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    Emotion, Scherer

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    Emotion, Scherer

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    of 45
    Emotion Klaus R. Scherer ‘Mach of social psychology deals with emotion and emotional behaviour, explicitly and impli- citly, in the context of social cognition and judgement, interpersonal relations and com munication, ot group behaviour. This chapter defines the phenomenon, reviews classic and current theories, and summarizes. relevant research on the elicitation and differentiation of emorional reactions. It focuses on the major Activation Affect Appraisal Discrete emotions Display rules Emetion Emetional reaction triad Expression OUTLINE components of emotion, including motor ex- pression, psychophysiological symptoms, mot- ivational changes and subjective experience, as well as on their complex interrelationships. In addition, issues such as emotion regula- tion and control, intercultural similarities and differences, and applied aspects of emotion rescarch are covered. KEY CONCEPTS Facil feedback hypothesis Feeling ‘Mood Proprioceptive feedback Social constructivism Sympathetic arousal Universality Scterer, K.R. (2000) Emotion, In M, Hewstone & W. Strocbe (Eds). Intraducian to Socal Psychology A Europes perspective (3rd. ed, pp. 151-191). Oxford: Blackwell. 152. Klaus R. Scherer Introduction Why should social psychologists study emotion? What is the role of emotion in social interaction? Imagine strolling through a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon in May. The first flowers are out, the birds are chirping, and you are feeling great — particularly given the fact that a very special person is walking hand-in-hand with you. All of a sudden, you notice a man emerging from behind some bushes along the path, He is holding a kaife and there seems to be blood on his hands .. Chances are that you would be experiencing what is commonly Emotion afer often weg Called an emotion. But what seems a straightiorward, albeit highly synonynousy with feeling or aversive, reaction turns out to be a major problem for social psycho: atfect, Moder usage assumes logists. For example, what exactly is the emotion? The quickening of emotion to be a hypothetical your heartbeat? Your mouth and eyes opening widely? Your gasp? The const Celta sudden urge to run away? Or the feeling that you are in danger — lunar eeeenoues Something you will call fear when interrogated about your state of 's generally presumed to mind at the time? Or a combination of all of these different aspects? have several components: We will have to discuss different views as to how to define the Physioegia aousal, motor phenomenon. Another issue of debate is the question of why we have ‘xpresson action tendencies emotions, Are they irrational passions that prevent us from being se shies Fens reasonable human beings? What is their function? Do animals have emotions? Are there differences between cultures? How would an Inuit react if man with blood on his hands appeared from behind a snowdrift? All of these questions are linked to the issue of the social nature of the human species and are thus a proper topic for social-psychological investigation. But even apart from such fundamental issues, social psychologists stumble across emotion at many points in the study of social cognition and behaviour. If the sight of the man with the knife has frightened you out of your wits, your judge- ‘ment as to the likelihood of his attacking you and the person next to you may be impaired. You may overreact. The event, if traumatic, may affect your memory Of park strolls with a significant other for years to come. You may change your opinion about certain races ot nationalities ~ if the man should happen to be a member of a social group different from your own. Major effects of emotion on social cognition have been demonstrated in the literature: perception, judgement, memory, problem-solving, task performance and many other aspects of individual fanctioning can all be strongly affected by different emotions (Forgas, 1991; Keltner, Ellsworth, & Edwards, 1993; sce chapter 5). Emotion has also been shown to play an important role in attitude change (Breckler, 1993; sce also chapter 8). Emotion also strongly affects social interaction. Your interaction with the man will be very different depending on whether you are frightened or angry. OF particular importance is emotional signalling, via expressive behaviour. Process and ‘outcomes of negotiations and social encounters depend heavily on the exchange fof such signals, e.g,, of threat or appeasement (see below and chapter 11). The reaction of the knifeman towards you will be determined in large part by the emotion signals you are providing, In general, the phenomenon of aggression is closely tied to emotion, particu larly frustration and anger (Averill, 1982; Berkowitz, 1962; Wyer & Srull, 1993; see chapter 10). IF your partner has frustrated you just before encountering the ‘man, and if you feel strong enough to deal with the person, you are more ikely to attack than flee. Emotions also infiuence the opposite pole, prosocial beha viour. A number of studies have shown that the likelihood of altruistic behaviour being shown is dependent, in a complex manner, on mood and emotion (Davis, 1994; Isen, 1993; see also chapter 9). ‘As one might expect, emotions play a major role in the establishment and -nan- agement of social relationships, such asin friendship and marriage (Berscheid, 1991; Fitness, 1996; Gottman, 1993) as well asin the case of the loss of a partner (Bonanno & Keltner, 1997; Strocbe & Strocbe, 1987; Stroebe, Schut, & Stroebe, 1998). But emorions also play a role in more mundane social encounters. A long-term rescarch programme conducted by Rimé and his collaborators (Rimé, Finkenauer, Luminet, Zech, & Philippot, 1998) has shown that most people tend to share their emotions by talking about their emotional experiences to others (sce chapter 12). ‘One oF the areas of social psychology for which emotion is of major relevance is group dynamics (see Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Barsade & Gibson, 1998; Heise & O’Brien, 1993) and collective behaviour. LeBon’s (1895/1960) carly work on mass behaviour relied strongly on the mechanism of emotional contagion, which he used to explain the irrational behaviour he claimed was typical of people in large crowds (see chapter 1). To use our park example to illustrate: if you show strong fear responses upon seeing the knifeman, it is likely that you will infect your partner, who might have first reacted in a rather cool fashion, with yous fright. This interesting phenomenon, after having been neglected for decades, s now finding renewed interest among social psychologists (sce Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994; Levenson & Ruef, 1997). Among the most infectious affect displays are yawning and laughter. Little wonder that emotion is central to social-psychological analysis. This chapter will sammiatize some of the major debates and illustrate some of the research efforts in this area. ‘What is an Emotion What is the fundamental tenet of the James-Lange theory of emotion? {er rio cen ei at ee or mcalemptoberal cael “What is an emotion?” This was the title of one of the most influential journal articles ever written in psychology. It appeared in 1884 and its author was Emotion 153 Sjsuoeyy Uasayp Ag uses se ssa00d UOROWe ay} yo eouanbas ay, 1-9 SYNDI 890014 ‘snenuwuog sanmosay uno 5300 von <— Seouanbasue> jequojod an Bere ou a4 Cuymuouesuees | :adueq (ssec01d vogoue joy waysfs Buyoyuou © wswe8io jo sauocuon 200) seBuey> ueUedLueD suiystsons solu fe una We Jo estexdde ‘yes Buypay u seBueya ‘259i Jo uog20y 1 ue paisqusiayp uy sa8uoyo yo uoyent pueuondanied ——wopowy awe gue weure Buses t -Buysry 206) Buyquan 5264 ‘fupes 123 <& preye Buo0y (uate sone sand euoqerys oe) shy ait we ana uo posed yo ove gaya resnor aypoas Bupa} ucjous, ‘uoneueho anniBod alo Uoneave aoved Jupuoree one uejouaNEaaied—_ dewoeyag uns} <— Buguen uyqun, <— anuye ree Sup e004 ‘pe! Yea www uewe iets | cower Seruopuoy voqne ayeudosdce pue suo esnose easioosshud ‘asuodsas goods Buypoy= uonowe, po yo vondenied yo wiayed payeqUarayP 20 vane wana ve yo uogdaos0d ower uo, uguem ssurqwent so0uy “Bue, wea I" It saruapuoy aye preye B99} yun vew e Buses f cotwe ogae ayeudosdte pue sno eaiBopIskus asuodsa Bulga, = voqous, Jowaned parequsiayp —ayads e Jo UoHeIDIS ‘Buygay = vogows, ue Jo voneVORS {Wore Ue jo wondaoved © seurer-aad Emotion 155 William James, one of the founding fathers of modern experimental psychology. tn this essay, James defended what he considered a revolutionary thesis concern- jog the nature of emotion; namely ‘that the bodily changes follow directly the iereeption of the exciting fact, and that our feling of the same changes 3 they Sccur is the emotion’ (James, 1884/1968, p. 19; emphases in the original) The James-Lange theory James illustrated his point