The Odd Couple: The Compatibility of Social Construction

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The Odd CoupleThe Compatibility of Social
Construction Evolutionary Psychology

• Ron Mallon
• University of Utah
• University of Hong Kong
• Stephen Stich
• Rutgers University

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(No Transcript)
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The BIG Picture What I hope to show in this
talk

• Evolutionary Psychologists (EPs) Social
  Constructionists (SCs) seem to have deep
  empirical disagreements about
• the extent to which normal humans share innate
  mental mechanisms which
• were shaped by natural selection
• strongly constrain our psychology, our social
  interactions our institutions

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• While there may indeed be some important
  disagreements between SCs EPs on these points,
  there is another, less obvious issue dividing
  them
• A philosophical disagreement about the meaning
  and reference of ordinary words for mental states
  and social phenomena words like anger, disgust,
  gender homosexuality

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• When this philosophical dispute is made explicit,
  it becomes clear that nothing much turns on it,
  and it can be easily set aside
• When the philosophical dispute has been set
  aside, the empirical disputes between SCs EPs
  look much less serious
• Rather than being adversaries, they look more
  like natural partners

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Overview of the Talk

1. Getting clearer on terminology (or why social
   constructionism isnt always a dirty word)
2. A quick sketch of some SC work on the emotions
3. A quick sketch of an emerging EP consensus about
   the emotions
4. Whats left to fight about? Are emotions
   universal or culturally local?

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• The philosophy that underlies this dispute The
  thick description theory of the meaning
  reference of emotion terms
• What it claims
• How it underlies the debate over the universality
  vs. cultural locality debate
• How to sidestep the problem posed by the thick
  description theory and make it clear that SCs and
  EPs need not be adversaries, since their theories
  are compatible complement each other

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Getting clearer on terminology (or why social
constructionism isnt always a dirty word)

• The terms Social Constructionism Evolutionary
  Psychology are both used for a variety of
  different views
• Social Constructionism is sometimes used as a
  label for a (quite nutty) metaphysical view that
  denies the mind-independence of all reality
• These radical social constructionists think that
  everything is socially constructed including
  atoms, galaxies and dinosaurs

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• Ill be focusing on a more modest and sane (and
  prima facie plausible) version of SC which holds
  that
• important features of human psychology social
  life are
• culturally caused and
• local in character
• SCs who fit this description need not endorse
  every aspect of what Tooby Cosmides call the
  Standard Social Science Model

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• Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes used for a
  specific cluster of views associated with
  Cosmides, Tooby Pinker.

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• Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes used for a
  specific cluster of views associated with
  Cosmides, Tooby Pinker.
• We think of this as High Church Evolutionary
  Psychology

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• Evolutionary Psychology is sometimes used for a
  specific cluster of views associated with
  Cosmides, Tooby Pinker.
• We think of this as High Church Evolutionary
  Psychology

• Though we dont propose to offer a definition,
  our view of EP is decidedly Low Church and more
  inclusive.

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The Social Constructionist Approach to the
Emotions

• A primary concern of SCs concerned with the
  emotions is to describe the rich multifaceted,
  culturally local network in which the emotions
  are embedded.
• Since understanding what informants say is a
  matter of great importance, SCs pay careful
  attention to a number of aspects of emotion
  discourse behavior in the target culture,
  including

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• the (often complex) circumstances under which
  people claim they or others experience the
  emotions picked out by various emotion words
• the pattern of inferences drawn when someone is
  believed to be experiencing the emotion
• the pattern of interactions that exist (or that
  people believe to exist) among emotions and other
  mental states
• the ways in which both emotions discourse about
  emotions interact with the moral, political
  economic lives of people in that culture

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• When done well, the resulting ethnopsychological
  accounts result in fascinating thick
  descriptions (Geertz) of patterns of interaction
  that differ in important ways from the patterns
  in which our own emotions and emotion discourse
  is embedded.

