Comments on: A culture shock for universal emotion

By: kathy lowen

kathy lowen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:05:10 +0000

Sorry to disagree with the pet “enthusiasts” here, but the article isn’t about whether animals have emotions or not. Although it’s fairly well known that domesticated animals’ success with humans has come from their ability to recognize and mimic human cues and expectations. In other words, they become our little “mini-me”, allowing us to project whatever we want to see onto them (although cats maybe not so much)!
“Oh look at Spot, he’s my best friend, and see, he’s even smiling at me!”

By: tushcloots

tushcloots — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:38:18 +0000

That makes perfect sense to me. Great example.

By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:57:17 +0000

Manfred Clynes found that there are universal movement qualities for emotions, tested by way of checking out finger pressure patterns when people were asked to express joy, grief, anger, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Clynes

By: Dovanator

Dovanator — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:38:13 +0000

I wonder if any of these authors realize that other animals besides humans have facial expressions as well.

Rub a cat or dogs stomach and tell me you don’t see them smile at you. Feed them and tell me you won’t see the same.

All animals have a pretty set standard of emotions and emotional cues. There are likely many more that are learned, but it seems likely that there are at least some inherently known emotions that have evolved because of specific situations.

By: tushcloots

tushcloots — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:10:44 +0000

I would think (before reading the article) that I mostly agree. However, infants display emotions that are not cognitively formed, not learned, but innate.

And, as with everything, it’s a sliding scale, but I have always felt that the ability to communicate subjectively is the glue that has allowed homo sapiens to form societies, and to develop not just situation threat awareness but to make the ability to share and co-operate possible.

It seems intuitive to me that all higher communication languages develop locally, and language is just one of them.
Art and emotion are specific to culture, beginning with the starting formation of tribal units, which was a paradigm shift in natural selection of evolution, as individuals within co-operative units are necessarily more secure.

As the ‘cone of influence’ (think cone of light) widens, it becomes more and more necessary to initiate co-operation with larger groups, but this has happened too recently to become an innate instinct(specific expressions) across the species.

The ability to express pain, suffering, and happiness, or such, seems to me, necessary to foster enough understanding to form units, on some fundamental level, anyways, so I would think some level of universal expression may be cross-cultural.

By: Kerry Maxwell

Kerry Maxwell — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:00:40 +0000

My first thoughts reading this post were the implications for an understanding of autism (two autistic sons). I see the first comment addresses this. One thing I find interesting is my kids find exaggerated (cartoony) facial expressions and body language hilarious, but are poor at picking up on “real-life” situations.

By: kathy lowen

kathy lowen — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:00:30 +0000

We may well have evolved certain facial expressions (eyes widening, etc.) for practical, survival reasons. But the ability to notice and even interpret those expressions could have evolved independently. One of the primary symptoms of autism is the inability read such emotional “cues” in others, whether thru body language or speech. And there is one interesting theory that autism may be simply a “throw-back” to our earlier Neanderthal relatives, who were perhaps “out-organized” by the evolution of facial recognition, and more advanced communication, social & cooperative skills in their new competitors, Homo Sapiens.