1 Psychology 1002: Emotion Marc de Rosnay Consultation hour: to Thursday Brennan MacCallum Room:

2 Overview 1 Lectures 1 & 2: Built for Emotion Evolutionary and biological perspectives on emotion Lecture 3: Emotion in Infancy Adaptive, functional and social perspectives Lecture 4: Emotions in Development Language development, the onset self- consciousness and atypical development Lecture 5: What is an Emotion? How should we think about emotions in the study of psychology? 1 Overheads are only an aid for lectures, they are not exhaustive

3 Lecture 1. Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) Importantly, Darwin emphasized continuities between human beings and non-human primates Basic emotional (including facial) expression are innate, they are produced and recognized automatically “... the young and the old of widely different races, both with man and animals, express the same state of mind by the same movements.”

4 Lecture 1. Darwin Darwin pioneered the careful observation of facial expressions of emotion, including those of human infants and blind children When infants cry, 1. do they have their eyes open or shut? 2. is their mouth open or shut?

5 Lecture 1. Darwin “Infants, when suffering even slight pain, or discomfort, utter violent and prolonged screams. While thus screaming their eyes are firmly closed, so that the skin round them is wrinkled, and the forehead contracted into a frown. The mouth is widely opened with the lips retracted in a peculiar manner, which causes it to assume a squarish form”

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7 Lecture 1. Darwin and his contemporaries Photographs from Mécanisme de la Physionomie Humaine (1862) by Guillaume Duchenne – heavily relied upon by Darwin Electric stimulation was used to determine the facial muscles responsible for different facial expressions

8 Lecture 1. The legacy of Darwin Darwin, fundamentally changed the ways in which emotions would be conceptualized within Western scientific thinking grounded emotion in our evolutionary history and drew strong parallels between different species regarding the functions of emotional expression Provided a framework for subsequent emotion research that is still influential today

9 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions?

10 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1971) Endeavored to show that certain basic emotions are universally recognized and understood to signify the same psychological state of the individual They, and others (e.g., Izard, 1971), were able to show this in literate cultures but argued that, “…, it is necessary to demonstrate that cultures which have had a minimal visual contact with literate cultures show similarity to these cultures in their interpretation of facial behavior.” (p. 125)

11 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1971): STEP 1 USA Papua New Guinea (Fore linguistic group) STEP 2 Papua New GuineaUSA (Note: step 2 not a direct replication)

12 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1971) stories: His friends have come, and he is _____ Her mother has died, and she feels very _____ He is _____, about to fight She is just now looking at something new and unexpected He is looking as something which smells bad

13 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1971) stories: She is sitting in her house all alone, and there is no one else in the village. There is no knife, axe, or bow and arrow in the house. A wild pig is standing in the door of the house, and the woman is looking at the pig and is very _____ of it. The pig has been standing in the doorway for a few minutes, and the person is looking at it very _____, and the pig won’t move away from the door, and she is _____ the pig will bite her

14 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1971) Results: Men, women and children from the tribe had very little difficulty matching the stories with an appropriate facial expression Remarkable continuity between the Fore linguistic group in PNG and literate cultures Remember, the expressions were posed by Caucasians, not fellow tribesmen There was some difficulty distinguishing surprise from fear

15 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Interim conclusions: Ekman & Friesen (1971) provide good evidence for universal recognition and universally shared understanding of certain basic emotions Why didn’t they examine other emotions? (shame, pride, guilt, contempt, etc) What makes an emotion basic?

16 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1986) Examined the possibility that contempt is a pan- cultural emotion Predicted that is was not, because, 1. not observed in other primates 2. one of the last emotions to appear 3. doesn’t involve bilateral facial actions

17 Contempt – unilateral facial action

18 Tightening and slightly raising corner of lip unilaterally

19 The other side of the face remains relatively passive

20 Contempt – bilateral facial action

21 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman & Friesen (1986). Findings: Did not confirm their hypothesis Contempt expressed as tightening and slightly raising corner of lip unilaterally was universally recognized (in 10 countries) Other variations of the contempt expression (defined differently in terms of facial actions) were not universally differentiated

22 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Conclusions: Generally accepted that anger, happiness, fear, sadness, (surprise), disgust and contempt are basic emotions There is still controversy surrounding other emotions (pride, shame, guilt, etc), moods (grumpy), persistent affective states (love, passion, hate, etc) and more stable personality traits or dispositions (depressive, anxious)

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24 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Conclusions: Generally accepted that anger, happiness, fear, sadness, (surprise), disgust and contempt are basic emotions There is still controversy surrounding other emotions (pride, shame, guilt, etc), moods (grumpy), persistent affective states (love, passion, hate, etc) and more stable personality traits or dispositions (depressive, anxious) Once you start to think about emotion and the emotion system in action then it becomes quite difficult to know what is emotion and what is not Consider, for a moment, mother-infant communication: vitality affects (Stern, 1985)

25 Lecture 1. Are there basic emotions? Ekman (1999) suggests the following criteria for basic emotions: 1.Distinctive universal signals 2.Distinctive physiology 3.Automatic appraisal, tuned to: 4. Distinctive universals in antecedent events 5.Distinctive appearance developmentally 6.Presence in other primates 7.Quick onset 8.Brief duration 9.Unbidden occurrence 10.Distinctive thoughts, memories, images 11.Distinctive subjective experience