7. EMOTION AND MOTIVATION

Psychological basis of emotion Overview We will begin by considering the functional relevance of emotions and their possible evolutionary origins. We will look at how emotions can be measured, and examine category-based and dimensional accounts of emotion. We will review three major theories of emotions (the James–Lange, Cannon–Bard, and Schachter theories). We will then look at one technique for measuring 'internal' emotional (affective) states in animals. Emotion: definitions and functions Everybody knows what emotions are… yet they can be difficult to define in a manner that allows experimental study. As a central theme we shall consider under the umbrella of 'emotion' all processes in humans and other animals that involve the assessment of value. Obvious functions Simple emotions such as fear are driven by motivationally-significant stimuli and events; 'emotional' behaviour can be highly adaptive for an animal. Fear of heights makes you less likely to be near (and therefore fall off) cliffs; fear of snakes and spiders makes you less likely to be bitten and poisoned by them (however unlikely that is in today's urban environment). Other emotions, especially those in the social domain , are more complex to understand. Emotions: rationally irrational? Schelling (1960), Frank (1988) and others view emotions as important because they are involuntary and difficult to fake; they advertise our inner states. In some situations , they are like a Doomsday machine (see Pinker, 1997, chapter 6, for light reading on this). The idea is that if your behaviour is controlled by rational mechanisms , you might change your mind, and people can bargain with you. If your behaviour isn't rational, you may do better. Imagine it's 1962, and you're President of the USA. The Soviet Union has just dropped an atomic bomb on New York, but the premier responsible has just been assassinated, so you know they will not attack again. Your nation's policy is to retaliate with a nuclear strike. But at this moment, you have nothing to gain by killing the citizens of Moscow, so you might pause. The problem is that by the time you're at this point, your freedom of choice may cause you not to retaliate (because it isn't particularly to your advantage at this time), but your opponent's knowledge that you might think and behave this way is what prompted the attack in the first place. What you needed is a deterrent that everyone would believe — for example, …