Jan 21 Flashcards
why do we call it a PROVISIONAL list of emotion properties?
because it likely IS NOT COMPREHENSIVE
will likely change as researche progresses
(currently: scalability, valence, persistence, generalization, global coordination, automaticity, social communication)
defining feature of a central state
is that experimental manipulations of that state should affect MULTIPLE OUTPUTS of that state (wide reaching - behavioural, physiological, cognitive, self report effects)
to determine this, it’s necessary to be able to MANIPULATE components of the state
ie. genes, brain cells
^ this likely calls for non-human research
basic emotion theories are the ______ view in the field
dominant
some of these ideas formed Anderson & Adolph’s principles
PAPER REVIEW: “4 models of basic emotions: a review of Ekman and Cordaro, Izard, Levenson and PAnksepp and Watt”
Ekman, Izard, Levenson & Panksepp’s theories are all examples of BASIC EMOTION THEORIES
paper focuses on the central themes of these models and identifies points of SIMILARITY/DIFFERENCE
considers which pieces of the models are MOST USEFUL
“all models are wrong, but some are useful”
important quote - core idea to keep in mind while we’re evaluating theories
what makes a USEFUL model?
- a useful model makes CLEAR, TESTABLE predictions
^ can ultimately be falsified
- a useful model will GUIDE and INFLUENCE RESEARCH
^ leads to new insights
- determining which parts of a model are RIGHT and WRONG is an EMPIRICAL question
3 things a strong model of basic emotions should do
(according to Tracy & Randles)
- allow us to FIGURE OUT IF X (some psychological entity) is a basic emotion
- if we already know that X is a basic emotion, a strong model should HELP US LEARN MORE about X
- provide SET OF INSTRUCTIONS for how to GO ABOUT STUDYING newly uncovered emotional states
basic emotion theories in a nutshell (5 points)
- propose a LIMITED NUMBER of biologically and psychologically “basic” emotions
(like fear, anger, joy, sadness)
- these basic emotions are DISCRETE and IRREDUCIBLE
- can be COMBINED to form complex emotions
- have INNATE NEURAL SUBSTRATES
- when elicited, lead to ORGANIZED and RECURRING PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR that are UNIVERSAL
BET: what is meant by saying that basic emotions are discrete and irreducible?
discrete: different from one another
irreducible: can’t be further distilled into component parts
BET: emotions evolved for what purpose?
to respond to fundamental life tasks
BET: distinctive causes, physiological correlates
emotions have distinctive causes - meaning they have specific ELICITING STIMULI
emotions have CHARACTERISTIC physiological correlates
emotions are AUTOMATICALLY ELICITED by these causes
basic emotions versus dimensional models
are generally distinguished from one another
- dimensional models define emotions based on their POSITION in two or more dimensions
(ie. arousal and valence)
^ may suggest that underlying neural mechanisms of an emotion are SHARED
- basic emotion models identify CATEGORICALLY DIFFERENT emotions with DISCRETE NEURAL SUBSTRATES
examples of basic emotions from diff theorists
Izard:
happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, interest, contempt
Panksepp & Watt:
PLAY, PANIC/GRIEF, FEAR, RAGE, SEEKING, LUST, CARE
Levenson:
enjoyment, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, interest (?), love (?), relief (?)
Ekman & Cordaro:
happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, surprise
why does Panksepp use all caps for his list of basic emotions?
bcuz he’s using common labels to refer to DIFF MEANINGS than we typically hold
what do all the theorists from the paper agree about the nature of basic emotions?
- DISCRETE
- have FIXED set of NEURAL and BODILY components
- have fixed FEELING or MOTIVATIONAL component
^ that has been EVOLUTIONARILY SELECTED because it’s adaptive
- PSYCHOLOGICALLY PRIMITIVE
- can INTERACT with other basic emotions and higher cognitive processes to produce COMPLEX emotional experience
BET theories: “psychologically primitive”
something that all 4 theorists agree on about basic emotions
means diff things to diff theorists
- are found in SUBCORTICAL BRAIN STRUCTURES (anatomically primitive)
- most strongly expressed EARLY in DEVELOPMENT or in response to IMMEDIATE CRISIS (primitive bcuz divorced from volitional control)
lone requirement of basic emotion held by Panksepp
basic emotions must be located in SUBCORTICAL STRUCTURES
all theorists agree that existence of a basic emotion is supported by what?
