An Attempt Toward A Naturalistic Description of Emotions II

Jacob Robert Kantor
Indiana University

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VI

The Utility of Emotional Behavior. One of the effects resulting from the growing influence which biological theories' began to exert upon psychology in the middle of the past century, was the conception that emotions are definite adaptational reactions which promote the conservation of the individual. More than closely linked is this assumption of the self-preservative character of emotional conduct with the idea that emotions are inherited forms of response. Not the least surprising, then, is the fact that the utilitarian doctrine of emotional behavior is more prescriptive than descriptive, and brings in its train results that are most remarkable.

It is entirely possible that even the most careful observer of emotional behavior may needs come to the conclusion that much of such action must be interpreted as adaptational and useful. In particular, this might be the case with the glandular secretions which are so prominent in emotional behavior. But what right have we to base our conclusions upon a limited number of features? What of the looseness of the bowels, the retching and vomiting, the violent heartbeat and the innumerable other symptoms of emotional shock? Are these too of use in the organism's adaptations? And is there anything in the nature of a psychological act which prohibits us from considering the glandular reflexes as entirely fortuitous occurrences in the total complex pattern of response?

Further indications of the invalidity of the utilitarian theory come to the surface when we consider that in the cultural emotions organic functions are not nearly so prominent, and apparently do not produce energy-giving secretions. And it is hardly convincing to say that in these secondary emotions the organic reflexes are not present because they are not needed, for by so doing one clearly makes utility synonymous with presence, and in consequence assumes what is to be established, since as a matter of fact even when the organic activities are present their utility is questioned.

Unfortunately the apparent serviceability of various strongly excited organic activities under certain circumstances has induced several writers to indulge in much indifferent speculation concerning the utility or general adaptive character of emotions.[1] Aside from the question whether these writers are observing emotions at all,[2] the objectionable feature of such speculation is the implication that organisms possess general mechanisms with definite purposive functions to meet unfavorable specific circumstances. The consequence of holding such a view is that it inevitably results in overlooking facts, such as the substituted character of the organic processes, which are not compatible with such a preconception.

The writer submits that, on the whole, observational evidence does not support the view that emotional disruptive shock is always or even in most cases beneficial to the organism, either at the moment or in the long run. As a record of fact, all that the study of emotions enables us to say is that under certain circumstances the emotional behavior is apparently a useful reaction in the sense that a very rapid and immediate response seems necessary, and it occurs. But, in just as many cases the dissociating and disruptive character of the emotional act may be the occasion for a very harmful result to the organism, and not infrequently the cause of its death. What chance would a person have in a difficult situation if he should be deprived even for a moment of the opportunity to offer a definitely centered and directed response to a pressing stimulus? It is evident, then, that emotional behavior is not always adaptable activity and consequently we must reject summarily any utility interpretation, especially since such an interpretation appears not to be based upon actual observation but upon the belief in a mental force or entelechy manifesting itself by physiological conduct.

VII

The Relation of Emotions to Instincts. Current psychological opinion appears unanimously agreed that there is a very close connection between emotional and instinctive behavior. And the basis for the belief in such a connection lies in the observation that emotions are very direct and even elementary forms of behavior. It is only the fact of connection, however, that is concurred in, otherwise there is wide divergence of opinion concerning the precise relation between instincts and emotions. Thus, McDougall conceives of an instinct as a fundamental system of action including an emotion, whereas Shand thinks of instincts as being parts of the fundamental emotion.[3] In passing, we might suggest that the disagreement between McDougall and Shand is made possible by the fact that the distinctive feature of emotional behavior is a form of dissociation, a fact which makes possible differing views as to the specificity or generality of such psychological acts.

Still another disagreement between those who believe in the close relation between instincts and emotions concerns the exact stimulation of them to action. On the one hand, it is held that emotions are the affective accompaniments of instincts in some form (McDougall), while on the other, emotions are presumed to arise when there is delay or obstruction in the way of instincts toward carrying on their predetermined goal (Shand). Let it be noted, however, that in all cases the implication is forced upon us that our action is predetermined by some innate power. Now such a view of human activity is entirely incompatible with any observation of behavior and leaves no place for the development of action and the conditioning of it by specific surrounding objects and persons. Our activities are not as a matter of fact the unfolding of purposes and ends but the responses to stimuli and their settings as they actually are found in our surroundings. Because we have no instincts in the sense of biological ends there can be no connection between instincts and emotions; this connection is impossible also, because actual instincts as found in animals and infants are definite response-patterns called out by specific stimulating objects; they are not in any sense tendencies which can conflict with each other.

No less significant than brilliant was the formulation which Dewey[4] made of the relation of emotions and instincts. Let us recall that Dewey was interested in the problem of substantiating James's doctrine of the priority of the organic changes (expressions) to the emotion proper by a reformulation of Darwin's statement of emotions and their expression. The reader will recall that Dewey interprets Darwin's expressions as "the reduction of movements and stimulations originally useful into attitudes," attitudes which apparently are conditioned by instincts. For Dewey the specific seizure or affect in an emotional situation is a conflict and tension of instincts or tendencies to action. "The emotion is psychologically the adjustment or tension o{ habit and ideal,[5] and the organic changes in the body are the literal working out in concrete terms of the struggle of adjustment." [6]

For us the significance of Dewey's doctrine lies precisely in the fact that it glaringly reveals the inevitable consequence of injecting into psychology such metapsychological entities as instincts. For mark you, Dewey cannot allow that the person is stimulated by a concrete object, for without the inhibiting tension an organism would not be making a response 'at' or towards an 'object,' [7] and so the conflict of instincts takes place as a mysterious ebullition in 'consciousness' out of which are differentiated both the stimulus and the response.[8]
 

Obviously the theory we have been summarizing cannot be employed to interpret the concrete disruptive behavior of actual human organisms, but we are interested to point out that possibly this is true of all instinct doctrines. The idea that emotions are conflicts of instincts or result from the conflict seems to us purely fanciful; and being based on so-called inner states it is in consequence entirely out of touch with concrete reaction conditions. Such a doctrine makes of emotions in some sense the inner side of instincts, while the latter are presumed to be the external phases of certain acts. In all theories of the close or inseparable relation between emotions and instincts, the former are presumed to be 'mental,' while the latter sometimes are and sometimes are not.

But after all such a widespread conception as that of the relation of emotions and instincts must have some factual basis, and truly enough a diligent search is rewarded by the means to account both for the asserted relation, and the belief in a conflict of tendencies.

And first as to the relation between emotions and instincts, the writer submits that the mentalists arrive at their interpretation by miscalling the substituted reflexes, in the emotional pattern of response, instincts. The motive for such a misinterpretation may be sought in the utilitarian conception of emotions, according to which all that occurs to the person must be looked upon as necessary happenings and never as fortuitous processes.

The conflict theory of emotions no doubt is based upon the observation that in some emotional situations a seizure occurs in the presence of a multiplicity of confusing objects; so that a simple response pattern cannot function without interference. Now the crude fact here is a conflict between stimulus objects and the concrete responses of the individual in contact with them, such stimuli and such responses being natural objects and events. From an objective standpoint it seems a far cry from this crude fact to a conflict of mentalistic states. An interpretation of concrete movements of an organism can never be made out to be a conflict of permanent mental tendencies.

VIII

The Classification of Emotions. If we agree to reject the belief in the relation of emotions and instincts, we at the same time renounce the latest of the perennial attempts to classify emotions.[9] And perhaps here we find a clue to the failure of all those attempts to segregate emotions under convenient rubrics. The clue is this, that psychologists could not find any common factor between the complex behavior of an organism and a presumed mental state, a fact which is otherwise expressed in the statement that there is no definite subjectivistic criterion for the classification of emotions.

From an organismic behavior standpoint, there is strictly speaking, of course, but one kind of emotion; that is to say, emotions constitute a class or type of action. The most obvious means, therefore, of classifying the various emotional activities is to correlate them with the exact circumstances under which they occur, and while the extreme complexity of these stimulating circumstances militates against our attaining at present any well rounded and compact classification, such a correlation will serve to give some behavior-content and meaning to the various divisions. Moreover, to describe an emotional act under the circumstances in which it occurs is to give it its stimulus-response setting and to keep our classification from resembling an enumeration of specific faculties.

The problem of ordering and arranging emotional acts involves us in precisely the same difficulties as the classification of thinking acts. In each case, however, the specification of the exact circumstances under which the person is responding will give us an insight into the operation of human reactions, besides helping us to understand the precise details involved in building up reaction systems. For instance, a comprehensive behavioristic study of the more subtle or refined emotions will afford us some insight into the intricate details of social behavior and the social modification of human action. Further, unless we plan to make such a comprehensive study of emotional activity we can find little promise of obtaining additional information about such behavior by the mere analysis of the secretory functions which play a prominent part in emotional acts as well as in other types of behavior. More value there would be in such an analysis if we considered the glandular secretions as integral parts of a large general response system in correlation with definite stimulating circumstances. It is something other than scientific wisdom to place one's hope for the classification of emotional conduct entirely in the physiological factors of behavior, as some writers do, to the neglect of the other components, and the stimulating conditions of the whole response.

