Social Functions 1
Social Functions of Emotions
Dacher Keltner
University of California-Berkeley
Jonathan Haidt
University of Virginia
[Full reference: Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2001). Social functions of emotions. In T. Mayne & G.
A. Bonanno (Eds.), Emotions: Current issues and future directions. New York: Guilford Press.
(pp. 192-213).]
Please address correspondence to: Dr. Dacher Keltner, Department of Psychology, 3210 Tolman
Hall, University of California, Berkeley CA, 94720. Internet: keltner@socrates.berkeley.edu.
Social Functions 2
Social Functions of Emotions
The primary function of emotion is to mobilize the organism to deal quickly with
important interpersonal encounters (Ekman, 1992, p.171).
Emotions are a primary idiom for defining and negotiating social relations of the self in a
moral order (Lutz & White, 1986, p.417).
Emotion theorists disagree in many ways, but most share the assumption that emotions
help humans solve many of the basic problems of social living. For evolutionary theorists,
emotions are universal, hard-wired affect programs that solve ancient, recurrent threats to
survival (Ekman, 1992; Lazarus, 1991; Plutchik, 1980; Tomkins, 1984; Tooby & Cosmides,
1990). For social constructivists, emotions are socially learned responses constructed in the
process of social discourse according to culturally specific concerns about identity, morality, and
social structure (Averill, 1980; Lutz & White, 1986). These contrasting approaches conceive of
the defining elements, origins, and study of emotions in strikingly different ways, but both
ascribe social functions to emotion.
In this chapter we present a social-functional account of emotions that attempts to
integrate the relevant insights of evolutionary and social constructivist theorists. Our account
can be summarized in three statements: 1) Social living presents social animals, including
humans, with problems whose solutions are critical for individual survival; 2) Emotions have
been designed in the course of evolution to solve these problems; 3) In humans, culture loosens
the linkages between emotions and problems so that cultures find new ways to solve the
problems for which emotions evolved, and cultures find new ways of using emotions. In the first
half of the chapter we synthesize the positions of diverse theorists in a taxonomy of problems of
social living, and then consider how evolution-based, primordial emotions solve those problems
by coordinating social interactions. In the second half of the chapter we discuss the specific
processes according to which culture transforms primordial emotions, and how culturally shaped,
elaborated emotions help solve the problems of social living.
Primordial Emotion
Evolutionary theorists concern themselves with universal, biologically based, genetically
encoded emotion-related patterns of appraisals and responses observed across species and
cultures, which we will refer to as primordial emotions. Primordial emotions are shaped by
evolutionary forces, genetically encoded, embedded in the human psyche, linked to biological
maturation, and they involve coordinated physiological, perceptual, communicative, and
behavioral processes that are meant to produce specific changes in the environment. They occur
most typically within the context of immediate face-to-face interactions, and they are brief,
lasting seconds to perhaps minutes, but not hours or days (Ekman, 1992).
Although functional analyses have been a mainstay of evolutionary theorizing about
emotion (e.g., Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989; Darwin, 1872; Izard, 1977; Plutchik, 1980), it
is only recently that theorists have begun to systematically link specific emotions to social
functions. This recent theoretical development can be attributed to several sources (Barrett &
Social Functions 3
Campos, 1987). Advances in ethology and behavioral ecology have illuminated the specific
advantages and problems posed by group living (Krebs & Davies, 1993). Working within
different traditions, theorists have begun to characterize the connections between specific
emotions and attachment (e.g., Kunce & Shaver, 1987), mate selection and protection (Buss,
1992), game theoretical characterizations of altruism, cooperation, competition, and
interpersonal commitment (Frank, 1988; Nesse, 1990; Trivers, 1971), and dominance and
submissiveness (e.g., Keltner & Buswell, 1997; Ohman, 1986).
We believe these recent developments can be summarized in a social functional approach
to emotion (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Keltner & Haidt, 1999; Keltner & Kring, 1998). Social
functional accounts operate at multiple levels of analysis, specifying the social benefits emotions
bring about for the individual, dyad, group, and culture. Across diverse methods and levels of
analysis, social functional accounts share certain assumptions. Most notably, social functional
accounts assume that group living, which has been characteristic of humans and other species for
millions of years, confers many advantages over solitary living. These advantages include more
proficient food gathering, responses to predation, and raising of offspring. Group living also
creates new problems requiring the coordination of group members.
