Emotion
Emotions
Organize action, physiology, cognition, and
perception to meet ever-changing
environmental and internal demands
 In patterns constituting core aspects of
temperament/personality functioning
 Motivate action and thought, creating value
in life—and impacting wellness and
sickness

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History

Emotions don’t exist (or can’t be studied)
–

Emotional expressions are infinitely malleable
–

Some anthropological accounts
Emotions are things – structural accounts
–
–
–

Behaviorism, ’50s - ‘60s
Discrete/Differential theory, ’70s – ’80s
Cross-cultural recognition of expressions
Demonstrates hard-wiring of universal emotions?
Emotions are processes and have functions
–
Functionalist, dynamic systems, emotion regulation,
constuctivist ‘90s – ’10s
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Universality
What emotions do you see here?
Cohn
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Postulate
“There are some facial expressions of
emotion that are universal.”
 “why do we not press our lips tightly
together when happy and curve the corners
up when angry, rather than the reverse?”

•

(Ekman, 1973, p. 219)
‘facial affect program’
•
p. 220
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Who’s friends came to visit
From Cohn
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Pre-literate culture study
Read an emotion-situation story.
 Shown three photos and asked to choose
one
 A high % correctly identified (p. 212)
 Why is expression identification in preliterate cultures important?

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Critique

Are identified expressions posed or spontaneous
–



Emblematic denotative expressions – caricatures?
Verbal identification of posed expressions
Relevant to of expression recognition
Not to universality of expression production
–
Or their innateness
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What about development?
Infant emotions


Core elements of infant behavior
Quickly motivate behavior
–
–
–



Hunger-Distress-Cry
Interest-Attentive face
Engaging playful other – joy - smile
Organize action, physiology, cognition, and
perception
To meet environmental and internal demands
Patterns constitute core aspects of
temperament/personality functioning
dmessinger@miami.edu
13
Infant emotional development
Distress is present at birth
 Interest and joy emerge in the first 2 mos.

–
joy developing through at least 6 mos.
Anger, sadness, fear differentiate after 4 m.
 Pride and shame develop between 1 & 2
years

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Developmental patterns

Socialization
–
–

Emotion displays become more restricted
Full-face to partial face - miniaturization
Cognitive input
–
shame, guilt, contempt emerge
 involve
–
rudimentary appraisal of self vis-à-vis other
dynamic systems
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THEORIES
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Cole & Moore (2015)
Are infants biologically prepared to express
certain emotions?
 Izard says “yes,” developed Differential
Emotions Theory (DET) and focused on
distress, enjoyment, and interest.
 Emotion expressions are innate and shaped
by interaction with caregiver in order to
effectively communicate current goal states

Will M.
22
Evidence for DET
Specific emotional responses to paradigm
situations in infants
 Cross-cultural evidence in adults
 Infants have mature facial musculature
 Expressions in fetuses are similar to human
children and primates.
 People blind from birth produce discrete
emotion expressions.

Will M.
23
Criticism
Infant facial expression is often ambiguous,
could depend more on integrated systems
than changes in goal states
Response: “facial babbling” is a precursor to
functional movements; feedback allows infant
to tailor emotion expressions to its
environment. Furthermore, success in this can
facilitate attachment.

Will M.
24
Response
(innate ≠ no environment input required).
 Developmental constraints will constrain
optimality (learning and maturation of
visual system is necessary)
 Natural selection will constrain infinite
variation. “Open systems” are adaptive
when cultural variation affects whether the
system leads to an adaptive outcome.
Mapping cultural variation to different
M.
adaptive outcomesWillwould
be a good future

25
The Structuralist View
“Many models assume
that each emotion kind
is characterized by a
distinctive syndrome
of hormonal,
muscular, and
autonomic responses
that are coordinated in
time and correlated in
intensity “
p. 30 Barrett, 2006
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Discrete Emotions Theory (DET)
= Natural Kind View

Emotion composed of:
–
–
–

Neurochemical processes
Expressive behavior
Subjective feeling
“Many models assume that each emotion …
is characterized by a distinctive syndrome
of hormonal, muscular, and autonomic
responses that are coordinated in time and
correlated in intensity.” Barrett, 2006
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Neurochemical processes
Emotional brain - Limbic system
Border between primitive brain stem and
cortex
 Lower portions - visceral (bodily) feelings

–

Developed at birth
Limbic cortex – awareness of feeling
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Damasio’s theory
Emotion is a neurochemical process
 Feeling is our sensation of that process

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30
Limbic system
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Amygdala

Transforms sensory
stimuli to emotion elicitors
 Not
–
–
–
mediated by neocortex
Input: rapid, automatic
appraisal of relevance
Output: Expression and
Experience
Reactivity of amygdala
determines temperament
dmessinger@miami.edu
Limbic cortex

Anterior cingulate gyrus
–

Motivation
Orbitofrontal cortex
–
–
–
–
Inhibition, social control
Feeds back to amygdala,
other subcortical structures
Neural development
evident 6 – 24 months
Pruning continues into
adolescence
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But where are specific emotions?
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35
Key brain regions implicated in
emotion-related processing.
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Where is joy located?
One possibility is that
anterior cingulate
cortex, is associated
with joyful responses,
whereas basal ganglia
are involved in related
action tendencies.
Greater left than right cerebral activation
(Duchenne smiles, tail wagging, etc)
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Facial affect programs?

