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

情绪的进化是因为它们有一个功能：它们使我们的行为方式在统计上增加了我们的社会和生殖成功。例如，疼痛使我们回避导致组织损伤的刺激，恐惧使我们远离危险，父母的爱使我们关心我们的后代。此外，为了有效地提高健康水平，情绪需要适应性地校准到社会生态环境中。 新技术让我们阻止或抑制了我们进化的情感，许多药物--包括非处方药--钝化了人们的情感反应。如果情绪的进化是因为它们使我们的行为适应，那么钝化这些情绪可能是有害的。以此类推：发烧有助于身体抵抗感染，因此退烧药缓解了我们的症状，但最终延长了感染-它们阻碍了我们身体的防御。同样，阻止我们进化的情感可能会阻止我们以生态上“适当”的方式行事（即，一个是适应性地适应我们的情况）。我的研究项目将研究钝化我们进化的情感所带来的生理和行为后果。对乙酰氨基酚--一种用于缓解身体疼痛的非处方药--也能减少人们的社会痛苦和他们对消极和积极刺激的情绪反应。我提出了两条研究路线，使用对乙酰氨基酚来减轻其他类型的精神痛苦，包括损失和社会制裁的痛苦，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阻断疼痛信号通路的下游后果。阻断痛苦应该会减少共情、不忠带来的痛苦和对欺骗的愤怒，从而分别使人们不太愿意帮助他人、不太嫉妒和不太惩罚。阻断痛苦还应该使人们对社会制裁和损失的反应更少，这样他们就能更慢地学会避免负面行为，从而导致更持久的自私和赌博。我的第二条研究路线是使用对乙酰氨基酚来减少看到他人利他行为时的情绪反应（“提升”）。通过削弱人们对他人利他主义的情感反应，它应该使他们感觉到更少的身体和动机感觉，给别人更少的钱，对利他主义者的评价不那么积极，并且被其他人认为更消极。这项研究将提供关键的洞察疼痛通路的功能，在响应社会线索，如何身体和社会疼痛系统相互作用，以及基本的学习过程。通过操纵情绪体验而不操纵情境，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先前存在的情绪和态度相互作用并更新。此外，这项研究将提供重要的见解，了解许多加拿大人每天使用的对乙酰氨基酚如何影响人们的日常决策和行为。

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.