Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

In the critical study, Ekman used a judgment method known as the Dashiell method, because the preliterate Foré participants were not well practiced in answering multiple-choice questions. Ekman presented participants with a story appropriate for each of the six emotions. For example, the story for sadness was: “the person’s child had died, and he felt sad.” Upon hearing the story, Foré participants, both adults and children, selected the emotional expression, from three different ones presented in photos, that best matched the story. If the Foré participants were simply guessing, one would have expected correct identifications of the facial expressions 33 percent of the time—a result that would have conformed to the predictions of social constructivists and their claims about the cross-cultural variation in emotional expression. Foré adults and children, in contrast, were correct 80 to 90 percent of the time in interpreting the six facial expressions—a finding that would have triggered the smile, raised eyebrows, and bright eyes of admiration in Darwin. Untouched by industrialization and modernity, the Foré interpreted those six facial expressions as you or I would.

ACTION UNITS AND THE OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE

 

When Ekman returned to the United States and first presented his results at a conference in anthropology, he was shouted down from the dais. Ideological accusations rang out in the auditorium. Ekman’s New Guinea data suggested that a biological facet of emotion—the movement of different facial muscles—was universal. Clearly such a notion is at odds with the constructivist claim that biology plays little role in emotion. Perhaps the chorus of critiques arose because Ekman’s data may have been reminiscent of the claims of Social Darwinism—that racial differences are rooted in evolution and biology. Early constructivists like Boas and Mead had soundly routed these Social Darwinist claims (the irony, of course, is that Ekman’s data highlight the deep similarities—presumably shaped by evolution—of people from radically different cultures).

Constructivists countered with the most well-cited study of emotion during this era, one that seductively argued that emotional experiences arise out of interpretations prompted by the particulars of the social context and not any specific physiological response. Perhaps the most definitive demonstration of the constructivist thesis would be to show that the same physiological response could lead to radically different emotions given how people interpret the situation they are in.

Such was the aim of Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer, the authors of this study. In the study, participants were led to believe that the experiment was examining the effects of a vitamin compound, Suproxin, on vision. Most germane to our present interests are the participants who received a shot of epinephrine (adrenaline), which increases blood pressure, heart rate, and the sweatiness of the palms, and who were not told of the effects of the shot. These aroused participants then found themselves in one of two contexts, which unfolded according to theatrical outbursts of a confederate (in cahoots with the experimenter) that would have made the Marx brothers proud. In a euphoria condition, the confederate, sitting across from the heart-palpitating participant in a small room, first crumpled sheets of paper up and attempted jump shots into the trash can. After announcing “I feel like a kid again,” he made a paper airplane and launched it into the air. He shot pieces of paper with a rubber-band slingshot, built a tower out of manila folders, and began shimmying with hula hoops left behind a portable blackboard.

In an anger condition a much different emotional drama took place. The confederate and the participant somberly completed the same five-page questionnaire. After questions about his childhood diseases, his father’s annual income, and psychiatric symptoms family members have presented, the confederate exploded. When asked how often he had sexual intercourse each week, and “With how many men (other than your father) has your mother had extramarital relationships?” (for which the lowest response category was “4 and under”), the confederate stomped out of the lab room, muttering about the idiocy of the study. Critical to the constructivists’ cause, those aroused participants in the euphoria condition reported being much happier than those in the anger condition. A similar physiological response—elevated fight/flight physiology produced by the epinephrine shot—could lead to radically different emotions depending on the interpretation prompted by the particular context. Constructivists around the world cheered.