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Course: Wireless Philosophy > Unit 7
Lesson 5: Basic emotionsBasic emotions
In this Wireless Philosophy video, we examine the idea that certain basic emotions are shared and experienced similarly by all human beings, regardless of differences in factors like language and culture. Are there mechanisms or modules in our brains that are devoted to specific emotional responses, such as fear, anger, or joy? If not, how can we be sure that people from very different cultures truly understand each other’s experiences?
View our Neuroscience and Philosophy learning module and other videos in this series here: https://www.wi-phi.com. Created by Gaurav Vazirani.
Video transcript
Are some emotions the
same for all human beings? In this video, we’ll consider the
idea that there are basic emotions— built-in emotional responses
shared by everybody. I met Takeshi on
my first trip to Japan. I could tell he was happy
to show me around Kyoto and he took me to his favourite Ramen shop, a place where they literally set fire to
the noodles just before they got served. Takeshi, I suspect, could also see that I was enthusiastic
to see the local hotspots; pun intended. Takeshi is from Japan
and I’m from the Maldives. The cultural gulf between us meant that we both needed to do a lot of
work to understand each other’s beliefs, traditions, and values
when we first met. But we didn’t seem to have major issues
understanding each other’s emotions, even on our first encounter. I can recognize and understand what
he is feeling effortlessly and immediately. He didn’t have to say a word.
I don't even need to speak his language. How is this possible? Why is it so easy to understand
the emotions of people from cultures very
different from ours when we do not share language,
culture, traditions, values, and so much more? One influential idea is that there is a small list of emotions
that are shared across all cultures. These are called basic emotions, a notion popularized by
the psychologist Paul Ekman. Ekman took a set of
photos of people’s faces which displayed various
emotional expressions and showed them to people
in very isolated communities, like the Fore people
of Papua New Guinea. He found that some emotional
expressions were widely recognised. Ekman originally identified
six basic emotions: fear, anger, joy, sadness,
disgust, and surprise. His list now includes
16 basic emotions. But recognising people’s
emotional expressions is one thing. Saying that all humans
are capable of experiencing a specific set of basic
emotions is another. Are we all capable of experiencing the same
basic emotions regardless of our culture? One influential idea is that our brains are partly made
up of a bunch of different mechanisms that perform specific functions. Theorists call these
mechanisms modules. And some think that there are modules
devoted to specific emotional responses. So, for example, there might be a specific
module for generating fear, another one for generating
anger, one for surprise, and so on. But we recognize a lot of
different and complex emotions, and how we classify them
varies across cultures and times. So those who argue
for emotional modularity don’t think that our brains have a
module for every emotion we experience. Some emotions, like romantic love,
might actually be culture-specific— not having a specific
module in the brain. Others might involve multiple different
emotion modules operating in tandem. But what these theorists hold is that there are specific
emotion modules in the brain responsible for generating a
specific list of basic emotions. Consider an example: fear. Suppose that you’re
walking through the woods, and suddenly you come
across a large bear! Your face might look like this. Your heart rate might increase. You might sweat a bit, and
your muscles might tremble. According to this hypothesis, this
is because we have a fear module. That is, our brains have
a special mechanism devoted to this set
of responses you get when you detect a
threat in your environment. The basic emotion we call fear is similar for everyone
who shares this module. Not everyone agrees with
this view of basic emotions. The psychologist
Lisa Feldman Barrett has recently criticized
the idea of basic emotions. Her criticism is
actually quite simple. When you look at lots and lots of
neuroscientific studies all together, Barrett says, there don’t seem to
be any parts of the brain we can identify as
emotion modules! Consider fear again. When we look at individual
studies of people’s brains when they’re experiencing fear, we see that their fear is associated
with some neural activity in the brain. But when we look at a lot of studies
collectively and all of the data together, we don’t find any specific neural activity
we can isolate as the module for fear. Barrett’s work has
become hugely influential. One response to her argument is to say that perhaps we just
haven’t looked hard enough. According to this response,
Barrett may be partly right. Maybe there aren’t any
specific systems in the brain that correspond to our typical
concepts of basic emotions like ‘fear’, ‘disgust’,
‘happiness’ and so on. But these are what
philosophers call “folk categories”— they’re concepts we use
in our everyday discourse, and they aren’t the result
of any scientific investigation. And maybe our folk categories don’t match the emotion modules
that evolution selected for us. The categories we use to
make sense of our own minds might not match the features of our brains
that explain how our minds really work. Sometimes they overlap,
but they don’t always have to. This response suggests that are emotion modules
devoted to specific basic emotions— it’s just that these basic emotions
don’t fit our folk emotion categories. For example, maybe there isn’t a
specific system in the brain for fear. But there might be
modules related to fear. Maybe there is a
specific system for anxiety and another system
for panic, and so on. So, while we categorize
your fear response to the bear as a basic emotion that
is shared cross-culturally, maybe there are other
related categories of emotion that are the actual
basic emotions— like anxiety or panic. While Barrett’s work shows that our folk
notions of basic emotions lack modules, this work doesn't actually rule out the
idea that there might be basic emotions, even if they’re not the ones we’d list
using our everyday emotion concepts. But can we really say that
there are basic emotions, even if we don’t quite
know which ones they are? The jury is still out on that. We need to do a lot more
neuroscience and philosophy before we can tell if there are or there
aren't specific modules in our brains that trigger certain
emotional responses. Either way, I think the answer
we get is quite intriguing. If there really are basic
emotions, my friend Takeshi and I are capable of experiencing
the same kinds of basic emotions despite our
cultural differences. And if there really
are no basic emotions, Takeshi and I, despite seeming to
understand each other emotionally, would actually be experiencing
very different kinds of emotions. Either we know each other
really well, or we really don’t at all! What do you think?