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Theoretical Approaches to Emotion

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Theoretical Approaches to Emotion ITRW on ISCA Archive Speech and Emotion http://www.iscaĆspeech.org/archive Newcastle, Northern Ireland, UK September 5-7, 2000 THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO EMOTION Randolph R. Cornelius Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY USA and speech already make use of the "big" theories of emotion, ABSTRACT if sometimes only implicitly. Finally, I will outline what students of emotion and speech might gain from an Four major theoretical perspectives on emotion in integration of theories from the four perspectives. psychology are described. Examples of the ways in which research on emotion and speech utilize aspects of the various 2. FOUR THEORETICAL perspectives are presented and a plea is made for students of PERSPECTIVES emotion and speech to consider more self-consciously the place of their research within each of the perspectives. When Skinner (Skinner, 1950) talked about theories of learning, he was actually talking about families or kinds of 1. ARE THEORIES OF EMOTION theories. I shall for the most part be doing the same. A survey of contemporary theory and research on emotion in NECESSARY? psychology reveals four different general theoretical perspectives about how to define, study, and explain emotion. Fifty years ago, B. F. Skinner (Skinner, 1950; Skinner, I have called these the Darwinian, Jamesian, cognitive, and 1972) asked "Are theories of learning necessary?" Calling social constructivist perspectives (Cornelius, 1996) . Each of theories, especially those that traffic in intervening variables these perspectives has its own set of assumptions about the or that appeal "to events taking place somewhere else, at nature of emotion, about how to construct theories about some other level of observation, described in different terms emotion, and about how to conduct research on emotion. and measured, if at all, in different dimensions" (Skinner, Each perspective is also associated with it own body of 1972, p. 69) from the phenomena they seek to explain, "fun" empirical research. Because each of the perspectives has its but "useless," Skinner argued that theories of learning are own more or less unique way of thinking about emotions, has ultimately "a refuge from the data" (Skinner, 1972, p. 72) endured in time, and has its sometimes passionate cadre of and so should be abandoned by any self-respecting science of adherents whose research exemplifies "how things are done" behavior. I would like to ask the same question of theories of within the perspective, it is appropriate to speak about each emotion; namely, "Are theories of emotion necessary?" More perspective as embodying its own tradition of research. specifically, I would like to ask, "Are theories of emotion There are, of course, several areas of overlap among the four necessary--and useful--to students of emotion and speech?" perspectives and their associated research traditions, this is Although it is beyond the scope of this paper, I believe it can especially true of the Darwinian and Jamesian perspectives. be shown that Skinner's attack on theory was wrongheaded However, for the most part, each ultimately presents a quite and that his conviction that a scientific psychology could different account of what emotions are all about. make do without theories and just "get back to an observable datum" (p. 72) was belied by his own arguments, which are 2.1 The Darwinian Perspective saturated by the kind of theoretical statements to which he objected. Contra Skinner, I will argue that theories of The central organizing idea of the Darwinian perspective is emotion are absolutely essential for students of emotion, no the notion that emotions are evolved phenomena with matter what aspect of emotion they study. I will further argue important survival functions that have been selected for that both contemporary and classic theories of emotion are because they have solved certain problems we have faced as a eminently useful to students of emotion and speech. species. As such, we should see the same emotions, more or less, in all humans. In addition, since humans share an evolutionary past with other mammals, we should expect to I know that you all make reference in your work to very observe similarities in the emotions of closely-related specific theories of how emotion gets encoded into speech species. and the like. I would like to convince you of the centrality and usefulness of the "big" theories of emotion to your The Darwinian perspective and its associated tradition of research. To get there, I will first describe four of the most research had their beginnings in Darwin's 1872 book The influential theoretical perspectives and research traditions in Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. The book, the study of emotion in the past 125 years or so. I will then whose origin lay in Darwin's discomfort with earlier attempts briefly describe what I see as some of the ways in which the to explain emotional expressions in terms of special creation, four perspectives have begun to