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• An example Catherine Lutzs study of the
  emotions of the Ifaluk

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• song is an Ifaluk emotion akin to (what we call)
  anger
• it has a strong moral component
• to count as feeling song an Ifaluk must be
  justifiably angry at another person who has
  engaged in morally inappropriate behavior
• thus two people cant be song at each other
• there are many other Ifaluk words for emotions
  akin to anger that do not involve this moral
  dimension
• there is no generic Ifaluk term that picks out
  all these sorts of anger
• one sort of behavior that can provoke song is the
  violation of a taboo (e.g. working in the taro
  garden while menstruating)
• another is ker, sort of excited happiness which
  can produce inappropriately loud talk or showing
  off

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• song does not lead to physical violence
• it does lead to
• refusal to eat or speak with the offender
• gossiping about the offender
• threats of fasting or even suicide
• threats to burn down the offenders house
• when a person recognizes that someones is song
  is directed at them, they typically experience an
  emotion the Ifaluk call metagu, a sort of fear or
  anxiety that leads to
• calmer, more appropriate behavior
• corrective action
• paying a fine
• apologizing
• sending something of value to the aggrieved
  parties

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Person 1
Person 2
Ker Misbehavior happiness/ excitement
Misbehavior
Song justifiable anger
Song
fear/anxiety Metagu
Metagu
Good, calm behavior
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Evolutionary Psychology An Emerging Consensus
on the Emotions

• Ekman To explain his well known finding that
  facial expressions of some emotions are
  cross-cultural universals, Ekman posited that
  these emotions are subserved by affect programs
• largely automated or involuntary suites of
  coordinated emotional responses
• subserved by innate mental mechanisms that are
  the product of natural selection
• present in all normal members of the species

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• downstream of the affect program, the behavior
  that an emotion produces is strongly influenced
  by culture
• display rules
• posture, tone of voice
• self reports
• more complex patterns of cognitive, behavioral
  social activity

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• upstream
• Ekman posited an appraisal mechanism which
  monitors stimuli triggers the appropriate
  affect program
• by the mid-1990s Ekman had come to think that
  just about all the activity of the appraisal
  mechanism is affected by culturally local factors
• Lazarus proposes that the emotion triggering
  mechanism includes an innate set of abstractly
  characterized conditions (core relational
  themes)
• Anger A demeaning offense against me mine
• Fear An immediate, concrete overwhelming
  danger
• Sadness Having experienced an irrevocable loss
• determining when these conditions have been
  satisfied requires culturally local beliefs
  information about culturally local norms, goals
  values

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• Robert Levensons Ekman-Inspired
• Bio-Cultural Model

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• Robert Levensons Ekman-Inspired
• Bio-Cultural Model

Affect Program
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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Downstream Cognitive Social Activity
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Downstream Cognitive Social Activity
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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Whats Left to Fight About?Are emotions
universal or culturally local?

• Far from being incompatible with each other, it
  looks like the evolutionary psychology and social
  constructionist approaches to the emotions are
  complementary
• ethnopsychologies like the one that Lutz provides
  provide details about culturally local aspects of
  belief, values, etc.
• Cognitive models like Levinsons give an account
  of the psychological mechanisms underlying
  emotions explain how innate, evolved mechanisms
  interact with culturally local beliefs values.
  

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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Downstream Cognitive Social Activity
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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• So whats left to fight about?
• Evolutionary psychologists maintain that central
  parts of the emotion system are innate and
  present in all normal humans, and when they are
  triggered they produce emotions (like fear, anger
  sadness) which are cultural universals.
• Since these mechanisms are homologous to
  mechanisms in other species, many non-human
  animals also experience emotions.

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• Social constructionists insist that emotions are
  a culturally local phenomenon and thus that
  people very different cultures have very
  different emotions.
• song metagu are Ifaluk emotions which outsiders
  do not experience
• amae (a pleasant sense of helplessness and desire
  to be loved) is Japanese emotion which Westerners
  do not experience (Harré)
• accidie (boredom or disgust with fulfilling
  ones religious duty) is an emotion that was once
  common in the West but has now disappeared.

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• anger is unknown among the Inuit (Briggs)
  anger, as a specific emotion, is not universal
  across cultures (Averill)
• sadness does not exist among Tahitians (Levy)
• there are no universal emotions and there may
  well be some cultures in which there are no
  emotions at all (Shweder)

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Whats Going On Here? The philosophical issue
that underlies the dispute

• Far from being incompatible with each other, it
  looks like the evolutionary psychology and social
  constructionist approaches to the emotions are
  complementary
• ethnopsychologies like the one that Lutz provides
  provide details about culturally local aspects of
  belief, values, etc.
• Cognitive models like Levinsons give an account
  of the psychological mechanisms underlying
  emotions explain how innate, evolved mechanisms
  interact with culturally local beliefs values.
  

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• So why do they disagree about the universality or
  cultural locality of emotions?

