Social emotions: behavioural consequences of calibrating and blocking human affective responses

社会情绪：校准和阻止人类情感反应的行为后果

• 批准号: RGPIN-2020-03985
• 负责人: Barclay, Patrick
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: University of Guelph
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=716752
• 关键词: Social; emotions; behavioural; consequences; calibrating

Emotions evolved because they serve a function: they make us act in ways that statistically increase our social and reproductive success. For example, pain makes us withdraw from stimuli that cause tissue damage, fear keeps us away from danger, and parental love makes us care for our offspring. Furthermore, to be effective at increasing fitness, emotions need to be adaptively calibrated to socio-ecological situations. New technologies let us block or suppress our evolved emotions, and many pharmaceuticals including over-the-counter medicines blunt people's emotional reactions. If emotions evolved because they make us behave adaptively, then blunting those emotions may be detrimental. By analogy: fever helps the body fight off infection, so fever-reducing drugs ease our symptoms but ultimately prolong infections they block our body's defense. Similarly, blocking our evolved emotions may prevent us from acting in an ecologically “appropriate” way (i.e., one that is adaptively tailored to our situation). My research program will examine the physiological and behavioural consequences of blunting our evolved emotions. Acetaminophen a popular over-the-counter drug for physical pain relief also reduces people's social pain and their emotional reactions to negative and positive stimuli. I propose two lines of research using acetaminophen to blunt other kinds of mental pain, including the pain of losses and social sanctions, as well as positive emotional experiences. My first research line investigates the downstream consequences of interrupting the pain-signal pathway using acetaminophen. Blocking pain should reduce empathy, pain from infidelity, and anger at cheating, consequently making people less willing to help others, less jealous, and less punitive, respectively. Blocking pain should also make people less responsive to social sanctions and losses, such that they learn to avoid negative behaviours more slowly, resulting in more persistent selfishness and gambling. My second line of research will use acetaminophen to reduce the uplifting emotional reaction to seeing others act altruistically (“elevation”). By blunting people's emotional reaction to others' altruism, it should make them feel fewer somatic and motivational sensations, give less money to others, rate altruists less positively, and be perceived more negatively by others. This research will give key insights into the function of the pain-pathway in responding to social cues, how the physical and social pain systems interact, and fundamental learning processes. By manipulating emotional experience without manipulating the situation, this research can help resolve debates about the nature of emotions, such as how emotional reactions interact with and update pre-existing sentiments and attitudes. Moreover, this research will provide crucial insights about how acetaminophen used by many Canadians daily impacts people's everyday decisions and behaviours.

情绪之所以进化，是因为它们具有某种功能：它们使我们的行为方式从统计上可以提高我们的社交和生殖成功率。例如，疼痛使我们远离导致组织损伤的刺激，恐惧使我们远离危险，父母的爱使我们照顾我们的后代。此外，为了有效地提高健康水平，情绪需要根据社会生态情况进行适应性校准。 新技术让我们阻止或抑制我们进化的情绪，许多药物（包括非处方药）会减弱人们的情绪反应。如果情绪的进化是因为它们让我们做出适应性行为，那么削弱这些情绪可能是有害的。打个比方：发烧有助于身体抵抗感染，因此退烧药物可以缓解我们的症状，但最终会延长感染时间，从而阻碍我们身体的防御。同样，阻止我们进化的情绪可能会阻止我们以生态上“适当”的方式行事（即根据我们的情况适应性地定制的方式）。 我的研究计划将研究削弱我们进化的情绪所带来的生理和行为后果。对乙酰氨基酚是一种流行的非处方药，用于缓解身体疼痛，也可以减轻人们的社交痛苦以及对消极和积极刺激的情绪反应。我提出了两项​​研究，使用对乙酰氨基酚来减轻其他类型的精神痛苦，包括失去和社会制裁的痛苦，以及积极的情感体验。 我的第一个研究方向是研究使用对乙酰氨基酚中断疼痛信号通路的下游后果。阻止痛苦应该减少同理心、不忠带来的痛苦以及对欺骗的愤怒，从而使人们不太愿意帮助他人、减少嫉妒和减少惩罚。阻止痛苦还应该使人们对社会制裁和损失的反应减弱，从而使他们更慢地学会避免负面行为，从而导致更持久的自私和赌博。我的第二项研究将使用对乙酰氨基酚来减少看到他人利他行为时的振奋情绪反应（“抬高”）。通过减弱人们对他人利他主义的情感反应，它应该让他们感受到更少的躯体和动机感觉，给他人更少的钱，对利他主义者的评价不那么积极，并被他人认为更消极。 这项研究将为疼痛通路在响应社会线索方面的功能、身体和社会疼痛系统如何相互作用以及基本学习过程提供重要见解。通过在不操纵情境的情况下操纵情绪体验，这项研究可以帮助解决有关情绪本质的争论，例如情绪反应如何与现有的情绪和态度相互作用并更新。此外，这项研究将为许多加拿大人日常使用的对乙酰氨基酚如何影响人们的日常决策和行为提供重要见解。