converge. Next, I will described in Darwin's typically marvelous attention to detail attempt to locate some examples of the research presented at the facial expressions and bodily movements that accompany this conference within the four perspectives. This will give several emotions in humans and other animals and presented you a sense, I hope, of the ways in which students of emotion a simple theory of the evolution of such expressions and movements. Although contemporary students of emotion If there are indeed a small number of basic or fundamental within the Darwinian tradition rarely cite the specifics of his emotions, each corresponding to a particular evolved theory of the evolution of emotion and emotional adaptive response pattern, then we should see those emotions expressions, Darwin's ideas have been enormously represented in more than just a set of universally recognized influential. His legacy to the study of emotion in psychology facial expressions. It should be possible to see the traces of and biology consists of his use of the theory of evolution by evolution in other aspects of emotion as well. Philip Shaver natural selection as a framework for understanding emotional and his colleagues have gathered evidence that they say expressions and, by extension, emotions themselves, and his indicates that there are evolutionarily determined, cross- insistence that emotional expressions must be understood in cultural universals in the meanings of different emotions. terms of their functions and, hence, survival value. Shaver and colleagues (Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O'Connor, 1987; Shaver, Wu, & Schwartz, 1992) asked There are many contemporary students of emotion who have people in three different cultures (Italy, China, and the followed Darwin's lead in trying to understand emotions from United States) to sort a long list of emotion names into an evolutionary perspective, even if they do not always categories based on their similarity to one another. follow the particulars of how Darwin understood emotional Hierarchical cluster analysis indicated that six emotions expressions to have evolved. Foremost among these are, of could be described as "basic-level emotion categories" with a course, Paul Ekman, Carroll Izard, Alan Fridlund, and the high degree of overlap across the three cultures. The six late Sylvan Tompkins. The work of Joseph LeDoux (1996) emotions were love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear. also fits neatly into this perspective. Under the influence of Notice how similar this list is to Ekman's. Tompkins, Ekman and Izard and their colleagues and students have expended a great deal of effort over the last 30 2.1 The Jamesian Perspective years attempting to demonstrate the universality of certain human facial expressions of emotion. Although there are Theory and research in the Jamesian tradition was inspired by those who question what these findings ultimately mean, William James' writings on emotion, in particular, his 1884 most notably Alan Fridlund (1994) and James Russell article "What is an emotion?" Almost since the day of its (1994) , Ekman and colleagues (Ekman, Friesen, O'Sullivan, publication, psychologists of various kinds have debated the Chan, Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, Heider et al., 1987) have truth of James' famous equation of emotions with the amassed an impressive body of evidence for the universality perception of bodily changes: "bodily changes follow of a small number of facial expressions of emotion, what I directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and... our call the Big Six: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion" surprise (Cornelius, 1996) . (James, 1884, p. 189-190) . James insisted that it would be impossible to have emotions without bodily changes and that The number of such universal facial expressions varies bodily changes always come first. To understand how James somewhat depending on whom one is reading. Ekman says adopted this position, one must first appreciate his debt to six (or seven--he sometimes includes contempt), Izard Darwin. identifies ten, Robert Plutchik figures there are eight. Whatever the number, these are seen to correspond to a set of Although James was concerned with explaining the nature of so-called "fundamental," "basic," or "primary" emotions. emotional experience while Darwin was concerned with These emotions are considered fundamental because they emotional expression, both thought of emotions as represent survival-related patterns of responses to events in environmental adaptations with important survival-related the world that have been selected for over the course of our functions. Like Darwin, James considered emotions to be evolutionary history. According to Plutchik (1980) , each more or less automatic responses to events in an organism's fundamental, basic, or primary emotion, fulfills a specific environment that helped it to survive. According to James "adaptive role in helping organisms deal with key survival (1884) , "the nervous system of every living thing is but a issues posed by the environment" (p.
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