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• So why do they disagree about the universality or
  cultural locality of emotions?
• Blame Canada Philosophy

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• The most widely discussed philosophical account
  of the meaning reference of terms for the
  emotions other mental or psychological states
  is due to David Lewis
• David K. Lewis
• 1941-2001

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• jargon
• meaning is (roughly) what a person must know to
  understand the term
• reference is what the term picks out
• meaning ? reference the morning star the
  evening star have the same reference, but
  different meaning

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• some central ideas of Lewis theory
• ordinary language mental state terms can be
  treated as theoretical terms
• theoretical terms are implicitly defined by the
  theory in which they are embedded
• the definition is just a long description that
  includes everything the theory claims about the
  thing the term refers to
• so I will call this sort of theory about the
  meaning of a theoretical term a description
  theory
• these implicit definitions are holistic because
  (i) the theory implicitly defines all of its
  theoretical terms, and (ii) the entire theory
  contributes to the meaning of every theoretical
  term

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• the theory which implicitly defines mental state
  terms is commonsense psychology our
  extensive, shared understanding of how we work
  mentally which is common knowledge among us
  (Lewis)
• mental state terms express package deal
  concepts since commonsense psychology provides
  an implicit definition for all of them
• if Lewis theory is correct then a cultures folk
  psychological theory implicitly defines the
  emotion words they use

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• Ethnopsychologies like the one provided by Lutz
  are intended inter alia to provide an account of
  the cultures folk psychology (their shared
  understanding of how they work mentally)
• Question How much of the detail in a rich
  ethno-psychology contributes to the meaning of
  ordinary mental state terms?
• austere opulent
  
• description theories description theories

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• What about reference?
• since the meaning of a theoretical term is
  given by a long description, the natural idea (
  the one urged by Lewis) is that the term refers
  to whatever fits the description
• but we cant require the fit to be perfect, since
  if we did, then any small error in the theory
  would make all the theoretical terms refer to
  nothing
• Lewis suggests that a term refers to whatever
  more or less fits the description but that is
  intentionally vague

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high accuracy

at one end of the spectrum are high accuracy
accounts of reference that require that most
descriptions fit at the other end are low
accuracy accounts that allow a referent to fit
many fewer descriptions
low accuracy
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high accuracy
low accuracy
austere
opulent
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high accuracy
thick description
low accuracy
austere
opulent
a thick description account of the meaning
reference of ordinary mental state terms is
opulent high accuracy
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• But what does all this have to do with the
  dispute about whether emotions are universal or
  culturally local?
• Assume that thick description account is correct

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• Among the Ifaluk it is common knowledge (i.e.
  part of their folk psychological theory) that
• if a woman goes into the taro garden when she is
  menstruating, it will provoke song
• if a man goes into the birthing house, it will
  provoke song
• if you are really song at me, I cant be song at
  you
• when a person realizes that someone is song at
  him, he typically experiences metagu
• etc., etc., .
• There is no emotion, among us, that fits all of
  these descriptions
• So there is no emotion in our culture that counts
  as an instance of song song does not exist here.

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• Much the same argument can be run in the opposite
  direction
• Among us, it is common knowledge (i.e. part of
  our folk psychological theory) that
• if someone shouts racial epithets it is likely to
  provoke anger
• if some gives someone else the finger it is
  likely to provoke anger
• if you are really angry at me, I can be angry at
  you too
• when one person provokes anger in another person,
  it will often lead to a heated exchange of words
  and will occasionally lead to physical
  confrontation violence
• etc., etc., .
• There is no emotion among the Ifaluk that fits
  all of these descriptions
• So there is no emotion among the Ifaluk that
  counts as an instance of anger anger does not
  exist among the Ifaluk.

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• N. B. These arguments make no assumptions at all
  about the psychological mechanisms underlying the
  emotions. Thus they are compatible with any
  account of those mechanisms, including the
  account favored by evolutionary psychologists.
• All that the arguments require are
• the thick description account of meaning
  reference
• the fact that there are substantial differences
  between our folk psychology ( what we commonly
  believed about mental states) and Ifaluk folk
  psychology ( what they commonly believe)

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• Is this the argument that leads Social
  Constructionists to the conclusion that emotions
  are culturally local?
• Though they dont use the philosophical jargon
  (or take account of important philosophical
  distinctions like meaning vs. reference) a good
  case can be made that they do indeed have
  something like this argument in mind.

