Greg Detre
@18.30 on Wednesday, 31 January, 2001
in Borders
Japanese and American feel the same emotions, but the Japanese (inscrutable Orientals with their alien minds) have more masking display rules
Ekman � experiment showing videos to American and Japanese
neutral and disgusting videos shown, the Japanese with interviewer smiled more and showed fewer signs of disgust
when the videos were played in slow motion, Japanese showed the same emotions briefly, but masked them a few hundreds of seconds later.
only after consciousness(???) caught up could the learned display rules alter the facial expressions
why have emotions evolved, and why they haven�t atrophied?
Is Spock, a supremely rational being, possible? He thinks not � he�d be a retrograde step. Evidence from neurology of people with emotion-related parts of their brains damaged leading disastrous lives � although they don�t panic when they skid the car, but when they arrive in the office they perfectionistically spend all their time on the first item in their in-tray (emotions seem important in decision-making tasks � need for �gut feeling�)
Damasio � would you like to come on a Thursday or a Friday � patient consulted diary, and was still debating about the merits of the two � then Damasio said �Well, what about Thursday� and the patient said immediately, �Yup� � analysis paralysis
�those who are sensible about love are incapable of it� � Douglas Yates
Darwin�s rational pros and cons to marriage on a piece of paper
his book also discusses AI and affective computing
what sort of approach does the book take?
neuroscience/neuropharmacology, anthropology, AI
what about maladaptive emotions, e.g. phobias?
well, they may seem maladaptive now to us, but the underlying mechanism/design of the human mind that allows that to happen must be adaptive � if designing a burglar alarm, balancing line between hairtrigger vs unresponsive
do you want false positives or false negatives? in the case of the fear system where you�re worrying about being attacked by predators, you�d probably prefer false positives
quick one-shot learning that happens in dangerous situations, and some people are wired up too jittery
is it possible to incorporate archaelogical evidence into the emotions?
evolutionary psychology is hard because emotions don�t fossilise, though there are other things that archeologists might be able to infer � psychology seems to speculative for the hard-headed archeologists
Mark Cohen � speculates about courtship rituals on the basis of hand axes being too big for effective combat use, perhaps used to impress � would imply similar sorts of emotions etc. for this behaviour to emerge
emotion and cognition as two separate systems in the brain � how do they relate?
evidence for some separation � damage to emotional centres in the brain leaving cognitive centres largely intact (and perhaps vice versa) � folk distinction between emotion + reason will probably break down
how do you differ from Damasio?
agrees with most of his stuff � except: Damasio seems to be saying that emotion is there to supplement reason � as though emotions evolved for that reason, whereas it seems to be the other way round, since emtoins came first
famous card-sorting test in DE � seemed that all the papers about this test fail to give all the details � he agrees with the basic thesis that emotion is fundamental to decision making
dating agencies?
this is not necessarily an impairment, but partly media-driven desire for the perfect partner � in America, putting a personal column or join an agency is perfectly normal
emotion adaptivity?
each emotion has its own story. they�re quick decision mechanisms for when you haven�t got much time
body as fundamental to emotion?
throwback to the James-Lange theory of emotions as perceptions of bodily feelings. it�s not that we run from the bear because we feel frightened, but that we run away and notice the heartbeat and adrenaline as the feeling of fear. he thinks that one can come before the other
Damasio focuses on a feedback loop between the body and mind. biofeedback, e.g. yoga calms their body, or pulling facial expressions makes you feel a certain way. James argued that the body acted as a sort of sounding board to amplify the feeling to reflect back the urgency of the feeling. presumably testable by looking at people with complete paralysis whether or not they feel faded emotions.
do we need a theory of mind to explain the more complex emotions?
yes, e.g. jealousy � without internalised model of other�s minds, it wouldn�t make sense.
debate over whether animals (e.g. chimps) have it too.
nicholas humphrey to test whether his dogs can feel guilt. put a piece of meat on the table in the kitchen every morning � asked his friend to flip a coin every day, and if heads to steal the meat before the dog could get it and if tails to let the dog have it. nick would come home, and the meat would always be missing, and his task would be to decide whether or not the dog looked guilty. then compared his impressions of the dog�s guilt with the coin flips and they tallied perfectly
how�s this book different from Damasio and Rolls etc.???
how important is the body in emotion???
is emotion adaptive then???
what�s his background?