I understand he biological reason why humans become angry. I am sure in caveperson times it was essential to survive. The same with fear.
But what biological/evolutionary reason is there for:
happiness
sadness
shame
embarassment
Like anger and fear, most other emotional responses likewise furnish incentives for evolutionary valuable behavior or disincentives for evolutionarily counterproductive behavior. We feel happy when something “good”–in terms of health, wealth, social achievement, or some other criterion for evolutionary success–happens to us (or to the relatives who share our genetic inheritance, or the friends who are allies in our quest for evolutionary success). We usually feel happiest about things that makes us more attractive to a potential mate. On the other hand, we feel ashamed or embarrassed when we commit some mistake that makes us less attractive in the eyes of the social group and therefore less desirable to a mate: the feeling is sufficiently unpleasant or uncomfortable that we usually find some way of avoiding a recurrence.
We are happy when we have eaten, when we’ve had a shag, when we look at our bulging muscles - happiness is a reward mechanism for doing what’s necesary to survive and pro-create.
We are sad when we lose a family member, get hurt, get turned down when we want a shag - Sadness is a, er, punishment mechanism (it motivates us to avoid that which made us sad)
We are ashamed when we do something not acceptable by the clan. So shame stops us doing such things (like killing a human or eating someone else’s food)
We are embarrased when we are not very good at shagging, or catching food, so we are motivated to get better.
This question presupposes that most emotions are genetically coded. However, there is evidence that many emotions are memes (learned behaviour passed on from one generation to the next by example rather than biologically). For example, children raised in isolation of humans do not tend to exhibit embarrassment or shame. (For references, see some of the web pages and online books listed in the Open Directory’s Feral Children category.
There is one other assumption, based on a woefully common misunderstanding of evolution, at work here: That all traits MUST be “evolutionarily advantageous” to exist. This is simply not true. It is possible for a trait to be selectively neutral and still be maintained in a population. A trait can even reduce individual survival and be maintained in a population. Looking for a simple “evolutional reason” presupposes a lot about evolution that very well might not be operating upon a specific trait.
i’m guessing shame holds the social organization together. Shame is to social situations what the legal system is to legal situations, a punishment to enforce compliance with standard rules. Without shame there would be social anarchy.
I have no idea about happiness or sadness. I heard a theory once that depression might be a tool the body uses to conserve energy (a form of hibernation).
What i don’t get is i have read happiness is 50-90% genetic. So what evolutionary purpose could it have if it doesn’t apply as a universal reward/punishment system? If you are genetically inclined to be happy or sad it doesn’t matter if you do/experience good or bad situations you will generally feel good or bad anyway.
When discussing the evolutionary aspects of affect, it’s important we first make a distinction between those emotions thought to have roots in reproductive behaviour and those that exist at “higher” social level.
There’s a good deal of literature that states there are five or six primary emotions that are consistent across cultures. These are as follows; happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise (n.b. depending on who you read there’s a few variations on this list but the theoretical background is consistent). In empirical studies, researchers have found that when shown prototype pictures of someone expressing the above states, subjects across all cultures can correctly identify the emotion at above chance levels. In shorter words, if you’re happy (i.e. smiling, eyebrows raised, eyes wider than your neutral state, etc.), pretty much everyone in world will think you’re happy.
Why is this so you ask? Communication. We humans area social species and the expression of emotion allows us to talk to one another. In doing so we are able to form/strengthen bonds within our group, tell other groups to stay the hell away form our food, warning friends when a hungry lion is in the neighbourhood and so on.
As psychonaut pointed out, there’s a risk of conflating the genetics of reproduction with social behavior however, if you tread carefully, there is a rational for the biological basis of affect. If someone* is born with out the ability to express different emotive states (say no eyebrows), the chances of them finding a mate decreases. If no one’s willing to get freaky with this type of person, their genes do not get passed on and this trait has been selected against (see Dogface’s post for a really important elaboration of this point)
So, if you’re buying my rational, there is an evolutionary explanation for these primary emotions. Now, when you start talking about states like shame, embarrassment, guilt, indignation, etc. things start to get a little murkier. Though these states may now be associated with reproductive behaviours within certain social groups, this doesn’t happen at the level of species (i.e you don’t see the same cross cultural recognition of these states).