To meet these problems and opportunities, humans have evolved a variety of complex
systems. Each system is organized according to a specific goal (e.g., to protect offspring or
maintain cooperative alliances) that is served by multiple subsystems. These include specific
perceptual processes, higher order cognition, central and autonomic nervous system activity, as
well behavioral responses, both intentional and reflex-like. For example, theorists have observed
that humans form reproductive relationships with the help of an attachment system (e.g.,
Bowlby, 1969; Kunce & Shaver, 1987). The attachment system involves perceptual sensitivities
to potential mates, representations of relationships, autonomic and hormonal activity related to
affiliative, sexual, and intimate behavior, behavioral routines such as flirtation, courtship, and
soothing, and specific emotions as we discuss below.
Within each system, primordial emotions serve two general functions (see also JohnsonLaird & Oatley, 1992). First, primordial emotions signal that action is necessary, either because
of a deviation from an ideal state of social relations, or because an opportunity presents itself.
Primordial emotions therefore involve perceptual, appraisal, and experiential processes that
monitor the conditions of ongoing relations, detecting disturbances (e.g., an infant’s distress) or
opportunities (a potential mate). Once activated, emotion-related perception and experience
interrupt ongoing cognitive processes and direct information processing to features of the social
environment that allow for the restoration or establishment of desirable social relations (Clore,
1994; Lazarus, 1991; Lerner & Keltner, in press; Schwarz, 1990).
Second, primordial emotions motivate behavior that establishes (or reestablishes) more
ideal conditions of social relations. Primordial emotions involve autonomic, hormonal, and
central nervous system activities that are tailored to specific social actions, such as fighting,
copulating, offering comfort, and signaling dominance (Davidson, 1980, 1993; Frijda, 1986;
Levenson, 1994; Le Doux, 1996; Porges, 1995; Sapolsky, 1989). Primordial emotions also
involve vocal, facial, and postural communication that: provide quick and reliably identified
information to others (Ekman, 1984, 1993; Izard, 1977; Scherer, 1986), which shapes social
interactions as we detail in a section that follows. We now consider how different emotions
might help solve the different problems of group living.
Social Functions 4
The Problems of Group Living and Primordial Emotions
Functional accounts begin with an analysis of the problems emotions were presumably
designed to solve, either by evolution or cultural construction (Keltner & Gross, 1999). Our
review of the theorizing on the social functions of emotion identifies three classes of problems
related to group living to which emotions are intimately linked, and we would argue, have been
designed to solve. Table 1 summarizes the nature of these problems, the general systems that
have evolved to meet these problems, as well as related emotions and their specific functions.
We note that Table 1 does not include all states we consider emotions (e.g., amusement does not
fit neatly into the taxonomy); rather it lists the emotions that seem well suited to solving specific
social problems. Additionally, although Table 1 describes how emotions are linked to
prototypical social objects (e.g., sympathy for vulnerable family members), we believe emotions
generalize to related social objects (e.g., sympathy for downtrodden members of society).
Several theorists have commented on the flexibility of the associations between emotions and
their intentional objects (e.g., Tomkins, 1984), which we discuss in an ensuing section.
The problems of Physical Survival
First, individuals must solve the problems of physical survival, including avoiding death
by predation, violence, and disease. Fear is the primordial emotion at the heart of the “fightflight” system (Ohman, 1986), which helps individuals avoid death by predation or other
physical attacks. Much is understood about the physiology of fear (LeDoux, 1996). On the
appraisal side, the amygdala contains specialized areas that scan incoming sensory information
for patterns that have been associated with danger. The amygdala can trigger a fear response
even before the incoming information has been sent to the occipital cortex for full processing,
and even before an individual knows what an object is (LeDoux, 1996; see chapter XX for
further elaboration). On the output side, primordial fear involves triggering the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenocortical axis, which pumps a quick dose of cortisol and other stress hormones
into the bloodstream, to ready the organism for fight or for flight. Primordial fear can be seen as
the heart of a system that includes a variety of cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that make it
more effective, e.g., vicarious learning, and the preparedness of animal phobias (Mineka &
Cook, 1988).
Disgust can similarly be seen as the primordial emotion at the heart of the “foodselection” system (Rozin, 1976b), which helps humans choose a balanced and safe diet. Unlike
fear, disgust is not found in other animals; only a simpler precursor, distaste, can be seen in rats,
and other generalist animals. Co-evolving with the tremendous expansion of cognitive ability in
humans, the distaste response has expanded to become the disgust response (Rozin, Haidt &
McCauley, in press). In humans, food rejections are not based primarily on the sensory
properties of the object, but rather on a knowledge of what it is, or what it has touched (Rozin &
Fallon, 1987). Potential foods elicit disgust if they resemble, or have come in contact with,
certain powerful elicitors of disgust, such as feces and decaying animal bodies. The food
selection system is further expanded by the addition of learning mechanisms, such as one-trial
learning for nausea-inducing foods (Seligman, 1971), and by cultural mechanisms, such as
cuisine, which marks prepared foods with a reassuringly familiar blend of spices or flavors
(Rozin, 1996).
