We are 'Only Human'

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN EMOTIONS

As anyone who knows this Blog reasonably well will recognize, I am a great believer in trying to understand human behaviour.


And I draw a lot on the concepts of ‘genes’ (the ‘hard-wired responses that come from our genetic adaptations) and ‘memes’ (the accumulated memories of our family and collective unconscious).

I was interested then in a recent report (quoted at the bottom of this article) on the Emotional Lives of Animals. I have prefaced this with a brief review of the more conventional concept of ‘Fight or Flight’.

In some ways what is said about animal emotions is almost obvious. And, growing up on a small family farm, I have never been in any doubt that animals of the same species, like pigs and cows, have their own individual characters.

But I think that there is also a point worth picking up about human beings.

Maybe one of our defining emotional characteristics as a species – the intense range and diversity of our emotions – draws a lot from our frightening vulnerability in our pre-weapon, pre-fire existence on the shoreline and the edges of the forest.

Not surprisingly, when we finally managed to relieve our anxieties by banding together, communicating and arming ourselves, our flight instinct easily switched to aggression – particularly for the males.

And the female genes and memes that fostered women (who were predominantly gatherers) led to the development of a different emotional repertoire.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves then about the endless problems that we seem to share in getting our act together as social beings.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT (borrowed from Wikipedia)

Animals respond to threats in many complex ways. Rats, for instance, try to escape when threatened, but will fight when cornered. Some animals stand perfectly still so that predators will not see them. Many animals freeze or play dead when touched in the hope that the predator will lose interest.

Others have more exotic self-protection methods. Some species of fish change color swiftly, to camouflage themselves. These responses are triggered by the sympathetic nervous system, but in order to fit the model of fight or flight, the idea of flight must be broadened to include escaping capture in either a physical way or in a sensory way.

Thus, flight can be disappearing to another location or just disappearing in place. And often both fight and flight are combined in a given situation.

The fight or flight actions also have polarity - the individual can fight or flee against or away from something that is threatening, such as a hungry lion, or fight or fly for or towards something that is needed, such as the safety of the shore of a raging river.

A threat from another animal does not always result in immediate fight or flight. There may be a period of heightened awareness, during which each animal interprets behavioral signals from the other. Signs such as paling, piloerection, immobility, sounds, and body language communicate the status and intentions of each animal.

There may be a sort of negotiation, after which fight or flight may ensue, but which might also result in playing, mating, or nothing at all. An example of this is kittens playing: each kitten shows the signs of sympathetic arousal, but they never inflict real damage.

As for human beings:

In prehistoric times when the fight or flight response evolved, fight was manifested in aggressive, combative behavior and flight was manifested by fleeing potentially threatening situations, such as being confronted by a predator. In current times, these responses persist, but fight and flight responses have assumed a wider range of behaviors.

For example, the fight response may be manifested in angry, argumentative behavior, and the flight response may be manifested through social withdrawal, substance abuse, and even television viewing.

Males and females tend to deal with stressful situations differently. Males are more likely to respond to an emergency situation with aggression (fight), while females are more likely to flee (flight), turn to others for help, or attempt to defuse the situation – 'tend and befriend'.

During stressful times, a mother is especially likely to show protective responses toward her offspring and affiliate with others for shared social responses to threat.

PATH TO UNDERSTANDING ‘EMOTIONAL LIVES’ OF ANIMALS

[by Lesley Richardson, Press Association, Wednesday, 4 August 2010]

A framework to understand the emotional lives of animals was revealed today.

Animal choices can be assessed objectively as evidence of pessimistic or optimistic decision-making which indicates their long-term mood.

Professor Mike Mendl and Dr Liz Paul, from the University of Bristol, and Dr Oliver Burman, from the University of Lincoln, looked through papers by experts from Charles Darwin to Paul Ekman and Jaak Panksepp to create the framework which can be used in the field of animal welfare and neuroscience.

Professor Mike Mendl, head of the Animal Welfare and Behaviour research group at Bristol University's School of Clinical Veterinary Science, said: "Because we can measure animal choices objectively, we can use optimistic and pessimistic decision-making as an indicator of the animal's emotional state which itself is much more difficult to assess.

"Recent studies by our group and others suggest that this may be a valuable new approach in a variety of animal species.

"Public interest in animal welfare remains high, with widespread implications for the way in which animals are treated, used and included in society.

"We believe our approach could help us to better understand and assess an animal's emotion."

An animal living in a world where it is regularly threatened by predators will develop a negative emotion or mood, such as anxiety.

Conversely, an environment with plenty of opportunities for survival resources creates a more positive mood state.

The researchers argued that these emotional states not only reflect the animal's experiences, they also help it decide how to make choices, especially in ambiguous situations which could have good or bad outcomes.

An animal in a negative state will benefit from adopting a safety-first, pessimistic response to an ambiguous event, according to the review which is published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

An example includes interpreting a rustle in the grass as signalling a predator compared to an animal in a positive state with a more optimistic response which would interpret it as signalling prey.