of view with an example that has become a clastic: we meet a bear in the forest, our heart races, our knees tremble and, because we are perceiving these physiological changes, we feel afraid. A year after the appearance of James’ seminal article, the Danish physiologist Carl Lange (1885) proposed a modd of emotion which, in spite of many minor differences, suggested the same basic mechanism with respect to the causal sequence as James. Because of this similarity, we traditionally speak of the James-Lange theory of emotion, also referred to asa peripheral position (since it focuses on the peripheral, Le., the autonomous and somatic rather than the central nervous system). According to this view, then, an emotion is elicited by a person’s awareness of a specific pattern of bodily changes and the consequent interpretation of the event in terms of emotion, The James-Lange position is compared to the established view of emotion at the beginning of the twentieth century in the first two rows of figure 6.1 (to which we shall keep returning for comparisons with more recent theories). Since the likelihood of encountering bears has steadily decreased since 1884, our more realistic example of an eliciting situation for the experience of fear in the modern world is used. Obviously, there is quite a large amount of overlap between the ‘pre-James* and ‘James’ views. Both positions agree on the ‘components’ of the phenomenon: an event, the perception /evaluation of the event, a wide variety of bodily reactions and action tendencies, and a characteristic feeling state. Both positions, ————_———— use the term emotion to refer to the feeling state component of the Feeling Eatler used total phenomenon. Furthermore, both positions agree on the exist-‘ryious wth emotion cence of a process, a sequence of events and on the differentiation Of he component of subjective ‘causes and consequences. The disagreement concerns precisely the experience of emotional arousal, status of ‘emotion = feeling’: is it a cause of characteristic bodily reac- often conscious and verbalzable tions and action tendencies, or rather their consequence? This issue by wing emotion words or has been at the root of a lively controversy that still persists today. Xeon How can modern social psychology settle this classic dispute? Pea synonymously with emotion Some Soil psychologists Emotion as a social-psychological construct restict the use to the valence aspect, pleasant vs. unpleasant 0 postive vs. negative, of feings. We first need to have a working definition of what we mean by emo- tion oraffect and/or feeling. Unfortunately, there seem to be as many 156 Klaus R. Scherer cfinitions of emotions as there are theories of emotion (Kleinginna ames scar ators Kieinginna, 1981), Like many other psychological terms, both in the hands and the steeta)_ AY and scientific psychology, emotion is a hypostetical construct which rmusealature generaly that is not directly observable as such, but which is inferred from a num are ined to Interna states ber of indices and their interaction. There is a growing consensus that ofthe owanism and thus the construct emotion should not be used as a synonym for feeling, (canaries as has often been the case in the past (notably in the case of William Tames), Feeling is now generally considered to be just one of sever- purposes. AS a consequence, expression is often manipulated al components of the total emotion construct. Other components are 10 produce appropriate signals neurophysiological response patterns (in the central and autonomous nervous systems) and motor expression (in face, voice and gesture). Social psychologists often refer to these theee components ~ feeling, ‘emotion; the tee response Physiology and expression as the emotional zeaction triad. components: physiological Another component seen as an essential part of the emotion srousal, motor expression and construct is the action tendency resulting from the evaluation of the subjective feng. eliciting event ~ such as wanting to run away or to hide out of fear of attack by a bear or a thug. Some authors have argued that the action tendency component is in fact the most important espect of an emotion in the sense that it defines its specificity, e.g., wanting to fle being specific to fear ‘or wanting to attack being, specific to anger (Frijda, 1986, 1987; Plutchik, 1980). It is important to note that most emotion psychologists distinguish action ten- dencies from overt instrumental behaviour. The actual ruaning or hitting are not generally considered to be components of emotion but rather behavioural consequences of emotion. It seems reasonable to assume that the emotion construc: should also include 4 cagnitive component. Clearly, mental processes must be part of the adaptive reactions of the organism to an emotion-liciting event since the latter always requires some kind of evaluative information processing, no matter how rudiment ary, to make sense of what happens. Thus, 2 bear hunter will evaluate the appear- ance of James? bear very differently from how a pienicker would. You might react quite differently to the knife-brandishing man if you were a member of the national Karate team. The cognitive activity of evaluation often changes rapidly when new information becomes available. For example, we will evaluate the man with the knife very differently once we motice that he has carved a stick for a little boy playing nearby and has inflicted a minor cut on himself. In consequence, one might argue that cognitive evaluation or app- signtcance of an obecs event “HAL is also one of the components of the emotion construct oracton to peron, nclading (@ Point that is indeed argued by several contemporary emotion psy- an evaluation of one's coping chologists and will be described below). This cognitive perspect- activites. tan occur at varous ive on emotion fits the strong rise of cognitive approaches in social levels of the cental neous peychology (sce chapter 8) ‘system and seed no! P¢ “The number of emotion components enumentted so far ~ feeling, <= physiological changes, motor expression, acton tendencies and Emotional reaction tad See ‘Appraisal Evaluation of the cognitive processing ~ include most if not all parts of psychological functioning. How can we distinguish emotion from other kinds of psychological processes? ‘To define the term more precisely, we suggest using, emotion as a shorthand for 4 proces that involves rather massive, interrelated changes in several organismic Subsystems occurring in response to an eliciting event of major significance to the jodividual. Rather than talk about emotional states, we should refer Emotion 157 to emotion episodes to underline the fact that emotion is a dynamic Mead Major afferences from process which has a beginning and an end and is of relatively brief emotion ae a difuse on duration. This allows us to differentiate emotion from other psy- (athe than a speci electing chological constructs such as mood (generally considered to be more diffuse, to last much longer and to be not necessarily elicited by 2 concrete event). ‘One way to highlight the special nature of emotion as a criss response (in 1 positive or negative sense) is to postulate that the various psychological and physiological components interact ina very specific way during the emotion episode. Scherer (1984b, 1993a) has suggested that the subsystems of an organism which normally ‘do their own thing? become synchronized or coupled duting the emotion process in order to allow the organism to cope with the emergency situation created by the eliciting event. For example, while you are suolling peacefully through the park with your friend, the vegetative part of your auto- omous nervous system is slowly digesting lunch, your respiration and heartbeat are optimally tuned to provide the required oxygen for your strolling and speaking pace, your facial muscles are involved in sending smiles of various sorts, and your thoughts revolve around the conversation and further planning of the afternoon’s activities. As soon as you see the man, the knife and the blood, digestion stops, your respiration and heartbeat change dramatically, yout facial muscles tense, your eyebrows rise, your mouth opens, the conversation stops, and your thoughts are frantically concerned with making sense of the situation and deciding what to do next. The regional blood supply to your lower body increases, preparing your leg muscles for vigorous running. Thus, all of your bodily end mental systems are being coordinated and synchronized to deal with what might be a major emergency situation, recruiting all resources available to the organism to deal with the emergency ~ a situation threatening one of your ‘major goals in life: to stay alive and unhurt. Summary We have reviewed the classic controversy around the James-Lange theory of emo- tion, which focuses on the causal sequence of bodily changes and emotion in the sense ofa feeling state. Part ofthe dispute is taken care of by more precise definitions. Emotion