4: Behaving Emotionally
Each culture dictates the display rules for emotion: to be overly emotional is a sign of weakness, but to have no emotions is to be disinterested, detached, and inhuman. We cannot control the emotions that we feel, but we can control how we behave when we feel them - to repress an emotion and to fake a response that expresses the appropriate emotion, to the appropriate degree, and in the appropriate manner. In this sense, it is not about the emotion, but the behavior.
Much of our learning about emotions occurs in arrears: we recognize when an emotion led us to behave inappropriately and attempt to repress and redirect our impulses when we find ourselves in a similar situation. Etiquette and manners can be learned in advance, and we can speculate what we ought to do when the moment arrives, but experience is the best teacher.
In a previous chapter, the mechanism of emotion was discussed - an immediate reaction that precedes logic by a few milliseconds. The emotion poises us to act, but we decide whether to obey the command and act upon the emotional urge.
It has also been mentioned that our tendency is to rationalize emotional reactions, so we are more likely to act mindlessly on emotion and seek to prove, to ourselves as much as others, that the choice we made in the heat of the moment was logical, rational, and correct. We are thus unlikely to acknowledge and learn from our failures.
So how, then, do we moderate our emotional behavior?
Signals and Expressions
We can often easily identify the signals and expressions of emotions in another person, which they send by means of nonverbal signals. It is posture, gesture, expression, and tone of voice that communicate the emotional state to others. Over the phone, we are blinded to all they physical signals of emotion and rely on vocal qualities. Through digital media, we are bereft of any visual or auditory signal.
But in person, we use emotional cues to understand what is being communicated - or more importantly, the attitude, motivation, and intent of the other person. And while we may not be fully aware or in control of it, we also send emotional signals and expressions to others so that they may understand our attitude, motivation, and intent.
He returns to the example of an emotionally heated discussion between a married couple - and suggests moments in the exchange in which being more attentive to the other person's emotional signals or controlling the signals that were being sent back might have led to a calmer and more productive discussion.
He then speaks of instances in which people attempt to conceal their emotions - particularly in negotiation, in which showing how you really feel can give the other side an advantage. Back to the married couple, there are moments in which responding to the emotional needs of others is more effective that expressing your own emotions.
We do not have the ability to turn our emotions off, but we do not have to act on them, and we can suppress the degree to which we express them. He returns briefly to the notion of microexpressions - the facial expression of genuine emotion that lasts for a fraction of a second before our suppression mechanisms set it.
Even when we are accurate in our estimation of another person's emotion, we do not know the source. We can tell someone is angry, but not exactly why: they may be angry at us because of what we said or did, or angry about something we did in a prior encounter, or angry because of something they are thinking about instead of listening.
We very often create a fiction about the other person that filters the emotional signals we expect them to express, and find evidence that our prejudgment was correct. That is, we expected another person to be angry about something we have to tell them, and seek signs of anger in their voice and expression to prove ourselves right, even if we have to invent them.
Expression of Emotion
There is a general tendency to think of emotions in a binary manner: an emotion is either positive or negative. This overlooks emotions that can be either (a person may be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised), or an emotion can itself be covalent (people enjoy feeling angry sometimes), so a simple system such as this is of little value.
Every emotional has a basic type: anger, fear, contempt, worry, surprise, happiness, sadness, disgust, etc. It also has a different level of intensity, a different cause, and a different objective. Most systems that attempt to classify emotion simply oversimplify and often misrepresent emotion in order to fit it neatly into one of a very limited number of boxes.
There is also difficulty classifying emotions by facial expression because many of them can produce similar facial expressions. Amusement and relief both express themselves in a smile.
He speaks for a time about vocal expression, and agrees with a theorist (Tomkins) that each emotion gives a person "an impulse to make a sound" that is indicative of their emotional state - but we have the ability to suppress vocalization entirely. He does note that most people are less accomplished at "faking" the vocal signals of emotion - so it is quite common to detect emotional deception when the facial expression and tone of voice are not aligned. While he's at it, he also mentions that vocal signals are harder to ignore - an it enables a person to send an emotional expression to someone who is not in sight (the cries of an infant).
