1007451

research-article2021
CDPXXX10.1177/09637214211007451Sznycer et al.Social Emotions

ASSOCIATION FOR
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Current Directions in Psychological

Forms and Functions of the Science

2021, Vol. 30(4) 292­–299
© The Author(s) 2021
Social Emotions Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09637214211007451
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211007451
www.psychologicalscience.org/CDPS

Daniel Sznycer1 , Aaron Sell2,3, and Debra Lieberman4

1
Department of Psychology, University of Montreal; 2Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University;
3
Department of Criminology, Heidelberg University; and 4Department of Psychology, University of Miami

Abstract
In engineering, form follows function. It is therefore difficult to understand an engineered object if one does not
examine it in light of its function. Just as understanding the structure of a lock requires understanding the desire
to secure valuables, understanding structures engineered by natural selection, including emotion systems, requires
hypotheses about adaptive function. Social emotions reliably solved adaptive problems of human sociality. A central
function of these emotions appears to be the recalibration of social evaluations in the minds of self and others. For
example, the anger system functions to incentivize another individual to value your welfare more highly when you
deem the current valuation insufficient; gratitude functions to consolidate a cooperative relationship with another
individual when there are indications that the other values your welfare; shame functions to minimize the spread of
discrediting information about yourself and the threat of being devalued by others; and pride functions to capitalize
on opportunities to become more highly valued by others. Using the lens of social valuation, researchers are now
mapping these and other social emotions at a rapid pace, finding striking regularities across industrial and small-scale
societies and throughout history.

