10 - Emotions in Social Relationships
(EN: No chapter introduction)
Love and Happiness
The authors regard two things as fundamental facets of human life: First, that we are social creatures and cooperate to meet our needs and accomplish our goals. Second, that even though we may choose to closely collaborate and care for one another's needs interdependently, each person is a distinct individual who acts in a self-interested manner.
Historically, the approach to love and anger considered them to be almost polar opposites, but there is some degree of hostility in even the most amiable relationships, and even great strife among individuals who are deeply passionate about one another. If we regard this as curious or paradoxical, it is only because we misunderstand the nature of those emotions.
There is also in any relationship a struggle for dominance, in which one party expects the other to accept a subordinate role. The anger that arises from frustration when the other party is resistant to overtures of power is not the opposite of the attraction that is felt, but a precipitating consequence of it.
Going back to evolution and animal behavior: we find that in pack animals there is motivation to work cooperatively in meeting needs (taking prey) and defending against threats - but this does not preclude the struggle within the pack for dominance and authority.
But the degree to which an individual will cooperate with others is mitigated by the benefit they perceive in choosing to cooperate rather than detach themselves from others. In animals this is driven by instinct, and in man by his reason and emotion.
A sense of connection between mother and child is fundamental to most species, but the connection between man and woman is entirely optional, and found in only a few species of mammals and birds. The notion of caregiving to a mate, not merely the young that resulted, was a critical evolutionary development for humanity, given the long length of time it requires a human infant to be self-sufficient.
Intimacy and Collaboration
There's a brief consideration of intimacy outside of sexual relationships: the comfort people take in friendships and in being part of a community.
Reference is made to a questionnaire of 100,000 Americans who ranked having good relationships, in marriage and otherwise, as the greatest factor in achieving happiness - above wealth, power, youth, and health.
Principles of Love
There seems to be common acceptance of the notion that the attachment style of adults in sexual partnerships reflects the attachment style they had as a child with their opposite-sex parent - in common parlance, that women seek men who were like their fathers and men seek women who were like their mothers. This seems to persist in spite of the weakness of the correlation between child and adult attachment styles.
Even Darwin observed that the behavior of a mating pair shares may aspects of a child-parent relationship - the way that adults seek to be in close physical contact, touching and caressing, even feeding one another - echoes nurturing behaviors.
Neither does it help that love is fascinating to many cultures, as there is much literature and social customers built around the attraction and intimacy of sexual relationships, which often clouds and misdirects understanding of the concept and its related behavioral components.
Another confounding factor is that human beings recognize one another as unique individuals, not merely as people who perform certain roles - there is a general idea of what it means to be a friend, a parent, a lover, or a husband but people in those roles are regarded as individuals, not merely role-players - hence in seeking a mate, it is not merely any member of the opposite sex that will do, but specific characteristics and idiosyncrasies of an individual.
This is also found to be true in other relationships - it is seen that among chimpanzee groups an orphaned child may be adopted by another female. But it is also not uncommon for females in the group to reject an orphan, or an orphan to reject a substitute for its mother.
In human society, we feel a unique love of a specific person, not a need for someone to fill a needed function, and the attachment is so strong that we form lifelong partnerships, and being widowed or separated from a mate has profound effects on human psychology, as does the death of a child or a parent.
Some theorists draw a distinction between the types or stages of love. Romantic and erotic love draws humans into courtship and mating, but this must be replaced by a less dramatic and more powerful caregiving love that sustains a long-term relationship.
Evolutionary Perspectives on Attachment and Sexuality
From a biological perspective, processes that promote reproduction are essential to the survival of a species. As previously mentioned, the length of time it takes to raise a child to the point at which it is self-sufficient is also significant for human beings, such that prolonged attachment becomes necessary.
Functionally, a there must be a strong and mutual affinity between mother and child, but for practical purposes there must also be an affinity between father and family. As such, our social tendencies, the desire to feel warmth and affection of others, are keys not only to being social, but to species survival.
Choosing a Mate
It is suggested that in most human societies, women select mates based on their predicted investment in parenting rather than from indicators of physical prowess such as being large or strong. On the other hand, male interests in mate selections are based on fertility and healthiness, the ability to bear and rear children.
