The Odd Couple:
The Compatibility of Social Construction &
Evolutionary Psychology
Ron Mallon
University of Utah &
University of Hong Kong
&
Stephen Stich
Rutgers University
The BIG Picture:
What I hope to show in this talk
• Evolutionary Psychologists (EPs) & Social
Constructionists (SCs) seem to have deep
empirical disagreements about
– the extent to which normal humans share innate
mental mechanisms which
• were shaped by natural selection
• strongly constrain our psychology, our social interactions &
our institutions
• While there may indeed be some important
disagreements between SCs & EPs on these
points, there is another, less obvious issue
dividing them
– A philosophical disagreement about the
meaning and reference of ordinary words for
mental states and social phenomena – words
like anger, disgust, gender & homosexuality
• When this philosophical dispute is made explicit,
it becomes clear that nothing much turns on it,
and it can be easily set aside
• When the philosophical dispute has been set
aside, the empirical disputes between SCs & EPs
look much less serious
– Rather than being adversaries, they look more like
natural partners
Overview of the Talk
Getting clearer on terminology (or why ‘social
constructionism’ isn’t always a dirty word)
II. A quick sketch of some SC work on the
emotions
III. A quick sketch of an emerging EP consensus
about the emotions
IV. What’s left to fight about? Are emotions
universal or culturally local?
I.
V.
The philosophy that underlies this dispute: The
“thick description” theory of the meaning &
reference of emotion terms
i.
ii.
What it claims
How it underlies the debate over the universality vs.
cultural locality debate
VI. How to sidestep the problem posed by the thick
description theory and make it clear that SCs
and EPs need not be adversaries, since their
theories are compatible & complement each
other
I.
Getting clearer on terminology
(or why ‘social constructionism’ isn’t always a dirty word)
The terms Social Constructionism & Evolutionary
Psychology are both used for a variety of
different views
Social Constructionism is sometimes used as a label for
a (quite nutty) metaphysical view that denies the
mind-independence of all reality
These radical social constructionists think that everything is
“socially constructed” including atoms, galaxies and
dinosaurs
• I’ll be focusing on a more modest and sane
(and prima facie plausible) version of SC
which holds that
– important features of human psychology &
social life are
• culturally caused and
• local in character
• SCs who fit this description need not endorse
every aspect of what Tooby & Cosmides call the
Standard Social Science Model
• Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes used for
a specific cluster of views associated with
Cosmides, Tooby & Pinker.
• Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes used for
a specific cluster of views associated with
Cosmides, Tooby & Pinker.
– We think of this as High Church Evolutionary
Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes used for
a specific cluster of views associated with
Cosmides, Tooby & Pinker.
– We think of this as High Church Evolutionary
Psychology
• Though we don’t propose to offer a definition,
our view of EP is decidedly Low Church – and
more inclusive.
II.
The Social Constructionist
Approach to the Emotions
A primary concern of SCs concerned with the
emotions is to describe the rich multifaceted,
culturally local network in which the emotions
are embedded.
Since understanding what informants say is a matter
of great importance, SCs pay careful attention
to a number of aspects of emotion discourse &
behavior in the target culture, including:
– the (often complex) circumstances under which people
claim they or others experience the emotions picked
out by various emotion words
– the pattern of inferences drawn when someone is
believed to be experiencing the emotion
– the pattern of interactions that exist (or that people
believe to exist) among emotions and other mental
states
– the ways in which both emotions & discourse about
emotions interact with the moral, political & economic
lives of people in that culture
When done well, the resulting
“ethnopsychological” accounts result in
fascinating “thick descriptions” (Geertz) of
patterns of interaction that differ in
important ways from the patterns in which
our own emotions and emotion discourse
is embedded.
An example: Catherine Lutz’s study of the
emotions of the Ifaluk
• song is an Ifaluk emotion akin to (what we call)
anger
– it has a strong moral component
• to count as feeling song an Ifaluk must be justifiably angry
at another person who has engaged in morally inappropriate
behavior
– thus two people can’t be song at each other
– there are many other Ifaluk words for emotions akin to
anger that do not involve this moral dimension
– there is no generic Ifaluk term that picks out all these
sorts of anger
– one sort of behavior that can provoke song is the
violation of a taboo (e.g. working in the taro garden while
menstruating)
– another is ker, sort of excited happiness which can
produce inappropriately loud talk or “showing off”
– song does not lead to physical violence
– it does lead to
•
•
•
•
refusal to eat or speak with the offender
gossiping about the offender
threats of fasting or even suicide
threats to burn down the offender’s house
– when a person recognizes that someone’s is song is
directed at them, they typically experience an emotion
the Ifaluk call metagu, a sort of fear or anxiety that
leads to
• calmer, more appropriate behavior
• corrective action
– paying a fine
– apologizing
– sending something of value to the aggrieved parties
Person 1
Person 2
Ker
Misbehavior
[happiness/
excitement]
Misbehavior
[fear/anxiety] Metagu
Metagu
Good, calm
behavior
Song [justifiable anger]
Song
III.
