[Deep Thoughts] Animal Emotions

[Kyle]

Do animals have emotions? If so- do all animals have emotions? What's the difference if there is one?

If animals don't have emotions, how do they perceive the world? If the do, does that make their perception different?

[Mike]

Unscientifically, it would seem that at least some of the more social mammals experience emotions. Dogs can be happy, sad, scared, excited, bored, jealous, contented, depressed. That may just be me anthropomorphizing, but in my experience, dogs express all sorts of emotions, and I buy into the idea that those are real emotions. Maybe not experienced in exactly the same way or of the same quality as human emotion, but maybe so. That seems real.

Apes similarly cover a wide range of human-like emotion as well. Apes can cry when sad even. Apes with language can express their emotions in words. That's pretty convincing.

Expand this out to cepholapods, monkeys, maybe some of the smarter birds... can you go farther than that? Cats? Pigs? Mice?

Does the range of possible emotions scale up and down with brain size and social structure? Maybe. Does the nuance or quality of emotions change in the same way? I don't know. Maybe something like a mouse HAS emotion, but only knows fear and contentment, because that's all it needs. Or maybe it's more subtle than that.

My gut feeling is that it all falls on some sort of spectrum and doesn't qualify for an easy yes/no answer. But I'm no expert.

[Stan]

The parts of the brain most responsible for emotions are similar across most/all mammals. (I'm not sure about marsupials and monotremes so I'm hedging. ) They probably have a similar range of emotions, though with less nuanced cognition overlaid on it.

Birds seem to have emotions, though I don't have enough experience with birds to really guess at the extent.

At a basic level, emotions are a change in brain state that alter your range of behaviors, often even altering the behavior displayed to the same stimulus. Thought of that way, probably all animals have emotions. Emotions are a nice cognitive shortcut. The organism doesn't have to remember all the details that brought them to a mental state, just their current mental state.

[Zen]

The release of neurotransmitters or hormones under certain situations results in particular physiological responses in the animal's body. The interpretation of these physiological states by the individual is what we call emotional response. Research has shown that the exact same physical stimulus can be manipulated by context to be interpreted in different ways. The classic experiment is a study where subjects where told they were being given an injection of a vitamin compound. One group was given a vitamin compound, the other group was given a shot of adrenaline. After receiving the injection, the subjects were asked to wait for an extended period of time before filling out debriefing forms at the end of the study. While waiting , there was a "confederate" of the researchers in the waiting room who behaved inappropriately. (In other words, acted like an ass the entire time.) The debriefing survey asked questions about the behavior of the confederate. How much did the persons behavior bother you. Are you angry with him. Etc... The study found that in the experimental group, with the shot of adrenaline, the subjects reported high levels of anger toward the person, while in the control group without the adrenaline, there was little to no anger reported.

The conclusion was that the heightened state of physical arousal brought on by the shot of adrenaline was interpreted as anger by the experimental group as a result of the context of the behavior of the confederate, while the same behavior did not cause anger responses in individuals without artificially heightened physical states.

This is also how things like the "Suspension bridge" effect are suggested to operate, as well as the reason taking a date to a scary movie is sometimes a prelude to other, non-scary activities.

So, I would posit that NO animals actually have emotions. They're all in their heads. Including humans.

[Mike]

Except that you and I and everyone around us behave as if emotions are real. We treat them as a real thing and act accordingly. People who do not experience emotions in the same way the majority do and/or who cannot recognize emotions are at a serious disadvantage in our society.

We act as if emotions are real, because that is the best working model of reality for us. Your examples indicate that emotions are easily manipulated and not as clear-cut as we believe, but that doesn't make them not real.

If they aren't real, then why is our most efficient model for navigating society to act as if they are? And if they aren't real, then what label would you put on the experiences we call emotion? And if you actually came up with a label, why not call that emotion?

[Stan]

[Zen]

[Kyle]

I really question your sincerity when you had to white-text it, Zen.

[Kyle]

I agree with Zen. I feel like thinking of it in another way- like they are tangible things- then we're getting into a metaphysical realm that I don't believe in. And I'm not saying that dismissively. I think most people think of emotions as out-of-body actual things-- Love, for example. I think most people think of love as something that exists outside of our minds (as well as in them). For sure religious people who think of God's love for humanity would have similar thoughts on it.

But I don't see the world that way. I agree with Zen that emotions are just our interpretation of a neurological response to a certain stimulus. Animals have those too. Animals have fear. Insects have fear. Fish have fear. Fear is an emotion. It's our neurological response to a perceived threat.

[Mike]

But not being tangible still does not mean they are not real.

A thought is a real thing that I experience. Yes, my thoughts are, on a physical level, merely neurochemical actions and responses within my nervous system, but at the level of human interaction, it is not really useful to discuss them solely on that level. It is useful and meaningful to refer to thoughts as an actual thing, albeit actual things without physical existence.

An interpretation is an actual thing, although again, one without physical form. An interpretation of a perceived neurological state is a thing. It is useful to categorize our perceptions/interpretations insofar as they have common elements and refer to them in shorthand with names like "joy" or "resentment" or whatever.

If you want to take it back to the original question, it's a matter of examining the experiences that humans label as emotions and figuring out how similar the experiences of various animals are to them.

[Kyle]

Is fear an emotion?

[Zen]

[bralbovsky]

Emotion is sort of our awareness of our internal sensations/conditions. We don't have too many sensors that give us access to this, certainly not when we compare the array of external sensors. This might be a good thing; naval gazing being what it is already.

New research suggests that emotion is actually more cultural than previously thought.
There are the basics: contentment, discomfort, arousal, and everything else is a cultural construct based on some combination of the basics. Some cultures just don't have what we might call the full menu of emotions, which indicates that emotions aren't universal or fundamentally just biology.

Certainly animals, planaria even, experience the basics. Perhaps self awareness is really the core of the question. Do they know they're reacting to stimuli or that they have agency? (Is agency even part of this?)

[Phoebe]