Human Cognition - Emotion

It was cold and damp that morning when the clan’s men loaded up their spears and packed hazelnuts in their pouches. The plan was to walk down river and then step off into the woods. Once through the woods, they would hunt in a clearing where they had seen evidence of reindeer the day before. There was a sense of excitement that the migrations were starting and the hunt would produce food and material for the clan. As they left camp, however, a seriousness came over the group. They were going into the killing fields.

The walk down river was quiet except for the morning birds and the water rushing along. As the camp disappeared around the bend, a misty fog engulfed the hunting party. It slowed them and they moved into single file staying in sight of each other. When they came to the rapids, they turned into the woods. Moving through the thick underbrush in the fog slowed them even more. What had been a beautiful morning now felt dark and confined. Each step further into the woods raised the awareness of danger. They could hear something moving off to their left. They stopped. Unable to see more than a few steps into the fog, all sound became acute. It sounded like a deer, but they knew it was a tiger imitating the sounds of prey. Fear gripped them as tightly as they gripped their spears. They were being hunted.

Emotions are complex. They are the product of many millenniums of evolutionary development which have inured to our survival. They gave our ancestors their world of friends and foes, their hunger for food and its fatal alternatives. Emotions are discrete and consistent responses to internal or external information which has a particular significance. For example, the realization of danger and the subsequent arousal of the nervous system are integral to the experience of fear. Rapid heartbeat and breathing, sweating and muscle tension are the built-in reactions to stimuli that are interpreted as dangerous. Emotions are brief in duration and consist of a coordinated set of responses which may include verbal, physiological, behavioral, and neural mechanisms. To paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, our emotions are the slaves of our experiences, and we are the slaves of our emotions.

The brain is a biological computer designed by evolution to process information that makes a difference. According to Leda Cosmides and John Tooby in “Handbook of Emotions”, the mind is a collection of information-processing procedures (cognitive programs) that are physically embodied in the neural circuitry of the brain. The brain and mind are terms, therefore, that refer to the same system. Other parts of the body evolved for lifting loads, grinding food, chemically extracting nutrients. The brain was designed by evolution to use information derived from the environment and the body to functionally regulate behavior and the body. The mind is, therefore, an evolved set of domain-specific programs for solving different adaptive problems such as face recognition, foraging, mate choice, heart rate regulation, sleep management, or predator vigilance. Each program is activated by a different set of cues from the environment.

There are many cognitive programs which, if not regulated, could all be activated at the same time resulting in delivered outputs that could conflict with one another. For example, sleep and flight from a predator require mutually inconsistent actions and physiological states. It is not an accident that it is difficult to sleep when your heart and mind are racing with fear. The consequences of falling asleep while being chased by a tiger would be devastating. Therefore, the brain has developed cognitive programs to deal with this issue, “commander programs”. They override some programs while other programs are activated. In our example, the commander program overrides the sleep program when predator evasion routines are activated. Further, many adaptive issues are best resolved by the activation of several subroutines at the same time while shutting off ineffective programs. Adaptive survival has been based on the evolutionary development of commander programs to load the right subroutine configurations at the right time based on information received. Emotions are commander programs.

One of the most interesting aspects of emotions is empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand what another person is experiencing from within the other person's frame of reference. In effect, empathy is the ability to supposedly feel what someone else is feeling. The way empathic emotions are characterized plays a large role in what we feel when we are being empathic. If, for example, emotions are centrally characterized by bodily feelings, then grasping the bodily feelings of another will be central to empathy. On the other hand, if emotions are more characterized by a combination of beliefs and desires, then grasping these beliefs and desires will be more essential to empathy. The ability to imagine oneself as another person is a sophisticated imaginative process. However, the basic capacity to recognize emotions is probably innate and may be achieved unconsciously. We will consider empathy more closely when we discuss self awareness, collective memory, and spirituality.

The classification of emotions has been researched from two fundamental viewpoints: each emotion is a discrete and fundamentally different construct; or emotions can be characterized on a dimensional basis in groupings. In Discrete Emotion Theory, all humans are thought to have an innate set of basic emotions that are cross-culturally recognizable. These basic emotions are described as “discrete” because they are believed to be distinguishable by an individual’s facial expression and biological processes. A popular example is Paul Ekman’s study of 1972 in which he concluded that the six basic emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Accordingly, there are particular characteristics attached to each of these emotions expressed in varying degrees.

A good example of how emotions can be characterized on a dimensional basis is the Lövheim Cube of Emotion proposed by Hugo Lövheim in 2012 (shown in the chart in comments). In the model, the three monoamine neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline, form the axes of a coordinate system, and the eight basic emotions are placed in the eight corners. The eight corners of the cube correspond to the eight possible combinations of low or high levels of the three monoamines (shown in the table in comments). The model proposes a direct relation between specific combinations of the levels of the signal substances and certain basic emotions, and merges a categorical and a dimensional view of emotions.

They stood still in the forest for what seemed like forever. Hearts pounding, ears and eyes strained to identify the danger that was lurking in the grey mist. There was no talking. Just hand signals and gestures. Finally, a cool breeze came up from the direction where they heard the tiger. They were down wind and the tension left them. The breeze blew away the rest of the morning fog and they were on the move again. The hunting party’s pace quickened to a jog. They were out of the trees and into the open field.

Moving from the last of the trees into the high grass, the hunting party spotted their target. A herd of twenty reindeer were grazing in the opening. The clan's men had played out this hunt many times. Their tactics were simple. They started to circle the herd from two directions. It took only a few steps before the herd became startled and began moving away from the hunters. As it did, one of the reindeer naturally separated from the rest and the hunters moved to keep it separated. Then the race was on. There was no sprinting, just a continuous jog. The reindeer would sprint away from them only to stop and catch its breath. The process was repeated seven times. Each time, the hunters came closer. Each time, the reindeer would sprint away and then stop. Each time, the hunters were drawing closer. On the seventh sprint, the reindeer stumbled from exhaustion and the clan’s men moved in for the kill.

The walk back to the camp that afternoon was quick. The clan’s men talked loudly, joking about the tiger in the foggy trees and boasting over the kill. When they got back to camp, the party was greeted with excitement. It had been a successful hunt. A reindeer had been killed and there had been no injuries or deaths. That evening, the hunters gathered around the fire and told stories of their hunt and of the past. The camp women watched and laughed. It had been a grand day and the sexual tension was high. It would be an even grander night.