Of cardinal importance it is for the classification of emotional conduct to be fully cognizant of the fact that whenever we persistently cling to a name as though it were something more significant than a name, we will inevitably falsify essential facts. Perhaps in no other domain of psychological science does a name mean quite so little or do so much harm as in the study of emotions. It is not surprising, then, that the literature on the subject amply reveals many difficulties of description and interpretation because such terms as fear, anger, joy, and sorrow are presumed to represent unique sorts of psychological facts. The truth of the matter is, that these names as commonly used stand not only for genuine emotional reactions but also for various other acquired human responses, such as feelings, besides the connate organized responses of animals and infants. Furthermore, let us not forget that besides standing for widely different forms of actual behavior, the names found in the writings on emotions represent mental states, each of which has a variety of expressions. Because names are so treacherous in the psychology of emotions, the needs of the science dictate that a closer examination be made of the behavior which is to be classified, and that slighter attention be given to conventional names.

IX

Determining Conditions of Emotions.—Incomplete must always be the description of psychological phenomena unless we add to our report of the facts of stimulus and response also the conditions under which the latter interact. The necessity to investigate the precise conditions influencing responses appears from the fact that any reaction depends as much upon the constitution of the individual and the character of the surroundings as upon the bare presence or absence of reaction systems and stimuli. In the case of the emotional situation the disruptive chaos can obviously be avoided by the substitution of an overt response for one that is lacking, provided that the surroundings are propitious, and the person is in a prepared condition for such an emergency.

Although there is great difficulty in specifying the exact determining conditions of emotional conduct we can, however, isolate a few factors which have a contributory effect in bringing about or preventing an emotional reaction. We may call these constitutional and stimulating conditions, respectively, inasmuch as they refer primarily to the condition of the person or the surroundings.

1. Among the constitutional conditions we might enumerate the following. (a) The primary constitutional condition of emotional behavior involves the fact of psychological equipment. A person who is thoroughly equipped with response patterns for the various situations in which he finds himself will be decidedly less liable to be thrown into a situation of no-response. Further, the student who had previously prepared himself in his learning task would be much less liable to suffer a surprise emotion when confronted with a difficult examination. (b) Closely related to the previous condition is the speed of reaction of the person. Ordinarily an individual who is not quick to improve upon a situation confronting him will be liable to be caught in a dangerous or undesirable position. The person who would begin to act rapidly in the presence of a dangerous object, possibly to inhibit movement, or to substitute another overt adjustment, would be much less apt to suffer disruption of his actions. The person who is clever at repartee will seldom if ever suffer an embarrassing moment. In this type of situation as in some of the elemental situations the self-confidence of the person is an extremely potent factor in the prevention of emotional disturbance. (c) The ability to avoid an emotional shock depends upon the general physiological condition of the person, since the capacity of the person to handle his reactional equipment varies with his physiological states. A person who is just recovering from an illness may be for the time being inadequately equipped to grapple with a dangerous natural situation. Similarly, to be overworked, nervous, or discouraged, means a special liability to undergo emotional shock. In these cases as in all others we must observe that the constitutional condition only has direct reference to the stimulations at hand. (d) Another influence of emotional conduct is the present condition of an individual which is due to the circumstances of an immediately preceding emotional situation. Thus the same or a similar stimulus may now influence the person not to suffer an emotional disturbance at all, or to experience a mild rather than a violent seizure.

2. The stimulation conditions of emotional behavior are very numerous as we might expect. (a) One of the outstanding conditions would be the familiarity of the person with the stimulating objects and their settings. When stimuli are known and not strange they are less liable to bring about a dissociation or disturbance in the person. One is seldom overawed or overwhelmed by familiar surroundings, and in a sense this is obvious when we consider that familiar surroundings mean that we have developed definite integrations of stimuli and responses. (b) Prominent as a contributory factor to social emotions is the presence of certain 'persons; a reproof or a faux pas in the presence of some relation, loved, or admired or feared individual will often result in an emotional behavior, whereas the absence of such persons may mean the avoidance of such a result. In general, the emotional disturbance is conditioned by the setting of the stimulus object, so that while the person may know what reaction to make to an object alone or under certain circumstances he may have no response for the object in its present setting. (c) It follows then from the character of the conditions of emotional behavior that a potent preventive of emotional seizure is a frequent contact with any given situation and especially a situation which, through recent experience, has shown itself capable of inducing an emotional disturbance.

X

Emotions in Animals and Infants. Throughout the entire modern subjectivistic tradition psychologists have always assumed that animals have emotions as well as other states of consciousness. Especially since Darwin's time, in which the continuity of species became the dominant motive in the biological domain, the view has prevailed that human emotions are really vestigial remnants of the emotions which the animal ancestors had acquired. Naturally enough such a mental states doctrine conduces to obliterate the distinction between emotional actions proper, and other types of feeling behavior, and as a consequence animals are endowed with reactions which, because of their organization and development, they, in common with infants, obviously cannot have. How anyone can ascribe to animals and infants such complex reactions as can only be acquired in a long social experience, is suggested to us in the thought that probably psychologists are reading back into the actions of children and animals motives and conditions of behavior which they find in themselves. How illegitimate such a proceeding is may be judged  from the fact that a critical observation of the actual responses to stimulating circumstances convinces us not only that animals never have any social emotions, but also that they seldom if ever develop to the stage of performing even elemental emotional behavior.

Since the present status of psychological opinion concerning emotions in animals has its roots in the Darwinian influence upon psychology, it would not be amiss to digress at this point in order to trace out the growth of the conception that man and animals have the same types of mental states. And first let us observe that Darwin accepted the biological similarity between the human and animal organism as the basis for a correlation between the expressions of emotions in the two cases. What seemed to be similar 'expressions' were then taken to refer to similar mental states. What Darwin and the other writers overlooked in their thinking was that they were not observing expressions of any mental state but rather direct animal responses of an instinct sort to specific stimuli. They, however, named these responses by applying conventional terms,[10] and in this way animals began to be endowed with all types of emotions and other sorts of feelings. Finally, this mode of thinking developed to the extent that Darwin [11] could write that 'man himself cannot express love and humility by its external signs, so plainly as does a dog.' Clearly we have here as flagrant a piece of anthropomorphism as one would care to find, even in such a culpable writer as Darwin is in this direction .[12] An excellent example of Darwin's uncritical views concerning the psychology of animals is found in his acceptance of Mr. Bartlett's statement concerning the knowledge and cautiousness of hyenas. "They well know that if one of their legs were seized, the bone would instantly be crushed to atoms." What one gathers from such a statement as was just quoted, and Darwin's remark about the value of observing infants in order to ascertain how far particular movements and gestures are really expressions of certain states of mind,[13] is that he was probably dealing with two different sorts of phenomena. He was considering human feeling behavior on the one hand and animal instincts on the other, but Darwin is misled by his conception of emotions and expressions to make the two identical.[14]

Among the many evidences which we might quote from the 'Expressions' to indicate this identification is Darwin's statement, that because the tender feelings are compound states and not simple feelings he could mention only weeping as their expression.[15] Also to the point here is the statement that blushing is the expression of many 'emotions' (shyness, shame, modesty) which are grouped under a single heading, namely, self-attention, no doubt, mainly as a heroic effort at correlation.[16] Do not these facts typify Darwin's inappreciation of the incongruity between critical observation of behavior and of forced injection of the continuity doctrine into the conventional and anecdotal tradition concerning emotions and their expressions?

If such be the case, is it not strange that current psychologists so readily accept the mentalistic continuity doctrine with its implication that emotions are persisting potencies which operate as properties of men and animals.[17] Here is evidence that about as much violence can be done to scientific facts by the uncritical acceptance of a continuity as of a discontinuity doctrine. A careful study of actual behavior discloses definite continuities in the activities of man and animals occasioned by similar organization and common external surroundings, but there are none the less just as definite discontinuities between the two types of organisms due to disparities of biological and psychological development and differences in surroundings. At the point of emotional behavior it is safe to say that observation discloses indefinitely more discontinuity than continuity.

In fairness we must add that Darwin did not entirely miss the difficulty of his views, for he says that love (maternal)[18] and practically all the complex feeling acts[19] have no characteristic expressions. But although this admission on Darwin's part implied a doubt as to whether the crude activities of animals and the refined behavior of human individuals are similar, his authority seems to be so incontestable as not to arouse comment when he implies that abstraction, denial, affirmation, and meditation are emotions, the expressions of which can be analyzed.[20] A slighter indication that Darwin suspected that all was not well with his formulation, to the effect that characteristic expressions exist for the emotions, is found in his report that when persons are confronted with photographs of expressions, they are not always able to attach the expressions to the emotions which they are supposed to express. For fear, however, that this would be too great a disturbing factor in his work, Darwin ascribed this inconstancy of the relation between the emotions and its expression to the misguidance of the imagination.[21]

Most incomprehensible it is that psychologists are not more sceptical of the doctrine that animals have emotions, if it is true that such a doctrine is based upon the sort of thinking we have been indicating. Surely there can be no question as to the vulnerability of Darwin's psychology. To indicate but a few weak spots we might ask how plausible it is that animals should voluntarily acquire emotional expressions. Further, what value can a theory have that fails to distinguish between thinking, and emotions and other types of feeling behavior. Again, we might ask whether such crude transmission of acquired behavior as Darwin supposes is consonant with observable facts. Hence, we might conclude that if the belief that animals have emotions is based upon the Darwinian foundation, it lacks much in scientific validity.