It is believed this is the reason that men remain interested in women in a more superficial manner, and focus on visual indications (such as body shape - breasts and hips in particular) of worthiness as health and fertility can be assessed on physical factors rather than psychological ones.
(EN: my sense is that this plays into gender stereotypes, and the authors present no research to back these assertions. I also sense it is from a cultural perspective of civilized societies - in more primitive groups, physical attributes still reign and even in civilized situations there is still internal deliberation between the attraction to physical features and the realization that other qualities are more important in the present way of life.)
Anger
Emotions that underlie conflict are "celebrated" in literature because stories of danger and strife are emotionally compelling and can easily be depicted by description of visual phenomena, whereas stories of positive emotions are more subjective and internal.
Such emotions are also considered important to civilized existence, as they must be present to some degree to motivate behaviors that lead to success, but too great a degree and these emotions become disruptive to society.
Aggression
In the history of western thought, aggressive emotions (anger in particular) have been portrayed as character flaws. It was the emotion that the Stoics saw as the greatest challenge to overcome, and aggressive display is not well tolerated by the majority of societies.
A more contemporary view of aggression regards it as a motivation to overcome a challenge - and in a social environment, the "Challenge" might take the form of other people. Various cultures have different levels of tolerance to the level of aggression that is considered to be acceptable: a less aggressive person is consider to be weak and ineffective, a more aggressive one is considered to be hostile and dangerous to others. Virtually all cultures have no tolerance for aggression that results in violence.
However, it must be noted that violence is not the natural consequence of aggression - merely one way in which individuals choose to express their feelings of aggression. This error is often made by politicians and social scientists, in assuming that the two are inseparable and that instead of attempting to curb violence, they seek to curb aggression.
Submission Within Social Groups
Zoologists have observed that dominance hierarchies are common in and mammals and certain bird species. These hierarchies are negotiated by threatening displays of aggression and complementary displays of deference, and between such incidents the position that has been established persists. High rank in the primate hierarchies is marked by better access to food and sexual partners. It is little different in human societies. The means by which we display aggression or deference has become subtler.
Aside of the position gained by individual merits, there is also a position gained by association. It has even been observed in primate species that families and supportive groups are recognized by other groups - such that when the head of one group gains status, the members of his group also gain status. Such observations lead some (Cheyney 1990) to speculate that primates recognize one another as individuals in the context of groups.
However, reconciliation is as important as aggression. In less social species the outcome of a territorial conflict results in the vanquished surrendering a territory to the victor. In order for a social group to persist, the vanquished must not be vanquished from the locale, merely from a position in the hierarchy in a group that will remain cohesive.
Reconciliation is in the interest of the winning party, to defeat someone in a fight and fail to reconcile creates resentment and a long-term opponent, who may return to challenge the victor again or form alliances with others to form a larger and more powerful group. (EN: this seems reasonable, but is not backed by research - so in theory an aggressor must reconcile and in practice many can observe to do so, if only by ceasing hostilities and allowing the defeated to cozy up to him, but there's no indication of the internal mechanisms that motivate either party to do so, merely the indication it is functionally necessary.)
Alliances and relationships are significant to social primates - so the typical sequence of any conflict begins with a phase of aggression, then leads to deference by one party to indicate he is amenable to being inferior, then finally a reconciliation by the other to bring hostilities to a close so that the daily routine may resume.
Aggression as a Product of Frustration
Thus considered, anger is considered to be the primary emotion of interpersonal conflict. It also follows that aggression is not a primary emotion, but the result of frustration. So long as progress is being made toward the goals and individuals are comfortable in playing their part, aggression does not arise.
Some details are presented from an experiment (Berkowitz 1981) in which test subjects evaluated suggestions made by another party (actually a proctor), which they could either reward (with one to five nickels), ignore, or punish (with a blast of loud noise in the other booth). In general, participants delivered more rewards than punishments. (EN: Looking at the numbers, "ignore" was very seldom used - which is interesting but likely not germane.)