Keywords
emotion, anger, gratitude, shame, pride, social valuation

In engineering, structure is narrowly dictated by the
desired function—roads for traveling, locks for locking
up valuables, chromatographers for analyzing mixtures,
and so on. This principle can be exploited in reverse,
that is, when an engineered object is before you and
your task is to characterize it. Reverse engineering in
light of candidate functions is illuminating also when it
comes to emotion systems and other complex products
of natural selection. The social emotions—gratitude,
pride, anger, shame, guilt, envy, jealousy, and others—
evolved because they each orchestrated physiology,
cognition, and behavior in ways that tended to solve
challenges and exploit opportunities posed by the
social interactions human ancestors engaged in. A cen-
tral function of these emotions appears to be the reca-
libration of social evaluations in the minds of self and
others (Sznycer, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2017; Tooby &
Cosmides, 2008).
Being valued by others is a critical resource for
humans (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). When other people
value you, they are inclined to attend to you, to associ-
ate with you, to come to your aid when you are in need,
to side with you in conflicts with third parties, and to
refrain from exploiting you. And when other people do
not value you, they are not so inclined.
The fact that people can value and have concern for
the welfare of other people is not trivial. Valuing others
often carries costs (e.g., lost resources, forgone oppor-
tunities), which the valuer’s genes must somehow
recoup, on average, if the psychology of valuation is
to persist in the brain over the generations. Nor is the
human psychology for valuing others common across
species. For example, most nonhuman primates seldom
confer benefits on genetically unrelated individuals,
and when they do, it is often a response to coercion.
Corresponding Author:
Daniel Sznycer, Department of Psychology, University of Montreal
E-mail: dsznycer3@gmail.com
Social Emotions 293
Over the past 60 years, evolutionary biologists have
modeled the narrow set of conditions in which it pays
to benefit another individual, even (within limits) at a
personal cost. To this mathematical mix, anthropolo-
gists, archaeologists, and behavioral ecologists have
added findings relevant to the social ecology of early
humans (e.g., caring for the sick in the hominin lineage;
Sugiyama, 2004). Together, these models and knowl-
edge have informed the study of the human psychology
of social valuation. This psychology appears to com-
pute the social value of each fellow group member
(with reference to the self, the focal individual) on the
basis of available cues relevant to the various biological
games that determine social value among humans (e.g.,
value of individual x as kin, value of individual x as
ally; Tooby et al., 2008).
The evolution of the human psychology of social
valuation would have led, in turn, to novel adaptive
problems of valuation. By hypothesis, the social emo-
tions evolved because they solved these problems reli-
ably. For example, the anger system functions to
incentivize the target of one’s anger to value one’s wel-
fare more highly when one deems the target’s current
level of valuation insufficient. Gratitude functions to
jump-start and maintain a cooperative relationship with
another individual when there are indications that the
other values one’s welfare. Shame functions to minimize
the spread of discrediting information about oneself and
the threat of being devalued by others. Pride functions
to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly
valued and respected by others. And so on.
This form-function approach can account for many
known features of the social emotions (Table 1). In
addition, this approach can be used deductively, to
predict and guide the search for heretofore unknown
features of social emotions. Next, we briefly review
anger, gratitude, shame, and pride to illustrate this
approach. (For an evolutionary approach emphasizing
the phylogeny of human emotions, see, e.g., Weisfeld
& Dillon, 2012.)
Anger
It is a problem for you when other individuals attach
insufficient weight to your welfare—less weight than
what you can cost-effectively enforce from them. When
people value you insufficiently, they will impose costs
on you even when they stand to gain little, they will
fail to help you when you are in need, they will pay
little attention to your predicaments, and so on (Sell
et  al., 2017). The adaptive problem of being valued
insufficiently would have selected for neurocognitive
machinery that functions to incentivize the undervaluer
to place more value on the focal individual. It has been
argued that anger is this mechanism (Sell, 2011; Sell
et al., 2009).
Anger is triggered when cues indicate that another
individual undervalues you. Note that mere disregard
of your welfare is insufficient to elicit anger if you do
not expect the target individual to value you in the first
place (e.g., a refusal to help you move to your new
apartment might elicit less anger in you if the refuser
is a mere acquaintance than if the refuser is a close
friend of yours). Harm, too, is insufficient to elicit anger
if the harm is not diagnostic of insufficient valuation
(e.g., your friend ruined your scarf by using it as a
tourniquet to save her daughter’s life).
Research findings indicate that an offender’s action
reliably elicits anger in the victim when the offender
(a) knows the identity of the victim ahead of taking the
action, (b) imposes large costs on the victim, and (c)
derives small benefits from the action (Sell et al., 2017).
For example, if your friend ruins your scarf, you might
feel more anger at her if (a) you learn that your friend
knew the scarf was yours, (b) it was an heirloom silk
scarf, and (c) your friend used the scarf to wipe her
mouth after a meal, and you might feel less anger at
her if (a) you learn that your friend mistakenly thought
the scarf was someone else’s, (b) the scarf was a cheap
one, and (c) your friend used the scarf as a tourniquet
to save a life. Anger can also be triggered by insulting
beliefs, such as when someone thinks that you are
ungenerous, weak, or unskilled. Those factors deter-
mine how much humans value other humans, and so
indications that someone underestimates your value on
those factors augur poor treatment.
Once triggered, the anger system deploys tactics to
incentivize the target of the anger to value the angry
individual more highly. These tactics carry the implicit
message “Pay the cost of valuing me more highly (e.g.,
help me next time), or I will exact an even higher cost
from you.” One type of anger tactic involves threatening
to withhold or actually withholding benefits. Another
type of anger tactic involves threatening to impose or
actually imposing costs through aggression. The increases
in heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate that
accompany anger (Siegel et al., 2018) suggest preparation
for combat. The aggression deployed by anger—when it
is deployed at all—increases in measured steps and is
terminated by indications that the target has recalibrated
his or her valuation appropriately (see Sell, 2011). Thus,
the aggression of anger is designed to bargain for better
treatment rather than to eliminate the target.
The form-function approach raises questions that are
invisible to other perspectives. For example, why does
the anger face look the way it does? Using this approach,
researchers have hypothesized that the facial expres-
sion of anger was engineered by natural selection to
294 Sznycer et al.