But let us turn to the actual observations themselves, for we must not dismiss the problem without an attempt to examine some types of animal behavior which appear to have some resemblance to the emotional activity in human beings. Consider the action of the chipmunk stimulated by footsteps approaching from the rear, while he is calmly nibbling at some garden green. Immediately there is a start and shift of position while the animal turns to face squarely the approaching object; then scampers towards his hole or other place of safety. Now much as the activity just described may resemble an emotional situation, a careful examination of the details indicates no breakdown of stimulus-response coordination. The start observed is nothing but the ordinary change of attitude which we find in all attention responses. In fact this attention start, which superficially appears like an emotional phase of behavior, is always found present and in addition to the emotional phase in all actual emotional conduct; in sequence it precedes the emotion-initiating perceptual or ideational process. Far from proving the presence of emotional behavior in animals, the attention-start points to the possibility of describing whatever activity we find in animals in their ordinary surroundings by referring to the practically full complement of congenital response systems with which they adapt themselves. Such acts as the attention-start the animal is uninterruptedly performing during each hour of its active life, and this fact would seem to indicate that these responses are due to a definite form of response system.

And now we may inquire into the findings of physiological research for light upon the problems of emotions. In particular, we might expect to gain some information from such experiments as are designed to test the Jamesian theory of emotions.

Unfortunately physiologists are parallelists and their work is seriously compromised by the assumption that in an emotional activity the organic changes are either the cause or the outcome of a psychic state called the emotion. Cannon [22] proposes to discover by the study of animals what bodily results follow the functioning of the fundamental 'agencies which determine the actions of organisms.' And Sherrington [23] aimed to test the view 'that the psychical process of the emotion is secondary to a discharge of nervous impulses into the vascular and visceral organs of the body.' The unhappy feature of such work done on the parallelistic basis is the immediate setting aside of the so-called psychic factor and the confining of one's efforts to the exclusive investigation of the organic phases of behavior. In consequence, the essential differences in behavior are entirely overlooked and the assumption of a continuity in the behavior of man and animals results in endowing the latter with activities that are really found only in the former. In general, we might say that the physiologists have really been studying (i) visceral reflexes in pain, hunger, and fear-rage instinct behavior,[24] and (2) the relative functioning of the cephalic and more posterior portions of the organism in instinct action,[25] but not emotions.

Sherrington's conclusion from his experiments not only does not militate against the James-Lange-Sergi theory of the emotions, but on the contrary offers some evidence that he is not occupied with emotions at all. His discussion reads much like a tremendous overemphasis of psychocephalic parallelism and nothing more. The transaction of cord and vagus cannot prove that emotions are cerebral processes, since the supposition that there exists an emotion in the form of a psychical adjunct has absolutely no basis in any observable fact. On the contrary, physiological experiments do appear to confirm the view that psychological behavior is the activity of the whole complex organism. Now the experiments seem to indicate that depending upon the intricacy of the behavior, the reaction systems may function when the organism is only partially coordinated. This fact is substantiated by Goltz's [26] decerebrate dog which 'showed' anger, but not fear, joy, and affection. May we not then assume that the animal behavior studied by Sherrington was really a series of instinct responses and not at all emotions similar to those found in the human species? The writer hastens to add that he accepts in its entirety the description of the behavior of the dogs which Sherrington has published, but reserves the right to reinterpret the terms joy, disgust, friendliness, so as to exclude completely the objectionable anthropomorphic implications. This reservation is necessary in view of the unfortunately extreme poverty of psychological language with which to describe animal reactions. Indeed, could Sherrington set aside his psychocephalic parallelism, he would be very sympathetic with our view concerning the absence of emotions in animals, since he writes that 'there is no wide interval between the reflex movement of the spinal dog whose foot attempts to scratch away an irritant applied to its back, and the reaction of the decerebrate dog that turns and growls and bites at the fingers holding his hind foot too roughly.[27] Is it not true that in both cases we have the operation of truncated response mechanisms of precisely the same sort which Sherrington himself describes as pseudo-affective reflexes? [28]

When we turn to the problem of emotions in infants we find a similar dearth of conditions capable of giving rise to emotional disturbances. Watson's studies of infants demonstrate the absence in the conduct histories of young children of the characteristic chaotic or no-response conditions, with the replacement of visceral and other reflexes. Watson does not agree with this view, however, and indeed believes he has found in infants three types of emotions, but our reading of his material convinces us that he has looked for and found only some specific instinct responses. The names he gives to these instinct responses, 'fear,' 'rage,' 'love,' seem to us to be arbitrarily applied and interchangeable.[29] In fact, when Watson's descriptions of the infant's responses are read to various persons, there is no general agreement as to the appropriateness of the names he applies.[30] Although Watson [31] definitely asserts that an emotional act differs from an instinct by the occurrence of a momentary shock, his disregard of the differences between emotions and other feeling acts, not involving disruptive shocks, betrays him into making emotions into hereditary patterns of response. In this manner he obliterates the boundary between emotions and instincts, and moreover by invoking the criterion of non-training for hereditary acts he achieves the result that we have already described, namely, a discovery in infants of three kinds of emotions. The upshot of this procedure is that Watson veers considerably from the objective position and tends to interpret infant behavior, not from the standpoint of actually occurring responses to specific stimulating conditions, but as the manifestations of hereditary tendencies. What observer can overlook the differences between actual emotional behavior and comparatively simple positive responses which are offered to such stimuli as restraining, pulling a blanket away, striking, etc., responses which may just as well be called habits as emotions. We insist that while the failure of a stimulus-response coordination among older infants begins to be possible, because they have been acquiring responses to stimuli, yet it is true that as a matter of fact genuine emotional conduct will be an extremely rare occurrence.

XI

Emotions and Expressions. As we have previously intimated some of the difficulties we encountered in the study of emotions in animals and infants are due to the still prevalent implication that in emotional reactions what we observe is an outward expression of a mental state called an emotion. Singularly enough, although Dewey [32] had long ago pointed out that expressions could have no meaning so far as the acting individual was concerned, the parallelistic conception of psychological behavior has to this day kept alive the inner-outer conception of emotions.

Illustrative of the influence which subjectivism exerts upon our minds is the fact that in the same papers [33] in which Dewey abjures emotional expressions, he employs himself in the defense of James' 'paradox' concerning the order of apparition of the invisible emotion and its visible physiological colligate. No doubt the reader recalls that the motive for this defense was Dewey's attempt to translate a philosophical conception into the biological terms which James's theory supplied. Dewey really meant to demonstrate that feelings are the internalizing of activity or will in the sense that an emotion is a report (feeling) in consciousness of an act previously performed.

But our purpose is not to revisit the scene of former battles; rather we wish to point out that when we stray from a description of actual behavior, the 'expressions' remain in our thinking, much disguise them as we may. Has Dewey avoided an unpsychological dualism by calling an emotion not an expressed entity, but a repercussion in consciousness of an organic happening? It is our opinion that Dewey has merely placed in relief a psychophysiological parallelism which at the point of emotions inspired James very little. For this reason Dewey could write [34] that "Prof. James himself does not seem to me to have adequately realized the inconsistency of Darwin's principles, as the latter states them, with his own theory." From that day to this the dualism has persisted through a multivaried modification of the expressions of the emotions to a serious neglect of the actual behavior of the person under the various conditions of emotional stimulation.

When emotions are studied as concrete behavior, we find absolutely no warrant for including in our description of them any dichotomy between the emotional acts and their expression. Moreover, there is no meaning in the question whether emotions precede or follow the expression. We might just as well ask whether the perceptual action of another person precedes or follows our observation of it. It is obvious, therefore, that the emotion-expression dichotomy may be entirely rejected irrespective of the specific interpretation one makes of emotional behavior. We are inclined to believe that this dichotomy goes back in the final analysis to a nonnaturalistic psychological hypothesis.

XII

Summary. Unlike any other type of behavior the emotional reaction is not a positive response to a stimulus, but rather a failure of a stimulus-response coordination to operate. What happens is that the organism is left in a crucial situation (in the most striking cases) without certain expected or desirable means of adaptation, either because of not having a response system for the particular stimulating circumstances or because of some failure of such an acquired response system to operate. Emotions are therefore essentially 'no response' activities. The individual thus left without a directed mode of adjustment is thrown back upon primary responses, namely, organic reflexes. It is these replacement reflexes which give emotional conduct the appearance of positive adjustments. From this it follows that emotional conduct must not be interpreted as hereditary forms of adaptational activity, since emotions are either due to the break-down of an acquired stimulus-response situation or the absence of such a coordination which should have been developed to meet the needs of the present situation. The criterion for what reaction systems should have been developed depends upon the observation of those definite reactions the individual has actually acquired, namely, the precurrent perceptual responses. The latter, however, are not complete for the present situation without the consummatory reaction systems that are not operating at the time, but which apparently should have been acquired contemporaneously with the precurrent responses. Our criterion is of course based upon the apparent concrete needs of the individual at the moment, and is therefore frankly ephemeral, since the needs of the individual can only be determined by a field observation of the emotional reaction.