Evolutionary Psychology:
An Emerging Consensus on the Emotions
Ekman: To explain his well known finding that
facial expressions of some emotions are crosscultural universals, Ekman posited that these
emotions are subserved by affect programs
–
–
–
largely automated or involuntary suites of
coordinated emotional responses
subserved by innate mental mechanisms that are the
product of natural selection
present in all normal members of the species
– downstream of the affect program, the behavior that an
emotion produces is strongly influenced by culture
• display rules
• posture, tone of voice
• self reports
• more complex patterns of cognitive, behavioral & social
activity
– upstream
• Ekman posited an “appraisal mechanism” which monitors
stimuli & triggers the appropriate affect program
• by the mid-1990s Ekman had come to think that just about
all the activity of the appraisal mechanism is affected by
culturally local factors
• Lazarus proposes that the emotion triggering mechanism
includes an innate set of abstractly characterized conditions
(“core relational themes”)
– Anger: A demeaning offense against me & mine
– Fear: An immediate, concrete & overwhelming danger
– Sadness: Having experienced an irrevocable loss
• determining when these conditions have been satisfied
requires culturally local beliefs & information about
culturally local norms, goals & values
Robert Levenson’s Ekman-Inspired
Bio-Cultural Model
Recruited
Response
Tendencies
Antecedent
Conditions
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Measurable
responses
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Behavior
Motor
Program
Physiologic
Support
Appraisal
System
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
Robert Levenson’s Ekman-Inspired
Bio-Cultural Model
Recruited
Response
Tendencies
Antecedent
Conditions
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Measurable
responses
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Behavior
Motor
Program
Physiologic
Support
Appraisal
System
Affect
Program
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Downstream
Cognitive
& Social
Activity
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Downstream
Cognitive
& Social
Activity
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
IV.
What’s Left to Fight About?
Are emotions universal or culturally local?
Far from being incompatible with each other, it looks like
the evolutionary psychology and social constructionist
approaches to the emotions are complementary
–
ethnopsychologies like the one that Lutz provides provide
details about culturally local aspects of belief, values, etc.
–
Cognitive models like Levinson’s give an account of the
psychological mechanisms underlying emotions & explain
how innate, evolved mechanisms interact with culturally
local beliefs & values.
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Downstream
Cognitive
& Social
Activity
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
So what’s left to fight about?
•
Evolutionary psychologists maintain that
central parts of the emotion system are innate
and present in all normal humans, and when
they are triggered they produce emotions (like
fear, anger & sadness) which are cultural
universals.
–
Since these mechanisms are homologous to
mechanisms in other species, many non-human
animals also experience emotions.
•
Social constructionists insist that emotions are
a culturally local phenomenon and thus that
people very different cultures have very
different emotions.
–
–
–
song & metagu are Ifaluk emotions which outsiders
do not experience
amae (a pleasant sense of helplessness and desire to
be loved) is Japanese emotion which Westerners do
not experience (Harré)
accidie (boredom or disgust with fulfilling one’s
religious duty) is an emotion that was once
common in the West but has now disappeared.
–
–
–
anger is unknown among the Inuit (Briggs);
“anger, as a specific emotion, is not universal
across cultures (Averill)
sadness does not exist among Tahitians (Levy)
there are no universal emotions and there may well
be some cultures in which there are no emotions at
all (Shweder)
V.
What’s Going On Here?
The philosophical issue that underlies the dispute
Far from being incompatible with each other, it looks like
the evolutionary psychology and social constructionist
approaches to the emotions are complementary
–
ethnopsychologies like the one that Lutz provides provide
details about culturally local aspects of belief, values, etc.
–
Cognitive models like Levinson’s give an account of the
psychological mechanisms underlying emotions & explain
how innate, evolved mechanisms interact with culturally
local beliefs & values.
So why do they disagree about the universality or
cultural locality of emotions?
So why do they disagree about the universality or
cultural locality of emotions?
