promote egocentric behaviours and competitiveness (e.g. ambition, pride, jealousy), while others promote relatedness and cooperation (e.g. love, compassion, guilt). We may therefore hypothesise that all emotions are healthy to a certain extent, and that our main challenge may be to balance them appropriately. As Damasio nicely states it,
Life being a high-wire act, most feelings are expressions of the struggle for balance, ideas of the exquisite adjustments and corrections without which, one mistake too many, the whole act collapses (2003: 7).
Consequently, ecological concerns and balance appear to be unspoken high priorities of life – priorities according to which individuals, without realising it, may be
continuously appraising their existence.
In summary, it appears from the above that humans are not merely self-centred beings. While psychologists view self-transcendent concerns as a requirement for optimal functioning, biologists go even further, suggesting that self-transcendent concerns are a requirement for the preservation of life. It should be kept in mind, however, that
humans’ need for self-transcendence goes beyond seeking to connect with and contribute to the lives of other fellow humans, and rather encompasses the search for other kinds of connection, such as connection with something larger than the self, such as the universe, or even spiritual agents.
While this discussion has focused on what may be viewed as the primary purpose of emotions in the ecology of life, it does not explain what the underlying mechanisms of emotional processes are. However, a basic knowledge of these mechanisms seems essential to understanding how emotions – in particular, performance-related emotions – originate. Neuroscience provides insight into this subject.
2.8 A neuroscientific perspective on emotion
While psychologists can access emotions from the outside through observing a person’s behaviour or his or her reports, neuroscientists provide a different perspective – they
observe emotions from within the body. Their findings provide evidence that, in humans and animals alike, there are specific areas in the brain that are in charge of emotional processes. Considering the similarities of these processes between humans and animals sheds light on the way in which emotions function at the most basic level. Emotions that are typically human are viewed as extending and enriching this basic emotional functioning, not replacing it.
The technological progress that has taken place in recent years has allowed
neuroscientists to identify the specific areas of the brain that are in charge of emotional processes. These emotional areas have been genetically programmed to react
automatically, and in a predetermined way, to certain stimuli called ‘emotional competent stimuli’ or ‘natural triggers’ (i.e. animals react fearfully the first time they see a predator) (see Damasio, 2003; LeDoux, 1998). When such kinds of stimuli are perceived or imagined, they are immediately recognised by the emotional areas of the brain as being threats or opportunities, and the body becomes ready for appropriate action: approach or avoidance behaviour. Approach and avoidance processes are ubiquitous across phyla, from unicellular organisms to human beings, and are essential for adaptation to the environment. Humans evaluate most, if not all, stimuli on a positive/negative dimension, and this evaluation instantaneously evokes approach or avoidance behavioural predispositions (Bargh, 1997; Elliot, 2006; Kahneman, 1999). These emotional responses are elicited automatically, without the intervention of cognitive structures or processes. Damasio compares these stimuli to the appropriate ‘keys’ that open pre-existent ‘locks’ of brain devices, or to a virus in the bloodstream that elicits a specific immune response. He states that ‘In the case of emotion the ‘antigen’ is presented through the sensory system and the ‘antibody’ is the emotional response’ (2003: 58).
Neuroscientists suggest that emotions are best viewed as the ‘end result of information processing occurring unconsciously’ (LeDoux, 1998: 37). This claim is based on the fact that cortical areas can be absent from emotional processes. For example, the amygdala (which is involved in processing emotions and learning fear) has direct connections with the sensory thalamus, and can therefore elicit fear through sub-cortical processes. This direct pathway is shorter and faster than cortical processes (because cortical processes go from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala), and
elicits fear automatically and unconsciously (Damasio, 2003; Davis, 1992; LeDoux, 1998). The rapidity of this process contributes to the survival of organisms. Emotional areas of the brain are indispensable to experiencing emotion and, when damaged, emotional reactions disappear. For instance, a lesion of the amygdala may prevent animals and humans alike from experiencing fear or anger in the presence of a real or imagined object, even when all other cognitive functions remain intact (Damasio 2003; LeDoux, 1998).
But, a priori, most stimuli are not ‘emotionally competent’ but emotionally ‘neutral’, which means that they do not elicit a genetically programmed emotional response. However, neutral and emotionally competent stimuli can become associated through conditioning, and the former may end up eliciting the same emotional responses as the latter (Davis, 1992; LeDoux, 1998). Such associations may be created particularly quickly, and below the subject’s awareness: a single pairing between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli being enough to elicit long-lasting fear (LeDoux, 1998). Damasio explains:
As they develop and interact, organisms gain factual and emotional experience with different objects and situations in the environment and thus have an opportunity to associate many objects and situations which would have been emotionally neutral with the objects and situations that are naturally prescribed to cause emotions. A form of learning known as conditioning is one way of achieving this
association...the face of a wonderful, unknown person that so resembles that of someone associated with some horrible event may cause you discomfort or irritation. You may never come to know why (Damasio, 1999: 57).
In addition to this, individuals may learn to associate neutral stimuli with emotional value just by observing others, and without the need of a personal experience. And this appears to be particularly so in the case of fear and anxiety (Olsson, Nearing, & Phelps, 2007). As LeDoux suggests: ‘Humans learn many things by observing others in social situations and it has been proposed that anxiety, especially pathological anxiety, is sometimes or even often learned by social observation’ (LeDoux, 1998: 237).
