Seeing the elephant: Parsimony, functionalism, and the emergent design of contempt and other sentiments

Abstract

Abstract:The target article argues that contempt is a sentiment and that sentiments are the deep structure of social affect. The 26 commentaries meet these claims with a range of exciting extensions and applications, as well as critiques. Most significantly, we reply that construction and emergence are necessary for, not incompatible with, evolved design, while parsimony requires explanatory adequacy and predictive accuracy, not mere simplicity. R1. IntroductionWe thank the authors of the 26 commentaries for their thoughtful and wide-ranging discussions of our target article. Many affirm the aptness of our analysis of contempt, the conceptual and methodological value of the Attitude-Scenario-Emotion (ASE) model, and the applicability of this model to other affective and interpersonal phenomena. Many authors also present constructive criticism, advancing the discussion and revealing avenues for future research and theory building. Some may misunderstand our argument, so below we clarify our position. We maintain that sentiments are like the proverbial elephant: unseen by disparate investigators narrowly focused on parts of the whole. Also like the elephant, sentiments are constructed from general materials organized over evolutionary and developmental time to serve specialized functions. We hope that in stimulating debate about the shape and substance of sentiments, we contribute to eventually understanding the evolved structure of the social mind.Our response is organized as follows: In section R.2, we address criticisms. These include skepticism that sentiments are natural kinds (R.2.1), skepticism of the functional distinction between attitudes and emotions (R.2.2), skepticism of the utility of the ASE sentiment construct, especially as applied to contempt (R.2.3, R.2.4), and skepticism of the operationalizability of the ASE model (R.2.5). In section R.3, we engage the many productive extensions and applications of the general ASE model (R.3.1, R.3.3) and of the specific ASE model of contempt (R.3.2, R.3.4). R2. Critical concernsGervais & Fessler: Author's Response 3 R.2.1. The designed emergence of functional kindsThe ASE model is grounded in an evolutionary approach that assumes the mind consists of adaptations shaped by natural selection. Adaptations can be described at multiple complementary levels: evolved function, phylogenetic history, ontogenetic origins, and proximate implementation. Functional descriptions, addressing why a trait evolved, entail descriptions of input-output computations, but they are agnostic as to how adaptations proximately work and how they arise during development. Nonetheless, natural selection operates by shaping proximate and developmental systems to produce functional phenotypes; rather than being contradictory to evolved design, "designed emergence" (Barrett 2015) is necessary for building locally adapted organisms. Likewise, Galesic's "alternative" account to the ASE supposedly renders sentiments illusory, mere distributions of emotions and judgments. Her account assumes b...

Moral expressions in Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom: Cultural similarities and differences in how affective facial muscle activity predicts judgments.

“…If spontaneous facial muscle activity is an accurate measure of internal emotional or affective states, its measurement could allow 1 However, we note that contempt is not mentioned in recent formulations of emotion-foundation links (e.g. see Graham et al, 2013, Table 2.1); the contempt link is understudied compared to disgust and anger (Cameron et al, 2015), and its definition and facial expression are particularly contentious compared to disgust and anger (A. Fischer & Giner-Sorolla, 2016;Gervais & Fessler, 2017).…”

“…With the exception of a relatively small corrugator effect in the NZ data, participants' own negativity judgments of ingroup and authority scenarios did not predict their own facial muscle activity. A domain-specific explanation could be that these community violations cross-culturally evoked contempt, which may not reliably evoke a strong facial display (A. Fischer & Giner-Sorolla, 2016;Gervais & Fessler, 2017). An alternative, more constructivist explanation could be that stronger negative facial expressions generally track severity, and since the current participants perceived the ingroup and authority violations to be relatively less severe (see Table 1), these violations did not evoke strong facial expressions (see Table 2).…”

“…see Graham et al, 2013, Table 2.1); the contempt link is understudied compared to disgust and anger (Cameron et al, 2015), and its definition and facial expression are particularly contentious compared to disgust and anger (A. Fischer & Giner-Sorolla, 2016; Gervais & Fessler, 2017).…”