is curcently seen as a superordinate /ypotbetical construct, which includes {feeling 1s one of several components (motor expression, physiological changes, vert), a much longer duration and a lower overall intensity 158 Klaus R. Scherer action tendencies and cognitive processing). If emotion is defined as an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in these components in response to an event of major significance to the organism, the sequence problem becomes an issue concerning the dynamic interrelationships between the components in a particular emotion episode. Why do we have Emotions? What are the adaptive functions of emotion? Why does the feeling component of emotion play a special role? Obviously, the synchronization of psychological and physiological processes in an attempt to mobilize all the resources of the organism to fice a significant event is a rather costly affait. Not only are some of the subsystems involved prevented. from carrying out their normal function (for example, we cannot digest or think very well when we ate in the grip of a powerful emotion), but there is also a strong mobilization of energy which constitutes a drain on the organism's resources (this is why very prolonged emotional arousal can be considered as sive) What is the reason for the existence of such a costly mechanism? The evolutionary significance of emotions Hebb and ‘Thompson (1979), in an in-depth analysis of the significance of animal studies for social psychology, have shown humans to be the most emotional of all animals, This is surprising given the established idea of humans as the first truly rational beings. How can we understand this paradox? One answer comes from the father of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin (see chapter 2). In The Expresion of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872/1998), he argued that the emo- tions serve useful functions for the organism, both with respect to the prepara tion of adaptive behaviour and to the regulation of interaction in socially living species. Focusing on the functionality of emotional expression, Darwin attempted to show for each of the major emotions how the different features of expression, particularly in the face and the body, could be analysed in terms of adaptive beha viour patterns of which they were considered to be the rudiments. For example, niising the eyebrows in order to increase the acuity of visior, pulling up the nose to avoid exposure to unpleasant odours (see Ekman, 1979, for a critical review). Darwin's central idea that we can find precursors of human emotional expressions in animal signalling has been supported by ethological research (van Hooff, 1972; Redican, 1982; Scherer, 1985). As an example, figure 6.2 illustrates the relationships between chimpanzee and human facial expression. eye &Be 8as@ @@ cS) @ Cc) 6 ag FIGURE 6.2 Continulty of facial expression from chimpanzees to humans (Reproduced from Chevalier Skolrikoft, 1973) Emotion as a social signalling system The expression of an organism’s emotion allows others to infer not only t tion of the expresser to a particular event or action, it also signals a particular action tendency (e.g. aggression in the case of anger) which can strongly deter- mine the subsequent interaction process. Let us assume that the knife-welding, man in the park is an apprentice mugger and you are his fist ‘case’. Much of the interaction will depend on the emotional signals you are sending. If you are freez~ ing while uttering a fearful scream, the man will see that he has fiightened you and, if he can prevent you from running away, that it is safe to demand your wallet. If you shout angrily at him and move forward (since you are a karate cham: pion), he is likely to see that you are angry and might attack him. Obviously, then, the subsequent interaction depends strongly on the emotional signals sent Emotion 159 160 Klaus R. Scherer by the interaction partners. The social psychology of human social interaction also demonstrates the importance of emotion signals in the delicate business of dealing with our fellow men/women in establishing relationships, interacting in groups and in many other social domains (see contributions in Feldman & Rimé, 1991). Emotion affords behavioural flexibility Emotions are quasi-automatic response mechanisms which we are not totally free to switch on and off at will, but which do not blindly execute simple stimulus-response chains (S-R chains). Whereas in S-R chains a specific response is directly coupled or linked to the eliciting stimulus, emotions decouple stimulus and response, ie, they separate event and reaction by rephicing the automatisen of instinctive reactions with a preparation for several reaction alternatives. In other words, the organism can choose from several possible responses to a given event. This is a much more flexible mechanism, providing the organism with greater choice in its behavioural reactions. Yet, a certain automatism remains ~ the emotions do prepare us, whether we want to or not, for particular types of adaptive behaviour (Scherer, 1984b). Tet us take our concrete example. If I were a karate champion and if I were exclusively governed by a stimulus-response mechanism, I would immediately attack. the man with the knife. Being endowed with the emotion of anger rather than 2 simple insult-aggression chain, I will immediately get angry, which, Fanaton Aheghieed date among other things, will prepare my organism for aggressive action ‘ofthe central and particularly BY providing the necessary activation, optima’ blood circulation in the autonomous nervous the areas of the body likely to be involved, and preparatory muscle system. Some authors use the tension, However, since anger decouples the stimulus and the term to refer specfealy © response, T do not hit the person right away. While the emotion has the symeatheti branch of he prepared a response that could be considered evolutionarily adaptive, SATO TNO ET. have now gained some latency time, which permits me to choose an optimal reaction from a large repertoire of possible behaviours For example, I might not want to hit the man if he appeared to be much stronger than I am, or if I discovered, a split-second after frst secing him come out of the bushes, that he has just carved a stick for a child, Thus, zhe latency time that intervenes between the elicitation of the emotion and the execution of an actual reactive behaviour pattern allows further evaluation of the stuation, including, an appraisal of the likelihood of suecess and the seriousness of the consequences of a particular action, ‘This decoupling of stimulus and response, providing time for further situation and response evaluation as well as behavioural negotiation and social interaction, would scem to be the most important function of emotion. But, as mentioned before, evolution in its wisdom also provides a specific preperation for action that the organism can fall back on, particularly when there is great urgency and when too much further evaluation and exchange of signals might have negative con: sequences, as in the case of imminent danger. These built-in provisions for pre ration and direction for appropriate action have been described by a number of psychologists (Frijda, 1986, Plutchik, 1980). Thus, emotion strongly affects ‘motivation (see also Buck, 1985) Information processing Once we can no longer rely on innate $-R mechanisms, we need criteria to evaluate the massive information that constantly impinges upon us. Cognitive social psychologists increasingly realize that human information processing, does not work in the same rule-governed, ‘cold? information-sifting and sorting, fashion that is typical of computers (see chapter 5). Human information process- ing, particularly in the social domain, often consists of hot cognition” (emo‘ional reactions helping us to sort the relevant from the irrelevant, the important from the not so important; see Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991). As already mentioned by the early philosophers, valence (ie., pleasure and pain, agreeablenes: and disagreeableness) plays @ major role in turning cold cognitions into hot ones. Some of the citeria used to evaluate incoming information are based on innate pre: ferences. For example, newborn infants will react with positive affect to sweet and with negative affect to bitter tastes (Chiva, 1985; Steiner, 1979). However, many of the criteria that we employ in stimulus evaluation are acquired or lexrned during socialization (sce chapter 3), and represented by needs, preferences, goals, and values. Regulation and control What is the function of feeling as one of the most prominent components of haman emotions? As already suggested by James, its probable that individuals constantly monitor thei organismic processes. Rather than limiting the monitoring only to the physiological changes, we propose that feeling is a reflection of everything that goes on in the process of synchronization of different organismic