The Origins Of Human Emotions And Their Purpose - Dr Laith Al-Shawaf

Why do we have emotions?

Well, emotions are adaptive, and they serve a function even though they're often maligned and regarded as irrational, and there's a long history in psychology and philosophy of regarding emotions as these irrational forces that get us into trouble. They really, uh, each have evolved for a reason and serve a function. And so for example, fear protects us from danger, disgust protects us from pathogens and from contamination, anger helps us to negotiate with people who are not treating us well enough or who are blocking our goals. Romantic love ser- serves to, uh, bond people together in a pair bond to bind e-each other, to bind two people to each other. Envy is a useful status in navigate... Is a useful emotion in navigating status hierarchies and, and so on and so forth. And so each emotion has an evolved function, something tied to survival or reproduction or some other kind of goal that is tributary to survival and reproduction like navigating status hierarchies and repairing relationships and building friendships and alliances and so on and so forth. And, uh, so they all serve a function.

Why have they been so maligned? Why have they not been super popular in the world of psychology? If they're this useful, if they give us all of these advantages and they help us stay alive and navigate things, w- why are people saying that they're irrational or that they're in conflict with cognition?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. I think part of the reason, and this is something that we might talk about over the course of the podcast, is that there is something that I think of as the emotion paradox, which is that on the one hand, yes, emotions are adaptive and useful and functional, and they help you survive and reproduce and raise your children and avoid illness and infection, but on the other hand, they also do cause people great distress, they can lead us astray, they are involved in a lot of psychological disorders, and a lot of people in one way or another do suffer because of their emotions. And so there are these two truths that we need to reconcile, the fact that they are adaptive and useful and functional on the one hand, and we really couldn't do the basic tasks of survival and reproduction without them, but on the other hand, they do cause distress, they do sometimes lead us to behave in ways that don't serve our interests, they do sometimes seem shortsighted. And so we have both of these together, and we need to figure out a way to reconcile them. Um, we can either do that now or we can build up to that, as you wish. But, um, I d- I did want to add one other thing, one other reason why I think emotions are given short shrift, it's that we tend to think of emotions as just the way that state feels. Fear is usually thought of as feeling afraid, what it feels like to be afraid. Disgust, when you say the word disgust, people think about what it feels like to feel disgusted. But emotions are more than just the feeling state, more than just the subjective phenomenology. There are a whole host of changes in our body and brain and mind and behavior. So for example, when you feel afraid, it is the feeling state, but it's also that your attention narrows to the dangerous stimulus, and your perception is heightened. Your physiology, things like digestion and reproduction, are suppressed 'cause they're not needed right now, and your hunger falls away, and you focus instead on escape, and energy is shunted toward the muscles for escape. And your memory is activated such that if you know the terrain, escape routes become more salient for you. And you con-