The Problems of Reproduction
Social Functions 5
Evolutionary and attachment theorists have speculated how a variety of emotions solve
the problems of reproduction, which include procreation and the raising of offspring to the age of
reproduction. The problems of finding and keeping a mate are in part met by emotions of
romantic love and desire, which facilitate the identification, establishment, and maintenance of
reproductive relations. These emotions involve appraisals, perceptions, and experiences that are
sensitive to cues related to potential mate value. These include beauty, fertility, chastity, social
status, and character (Buss, 1992; Ellis, 1992), expressive behaviors that signal interest and
commitment (Frank, 1988) and evoke desire and love, and hormonal and autonomic responses
that facilitate sexual behavior (Davidson, 1980). In table 1 we also contend that the experience
and display of emotions related to the loss of a partner provoke succorance in others, and
eventually helps individuals establish bonds with new mates. We label this emotion sadness (for
similar analysis of distress, see Dunn, 1977; for analysis of grief, see Lazarus, 1991).
The protection of potential mates from competitors is equally critical. Jealousy, the
literature shows, relates to mate protection, and is triggered by cues that signal potential threats
to the relationship, such as possible sexual or emotional involvement of the mate with others
(Buss, 1992). Jealousy motivates possessive and threat behaviors that discourage competitors
and prevent sexual opportunities for the mate (Wilson & Daly, 1996).
Mammalian neonates are extremely dependent and vulnerable to predation, and continue
to be so for much longer periods of time compared to other species. As a consequence, social
species have evolved caregiving-related emotions of parental and child love and sympathy,
which facilitate protective relations between parent and offspring (Bowlby, 1969; Kunce &
Shaver, 1987). The caregiving system involves perceptions and experiences that sensitize
parents to infantile cues (e.g., of neotany, distress) and infants to vocal and visual cues of
parenthood (Fernald, 1992). Filial love and sympathy are characterized by experiences and
expressive behavior such as mutual smiles and gaze patterns. These are elements of interactions
that strengthen loving bonds, and physiological responses that help caretakers respond to others’
distress (e.g., Eisenberg, et al., 1989).
The Problems of Group Governance
Finally, theorists have argued that emotions help solve two subclasses of problems
related to group governance, which arise in several contexts, including the allocation of
resources and distribution of work (Fiske, 1991). First, to avoid the problems of cheating and
defection and to encourage cooperation, in particular among non-kin, humans reciprocate
cooperative and non-cooperative acts towards one another (Trivers, 1971). Reciprocity is a
universal social norm (Gouldner, 1960), and is evident in gift giving, eye-for-an-eye punishment,
quid-pro-quo behavior in other species (de Waal, 1996), and the tit-for-tat strategy (Axelrod,
1984). Several emotions signal when reciprocity has been violated and motivate reparative
behavior (de Waal, 1996; Frank, 1988; Nesse, 1990; Trivers, 1971). Guilt occurs following
violations of reciprocity and is expressed in apologetic, remedial behavior that re-establishes
reciprocity (Keltner & Buswell, 1996; Tangney, 1991). Moral anger motivates the punishment
of individuals who have violated rules of reciprocity, and is defined by the sensitivity to issues of
justice and unfairness (Keltner et al., 1993). Gratitude at others’ altruistic acts is a reward for
adherence to the contract of reciprocity (Trivers, 1971). Envy motivates individuals to derogate
others whose favorable status is unjustified, thus preserving equal relations (Fiske, 1991).
Second, humans must solve the problem of group organization. Status hierarchies
Social Functions 6
provide heuristic solutions to the problems of distributing resources, such as mates, food, and
social attention, and the labor required of collective endeavors (Fiske, 1990; de Waal, 1986,
1988). Hierarchies are dynamic processes, and require continual negotiation and redefinition.
The establishment, maintenance, and preservation of status hierarchies is in part accomplished by
emotions related to dominance and submission (de Waal, 1996; Ohman, 1986). Embarrassment
and shame appease dominant individuals and signal submissiveness (Keltner & Buswell, 1996;
Miller & Leary, 1992), whereas contempt is defined by feelings of superiority and dominance
vis-a-vis inferior others. Awe tends to be associated with the experience of being in the presence
of an entity greater than the self (Keltner & Loew, 1996). In some cases, awe is elicited by
nature or art (Shin, Keltner, Shiota, & Haidt, 2000). In other instances, awe is elicited by the
presence of higher status others, and thereby endows higher status individuals with respect and
authority (Fiske, 1991; Weber, 1957).
