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The study of facial expressions seems like it would be a terrific place to apply Vygotsky's theory of the convergence of the biological and cultural in individual behavior and the human higher psychological functions. As we now know via Ekman and others, all humans with a typical physiology use the same basic muscles in their facial expressions. These are very complex and subtle processes that have been determined in biological evolution. No animals besides humans have so many possible facial expressions, or such an ability to control them. Like the upright posture, the voice tract and the hand, these special facial features and abilities are uniquely biological products of human cultural evolution - and primate evolution before it - over many hundreds of thousands and millions of years. What a perfect example of how humans have created themselves over the eons! Don't you agree?
Facial expressions, of course, are quite unlike verbal and written signs, such as words, which contain detached and assigned meanings. They are more like gestures in that facial expressions are directly connected to body movements and body reactions. A smile, therefore, has simultaneously both biological and cultural meaning (although smiles etc. certainly can be faked - up to a point). Other things that might be analogous to facial expressions with regard to the **simultaneous** inclusion of both biological and cultural meaning in **real-time communication** might include voice inflection, playing a musical instrument, sexual touching, and dancing (think of how important physical things like breathing and balance are to such complex activities). The whole notion of the microexpression seems to brilliantly reveal this remarkable dialectic between the biological and cultural. Modern recording and analysis techniques uncover subtleties never before measurable, not to mention how we now watch big screen actors and directors use these expressions with great skill for dramatic effect. This study of facial expressions and emotions reveal processes that strike me as among the most dramatic confirmations of Vygotsky's approach that I can think of. It seems like such rich territory to explore. Is any Vygotsky-oriented researcher pursuing this?
It seems that Ekman and de Rivera approach the question of emotions by first doing something in common, and then diverging in two different directions. What they both seem to do in common is conflate the biological and cultural, just as Vygotsky criticized for doing this the two great wings of (what he called) the old psychology - objective psychology and subjective psychology. Neither Ekman nor de Rivera seem to see it essential to try to analytically differentiate the two in their theory. The two very different processes, which Vygotsky emphasized must be distinguished and understood as following very different laws of motion and development, seem to be bundled together in both approaches. And then the two researchers seem to go in different directions - one seems to try to reduce emotions to biological and physiological processes, while the other seems to want to compress emotions into categories of universal social and cultural meaning. Does this seem like a fair synopsis of the two approaches?
Both approaches can be and have been very fruitful, and are capable of producing many useful insights and grounds for further research. But stepping back and looking at these two interesting approaches side by side, aren't we still encountering the dualism between natural and social science that Vygotsky sought to overcome?
- Steve On Jul 7, 2010, at 10:14 AM, Martin Packer wrote:
Steve,I admire what you're doing here (placing you above me on the Status dimension!). What you've written is accurate; the only thing I would add is that status/recognition movements are vertical (rather than withdrawal it's more a matter of putting the other down); openness/ being movements are movements of openness/closing. But this amounts to trying to reconstruct a 200-page monograph from a single diagram. To judge its plausibility one really needs to read the original. You ask, is this semantic space universal? De Rivera has done research in Japan and elsewhere, but I don't have the details to hand.Talking of universal, Dr. Lightman is based on Paul Ekman, of USF, who has developed a coding scheme to identify emotions based on the movements of several hundred facial muscles. Ekman sees these movements as innate and universal. It's fascinating work, I just don't think it's the whole story, by a long way. It's rather like saying that by examining the movements of lips, tongue and glottis I can identify each of the words of English (or perhaps all languages if you want to be universal). Unfortunately this tells me nothing about the semantics or pragmatics of speech.Martin On Jul 6, 2010, at 10:08 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:Thanks, Martin. So let me put the chart into sentences using action verbs and see if I have it about right - and if it sounds about right as claims about emotions. I'll be the subject and you be the object. There are 12 pairs, which I'll number as I go. The subject-object relational direction along each axis, in the way I happen to be describing each point, is ... away, toward, toward, away. The first two points in each axis are the actions of the subject on themselves in relation to the object ... and the second two points are actions of the subject on the object in relation to themselves.Hence, along the Intimacy-Belonging axis, I can 1) withdraw in fear, 2) be attracted to you with love, 3) draw you to me with my desire, or 4) repel you with my anger. If I do these, correspondingly, you will feel 1) anxiety, 2) secure, 3) confidence, or 4) depressed.Along the Status-Recognition axis, I can 5) withdraw in horror or dismay, 6) feel high esteem toward you, 7) shower you with my admiration, or 8) dismiss you with my contempt. If I do these, correspondingly, you will feel 5) embarrassment and/or guilt, 6) humility, 7) pride, or 8) shame.Along the Openness-Being axis, I can 9) withdraw in suspicion or dread, 10) feel accepting of you, 11) share my sense of wonder with you or 12) subject you to my rejection. If I do these, correspondingly, you will feel 9) startled or panicked, 10) satisfaction, 11) delight, or 12) sorrow.Do I have these about right? And in and of themselves, do these emotional relations sound about right? To me, some seem intuitively okay, some odd. Does de Rivera believe these apply universally?I like the idea that emotions are social relations, and not just individual body actions. But I am not sure how to get from that idea to this chart.Perhaps we could ask Dr. Lightman on the show Lie To Me. He might know! LOL(Lie To Me is a US fictional detective-style show some may have seen about a social scientist expert on emotions and his colleagues using videos of microexpressions and so forth to solve investigations for the government, etc. They always catch the bad guys in their lies.)