Table 1.  Elicitors, Adaptive Functions, Modulating Factors, and Outputs of the Anger, Gratitude, Shame, and Pride Systems

Outputs (in addition to the

Emotion Input (elicitor) Adaptive function Modulating factors respective feelings)
Anger Cues that another Incentivizing the Anger is mobilized more intensely • Information search in order to
individual target to value when estimate the true weight the
values your your welfare • The cost imposed on you is target attaches to your welfare
welfare more highly high (vs. low) (e.g., “perhaps she refused to
insufficiently • The benefit derived by the help me because she didn’t
(e.g., benefits at target is low (vs. high) know how much I needed help”)
your expense) • The target takes action • Nonverbal communication of
knowing the recipient of the anger (e.g., facial expression of
harm would be you (vs. a anger)
third party) • Threatening to withhold or
actually withholding benefits
from the target (e.g., refusal to
help the target)
• Threatening to impose or
actually imposing costs on the
target (e.g., telling others about
the target’s offense, punching
the target)
Gratitudea Cues that another Upregulating the Gratitude is mobilized more • Acknowledging to the target (a)
individual value attached intensely when the benefit the target caused you
causes you to to the welfare • The target causes you to to obtain, (b) the cost incurred
obtain benefits, of the target obtain a high (vs. low) benefit by the target, and (c) the target’s
attaches a high individual in • The target incurs a high (vs. implied valuation of your
weight to your order to better low) cost in order to benefit welfare
welfare, or both reflect the you (or in order to prevent • Upregulation of the weight
(e.g., does you target’s positive you from incurring a cost) attached to the welfare of the
a favor) contributions to • The target takes the action target
your welfare knowing the recipient of the
benefit would be you (vs. a
third party)
Shame Cues indicating Limiting the spread Shame is mobilized more • Forgoing the candidate course of
the prospect of discrediting intensely when action that you value but others
or actuality of information • You take an action or have a view negatively
being devalued about yourself trait that others consider highly • Interrupting your execution
by others and the (vs. mildly) negative of a disgraceful action when
because of likelihood • There is a high (vs. low) detection is impending
the spread of and costs of probability that discrediting • Hiding
reputationally any ensuing information about you will • Paranoid thoughts
damaging devaluation by reach the minds of others • Increased cortisol
information others when • Others respond to your • Shame display (slumped
about you that information actions and traits with intense posture, averted gaze)
spreads negativity (vs. mild negativity, • Appeasement
neutrality, or positivity) • Threats, aggression
Pride Cues indicating Promoting Pride is mobilized more intensely • Motivation to take actions or
opportunities more positive when cultivate characteristics that are
to become, or evaluations • You take an action or have a valued (or feared) by others
the actuality of yourself by trait that other people value • Perseverance at costly or difficult
of being, more others (or fear) highly (vs. mildly) endeavors whose outcomes are
highly valued valued by others
by others • Pride display (expansive posture,
gaze directed at audience)
• Heightened sense of entitlement
following achievement