Primordial emotions and social interaction
We believe that emotions most typically solve the problems of social living in the context
of ongoing face to face interactions (e.g., Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Keltner & Kring, 1998).
This view has typically been espoused by those who argue that emotions are constructed within
social relationships, and by implication, are not biologically based or universal (e.g., Lutz &
Abu-Lughod, 1991). Evolutionary theorists, however, have long suggested that humans evolved
adaptive responses to the emotional responses of others (e.g., Darwin, 1872; Ohman & Dimberg,
1978), consistent with the claim that communicative behavior of senders and receivers coevolved (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Hauser, 1996). From this perspective, one individual's emotional
expression serves as a "social affordance" which evokes "prepared" responses in others.
Primordial emotions structure social interactions in at least three ways.
First, emotional displays evoke complementary emotional responses in others (for more
complete review, see Keltner & Kring, 1998). These complementary emotions are core elements
of interactions such as courtship, bonding, appeasement, and reconciliation (Eibl-Eibesfeldt,
1989). Thus, soothing interactions involve sympathetic responses to another’s distress. Some
socialization interactions involve angry responses to another’s transgression, followed by a
shamed or guilty response to the anger (Ausubel, 1955; Gibbard, 1990). Appeasement
interactions involve displays of submissive emotions, such as embarrassment and shame, that
evoke reconciliation related emotions in the observer, such as amusement (in the case of
embarrassment) and sympathy (in the case of shame) (Keltner, Young, & Buswell, 1997).
Displays of love and desire coordinate the flirtatious interactions of potential romantic partners
(Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989).
Second, emotional communication conveys information about the sender’s mental states,
intentions, and dispositions, which are critical to social interactions (Fridlund, 1992). The
empirical literature suggests that emotional displays provide rapid, fairly reliable cues of the
sender’s emotion, intentions, and disposition (for review, see Keltner & Kring, 1998).
Contagious emotional responses provide a more direct route to the understanding of others’
mental states, leading individuals to experience similar responses to objects or events in the
environment, coordinating individuals’ perception and action (Hatfield, Rapson, & Cacioppo,
1994).
Finally, emotions serve as incentives for others’ social behavior: an individual’s
Social Functions 7
expression and experience of emotion may reinforce another individual’s social behavior within
ongoing interactions (e.g., Klinnert et al., 1983). For example, the display of positive emotion by
both parents and children rewards desired behaviors and shifts in attention, thus increasing the
frequency of those behaviors (e.g., Tronick, 1989). The literature on social referencing indicates
that displays of more negative emotions deter others from engaging in undesirable behavior
(Klinnert et al., 1983).
To summarize, we have argued that group living presents humans with the problems of
physical survival, reproduction, and group governance. Humans have evolved complex systems
to meet these problems and opportunities, and emotions serve important functions within these
systems by signaling that problems or opportunities exist and by coordinating the actions of
interacting individuals. We now consider how culture elaborates upon primordial emotions.
Culture and the social functions of elaborated emotions
Evolutionary perspectives on emotion have always included a role for culture. Darwin
begins The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) with a description of a
cross-cultural study in which he sent questionnaires to missionaries around the world, asking
them to comment on the facial and bodily expressions of emotions shown by non-Western
people. He concluded that some expressions are highly universal, whereas others are more
variable, a conclusion that has withstood the test of time (Haidt & Keltner, 1999). Ekman has
also always included an important role for culture in his “neuro-cultural” theory of emotions
(1972). Ekman built on Tomkins’ (1963) notion of universal “affect programs”, suggesting that
culture plays its role as a modulator of both inputs (what counts as an insult, or a loss?) and
outputs (display rules about which emotions can be expressed in which circumstances).
While Ekman’s critics have often ignored his writings about culture (e.g., Ekman, 1972),
they have also pointed out ways in which culture may play a more profound role in human
emotional life. Impressed by how culture and language give humans flexibility and creativity in
designing their lives and societies, social constructivists concern themselves with the total
package of meanings, social practices, norms, and institutions that are built up around emotions
in human societies (Lutz, 1988; Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1990; Shweder, 1993; White, 1990). We
refer to these complex meanings as elaborated emotions. Elaborated emotions are shaped by
social discourse and interaction, and by concepts of the self, morality, and social order (Markus
& Kitayama, 1991; Shweder & Haidt, in press). Elaborated emotions vary across cultures, they
cannot be experienced by infants, and they can last for years or centuries. For example, the
hatred felt towards an historical enemy, although at any one moment in time comprised of brief
emotional experiences, is made up of values, beliefs, images, action tendencies, and affective
dispositions or sentiments that can pass from one generation to the next and last for extended
periods of time1.
