How The Mind Works

Emotions are likely ubiquitous among humans across the globe. There are many arguments that emotions are culturally specific, and yet what are specific are the actions or images that bring about the emotions, not the emotions themselves. People have surprisingly similar ways of expressing anger, sadness, happiness, and surprise. Even in cultures that have remained isolated from Western societies, we see similar emotional expression and full recognition of emotions expressed in pictures. Therefore, emotions are likely part of the core of being human. Why we have emotions is also a controversial question, and Pinker contends that emotions help us decide what to do next. If we want or need multiple things, we can’t partially go after all of them. We need to feel fear or urgency, thirst or hunger, a general desire to achieve a goal to motivate us to go after it. When there are multiple goals, more intense emotions help us decide what to do first, but then we are still feeling the lack of the other goals, so we don’t forget them.

Disgust is one of the emotions we see expressed the same way in cultures all over the world. However, we see it expressed toward very different objects or behaviors. Disgust serves one clear evolutionary purpose: Make anything potentially dangerous or counter-productive disgusting. However, disgust also extends to food items and some behaviors that aren’t specifically problematic. For food, many disgusting foods in one culture are regularly consumed and enjoyed in other cultures. One of the best theories of why foods become disgusting relates to what was available to our ancestors. If they readily ate a food, it was passed down as acceptable (i.e., it will not kill you and provides sustenance), and if they did not readily eat a food, it became banned. The ban is a precaution against the food being potentially poisonous and a winnowing out of preferred tastes for the food. Ingesting anything has an element of risk because it gives the item quick access to your entire body, and humans who were most careful about the foods they ate probably survived the longest.

Fear is another ubiquitous emotion, and this one is more similar across cultures. Snakes and spiders are common fears, as are heights, darkness, and blood. Some fears appear ingrained from birth as they manifest at the first exposure, and others are learned with interesting differences. Some fears are easy to create, such as those fears our ancestor would have faced. A child can be taught to be afraid of a rat more readily than of a pair of opera glasses. Rats weren’t scary to our ancestors, but they are an animal and have traits like other animals that make them less predictable and more worthy of fear than a pair of opera glasses. Some fears are difficult to teach, as any public health official who has tried to get people to slow down and buckle up knows. We should be much more afraid of those dangers (speeding and not wearing a seat belt) than of spiders or snakes, but we are not. Fear serves a distinct purpose, but it has not adapted with changing environments (like disgust), producing a mismatch between what we fear and what we “should” probably fear.

One perplexing collection of emotions includes those that involve self-sacrifice. Altruism, or behaving in a way that benefits others at a cost to you, is difficult to explain using natural selection. However, altruism is typically seen among relations—those with similar genes. Most species do not perfectly replicate. Instead, they reproduce by combining genes from two members. Therefore, multiple individuals have an interest in the survival of the newest members, and many members share at least a percentage of their genes. These connections mean that behaviors that sometimes appear disadvantageous to the individual may benefit a related member.

Altruistic acts are regulated by a complex play of emotional displays and negotiation. As Pinker explains, birds that groom themselves can reach most of their bodies by themselves, but they can’t reach some spots (like the tops of their heads). They need help, and it benefits everyone to help and be helped in return. Who should each bird help? The answer is those who are related and those who help in return. A bird will remember a counterpart that doesn’t reciprocate and refuse to groom them in the future, ensuring that few cheaters and mostly helpful members survive. That simple example compounds with more intelligent species, like humans, as deception can be subtler. With each generation, those who deceive best and those who expose deceit best have the best chances of survival, such that genes that help for deception and sniffing out deceit will be selected, increasing the sophistication of the game.

One question that arrives from studying emotions is why show emotions at all. Especially in an intelligent species in which deception becomes highly sophisticated, those who show emotion too readily will struggle to deceive or convince others and get the best deal in negotiations. Wouldn’t those who can best control their emotions survive best, such that automatic displays of emotion (like blushing) are selected against? Pinker argues that there is one reason for this display. Physiological displays of emotion, which are not controlled and give away how a person is really feeling, are the ultimate way to convince others that you are telling the truth. If you blush when asked if you are attracted to someone, regardless of the words you say, you have shown that in fact you are attracted to that person. It may make you a little vulnerable to admit that attraction, but it also means others know it is a genuine feeling. You had no control over the blushing. Having some “tells,” some signs of genuine emotions, is part of the complex game of social interaction, and these tells are just as useful and necessary, even with some drawbacks, as the ability to deceive.