- GENERALIZATION ACROSS SPECIES
ie. examining the emotion in nonhuman animals
ie. existence of neurons dedicated to producing that emotion
BET theorists and their assertion that generalization across species is evidence of basic emotions - this leads to what important questions?
- how do we observe the emotion in another animal?
- assumes that emotions are hardwired at the level of individual neurons
^ likely much too simplistic, not enough flexibility
- what about animals with very different kinds of neural systems?
is pride a basic emotion? Tracy & Randles’ suggestion
Tracy & Randles suggest pride passes the test of having a distinct FEELING/MOTIVATIONAL COMPONENT
suggest it’s spontaneously shown in ‘pride-eliciting’ situations across culture - suggests UNIVERSALITY
suggests that DOMINANCE DISPLAYS in non-human animals may be related to pride
PROBLEMATIZING Tracy & Randles’ suggestion that pride’s a basic emotion: suggestion that pride has a distinct feeling/motivational component
by what objective criteria?
PROBLEMATIZING Tracy & Randles’ suggestion that pride’s a basic emotion: it’s spontaneously shown in ‘pride-eliciting’ situations across cultures (suggests universality)
how do we define ‘pride-eliciting’ situations?
CIRCULARITY built in here
we only know what a ‘pride-eliciting’ situation is by determining that it “elicits pride”
PROBLEMATIZING Tracy & Randles’ suggestion that pride’s a basic emotion: suggestion that dominance displays in non-human animals may be related to pride
what criterion are used to assess this?
BET: what’s the function of a basic emotion?
- basic emotions must have DIRECT CAUSAL POWERS over MOTIVATION and BEHAVIOUR
(at least early in development)
BET: basic function of emotions as having direct causal powers over motivation and behaviour - this is based on what class of principles?
based on EVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES that emotions evolved to facilitate ADAPTIVE COPING
BET basic function of emotion to directly affect motivation and behaviour - what happens as higher cognitive functioning develops?
emotion regulation also improves
so effects of emotion become MORE PROBABILISTIC THAN DETERMINISTIC
ie. in an infant, a certain stimulus will always lead to an emotion, but in an adult, this may not happen all the time because of intervening concept of emotional regulation
BET functions of basic emotions: connecting to last lecture and provisional list of features of emotion
- “basic emotions must have direct causal powers over motivation and behaviour, at least early in development”
^ connects to AUTOMATICITY
- “based on evolutionary principles that emotions evolved to facilitate adaptive coping”
^ connects to FUNCTIONAL DEFINITIONS
- “as higher cognitive functioning develops, so too does emotion regulation, so effects of emotion become more probabilistic than deterministic”
^ connects to VOLITIONAL CONTROL
quote on if pride has a distinct function
“pride likely promotes social status through several causal pathways:
- the reinforcement of achievement behaviours which in turn boosts status
- the motivation of perseverance at difficult tasks
- the communication of an individual’s deservedness of higher status”
can BET prompt a functional definition of pride?
yes!
through its assertion of the function pride serves to PROMOTE SOCIAL STATUS
(through reinforcing achievement behaviours, motivating perseverance in difficult tasks, and communicating individual’s deservedness of higher status”
how can we know that diff emotions are discrete?
all the BET theorists agree that basic emotion should have discrete antecedents, neural networks, physiology and behavioural output
but it’s challenging to find evidence of this in humans
challenges of studying the brain and particularly in establishing causality
difficulty in establishing that diff emotions are discrete (bcuz of hurdles studying brain and establishing causality) - WHAT DOES PANKSEPP ARGUE FOR?
argues for necessity of research in NON-HUMAN ANIMALS
sees this as the route to ESTABLISHING diffs between basic emotions
difficulty in establishing that diff emotions are discrete (bcuz of hurdles studying brain and establishing causality) - WHAT DOES EKMAN ARGUE FOR?
focus on studying DISCRETE EVENTs that elicit emotions
study the CAUSES/emotion-evoking stimuli
what argues against the idea that universality of emotions is evidence for genetic underpinning?