In human beings, culture alters the use and expression of many evolved traits or systems,
including primordial emotions, in several ways. Childhood instruction, culturally specific
environmental conditions, and personal experiences determine culture specific elicitors of
emotions, and shape the manner in which primordial emotions develop and are expressed. We
will analyze cultural variation in emotion by applying our functionalist perspective to the sorts of
objects that anthropologists and social constructivists are concerned with: meaning systems and
emergent social phenomena such as institutions and practices.
Social Functions 8
Modern approaches to culture often focus on how humans create the symbolic and
material worlds that then shape, constrain, and enable them, as in Shweder’s (1989) succinct
formulation, ”culture and psyche make each other up”. Cultures draw on many sources to create
their symbolic worlds, including the human body and the phenomenological experiences it
provides (Geertz, 1973; Lakoff, 1987). All cultures have noticed that people experience hunger,
fatigue, illness, and sexual arousal, and all cultures have developed ethnotheories, customs, and
practices that explain the origins and govern the interpretation of these experiences. Primordial
emotions, we propose, provide universally available patterns of perception, experience, and
action that cultures work into their ethnotheories, values, practices, and institutions. The
primordial emotion of anger, for example, might be elaborated into a codified defense of the
social-moral order, linked to satisfying feelings of righteousness, and valued as a prosocial force
(e.g., the Ifaluk emotion of song, Lutz, 1988). Conversely, anger might be elaborated as a
childish and destructive response whose expression is suppressed, leading to the use of other
methods to solve interpersonal disputes (Briggs, 1970).
Culture and the elaboration process loosen the link between a primordial emotion and the
social problem it was designed to solve in two ways, as we elaborate below. First, cultures find
new solutions to the ancient problems that emotions were designed to solve. Second, cultures
find new uses for old emotions that have little to do with their “original” function. Once this
loosening is recognized it becomes easier to reconcile evolutionary approaches (which focus on
primordial emotions, and therefore find universality) and social constructionist approaches
(which focus on elaborated emotions and therefore find cultural variation).
New solutions to old problems: Artifacts and institutions
Humans have developed an enormous variety of artifacts and technological solutions to
the problems of survival, reproduction, and group governance. Cole (1995, p.32) writes that “the
basic function of these artifacts is to coordinate human beings with the environment and each
other." For example, the invention of weaponry, walls, and towns largely solves the problem of
predator-avoidance and reduces the need for primordial fear reactions towards non-human
animals, although such technological developments may then create new reasons to fear other
people. Social institutions are a related means by which humans solve ancient problems.
How do evolved artifacts, institutions, social structures, and technologies change the
emotional profile of a culture? We perceive at least two possibilities. First, social institutions
may work together with emotional systems, formalizing their functions and extending them into
new domains. For example, the institution of marriage can build upon sexual and attachmentrelated emotions in cultures that practice love-based marriage, to create stable environments for
child-rearing. Or marriage can build upon the emotions of the reciprocal altruism system in
cultures that practice arranged marriages, to bind families together that trade daughters. Other
social institutions formalize the functions of emotions. For example, Moore (1993) has observed
how court related mediations between defendant and victim formalize exchanges of shame and
forgiveness, and forge bonds following transgressions. Goffman (1967) likewise observed how
group based status rituals that revolve around social practices, such as teasing and manners of
dress and diction, ritualize displays of embarrassment and pride. In these circumstances,
emotions may serve their original social functions in more pronounced, consistent, and
consciously recognized ways.
Second, innovations in technology, social structure, or social institutions may bypass
Social Functions 9
certain emotional mechanisms, making those emotions less prevalent in a society. For example,
cultures must address the problem that young women can become pregnant in their mid-teens,
and that men who are not bound by marriage often do not help to raise their offspring. Many
cultures therefore make girls marry right after their first menses. But another common solution is
to delay female sexual activity by making a virtue of chastity, and by linking female sexuality
outside of marriage to shame. This linkage was clearly in place in the United States until
recently. The word “modesty” used to connote a feminine virtue in which properly socialized
women felt shame when confronted by issues of sexuality, particularly their own. In this way
American women experienced deferential, modesty related feelings such as embarrassment and
shame that are comparable to the experience of lajya of Oriya women (Mennon & Shweder,
1994) and hasham of Awlad-Ali women (Abu-Lughod, 1986). But new technology (birth
control), new social and economic facts (women working, and reducing the power differential
with men), and new institutions (women’s groups and magazines) have greatly reduced the
association of sexuality with shame. We cannot be certain, but it seems quite likely that the
frequency of sexual shame/modesty experiences has greatly diminished for American women, as
has the link between shame/modesty and appeasement or submissiveness functions in the context
of sexuality.