Neuroscientists bring back the construct of conditioning (a construct that had almost completely disappeared due to its behaviourist connotations) to emotional research (see i.e. Damasio,1999; LeDoux, 1998; Rolls, 2000). Notwithstanding, they do not propose
conditioning as a replacement for cognitive theories, but rather, they emphasise the fact that multiple levels of processes intervene in emotional experiences. In fact, emotional responses seem to result from the activation of different and partially independent areas of the body (i.e. the spinal cord (reflexes), subcortical and cortical areas) (Elliot, 2006). This reminds us that emotions are not all about cognitions, and suggests that our
prevalent theories in performance research may suffer from an overly cognitive bias (Nagel, 2010).
Neuroscientists’ findings have strong implications when it comes to performance research for two main reasons. Firstly, if pain and pleasure, threats and opportunities, and avoidance and approach, lie at the heart of emotions; if, moreover, objects and events that are originally neutral come to be invested with emotional value through association with stimuli that are automatically recognised as pertaining to the one or the other category, then we may hypothesise that the brain is continually monitoring the world in order to make sense of new situations and events in terms of ‘where do they fit’ within these opposing, pre-established emotional categories. This hypothesis has implications when it comes to interventions. For instance, fear of performance likely reveals an association between the activity and the threatening stimuli. Based on this hypothesis, interventions that aim at helping performers overcome performance anxiety should not merely aim at reducing negative emotions (i.e. anxiety), but at shifting the existent association between performance and threat into a new association between performance and opportunities. In other words, in order to be successful, intervention should aim at completely changing the meaning performers make of their performance.
Secondly, neuroscientists suggest that the real root of anxiety might reside in
unconscious associations between performance and distressing events. This suggests that MPA research should be broad enough to investigate the origin of these
associations. And, particularly importantly for this research, this suggests that a performers’ socio-cultural environment plays a major role in shaping his or her performance experiences, as it provides the kinds of performance contexts in which dramatically different associations may be learned. Consequently, the impact of the performers’ socio-cultural context should be included in MPA research.
In addition to the above, Damasio highlights another characteristic of emotion that is particularly relevant when it comes to research that includes interventions. He argues that emotions are mainly elicited by perceived images and ‘mental images’. This suggests that the creation of new emotional associations should be mediated by the creation of new mental images, which implies that not all kinds of cognitive
restructuring would be equally effective when it comes to promoting positive emotions. Given the importance of these implications, I will investigate them further here.
Damasio states that
Emotions occur in one of two types of circumstances. The first type of circumstances takes place when the organism processes certain objects or situations with one of its sensory devices…The second type of circumstance occurs when the mind of an organism conjures up from memory certain objects and situations and represents them as images in the thought process… (1999: 56).
He argues that human and animal brains continuously generate ‘movie-like’ images that proceed from all sensory modalities, and ‘depict’ processes and entities of all kinds. These images, or neural representations that elicit emotion (Damasio, 2003), precede language, and this is why emotions are found in abundance in non-human creatures as well as in babies before they integrate language into their thinking process.
Damasio explains that
Wordless storytelling is natural. The imagetic representation of sequences of brain events, which occurs in brains simpler than ours, is the stuff of which stories are made…Movies are the closest external representation of the prevailing storytelling that goes on in our minds… Telling stories precedes language, since it is, in fact, a condition for language, and it is based not just in the cerebral cortex but elsewhere in the brain and in the right hemisphere as well as the left. (2003: 188, 189)
Other researchers agree that images are the primary elicitors of emotions. For instance, Frijda argues that it is the immediacy of sensory stimulations – of any kind of modality – that has the proper input format to trigger emotional processes, and adds that a vivid imagination, too, has the properties of ‘reality’ and is capable of eliciting or abating strong emotions. He claims that symbolic information has a weaker impact on emotions
than pictures or events that are actually perceived or imagined. He reminds readers that a photograph of a distressed child in Vietnam had more effect on people’s emotions than reports about thousands killed, and that ‘knowing’ about the threat of nuclear war does not seem to move people as much as watching a film such as The Day After. Frijda states that ‘knowing means less than seeing’ (1988: 352), and argues that it is
imagination rather than knowledge that elicits emotions. This is why ‘one kind of cognition is not equivalent to another’ (Fridja, 1988: 352).
Frijda argues that the effect of the present, of what is actually here to entice or repel – whether through the senses or through imagination – is powerful and engenders ‘passion’ in opposition to the weakness of ‘reason’, which he defines as ‘the consideration of satisfactions and pains that are far away and only symbolically mediated’ (1988:352). The images-emotions intrinsic association, in opposition to the lack of association between reasoning and emotions, appears to be manifest in the way in which people usually react to technical articles – they may find these articles
interesting, but they are seldom moved by them. On the other hand, inspirational talks – think of Martin Luther King’s talk ‘I have a dream’ – are mainly built on the ability of language to create mental images that trigger emotions and motivate individuals. According to this theory, reasoning, or symbolic knowledge, does not elicit the
‘experience of pleasure or pain’ that characterises emotions (Frijda, 1988: 351); it does not trigger an impulse to approach or avoid, a desire or urge. It is unconnected to the logistic support of the action-readiness mechanism that propels individuals for action.
These characteristics of emotional processes need to be taken into account when
analysing findings, and particularly when designing interventions, because they suggest that certain kinds of cognitive restructuring may be overly-based on ‘reason’, and may thus be inappropriate to eliciting change. Without the factor that ‘transforms symbolic knowledge into emotionally effective stimulation’, researchers could be unwarily trying to replace emotionally-charged mental images with ‘healthy’ thoughts that may fall short of having the imagetic vividness required to elicit emotions.