subsystems in an emotional episode (Scherer, 1984a, 1984b, 1993a). Thus, our feeling state serves to reflect and integrate all the components of the emotional episode such as our evaluation or appraisal of the situation, the bodily changes occurring in our nervous system, the action tendency or preparedness for particular behaviours, and the expressive signals that we are giving off to the social environment. Since in the process of emotion the state of all these components and their syrchro: nization or desynchronization changes constantly, our feeling, as an integrated reflection of all of these subprocesses, would allow us a constant monitoring, of ‘what goes on. This is, of course, a fundamental requirement for being able to regulate or manipulate the emotion process (see below). Emotion 161 162 Klaus R. Scherer ‘We can now return to the sequence issue discussed above. If fecling fulfils a monitoring function, reflecting and integrating all other components involved in the emotion construct, it must indeed be, as postulated by James and Lange, a consequence rather than a ease, However, rather than assuming simple causal chains, such as ‘I tremble therefore I fel afraid’, we expect to find a complex dynamic network of intertelationships among the different components. In particular, feelings reflect not only bodily changes but also the individual’s evaluation of the emotion-elicting situation. This may be the key to the problem, and it is to this issue that we shall turn next, Summary Following the pionecting lead of Darwin, social psychologists and ethologists have highlighted a large number of important fanctions of the emotion mechanism. In the course of evolution, the development of emotion has allowed a decoupling ‘of instinctive stimulus-response contingencies, providing a lateney time during which to choose from a large repertoire of possible responses, but at the same time automatically preparing particular action tendencies to allow adaptive emergency responses. The expression of emotion serves important signalling functions, allow- ing subtle interpersonal negotiations. Finally, the feeling component of emotion is a powerful mechanism to facilitate regulation and control of emotional behav- four. The regulation of emotion is often used strategically in social interaction, How are Emotions Elicited and Differentiated? _ Much of the work of social psychologists interested in emotion has been con- cerned with the question of which situations are capable of provoking emotional responses (elicitation), and which out of the many possible emotions is the one that is elicited by a particular type of situation (differentiation). Philosophical notions How did philosophers define emotion over the last centuries? Uae RS I aS ASN I TIE For most philosophers, this question did not constitute a major problem. An insult to our honour would obviously produce anger, an attack by a powerful enemy fear, and so on. This normative approach, adjudicating the appropriateness of particular emotions to eliciting situations and persons, postulates a clear match between the type of eliciting situation and the type of emotion. Lay people also do not quite understand the question: it seems clear to them why someone reacts with a particular emotion in a particular situation, for example being affaid when encountering a bear or a man with a knife. So what is the problem? The prob- Jem lies in the fact that information about the situation alone often does not allow us to predict the ensuing emotion. As we have seen, a hunter might be quite happy to sce the bear trot out of the forest. A plainclothes police officer might be relieved finally to happen upon the mugger she has been tracking, for days in the park. Ir seems thar one of the decisive factors in emotion elicitation and dif- ferentiation is the interaction between the type of situation and the signifcance of the event to the person experiencing the emotion. This is why all eminent philosophers who dealt with emotion have explictly or implicitly defined the different kinds of emotions in terms of the significance of the events or actions to the person - or as we might say today, in terms of the person’s evaluation of an event with respect to important needs, goals and val- ues. Even James, bent on arguing the revolutionary hypothesis that the type of emotion experienced was determined by the perception of the patterns of bodily changes, had to admit that the nature of these bodily changes in turn was deter- mined by the overwhelming ‘idea’ of the significance of the elements of a situ- ation for the well-being of the organism (e.g., the probability that the bear will Kill us or that we will kill it; James, 1894, p, 518). In modern parlance, this sounds. suspiciously close to the notion of the appraisal of the event in terms of the organ- ism’s important needs, goals and values. Nobody had said it exactly that way since it was not a major issue of the social psychology of emotion. It seemed trivia. ‘Then came non-trivial social psychology and complicated things. The Schachter-Singer theory of emotion How is the Schachter-Singer theory different from other peripheral theories? Why has this non-trivial theory lost its appeal for social psychologists? At the beginning of the 1960s, the experimental social psychologist Schachter was cone of the first to propose a cognitive theory of emotion. While accepting several of the fundamental tenets of the James-Lange theory (such as equating emotion with verbally reported feeling and assigning a central role to arousal in the peri- pheral nervous system), he doubted that there could be as many differentiated patterns of physiological changes to account for the great variety of moo¢s and ‘emotion states for which there are verbal expressions (particularly since paysio- logical psychologists seemed to have trouble demonstrating such differences even. between major emotion categories experimentally). Thus, contrary to James, Schachter suggested that the perception of heightened non-specific acousal (defined in terms of sympathetic activation, as indexed by sensations like the heart beating faster, limbs trembling, face flushing, etc.) is sufficient to elicit Emotion 163 164 Klaus R. Scherer emotion = fecling. With respect to the factors responsible ‘or the differentiation of the emotions ~ where James would have answered ‘the specific nature of the bodily changes’ ~ Schachter, argued for a ‘steering function’ of cognitions arising from the immediate situation as interpreted on the basis of past experience. According to this view, there are two factors that are necessary Symoathetic arousal See to elicit and differentiate emotion as feeling: (1) the perception of sctvation. heightened sympathetic arousal, and (2) cognitions concerning the interpretation of the situation in the light of one’s past experiences (see sequence diagram in figure 6.1). Schachter acknowledged that: ‘In most emo- ton inducing situations, of course, the two factors are completely interrelated. Imagine a man walking alone down a dark alley, a figure with a gun suddenly appears. The perception-cognition “figure with a gun” in some fashion initiates a state of physiological arousal; this state of arousal is interpreted in terms of know- ledge about dark alleys and guns and the arousal is labelled “fear”? (Schachter & Singer, 1962, p. 380). Note that contrary to James-Lange, Schachter does not presume that it is differentiated physiological patterning that produces a par- ticular feeling ~ he assumes, for the ‘normal case’, that non-specific sympathetic arousal and the simultancous cognitive interpretation of the eliciting event produce the feeling, But Schachter was not really interested in the normal case; he focused on situations in which the two factors are not linked, What happens, he asked, if a person experiences heightened arousal for which there are neither immediate explanations nor appropriate cognitions? Schachter argued that this situation will clicit an ‘information search and self-attribution” process (See chapters 5 and 7 in this volume). We can state the presumed mechanism in « somewhat simplified manner: ifI detect a heightened level of sympathetic arousal that I cannot attrib- lute to an extraneous factor, I know that I am likely to feel an emotion. I will then carefully scrutinize my physical and social environment and, based on all pertin- ent cues, decide which emotion is appropriate. I is this emotion, then, that I will be feeling (of course, there is no assumption that any of this is voluntary or conscious). In a now classic experiment, Schachter and his collaborator Singer tested this notion (Schachter & Singer, 1962). They administered either adrenaline (= epinephrine) or placebo injections to participants who had been told that the ‘experiment was to test the transient effects of a vitamin compound on vision. Within complex experimental design, they varied the type of information they gave to participants with respect to the effects that the injection