Dear Self Interested Ontologists,
I found this video of Peter Snyder
explaining how Darwin
experimented on 24 people using a single blind experiment related to emotions:
http://video.scientificblogging.com/video/Peter-Snyder-Darwin-experiment;Neurosciences
He describes it as:
the first example of a
prospective "single-blind" study of human perception of emotional
_expression_
Snyder also claims that this experiment
was echoed ever since by experimental psychologists looking for emotional
behaviors.
There is a good Wikipedia write-up
describing how emotions evolved at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_emotion
Describing Darwin’s work:
His work looked at not only facial expressions in both humans and animals, but
attempted to point out parallels between behaviors in
animals and in humans.
It concludes:
Primal emotions, such as fear, are associated
with ancient parts of the brain and presumably evolved among our premammal
ancestors. Filial emotions, such as a human mother's love for her offspring,
seem to have evolved among early mammals. Social emotions, such as guilt and
pride, evolved among social primates. Sometimes, a more recently evolved part
of the brain moderates an older part of the brain, such as when the cortex
moderates the amygdala's fear response. Evolutionary psychologists consider
human emotions to be best adapted to the life our ancestors led in nomadic
foraging bands.
I hope those of you who are interested in
emotional behaviors as explanations of human actions find these two references
useful.
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2