The subject evaluating the suggestions was either allowed to sit comfortable or was made uncomfortable (placing an arm in a cold water bath) - and, not surprisingly, those subjects who were uncomfortable were slightly less inclined to reward, but greatly more inclined to punish.
While the emotions of the subject were not monitored, it was generally observed that the subjects who were made uncomfortable became increasingly more angry over time, and shorter with the staff - which also indicates that an aggressive person is likely to vent their anger on someone, but is not discriminate in choosing a target.
Cultural Variations in Aggression Management
One of the most distinctive differences in cultures, from a psychological perspective, is the way in which aggression is exercised and tolerated among members of the group.
One ethnographer (Briggs 1970) lived among an Inuit tribe for several months. The 35-member tribe was engaged primarily in fishing and trade and lived in a primitive setting (igloos and tents). She observed that aggression was very seldom expressed among adult members of the tribe, and children were coddled rather than disciplined. The researcher (whom the authors have met personally and describe as "charming and amiable") found herself prone to irritation living under harsh conditions, and notes one incident in which she had a tense confrontation with some travellers who had damaged one of the tribe's canoes and wished to borrow another one (the tribe had few possessions and were generous, but the canoes were critical to their ability to support themselves), and notes that the members of the tribe shunned her as a result.
Another ethnographer (Chagnon 1968) spent time with the Yanomamo people of southern Venezuela, a tribal group that is highly aggressive, regularly conducting raids on neighboring tribes in which they made a point of killing at least one person, dueling with one another (often with clubs). Between internal and external strife, fully a quarter of mortality in adult males was due to violence, and while women and children are not involved they show aggression toward one another routinely. Fierceness results in elevated social status and is necessary even to defend one's household and position in the village.
To demonstrate that aggression is not unique to primitive tribes, the authors present statistics about American schoolchildren (Hammond 1993). A national survey found that 50% of boys and 25% of girls had been in a physical fight in the past year; 23% of boys admitted to carrying a knife to school; and 3% had carried a gun.
At inner-city schools in Washington DC, the levels are elevated, as was their exposure to violent crime: 9% had at some point witnessed a shooting, 13% a stabbing, 16% had seen a dead body, and 25% had witnessed a mugging. It's noted that emotional disorders related to fear and aggression were elevated, and particularly so in those who had witnessed violence directly.
Interdependence ad Individualism
While patterns of aggression and violence differ widely from one group to another, the authors observe that there are certain "modes" that are common:
In societies in which there is strong interdependence, aggression is rare. This is particularly true in groups where existence is hardscrabble and success depends on cooperation. In essence, collectivism promotes pacifism.
(EN: That's an interesting observation, as the common perception is that poverty causes violence, but it seems rational that groups of poor people who must cooperate to overcome hardship would be less violent than groups in which the success of one person's welfare is their own concern and others are seen as rivals rather than assistants in overcoming hardship.)
It's also noted that aggression is higher among people who see their problems as extrinsic (something in the environment caused them to fail) as opposed to intrinsic (something they did or failed to do in the situation) as aggression is an emotion that is directed at an object, such that people who take the perspective that something else caused them to fail are more likely to be hostile toward the external cause of their frustration, particularly when it is perceived that another person is their tormentor.
While members of cultures who place emphasis of internal causes of failure tend to display less aggression toward others, there is increased incidence of aggression towards self, as evidenced by increased incidence of self-mutilation and suicide.
There's a consideration of the ideals portrayed in Western literature: the epics of Greece and Viking sagas celebrate the heroic individual, and while the age of chivalry tempered violence it still celebrated the heroic knight Even to the modern era, children are encouraged to venerate and emulate heroic figures: pioneers, entrepreneurs, athletes, and comic-book superheroes. Moreover, these role models are often portrayed as overcoming adversity and defeating rivals by virtue of their individual strength and virtues rather than by cooperating.
While amiability is often lauded and encouraged, it is also clear that the competition within an aggressive society drives progress - competition provides incentive for people to attempt great deeds to earn personal rewards. It is no accident that nonaggressive societies remain stagnant but harmonious while aggressive cultures achieve great things but are marked by social discord.