would probably produce in them (i.c., feel aroused vs. feel tired). The expectation was that participants ‘who could attribute their arousal to the drug would not look any farther ~ they had enough justification for what they experienced. In contrast, participants who were ignorant of potential side effects or who expected the oaposite effects should be looking for other reasons for their arousal in the situation. Such reasons were provided by the experimenters in the form of a confederate who, depending on the condition in the experimental design, would behave in a euphoric or an angry manner. The experimenters expected that if(1) there was real arousal (in the aden- aline but not in the placebo group), and if (2) the participants did not have an obvious explanation for this arousal (in the ignorant or misinformed rather than the correctly informed groups), they would use the emotion cues provided by the confederate to attribute the respective emotion (euphoria ot anger, depending on the condition) to themselves. While the design may be difficult to follow with- out reading the study, the fundamental idea is simple: the experimenters gener- ated the need for participants to find explanations for a change in physio ogical state and the corresponding feelings, for which they did not have appropriate expectations. Then, an appropriate explanation was offered in the form of the emo- tional behaviour of a confederate ~ “If he feels in that way about this sitvation, I must de feeling the same, and that explains my arousal’. Thus, the emotion is believed to be constituted by the felt arousal and the cognitive interpretation of the situation based on the model’s behavioural expression. Schachter and Singer used self-atings and some observational data to test their hypotheses. They concluded that the data supported their theoretical position, although the evidence was not overwhelming, Apart from the weak results, the methods used in this stady have been strongly criticized, Furthermore, attempts at replication have been generally unsuccessfil (see Gordon, 1987; Reisenzein, 1983, for a review of these issues). In spite of these shortcomings, the experiment has had an enormous influence ‘on the social psychology of emotion as it demonstrated the possibilty that in a «case where we cannot easily account for an abnormal degrce of arousal, we will tuen to the social environment to find cues that might explain this internal state. I is by now an established finding in social psychology that we use information from the social environment (particularly other people) as a guide to judgement and choice in situations of uncertainty (see chapter 5 in this volume). Schachter and Singer were among the first to point to the possibility that our emocional experience, which had always been thought to be a very private domain and dir- cetly linked to the intricate goings-on in the body, is also subject to a multitude of social influences and, under certain conditions, might even be completely open to manipulation. Unfortunately, rather than treating the Schachter-Singer paradigm as a special case, as the authors had suggested themselves, many subsequent authors, including Schachter himself, used it as the basis for what has become known as the Schashter-Singer theory of emotion, the only theory of emotion to be covered in most textbooks of social psychology in the past 30 years. (At this point, please refer baci to the diagram in figure 6.1 to recall exactly what the Schachter Singer ‘emotion theory s all about.) Cleatly, a a general theory of emotion, trying to explain how emotions are ‘ypicaly elicited and which factors determine their differenti- ation, the Schachter-Singer approach seems not only of limited value but actually misleadirg, While it was a clever idea to induce arousal via adrenaline injection and to manipulate attributions about its effects, it was in no way an operational- ization of how emotional arousal is produced under normal circumstances. his Emotion 165 166 Klaus R. Scherer issue is addressed by what seems to be the majority view among social psycho- ogists studying emotion elicitation and differentiation today — appraisal theory. Appraisal theory What is the role of cognition in emotion? What are the dimensions used in evaluating events that provoke different emotions? _sea rarer RRULARr ae eRe ORNS RCTIERRe ETRE: | Arnold (1960) was among the first psychologists to propose formally that the significance of an emotion-cliciting event to the experiencing person (which had ‘been implied by all major thinkers on emotion) was established through a process of evaluation or appraisal of the event based on a set of criteria specific to the person, A few years later, Lazarus (1966) made a major contribution in pointing out that there is a process of appraisal, with reappraisals often changing and. correcting first impressions, and thus changing the resulting emotion. Lazarus also introduced the distinction between what he called primary and secondary appraisal of an emotion- or stress-eliciting event: while the primary evaluation deals with the pleasantness and unpleasantness of an object or whether an event helps or hinders satisfying a need or attaining a goal (ic., the ‘goal conducive- ness’ of the event), the secondary appraisal determines to what extent the person will be able to cope with the consequences of an event, given his or her com- petencies, resources or power. Lazarus calls his model “transactional” ~ the significance of the event is determined not only by the nature of the event but also by the needs, goals and resources of the person, These two determinants inter- act or transact, and itis the result of this transaction that wil determine the nature of the emotion (or the amount of stress suffered; Lazarus, 1968, 1991). One of the major advances due to the development of appraisal theories is the detailed specification of appraisal dimensions or criteria. Appraisal theorists have established lists of such criteria which are assumed to be used in evaluating emotion-antecedent events. Examples of such criteria are the novelty or expected- ness of the event, its pleasantness, whether it helps or hinders reaching, one’s goals, and how well one can cope with the consequences (see Scherer, 1999; Smith & Lazarus, 1993, for details). Let us return to our park example, When you see the man with the knife emerge from the bushes, a very rapid process of cognitive ‘evaluation of the significance of this event for your own pe-sonal well-being will ‘ensue, illustrating some of the central appraisal criteria suggested by emotion ‘theorists. What is the intention of that man (causality, agency, responsibility)? Will his actions affect my own plans and goals, such as survival, remaining unharmed, enjoying myself (goal conduciveness)? Will I be able to deal with an attack, ie. am I stronger, is it promising to call for help (coping pctential, power)? The outcome of the event appraisal, using these and other evaluation criteria, will determine your emotional reaction. Many appraisal theorists have ventured predictions as to when particular types of emotion should occur as the result of particular patterns of appraisal results (Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996; Scherer, 1984b, 1993b; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). The second column in figure 6.3 shows some examples of concrete hypotheses about antecedent appraisal profiles for some of the major emotions (sce Scherer, Schott, & Johnstone, 2000, for a comprehensive overview of the current state of appraisal theory). Much of reccnt social-peychologival research on emotion has been directed at testing some of these predictions or studying the relationships between appraisal results and emotional responses in a more inductive fashion. Generally, particip- ants arc asked to recall episodes of typical emotions, such as anger, fear or shame, and are then asked to respond to questions about the underlying cognitive appraisal processes (Roseman, Spindel, & Jose, 1990; Smith &¢ Ellsworth, 1985 Scherer, 1997a). In a variant of this procedure, Scherer (1993b) used a com- puter expert system to obtain information on participants’ appraisals of import ant events that had happened to them and to predict (with a success rate of about 70 per cent), on the basis of theoretical assumptions, which emotion terms they would use to describe their experience. An alternative strategy is to systematically construct scenarios or vignettes on the basis of the predicted appraisal profiles and to ask participants to imagine experiencing this situation and to indicate their probable emotional reactions (Smith & Lazarus, 1993). Such studies have generally provided strong support for the theoretical expecta tions formulated by appraisal theorists (Reisenzein & Hofmann, 1993; Scherer, 1999; see examples in Scherer et al., 2000). Yet another empirical approach con- sists of choosing a particular emotion-inducing event that affects many people at the same time, such