Précis

Professor Carver has long been interested in how the structure of behavior relates to feedback processes. More recently that interest has broadened from control of action to include emotions. In his view, affect is created by a feedback system that monitors how well things are going behaviorally. If things are going poorly, negative affect arises; if things are going even better than desired, positive affect arises. Because this view derives from feedback processes, it includes the idea that deviations in either direction (going very well, going very poorly) lead to changes that tend to counter the deviations. This view challenges other models in at least a couple of respects: It has some counterintuitive implications about consequences of positive feelings, and it argues explicitly that pure incentive motivation can produce affects of both hedonic tones, as (separately) can pure threat motivation. This theory also fits a view joining depressed affect to a reduced commitment of energy to the goal underlying the depressed affect. These various considerations suggest a view in which some of the functional properties of affect coalesce around the problem of scheduling & prioritizing incentives for pursuit.

Next Week, October 23

Robert Emmons: Goals, Gratitude, and the Pursuit of Significance.

The Evolution and Human Adaptation Program Lectures are sponsored by the LS&A Dean's Office, the Research Center for Group Dynamics at ISR, and the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry. To add your name to the mailing list of events sponsored by EHAP, send a note to ehap@umich.edu

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