Emotions, Attitudes and Communication · Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human...

Emotions, Attitudes and Communication

GU, IPC, HT09Bilyana Martinovski

Semiotic Conditions• Perception

• Senses: smell, vision, hearing, taste and touch

• The architecture and functions of the brain

• Experiences

• Cognitive system: think, feel

• Cultural conceptual systems

Theories and Models aboutEmotion

• Darwinism, biology, physiology

• (William) Jamesianism, psychology, neurology

• Cognitivism

• Social constructivism, anthropology, sociology

Darwin, Ekman biology, physiology

• Survival value, evolution, adaptation role

• Expression of feelings

• Universalism

• Other species have it

Cognitivism Plato, Descartes, Arnoldreason, will, appetite‘I think therefore I am’

Appraisal theory– Not deliberate, ‘direct, immediate, non-reflective,

non-intellectual, and automatic’

– How one thinks about something may influence what feelings come up

– Lazarus’ coping strategies

Social ConstructivismAnthropology and Sociology

James Averill and Rom Harre;Handbook of emotion, Lewis&Haviland,

1993

Emotions are social and cultural constructions, products that have meaning thanks to social rules

Emotion and Prosody, Abelin and Allwood

• Intention and interpretation do not coincide always

• Some emotions can be recognized easier independently of culture and language, ie they are more universal

• One recognizes emotions more correctly in ones own language i.e. universalism is limited

• Some emotional expressions have similar acoustic features– Anger: - continuity, + intensity– Fear: + continuity, - intensity

Privileged Limbic System

Neuroscientists such as Uexkull (1934), Fuster (2003), and Arnold Scheibel (2006) observe that evolution gave privilege to the limbic system: emotional feedback is present in lower species, but other cortical cognitive feedback is present only in higher species.

James, Damasio psychology, neurology

• Experiences of feelings

• Conditions of the body influence and cause emotions, which in turn influence thinking

Damasio: Descartes' ErrorPhineas Gage:- impaired ability to feel emotion- intelligence remained intact after the accident- severely handicapped ability to take rational

decisionsDamasio:- emotions could no longer be engaged in the decision process- rationality stems from our emotions- our emotions stem from our bodily senses- state of mind is identical to state of feeling, which is a reflection of state of body

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994

Damasio explores in depth the unusual case of Phineas Gage, a man whose ability to feel emotion was damaged after an accident destroyed part of his brain. Specifically, he demonstrates that, while Gage's intelligence remained intact after the accident, his ability to make rational decisions and to reason became severely handicapped because his emotions could no longer be engaged in the process.

Damasio

argues that first, rationality stems from our emotions, and second, that our emotions stem from our bodily senses. The state of the mind, or feeling, is merely a reflection of the state of the body, and feeling is an indispensable ingredient of rational thought.

Descartes: Discourse on Method,“I think, therefore I am"

The building block upon which he constructed his philosophy of Dualism. In Descartes' approach, thought is the proof of existence; it is the basic truth. Damasio argues that the body is the genesis of thought, that thinking is inherent to a body in which no spirit exists. The fundamental difference in argument situates itself in that thought is a physiological function, based on anatomy making the statement "I think, therefore I am" a repetition. It essentially becomes "I am, therefore I am" when Damasio's principle of the body-mind rather than dualism is applied. This presents the reason why the work is titled Decartes' Error.

somatic-marker hypothesis

The somatic-marker hypothesisproposes a mechanism by which emotional processes can guide (or bias) behavior, particularly decision-making.

Three Layered ‘Mind Minding’ Model (M) of Interlocutor’s Goals, Beliefs, Desires, Memories,

and Emotional States (BGDME)

Theories of Mind (ToM)

• Imitation - we reason about others’ states of mind by imitation, mirror neurons (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004; Iacoboni, 2005)

• Simulation - we reason about others’ states of mind by simulation (Goldman, 1989)

• Representation - we reason about others’states of mind by use of common-sense representations (Hobbs and Gordon, 2004)

Integrated Theory of Mind: Hypotheses• Embodied ToM - mental states take input

from emotional states, which take input from body states

• ToM is expected in many species• Imitation, simulation and representation are

evolutionary stages of cognitive and emotive development

• Contemporary Homo Sapiens uses all three ToM processes

• Theories of Mind have linguistic-pragmatic manifestation in discourse

Emotion in Decision-Making• conflict and negative emotions can be constructive• display of emotion helps participants to navigate in social structures, it is not

only a consequence of information-processing (Parkinson, 1996)• ambiguity often causes negative emotions, which influence judgment• negative emotion in one situation or to one agent easily distributes over

other situations/agents (Griffit, 1976)• coercian bias influences negotiation, i.e. negotiators are not aware that

display of anger does not only influence the other party but it also fires back on themselves

• illusion of transparency influences negotiation i.e. negotiators assume their emotions are obvious to others, which leads to minsinterpretations

• expression of negative emotion can lead to necessary changes (Schwartz, 1990)

• anger indicates the importance of an issue to the involved party (Daly, 1991)

Effects of Positive Emotions• enhanced commitment, bonding and confidence (Pruitt &

Carnevale, 1993; Kramer, Pommerenke and Newton, 1993; Shiota et al., 2004; Kopelman et al. 2006)

• enhanced flexibility (Druckman & Broome, 1991)

• mutually satisfactory agreements (Hollingshead and Carnevale, 1990; McIntosh, 1996; Baron, 1990)

• enhanced gullibility and passivity (Schaller & Cialdini, 1988)

• heightened expectations which likely lead to disappointment (Parrott, 1994)

Thank you!