One of the significant results of the reactional interpretation of emotional conduct is that it forces to the front the distinction between emotions and feeling behavior. Fundamental in such a distinction is the fact that, unlike emotional conduct, feeling behavior of every type always involves the operation of definite response systems. A fact it is that almost every segment of behavior in which is found an emotional phase, will also include one or more feeling reactions, but in every instance the observer can adequately discriminate between the two types of conduct.

A natural consequence of the negative character of emotional behavior is that such action cannot be of general and necessary utility to the organism. In no sense can emotions be considered as determining adjustments of any kind whatsoever. Although it may sometimes occur that the disruptive dissociation of the emotional reaction may turn out to be a benefit to the person, yet such a consequence must be considered as a wholly fortuitous circumstance, and in general emotions must never be thought of as permanent directive agents which serve to carry the person through the intricate maze of daily events. On the contrary, emotional conduct is always truncated and ineffectual action, and can be useful only in elementary situations where the replacement reflexes can be of service.

Because emotions are negative or 'no response' actions, they cannot very readily be classified. Although the psychologist has trouble in grouping and correlating such behavior, this very fact is of extreme importance to the student of psychological phenomena, in that he is necessarily forced to study the emotional situation precisely as it occurs; and so the classification of emotional conduct must be based upon definite stimulus-response conditions, a fact making for exact and accurate, though extremely difficult, classification. Probably the most valuable result to be derived from such a work is the freeing of emotional conduct from their presumed dependence upon those teleological entities called instincts.

It follows from the dissociative and disruptive character of emotional behavior that emotions are seldom if ever found in animals and young children, since such organisms have not reached the stage of acquiring sufficient response systems to become disrupted. In animals and in infants the organic reflexes and other factors common to emotional reactions are parts of behavior segments which are positive responses to stimuli and are not replacement acts at all. An analysis of the behavior of animals and infants does not reveal conditions of a precurrent response failing to elicit its appropriate consummatory reaction, with the consequent replacement of this final act by organic reflexes as the only available mode of adjustment.

On the whole, it is hoped that such an organismic hypothesis as we have proposed will throw into clearer relief what has always appeared as an extremely baffling psychological phenomenon. Upon the basis of such a naturalistic standpoint emotions become familiar to us not as products of theory, but as vital modes of an organism's responses to disrupting conditions of its environment.

Notes

1. Cf. Cannon, 'Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage,' 1915.
   Note Cannon's hortatory defense of the martial virtues.
2. Note the grouping of phenomena—pain, hunger, fear, rage.
3. All this for both in terms of mental structures. Cf. Shand, Proc. of Arist. Soc., 1915, 15, 74. "Primary emotion is at first a biological force pursuing its innately determined end by means of instincts and other dispositions organized with it." Ibid., p. 75.
4. PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 553; 2, 13.
5. Apparently the conflict of two or more instincts brings about the emotion.
6. PSYCHOL. REV., 1895, 2, 30
7. Ibid., 2, 28.
8. "The frightful object and the emotion of fear are two names for the same experience." Ibid., p. 20.
9. Cf. McDougall, 'Social Psychology.'
10. What can be meant by 'insulting' a monkey? Darwin, 'Expressions of the Emotions,' p. 137.
11. Loc. cit., p. 10.
12. One is strongly reminded here of Darwin's violent assumptions concerning the exalted aesthetic development in animals as described in connection with his theory of sexual selection.
13. Loc. cit., pp. 13, 122.
14. As Dewey (PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 555) so well expresses it, "In the discussion of movements in animals (PP. 42-48), the reference to emotions is not even nominal. It is a matter of 'satisfaction of desire' and 'relieving disagreeable sensations'—practical ends."
15. Loc. cit., p. 214.
16. At the basis of the difficulties here is an implied acceptance of a structuralistic psychology.
17. When not based upon observed facts such a doctrine would of course be a metaphysical proposition.
18. Loc. cit., p. 213.
19. Called by him states of mind, loc. cit., p. 26r.
20. From a subjectivistic standpoint, Darwin's performance is much mitigated, since after all what he is attempting to do in this book is to correlate the 'mental' and the 'physical.'
21. Ibid., p. 14.
22. 'Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage,' 1915.
23. Proc. of the Royal Society, London, 1900, p. 390.
24. Cannon.
25. Sherrington.
26. Quoted by Sherrington.
27. 'Integrative Action of the Nervous System,' p. 266.
28. Ibid., p. 251 ff.
29. We are here reminded of Sir Charles Bell's assertion that animals 'seem chiefly capable of expressing rage and fear' (quoted by Darwin, op. cit., p. 10).
30. That is to say, when the persons who hear the description take the names to refer to emotional reactions. It is true, of course, that the names may be entirely appropriate for the reactions studied, but in that case we assume that the names symbolize a variety of behavior.
31. 'Psychology,' p. 196.
32. PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 555.
33. PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1; 1895, 2.
34. PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, I, 554.

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FIRMA DEL CONVENIO PARA EL DISEÑO Y ELABORACIÓN DEL EXAMEN ÚNICO PARA LA CERTIFICACIÓN PROFESIONAL EN PSICOLOGÍA

El día 22 de junio se avanza hacia la certificación profesional de los psicólogos, firmando el convenio para el diseño y elaboración del Examen Único para la Certificación Profesional en Psicología (EUC-PSI)

Este convenio sienta las bases de la Certificación de los Psicólogos en México, y surge del esfuerzo de la Sociedad Mexicana de Psicología (SMP) y el Colegio Mexicano de Profesionistas de la Psicología (CoMePPsi). Esta idea surge de la proliferación de sujetos que ofertan servicios psicológicos sin tener los conocimientos, habilidades y destrezas para resolver los problemas que presentan sus pacientes.

En cierto grado la proliferación de sujetos que ofertan servicios de psicología se debe a la proliferación de escuelas que brindan la carrera psicología, sin proporcionar durante la carrera los conocimientos, habilidades y destrezas para resolver los problemas que presentarán sus futuros pacientes.

Un paso importante y que ayudaría a subsanar este problema seria que los órganos que se proponen para regular esta certificación en conjunto con la Secretaria de educación Pública (SEP) sometieran a una certificación a las escuelas que ofertan la carrera, y verificarán que sus planes de estudios estuvieran actualizados y contarán con la infraestructura suficiente para dotar a los estudiantes de dichas destrezas y habilidades etc. Por otra parte se debería verificar el proceso de titulación al cual tienen que someterse los estudiantes ya que detras de este proceso tan importante se esconde un negocio que deja sumas fuertes de dinero (escuelas privadas). 

En estos dos puntos vemos una posible solución a esta problemática ya que podemos hablar de que una persona que oferta el servicio de psicología que no tiene destrezas habilidades etc. Pero antes tuvo que cursar con una preparación en una escuela. Y para titularse es la institución que fija los costos y el tiempo. Se debería de verificar esta situación, aunado a la certificación profesional.

• Vemos que la certificación ayudaría, pero se debe atacar el problema de fondo. 
• Seria importante investigar cual es la causa de que algunas personas que ofertan los servicios de psicología no cuentan con las habilidades y destrezas etc.

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FIRMA DEL CONVENIO DE COLABORACIÓN ENTRE LA AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION Y LA SOCIEDAD MEXICANA DE PSICOLOGÍA

Foto extraída de la página oficial de SMP

El pasado jueves 4 de agosto en el Congreso Anual 2011 de la APA en Washington, D. C. Firmaron el convenio la Dra. Melba Vásquez (APA) y el Dr. Joaquín Caso Niebla (SMP), 

Este convenio de colaboración, busca identificar actividades y proyectos para trabajar juntos, asistirse y apoyarse mutuamente cooperar para el mejoramiento de la psicología en México. 

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An Attempt Toward A Naturalistic Description of Emotions I

Jacob Robert Kantor
Indiana University

  

Descargar en versión pdf.

The records of recent psychological history incline us toward the view that the descriptions and theories of emotions are for the most part inspirited by the necessity to specify the precise causal connection between mental and physiological _.states. Thus James was interested to point out that the accepted sequential order of the mental and physiological should be reversed. What influenced James to formulate his theory was not merely the conviction that emotions are primarily organic or physical, since James was himself a subjectivist; but rather he was interested to substantiate the belief that emotions are not in any sense entitative mentalities expressing themselves in physiological action after being aroused. That the significance of James's theory lies not in the emphasis of organic resonance, but rather in the assumption that an emotion is the subsequent awareness of organic disturbances, is convincingly evidenced by the fact that the assertion of the organic basis for emotional conduct is centuries old.[1]

But now that the entire subjectivistic tradition in psychology is being challenged and tested, it seems appropriate to attempt an evaluation of emotional conduct not with regard to any causal sequence, but solely upon the basis of an observational correlation of the stimulating circumstances and the organism's responses to them. In the following discussion the writer proposes to submit a series of propositions, which it is hoped will serve to suggest an interpretation of emotional conduct from an objective and naturalistic standpoint.

