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Chen T, Qiu Y, Gan R, Du Y, Zhang Y, Lin S, Li X, Huang R. Mapping universal and culturally specific moral brain: An SDM meta-analysis of neural correlates in shame and guilt across East Asian and Western contexts. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2025; 174:106200. [PMID: 40354955 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106200] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2024] [Revised: 04/06/2025] [Accepted: 05/05/2025] [Indexed: 05/14/2025]
Abstract
Shame and guilt are moral emotions that promote individual interests and maintain social norms. Previous studies suggested that these emotions are universal but that their specific experience and underlying neural mechanisms may be culturally influenced. However, little is known about the cross-cultural neural mechanisms of these emotions, including their commonalities and differences. Understanding these mechanisms may elucidate the evolutionary significance of these emotions and clarify how culture influences them. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis of 62 neuroimaging studies to identify the neural correlates of shame and guilt across East Asian cultures (EAC) and Western cultures (WC) using seed-based d mapping with permutation of subject images (SDM-PSI). We found that shame and guilt shared brain locations with significant activation in the middle cingulate cortex (MCC) and insula regardless of cultural background. However, we also observed differences in the brain activation patterns between the two cultures. Shame elicited stronger activation in the MCC in EAC than in WC. Guilt elicited stronger activation in areas related to theory of mind, such as the temporal pole and precuneus, in WC than in EAC. These results indicate that, although shame and guilt share similar neural mechanisms, the cultural contexts can modulate the activation patterns of the relevant brain regions. These findings provide insights into the universal and culturally specific neural mechanisms underlying shame and guilt. We hope that this study helps to promote mutual respect among people from different cultures and understand what we have in common as well as how and why we differ.
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Affiliation(s)
- Taihan Chen
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Yidan Qiu
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Runchen Gan
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Yanxuan Du
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Yihe Zhang
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Shuting Lin
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Xinrui Li
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
| | - Ruiwang Huang
- School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China.
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2
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Durkee PK, Lukaszewski AW, Buss DM. Status-impact assessment: is accuracy linked with status motivations? EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES 2023; 5:e17. [PMID: 37587932 PMCID: PMC10426072 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2023.12] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2021] [Revised: 04/07/2023] [Accepted: 04/14/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Status hierarchies are ubiquitous across cultures and have been over deep time. Position in hierarchies shows important links with fitness outcomes. Consequently, humans should possess psychological adaptations for navigating the adaptive challenges posed by living in hierarchically organised groups. One hypothesised adaptation functions to assess, track, and store the status impacts of different acts, characteristics and events in order to guide hierarchy navigation. Although this status-impact assessment system is expected to be universal, there are several ways in which differences in assessment accuracy could arise. This variation may link to broader individual difference constructs. In a preregistered study with samples from India (N = 815) and the USA (N = 822), we sought to examine how individual differences in the accuracy of status-impact assessments covary with status motivations and personality. In both countries, greater overall status-impact assessment accuracy was associated with higher status motivations, as well as higher standing on two broad personality constructs: Honesty-Humility and Conscientiousness. These findings help map broad personality constructs onto variation in the functioning of specific cognitive mechanisms and contribute to an evolutionary understanding of individual differences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick K. Durkee
- Department of Psychology, California State University, Fresno, California, USA
- Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
- Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse, France
| | - Aaron W. Lukaszewski
- Department of Psychology, California State University, Fullerton, California, USA
| | - David M. Buss
- Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA
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3