as term examinations for students, and then obtaining informacion about both the differential appraisals of the situation and the type of emotional response. Such studies, in addition to providing evidence for the predicted appraisal-emotion links, have shown the importance of emotion Blends, the fact that the complex appraisal of a given situation by a particular person is likely to give rise to a mixture of several emotions rather than only one specific emotion (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985; Smith & Ellsworth, 1987). A field study in an international airport confirmed this hunch. Scherer and Ceschi (1997) video- taped and interviewed airline passengers whose luggage was lost. Figure 6.4 shows the special mix of emotions for each of the passengers. The data from this study illustrate not only the fact that emotions seem to be always mixed but also the central tenet of appraisal theory: while the event was the same for all passengers ~ their lnggage being lost ~ the special mix of emotions produced depended on the specific appraisal of the significance of the event made by each person. Thus, 8 one might expect, passengers who judged the consequences of the loss as seriously interfering with their plans and evaluated their coping potential as relatively low tended to report more negative emotion blends. ‘A major methodological problem for testing of these appraisal theories empiric: ally is the difficulty of assessing the nature of the emotion-antecedent cogaitive Emotion 167 (261 “Uasoq4 UEUDA Woy poonpordos suossaxdxo (ODP) ‘PEEL HOGIRM 9 -ORIPS ‘ORGL “GPREL 12915 295) (ezep Wodas fequon Bussn saipms feouidwa 30 synsar uo Apred ue suonpaid jeonaioays uo Apued paseq) suonowro Jofew snoy 104 saqyoud asuodsas pur jesfexdde payequaleyip Jo SuoREASAII €°9 3UNDH voenys aug om009 sou2y/s004 onaafeq/ssaupes swiou Bune. se uoqoe Suapsu00 uungzeds a uy ABiou Aouanbaspin w ase aey/iotuy pasue -Buxysyes 2 eo we vod n pue aed 2 ed ws 38e304) uu se uses wana | Kor/ssourddey Luoseoudx (2209, uosaudxe jeje, ‘youd yesteaddiy rage 19394 “SSAw = 5 10 WS ferent kinds of affect blends encountered after finding out that one's luggage has been lost 997, p. 221) Be sé ge gs Ea et SE ge 170 Klaus R. Scherer appraisal processes independently of the underlying feeling state. Most of the research described above has relied on retrospective verbal self-report as to the nature of the evaluation that has preceded the emotional experience. Obviously, is Kind of evidence is very imperfect since one cannot rule out that the re- spondent will construe the likely appraisal antecedents on the basis of culturally shared ideas (social representations) about which types of events produce particu- lar emotions. The same problem besets the use of vignette or scenario studies (see Parkinson, 1997; Parkinson & Manstead, 1993) One way to avoid the danger of circularity in this kind of approach is for researchers to manipulate situations in such a way that one can expect the appraisal process to produce certain types of results. Obviously, one may run into the prob- Jem that some participants may not evaluate the situation as the experimenter expects them to do, particularly if their needs, goals and resources ciffer greatly from other participants in the experiment. While such studies are difficult to design, they offer the only chance to solve the methodological problem of relying on verbal recall One promising approach in this direction is the use of computer games that allow researchers to manipulate the events the player has to deal with (such as the sudden occurrence of goal obstacles, the relative power to deal with enemies, et.) In addition, aficionados of computer games show high selfinvolvement in the ‘game, which is the major condition for the induction of emotion in the labor- atory (sec examples in Scherer et al., 2000). Cultural and individual differences in event appraisal What are the potential sources of cultural differences in emotion-antecedent appraisal? For social psychologists, the emotion-antecedent appraisal mechanism is of par- ticular importance since it may help to explain cultural differences in eliciting situations and emotional experience. As mentioned before, while there may be some innate or universally acquired appraisal criteria, in most cases the appraisal criteria will depend on acquired needs and to a large extert on culturally defined goals and values (see Mesquita, Frijda, & Scherer, 1997). For example, in a large intercultural study conducted in 37 countries on all five ccntinents, Wallbott and ‘Scherer (1995) found that for respondents in individualistic cultures (placing, a high value on the rights and interests of individuals), there was relatively little difference between shame and guilt; in both cases, the behaviour that had clicited the emotion was considered to be highly immoral. In collectivistic cultures, (giving priority to the interests of the family and of social groups), on the other hand, guilt experiences were provoked more frequently by events that were judged to be much more immoral than those that produced shame. Consistent with these different appraisal tendencies in collectivisic and individualistic cultures, the data showed rather striking differences in the other components of these two emotions. Shame experiences in collectivistic cultures were intense but brief, without major consequences. In contrast, in individualistic cultures, the reaction profiles for shame experiences were very much like those of guile experi- ences (involving long-term effects on self-evaluation). Thus, it is to be expected that socio-cultural value systems can strongly affect emotional life. Another poten- tial source of appraisal differences between cultures could be variations in belief structures. In the large 37-country study referred to above, respondents in ‘Affican countries consistently attributed greater external causality and immoral- ity to emotion-inducing events than respondents in other cultures. One possible cexplantion for this finding is the widespread belief in sorcery and witchcraft found. in many Aftican countries, which implies a belief structure that privileges external attribution and the assignment of moral blame to presumed unnatural agents of harmful events (Scherer, 19976). In acdition to differences between ethnic or national cultures, we can also expect differences in appraisal processes between members of different cultures even within a particular ethnic group or nation-state. Thus, goals and values often dif- fer between social classes, generations or political affiliations, making it likely that the very same event will provoke different emotions among members of such different groups. In addition to cultural and group differences, one also finds sizeable indi- vidual differences in appraisal that determine the type of emotional reaction Apart fom differences in goal hierarchies, differences in the structure of the self- concept may play a major role. For example, Brown and Dutton (1995) showed that participants with low self-esteem have more severe emotional reactions t0 failure chan high self-esteem people. This is particularly true for emotions that directly implicate the self (e.g,, shame or humiliation). The authors suggest that this result is due to low self-esteem people overgeneralizing the negative implica- tions of failure. No differences were found for emotions that do not cirectly involve the self in appraisal (e.g., happiness, unhappiness), There is good evidence that the organization of the self may be affected by cultural value systems (see Markus & Kitayama, 1994). A systematic overview of the potential determin- ants of individual differences in appraisal is provided by Van Reekum and Scherer (1997) Summary We can now return to our stat ing point: what is the proper sequence of the dif- he last section has pitted appraisal theory against Petipheral theories, arguing that it is the prior cognitive evaluation of an event that will elicit the emotion and produce differentiated feeling states. Hlopefally, this discussion has shown that (11) many peripheralists may have meant the fee! ing component when they talked about ‘emotion’ (in which case, there is no ferent emotion components! Emotion im 172 Klaus R Scherer contradiction with an appraisal account), and (quite apart from the difficulties of replicating some of the results relied upon by peripheral theories) that (2) under normal circumstances, the appraisal view seems more realistic than the idea that wwe have to search for cues in the social environment in order to feel the proper emotion, Are there Specific Response Patterns for Different Types of Emotions? What theoretical issues are involved in the debate conceming the existence of emotion-specific response patterns? Why do discrete emotion theorists postulate a limited number of ‘basic’ emotions? While almost all theorists of emotion agree that there is differentiation for the feeling component (which would be difficult to deny given the large