New problems for old solutions: Pre-adaptation and the creativity of culture
In the course of evolution physical structures and behavioral patterns evolve under
selection pressures for one purpose, but often are serviceable for a different purpose (Mayr,
1960; Rozin, 1976a). For example, the human tongue evolved as a mechanism to select and
handle food, but it was pre-adapted to play a role in speech production, which has affected its
current form. If the re-use of such a pre-adapted feature gives an advantage to certain
individuals, the new use will become more common in succeeding generations, guided by a new
set of selection pressures. This process can happen in biological evolution over the course of
thousands of generations, or in cultural evolution over the course of a few years or decades.
The process of cultural pre-adaptation is visible in the transition from primordial
emotions to their elaborated forms. As a general principle, we suggest that primordial emotions
will be recruited for new uses when features of their antecedents, appraisal patterns, or
behavioral patterns match characteristics of the new domain where a solution to a similar social
problem is needed. Certain emotion-related appraisals can be extended into new domains with
slight changes. For example, because ideas can spread quickly from person to person, like
germs, primordial disgust and its defense against microbial contagion is easily recruited and
elaborated into a defense against ideological contagion, such as communist infiltration during the
cold war. Once ideas are seen as “contaminating”, the solution to the problem is clear: infected
individuals must be isolated, or expelled from the community. (See Lakoff, 1987, for more on
the importance of metaphor in human thought.) Thus, the food rejection of primordial disgust
(or core disgust, Rozin, Haidt & McCauley, 1993) is easily adaptable to social rejection, and
most cultures seem to have some form of socio-moral disgust in response to certain classes of
“offensive” social violations (Haidt et al., 1997).
Pre-adaptation can occur at the level of emotion-related behavior as well, according to
similar principles of similarity and generalization. Thus, many contexts requiring politeness,
such as more formal interactions or those involving strangers, resemble those involving
individuals in social hierarchies: the interactions are defined by potential threat. Theorists have
Social Functions 10
argued that appeasement-related behaviors, including submissive displays and embarrassment,
have been elaborated into more complex politeness and deference rituals (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989;
Visser, 1991). As one example, negotiating locations of limited space (e.g., doorways) often
involve polite smiles, gaze aversion and specific gestures (head bows in other cultures) that draw
upon the nonverbal cues of embarrassment. Emotion-related displays can be extended into new
domains, thereby developing new uses. It will be important for future research to establish the
extent to which the different components of primordial emotion are activated when one
component of emotion (appraisals, display behavior) are generalized to a new domain.
In sum, primordial emotions are universal, biologically based, coordinated response
systems that have evolved to enable humans to meet the problems of physical survival,
reproduction, and group governance. The creative process of culture, however, loosens the link
between the primordial emotions and their functions, finding new solutions to old problems and
new uses for old emotions. Evolutionary theorists are therefore right when they document high
degrees of cross-cultural similarity in (primordial) emotion and emotion based preferences,
interactions, and practices (e.g., Buss, 1992; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Ekman, 1992). Social
constructionists are also right when they document striking cultural variation in the uses and
functions of (elaborated) emotions in human societies. We now apply this framework to a
discussion of the biologically and culturally determined social functions of two specific
emotions, disgust and embarrassment.
Two case studies of primordial and elaborated emotion
Disgust
The dangers of parasites and bacteria are particularly acute for humans, who live in close
quarters and eat a great variety of potentially dangerous foods. Humans are aided by a variety of
food-related emotions, strategies and learning mechanisms, which work together as a functional
system to achieve the right balance between exploration of new foods and the avoidance of
dangerous foods (Rozin, 1996). Humans show neophobia, nibbling, and preparedness to
associate nausea with new foods, even after a long delay (Seligman, 1971; Rozin, 1996). In
humans, disgust is at the center of the food-selection system, having evolved from the more
primitive reaction of distaste into a way of making people concerned about the contact history
and nature of their potential foods, rather than just their sensory properties (Rozin, Haidt &
McCauley, 1993). Disgust pushes against sensation seeking as part of the “omnivore’s
dilemma”: the simultaneous interest in and fear of new foods (Rozin, 1976b).
Human societies have developed diverse ways to safeguard their food supplies and to
minimize the threats of bacteria and parasites. These solutions include technological innovations
(cooking or curing meat, boiling or filtering water), institutions (government food inspectors),
and cultural norms and food taboos whose violation triggers disgust or outrage. More recently,
newspapers and television reports offer consumers advice from experts on what foods to eat, and
how to prepare them.