Note: The elicitors and adaptive functions are hypothesized on the basis of an adaptationist, form-function approach. The modulating factors and
outputs are based on empirical findings. Some of these findings are cited in the main text; for other findings, see references cited by Sell et al.
(2017) for anger, by Lim (2012) and Smith et al. (2017) for gratitude, by Tangney et al. (1992) and Sznycer et al. (2016) for shame, and by Sznycer,
Al-Shawaf, et al. (2017) for pride.
a
Motivation to balance benefit inflow with corresponding outflow (indebtedness) is different from gratitude, but can co-occur with gratitude in
some contexts.
Social Emotions 295
enhance cues of physical formidability in the face in
ways similar to how nonhuman animals aggrandize
their body size or weaponry during aggression (e.g.,
by erecting their hair or baring their fangs). Consistent
with this hypothesis, research has shown that each of
the seven muscle contractions that constitute the anger
face increases participants’ perception of the express-
er’s physical strength (Sell et al., 2014).
The form-function approach has also been used to
understand the content of the verbal arguments made
by offenders and their angry victims. When anger in a
victim is triggered by, for example, an offender benefit-
ing at the expense of the victim, the offender can defuse
that anger if the victim can be convinced that, in reality,
(a) the cost incurred by the victim was small, (b) the
benefit derived by the offender was large, or (c) the
offense was not directed specifically at the victim. That
is, the anger of a victim is switched off if the victim
encounters clarifying information that the offense does
not actually indicate insufficient valuation on the part
of the offender. Research conducted by Sell et al. (2017)
has provided support for these predictions and also
shown that offenders capitalize on their implicit knowl-
edge of the logic of anger: Offenders choose to make
precisely those verbal arguments that mollify anger in
victims. These findings were obtained in five industrial
nations and one hunter-horticulturalist population of
the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Gratitude
The existence and actions of other people have effects
on the focal individual that can range from highly det-
rimental to highly beneficial. Some of these effects are
simple side effects of other people’s activities (e.g.,
dumping trash in a common area); other effects are
intended (e.g., helping). In general, people have a stake
in the well-being of those individuals whose existence
and actions cause them to benefit (Tooby & Cosmides,
1996). This evolutionarily recurrent situation would
have selected for machinery to identify individuals from
whom one derives benefits, to correspondingly upgrade
how much one values those individuals (and thus to
make investments in their continued existence and
well-being), and to signal one’s upgraded valuation to
those individuals. These functions appear to be realized
by the gratitude system (Lim, 2012).
Gratitude is a complex emotion. Everything else
being equal, the more a benefactor values your welfare,
the more that benefactor will go out of his or her way
to benefit you, and the more you will derive benefits
from him or her—and therefore the more gratitude you
will feel and the more your valuation of the benefactor
will be increased. Everything else is not always equal,
however. Some individuals cause you to benefit as a
side effect of their actions even when they do not value
your welfare particularly highly. Other individuals value
your welfare highly, but their actions cause you to
obtain benefits that are modest in size. Both benefactor
types contribute to your welfare, and so both may elicit
gratitude and enhanced valuation of their welfare on
your part. However, they may warrant somewhat dif-
ferent modes of gratitude.
Indeed, this emotion appears to be sensitive to dif-
ferent kinds of information relevant to different bene-
factor types. Gratitude is sensitive to the benefits
delivered by a benefactor (Forster et al., 2017; Tesser
et al., 1968). This would allow the gratitude system to
not miss benefactors who cause you to benefit as a
mere side effect of their actions. In addition, gratitude
is sensitive to cues of how much the benefactor values
your welfare, including how much the benefactor
intended to benefit you (Tesser et al., 1968; Tsang, 2006;
see also Smith et  al., 2017) and how much cost the
benefactor incurred to benefit you by a given amount
(the ratio of costs to benefits; Lim, 2012). This would
allow the gratitude system to not miss benefactors who
value your welfare and who will therefore tend to ben-
efit you reliably, even if modestly.
Gratitude and increased valuation directed at a per-
son who provides a benefit tend to give that person a
stake in the well-being of the focal individual. This
dynamic can lead to a cycle of mutual escalating valu-
ation, which can result in, for example, friendship
(Algoe et al., 2008; Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Gratitude
is thus a key emotion in jump-starting and maintaining
cooperative relationships.
Shame
Humans devalue and shun individuals who are poor
social partners. This would have selected, on the recipi-
ent’s end, for adaptations to solve the adaptive problem
of being devalued. Shame appears to be a primary
defense against this adaptive problem (Gilbert, 1998;
Sznycer et al., 2016).
Shame is triggered by the prospect or actuality of
being devalued by others. Once active, the shame
system mobilizes a host of responses geared to mini-
mizing the likelihood and costs of being devalued.
Shame is associated with depression, anxiety, and
paranoid ideation (Tangney et al., 1992), which may
prepare the focal individual to face a less benign social