(EN: I was expecting the authors to relate this to gender differences, but they do not. The connection is fairy obvious in that the general observation is that girls are encouraged to be amiable whereas boys are encouraged to be aggressive, which results in a distinct difference in their adult personalities. This is often dismissed as a gender stereotype, but it's plain to see that it is entirely common.)
There is a brief mention of vengeance as another symptom of aggression - whereas competition directs aggression toward achieving success, vengeance directs it toward retaliation in the wake of failure.
(EN: The authors provide no research and offer platitudes and even a Bible verse in support of the notion that vengefulness is counterproductive, and even look to literature to witness that vengeance is a common dramatic device - though I would add that literature portrays vengeance as negative, such examples in which the protagonist is vengeful and his actions result in success are very rare and it is more often he fails or suffers the consequences of pursuing revenge.)
Aggression in the Adjustment of Relationships
As noted previously, societies have power hierarchies and the maintenance of the group requires deference between the ranks - aggression either serves to establish, reinforce, or adjust the power relationship between members of society. Ideally, it does so without violence, when one party expresses deference or withdraws its pretenses of dominance.
Here, a distinction is made between aggression and annoyance, as it is common for people in a relationship to become annoyed with one another without becoming aggressive - the difference being that annoyance has nothing to do with the power relationship and generally fades without the offended party taking action.
In a survey of married and single university students (Averill 1982), subjects kept diaries of instances in which they felt angry or annoyed. 66% reported an incident of anger once or twice a week and 44% reported annoyance once a day - and the authors suggest these are underestimates because frustration and annoyance generally fades quickly and is forgotten.
In assessing the incidents, 94% described situations of frustration in which another person interfered (if only by failing to assist) in their pursuit of a goal, and 96% also mentioned violation of personal expectations of another person. It was also observed that anger was often caused by a person the subject claimed to like in general (friends, family, and coworkers), and while frequent annoyance and anger are often cited as reasons for terminating a relationship, it is far more common for people to attempt to work through their differences and preserve the relationship.
It was also found that 80% of participants noted incidents in which they felt angry or frustrated with themselves rather than another party. They would cite disappointment at something they had done. In such instances, it was "typical" (no percentage disclosed) for the participant to mitigate their self-assessment by indicating they felt justified, or that the circumstances were beyond their control, or that they did what seemed best at the time and regretted it only afterward.
Two-thirds of participants indicated that anger was negative in general, but at the same time 62% indicated that aggression and anger was beneficial in bringing about a positive resolution, and that the reconciliation served to strengthen the relationship.
Cultural Codes
Aggression is used to provoke fear in the other party, and thereby win dominance over them. However, when the claim to dominance is seen as unmerited, aggression is answered with aggression and a struggle for dominance ensues.
In humans, this pattern remains evident but there are also a range of emotions such as embarrassment, shame, anxiety, and the like that are also used in establishing and reinforcing relationships. The degree to which dominance and competition is subsumed by more subtle emotions is entirely dependent on culture.
Here, the differences between male aggression and female aggression are contrasted, with a note that there are certain gender-specific patterns that seem to be universal: males function as hunters and soldiers are more abrupt and direct, whereas females function as organizers within the household and are more subtle and indirect. These are criticized as being outdated stereotypes, but can be observed across virtually all human cultures.
In individualistic societies there is much individualism and competition, resulting in open aggression as each member of society attempts to assert himself and claim his rightful place, though disputes once settled with open violence are now taken to the courts.
A different approach is taken in collectivistic societies in which harmony and collaboration are valued , which results in individuals who seek to accept their place in society and attend to their duties, with little to no sense of ambition or personal entitlement.
There is yet a third major cultural theme in which emphasis is placed on spiritual matters, which is close in nature to collectivism except that emphasis is in conforming to a norm defined by religious leaders and scriptures, such that compliance to divine will rather than practical matters guides the choices made in daily life.
While some cultures have a pronounced preference for one of these three modes, it is more common for them to be mixed: each society has certain folkways that derive from aspects of individual, collective, and spiritual imperatives.