Perhaps because it has been partially freed from its original mission -- as a guardian of
the mouth against dangerous foods -- disgust has been put to a variety of new uses. Its eliciting
conditions have expanded so much that disgust may now be described as a social emotion whose
function is to guard the social order against certain forms of deviance, and to guard the soul
against certain forms of debasement (Rozin, Haidt and McCauley, in press). The link between
Social Functions 11
material progress and the expansion of disgust in European history has been pointed out by Elias
(1978). Disgust and its associated cognitions about contamination and purity are recruited into
the maintenance of social groups with distinct boundaries, (e.g., the Indian caste system, upper
class attitudes towards the lower class). Disgust is used in initiation rites (e.g., of American
college fraternities) in which new members are forced to touch or eat the body products of
others, thereby deliberately courting the risk of disease, yet simultaneously marking individuals
as members of a communal sharing group.
Embarrassment
The establishment, maintenance, and preservation of status hierarchies is in part
accomplished by dominance and submissive emotions (de Waal, 1996; Ohman, 1986).
Embarrassment is a primary example. The primordial form of embarrassment involves
submissive related behavior (Keltner, 1995) much akin to the appeasement displays of other
species (e.g., gaze aversion, head movements down, controlled smiles) and submissive
phenomenology (e.g., feelings of smallness and weakness) (Keltner & Buswell, 1996; Miller &
Leary, 1992). Empirical evidence indicates that displays of embarrassment appease dominant
individuals by evoking affiliative emotion and forgiveness (Keltner & Buswell, 1997).
Several interactions that systematically recruit and revolve around embarrassment and
other submissive emotions reinforce status hierarchies and status based relations. Status
demarcating rituals, such as greeting and teasing, involve the ritualized display and elicitation of
embarrassment (Goffman, 1967; Keltner, Young, Heerey, Oemig, & Monarch, 1998; de Waal,
1986, 1988), thus signaling the hierarchical relations between interacting individuals.
Culture has evolved several new solutions to the problem of coordinating hierarchies.
These include class and caste systems, aristocracy, status arrangements in groups and
organizations, status signaling clothing (e.g., the length of a doctor’s lab coat in medical
hospitals), linguistic practices (Brown & Levinson, 1987), status determinant, role-related norms
for women and men, and moral codes dictating the individual’s place within a community
(Shweder et al., in press). Status-related emotions have also been coopted in several more recent
human social practices. Politeness systems, including table manners and conversational
pragmatics, incorporate submissive emotion and gesture (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Keltner,
Young, & Buswell, 1997). In many Hindu and Islamic cultures the expression of submissive
emotions demonstrates feminine virtue (Abu-Lughod, 1986; Menon & Shweder, 1994).
Flirtation and courtship involve submissive smiles of embarrassment (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989) and
dominant displays (Fisher, 1992).
Conclusions and Future Prospects
We have argued that emotions are part of systems that solve problems related to physical
survival, reproduction, and group governance. Biologically based, universal primordial emotions
involve experience, perception, physiology, and communication that solves these problems in the
context of ongoing social interactions. Elaborated emotions are the total package of meanings,
behaviors, social practices, and norms that are built up around primordial emotions in actual
human societies. This approach integrates the insights of evolutionary and social constructionist
approaches and points to the systematic role of emotion in social interactions, relationships, and
cultural practices.
We have intentionally focused on classes of emotions that solve specific social problems.
Social Functions 12
Other emotions are likely to serve more context-general social functions: amusement may relate
to the transformation of dangerous situations into safe ones (Keltner & Bonanno, 1997); interest
may motivate general exploratory behavior and learning; happiness or contentment may signal to
the individual her or his general level of social functioning (Nesse, 1990). These sorts of issues
await further investigation.
Our hope in this article is to prompt researchers to continue to examine the social
functions of emotions, both in their universal and culturally elaborated forms. Towards this end,
we make the following recommendations for future research. A first is to study emotion within
theoretically relevant relationships. Many studies of emotion and social interaction have looked
at strangers or, in more ambitious cases, friendships. We would suggest that the net needs to be
cast more broadly, that researchers need to study emotion in different kinds of relationships. The
study of embarrassment and shame may be most appropriate in interactions between superiors
and subordinates. Love, desire, and jealousy are most fruitfully examined in interactions
between actual or potential romantic partners.
We further suggest, following our functional analysis, that empirical research may be
most revealing when it focuses on the nature and consequences of emotions when relationship
relevant problems (e.g., the maintenance of reciprocity between friends) are most salient, for
example when stances towards them are being established, negotiated, or changed. The functions
of love and desire are likely to be most clearly documented during initial stages of courtship or
when a romantic bond is threatened. The manner in which shame and embarrassment help
define status related roles is likely to be most illuminated when studying groups during dynamic
times of status negotiation.