landscape. Shame is also associated with increased
cortisol and increased pro-inflammatory cytokine activ-
ity (­Dickerson et al., 2004); the latter might be advanta-
geous if devaluation is followed by aggression and
injury or infection.
296 Sznycer et al.
The behavioral repertoire of shame is broad. From
the perspective of the disgraced or to-be-disgraced indi-
vidual, a trait (e.g., incompetence) or course of action
(e.g., theft) that fellow group members view negatively
can be shielded from others’ censure at each of various
junctures: imagination, decision making, action, infor-
mation diffusion within the community, and audience
reaction. Shame appears to have authority over
devaluation-­minimizing responses relevant to each of
these junctures. For example, shame can lead people
to turn away from courses of actions that might lead
others to devalue them, to interrupt their execution of
discrediting actions, to conceal and destroy reputation-
ally ­damaging information about themselves, and to
hide. When an audience finds discrediting information
about the focal individual and condemns or attacks that
individual, the shamed individual may apologize, signal
submission, appease, cooperate, obfuscate, lie, shift the
blame to others, or react with aggression. These behav-
iors are heterogeneous from a tactical standpoint; some
even work at cross-purposes if mobilized concurrently.
But each of these behaviors appears to have the stra-
tegic potential to limit the threat of devaluation in cer-
tain contexts, combinations, or sequences.
Such shame-inspired behaviors as hiding, scapegoat-
ing, and aggressing are undesirable from the stand-
point of victims and third parties. This has led to the
view that shame is an ugly and maladaptive emotion
(­Tangney et al., 1996). However, note that those behav-
iors can enhance the welfare of the focal individual,
who is pressed to escape detection and minimize or
counteract devaluation by others. Whereas the conse-
quences of social devaluation are certainly ugly for the
individual being devalued, the form-function approach
suggests instead that shame is an elegantly engineered
system that transmits bad news of the potential for
devaluation to the array of counter-devaluation
responses available to the focal individual.
It is a common view that shame occurs when the
focal individual attributes a negative outcome (e.g., a
failure) to a defect of the global self (Tangney et al.,
2007). However, being devalued by numerous or pow-
erful others elicits shame even when the devalued indi-
vidual knows propositionally that he or she did not
cause a negative outcome (Robertson et al., 2018).
The form-function approach has been used to under-
stand how shame is modulated. The intensity of antici-
patory shame that people feel regarding a given
potential action that others view negatively (e.g., theft)
tracks the precise degree to which fellow group mem-
bers devalue those individuals who take that specific
action. This allows the shame system to be mobilized
cost-effectively: to activate neither insufficiently nor
excessively relative to the magnitude of the devaluative
threat. These findings were obtained consistently across
three industrial societies (Sznycer et al., 2016) and 15
traditional small-scale societies highly different from
one another in their languages, belief systems, and
subsistence bases (Sznycer, Xygalatas, Agey, et  al.,
2018). Shame even tracks the evaluations of lawmakers
from ancient, culturally foreign societies: The intensity
of shame that laypeople report they would feel if they
committed offenses excerpted from ancient Mesopo­
tamian and Chinese laws tracks the actual punishments
provided for those offenses by those ancient laws
(Sznycer & Patrick, 2020). These findings raise ques-
tions about theories positing massive cultural differ-
ences in shame (e.g., Benedict, 1946) and suggest
instead that shame is part of a universal human nature.
Pride
Becoming more highly valued by others results in a
greater inflow of benefits, and the brain may have been
selected to exploit the relevant opportunities. The pride
system appears to be the resulting adaptation. A system
realizing this function is expected to (a) motivate the
pursuit of achievements or the cultivation of traits that
are valued (or feared) by others, (b) motivate the adver-
tisement of achievements, and (c) motivate the achiever
to profit from the increased valuation by others.
Findings about pride are consistent with these
hypotheses. Pride is triggered by acts, traits, and
events indicative of the focal individual’s enhanced
capacity to confer benefits (e.g., job promotion) or
impose costs (e.g., winning a fight) on others (Lewis
et al., 1992; Tracy, 2016). The feeling of pride is highly
pleasant and rewarding. This feeling motivates the
individual to persevere and to invest in courses of
action necessary to bring about further achievement
(Gilchrist et al., 2018).
Once attained, achievements are advertised with a
full-body display featuring erect and expansive posture
and gaze trained at the audience. The pride display
develops in the absence of visual input: Congenitally
blind individuals produce the pride display when they
succeed (Tracy, 2016). Adults across cultures perceive
the pride display as an indication that the displayer is
successful or physically formidable (Tracy, 2016).
Pride motivates the focal individual to profit from
the enhanced social landscape that follows achieve-
ment. Pride leads people to pursue new challenges
previously beyond reach. In addition, the enhanced
capacity to confer benefits or impose costs on others—
elicitors of pride—leads the focal individual to expect
others to value him or her more highly (Sznycer &
Cohen, 2021), and to become angry when that expecta-
tion is not met (Sell et al., 2009).
Social Emotions 297

