The Nature of Emotions

The Nature of Emotions

By Nathan Alhalel

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At some point in all our lives, most of us have wished we could read people’s minds. The reason for this is rather simple: emotions are complicated. People have a hard time both deciphering other people’s emotions and explaining their own. It is actually so complicated that psychologists, neuroscientists, and therapists have yet to agree on a single definition. Not only that, but over 90 definitions of “emotion” were proposed during the 20^th century alone. Despite the overwhelming odds, Robert Plutchik believes that evolutionary theory may provide a way of unifying many of the already proposed theories of emotion. In his article “The Nature of Emotions”, he claims that the best way to do this is to pull together information from many different species, define emotions in terms of what their adaptive functions are, and find the biological basis and connections between them using those functions. He calls this the “psychoevolutionary theory of emotion”.

Examples of these adaptive functions Plutchik sought to define are found in abundance in our everyday lives. Fear and anxiety, for example, can be paralleled to the heightened arousal of an animal that notices a predator or threat nearby. Love and emotional attachment promotes pair bonding, reproduction, and parental investment, which are all essential for evolutionary fitness in many species. He compared other emotions in animals using Darwin’s conclusion that expressive behavior (emotions) are used to communicate information from one animal to another about things that have occurred or will occur in the near future. This communication, in turn, improves the chances of survival of the individual both demonstrating and receiving the cues. Plutchik then extends this idea by elaborating that these interactions and emotions are “an attempt to reduce the disequilibrium caused by an unusual event and reestablish a state of comparative rest”.

He also believes that “feeling states tend to be followed by impulses to action that can be seen from an evolutionary prospective”. For example, at a young age, many species need food, protection, and transportation. Crying is the perfect action to display the emotion of discomfort to get all of these things from parents. Fear protects the individual physically through “fight or flight” and shame leads to a decrease in the probability of repeating the shameful act. Emotions are also seen as a form of communication that can substitute more risky behavior such as fighting. Taking all of this into account, it is quite obvious that emotions are valuable both in communication and in increasing the individual’s chance of survival. In other words, “emotions represent proximate methods to achieve evolutionary fitness”.

Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory assumes that “evolutionary fitness” has lead to eight basic emotion dimension arranged in pairs and all other emotions that one can experience are formed by a combination of these eight. Although Plutchik doesn’t go into detail about how these eight became the essential emotional dimension, one can assume that species, including humans, have undergone natural selection to create a population of individuals with the ability to both “feel and express all emotions in appropriate settings”. This adaptation then led to the eight basic dimensions we now see today. 

 

(Word Count: 520)

Plutchik, Robert (2001). "The Nature of Emotions". American Scientist, Vol. 89, No. 4 (July-August 2001), pp. 344-350.