Functioning Within and Between Groups
The author refers to the "Robbers Cave" experiment (Sherif 1953) conducted in Oklahoma, in which a group of 12-year-old boys in a summer camp were allowed to freely form groups and hierarchies. The results were "remarkably similar to those described by Goodall among chimpanzees."
Friendships and alliances formed among the group when all were housed together, and the larger group was subdivided, each group developed its own culture and dominance hierarchy.
In one group, a boy rose to a leadership position by virtue of making more suggestions for group activities and facilitating interaction among members of the group. His behavior was often supportive rather than critical of others, and only once was he seen to be hostile with another boy. "Punishment" was the assignment of onerous chores, and it's said that this was regarded as fair. As a result, the group achieved stability and harmony. It's suggested that the group's cohesiveness "occurred not by interpersonal competition but collaborating toward joint goals that all wanted to achieve."
Another group featured a leader who kept a greater power-distance, and worked through a core "clique" of lieutenants he selected. He was more autonomous and dominant, with a leadership method that relied on threats and sometimes physical abuse (characterized as "roughing up") of other boys. In spite of the aggressive and confrontational culture, it's noted that he was an effective leader and held the respect of the group.
(EN: This relation of the experiment is interesting in that it presents both styles objectively, though with a bit of bias toward the less aggressive group as evident by the amount of information provided. The study is often cited, and I've often seen interpretations that have been far more skewed to make one style of leadership seem more effective than the other - but what the authors seem to be suggesting is that both are valid and functional cultural choices.)
Conflict Between Groups
Goodal's observation of chimpanzee populations included incidence of subdivision: a troop of chimps would subdivide into two smaller groups, which initially were peaceable and even friendly to one another, but which over time grew more distant and even hostile. Altercation between different groups was much more intense than internal dominance conflicts, and the attacks were more brutal and showed a clear "intent to kill" - one account is given of a killing where several members of one group isolated a member of another and beat him literally to death.
It's been mentioned that aggression and violence in a group is done in order to create a dominance hierarchy, and that the ultimate goal of such conflicts are to establish a new social order in which the status is changed, but in which both victor and vanquished coexist and collaborate in the support of the group. There is no such mitigation when conflicts are with outsiders - their existence has no benefit to the group and the objective is simply to destroy them.
Social animals live within a group and as a consequence any outsider to "us" as being "them" - an individual who is of no consequence to the group and is a potential threat. As such, the nurturing of "us" and the hostility toward "them" is not only a natural inclination, but a functional reaction to protect and defend the group that provides a survival benefit to the individual.
Various studies have been done involving placing people into random groups to observe the differences in behavior, particularly aggression, sown among the group and toward other groups, and these results are consistent.
Returning to the "Robber Creek" experiment, the hostility between groups of boys was exacerbated by competitions such as football, tug-or-war, and other common camp games that pitted one group against another for a prize, which naturally increased the level of hostility among groups - to the point where there was constant hazing, malicious pranks, and even open violence between the groups. (EN: Brings to mind the dozens of "reality television:" shows that do exactly the same thing.)
It's also noted that intergroup rivalry, once created, is very hard to undo. One summer's experiment in Robber's Creek attempted to reunite the groups, but even when the boys were brought back together the rivalries remained. It took a series of staged incidents that required collaboration (for example, the truck that brought food from the nearby town was mired and the boys all had to work together to pull it out) to re0unify the team, but even then, "hostility did not cease, but ... it was much reduced."
Violence Between Societies
There is a brief mention of civil strife, which represents a transitional stage in the separation of one group into two (or more) separate groups - just as with the subdivision of a chimpanzee troupe or children at summer camp forming sub camps. It is arguable, at this point, whether they are still to be considered a single group - and resolving to remain united or separate often escalates to violence in which one group establishes dominion over another.
The age of European colonialism demonstrated a period of time in which some societies dominated others - rather than destroy the enemy, the victor chose to occupy the enemy's territory and subordinate its people. Consider the treatment of the Native Americans by the invading Europeans, or the treatment of the Aztec people by the Spaniards
(EN: In modern times, consider the treatment of Irish Catholics by British protestants, Palestinian Muslims by Israeli Jews, and so on - the practice is not localized to a brief and embarrassing period of human history. It's been argued that we have found more sophisticated tools, such as economics and culture, to effect exploitation without physical domination, and there does seem to be some merit to this argument.)