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Hernandez HS, Hovasapian A, Campos B. Displaying pride: Variation by social context, ethnic heritage, and gender? PLoS One 2023; 18:e0285152. [PMID: 37115772 PMCID: PMC10146430 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285152] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2022] [Accepted: 04/17/2023] [Indexed: 04/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Pride is universal; however, the complexities linked to its social status functions and implications for social relationships suggest the possibility of variation in its display. Drawing from empirical evidence, this study examined whether displayed pride would vary by social context (i.e., whether the target was a competitor or a loved one), ethnic heritage (i.e., membership in individualistic or collectivistic cultural groups) and by gender. Young adults (N = 145) verbally described a pride experience to an imagined competitor, loved one, stranger or in a no-context control condition. Results showed similarity in displayed pride across the four contexts. However, some ethnic group and gender variations were observed. Latino/a/x Americans displayed less pride verbally than European Americans while women displayed more than men. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how people manage the display of pride and suggest that ethnic and gendered motivations for managing pride displays are relevant to a comprehensive understanding of interpersonal emotion regulation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Sanchez Hernandez
- Department of Psychological Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America
| | - Arpine Hovasapian
- Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America
| | - Belinda Campos
- Department of Chicano/Latino Studies, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America
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4
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Quillien T. Rational information search in welfare-tradeoff cognition. Cognition 2023; 231:105317. [PMID: 36434941 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105317] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2022] [Revised: 08/23/2022] [Accepted: 10/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
One of the most important dimensions along which we evaluate others is their propensity to value our welfare: we like people who are disposed to incur costs for our benefit and who refrain from imposing costs on us to benefit themselves. The evolutionary importance of social valuation in our species suggests that humans have cognitive mechanisms that are able to efficiently extract information about how much another person values them. Here I test the hypothesis that people are spontaneously interested in the kinds of events that have the most potential to reveal such information. In two studies, I presented participants (Ns = 216; 300) with pairs of dilemmas that another individual faced in an economic game; for each pair, I asked them to choose the dilemma for which they would most like to see the decision that the individual had made. On average, people spontaneously selected the choices that had the potential to reveal the most information about the individual's valuation of the participant, as quantified by a Bayesian ideal search model. This finding suggests that human cooperation is supported by sophisticated cognitive mechanisms for information-gathering.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tadeg Quillien
- School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
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5
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Sznycer D, Sell A, Williams KE. Justice-making institutions and the ancestral logic of conflict. EVOL HUM BEHAV 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.12.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
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6
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Uchida A, Nakayama M, Uchida Y. Cultural psychological processes underlying workplace remuneration in Japanese and European American contexts. ASIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/ajsp.12560] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Aya Uchida
- Graduate School of Human and Environment Studies Kyoto University Kyoto Japan
| | - Masataka Nakayama
- Institute for the Future of Human Society Kyoto University Kyoto Japan
| | - Yukiko Uchida
- Institute for the Future of Human Society Kyoto University Kyoto Japan
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7
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Eisenbruch AB, Krasnow MM. Why Warmth Matters More Than Competence: A New Evolutionary Approach. PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2022; 17:1604-1623. [PMID: 35748187 DOI: 10.1177/17456916211071087] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Multiple lines of evidence suggest that there are two major dimensions of social perception, often called warmth and competence, and that warmth is prioritized over competence in multiple types of social decision-making. Existing explanations for this prioritization argue that warmth is more consequential for an observer's welfare than is competence. We present a new explanation for the prioritization of warmth based on humans' evolutionary history of cooperative partner choice. We argue that the prioritization of warmth evolved because ancestral humans faced greater variance in the warmth of potential cooperative partners than in their competence but greater variance in competence over time within cooperative relationships. These each made warmth more predictive than competence of the future benefits of a relationship, but because of differences in the distributions of these traits, not because of differences in their intrinsic consequentiality. A broad, synthetic review of the anthropological literature suggests that these conditions were characteristic of the ecologies in which human social cognition evolved, and agent-based models demonstrate the plausibility of these selection pressures. We conclude with future directions for the study of preferences and the further integration of social and evolutionary psychology.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Max M Krasnow
- Division of Continuing Education, Harvard University
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9