Levenson’s point that observing emotions across cultures may be because SIMILAR ENVIRONMENTS PRODUCE:
- SIMILAR CULTURALLY LEARNED RESPONSES
- and emotion expression associations can be TRANSMITTED ACROSS CULTURES
difficulty in establishing that diff emotions are discrete (bcuz of hurdles studying brain and establishing causality) - WHAT DOES LEVENSON POINT OUT?
points out that OBSERVING EMOTIONS ACROSS CULTURES DOESN’T MEAN that there must be a CONSERVED NEURAL NETWORK
this is because SIMILAR ENVIRONMENTS produce similar culturally-learned responses
and emotion associations can be TRANSMITTED across cultures
^ this argues against idea that universality of emotions is evidence for genetic underpinning
is pride featured in BET?
no
Tracy & Randles on pride
suggest pride has DISCRETE non-verbal behaviours but that the events that elicit pride may be less specific to pride
ie. they may also elicit happiness (although likely not vice versa)
^ most things that elicit pride likely elicit happiness, but things that elicit happiness don’t all elicit pride
^ leads to question of if happiness is a basic emotion or a DIMENSION?
happiness and pride: Tracy & Randles suggest that focus on ________ is useful - why?
focus on DISCRETENESS
ie. pride has discrete behaviours but that events that elicit pride aren’t that specific because they also elicit things like happiness
suggest focus on discreteness is useful because it PUSHES NEW THINKING about the nature of emotion
core affect program
pre-requisite of basic emotions
this core affect program ELICITS ADAPTIVE RESPONSES to FIXED PROTOTYPES of antecedent stimuli
hardwired program in the brain
what does Ekman say about the core affect program?
that the core affect program MUST elicit adaptive responses to fixed prototypes of antecedent stimuli
IT MUST IN ORDER FOR EMOTIONS TO TRIGGER COHESIVE RESPONSES SIMILARLY ACROSS INDIVIDUALS/CULTURES
this requires a program that’s hardwired in the brain
can novel stimuli be added to the core affect program?
BET says yes
novel stimuli can be added to the program, as can novel behavioural outputs
(points to generalization/learning)
what element on the provisional list of features of emotions is synergistic to the core affect program?
global coordination
the core affect program emphasizes the __________ of emotional responses but fails to account for what?
emphasizes the STABILITY of emotional responses
but fails to account for the FLEXIBILITY and VARIABILITY inherent to emotion
cognitive pre-requisites for pride
- pride is a SELF-CONSCIOUS emotion, that’s elicited by HIGH-LEVEL COGNITIVE APPRAISALS
- it’s a COGNITIVE-DEPENDENT emotion, which contrasts with COGNITIVE-INDEPENDENT basic emotions
how does pride contrast from basic emotions?
it’s cognitive dependent, requires high level cognitive appraisals
whereas basic emotions are COGNITION-INDEPENDENT
BET makes a hard distinction based on the requirement of cognition to mark a qualitative difference between…
different kinds of emotions
ie. pride requires cognition (so isn’t a basic emotion)
is this useful or valid?
is an emotion evoked by thinking of a certain thing different than an emotion evoked by a proximal stimulus?
^ are these qualitatively different states, or the same state that have simply been arrived at through different processes?
Anderson & Adolph - what’s their relationship to BET tradition?
their framework = BUILT ON the BET tradition but also DEPART from it in important ways
can recognize many of A & A’s framework in BET theories
aspects of A & A’s theory that we can see in BET
- automaticity
- global coordination
- use of evolutionarily derived functional definitions
differences between A & A’s theory and BET
- BET focuses on STABILITY and IGNORES INDIVIDUAL DIFFS
- A & A emphasizes FLEXIBILITY and easily ACCOUNTS FOR VARIABILITY in emotion WITHIN and ACROSS individuals
- A & A formalize the importance of FUNCTIONAL DEFINITIONS and locate all stimuli and outputs in equivalent qualitative functions
^ versus BET theory distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive
how do A & A account for diffs in emotion within and across individuals?