I

The Nature of Emotional Conduct.—Emotional conduct consists of interrupting forms of action stimulated by rapidly changing circumstances, in some cases accompanied by various intense organic processes which sometimes facilitate the immediate performance of a new act.

It is absolutely important for the understanding of emotional conduct to note that the primary occurrences in such action are the confusion and excitement which disrupt the behavior ordinarily taking place when the emotion-exciting stimulus appears. When we attempt to describe the specific characteristics of an emotional act we are profoundly impressed with the condition of disrupting chaos and inhibition of action which occupies so large a place in the emotional situation. We may look upon the emotional person as practically paralyzed for a moment; he appears to undergo a dissociation of his reaction systems; so that he remains powerless and helpless until his responses are reconstituted. This reconstitution may be superficially described as a refocussing of the person toward some definite object. Essentially, emotional conduct is a momentary condition of 'no response,' since there appears to be a complete cessation of all directed responses to surrounding conditions. In point of fact, it is this disruptive chaos which definitely marks off the milder emotional activities from the numerous classes of so-called feeling behavior to which they otherwise display striking resemblance.

In detail, the 'no response' phase of the act is a natural consequence of the fact that the perceptual phase of the behavior segment cannot be followed by an overt act. In such a case the perceptual phase of the activity is an implicit response situation. When it is possible for an overt activity to occur, then there is no emotional object or condition. But whenever a dangerous object or other emotion-exciting stimulus appears, or when we meet with and recognize a dangerous situation and cannot do anything about it, we are in an emotional condition and perform an emotional response.

The emotional response, then, is not the definite functioning of an organized reaction system; in fact it is quite the opposite. In other words, we are not possessed of a large number of definite potential emotional reaction systems, in the sense that we are prepared to make specific disruptive reactions to definite objects of stimulation. In the case of various informational or habit activities, however, the organism does have definite potential response systems in its functional equipment. Thus for example, the verbal stimulus 'who was victor at Salamis?' or the perceptual presentation of the word 'loan' in stenographic notes will bring out definite overt responses which were acquired in a previous time and which are called into action by the present stimulation. Not so, however, in the case of emotional behavior in which no definite response system is functioning. What really happens to the person in the emotional situation is, that in the absence of what, from a behavioristic standpoint, may be called a required response system, the individual is thrown back upon any available behavior resources. In the most turbulent situations the person can substitute only visceral reflexes, and such behavior we may call the elemental emotions. In contrast with this condition, that is to say, in the more typically cultural situations [2] the person replaces the required response system with one serviceable in some similar circumstance (laugh when caught in a socially disapproved act, as though it were a deliberate joke), or with some response previously associated with the required act in this particular environing condition (smile profusely instead of answer question).

Assuming that we can agree that emotional behavior consists essentially of a disruptive disorganization of responses we might still question whether this diffuse and chaotic functioning of the organism offers a valid criterion of differentiation of emotional from other types of behavior. For we might recall that other types of psychological behavior also show marked reactional disturbances. In the following exposition we propose to point out that despite the apparent superficial similarities, emotional conduct presents marked behavior factors different from those of other types of psychological action.

Let us pause here to inquire briefly into the conditions responsible for the irregularities of human behavior marking the general spontaneity of all psychological activity. First, we must note that all psychological description consists primarily of all the enumerative factors comprised within the arbitrarily chosen boundaries dividing off one segment of the organism's activities from all that precedes and follows. Such a segment of behavior we may call an act, or if we choose a pattern of response. Now every such act is a product of a series of stimulating objects or conditions and response systems, some one or a few of which give a name to and characterize the act.

Indispensable in the extreme for the understanding of emotional behavior at this point is the careful distinction between response systems and patterns of response. Patterns of response consist of series of definite response systems organized in contact with particular stimuli and excited to action by them. Ordinarily, the definiteness and regularity, as well as the predictability of an act, depend upon the specific correlation of a definite reaction system with some particular stimulus. Whenever the organism possesses a definite response system of some sort, capable of excitation by a specific stimulus, we may expect an orderly and more or less compact act or pattern of response.

Even here the act is spontaneous and variable, provided that the context or setting of the stimulus is modifiable. This sort of situation is well illustrated by the web-spinning of spiders in which the slight modifications of the context of the stimuli makes possible the hardly perceptible differences in web-spinning. In human informational and habit modes of action a somewhat greater invariability and unconformity to type are introduced by the greater possibilities of variation in the settings of the various stimuli. Clear it is, therefore, that notwithstanding the wider or narrower latitude for irregu -larity of behavior supplied by the variability in the setting of the stimulus, there is, of course, a fundamental describable regularity in all of our behavior which comprises organized response systems.

Here then we have a clue to the explanation why emotional conduct lacks even the remotest resemblance to order or regularity, namely the absence in such conduct of an organized reaction system. The lack of a stimulus response integration can be more readily appreciated when we consider that the very circumstances under which emotional behavior occurs make it impossible for the person to develop response systems with which to adapt himself to those circumstances.

Moreover, this lack of a response system makes it possible to see why in the emotional situation the only basis for predicting the behavior of a person is the influence of the surroundings at the moment, and it is only because the surroundings are such as to determine the intensity of the person's dissociation, that we are able to describe, however inadequately, the comparatively large segment of behavior which includes the emotional act.

To the writer it seems that the absence of a definite response system in emotional behavior explains the following facts, and furthermore, unless there are other satisfactory means of accounting for these facts they tend to support the hypothesis that an emotional act is essentially a 'no response' phase of behavior. The facts are: (1) the impossibility of an onlooker to specify what sort of emotion a person is experiencing from any observation of the individual aside from the emotional circumstances, (2) the hitherto complete failure of psychologists to be able to make any satisfactory classification of emotional acts. (3) Furthermore, is it not the absence of a response system in emotional behavior and its replacement by reflexes which makes it easy for psychologists to misinterpret emotional acts, and to look upon them as mere bodily 'changes' or 'expressions' of invisible states of mind? (4) Again it appears that only 'no behavior' conduct could induce psychologists to interpret emotions as the awareness of organic changes or to look upon the substituted visceral reflexes as instincts which protect the organism pending the arousal of the awareness of what is to be done in the situation in question. (5) And finally, the view that the same emotions are found in the animal world as in human action equipment may be traced to the fact that psychologists were observing in the human organism not definite reactions but replacement responses which do in part resemble the simple organized activities of animals.

Although the disruptive chaos may be taken as a definite mark of differentiation between emotions and other forms of behavior, it should not be considered as in any sense an exhaustive description. In the actual description of a concrete emotional situation we must include many other essential features, although chief reliance must be finally placed upon the absence of a focussed reaction system. When we thus take cognizance of all the factors in a behavior situation it becomes impossible to confuse emotional conduct with the hypnagogic dissociations in which the person is temporarily cut off from his surroundings, or with the attention shift in which there is merely an orderly reconstitution of reaction systems as a preparation for a change in behavior. To give always as full a description of behavior as possible would mean that we might avoid mistakes that now are most flagrantly indulged in, namely, calling certain acts emotions which clearly are not, such as passions, sentiments, and habits of affective response, or identifying as something else actions which are emotional in character.

Lest someone inject into the description of emotional behavior any teleological notion concerning the lack of response, we might suggest forthwith that the assumption of such a lack of 'a response system is based directly upon the immediate facts of the emotional situation. The fact is, that in any specific emotional situation the contextual stimuli and the associated activities that occur, clearly indicate that a particular kind of stimulus-response correlation should be a significant factor in the segment of behavior under observation. In some instances we can determine with little chance of error what the person may be expected to offer in the way of an organized and directed activity in a particular situation.

If in each case of emotional conduct the fundamental principle is the absence of a certain response system the question arises as to how to distinguish between the more and less violent emotional activities. Here as elsewhere in the investigation of emotions the only safe and sufficient guide is the consideration of the specific conditions under which the behavior occurs. As we have already pointed out the person may be found lacking a response system in a situation in which the greatest immediate need for definite action seems to dissociate him until he is left with only his simplest elementary behavior, while in other situations, events do not occur so suddenly, nor are the circumstances so pressing as to bring about even very marked surface confusion. In the milder situation there is, in fact, only a slight difference between the activity interrupted by the emotion-exciting stimulus and the resumed occupation after the emotional period is over. Consequently, the milder sorts of emotion seem to merge with the non-emotional situation in which a definite response is 'merely delayed or inhibited because of the person's lack of attention to a certain stimulus, or because of a momentary failure of perception.

II

The Systematic Analysis of Emotional Acts. — As a distinctive segment of psychological activity an emotional act can not only be separated and distinguished from its preceding and succeeding contextual correlatives, but can be analyzed into its functionally constituent phases. And thus we may distinguish in the emotional situation (1) the perceptual phase, that is, the discrimination and appreciation of the stimulus object, or the ideational preliminary to an emotional response; (2) the emotional action proper; (3) the superseding organic or other activities. Succeeding these three phases we find another segment of behavior and unless it is another emotional act, involves an organized response system.