Additionally, you need a need a highly developed society for these states to come about. That’s to say, in order for embarrassment to exist, you will need a society wherein people have developed social norms and have the cognitive ability to recoginse when/if there’s been a transgression of these norms. Furthermore, these norms vary across social groups (e.g. not eating with you left hand in some parts the world). For these reasons, it doesn’t seem that these states have a direct role in evolution per se. But, as a post hoc caveat, I will mention that as these states assist in the maintenance of social norms, they do play a de facto role in evolution however, methinks it’s over ambitious to say that they’re directly tied to reproductive behaviors.
*For the sake of argument, I’m using one person as an example. I know that evolution doesn’t work on an individual level but it gets the point across.
Furn:
Also, don’t make the mistake that human emotions evolved from “nothing” during “caveman times”. Watch chimps in action and you’ll see pretty much the whole panoply of “human” emotions. This would strongly imply that our common ancestor (some 6 millions yrs ago) also had these emotions.
The process of evolution rarely produces something completely new, but rather builds upon what is already there. So, the answer to your question almost certainly goes back 10s of millions of yrs thru mammalian and primate evolution.
Umm, because it is useful to be able to make cognitive assessments?
Thought is a subprocess of feeling. No feeling, no thought. The process by which incoming sensory input is matches with prior experience, patterns recognized, and current situations mapped to previously recognized patterns is an emotional one. As is all of induction.
The reason your computer is a machine that executes preprogrammed instructions rather than doing its own thinking is that it doesn’t feel.
This question keeps coming up in one form or another. Here are some of my previous answers (and of course relevant comments by others in those threads):
Should you trust your instincts? (kinda long)
Should People in the future be genetically designed to be emotionless?
Intersting. I see Chimps get angry, happy sad etc. But are we able to guage in chimps the feelings of shame, embarrasment, loneiness?
These seem to be “high tuned” emotions with no real justification.
Researchers have documented these emotions as well. There’s a pretty good book on the subject, When Elephants Weep, which discusses the various reports of different types of animals and their emotional responses. (I do, however, take some of them with a grain of salt.)
Chimps, for example, sometimes actually blush when extremely embarassed, or so I’ve heard. One story involved a juvenile male who was trying to impress a group of females with his gymnastics. He missed a branch on a jump, and crashed to the ground. The researcher reported that he flushed, looked away from the females, and slunk away with his shoulders hunched.
Loneliness is easily observable in ape societies. Jane Goodall wrote about one ape who was the outcast of the group, and was obviously distressed when his overtures were rebuffed. He would spend his time longingly staring at the group, sighing.
From what I have read, it appears that apes have the emotional maturity of a young child, in that they’re able to experience the myriad of human emotions, and are very open and honest with them. Throughout the animal kingdom, it appears that the more intelligent and social a creature, the more emotional they are. (In which case, shame would have the same usefulness in, say, a group of chimps as it is in human social situations.)
The book I previously mentioned argues that love is the most simple, and basic emotion of all, and is most broadly experienced among animals. Reasonable enough, I suppose, is their assertion that love is an effective tool in making parents interested and invested in the care of their young, rather than just feeding them because some instinct tells them they’re supposed to.
Of course, many scientists refuse to believe that any animal other than man is capable of emotion, much like animals are furry robots, who only display “stimulus response.” They argue that love is incredibly complex-- too nuanced for a lower creature. (To which my mind responds that human love is complicated because we make it so.)
"Intersting. I see Chimps get angry, happy sad etc. But are we able to guage in chimps the feelings of shame, embarrasment, loneiness?
These seem to be “high tuned” emotions with no real justification."
Well, firstly, any guage of a non-human animal’s emotion is subjective.
Concerning loneliness, we’ve clearly seen chimps exihibit classic bahaviors associated with “psychosis” when they are raised in isolation. Is this loneliness? Probably.
I’m not sure about shame in chimps. But in humans, it would have a pretty significant survival advantage to the extent that it would help with group cohesion-- ie, shame at committing a violation against someone in the group.