via CONTEXT and VOLITIONAL CONTROL
A & A make explicit the _________ ___ _______ _____ while leaving room for variance so that they may be…
PROPERTIES OF EMOTION STATES
room for VARIANCE that is SEPARABLE FROM PHYSICAL INSTANTIATION
versus Panksepp’s insistence on subcortical basis of emotion
or the broad consensus that basic emotions must have a discrete neural mechanism
2 quotes: Panksepp’s thesis
“many choose to ignore the likelihood that raw affective experiences - PRIMAL manifestations of “mind” - are natural functions of mammalian brains”
“…HIGHER aspects of the human mind are still strongly linked to the basic neuropsychological processes of ‘LOWER animal minds’”
in simple words: people like to draw distinctions between higher thought processes and basic biological/cognitive processing
he argues these are LINKED and INSEPARABLE
2 quotes: Panksepp’s goal
“…to encourage more open-minded discussions about the variety of primary-process affective processes in mammalian brains - emotional, homeostatic, and sensory feelings - and to motivate young scholars to avoid the grand mistakes of the 20th century, which in a sense were similar to those bequeathed by Rene Descartes” (ie. dualism”
“…we can scientifically understand the foundations of the human mind by studying the basic subcortical emotion systems that can be well studied in animals”
in simple language: PANKSEPP HERE IS INTRODUCING IDEA THAT ALL COGNITIVE PROCESSING IS LINKED
^ doesn’t believe in discontinuity between biological mechanisms and emotion
^ says that all emotions are rooted in the brain and biology
Panksepp’s prescription
we need more research using ‘DUAL ASPECT approaches’ that follow the scientific method
ie. using conditioned place preference or conditioned place aversion to test the hedonic properties of a stimulus
ie. testing if emotional response circuits are rewarding or punishing
ie. using emotional vocalizations as proxies for feeling states
dual aspect theory
holds that the mental and the physical are different aspects of a UNITARY reality
Panksepp: primary emotional operating systems
these correspond to different NEURAL CIRCUITS
circuits = DEFINED by GENETICS, REFINED by EXPERIENCE
circuits generate well-organized behaviour sequences
Panksepp: how do we evoke behaviour in primary emotional operating systems?
through electrical stimulation
Panksepp: location of primary emotional operating systems
each system is assigned a SPECIFIC ANATOMICAL LOCATION
systems OVERLAP and INTERSECT
interactions can be EXCITATORY or INHIBITORY
theory equates these systems with the PRIMARY-PROCESS LEVEL
Panksepp: “the brain is evolutionarily layered”
Panksepp references ideas about how brain complexity evolved and how this then relates to how the brain functions
“what came first remains low and medial in the brain; what came later was added on the outside (more laterally)”
this approach PARCELLATES brain functions and ASSIGNS them to PHYSICAL LOCATIONS in the brain
Panksepp argues that any understanding of emotion must be based first on…
understanding evolutionarily conserved ‘primal affective’ functions
“the primal affective mechanisms exist in some of the most ancient regions of the brain, where evolutionary homologies are striking”
“if we don’t understand the foundational level - the primary process mechanisms of the BrainMind - then we will never have a clear image of how our emotional feelings evolved and how higher brain mechanisms work… the secondary and tertiary functions of the brain rely critically on unconditional networks that evolved earlier”
Panksepp believes that what are important in generating emotional experience?
primal emotions
which are rooted in subcortical structures
these are re-represented in higher brain regions
Panksepp would say that classical conditioning (and other forms of basic learning) are dependent on…
bottom up hierarchical controls
depend on primal emotion subcortical structures
Panksepp’s criticism of modern human emotion affect studies
excessive weight is placed on poorly defined “cognitions”
in lieu of full consideration of primal nature of our emotions and motivations
Panksepp’s 4 central claims
- brain networks that are located in evolutionarily old brain regions that are similar in all mammals control basic emotional instinctual behaviours
- the lower regions of the brain = more important for generating emotional feelings than higher (cortical) regions
- brain regions/networks that generate emotional instinctual behaviours closely correspond to feelings associated with these states
- basic neurochemistry (neuromodulators, opioids, ocytocin, dopamine) of emotional feelings = the same across all mammals
how does Panksepp propose we will get to a scientifically valid general definition of emotions?
by studying the PRIMARY PROCESS SYSTEMS (subcortical neural centres)
Panksepp’s __ basic emotional systems
7
Panksepp’s legacy
- details of his theory = DEBATABLE and NO LONGER WIDELY ACCEPTED
- his work has INSPIRED much research into neural mechs of emotion
- influential in PSYCHIATRY, providing FRAMEWORK to understand neural mechanisms of disorders like DEPRESSION and ANXIETY
^ and to TARGET TREATMENTS to underlying emotional disturbances
- used his research to ADVOCATE for IMPROVING ANIMAL TREATMENT