Blame
Canada
Philosophy
•
The most widely discussed philosophical
account of the meaning & reference of terms
for the emotions & other mental or
psychological states is due to David Lewis
David K. Lewis
1941-2001
–
jargon:
•
•
•
meaning is (roughly) what a person must know to
understand the term
reference is what the term picks out
meaning ≠ reference: ‘the morning star’ & ‘the evening
star’ have the same reference, but different meaning
–
some central ideas of Lewis’ theory
•
•
ordinary language “mental state” terms can be treated as
theoretical terms
theoretical terms are implicitly defined by the theory in
which they are embedded
– the definition is just a long description that includes
everything the theory claims about the thing the term
refers to
• so I will call this sort of theory about the meaning
of a theoretical term a description theory
– these implicit definitions are holistic because (i) the
theory implicitly defines all of its theoretical terms,
and (ii) the entire theory contributes to the meaning of
every theoretical term
•
the theory which implicitly defines mental state terms is
commonsense psychology = “our extensive, shared
understanding of how we work mentally” which is
“common knowledge among us” (Lewis)
•
mental state terms express “package deal concepts” since
commonsense psychology provides an implicit definition
for all of them
•
if Lewis’ theory is correct then a culture’s folk
psychological theory implicitly defines the emotion words
they use
–
Ethnopsychologies like the one provided by
Lutz are intended inter alia to provide an
account of the culture’s folk psychology
(their shared understanding of how they
work mentally)
•
Question: How much of the detail in a rich ethnopsychology contributes to the meaning of ordinary
mental state terms?
austere
description theories
opulent
description theories
–
What about reference?
•
since the meaning of a “theoretical” term is given by a
long description, the natural idea (& the one urged by
Lewis) is that the term refers to whatever fits the
description
•
but we can’t require the fit to be perfect, since if we did,
then any small error in the theory would make all the
theoretical terms refer to nothing
•
Lewis suggests that a term refers to whatever more or
less fits the description – but that is intentionally vague
high
accuracy
low
accuracy
at one end of the
spectrum are high
accuracy accounts
of reference that
require that most
descriptions fit; at
the other end are
low accuracy
accounts that
allow a referent to
fit many fewer
descriptions
high
accuracy
low
accuracy
austere
opulent
high
accuracy
thick description
low
accuracy
austere
opulent
a thick description account of the meaning & reference of ordinary
mental state terms is opulent & high accuracy
•
But what does all this have to do with the
dispute about whether emotions are
universal or culturally local?
–
Assume that thick description account is correct
•
Among the Ifaluk it is common knowledge (i.e. part of their
folk psychological theory) that
–
–
–
–
–
if a woman goes into the taro garden when she is menstruating, it will
provoke song
if a man goes into the birthing house, it will provoke song
if you are really song at me, I can’t be song at you
when a person realizes that someone is song at him, he typically
experiences metagu
etc., etc., ….
•
There is no emotion, among us, that fits all of these
descriptions
•
So there is no emotion in our culture that counts as an instance
of song; song does not exist here.
•
•
Much the same argument can be run in the opposite direction
Among us, it is common knowledge (i.e. part of our folk
psychological theory) that
–
–
–
–
–
if someone shouts racial epithets it is likely to provoke anger
if some gives someone else “the finger” it is likely to provoke anger
if you are really angry at me, I can be angry at you too
when one person provokes anger in another person, it will often lead to
a heated exchange of words and will occasionally lead to physical
confrontation & violence
etc., etc., ….
•
There is no emotion among the Ifaluk that fits all of these
descriptions
•
So there is no emotion among the Ifaluk that counts as an
instance of anger; anger does not exist among the Ifaluk.
•
N. B. These arguments make no assumptions
at all about the psychological mechanisms
underlying the emotions. Thus they are
compatible with any account of those
mechanisms, including the account favored by
evolutionary psychologists.
All that the arguments require are
•
–
–
the thick description account of meaning &
reference
the fact that there are substantial differences
between our folk psychology (= what we
commonly believed about mental states) and Ifaluk
folk psychology (= what they commonly believe)
•
Is this the argument that leads Social
Constructionists to the conclusion that
emotions are culturally local?
•
Though they don’t use the philosophical jargon
(or take account of important philosophical
distinctions like meaning vs. reference) a good
case can be made that they do indeed have
something like this argument in mind.
“Across languages, the range of implications, suggestions, and
connotations of psychological state terms do not easily map, at
least not lexically; and to adequately understand the meaning of
the terms in either language is to understand a good deal about
different local systems of values and particular ways of life.