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Krems JA, Merrie LA, Short V, Duarte K, Rodriguez NN, French JE, Sznycer D, Byrd-Craven J. Third-Party Perceptions of Male and Female Status: Male Physical Strength and Female Physical Attractiveness Cue High Status. Front Ecol Evol 2022. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2022.860797] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Status is a universal feature of human sociality. A lesser-studied adaptive problem surrounding status is assessing who has which levels of status in a given group (e.g., identifying which people possess high status). Here, we integrate theory and methods from evolutionary social science, animal behavior, and social psychology, and we use an emotion inference paradigm to investigate what cues render people high status in the eyes of social perceivers. This paradigm relies on robust associations between status and emotion display—particularly the anger display. If a target is expected to enact (but not necessarily feel) anger, this would suggest that social perceivers view that target as higher status. By varying target attributes, we test whether those attributes are considered status cues in the eyes of social perceivers. In two well-powered, pre-registered experiments in the United States (N = 451) and India (N = 378), participants read one of eight vignettes about a male or female target—described as high or low in either physical strength or physical attractiveness (possible status cues)—who is thwarted by another person, and then reported expectations of the target’s felt and enacted anger. We find that people expected physically stronger (versus less strong) men and more (versus less) physically attractive women to enact greater anger when thwarted by a same-sex other. Strength had no significant effect on estimations of female status and attractiveness had no significant effect on estimations of male status. There were no differences in expectations of felt anger. Results suggest that people use men’s strength and women’s attractiveness as status cues. Moreover, results underscore the notion that focusing on male-typical cues of status might obscure our understanding of the female status landscape. We discuss how this paradigm might be fruitfully employed to examine and discover other unexplored cues of male and female status.
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da Silva BMS, Ketelaar L, Veiga G, Tsou YT, Rieffe C. Moral emotions in early childhood: Validation of the Moral Emotions Questionnaire (MEQ). INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1177/01650254221075031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Moral emotions are experienced in daily life and are crucial for mediating appropriate social behaviors, as they prevent individuals from committing transgressions. In this study, caregivers of 377 children aged between 2.5 and 6.5 years old completed the Moral Emotions Questionnaire (MEQ), a parent report aimed to separately identify the presence of shame, guilt, and pride behaviors in early childhood. To validate this newly developed questionnaire, a confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance were conducted, and internal consistency, and concurrent validity were tested. Outcomes confirmed that the three moral emotions can be individually identified through the MEQ, even at such an early age. The MEQ scales showed acceptable internal consistencies and the associations between the three moral emotions and externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, and social competence were in accordance with previous research, therefore confirming concurrent validity.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lizet Ketelaar
- Dutch Foundation for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Child, The Netherlands
| | - Guida Veiga
- Departamento de Desporto e Saúde, Escola de Saúde e Desenvolvimento Humano, Universidade de Évora, Portugal
- Comprehensive Health Research Center (CHrC), Universidade de Évora, Portugal
| | | | - Carolien Rieffe
- Leiden University, The Netherlands
- University of Twente, The Netherlands
- University College London, UK
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11
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Witkower Z, Hill AK, Koster J, Tracy JL. Is a downwards head tilt a cross-cultural signal of dominance? Evidence for a universal visual illusion. Sci Rep 2022; 12:365. [PMID: 35013481 PMCID: PMC8748875 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-04370-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2021] [Accepted: 12/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
The present pre-registered research provides the first evidence that a downwards head tilt is sufficient to communicate dominance from a neutral facial expression among the Mayangna, members of an unindustrialized, small-scale traditional society in Nicaragua who have had minimal exposure to North American culture. Consistent with the Action Unit imposter effect observed in North American populations (Witkower and Tracy in Psychol Sci 30:893-906, 2019), changes to the appearance of the upper face caused by a downwards head tilt were sufficient to elicit perceptions of dominance among this population. Given that the Mayangna are unlikely to associate a downwards head tilt or related apparent facial changes with dominance as a result of cross-cultural learning, the present results suggest that perceptions of dominance formed from a downwards head tilt, and the visual illusion shaping these perceptions, are a widely generalizable, and possibly universal, feature of human psychology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zachary Witkower
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3G3, Canada.