There is then a bit about the physical expression of emotion, which he admits have not been researched in much detail. We find that a person is drawn to be closer when they are amused or angry, but increases distance when there is fear or disgust toward a person or object. In certain expressions of sadness there is a loss of overall muscle rigor, causing a person to slump or even collapse - but there is also physical relaxation from the emotion of relief.
Aside of the instantaneous emotional response, everything else that we do when we are emotional is learned - whether we choose to adhere to or deviate from cultural standards, we are imitating an expression we have seen in others.
And these expressions tend to be functional: we assess whether a voluntary emotional expression was helpful in achieving our goals - and if it was, then that behavior is reinforced and repeated. While it is easiest for us to become habituated to the natural expression of emotion, we can with effort become habituated to an unnatural expression. And once we have made a habit of something, it becomes an automated response that we activate with minimal consideration.
Habits may become common among many people, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is universal or instinctive - but because our expressions are meant to be understood by others, they tend to conform to cultural norms or patterns.
Internal Effects of Emotions
There is a brief consideration of the emotional effects on the autonomic nervous system - and it is on these reactions that polygraphs and other means of emotional observation are based: fear causes the palms to sweat and the respiration to become shallow, so it is assumed that when a person lies, his body exhibits these symptoms because he is feeling the fear of his deception being discovered.
Psychologically, emotions affect the mind. An emotional trigger brings to mind the memories of incidents in which a similar emotion is felt, which shape the way in which we think and react. Research suggests that this is even true of memories that we have difficulty calling to mind when we are calm - the fear we feel calls to memory a childhood incident that may have been forgotten, or at least buried deep in memory.
There's a bit about the involuntary regulation of emotional reaction, which the author admits has not been sufficiently researched, but nonetheless seems plausible. A person who routinely suppresses their anger has created an association between the feeling of anger and the mechanisms of suppression that become like a habitual reflex. Even as he begins to feel anger, these buffers become active, unconsciously or pre-consciously suppressing his anger even before he may recognize that he is feeling angry.
These responses become a kind of emotional programming, sets of instructions that kick in before the conscious mind can choose how to respond. They not only poise us for action and cause us to have an immediate expression (which again we can choose to take or ignore), but they also trigger internal physical reactions such as the release of hormones.
This might explain the reason that some people seem emotionless and others quite emotional - their historical pattern of expressing or repressing their emotion has created a reflex action that intensifies or dulls emotions before they are aware that they are feeling them. They do not have stronger or weaker emotions, but are merely accustomed or expressing them with more or less drama.
Behavioral Programming
This emotional programming might better be seen as behavioral programming - because the emotion is not the program, merely the button that is pushed that causes the behavioral program to run. Again, we cannot choose whether or not to feel fear, but we can choose how we behave when the emotion of fear is upon us.
Behavioral programs are open to various degrees of editing: some are editable and others are not. Those that are not editable are seen in animals: their instinctive reaction, which they cannot change. But we also notice in higher species of animal, particularly the mammals, the ability for these instincts to be changed by feedback from the external world (Pavlovian conditioning). And in man, there is a voluntary component - he may choose to program himself, and may even do this in advance by imagining a situation and simulating an emotional reaction.
The argument of nature and nurture is presently at a stalemate: it is acknowledged that some behaviors are natural and others are learned. And while some behaviors are entirely learned (there is no natural instinct to ride a bicycle), even many of them do not begin with an empty shell. We draw upon some existing code when cobbling together new programs.
While we speak of the idiosyncratic nature of the human mind, there is evidence that certain emotional signals and responses develop in a similar way in people who have similar life experience. That is, unless there is some unusual experience, people tend to develop the same behavioral patterns. The psychology of the "normal" person is based on the assumptions of a normal life, with normal experiences, and nothing out of the ordinary.
