In the course of developing his positive theory, Damasio wants to talk about emotions, and that's what I like to explain right now. It's common in contemporary experimental psychology, and social psychology in particular, to distinguish among, between basic emotions and the other kinds of emotions. By basic I mean, those emotions that are pan cultural, in the sense that every member of our species who is at least neurologically typical, is going to be likely to have one of these basic emotions. That is there, in a sense part of our biological nature to have one of these emotions or another at any given time. These emotions are not normally thought of as consisting of six: Anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, disgust, and fear. Anybody who's born as a member of our species who is neurologically typical is going to be prone to have one or these emotions under various circumstances, and they will manifest themselves in pretty common ways from one person to the other. The idea is that for example, it doesn't matter whether you were born in Marseille, France, or you're born and raised in Moscow or you're born and raised in New Mexico in Albuquerque, for example. If you ingest something that's very bad for you, you will wretch , you will have an emotion of disgust. Your body will do everything it can to expel that thing from your mouth. Likewise, it doesn't matter whether you're born and raised in Sydney Australia or Buenos Aires. If there's something that is obviously threatening to your well-being, you will probably experience fear, and that fear is going to have a certain distinctive ways it looks on your face. It'll have a physiological manifestation. We now know that under conditions of considerable fear you tend to have more blood flow to your legs. Whereas by contrast in situations of considerable anger you have more blood flow to your arms, which makes it kind of evolutionary sense if you think about it. So these primary or basic emotions are ones that are relatively, they're given us by virtue of our biological endowment when were just born and they're elicited by relatively, easily identifiable, things in the environment. And furthermore, they have a fairly common manifestation, doesn't matter whether you're born and raised in Papua New Guinea or Paris France, if somebody or something makes you happy, there is a certain way you are more or less likely to look, with a smile for instance. Now, in addition to these basic emotions and their pan cultural manifestations, they're also going to be a top layer above that known as display rules, that can modulate the way in which these emotions are manifested in your face and other behavior. So for example, in modern western society and certain other societies we've got rules as to how much you're allowed to smile when there's an event having to do with mourning, going on. So if you're at a funeral, even if you see an old friend, you probably are expected to keep your pleasure at seeing that old friend under wraps. Likewise, there are conditions under which it's appropriate to show disgust, conditions under which it's appropriate or inappropriate to show fear. Many cultural situations tell us that this kind of facial expression is okay under these circumstances and other cases not. In one famous experiment, comparing American students and Japanese students, two groups American students Japanese students were asked to watch funny movies. I believe it was the same funny movies in both cases, and both found them when they took themselves not to be being observed, both groups laughed at about the same extent and at the same rate in response to the funny things that would happen in the movies. However, when the situation was changed so that, in both viewing situations there was an authority figure present and was visible to all the students, scientist-like person standing in front of them with a white lab coat for example. Then, the American students would not change their manifestation of laughter very much in when they're watching the movies just because there is an authority figure in front of them, where the Japanese students would change considerably, so that the Japanese students tended to modify their expressive behavior in response to what they took to be an authority figure whereas American students did so much less so. So, the result is that these two different groups may have different display rules, and you might think about your own situation, think about whether there are conditions under which your society or your culture tells you that even if you're feeling an emotion of a certain kind, and have a tendency to express that emotion in your voice, in your face, in your gestures and so forth you're asked to either minimize it because of the situation, or maybe even maximize it, dramatize it, heighten it because of the situation that you're in. The idea though is that basic emotions have one pan cultural manifestation which is supposed to be in common in terms of facial expression, physiological responses and often the way that these emotions feel experientially. Then on top of that there's a layer that explains why even these basic emotions might be expressed differently among different cultures and that layer has to do with display rules. On top of these basic emotions, what Damasio would call primary emotions, he also discusses secondary emotions, which secondary emotions tend to have two different components. One of which is they're often activated by our experience, our knowledge of the world, our expectations about what's going on around us and so on. So