Why Do Humans Actually Have Emotions? - Dr Laith Al-Shawaf

Why Do We Have Emotions? (0s)

• Emotions are not irrational; they are adaptive and serve evolutionary functions, such as fear protecting us from danger and disgust protecting us from pathogens. (2s)
• Emotions can sometimes cause distress and lead to negative behaviors, creating a paradox where they are both beneficial and potentially harmful. (1m41s)
• Emotions are often misunderstood as just feelings, but they encompass a complex interplay of physiological, psychological, and behavioral changes that work together to address specific adaptive challenges. (2m57s)

How Our Emotions Advocate For Us (6m37s)

• Emotions, including seemingly negative ones like fear and disgust, serve the function of promoting an individual's well-being and survival. (7m34s)
• While some emotions are more interpersonal, such as guilt and anger, they all ultimately contribute to an individual's broader interests, including social connections and familial bonds. (8m25s)
• The feeling of love, while often difficult to rationalize, plays a crucial role in maintaining long-term relationships by making the potential costs of infidelity feel more immediate and significant. (11m24s)

Emotions From an Evolutionary Perspective (14m2s)

• An evolutionary perspective highlights that both positive and negative emotions are functional and adaptive. (14m25s)
• An evolutionary perspective suggests that emotions are not just feeling states, but also involve changes in attention, memory, conceptual categorization, physiology, and behavior, all aimed at solving adaptive problems. (14m44s)
• An evolutionary perspective proposes that despite linguistic differences in emotion words across cultures, there is likely an underlying cross-cultural uniformity in the psychology of emotions. (16m32s)

Are Some Emotions More Basic Than Others? (20m54s)

• There is a common view that some emotions are more basic than others, with joy, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, and fear often considered more fundamental. (21m34s)
• This view stems from research in the 1960s and 1970s that found these emotions had universal facial expressions that were universally recognizable. (22m5s)
• A more modern evolutionary perspective suggests that the presence or absence of facial expressions for emotions depends on the costs and benefits of signaling those emotions in different contexts. (23m36s)

Why We Experience Fear & Surprise (25m2s)

• Fear causes heightened perception, narrowed attention, and the suppression of non-essential functions like digestion. (25m34s)
• Fear also impacts conceptual understanding, shifting focus from abstract qualities to usefulness for escape. (25m51s)
• Surprise creates a focus on the unexpected event, prompting a rapid assessment of it as positive or negative to determine the appropriate reaction. (27m47s)

The Emotions of Awe & Dread (28m34s)

• Awe may be related to absorbing information and learning in order to adapt to the world. (29m17s)
• Awe may stem from grand vistas and scenes that offer useful information or change one's estimations of something. (30m13s)
• Witnessing someone display great talent or skill may induce awe and encourage learning and skill acquisition. (31m5s)

How Shame is Adaptive (32m29s)

• Shame functions to prevent behaviors that could lead to a loss of status or reputation within a society. (32m39s)
• Shame can manifest as attempts to conceal negative information to prevent status loss and to mitigate damage if such information becomes public. (32m51s)
• Shame is linked to the human need to avoid social devaluation, as being ostracized from a group could be detrimental to survival. (33m33s)

Why Anxiety is So Prevalent in Modern Society (40m43s)

• Modern society may contribute to anxiety due to factors like distance from family and friends, sedentary lifestyles, poor diets, and social media comparisons. (41m17s)
• Exposure to highly successful individuals through media can negatively impact self-perception, as it highlights personal shortcomings in comparison to often unrealistic portrayals of success. (42m29s)
• Understanding the evolutionary basis of emotions, such as sadness and anxiety, can help individuals reframe their relationship with these emotions and potentially reduce their negative impact. (43m21s)

Explaining the Trait of Need for Cognition (48m55s)

• Need for cognition is a personality trait that describes how much a person enjoys thinking about and understanding challenging things. (49m3s)
• People with a high need for cognition may find solace in understanding the evolutionary reasons behind their emotions, even negative ones. (49m23s)
• Emotions, like cognition, are complex information processing systems in the nervous system that evolved for a reason. (52m42s)

Feeling Emotions About Emotions (58m11s)

• Second-order emotions are feelings we experience about our initial emotions. Examples include feeling frustrated about being anxious or feeling guilty about something when we believe we shouldn't. (58m16s)
• Understanding the evolutionary function of emotions, such as the hedonic treadmill or the protective nature of anxiety, can help reduce negative second-order emotions like self-criticism or frustration. (1h0m1s)
• Shame, often a second-order emotion, is primarily about perceived social devaluation or fear of rejection from a group, rather than actual culpability for wrongdoing. This highlights the importance of social acceptance and reputation management for human well-being. (1h1m24s)

The Difference Between Envy & Jealousy (1h7m48s)

• Jealousy is for protecting valued relationships, often romantic, but also friendships, from potential threats. (1h8m7s)
• Envy is wanting something that someone else possesses, such as a coveted position, material object, or higher status. (1h8m20s)
• Experimentally inducing disgust in individuals leads to a decrease in their desire for sexual variety and novelty, suggesting a link between disgust sensitivity and mating preferences. (1h10m23s)

Sex Differences in Emotion (1h11m12s)

• Women have a stronger disgust response than men, particularly towards sexual and pathogen disgust. (1h11m24s)
• Women experience internalizing negative emotions like sadness, anxiety, and depression more frequently than men. (1h13m38s)
• Men experience externalizing emotions like anger more frequently than women. (1h13m48s)

Emotions That Aren’t Really Adaptive (1h18m27s)

• Some theorists propose that religious belief is a byproduct of hyperactive agency detection, the tendency to perceive agents even in their absence. (1h18m46s)
• Some theorists propose that murder is a byproduct of evolved aggression, where the mechanism for aggression is over-triggered. (1h21m9s)
• Some theorists propose that reading and writing are byproducts of adaptations for spoken language, as they are more recent cultural innovations and more difficult to acquire. (1h22m49s)

How Laith Applies His Work to Daily Life (1h24m40s)

• Emotions should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, considering their function and whether they are currently serving that function or misfiring. (1h25m34s)
• It is important to determine if an emotion is interfering with daily life or helping to solve a problem, and then decide whether to reframe it or embrace its wisdom. (1h27m10s)
• While it is helpful to avoid excessive self-criticism for experiencing emotions, it is also important to recognize that individuals may have more control over their reactions to their initial emotions. (1h29m57s)

Where to Find Laith (1h32m55s)

• The website www.laithalshawaf.com contains links to popular science articles. (1h33m8s)
• A 1400-page book with almost 70 chapters about emotions was recently published. (1h33m28s)
• People can follow on Twitter/X @laithalshawaf for more information about emotions. (1h34m9s)