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12
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13
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Sznycer D, Sell A, Lieberman D. Forms and Functions of the Social Emotions. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2021. [DOI: 10.1177/09637214211007451] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
In engineering, form follows function. It is therefore difficult to understand an engineered object if one does not examine it in light of its function. Just as understanding the structure of a lock requires understanding the desire to secure valuables, understanding structures engineered by natural selection, including emotion systems, requires hypotheses about adaptive function. Social emotions reliably solved adaptive problems of human sociality. A central function of these emotions appears to be the recalibration of social evaluations in the minds of self and others. For example, the anger system functions to incentivize another individual to value your welfare more highly when you deem the current valuation insufficient; gratitude functions to consolidate a cooperative relationship with another individual when there are indications that the other values your welfare; shame functions to minimize the spread of discrediting information about yourself and the threat of being devalued by others; and pride functions to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued by others. Using the lens of social valuation, researchers are now mapping these and other social emotions at a rapid pace, finding striking regularities across industrial and small-scale societies and throughout history.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Aaron Sell
- Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University
- Department of Criminology, Heidelberg University
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14
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Liu C, Li J, Chen C, Wu H, Yuan L, Yu G. Individual Pride and Collective Pride: Differences Between Chinese and American Corpora. Front Psychol 2021; 12:513779. [PMID: 34093292 PMCID: PMC8170025 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.513779] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2019] [Accepted: 04/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
This study investigated cross-cultural differences in individual pride and collective pride between Chinese and Americans using data from text corpora. We found higher absolute frequencies of pride items in the American corpus than in the Chinese corpus. Cross-cultural differences were found for relative frequencies of different types of pride, and some of them depended on the genre of the text corpora. For both blogs and news genres, Americans showed higher frequencies of individual pride items and lower frequencies of relational pride items than did their Chinese counterparts. Cross-cultural differences in national pride, however, depended on the genre: Chinese news genre included more national pride items than its American counterpart, but the opposite was true for the blog genre. We discuss the implications of these results in relation to the existing literature (based on surveys and laboratory-based experiments) on cultural differences in individual pride and collective pride.
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Affiliation(s)
- Conghui Liu
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Jing Li
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Chuansheng Chen
- Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States
| | - Hanlin Wu
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Li Yuan
- Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
| | - Guoliang Yu
- School of Education, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
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15
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Sánchez-García J, Rodríguez GE, Hernández-Gutiérrez D, Casado P, Fondevila S, Jiménez-Ortega L, Muñoz F, Rubianes M, Martín-Loeches M. Neural dynamics of pride and shame in social context: an approach with event-related brain electrical potentials. Brain Struct Funct 2021; 226:1855-1869. [PMID: 34028612 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-021-02296-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2020] [Accepted: 05/08/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
The neural underpinnings of social emotions such as pride and shame are largely unknown. The present study aims to add evidence by exploiting the advantage of event-related brain electrical potentials (ERP) to examine the neural processes as they unfold over time. For this purpose, a dot-estimation task was adapted to explore these emotions as elicited in a simulated social context. Pride prompted an early negativity seemingly originated in medial parietal regions (precuneus) and possibly reflecting social comparison processes in successful trials. This was followed by a late positivity originated in medial frontal regions, probably reflecting the verification of singularly successful trials. Shame, in turn, elicited an early negativity apparently originated in the cuneus, probably related to mental imagery of the social situation. It was followed by a late positivity mainly originated in the same regions as the early negativity for pride, then conceivably reflecting social comparison processes, in this occasion in unsuccessful trials. None of these fluctuations correlated with self-reported feelings of either emotion, suggesting that they instead relate to social cognitive computations necessary to achieve them. The present results provide a dynamic depiction of neural mechanisms underlying these social emotions, probing the necessity to study them using an integrated approach with different techniques.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jose Sánchez-García
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain.