- Steve On Jul 6, 2010, at 6:00 PM, Martin Packer wrote:Thanks, Steve. And I just found this brief summary online, from the abstract of one of de Rivera's more recent publications:"While emotions are usually treated as internal states, it is possible to view them as social relationships. From this perspective, the different emotions are not primarily understood in terms of facial expression, physiological pattern, hedonic tone, or level of arousal, but as different transformations of the relationship between person and other."Martin On Jul 6, 2010, at 7:31 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:Thanks Martin, I am thinking about your comments. Meanwhile, I am reposting your chart as a .jpg file (it was originally posted as a .pict file). Someone asked me how I opened it. I dunno, my computer just did. Might be easier for some to open this, hope it works.- Steve <from xmca jul 5 2010 Interpersonal movements of emot.jpg> On Jul 6, 2010, at 5:08 PM, Martin Packer wrote:Steve,The diagram is just that, a synoptic look at a long monograph which I recommend as a good read. Yes, de Rivera was offering a "structural" - basically structuralist - analysis of the emotions. The basic idea is that each emotion is a movement, often literal and if not metaphorical, between two people. Each movement has both a subject and an object: to put it in very simple terms, I can push you away in anger, or I can withdraw from you in fear. In both cases you are the object of the emotion, I am the subject. The movement is in opposite directions, but in both cases it is along the dimension of intimacy. Other emotions involve movements along two other dimensions, which de Rivera names openness and status. The experience one has as the object of an emotion is different from ones experience as a subject. I should add that he has conducted cross-cultural comparisons of emotion.de Rivera does write about the situatedness of these movements, though of course even the object of an emotion is in the world for the person who is a subject. In fact, he argues that each emotion provides a unique way of understanding a situation. For more of this I always recommend the article by Hall & Cobey, 'Emotion as the transformation of world.' So, on this analysis, although an emotion is an interpersonal movement, and so social, it is *also* an experience of the situation, and so individual.I wanted to study moral conflicts, not in the form of what people say when they are asked to reason about hypothetical moral dilemmas (a la Kohlberg), but in terms of what people actually do. One clear component of a real, first-person moral conflict is its emotionality. How to look at that without reducing it to an individual subjective experience, chaotic and irrational (the empiricist approach) - or the result of some intellectual process of appraisal (the rationalist approach, common among cognitive psychologists)? What I came to argue was that emotion plays a central role in conflict: it structures the situation in a way that is immediate, unreflective, and with a strong sense of conviction. It is a disclosure, a first way of understanding what has happened, in action rather than in cognition, and it gives rise to practical concerns (an impulse to confess, or seek revenge...). This has many positive aspects, but it also makes it difficult to see the other person's point of view, or even to recognize that they *have* a point of view. The conflicts I studied only got resolved when people talked, even if only to try to convince one another to do what they considered the right thing, because then they found out that what they had taken to be 'the facts' were only one interpretation. The values behind the facts started to become evident. I think many of us would recognize these characteristics of everyday conflicts.Martin On Jul 6, 2010, at 2:33 PM, Steve Gabosch wrote:Martin, on the interesting chart you modified from de Rivera (1977) with the 12 pairs of subject/object interpersonal movement of emotions. It seems to deal with emotions in a decontextualized way - we don't see the situations that create these responses. Am I correct in that observation? The pairings it depicts are thought-provoking, but I don't understand some or most of them. The whole subject-object structure confuses me. The premise of the chart that emotions are a way of being engaged in the world, and that emotions are rational, or have rationality, makes sense - I am ok with that - but I don't see how this chart is connected to the world - it seems to detach emotions from their context. I just see an interesting list of oppositions and groupings of emotions without explanation. So I seem to be missing something. Could you explain this chart a little?On the topic in this thread, I agree with David K that abstraction and generalization are two different processes. I am not convinced yet that Vygotsky was always clear on that distinction - he seems to conflate the two in Ch 5 in some places, for example, but seems to have found great relief when he solved new aspects of this question in Ch 6, criticizing the block experiments and their thinking at the time for some important limitations in this regard. At the same time, David points out the great pressures bearing down on psychologists and pedologists in the early 1930's, greatly distorting that conversation. Lots of puzzles to work out in that Ch 5 to Ch 6 transition on concept formation theory.- Steve On Jul 5, 2010, at 3:30 PM, Martin Packer wrote:On Jul 5, 2010, at 4:58 PM, Martin Packer wrote:<Interpersonal movements of emot.pict>_______________________________________________an emotion is an interpersonal movement.systematic structure to the emotions, captured in the diagrams with dimensions of intimacy, status, and openness. there is a rationality to emotion - emotion is a way of being engaged and involved in the world.xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca_______________________________________________ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
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