number of ‘emotion labels in all languages), this is not the case with respect to roptecrplive eeback the response patterns in the peripheral systems (c.. expression and proprioception efes to the physiology). In fact, this issue even cuts across the different theo: cacy eps 12 rei approaches. As we ave seen cater, some peripheral theorists provide sensory information (for example, James) hold that it is highly patteraed proprioceptive clit one m8) feck Fon paper sens that determin he diieon ee one nteral ofthe emosions. Others (particularly Schachter ard Singet) claim that aterapon detecion of i is general, non-specific physolagical arousal or activation combined changesin another system. with situational cues that produces differentiaton. Cognitive the~ oes of emotion also differ in this respect. Whi some theories do not address the issue of physiological and expressive differentiation (e.g., Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987), others argue that appraisal results will produce specific response profiles, including physiological differentiation (Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1986, 1992b; Smith, 1989; Smith & Scott, 1997). This claim is based on the notion that if emotions do have adaptive functions, they should bring about action tenclencies that allow the individual to cope with the eliciting event, These action tendencies, in turn, should produce differentiated patterns of responses and expressive signals. “This is the point at which to introduce another major theoretical —— > taaiition - discrete emotion theories. In the 1960s, Tomkins postu: Discrete emotions The theca cre tat thee lated the existence of a limited number of basic or fundamental dis icalinted aumber of crete emotions, largely based on Darwin’s work, and suggested that highly dferentated basic innate neural motor programmes are executed when the respect or fundsrental ematiors thst ye emotion is induced by appropriate stimulation. These neural wesonmon de pyogrammes ae expected to produc, in aon vo epi cl es ad INES. expressions, differentiated reaction patterns in the voice as well as in Emotion 17: physiological response systems (see Tomkins, 1984, for a summary). Tomkins? theoretical approach strongly influenced Ekman and Izard, whose theoretical and empirical work on emotion-specific facial expression has dominated the emotion area for the last 30 years (Ekman, 1972, 1982, 1992; Izard, 1971, 1991). Both researchers defend the theoretical view that there is a small number of well-delimited universal emotions with very specific expressive and physiological response patterns. So fir, all of these considerations are based on theoretical assumptions, We shall deal separately with each of the three major components constituting the so-called response triad of the emotions ~ motor expression, physiological changes and feeling states. Motor expression What are the social functions of facial and vocal emotion expression? ‘Are the emiotional expressions in the face and the voice universal, i.e, similar across cultures? If emotional expression in face, body and voice is to serve a major function in communicating an individual’s emotional reaction and intended accion (as ‘outlined in the first section of this chapter), there must be clearly differentiated signals corresponding to different types of emotion. We shall examine the evidence for facial and vocal expression separately. Facial expression The expression modality studied most intensively in the century after Darwin's Pioneering work has been the face. If one assumes that innate neural motor programmes produce specific response patterns for primary emotions (as discrete ‘emotion theorists do), the facil expressions of emotion should be very similar across cultures. Early work by Ekman (1972) and Izard (1971) showed indeed that participants from widely diferent cultures were able to identify the emotions facially expressed by American encoders in series of photographs rather accurately (as illustrated by the photos in figure 6.3). Critics were quick to point out, of course, that this procedure may not have been the correct ————————— ay of investigating the universality of facial expresion of emotion uvenally, erable since the wide distribution of Hollywood films all over the world may ferwrccn! netic hhave taught people in other cultures to identify American facial be found al over the worl, ‘expressions reliably. In response to these erticisms, Ekman, Sorensen independent of cute and Friesen (1969) conducted a study which showed that members (lttough cuturally detemined ofa tribe in a remote area of New Guinea, who had had very little Tosfestors ae abvays contact with the outside world, identified Western facial expressions 2siered poss 174 Klass R. Scherer PLATE 6.1 Photographs of facial expressions in members of 2 tribal society in New Guinea that had litle prior contact with the outside world. Guess which expressions correspond to which of the following scenarios: Your friend has come and you are happy / Your child has died / You are angry and about to fight / You see a dead pig that has been lying there a long time. Easy, isn't it? ‘Reproduced from Ekman, 1998, p. 380) quite accurately. They also produced expressions of specified emotions that were similar to those seen in the West when asked to show a face typical of specific ‘emotion-cliciting situations (Ekman, 1972). Plate 6.1 shows some of the expres- sions videotaped by Ekman in New Guinea. Since then, there have been quite a number of studies in this area, with -espect to both the decoding and encoding of the different primary emotions, The bulk of the evidence indicates that actor portrayed facial expressions can be decoded rather accurately by judges from different cultures (Ekman, 1982, 1989; Ekman & Rosenberg, 1997). This generally supports the Darwinian notion of facial expres- sions having evolved from formerly ‘serviceable habits’ which in principle should be the same for all cultures in the world, Comparative studies (Redican, 1982; van Hooft, 1972) show that there are a number of elements that can be traced tback to functional behaviour patterns, and which we find in similar forms in other animals (see figure 6.2) as well as in young babies. However, these studies also show that there are features that are specific to human facial expression and for which it is difficult to find functional explications in a biological sense. Furthermore, while the intercultural studies of facial expression have demonstrated considcrable universality, there has also been evidence for culeural specificity. This is true for decoding where cultural influences on emotion perception in the face have been demonstrated (Matsumoto, 1989) as well as for encoding. For example, contradicting the claim of a pan-cultural facial expression for contempt (Zkman & Friesen, 1986), Ricci-Biti, Brighetti, Garotti and Boggi Cavallo (1989), who compared contempt expression in the United States and Italy, found rather iatked differences in the facial patterning of this emotion. What could be the origins of such cultural differences in expression? One possibility is that caltures may differ with respect to the socially desirable amount of control of expression, to be discussed below. Even apart from the existence of cultural differences, there are some questions with respect to the existence of ‘innate motor programmes’ expected reliably to produce full-blown, emotion-specifc facial expression patterns. There is increas- ing evidence that actors, when asked to portray typical facial expressions of emotion, use only parts of the fully fledged emotion-specific muscle-movement patterns described by Ekman and Izard. Gosselin, Kirouac and Doré (1995) video- taped actors portraying six different emotions. They showed that observers, as expected, reached a high accuracy score in correctly decoding the posed emotions. However, a detailed analysis of the facial muscle movements sed in portrayal showed that in the large majority of cases, only subsets of the theoretic- ally posulated patterns were found. Similaely, Galati, Scherer and Ricei-Bitti (1997) asked both sceing and blind participants without any prior experience in acting to portray some of the major emotions. These lay people also showed only partial patterns (with even fewer movements than professional actors), yet observers were still able to decode the emotion with better than chance accuracy. Carroll and Rassell (1997) studied the facial expressions that accompany a basic emotion in four Hollywood films. The expressions judged as surprised, afraid, angry, disgusted or sad rarely showed the full predicted pattern. Rather, the actors tended to use only one or two parts from the full pattern, In fact, this might be expected from good actors, Since the film context already suggests the intended emotion (Sce Wellbott & Ricci-Bitti, 1993, on the role of context), good actors seem to Emotion 175 176 Kus R. Scherer underplay rather than overplay the respective expression (see