This week’s reading focused on different aspects of the expression of emotion. The facial and bodily expressions as means for communication and expression of emotion, their origins and cultural resemblances where largely discussed throughout the readings.
In LeDoux’s chapter5, “The way we were”, he introduces us to the evolution of emotions. He thinks every emotion comes from a different network in the brain and therefore should be studied one at the time. He chooses to study fear being a primitive emotion, universal and also shared with animals. Fear is associated with survival reflexes; responses to danger are similar in every animal and society. In this perspective he uses Darwin’s work to explain the evolution of emotions. “Mind and behavior are also shaped by natural selection” which would explain the similarities in expression of emotions between animals and humans and within human societies. The innateness of the expression of our emotions I thought was very intriguing; and to think that one aspect of being civilized is learning how to control the expression of our emotions. He also brings up the idea that bodily expression is the first means of communication between the mother and the child. Even beyond the mother-infant relationship I would say that it stays a very important means of communication but that it looses it’s importance or consciousness because we are less used to using it. Is bodily expression more truthful but harder to interpret once words have been introduced? The impact of society was also presented and the differences in the way cultures express their emotions is fascinating. Is it possible to understand those differences? And in what way can those differences inform us on societies?
In this chapter he also talks about the different researches that have been done to find “basic emotion” with universal facial expression. It seems as though a lot of research has been done with a lot of various results. It appears as though some universal basic emotion could potentially exist but it seems very hard to fall in agreement.
The first article, “Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion” broke this question in two parts, one concerning the receiver and the other the sender. Different perspectives and tests exist for example using actors. This article brings up the question of how to control our emotions? And to what extend is it possible? If we can actually recognize signals throughout different societies, meaning codes do exist for all humans. Can we explain their origins and differences? The sender has different tools, for example facial or vocal and it appears that we express our emotions that way only in public, which enhances the importance of bodily expression as a means of communication.
The second article “The Experience of Emotion” brings up several issues. First of all it presents the different approaches that exist to the study of expression of emotion and the different aspects they all suggest. Emotion has an important subjective aspect; will research ever be able to come through this obstacle? The writer focuses on the idea of consciousness. He mentions the emotions of pleasure and displeasure has being universal and present at birth, but how can one read the emotion of a child? If we don’t have any consciousness of an emotion can we still say it is there? What is an emotion without consciousness? How can we measure it? Can an emotion exist without a feeling?
The “The Naked Face” article focuses primarily on facial expression and the work Ekman did to catalog all possible expression and their meaning. He differentiates voluntary and involuntary expression. He points out the fact that we don’t use facial expression to understand one another as much as we could. What would it be like if we actually used all those significance he found? How would our relationships change? How would it be if we could control all our expression? This article also puts forward the question of how much consciousness we have of our emotions and the ways we can express them.
Finally in the last article, “Listening to your heart: interoceptive awareness as a gateway to feeling”, the author poses the question of which comes first between body sensation and feeling? Which one is the consequence of the other; does it have to only work one way? This also was an issue in Ekman’s work when he realized that making the facial expression he had catalogued could make the feeling it was linked to arise. He also presents the difference between emotion and feeling, which I still found confusing.
The readings brought up a lot of interesting question about the expression of emotions. Some of the main issues seemed to be the cultural differences in bodily expression and our relation and consciousness to our own emotions. The definition of emotion and its location in the brain, the different functions it implies is also an important part of the research. It is a very large subject and it appears to be complicated for researches to find a common ground.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I believe that it is hard for the researches to find this "common ground" because of the context that they are trying to define the emotions in. Are the researchers looking at emotions biologically, or psychologically or culturally? When reading the articles, you have to keep in mind what kind of researchers they are and what part of emotions they are taking interest in. Plutchik's wheel of emotions and his equations can be seen as being too straightforward and logical for some. Others could find it helpful to dissect emotions and break them down into basic emotions of first and second order. I don't know if it's possible to put together dyads of feelings and turn them into other emotions. I know that my feelings can be complex at times because there are so many factors going on, but I don't know if I could really break it down into an equation
The fact that there has been a system developed (FACS) for distinctively distinguishing facial expressions is astonishing, and also gives more evidence to the fact that the study of emotions is an especially disputable one. No wonder there have been so many research methods proposed! How can we only have 8 (or 6, or 4...) core emotions? I know someone who has a "questioning" look on their face much more often than they have a sad or surprised look on their face. Would this perhaps mean that there are different core sets of emotions for individuals? Individuals in different cultures? What does it mean that Tomkins had a knack for judging emotions, and other people had to take much more time to get to know the system he and Ekman had devised?
I absolutely believe that bodily expressions of emotion are the much more truthful than what one may show in words on in one's facial expression(being that bodily expression are so much harder to conceal). However, what makes fear unique is that in it's strong link to animals, it appears that humans are less able to modify their emotional responses when confronted with a fearful stimulus (thus producing a rather primitive response). I would be interested in discussing further what sets fear apart from other emotions - I believe LeDoux makes an excellent choice of distinguishing it in Chapter 5.
I definitely enjoyed the naked face article the most; but I wondered how accurate it actually is. Though I realize the FACS system is probably extremely difficult to master, if it is really the key to analyzing people, why don't more people attempt to learn it? I also wondered how much the environment really affects a reaction; we've now seen so many different reaction-response models; which one is really "correct" (though this seems to be a unanswerable question)?
Post a Comment