I. The perceptual phase is an act of simple apprehension which in a given case may be an implicit appreciation of a danger or its opposite. As an incipient response system a perceptual reaction of danger involves uneasiness, excitement, trembling, and unpleasantness, all of which are reminiscent of a previous condition of the individual in actual danger, which condition is preserved and revived in vestigial form. In a sense, the perceptual phase of the emotional situation is a preparatory response for some act which is to follow. When, as sometimes happens, the exigencies of the situation prevent the occurrence of the overt act, as for example when confronted by a dangerous animal under conditions lacking available means of escape, or when an appropriate act has never been acquired for the present frustrating and baffling circumstances, then the cataclysm or seizure which is the emotional phase proper is instantaneously irrupted.

At this point it is worth noting that an emotional complex cannot include a primary perceptual act[3] as an antecedent function. For in such a case the primary differential reaction, or the meaning activity, is a directly operating overt response in the form of a definite adjustment, and therefore can never invoke a confusional, disruptive response activity, such as we find in emotional conduct.

As compared with the perceptual anticipatory phase of emotional action, the ideational antecedent of the emotional act is a more refined and more vague vestige of an original danger or other response; it is brought into operation through a substitution stimulus for the original danger situation. The statements just made presuppose an idea to be a definite act which incipiently [4] repeats a previously direct overt adjustment, or what was in a former time a precurrent or preparatory activity such as reading something, or hearing imparted information. In the case of such an antecedent act, the emotional behavior is much milder, and the organism does not as a rule get so much out of hand as in the case of the emotional situation preceded by a definite perceptual reaction. It must be understood, however, that the violence of an emotional activity is entirely due to the surrounding circumstances; so that the emotion following an ideational process might possibly be far more turbulent than one which is preceded by a perceptual activity.

2. The emotional activity proper may be described as a process of disintegration of the series of response systems constituting the individual at the moment. In effect, there is a total inhibition or suppression of all activity so far as any overt adjustmental response is concerned. Essentially, the emotional factor is a phase of behavior in which there is lacking a coordinate stimulus-response process ordinarily resulting in a definitely directed act.

Such an act when it occurs may be looked upon as a consummatory response which is initiated by the precurrent perceptual or ideational action, and when this act does take place we call the pattern of response a volitional or habitual adjustment. The typical commotional seizure and chaos, is then, the direct consequence of the non-operation of a consummatory reaction when its appropriate antecedent has functioned. According to our hypothesis it appears that an emotion is intrinsically a negative form of behavior although it may serve to induce or accelerate another adjustment.

3. Because every psychological act is the reaction of an organism, it is an invariable law that whenever a stimulus fails to produce its appropriate response the organism is forced to fall back upon some substitution or replacement act. We have already suggested that in the most striking emotional situations the replacement acts are interoceptive reflexes. Hence we find an almost universal emphasis upon organic processes as prominent factors in emotional behavior. Naturally there will be a great difference in the amount and intensity of such organic activity when we compare the elemental behavior, sometimes called the violent emotions, and the cultural conduct usually referred to as the subtle or tender emotions.[5] In the latter case, it is universally true that whether the stimulus is perceptual or ideational there is always possible some measure of direct adjustment and therefore there is less organic functioning.

If we accept as a fact the difference between the elemental and cultural emotions we may then specify some of the conditions in the more violent and pervasive emotional action, and assume that the descriptions will hold for the simpler activities with merely a variation in the degree of the organic components. And first we may note that the supplied organic activities involve vascular and visceral processes of all sorts. There are disturbances of the digestive secretions, respiration, contraction of blood vessels, acceleration or retardation of the heart beat, induction of various secretions, etc. Very frequently we find also as substitutes for definite focussed responses, imperfectly articulate cries which in most cases answer better to the description of groans or screams than to language. Still other substituted actions are the numerous random activities of the skeletal muscles sometimes becoming so exaggerated in emotional behavior that persons assume poses of cataleptic rigidity.

Following very closely upon the emotional activity proper the person may begin an act which is directly conditioned by the stimulating circumstances surrounding him at the moment. Naturally the type of response will depend upon the circumstances which initiated the emotional activity in the first place, since we are here observing what is after all a definite and restricted event. In the case of a primary emotion the activities are large overt responses involving the external skeletal muscles, as in fighting, running, and jumping. It is in such cases that the preceding definite emotional conditions may be of service. In the secondary emotional situations the transition from the state of suspense and confusion is more gradual and in fact the whole emotional situation is more of a piece with other activities than is true in the primary emotions. In other words, the specific emotional action is decidedly less marked off from preceding and succeeding segments of behavior. The directed responses following an emotional situation are then very rigidly determined by the surrounding stimulating objects and in all types of emotional conduct are at first diffuse and not especially well directed for the needs at hand. The recovery is indefinitely more rapid, however, for the cultural emotions, since as we have already seen, in these cases the organism is never shaken to the reaction foundations. In all cases, however, it must be noted that when the final activity once begins the emotional action proper has ceased to exist. This directed act or adjustment must be considered as a consummatory act following a precurrent response which is not identical with the anticipatory phase of the emotional act. It is, therefore, from the standpoint of the stimulus, a new and not merely a delayed reaction. So disparate are the emotional acts and the adjustments which follow them that in any given emotional situation the presentation of a new stimulus, no matter how remote from the emotional situation, will strikingly curtail the emotion. Such a situation is well illustrated by the student suffering an emotional confusion while being orally examined, but who recovers immediately when he attempts to make some reply, however unsuited to the question.

III

Some Points of Contact between the Organismic [6] Hypothesis and the James-Lange Theory.—Our analysis of emotional conduct suggests a basis for reexamining some of the discussions centering about James's formulations of emotions. One of the essential points in the discussion turns about the problem of harmonizing the directness and immediacy of emotional conduct with the apparently necessary cognition of what sort of act should occur. The pre-Jamesian view was interpreted in the following manner. The stimulus object excites a mental state (emotion) which is followed by its appropriate bodily expression. Not unlike his predecessors James was a mentalist, and consequently thought of an emotion as a 'state of mind,' but he saw clearly the necessity of connecting it very closely with overt activities if the description was to be at all in consonance with the facts. As a result, James was lead to assert that the emotion proper follows the bodily expression. Now, although we must admit that James's emphasis of the immediate occurrence of some act was a distinct stage in advance of his predecessors' theory, yet because he thought of an emotion as the knowledge process in the situation he could not explain why any particular behavior or expression, as he called it, should be connected with any specific mental state. The solution that he offered was that the stimulus object calls out an instinct act presumably appropriate for the occasion, and which supplies the characteristic emotional tone to the succeeding mental state.

Such a solution could of course not be satisfactory to James himself unless he could conceive of an instinct as a definite cognitive activity, a condition which runs completely counter to James's mentalistic attitude and his own vivid description of instincts as primarily physiological processes. For unless he could consider instincts to be definite cognitive processes, the fact that different kinds of acts seem to be associated with any given emotion still leaves the original problem on his hands. But if the instinct is a cognitive act what purpose can the succeeding mental state serve, since the reflex-instinct act arrogates its function? It is not surprising, therefore, that James soon gave up the notion of the instinct as the means of connecting an immediate overt act with an emotion, in favor of the idea that possibly there are differentiations in organic activities suitable enough to provide specific antecedents to the mental phases of emotions.

How differently interpreted is the entire behavior situation from an objective standpoint. Whatever the immediate act may be, its prompt occurrence following the perception of the stimulating object is a natural consequence of the phasic character of all psychological behavior, for perception is merely a precurrent phase of a segment of behavior in which some consummatory reaction is to follow.[7] And since the precurrent action is a perceptual process, no inscrutably working instinct need be here invoked. As we have attempted to show in the earlier part of this paper, it happens that in a segment of emotional behavior no organized response actually occurs, but instead a series of replacement reflexes. It is of course understood that each phase of any segment of behavior is the reaction of the complete organism as a biological unit. Unless one adopts an organismic hypothesis at this point, it is impossible to avoid a controversy, as the experience of James illustrates, concerning the order of emotional events.

If it is true as we have suggested, that the perceptual phase of a segment of emotional behavior brings about a 'no response' action, what becomes of the knowledge factor that seems so essential to James in common with all other writers on the emotions? Our answer to this question is as follows. In the first place, since no directed adaptation follows the perceptual phase of the segment of emotional behavior we are not obliged to assume that the precurrent perceptual response carries any further significance than the appreciation of a .danger or other stimulus. And further, any definite knowledge of what is occurring in the emotional situation is a cognitional response belonging to a segment of behavior postdating the emotional situation in question. To us it seems that most of the difficulty that James had with the emotions arose from a confusion of the perceptual phase of an emotional situation with the knowledge of an emotional event after it occurs.

We believe that an objective analysis of emotional conduct reveals two kinds of cognitive factors. The first is the precurrent appreciation of an emotion-exciting object which results in a 'no response' action with substituted organic reflexes. The second is the self-expressive language act which we may call the overt appreciation of the danger situation. We repeat, that if James could have kept these two distinct and considered them as phases of a complex action, he could have obviated the entity interpretation while still doing full justice to the conception of emotions as rapidly occurring acts in which running or striking follow directly upon the perception of some stimulating object.