for example, you might feel resentment, which perhaps is a weak kind of anger, but resentment is a special kind of anger in the sense that, resentment requires certain attributions to the object of that resentment. You can't just feel resentment per say. You've got to feel resentment towards an individual for doing something or other. So for example, it make very little sense for me to resent my car even if it doesn't start one day. Unless I somehow thought that the car was an inanimate object that was trying to behave in a willfully annoying or irritating or offensive way towards me. When I resent someone the more natural cases one which I take offense, at what they're doing. I think that what they're doing is somehow wrong, inappropriate et cetera. And want perhaps some retribution or at least some compensation for the thing that they've done. Likewise hope. It doesn't make sense if somebody asks you, "how you're feeling?" And you say, "Oh I'm feeling hopeful. " And you then they then ask you, "Oh what are you hopeful about?" It wouldn't make sense to reply oh nothing at all. Nothing in particular, I'm just feeling hopeful". Rather, hope is something that requires what philosophers like to call an object. To be hopeful you have to be hopeful about something or other. These are examples of secondary emotions, resentment on one hand and hope on the other. So we're going to be thinking about emotions and you might in your own life reflect on the variety or the panoply of emotions that you have. Which emotions have that kind of visceral feel about them. Which emotions are ones that you feel like you're just built experience. Which emotions are ones that require a cognitive component in the sense that you have certain expectations or presuppositions about the world that make that emotion possible. In addition, I would also mention that there are emotions that are in a sense very culturally specific. Maybe anybody in any culture can feel resentment or hopeful. Whereas there are other motions that are perhaps a third level, tertiary perhaps, that requires certain specific assumptions about your own culture. For example, in Portuguese, pardon me if I'm not pronouncing it exactly right, the word Saudade seems to refer to the experience of longing in nostalgia you have for the lost days of the Portuguese empire. Now I can imagine modern day Portuguese people feeling this emotion of nostalgia for days of Portuguese glory. Although there's plenty of Portuguese Glory nowadays to go around, there might still be people who feel nostalgic about what was the case before, but that's an emotion that I as a non Portuguese person don't think I have any understanding of, don't think that I can experience. Likewise Japanese has the word Amae, which is refers to something like the sense of bliss that you feel when you're lost in a huge crowd of people. Now, for me Amae is not something I have any emotional connection to in the sense that, when I'm in a huge crowd of people my general tendency is to want to get away from that ground as soon as possible. But if you're the sort of person who feels that kind of bliss in the loss of self for example in that large crowd of people, then maybe you're experiencing Amae. You don't necessarily have to be Japanese, but it's not something that anybody from any culture can get access to. It depends upon certain assumptions about what you take to be good or bad about being associated with many others. So emotions take a number of different forms. Some are, it seems built into our biological nature, others are more specific in the sense of having cognitive components, yet others are more specific in the sense of having a deep cultural background. Those emotions especially that have deep cultural background and set of presuppositions are ones that some of those might be able to understand and even experience others will find them, in some sense form. We can see this played out in our behavior, when we think about two kinds of smile. There are many types of smile. But I want to focus on two types one of which is known as the Duchenne smile. Duchenne found that there are smiles that seem to be highly associated with genuine pleasure. And when you're smiling a Duchenne smile, not only do the zygomatic major muscles around your mouth get activated making your mouth do this, but also the orbicularis oculi muscles that go around your eye sockets are activated. I can't do that at will. Those muscles are activated, those are the ones that make this sort of crew's feet types of smiles happen. When you're genuinely and honestly and sincerely happy, you're likely to manifest that in your face by means of what we now call the Duchenne smile, whereas, what's sometimes referred to as a social smile, suppose you're having a birthday and someone gives you a present that you're only slightly happy to have, maybe it's a neck tie or a mug or something that you're not so thrilled to become the owner of, you might make a polite smile. Thank you. That does not involve activation of the orbicularis oculi, that's a polite smile. It's not necessarily insincere, but it's very different from the Duchenne smile which seemed like a genuine emanation or manifestation or expression of a felt emotion. We can see the Duchenne smile as corresponding to a basic emotion or primary emotion, whereas the social smile corresponding to a secondary emotion. Two kinds of facial expressions that seems superficially similar. But that if you pay attention to, you can begin to distinguish between and those correspond to primary and secondary emotions respectively.
