Emotions Argumentative Analysis

The main distinction between culture and evolutionary bases of emotions is the origin and function of these emotions. The evolutionary perspective would say, “Generally prepare us for action that serves our best interests” (1/25). To get a stronger sense of what this means, it helps to look at the very beginning, natural selection. And natural selection would say that emotions increase the likelihood to keep our offspring and us safe. Basically, emotions goal in this perspective would keep us alive and flourishing. This is a little different to the culture perspective, which would say, “Emotions--Prepare us for action that serves our best interests within a culture, and also serves culture’s interests” (1/25). Although they both are rather

concerned with our “best interest”, the evolutionary perspective appears to be more apprehensive about our mortality and culture is more concerned with suitable socially.

The evolutionary perspective considers emotions to be a biological process connected to the brain, autonomic nervous system, and hormones. The culture perspective states that emotions come from, “Language, beliefs, social roles, concepts, and the performance of emotions” (1/25). From what is presented here, evolution views emotions as a response inside of the body whereas the cultural perspective perceives emotions as a manifestation of our values.

Humans have evolved a variety of emotion; each designed to help with particular adaptive. Our ancestors were confronted with a large quantity of these problems including, avoiding predators, gathering nutrients, enticing mates, caring for progenies, and finding shelters. Because all of these problems needed to be solved, humans’ brains developed specific mechanisms that helped us to deal with these problems. According to the evolutionary perspective, Emotions are adaptive programs designed through repeated encounters that are intended to either direct other physiological programs or to directly solve adaptive problems faced by a species over time. Happiness and sadness have yet to have distinct

evolutionary bases. Some might say that happiness and sadness could be used in terms of steering an individual in the ‘right direction’. But, sadly there is no concusses on how happiness and sadness may fit in evolutionarily speaking. Fear can be used to avoid dangerous situations. In class, it was stated that from an evolutionary standpoint fear could be used to induce a flight, flight or, freeze response. (1/13) Danger poses a major survival challenge, so psychological mechanisms (fear) that lead us to cope with danger effectively, are the kind of things that evolution would have selected. Disgust can be easily argued from an evolutionary standpoint. Disgust could be used to avoid contamination from food or water, as well as avoiding another human being who appear sick. (pg 55) Evolutionary speaking anger is used to protect both resources and progenies. (1/13) This helped in evolution when someone was threatened; an active reaction can destroy or intimidate the other, giving more opportunities to survive and procreate. Evolutionary speaking, emotions provide a fast response mechanism for dealing with events. Although we can do complicated, reasoned, cognition, in survival it may take fast instinctive emotion-driven action to stay alive. The ones who do survive may then breed and their faster response genes propagate more than those of the dead slower losers.