Another essential feature of the Jamesian theory of emotions, which becomes clarified by our organismic hypothesis, is the shift which we have intimated James effected in the expressions of the emotions. Let us recall that in the 'Principles' he mentioned as antecedent expressions such overt directed responses as crying, running, and striking, and that in the 'recantation of heresy' article [8] he modified his view to stress visceral activities. This shift was stimulated by the critics of his theory who pointed out that entirely different expressions might give rise to the same emotions,[9] and bespoke an endeavor to find less inflexible touchstones of his theory. In supplanting the exteroceptive activities with diffuse interoceptive waves as expressions of emotions, James of course weakened his theory, since he gave up what appeared to be prime prerequisites to support the denial of the antecedent mental factor in emotions.[10] James's acquiescence in what was virtually a complete retreat from his original position, was inevitable as long as he did not recognize that the factors in an emotional act are a succession of organismic responses, and not sequences of mental and physical events.

Could James have developed an organismic conception from which both antecedent and consequent mentalities are banished, he might readily have seen that the overt directed acts such as running or striking are very immediately related to the emotional situation, but need not be interpreted as concomitants of mental states. As our analysis has indicated, these overt responses are consummatory phases of behavior following very closely upon the preparatory perceptual reaction which postdates the emotional phase of another segment of behavior. In point of fact, when these running or striking acts occur, even when they seem simultaneous with the appearance of the emotion-exciting stimulus, the emotional seizure is over.

And finally, the organismic hypothesis affords us an insight into the fallacy of making emotions consist to a very considerable degree of organic activities.

Had James not been a subjectivist he would never have faced the necessity of making the organic processes into positive, adaptive responses which serve to express emotions. Rather he would have seen why the organic processes must inevitably be indifferent 'expressions' of emotions. Could James have seen that the organic processes are merely substitute activities which fill in a gap between two anticipatory or precurrent reactions, the former of which is not followed by an appropriate final act, he would have realized that these organic reactions could not be 'expressions' of specific 'emotions,' whether preceding or succeeding them. Failing to evaluate properly the organic resonances, James found in them nothing but an illusion of immediacy.

IV

Distinction of Emotions from Non-Emotional Feeling Behavior.—The strict observation of actual responses under different conditions of stimulation indicates very clearly that a wide difference exists between the disruptive types of emotional action and other forms of feeling behavior which are frequently called by the same name. Probably few accomplishments in psychology are more desirable than the isolation and examination of the distinguishing features of the great mass of activities which have been indiscriminately thrown into a heap through the intellectualistic influence of subjectivistic psychology. Let us note that the necessity to review the facts of affective behavior is intimately bound up with a naturalistic attitude. In the first place, not until such an attitude became at all established was it deemed necessary to give much attention to the detailed analysis of human behavior. Again, this naturalistic view is of extreme advantage for the study of feeling behavior, since it serves to prevent our being misled by the conception of a presumed operation in them of some form of common mental content symbolized by a word such as Fear or Anger.

In reply to the question whether there is any feature of behavior which sharply marks off the emotions from other kinds of feeling conduct, we may offer the tentative criterion of the presence or absence in the act of an organized response system. If this criterion be valid and if it be employed as a guide in the investigation of human activity, we ought to be able, not only to distinguish emotions from all other feeling behavior as a class, but also from each type of activity in the class.

Especially is it necessary to mark off sharply the emotions from the passions, which constitute a very different form of behavior. Unlike the emotions, the passions consist of organized response systems which in some form operate continuously, whether or not the original stimulating object is present. The passions, as exemplified by love and hate, are the prolonged functioning of organized response systems kept active by the periodic appearance of the original stimulus or by some substituted stimulus-object such as a letter or some other token. Moreover, between the intervals of direct or substituted stimulation by the original object of love or hate, the person is constantly responding in a characteristic feeling manner, thereby inducing much self-stimulation. Thus, a person who acquires a passion for another individual or some object such as books or music, begins to respond with some form of implicit feeling activity, becoming cheerful, hopeful, happy or enthusiastic, depending upon the specific circumstances.[11] Clearly, when we observe the person responding to the absent object of passion; that is, when he responds with the protracted implicit feeling activity, we cannot possibly confuse such behavior with the momentarily explosive emotional reaction. On the other hand, when we compare with an emotion the more violent focussed passion responses performed in the presence of the stimulating objects, probably the only crucial criterion is that the passion acts do, and the emotional acts do not involve definite organized reaction systems. However unsatisfactory the description of passion acts may be at the present time, it is beyond doubt that they constitute a genuine chapter in the psychology of feeling.

Also the emotions must be clearly distinguished from the sentiments which are in essence prescriptive and limiting types of activity developed under the influence of social approval. Sentiment acts are directed forms of responses usually resulting in some definite kind of complex social conduct. Illustrative of the sentiments are the activities of modesty, cleanliness, and charitableness. A sentiment is a preferred act of acquiescence or readiness to do certain definite complex things or to have them done. Again, sentiments are in a genuine sense latent and intermittent responses and the specific acts may involve much implicit or thought activity. As compared with sentiments, passions are for the largest part direct and specific responses to stimuli; passion acts being more elemental and explicit, they are also more closely integrated with the immediate surrounding conditions, while sentiments are more generalized reaction systems having a larger range of exciting stimuli.

Unfortunate indeed is the confusion of emotional conduct with diffuse feeling behavior, a practice generously indulged in when the term emotions is employed as a general blanket for all sorts of feeling activity. The diffused feeling acts are responses to prolonged conditions as of desire, achievement, or thwartedness. They are responses to objects and conditions definitely recognized as of a particular character, beautiful, good, wise, etc. Upon the basis of definite external situations in which the person finds himself we can trace out particular forms of responses that may be denoted regretful, remorseful, relief, elation, cheerful, enthusiastic, disappointed, admiring, patient, or impatient, happy, excited, shocked, depressed, and an indefinite number of others. In all these cases there are more or less continued effects brought about in a person through some contact with particular objects in specific settings. In each case it appears that the whole individual is involved, and for a considerable period of time; so that any particular feeling is distributed over all the reaction patterns of the person. In worry, for example, the individual seems overwhelmed by a certain environing condition and constantly keeps up a process of self-stimulation, thereby reinforcing the feeling. We find also the constant tendency to hark back to the feeling stimulus as a point of reference. Thus when we are worried about an impending calamity and read of someone's success, we connect ourselves with that situation and feel deeper concerning our own affair. In a general way, the diffuse feelings are implicit phases of all the activities of the person while he is in an affective condition.

Since the diffuse feelings are not outwardly directed, the definite response systems of such behavior are not always manifest to the observer; so that it may not be entirely out of the way to say that in intense feeling one is simply acting upon oneself. As a consequence, to a considerable extent we may think of diffuse feelings as conditioning activities, in the sense that while they are operating they will affect any activity the person is performing.

Great as are the difficulties of description encountered in even the slightest penetration into the maze of feeling responses, they can be amply accounted for by the lack of exploration in the psychology of feelings. The absence of accurate investigations in this domain is manifested by the fact that the interpretation of feeling conduct is based less upon facts of concrete reactions than upon the habits of popular speech. The futility of such interpretation is clear when we consider that no feeling term in popular use refers to a type of response belonging exclusively to a single class of psychological reaction. But although we have yet to begin the isolation of the various classes of feeling behavior, the differentiation of emotional conduct from the various other forms of feeling behavior appears plausible and worth while.

V

Are Emotions Inherited?—The conception of emotions as inherited forms of response is a legacy which psychology has acquired from the tradition of biological abstractionism.[12] Immediately we face the question as to what is inherited and how. From the standpoint of a mental states psychology, one might say, of course, that a permanent state of mind may be inherited, but what bearing can such an assertion have upon the problems of objective psychology? When we confine our study to definite facts of behavior and reject the conception of emotion-cause and its manifestations, we find no specific kind of chaotic condition as a permanent acquisition of the person, arousable to action by various sorts of stimulating objects or conditions. 

Some there are who might I say that the inheritance of emotions means that the individual is so constituted that he will suffer dissociation when put under certain kinds of stress, but how informing is this statement? Such a statement is on a par with the assertion that the human individual is born to think, to perceive, to wear clothes, as well as to undergo various other experiences.

The doctrine of diuturnal inheritable emotions must inevitably make emotions into entities of some sort. For, consider that the doctrine requires nothing less than that a person should be equipped with some innate powers manifesting themselves in complex and peculiar activities in emotional situations. Not the least objectionable consequence of the entity interpretation is that it implies a parallelism or an interactionism, and this circumstance always means an obscuring of the actual events in human behavior. An emotion comes to be either a cause, an effect or an accompaniment of bodily activities.

That much of the writing concerning emotions is based on an entitative conception is amply demonstrated by the psychological literature relative to the organization, combination and association of emotions. Thus, from the time of Descartes to the present, there is an unbroken procession of theories as to how a few primary or simple emotions (states ii or entities) become combined into complex emotions or sentiments. The only difference between a seventeenth century mixture and a twentieth century compounding of emotional states lies in the connection of the emotion in the latter case with an instinct which is presumed to be in some sense a biological process. [13] In actual practice, however, there is little difference between Descartes' organization of all emotions (passions) he enumerates forty from the six primaries (admiration, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness) and Spinoza's combination of all (about forty-six) [14] from the three primaries (desire, pleasure, and pain) or McDougall's, Shand's and Ribot's association of elementary emotional states into complex sentiments. In all cases there is a logical grouping of elements which are apparently derived from an analysis of feeling situations[15] quite after the fashion of the British associationists. In no case is there, nor indeed can there be any attempt to connect such combinations of emotions with any directly observable data of behavior.