There are certain programs that were written far in our evolutionary past, because these behaviors were useful to our ancestors: we have been hunter-gatherer tribesmen for thousands of years before adopting the modern lifestyle. Some do not believe we are able to rewrite these preset instructions - and even if we are, it is not something that is done easily. But even these ancient patterns were developed at one time, as a departure from the patterns that existed before them.
It may also be because life is largely similar for most of the human race that certain emotional programs seem universal. The differences between people of drastically differing cultures are actually quite superficial. To get food, to seek shelter, to mate, to collaborate, and so on are activities that all humans perform, in different ways.
Not only are we programmed to act on our own emotions, but we become programmed to react to the emotions of others. There are certain ways we react to any other person, more specific ways we react to a specific type or class of person, and even more specific ways we react to a specific individual. These programs may clash with one another when we witness the emotional reaction of a person for whom we have multiple programs due to their various qualities.
There is some argument as to the degree of control we have over these established programs. In many instances, we act first and think later, and try to modify our actions afterward. This is evident in people who attempt to "fix" conversations - when they recognize that their reaction was wrong and they attempt to override it with a different reaction during the course of the same conversation. To deny having said something they said, or to express a desire to start over from a point at which they went wrong.
There's also a convoluted but about linking emotions. We may feel regret about having felt angry a moment before, and so our programming abruptly switches from one to the other. There is also the period of time in which the two emotions are overlapping - in which we are still feeling angry while we are beginning to feel regret.
Learning and Unlearning Emotional Responses
The author theorizes that any emotional response that requires a bodily movement is more easily learned (or unlearned) than facial expression, and facial expression is easier than vocal expression.
He speaks of the reaction that drivers learn - stepping on the brake pedal to avoid a collision with an object that unexpectedly appears in front of the vehicle. The reaction is so strong that parents teaching their teenagers to driver routinely report stepping on the "imaginary brake" while in the passenger's seat. This is a physical reaction that is not an established behavior in our species (our primitive ancestors did not have automobiles).
But also consider the tendency to strike out at others in anger. We often see this in animals and young children, but the adult human being has learned not to respond to irritation with physical violence. This is an example of a very strong and very ancient emotional response that is routinely un-learned - though in most criminals, we find this self-discipline lacking.
He returns to the consideration of dysfunctional emotional reactions - those that cause a person to do things that are harmful to himself or others, or refrain from doing things that would seem necessary to avoid harm. There are rather many socially awkward individuals who damage their relationships with others because they have not learned the appropriate way to respond to emotions in themselves and others.
A necessary first step to controlling emotion is recognizing it. We must develop emotional self-consciousness, what the Bhuddist calls "mindfulness," of our own emotional states. Ideally, we must recognize that we are experiencing an emotion before we take action, because it is only in this moment that we can choose to have a different reaction.
A second step is impulse control - the ability to choose not to act the way we feel like acting. Again, he mentions the Bhuddists, who believe it takes years of meditation to gain this ability, but also to philosophers and psychologists who have more practical ways of intercepting these impulses. Any toddler who has been potty-trained has gained control over his most basic impulses, and this does not require years of meditation.
The third step is to have an alternate program to which we can switch - to do something other than follow our habitual pattern of behavior, or to refrain from taking any action at all. It is generally most effective to replace one habit with another than to deconstruct a habit and leave the bare wires exposed - we may unconsciously develop another bad habit if we do not replace it with a good one.
When dealing with others, there is the matter of appraisal. We must be able to accurately identify their emotional response (which is simple) and then to identify the source of that emotion (which is more difficult). Then we must predict their reaction and determine a method for deflecting or re-training it. This is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to do with strangers - but should be much easier to do with those people with whom we interact frequently.
In the end, there is the concession that our attempts to control emotional behavior do not always work, and even when they do it requires consistent effort to re-train our emotional responses. It involves changing what we perceive to be more attentive, being more objective in our assessment, and being more strategic in our choice of actions.
We cannot instantly change, but must strive toward change and appreciate the small successes along the way as we make marginal and incremental improvement in our emotional behavior.