| | - Gema Esther Rodríguez
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain
| | - David Hernández-Gutiérrez
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain
| | - Pilar Casado
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain.,Psychobiology and Methods in Behavioral Sciences Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Sabela Fondevila
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain.,Psychobiology and Methods in Behavioral Sciences Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Laura Jiménez-Ortega
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain.,Psychobiology and Methods in Behavioral Sciences Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Francisco Muñoz
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain.,Psychobiology and Methods in Behavioral Sciences Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Miguel Rubianes
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain
| | - Manuel Martín-Loeches
- Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII. Avda Monforte de Lemos, 5, Pabellón 14, 28029, Madrid, Spain.,Psychobiology and Methods in Behavioral Sciences Department, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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16
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Sznycer D, Cohen AS. Are Emotions Natural Kinds After All? Rethinking the Issue of Response Coherence. EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY 2021; 19:14747049211016009. [PMID: 34060370 PMCID: PMC10355299 DOI: 10.1177/14747049211016009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2021] [Accepted: 04/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
The synchronized co-activation of multiple responses-motivational, behavioral, and physiological-has been taken as a defining feature of emotion. Such response coherence has been observed inconsistently however, and this has led some to view emotion programs as lacking biological reality. Yet, response coherence is not always expected or desirable if an emotion program is to carry out its adaptive function. Rather, the hallmark of emotion is the capacity to orchestrate multiple mechanisms adaptively-responses will co-activate in stereotypical fashion or not depending on how the emotion orchestrator interacts with the situation. Nevertheless, might responses cohere in the general case where input variables are specified minimally? Here we focus on shame as a case study. We measure participants' responses regarding each of 27 socially devalued actions and personal characteristics. We observe internal and external coherence: The intensities of felt shame and of various motivations of shame (hiding, lying, destroying evidence, and threatening witnesses) vary in proportion (i) to one another, and (ii) to the degree to which audiences devalue the disgraced individual-the threat shame defends against. These responses cohere both within and between the United States and India. Further, alternative explanations involving the low-level variable of arousal do not seem to account for these results, suggesting that coherence is imparted by a shame system. These findings indicate that coherence can be observed at multiple levels and raise the possibility that emotion programs orchestrate responses, even in those situations where coherence is low.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel Sznycer
- Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, QC, Canada
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17
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Abstract
The emotion of pride appears to be a neurocognitive guidance system to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued and respected by others. Whereas the inputs and the outputs of pride are relatively well understood, little is known about how the pride system matches inputs to outputs. How does pride work? Here we evaluate the hypothesis that pride magnitude matches the various outputs it controls to the present activating conditions - the precise degree to which others would value the focal individual if the individual achieved a particular achievement. Operating in this manner would allow the pride system to balance the competing demands of effectiveness and economy, to avoid the dual costs of under-deploying and over-deploying its outputs. To test this hypothesis, we measured people's responses regarding each of 25 socially valued traits. We observed the predicted magnitude matchings. The intensities of the pride feeling and of various motivations of pride (communicating the achievement, demanding better treatment, investing in the valued trait and pursuing new challenges) vary in proportion: (a) to one another; and (b) to the degree to which audiences value each achievement. These patterns of magnitude matching were observed both within and between the USA and India. These findings suggest that pride works cost-effectively, promoting the pursuit of achievements and facilitating the gains from others' valuations that make those achievements worth pursuing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel Sznycer
- Department of Psychology, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada
- Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala City, Guatemala
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18
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Durkee PK, Lukaszewski AW, Buss DM. Psychological foundations of human status allocation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020; 117:21235-21241. [PMID: 32817486 PMCID: PMC7474695 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2006148117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Competing theories of status allocation posit divergent conceptual foundations upon which human status hierarchies are built. We argue that the three prominent theories of status allocation-competence-based models, conflict-based models, and dual-pathway models-can be distinguished by the importance that they place on four key affordance dimensions: benefit-generation ability, benefit-generation willingness, cost-infliction ability, and cost-infliction willingness. In the current study, we test competing theoretical predictions about the relative centrality of each affordance dimension to clarify the foundations of human