Ekman+(WK6)

__**Summary:**__

"Most of my presentation will describe nine characteristics of the emotions of anger, fear, sadness, enjoyment, disgust, and surprise. I will also raise the possibility that contempt, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and awe may also be found to share these nine characteristics" (p. 170).

Basic emotions "have unique features (signal, physiology, and antecedent events)" and "has features in common with other emotions - rapid onset, short duration, unbidden occurrence, automatic appraisal, and coherence among responses - which allow us to begin to deal with fundamental life-tasks quickly without much elaborated planning, in ways that have been adaptive in our past." (p. 195)

//What distinguishes basic emotions from one another (nine characteristics): //

**1. Distinctive universal signals** -This is shown in the way in which emotions are expressed. -"The strongest evidence for distinguishing one emotion from another comes from research on facial expressions." (p.175) -The evidence for the universality of these signals lies in cross-cultural agreement as well as in the study of emotional expressions (p.176). -In addition to the physical expressions, there may be universal vocal expressions, but Ekman states that Tomkins is still researching this idea (p.176). ‍‍-"Emotional expressions are crucial to the development and regulation of interpersonal relationships." Example: stroke victims experiencing "interpersonal difficulties." (p.177)  ‍‍-"Basic emotions can occur without any evident signal...a threshold may need to be crossed to bring about an expressive signal, and that threshold may vary across individuals." (p.177) -Evolution may be related to the "why" of these basic emotional expressions, but there is not enough evidence to show this. (p.177-178)

-"The techniques for measuring human expression in muscular terms (Ekman &Friesen, 1976, 1978; Izard, 1979), could be modified for use with other primates, allowing very precise comparisons of the muscular displays." (p.179) -"There is no necessary reason why every emotion must appear in other animals, some emotions might have emerged only in humans." such as pride shame and gratitude (p.179)
 * 2. Presence in other primates **

-This is the manner in which the body reacts to emotional situations through the autonomic nervous system. (p.179) -"[T]he social constructionist emphasizes the past history of the individual" having an affect on the physiological reaction, and "the evolutionary theorist emphasises the past history of the species in explaining why there is emotion-specific ANS activity." (p.180) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">-"ANS patterns evolved because they sub-serve patterns of motor behavior which were adaptive for each of these emotions, preparing the organism for quite different actions." (p.181) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">-These physiological reactions, from an evolutionary point-of-view were adapted to help the individual to react to the situation quickly in order to survive. (p.181)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">3. Distinctive physiology (or Emotion Specific Physiology) **

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">4. **Distinctive universals in antecedent events** -It was found that, "commonalities in emotion antecedents in the many non-western cultures they examined. It was not in the specific details but more on an abstract level that universality in antecedent events was found. The loss of significant other, they found, is an antecedent to sadness in many, perhaps all cultures. but who a significant other is or can be will differ from culture to culture" (p. 184). -"Ekman and Friesen formulated prototypic interpersonal events which would universally call forth each of this set of emotions. For example, the antecedent event for fear is physical or psychological harm" (p. 184).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">5. **Coherence among emotional response** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">-"It is not possible as yet to determine whether the disassociation's between autonomic and expressive behavior that have been found are normative or instead reflect differences in personality, temperament, and/or differential attempts to inhibit activity" (p. 184). -"I am positing that the autonomic responses and expressive changes are not, by nature, disconnected, although there will be large individual differences, some constitutional and some based on learning. And, I am positing connection rather then disconnection between facial expressions of emotion and distinctive patterns of CNS activity, and not limited to just the brain areas involved in production of the facial expression" (p. 184-185).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">6. **Quick onset** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">-"It is the nature of emotion, I believe, that emotions can begin so quickly that they can happen before one is aware that they have started. Indeed quick onset is fundamental I believe to the adaptive value of emotions, mobilizing us to respond to important events with little time required for consideration or preparation. There is some evidence form expression and physiology to support the proposal that emotions can onset quickly" (p. 185).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">7. **Brief duration** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">-"There is no agreement about how long exactly emotions last, and no agreement about which aspect of emotion must be considered to empirically make that determination. Motor behavior is probably a better index of when emotions begin then when they are over. Some of the ANS changes last longer then others, and both may last longer then people subjectiveley beleive they are experiencing the emotion, hence the observation after the near-miss car accident, 'I am no longer afraid but I feel as if I am'" (p. 186).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">8. **Automatic appraisal**

Since the interval between stimulus and emotional response is sometimes extraordinarily short, the appraisal mechanism must be capable of operating with great speed. Often the appraisal is not only quick but it happens without awareness, so I must postulate that the appraisal mechanism is able to operate automatically. It must be constructed so that it quickly attends to some stimuli, determining not only that they pertain to emotion, but to which emotion” (pg 187)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">9. **Unbidden occurrence** “Because emotions can occur with rapid onset, through automatic appraisels, with little awareness, and with involuntary response changes in expression and physiology, we ofter experience emotions as happening to, not chosen by us. One can not simply elect when to have which emotion”. (pg 189)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">__**Quotes/responses:**__ "To identify separate discrete emotions does not necessarily require that one also take an evolutionary view of emotions" -So instead of noting that "basic" emotions are a result of evolution one could argue that it is attributed to "species-constant learning": "social learning which will usually occur for all members of the species regardless of culture" (p. 170-171)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">"In happiness a goal is attained or maintained, in sadness there is a failure to attain or maintain a goal, in anger an agent causes a loss of a goal, and in fear there is an expectation of failure to achieve a goal" (p. 171).

All of these views of emotions have one thing in common, that they presume that "emotions are designed to deal with inter-organismic encounters, between people or people and other animals" (p. 171)

"It is important to note: that emotions can and do occur when we are not in the presence of others, and are not imagining other people. We can have emotional reactions to thunder, music, loss of physical support, auto-erotic activity, etc." (p. 171)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">"I believe the primary function of emotion is to mobilize the organism to deal quickly with important interpersonal encounters, prepared to do so in part, at least, by what types of activity have been adaptive in the past" (p. 171).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">"Emotional expressions are crucial to the development and regulation of interpersonal relationships [...] stroke patients who can not properly identify the prosody that accompanies speech or who cannot generate the prosody that accompanies emotion utterances have severe interpersonal difficulties" (p. 177).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">"Because emotions can occur with rapid onset, through automatic appraisal, with little awareness, and with involuntary response changes in expression and physiology, we often experience emotions as happening to, not chosen by us" (p. 189, under "Unbidden Occurrence").

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">"Perhaps it has not been relevant to survival to know which positive emotion was occurring, only that it was a positive emotion rather than anger, fear, disgust, or sadness" (p. 190).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">__**Vocabulary:**__

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Ontogeny: Development of the individual (p. 171).

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">Phylogeny: Development of groups of individuals (p. 171). Autonomic nervous system (ANS): Involuntary and subconscious sensory and motor actions taken by the body. (wikipedia.com)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">__**Questions/statements:**__

<range type="comment" id="664070">‍Each emotion family can be considered to constitute a theme and variations. (p.173) ‍

Expressions which represent the variations within a family has not yet been researched. (p. 173)

The theme is composed of the characteristics unique to that family. The variations on the theme are the product of various influences: individual differences specific to and reflecting the nature of the particular occasion in which an emotion occurs. (p.173)

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: arial,sans-serif;">__**What to talk with other groups about:**__