At the basis of all intellectualistic attempts to describe and compound emotions lies the assumption explicit or implied that the psychologist is attempting to describe the ultimate character of human nature and not the concrete behavior of a human organism under its various conditions of stimulation. This assumption of the ultimacy of human nature further implies that emotional states constitute some of the prominent factors of human nature. Here is a suggestion as to the motive for assuming the inheritability and permanence of emotions, namely, a prejudice concerning the absolutistic and invariable character of psychological facts. The domain of psychology appears to be the final halting place for those finalities which, since the Renaissance, have been gradually ousted from the natural sciences. Instead of describing emotional behavior, as indeed all other phenomena of the psychological domain, as definite organismic responses to specific stimulating circumstances, the attempt is made to describe behavior as manifestations of putative powers, or substances resident in the individual. In consequence, the names of emotions, as well as other classes of behavior are hypostatized into unique qualities of mind. The subjectivistic psychologist of emotions treats the behavior he studies much after the fashion in which the older ethicist handled the social activities he dealt with, and so fear, love and anger became 'properties' of the individual in a manner similar to that of the 'virtues.'

If anything can be clearly made out in the observation and description of emotional behavior it is this: that such behavior only occurs under definite, external surrounding conditions and therefore can only be described in terms of such conditions. The specific movements of and changes in the individual are direct effects of definite external circumstances and not expressions of innate and continuous entities. This fact is, of course, no more true for emotions than for any other sort of behavior, but it requires special mention here, because the tradition has grown up that emotions are peculiar forces or tendencies which manifest themselves in many singular ways. This is in effect making emotions or the instincts which are presumed to operate with them into final causes or primary principles of behavior of which the various activities of the human individual are the effects.

Excellently illustrative of this attitude is the reiterated assertion that love in all its forms, including all the acts referred to under this term, is the manifestation of a hidden force called the sexual instinct. This sex-love situation admittedly constitutes a crucial instance because of the pervasiveness of sex behavior, but a critical examination of the facts involved offers sufficient evidence that every specific activity which we find in this series of behavior segments can be described without invoking any transexperiential causative factor. The wide prevalence and constant occurrence of certain forms of behavior can be readily accounted for on the basis of incessant stimulation. Consequently, it would be very remarkable if there existed less sex activity in the form of actual sex behavior and discussion than we now find in the presence of all the multifarious sex stimulations, both social and physiological, constantly surrounding us.

Among the conditions unwittingly designed to induce sex stimulation are the divergent apparel, work, duties, virtues of men and women, which have developed with an uncanny inclination towards the emphasis of sexual differences. Moreover, modern civilization has tended more and more to make of woman a sex object, a stimulus to sex reaction. Possibly the reader will find just here a justification of the belief that a sex instinct-emotion is responsible for such social development as we have suggested; but is it of advantage to psychology, we might ask, to compromise our interpretations with a hopeless bias of immutable final causes, in view of the fact that we can readily convince ourselves of the existence of definite empirical facts to account for the kind of society that we have developed? Any critical investigation of differential phases of civilization as represented by different geographical, national and temporal conditions, will disclose sufficient economic, social, and religious motives, in short, verifiable conditions, to account for the peculiarities of our complex social behavior.

And now we must consider the biological facts of sex, those most potent sources of confusion in psychological investigations. Because the biological factors which condition psychological reactions are so imperious in their influence and so constant in their operation they have been repeatedly misinterpreted. Instead of being described as essential factors in organismic reactions they have been made into vital forces or purposes. Now obviously the biological organization of the person as the pre-psychological matrix of all human behavior, exerts great influence upon his conduct, but just as obvious it is that the biological sex factors are simple stimulus-response activities. To consider the comparatively simple biochemical processes which operate as components in psychological reactions as causes or representatives of vital causes is to do violence to critical observation. Furthermore, it is not incorrect to say that the biological factors of sex, at the level of human psychological development, serve as subordinate influences of behavior among the exceedingly many others. Are we beyond understanding how physiological sex activity can be secondary excitements to behavior originally induced by primary social sex stimulation? And what of the numerous sex-gland and other reflexes which serve as important stimuli to sex behavior, both implicit and overt? Are these reflexes to be interpreted as anything but natural consequences of the metabolic conditions of the individual at the time? For if they are the results of such definite physiological processes, and who can doubt the fact, then they are, of course, the effects of immediately occurring and verifiable biological processes, and not the manifestations of mysterious instincts. Most infelicitous is the confusion of the directly observable biological processes stimulating us to action, precisely as the other conditions about us do, with hidden forces which have no actual existence aside from their name. Must we not conclude then, that the biological factors of sex, in the form of sex structures and their functions, merely provide a foundation and a means for the operation of sex behavior, while the sex reflexes serve only as concrete stimuli for various kinds of reactions?

To believe that all the complex human sex actions are the manifestations of a sex-instinct-emotion is like attributing the standing-up reactions of a child to an upright instinct, although in the latter case only the slightest amount of critical observation makes it easy to see that it is not because he has a standing-up instinct that the child is induced to acquire standing-up reactions, but because in addition to his peculiar biological structure he is living in a standing-up world. All the objects and their settings are standing-up objects and it would be really impossible for the child to develop otherwise. Here as elsewhere, of course, one can invoke an absolute teleological factor and say that an ultimate cosmic purpose has brought it about that the child should be born into a standing-up world. The writer frankly admits that to such an argument he lacks all answer.

If we have succeeded in making it at all plausible that the intricate emotional and feeling behavior of a sex character is to be interpreted primarily, if not exclusively, in terms of definite surrounding circumstances, it must appear that the same situation would be true in the case of other feeling behavior such as anger, grief, and fear. In each case, the specific phases of the behavior event can be correlated with a stimulating object or condition. The names given to the events denote concretely occurring phenomena and not ends which are being worked out through pre-arranged machinery. Unfortunately psychologists have been in the habit of considering emotional responses as innate feeling activities much after the fashion in which they have thought of instincts as innate knowledge processes. And this condition prevails in spite of the fact that every observation of fear or anger behavior strongly suggests that no matter what action occurs, it is a direct function, in a mathematical sense, of changes that are taking place in the environment of the individual. What is more natural than that one should attempt to strike back when struck, and when this is prevented by holding the hands it is to be expected that the person will kick, cry, and attempt other means of releasing himself and doing damage to his opponent. This whole activity may be called an anger stimulus and response situation, but in no sense must we speak of the striking out, the breath holding, the snarling and the crying as 'emotional manifestations' of an anger 'emotion.' Can there be any other explanation than that the variable and unpredictable occurrences in an emotional situation are the results of series of specific external stimulations? As to the name of the total behavior when the name stands for an actual emotion, is not that derived from the mere fact that it includes an emotional factor, although that factor is of the briefest duration. For the most part, however, the actions taking place in the total situation can be analyzed into volitions, habits, perceptual responses, etc. Do psychologists mean by an 'emotion' anything more than some event hypostatized through the medium of a name?

(To be concluded.)

Notes

1. Cf. Titchener, E. B., 'An Historical Note on the James-Lange Theory of Emotion,' Amer. J. of Psychol., 25, 427-447.
2. By the terms elemental and cultural the writer plans to point out a difference in behavior circumstances as illustrated by coming upon a dangerous animal in a wood and by being informed of a legacy.
3. By primary perception is meant the directly operating exteroceptive type of consummatory behavior. In primary perception the precurrent and consummatory (we borrow these terms from Sherrington) phases of activity are identical.
4. And in many cases symbolically.
5. Not sentiments or diffused feelings.
6. By the term organismic we mean to point out the absolute inseparability of the factors in an emotional or any other psychological act. Emotions as acts of a unique individual cannot be thought of as composed of parallel or interacting parts.
7. Cf. Kantor, 'Suggestions Toward a Scientific Interpretation of Perception,' PSYCHOL. REV., 1920, 27, 191 ff.
8. PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 516.
9. Cf. Worcester, Monist, 3, 285 ff.
10. Especially was this true, since as James himself realized, different organic activities may belong to the same emotions, Cf. PSYCHOL. REV., 1894, 1, 520.
11. The extreme importance of the situation to which responses are made is well brought out in these activities; also we observe the intermingling of different forms of feeling reaction in the same segment of behavior. Especially do we find considerable alternation between emotions and diffuse feelings.
12. Cf. Kantor, 'A Functional Interpretation of Human Instincts,' PSYCHOL. REV., 1920, 279 55.
13. We use the term biological process here because, while even in Spinoza we find a reference of emotions to biological conditions, such reference does not involve specific modern physiological details.
14. I adopt Ribot's calculations here.
15. "We may count as primitive all those which cannot be reduced to previous manifestations." Ribot, 'Psychology of the Emotions,' p. 13.

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