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• Across languages, the range of implications,
  suggestions, and connotations of psychological
  state terms do not easily map, at least not
  lexically and to adequately understand the
  meaning of the terms in either language is to
  understand a good deal about different local
  systems of values and particular ways of life.
  (Shweder, 1994)
• Emotion words are treated here as coalescences
  of complex ethnotheoretical ideas about the
  nature of self and social interaction. To
  understand the meaning of an emotion word is to
  be able to envisage (and perhaps to find oneself
  able to participate in) a complicated scene with
  actors, actions, interpersonal relationships in a
  particular state of repair, moral points of view,
  facial expressions, personal and social goals,
  and sequences of events. (Lutz, 1988)

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• Obviously, Evolutionary Psychologists and others
  who reject the view that emotions are culturally
  local must reject the thick description theory of
  meaning reference.
• How much of a problem is this?

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high accuracy
thick description
low accuracy
Producing an alternative to the thick description
theory is no problem at all. There are lots of
alternatives on the market.
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high accuracy
thick description
low accuracy
Producing an alternative to the thick description
theory is no problem at all. There are lots of
alternatives on the market.
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• In addition to all these, philosophers like
  Putnam and Kripke have offered alternative
  causal/historical theories of reference
  according to which the reference of a term fixed
  by the circumstances in which it was introduced
  and its transmission history in the language.
• If any of these alternative accounts of meaning
  reference is correct, then the argument for
  cultural locality collapses.

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• So the situation is this
• Those who think that emotions are culturally
  local are (tacitly or explicitly) adopting a
  thick description account of the reference of
  emotion terms.
• Those who think that emotions are universal are
  (tacitly or explicitly) adopting some other
  account of the reference of emotion terms.

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Whos Right? And Why It Doesnt Matter

• To settle the universal vs. culturally local
  dispute, it looks like we have to determine which
  account of reference is correct.
• And that might sound like bad news because
• philosophers and linguists arent even close to
  figuring out which account of reference is
  correct. Even worse,

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In Deconstructing the Mind, I argued that the
issue may well be moot, since neither
philosophers nor linguists have given us a
coherent account of what a theory of reference is
supposed to do, thus we dont really have a clear
idea of what it would be to get a theory of
reference right.

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• But actually this is not such bad news since, for
  two rather different reasons, it doesnt much
  matter which side is right.
• Reason 1 The dispute is almost entirely
  isolated from the empirical theoretical claims
  that SCs EPs want to make.

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• A SC who thinks that emotions are culturally
  local can accept everything in the Levinson-style
  EP model and everything an EPist wants to say
  about the evolution of the components of this
  model.

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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Downstream Cognitive Social Activity
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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• A SC who thinks that emotions are culturally
  local can accept everything in the Levinson-style
  EP model and everything an EPist wants to say
  about the evolution of the components of this
  model.

• All the SC need insist on is that many beliefs,
  norms, goals values are culturally local. And
  this is not a claim that (sensible) EPists are in
  the least inclined to dispute.

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• Reason 2
• No matter who is right about the meaning
  reference of ordinary language emotion terms,
  each side can easily say what it wants to say
  with the help of a bit of technical language.
• To see the point, lets once again assume the
  thick description account is correct.

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• The EPs must concede that anger (the emotion
  picked out by the ordinary English word) is not
  universal.
• But they can still maintain that there is a
  family of emotions in different cultures, all
  subserved by the same innate affect program
  emotion prototype or core relational theme
  that subserve anger in our culture.

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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Downstream Cognitive Social Activity
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Anger Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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• We can then simply introduce a technical term,
  core anger, to refer to all of these emotions.

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Norms
Values
Goals
Beliefs
Downstream Cognitive Social Activity
Subjective
Self-Report
Experience
Interpersonal
Facial
Facial
Program
Expression
Anger Emotion
Prototype
Voice Tone
Vocalization
Program
Intrapersonal
Motor
Motor
Behavior
Program
Physiologic
Physiologic
response
Support
core anger
Appraisal System
Cultural learning
Display and feeling rules
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• EPs who have conceded that anger is not universal
  can claim, instead, that core anger is universal.
  
• And this, surely, captures what they really want
  to claim.

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Conclusions

• The most conspicuous disagreement between SCs
  EPs who study the emotions is not an empirical
  disagreement about minds, cultures or evolution.
• Instead, it disagreement about the universality
  or cultural locality of the emotions.

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Conclusions

• That dispute is rooted in a philosophical dispute
  about the meaning reference of ordinary
  language emotion terms.
• And nothing much depends on that philosophical
  disagreement. It does not matter who is right.

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Conclusions

• Once the philosophical dispute is set aside, it
  should be easier for Social Constructionists and
  Evolutionary Psychologists to stop seeing each
  other as enemies and start seeing each other as
  natural allies in the attempt to understand the
  emotions.

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• Blessed are the peacemakers
• for they shall be called the children of God
• Matthew 59