Current evidence:
–
–
–
–
Relevant linked brain systems
But not distinct affect programs
Fear may be exception
Panskepp and current animal work
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Qualia: Affective-cognitive
schema

Emotion feeling linked to cognitions
–
produces thoughts and actions

–
Emotion-cognition does not transform feeling

–

i.e. self-appraisals
Feeling never changes
but feeling linked to different images and thoughts
In development, modular systems - emotion,
cognition, motor - become less insular and more
integrated
dmessinger@miami.edu
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Is there emotional feeling without
knowledge of feeling?

Infantile memory
–
–
–
–
Strong emotional associations
Without explicit knowledge of associations
Makes associations inaccessible to reflection
and difficult to change
Memories of smells, movements, even abuse
dmessinger@miami.edu
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Role of cognition

DET
–
–
Emotions are quality of consciousness
If emotion = feeling, cognition not necessary
 Hence,
babies have them!

For Barrett, emotion knowledge necessary.

If emotion is about something, some degree of
cognition is involved

No emotions for babies?
dmessinger@miami.edu
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Discrete Emotions Theory (DET)
Hypotheses


“Emotion-specific” programs unite expressive,
physiological, and phenomenological processes
As the CNS matures, “basic emotions emerge as
structured wholes”
–

don’t come together developmentally
There are no display rules operating in infancy
–
In infancy, as discrete emotions arise, they should be
accompanied by discrete facial expressions of those
emotions (read-outs)
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Expressive behavior
Discrete infant emotions
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Adults expressions seen as discrete
(Oster et al., 1992)
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Infant negative expressions rated
as distress
(Oster et al., 1992) dmessinger@miami.edu
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Situational appropriateness:
Production studies
Premise:
 In response to an appropriate elicitor
(situation), hypothesized emotional
expression should occur significantly more
than other expressions
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Specifying Specificity: Facial
Expressions at 4 Months
evidence for a family of frustrating, goalblocking events that elicited expressions
and cortisol responses indicative of anger at
4 months.
 Yet situations also elicited expressions and
cortisol changes indicative of sadness.

Bennett, David S.; Bendersky,
Margaret; Lewis, Michael
Infancy. Vol 6(3), 2004, 425-429
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Negative emotional expressions
are not situationally specific

Through 2 months, Justine
–

shows distress to bathing, being moved, &
pacifier removal (inoculation and hunger)
After 2 months, anger and, to a much lesser
degree, sadness are most common reaction
to all negative elicitors
–
infants cry, not a specific reaction
•
dmessinger@miami.edu
Camras, 1992
55
Examples

Sad  distresssmile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akPVtObBUOk&feature=related

Saddisress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7oD9WX-1CU


Fear/orientdistress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=QiBrPkGoqFM
Feardistress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fASp42ZvjIM&feature=fvwrel,

Distress:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=H-1me_wsuyk (alligator bite)

Sad
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLjXta0Szw, dad singing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAzLsnYvdYo&feature=related (lower lip in response to rasberries)
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Maze game—Scary—children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGd5NqP6qd4

Slow-motion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC5qPvTQUdo

Compendium: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cypeLuCIrU0

Long: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9kNCBGEyfk 0:55-1:07, 1:45-2:30
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Dynamic blends
Discrete emotions—pattern of facial action.
 When patterns from different emotion
expressions occur together, a blend occurs.
 Matias & Cohn found that negative blends
were as frequent as negative discrete
emotions.

–
Positive discrete > positive blends
dmessinger@miami.edu
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Summary

Some negative facial expressions
–
–
–
are not recognizably expressions of discrete
emotions
do not always occur in response to appropriate
elicitors
nor do they occur discretely in time
dmessinger@miami.edu
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Beyond DET Structuralism
Alternate Views
Functional and dynamic views
Emotion is not inside you.
 Emotions are process of changing (or
maintaining) relations with environment
significant to the individual.
 Emotions influence situation.

dmessinger@miami.edu
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Alternative views

Functional
–
Insight: Recognition of function of emotions and their
flexibility in functioning

–

Regulating emotion to achieve goals
Difficulty: Use goals to interpret behavior but use
behavior to infer goals
Dynamic
–
–
Insight: Recognition of interfacing role of multiple
components in emotional process
Difficulty: Specifying process
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Functionalist theory

Emotion is the person’s attempt or readiness to
establish, maintain, or change the relation between
the person and the environment on matters of
significance to that person (Saarni et al., 1998).
–
Emotion is associated with goal-attainment, social
relationships, situational appraisals, action tendencies,
self-understanding, self regulation, etc.
dmessinger@miami.edu
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Functions







Interest
Fear
Anger
Joy
Sadness
Disgust
Surprise







Orienting/exploration
Avoidance/flight
Goal removal
Approach/continuation
Withdrawal
Expulsion
Orienting
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Dynamic systems