status allocation. We examined the extent to which American raters' (n = 515) perceptions of the benefit-generation and cost-infliction affordances of 240 personal characteristics predict the status impacts of those same personal characteristics as determined by separate groups of raters (n = 2,751) across 14 nations. Benefit-generation and cost-infliction affordances were both positively associated with status allocation at the zero-order level. However, the unique effects of benefit-generation affordances explained most of the variance in status allocation when competing with cost-infliction affordances, whereas cost-infliction affordances were weak or null predictors. This finding suggests that inflicting costs without generating benefits does not reliably increase status in the minds of others among established human groups around the world. Overall, the findings bolster competence-based theories of status allocation but offer little support for conflict-based and dual-pathway models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick K Durkee
- Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712;
| | | | - David M Buss
- Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78712
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19
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Moral elevation: Indications of functional integration with welfare trade-off calibration and estimation mechanisms. EVOL HUM BEHAV 2020. [DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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20
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Witkower Z, Mercadante EJ, Tracy JL. How affect shapes status: distinct emotional experiences and expressions facilitate social hierarchy navigation. Curr Opin Psychol 2019; 33:18-22. [PMID: 31336192 DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.06.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2019] [Revised: 06/13/2019] [Accepted: 06/18/2019] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
All human societies are organized hierarchically, and individuals who occupy positions of high social rank typically acquire fitness advantages over lower ranking group members. Here, we argue that certain emotions function, at least in part, to help individuals successfully navigate these hierarchies. We review evidence suggesting that nine distinct emotions - pride, shame, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, envy, and admiration - influence social rank outcomes in important ways; most notably subjective experiences of these emotions motivate adaptive status-relevant behavior, and nonverbal expressions associated with these emotions send adaptive messages to others which facilitate expressers' attainment and maintenance of social rank. In sum, the reviewed emotions are thought to have intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences relevant to the navigation of social hierarchies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zachary Witkower
- Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Canada.
| | | | - Jessica L Tracy
- Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Canada
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Sznycer D, Lukaszewski AW. The emotion–valuation constellation: Multiple emotions are governed by a common grammar of social valuation. EVOL HUM BEHAV 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
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23
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Martin MA. Biological Anthropology in 2018: Grounded in Theory, Questioning Contexts, Embracing Innovation. AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 2019. [DOI: 10.1111/aman.13233] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
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Sznycer D. Forms and Functions of the Self-Conscious Emotions. Trends Cogn Sci 2019; 23:143-157. [DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.11.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/08/2018] [Revised: 11/26/2018] [Accepted: 11/27/2018] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
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Sznycer D, Delton AW, Robertson TE, Cosmides L, Tooby J. The ecological rationality of helping others: Potential helpers integrate cues of recipients' need and willingness to sacrifice. EVOL HUM BEHAV 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.07.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/01/2023]
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26
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Abstract
Human foragers are obligately group-living, and their high dependence on mutual aid is believed to have characterized our species' social evolution. It was therefore a central adaptive problem for our ancestors to avoid damaging the willingness of other group members to render them assistance. Cognitively, this requires a predictive map of the degree to which others would devalue the individual based on each of various possible acts. With such a map, an individual can avoid socially costly behaviors by anticipating how much audience devaluation a potential action (e.g., stealing) would cause and weigh this against the action's direct payoff (e.g., acquiring). The shame system manifests all of the functional properties required to solve this adaptive problem, with the aversive intensity of shame encoding the social cost. Previous data from three Western(ized) societies indicated that the shame evoked when the individual anticipates committing various acts closely tracks the magnitude of devaluation expressed by audiences in response to those acts. Here we report data supporting the broader claim that shame is a basic part of human biology. We conducted an experiment among 899 participants in 15 small-scale communities scattered around the world. Despite widely varying languages, cultures, and subsistence modes, shame in each community closely tracked the devaluation of local audiences (mean r = +0.84). The fact that the same pattern is encountered in such mutually remote communities suggests that shame's match to audience devaluation is a design feature crafted by selection and not a product of cultural contact or convergent cultural evolution.
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