(Shweder, 1994)
“Emotion words are treated here as coalescences of complex
ethnotheoretical ideas about the nature of self and social
interaction. … To understand the meaning of an emotion word
is to be able to envisage (and perhaps to find oneself able to
participate in) a complicated scene with actors, actions,
interpersonal relationships in a particular state of repair, moral
points of view, facial expressions, personal and social goals,
and sequences of events.” (Lutz, 1988)
•
Obviously, Evolutionary Psychologists and
others who reject the view that emotions are
culturally local must reject the thick
description theory of meaning & reference.
•
How much of a problem is this?
high
accuracy
thick description
low
accuracy
Producing an alternative to the thick description theory is no
problem at all. There are lots of alternatives on the market.
high
accuracy
thick description
low
accuracy
Producing an alternative to the thick description theory is no
problem at all. There are lots of alternatives on the market.
In addition to all these, philosophers like Putnam
and Kripke have offered alternative
“causal/historical” theories of reference
according to which the reference of a term
fixed by the circumstances in which it was
introduced and its transmission history in the
language.
If any of these alternative accounts of meaning &
reference is correct, then the argument for
cultural locality collapses.
•
So the situation is this:
–
Those who think that emotions are culturally local
are (tacitly or explicitly) adopting a thick
description account of the reference of emotion
terms.
–
Those who think that emotions are universal are
(tacitly or explicitly) adopting some other account
of the reference of emotion terms.
VI. Who’s Right?
And Why It Doesn’t Matter
To settle the universal vs. culturally local dispute, it
looks like we have to determine which account
of reference is correct.
And that might sound like bad news because
philosophers and linguists aren’t even close to
figuring out which account of reference is
correct. Even worse,
In Deconstructing the
Mind, I argued that the
issue may well be moot,
since neither philosophers
nor linguists have given us
a coherent account of what
a theory of reference is
supposed to do, thus we
don’t really have a clear
idea of what it would be to
get a theory of reference
right.
•
But actually this is not such bad news since, for
two rather different reasons, it doesn’t much
matter which side is right.
–
Reason 1: The dispute is almost entirely
isolated from the empirical & theoretical
claims that SCs & EPs want to make.
•
A SC who thinks that emotions are culturally
local can accept everything in the Levinsonstyle EP model and everything an EPist wants
to say about the evolution of the components of
this model.
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Downstream
Cognitive
& Social
Activity
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
•
A SC who thinks that emotions are culturally
local can accept everything in the Levinsonstyle EP model and everything an EPist wants
to say about the evolution of the components of
this model.
• All the SC need insist on is that many beliefs,
norms, goals & values are culturally local. And
this is not a claim that (sensible) EPists are in
the least inclined to dispute.
•
Reason 2:
–
No matter who is right about the meaning &
reference of ordinary language emotion
terms, each side can easily say what it wants
to say with the help of a bit of technical
language.
–
To see the point, let’s once again assume the
thick description account is correct.
•
The EPs must concede that anger (the emotion
picked out by the ordinary English word) is not
universal.
•
But they can still maintain that there is a family
of emotions in different cultures, all subserved
by the same innate affect program & “emotion
prototype” or “core relational theme” that
subserve anger in our culture.
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Anger Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
Appraisal
System
Downstream
Cognitive
& Social
Activity
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
•
We can then simply introduce a technical term,
core anger, to refer to all of these emotions.
Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Interpersonal
Anger Emotion
Prototype
Subjective
Experience
Self-Report
Facial
Program
Facial
Expression
Vocalization
Program
Voice Tone
Intrapersonal
Motor
Program
Physiologi
c
Support
core
anger
Appraisal
System
Downstream
Cognitive
& Social
Activity
Motor
Behavior
Physiologic
response
Cultural learning:
Display and feeling rules
•
EPs who have conceded that anger is not
universal can claim, instead, that core anger is
universal.
•
And this, surely, captures what they really want
to claim.
Conclusions
The most conspicuous disagreement between SCs &
EPs who study the emotions is not an
empirical disagreement about minds, cultures
or evolution.
Instead, it disagreement about the universality or
cultural locality of the emotions.
Conclusions
That dispute is rooted in a philosophical dispute
about the meaning & reference of ordinary
language emotion terms.
And nothing much depends on that philosophical
disagreement. It does not matter who is right.
Conclusions
Once the philosophical dispute is set aside, it should
be easier for Social Constructionists and
Evolutionary Psychologists to stop seeing each
other as enemies and start seeing each other as
natural allies in the attempt to understand the
emotions.
Blessed are the peacemakers;
for they shall be called the
children of God
Matthew 5:9