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The Social Functions of Emotion
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Lecture 1Social Functions of Emotion:
Core text- Niedenthal et al. 1ST ED. ‘Psychology of Emotion’.
Functions:
Functionality- something is described as having a function (‘functional’) if it can
be seen as helping to maintain some sort of social system. An example of this is
the various organs of the human body being able to serving a particular function
because they help to maintain the body, therefore contributing to the survival.
But do emotions have specific functions?
Social functions: general assumption is that emotions are socially functional
because they help social systems to operate more smoothly. The problem is that
in the social domain, we don’t have a mechanism for weeding out things that are
dysfunctional (in biological domain we do- natural selection). We don’t have an
exact parallel of this in the social domain. We can’t simply assume that the fact
that we have emotions mean that they are functional.
Keltner & Haidt (1999): sidestep this problem by arguing that there are
different consquences of emotions for different types of social systems. It was a
theoretical, conceptual paper that makes two key points:
1. Emotions can indeed be functional in ways that are social (serve a purpose for
dyads/groups or whole societies and cultures). Fight-or flight- some emotions
prepare the organism to flee or flight from the predator.
2. This social functionality can be studied at different levels of analysis. (E.g. dyad
or group).
They propose four levels of analysis:
1. Individual: the individual operates in a social environment, and emotions might
cue the individual to attend to aspects of the social environment in ways which
are adaptive.
o Emotion could inform the individual about the extent to which the social
context requires action (e.g anger, if we feel anger this could provide
information about issues to do with fariness and justice. Feelings of love about
commitment, and shame about social status). It is fine tuning the individuals
attention and cognitive resources towards things that are social in nature.
o Another consequence at this level is that emotions can prepare us to respond
to opportunities, and also to challenges or problems that arise in social
interactions. (E.g. anger (fight or flight argument) will enable us to respond
more effectively). The individual level is the least social level.
2. Dyadic: three consequences of emotion that are identified at this level. Behind
every emotion lies a thought and after every emotion lies an action. So we can
adapt our own behaviour to mesh or be consistent with someone else’s
emotions.
o Expressions help us to know what other people are thinking, feeling, and
intending to do, because behind every emotion is some sort of appraisal,
which is followed by action that is intended in some way. So knowing what
someone is feeling or thinking allows us to know what they are going to do,
allowing us to adapt our behaviour in order to mesh with their behaviour. The
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