Development, interaction, and (emotional)
behavior are complex
involving multiple interfacing/interacting
constituents
which produce patterns we see as pre-designed
regularities
A bottom-up approach
–
Discrete emotions as preferred states formed from the
interface of multiple constituents
dmessinger@miami.edu
69
Dynamic phenomena
The raised brow of interest occurs with
raising the head
 There are different interest expressions

–
Problems with top-down approaches
Duchenne smiling as a muscular dynamic
 Joy appears to develop in time
 Neonatal (Duchenne) smile may emerge
before happiness
 Importance?

dmessinger@miami.edu
71
Dynamic systems alternative
‘Distress-pain, anger, sadness often seen
together during crying’
 Perhaps negative emotion in infancy differs
in intensity - phases of crying - distress &
anger, with sadness reflecting a weakening
of intensity

–
Camras
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Surprise expressions as
coordinative motor structures

Results indicate that MO is selectively associated
with raised brows
–

Brow raises occurred after the onset of the MO
movement, further suggesting that MO recruits raised
brows.
Facial criteria may be inappropriate for identifying
"surprise" expressions in infants.
–
Camras, L. A., Lambrecht, L., & Michel, G. F. (1996). Infant
"surprise" expressions as coordinative motor structures. Journal
of Nonverbal Behavior, 20(3), 183-195.
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Interest expressions as
coordinative motor structures

Opening the mouth is accompanied by brow
raising in infants, thus producing "surprise“
expressions in non-surprise situations.
–
–
Raised-brow movements significantly cooccurred with head-up and/or eyes-up
movements for both ages.
Knit-brows co-occurred with eyes-down at 5
mo and head-down at 7 mo

Michel, G. F., Camras, L. A., & Sullivan, J. (1992). Infant interest expressions as
coordinative motor structures. Infant Behavior and Development, 15(3), 347-358.
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Surprise! Its not in the face
Covert toy switch
dmessinger@miami.edu
Camras, et al.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10
.1037/152875
3542.2.2.179
Surprise examples
Expression on demand:
 Coordinative structure?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DaKcKqVheE&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOvtNPljtv0&feature=related
Posed adult: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4AyfrM8Q2o
Girl and Dad 1:05—1:40. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5HXl_zJ5po
[ad
preceding]
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76
Criticism
Infant facial expression is often ambiguous,
could depend more on integrated systems
than changes in goal states
Response: “facial babbling” is a precursor to
functional movements; feedback allows infant
to tailor emotion expressions to its
environment. Furthermore, success in this can
facilitate attachment.

Will M.
77
Response



(innate ≠ no environment input required).
Developmental constraints will constrain
optimality (learning and maturation of visual
system is necessary)
Natural selection will constrain infinite variation.
“Open systems” are adaptive when cultural
variation affects whether the system leads to an
adaptive outcome. Mapping cultural variation to
different adaptive outcomes would be a good
future direction.
Will M.
78
Feedback loops
Internal: Proprioceptive
 External: Social

–

"I take smiling to be a social signal," Messinger
says. "I really think that babies are learning
what joy is by sharing it with someone else." In
other words, smiling might not be so much an
expression of a preexisting state as a path we
take to get to that state.
Why do babies smile? - Slate Magazine, Jul 1, 2010 –
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79
Mirror Neuron System
Neural basis for apperception of others’
experience
 What you see is what you feel
 Research limitations

–

Inter-species generalization, imaging
constraints, etc
But potential source of ASD affective
deficits…
Relative reduced activity of pars
opercularis of inferior frontal gyrus to
facial expressions
RH LH
Figure 1 Reliable activity during imitation
of emotional expressions.
(a,b) Activity in bilateral pars opercularis
(stronger in the right) of the inferior
frontal gyrus is seen in the typically
developing group (a) but not in the ASD
group (b). A between-group comparison
(c) revealed that this difference was
significant (t 4 1.83, P o 0.05, corrected for
multiple comparisons at the
cluster level). RH, right hemisphere; LH,
left hemisphere.
Internalization model

1.
2.
3.
Three postulates describing the mechanisms
involved in the development of the emotion
components
The processes that differentiate the appraisal
and expression components are
interdependent
Expression signs can be used symbolically
Body sensations accompanying emotions are
transformed into conscious feeling
Oberwelland
Holodynski & Friedlmeier (2010). The
Development of Emotions and Emotion
Regulation
Emotion is not facial expression

“Happiness alone is
not sufficient to
produce smiles.
Rather, happiness
produces smiles only
during social
interaction.”
(Ferenandez-Dols &
Ruiz-Belda, 1995, p.
1114).
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91
Behavioral ecologists.
Biologically oriented ethologists attempting
to explain signaling behavior across species
within a framework of evolution through
natural selection.
 Facial expressions do not reflect emotions
 They occur during social interaction &
reflect social motives and negotiation

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92
Behavioral ecology view

Facial displays:
–
–
–
“signify our trajectory in a given social
interaction”
“’social tools’ aiding the negotiation of social
encounters”
“specific to intent and context”
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93