Our second recommendation follows quite closely from the first: namely, study emotion
in the context of social interactions and practices. A great deal of the study of emotion, even of
the more social nature of emotion, examines the individual’s response to controlled stimuli. This
sort of work is no doubt necessary; the understanding of emotion in social interaction rests upon
the understanding of individual emotional response. Yet given the advances in the study of
emotion, it may be time to study social interactions and practices that revolve around emotions.
In the course of this review we have identified ways that cultural practices elaborate upon more
primordial emotions (e.g., appeasement rituals), and ways in which primordial emotions are
generalized to new practices (e.g., disgust related to unsavory ideologies). These different social
practices have begun to be and should continue to be a focus of emotion research. The emphasis
on emotions within social practice raises difficult conceptual issues. In studies of emotion
related interactions, such as teasing, it will be necessary to treat the dyad or group as the unit of
analysis (see comments below). Studies of how culture elaborates upon emotion will direct
researchers to cultural objects and practices, such as etiquette manuals, religious texts, or
institutions, that do not appear, from the traditional point of view, to involve emotion. Yet it is
precisely in looking at these sorts of interactions and practices where one will find culturally
elaborated emotion.
Finally, a functional approach suggests that it is important to study systematic
consequences. The functions of a specific emotion will in part be revealed by its regular
consequences (e.g., Keltner & Gross, 1999). This view shifts the emphasis from looking at
emotion as an outcome or dependent measure to the view that emotions themselves have
important outcomes. As a field we know all too little about the systematic consequences of
Social Functions 13
emotions, and this remains a very important line of inquiry. Relevant research can proceed at
multiple levels of analysis. At the individual level of analysis, one would expect the disposition
to experience and express specific emotions, for example anger or the lack of embarrassment, to
be associated with specific social consequences. In moving to the dyad as the unit of analysis,
one might look at how patterns of emotional expression and experience lead to specific
consequences for ongoing interactions. Thus, we would expect timely displays of love and
desire to predict more interest and intimacy in ongoing interactions between potential romantic
partners. One could look at the long term consequences of patterns of emotional experience and
expression for relationships. For example, following the analysis offered in this chapter, one
might expect frequent displays of gratitude to predict the long term sense of fairness in
friendships. Finally, it will be important for researchers to document the consequences of
emotion for groups and cultures. Ritualized displays and experiences of embarrassment may
contribute to the stability of group hierarchy. The culturally elaborated experience of disgust
may correlate at the cultural level with specific stereotypes and outgroup prejudices.
Emotion researchers have long moved across and around discipline specific theoretical
inclinations and methodological practices. This tradition has led to great debate in the study of
emotion (is emotion universal or culturally specific?), and great advances. The study of the
social functions of emotion, we contend, depends vitally on the integration of ideas and evidence
from different disciplines.
Footnotes
1. An example may clarify the distinction: Is motherhood universal? We might speak of
primordial motherhood as a system of tightly coordinated physical and psychological processes
(involving gestation, parturition, and hormones that increase attachment) that is universal to
humans and similar to motherhood in many nonhuman species. On the other hand, many
researchers have documented cross-cultural variation in elaborated motherhood, e.g., single
versus multiple mothering, breast versus bottle feeding, and valuation versus devaluation of the
role of the mother (Kurtz, 1992).
Social Functions 14
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Social Functions 19
Table 1. A taxonomy of problems and the functional systems and emotions that solve them.
Social Functions 20
PROBLEM
FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS
EMOTIONS
SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Problems of Physical Survival
Predation
Fight-Flight
Fear
Rage
Avoidance of threat to self
Removal of threat to self
Disease
Food-Selection
Disgust
Interest
Avoid microbes/parasites
Learn about new foods/resources
Finding a mate
Attachment
Desire
Romantic Love
Sadness
Increase likelihood of sexual contact
Commit to long term bond
Replace loss of mate
Keeping mate
Mate protection
Jealousy
Protect mate from rivals
Protecting vulnerable
children
Caregiving
Filial love
Sympathy
Increase bond between parent, offspring
Reduce distress of vulnerable individuals
Cooperation
& Defection
Reciprocal Altruism
Guilt
Moral Anger
Gratitude
Envy
Repair own transgression of reciprocity
Motivate other to repair transgression
Signal, reward cooperative bond
Reduce unfair differences in equality
Group Organization
Dominance-Submissive
Problems of Reproduction
Problems of Group Governance
Shame &
Pacify likely aggressor
Embarrassment
Contempt
Reduce status of undeserving other
Awe
Endow entity greater than self with status
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________