United States India Fig. 1.  Linkage of social emotions to a common psychology of social
valuation. The scatterplots show the association between people’s
a f valuation of 25 positive personal characteristics in others (e.g., trust-
worthiness, bravery, ambitiousness, good table manners) and the
7 anticipated intensity of a focal individual’s pride (for having those
r 2: .65 r 2: .76 characteristics), anger (toward someone who fails to acknowledge
that the focal individual has those characteristics), gratitude (toward
someone who convinces others that the focal individual has those
Pride

characteristics), sadness (if someone who had those characteristics

dies), and guilt (for harming someone who has those characteris-
tics). Each point in each panel represents the mean valuation rating
and mean emotion rating of one personal characteristic. Ratings of
1 valuation, pride, anger, gratitude, sadness, and guilt were given by
different participants (between-participants design). The data in (a)
through (e) are from the United States, and the data in (f) through (j)
b g are from India. From “The Emotion–Valuation Constellation: Multiple
Emotions Are Governed by a Common Grammar of Social Valuation,”
7 by D. Sznycer and A. W. Lukaszewski, 2019, Evolution and Human
r 2: .39 r 2: .14 Behavior, 40(4), p. 399. Copyright 2019 by Elsevier. Reprinted with
permission.
Anger

The form-function approach has been used to under-

stand how pride is modulated. As in the case of shame,
1 pride tracks the values of audiences. More specifically,
the intensity of anticipatory pride regarding a given
achievement is modulated to match the precise degree
c h to which fellow group members value those individuals
7 who attain that specific achievement. These findings
r 2: .66 r 2: .70 were observed in 16 industrial societies (Sznycer,
­Al-Shawaf, et al., 2017; Sznycer & Lukaszewski, 2019)
Gratitude

and in 10 traditional small-scale societies (Sznycer,

Xygalatas, Alami, et al., 2018). Similar modulation rela-
tive to social value was observed in other social emo-
1 tions as well (Sznycer & Lukaszewski, 2019; Fig. 1).

d i Concluding Remarks
7
The human psychology of social valuation is highly
r 2: .66 r 2: .65
complex and specialized. This psychology likely con-
stitutes the environment that selected for the social
Sadness

emotions over evolutionary time and that social emo-

tions target in their moment-to-moment operation.
These conjectures help explain the ways people feel,
1 think, and act when under the spell of anger, gratitude,
shame, pride, guilt, envy, and other emotions. These
e j conjectures also help identify the things over which
people feel anger, gratitude, shame, pride, guilt, envy,
7
and other emotions. The form-function approach
r 2: .61 r 2: .26
appears to be a powerful framework for dissecting the
social emotions.
Guilt

Recommended Reading
Lieberman, D., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2007). The architec-
1 ture of human kin detection. Nature, 445(7129), 727–731.
1 7 1 7
A landmark study showing cue-based estimation of
Valuation Valuation
genetic relatedness and downstream calibration of altru-
Fig. 1. (continued on next column) ism and sexual disgust toward siblings.
298 Sznycer et al.
Sznycer, D. (2019). Forms and functions of the self-conscious
emotions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 143–157.
An extended analysis of the fit between form and function
in pride, shame, and guilt.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2008). (See References). An early
proposal of the view that emotions have orchestrating
and recalibrating functions.
Transparency
Action Editor: Robert L. Goldstone
Editor: Robert L. Goldstone
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of
interest with respect to the authorship or the publication
of this article.
Funding
This research was funded by a Fonds de recherche du
Québec – Société et culture grant (2020-NP-267363) and
a Subventions d’exploration – Subvention institutionnelle
du CRSH–Université de Montréal grant to D. Sznycer.
ORCID iD
Daniel Sznycer https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6510-3313
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