Any instance of conflict among nations, or even factions within nations, tends to have similar characteristics and patterns to conflict among smaller groups: where two groups are in conflict and cannot avoid one another, the dominance hierarchy must be sorted out, and unless one group submits to the other's claim to superiority, violence ensues.
Disgust and Contempt
Anger and aggression result from a conflict among people or groups of people, by which time hostilities have escalated. Prior to escalation, much can be gleaned from the way in which the parties regard one another, particularly in terms of the respect they show for one another in general as expressed by attitudes of disgust and contempt.
Disgust can be recognized in the way in which parties regard one another. The authors present a few sentences of account from the perspective of Aztecs in an early encounter with the Spaniards in which they describe them as being "like monkeys" and "like wild pigs" who are "barbarous," "savage," and "swollen with greed."
(EN: My sense is the passage is from a historian who is fictionalizing the event, assuming what the Aztec people might have been thinking rather than reporting what they actually were. The reference to "wild pigs" is telling because there were no pigs in the Americas until the Spaniards brought them, so the Aztec people had no concept of the animal and could not have used it in a simile. Even so, it's fairly common to express distaste by comparing a human to an animal, so while it's fictional it's still reasonable as an example.)
The emotion of disgust is closely tied to the sense of taste (EN: Which is a tautology because the word "disgust" is based on "gusto" or taste), which corresponds to a functional inclination to shun or avoid things that have a taste or smell that suggests consuming them or even handling them may be unhealthy. It is the desire to avoid something to preserve one's own health and cleanliness when extended to other people.
The authors suggest that contempt is different to disgust that has a more social origin: a person is held in contempt because they are not a member of a desired group and are seen as unworthy. This applies not only to members of other groups, but prejudice within a society regarding those who are inferior or substandard.
Both disgust and contempt demonstrate that the subject of these emotions regards the perceived person as being an outsider to his own group or subgroup - and referring to the earlier consideration of violence, there is no sense that they are important to the subject's own survival, such that any conflict does not seem a mutually acceptable resolution.
There are some further examples of mutual contempt between Europeans and natives during the colonial era, and then the observation that wartime propaganda often stokes contempt by portraying the enemy as loathsome and subhuman.
Anger and Contempt in Marriage
Recall that emotions poise a subject to take action, but there follows a cognitive process to decide what action to take - which includes the ability to mitigate the response. This is an important function in social creatures because they must consider the value of the relationship when interacting with another person. This is the reason that aggression among people of different groups is characterized by greater hostility and violence than that which occurs within groups.
For many species, the relationship between a mating pair is the most valued, but compatibility is not automatic or permanent - there is a struggle even in the closest relationships to fulfill one's individual needs, though a greater amenability to serve the needs of the other for the sake of maintaining an ongoing relationship.
Because there is a greater tolerance for being mistreated, there is a longer history of resentment and negative emotions that have been "bottled up" until there is an incident in which the subject has had their fill and seeks to rectify, hence the passionate nature of marital conflict.
Ultimately, these conflicts are methods of readjusting the relationship - to restore the balance of taking and giving between the two parties and negotiate mutually acceptable terms for the future. If there is no willingness to negotiate, then argument is pointless except as a way to express frustration for personal reasons.
Reference is made to self-help books on the fringes of psychology that consider the degree to which each member of a partner expects their interests to be served and is willing to serve the interests of the other party, with an eye toward a healthy balance between the two.
Another reference is made to interviews of couples, which found that individuals who are more self-oriented and competitive tend to dwell on past incidents in which they feel gratified or disappointed for having won or lost, whereas couples who are collaborative tend to focus on the future instead, considering the way in which they must work together.
It's suggested that aggression is not the most "corrosive" emotion to couples, but contempt. Anger accompanies a process of working out differences to maintain the relationship, whereas contempt involves withdrawing from the relationship as a precursor to ending it.