Wallbott & Scherer, 1986). Proponents of the idea that expressions are the results of innate neural motor programmes (such as Ekman, 1972, 1992) could argue that actors’ posing rep. resents only an approximation to the automatic triggering of neural motor pro. ‘grammes subserving expression under real-life conditions. Unfortunately, most of the research so far hay been conducted on posed expressions and we have pre cious litte hard evidence on what the expressive patterns in natural emotional expression really look like. One exception is the work by the human ethologist Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1995), who has filmed naturally occurring emotional expressions in a wide varicty of cultures, often with a hidden camera. While these flm docu- ments provide excellent case studies, there is not enough systematic evidence to settle the issue of universal motor programmes. Another possible approach is to study very young infants who are not yet able to control or regulate their emo. tional expression (which is often the problem in experimental emotion induction in adults), According to discrete emotion theorists, the expression patterns (or the neural motor programmes) are innate and are expected to occur, albeit in rudi mentary form, at a very early age (Izard, 1971, 1991). On the whole, however, the issue of whether the rudimentary expression patterns in infants support the assumption of the existence of innate motor programmes remains to be settled. ‘The idea of innate programmes can also be challenged on theoretical grounds. In recent years, some theorists have suggested a componential approach to ex: plaining expression patterns, assuming that the individual elements in a dynamic expression may be selectively determined by cognitive processing and the result- ing action tendencies (Frijda & Tcherkassoff, 1997; Scherer, 1984b, 1992b; Smith & Scott, 1997). Vocal expression Can judges recognize an emotion expression on the basis of voice and speech cues alone, i.c., without pertinent verbal information? Many such studies have been conducted (mostly using actor portrayals of vocal emotion expressions) and reviews of the studies in this area (Johnstone & Scherer, 2000) have reached the conclusion that judges performed far beyond what one would expect by chance. In the first large-scale cross-cultural study of vocal expressions, Scherer, Banse and. ‘Wallbott (in press) were able to show above-chance recognizabilty of vocaly ex: pressed emotions across language and culture boundaries. These data tend to support the hypothesis that vocal expression, like facial ex pression, is at least partly biologically based (Frick, 1985), an assumption that is supported by strong comparative evidence pointing towards the evolutionary con tinuity of vocal emotion expression. Behavioural biologists, studying vocal animal communication, have pointed to important similarities in the vocal expression and communication of motivational-emotional states in many different species. Thus, angry, hostile, dominant states are generally expressed by harsh, loud vocalizations, whereas states of fear and helplessness give rise to high-pitched, thin-sounding yocalizations. To a large extent, this also seems to be true for the equivalent human vocalizations (Scherer, 1985). However, as for facial expression, there are also differences between species and cultures In fact, the cultural influences on the voice are even more pronounced than those on the face, since in the course of the evolution of language the voice has also become the cartier signal for speech. Thus, while the facial muscles do serve ‘other functions related to vision, eating and speaking (see Ekman, 1979), their major function seems to be the facial expression of affective states. In contrast, the voice often does double duty in carrying linguistic (phonological and maor- phological) and extra-linguistic (related to speaker state) meaning Since dif- ferent languages with widely different phonological and syntactical structures are spoken in different cultures, we might expect a certain degree of cultural ané/or linguistic diversity of emotion signalling in the voice. However, in spite of such diversity, the underlying emotion may still be recognizable across cultures, as sug> gested by the results of the cross-cultural studies reported above In the study of facial expression, researchers have used fine-grained objective coding schemes to analyse the facial muscle movement configurations that oscur for specific emotions (Ekman, 1992), In the vocal domain, researchers have used analogue or digital voice and speech analysis to determine the prototypical acoustical profile, or signature, for the major emotions. Some results of the work in this research tradition (see Scherer, 1986; Banse & Scherer, 1996) are shown in figure 6.3. Control and strategic manipulation of expression The discussion so far may have suggested that automatically and involuntarily produced differentiated patterns of expression in the face and the voice are always available to infer the emotion of the expresser. While this is indeed postulated by many theorists, itis only half of the picture. In this section we need to discuss the ways in which individuals ~ consciously or unconsciously ~ monitor and modify these processes. Virtually all theories of emotion have assumed that while we are thrown into emotion or passion, we are not totally helpless: we can control, regu- late or modulate the emotion. The fecling component of emotion, which may be the only one absent in the emotional system of the non-human mammals, and even of the higher primates, is precisely what we need as a feedback system for such regulation attempts — often in the service of social norms. Wandt (1900) pointed out very early on that emotional expression is sub- Emotion 17 ject to cultural control and that many cultures sanction explicitly Display rules Modern term ot implicidy what expressions can be legitimately shown under par- denoting the old observation ticular circumstances. Ekman and Friesen (1969) have called these that there are socio-cultural cultural prescriptions display rules, describing, different forms of suppressing, de-intensifjing, masking or replacing the spontaneous norms that govern the type of emotional expressions that are acceptable in specific situations expression, Apart from cultural prescription, controlling one’s tt" SENN UANIN 178 Klaus R. Scherer PLATE 6.2. A snapshot of manipulated expressions in a society setting, revealing beautiful cues of non-verbal leakage ~ despite the individuals attempt to show the proper affect (Reproduced from Morris, 1977, p. 107) ‘emotional expression is of course also of strategic interest, particularly ifone wants to deceive one’s interaction partners. A number of investigators have, over the years, conducted systematic research into expressive cues to lying and deception (see Anolli & Ciceri, 1997; Ekman & Rosenberg, 1997; DePaulo & Friedman, 1998), Plate 6.2 provides a nice illustration of a tactically manipulated expression Regulation of expression is not limited to suppression or inhibition of emo- tion, In fact, in one of the earliest psychological treatments of emotion, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics (eg., in McKeon, 1941), beautiflly illustrates that one needs to be able to get angry for the right reason, at the right person and in the right manner in order to be taken seriously ~ an early lesson in ‘emotional inte! ligence’ (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Therefore, emotion expression management has important implications for applied social psychology. A particularly interest ing case is provided by negotiation situations where emotion signals are often sent for tactical reasons (¢.g., a trade union offical’s feigned anger at a ‘ridiculously low” pay rise offer by the management). Hochschild (1983) has shown that there are also positive “fecling rules” requiring an intensification of appropriate feelings in the service of particular social interests (e.g., stewardesses creating positive social PLATE 6.3 One of the major functions of emotional expression 's communication - often in the service of social bonding or inter- actional strategy rules affect routines towards airline passengers). ‘The argument is that the require not only feigning a particular emotion (i. by emitting the appropriate signals), but also actually feeling it. This aspect of regulation has become an import ant togic in the social psychology of organizations ~ while some of the writers in this tradition highlight the effort and potential alicnation involved in this ‘emo: tion work’ (Hochschild, 1983), others emphasize the functionality of the tactical luse of emotion management (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). Thus, Staw, Sutton and Pelled (1994) review evidence showing how Emotion 179 180 Klaus R. Scherer PLATE 6.4 Examples of the ‘eyebrow flash’, a postive affect greeting

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