Most human goals are social;

 emotions are our means of steering.

 

Keith Oatley, Ph.D.

 

Professor of Cognitive Psychology

Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology

University of Toronto

 

Tuesday, October 30

 4:00 P.M.  

Coffee and tea at 3:30

4448 East Hall

 

Précis

Emotions are processes that manage goals. We are a social species, so human goals are for the most part social. We achieve together many outcomes that we could not possibly accomplish alone. Oatley and Jenkins have recently developed a theory of three major social-goal systems that have evolved in mammals. One system is assertion or dominance. Its goal is to move up in a status hierarchy and to maintain one's position if challenged. Its characteristic emotion is anger. The second system is attachment. Its goal is protection from inter-species predation and intra-species aggression. Its characteristic emotion is anxiety. The third, and most recently evolved is affection. Its goal is interpersonal warmth, and its characteristic emotions are happiness and love. Among humans, most (though not all) emotions relate to these systems. I shall describe how these emotions arise and describe, also, exceptions to this scheme. These systems affect fitness by specific moods setting up scripts for specific kinds of relationships with others. Anger sets up relationships of conflict, anxiety sets up relationships of protectiveness, happiness sets up relationships of cooperation. People navigate the social world largely by way of these emotions, which act as guides to social action. Two different kind of depression are based on (i) loss of status and (ii) loss of a partner in attachment or cooperation. Depression exemplifies the problematics of guidance by social goals. Among modern humans none of the three systems, none of the interactions among them, and none of the repertoires of emotions that each calls into readiness, is without paradoxes. Narrative stories are human universals: they are means of simulating problematic situations in order to gain     

insights into their personal and social properties.                      

 

Next Week, November 6

Kim Hill: Do foragers suffer stress and depression: A walk through the life of some hunter-gatherer friends.

 

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