Richard L. Rapson

Passionate love/sexual desire: Can the same paradigm explain both?

Two decades ago, experimental social psychologists became interested in the emotion of passionate love, “the desire for union with another.” Recently, sex researchers have begun to focus on sexual desire, “the desire for sexual union with another,” or the loss thereof. In this paper we review what experimental social psychologists have learned about the nature of passionate love in the last two decades and contrast their view of passion with that of sex researchers, especially with regard to the role that anxiety plays in the intensification/dimunution of passion. Finally, we suggest that researchers might profitably use the same paradigm to study these heretofore separate phenomena.

Emotional Contagion: Evidence that emotional contagion exists

Introduction In chapter 1, we proposed the following: Proposition 3. Given Propositions 1 and 2, people tend to “catch” others emotions, moment to moment . Researchers from a variety of disciplines have provided evidence in support of this contention. Animal research Ethologists believe that the imitation of emotional expression constitutes a phylogenetically ancient and basic form of intraspecies communication. Such contagion appears in many vertebrate species (Brothers, 1989). In the 1950s, a great deal of research documented that animals do seem to catch others emotions. Robert Miller and his Pittsburgh colleagues (Miller, Banks, & Ogawa 1963; Miller, Murphy, & Mirsky, 1959; Mirsky, Miller, & Murphy, 1958) found that monkeys can, through their faces and postures, transmit their fears. The faces, voices, and postures of frightened monkeys serve as warnings; they signal potential trouble. Monkeys catch the fear of others and thus are primed to make appropriate instrumental avoidance responses. Some scientists (Miller et al., 1963) tested these hypotheses by means of a cooperative conditioning paradigm. In such a paradigm, one monkey is shown the CS; a second monkey possesses the power to make an appropriate avoidance response. The question is, “Can the monkeys learn to communicate?” In this cooperative conditioning experiment, each time rhesus monkeys spotted the illuminated face of the target monkey on a television monitor, it was their task quickly to press a lever to avoid electric shock. Sometimes monkeys were shown a calm CS face, sometimes a frightened or pained face.

Emotional Contagion: Mechanisms of emotional contagion: II. Emotional experience and facial, vocal, and postural feedback

The violinist Itzak Perlman, in trying to play a difficult note raises his eyebrows (if it is a high note) and keeps them raised until the note has been played … it is generally believed that these motions are secondary and ancillary. But suppose that a good part of musical memory is in fact lodged in these peculiar movements. Suppose that they are significant. –Zajonc & Markus (1984, pp. 83–84) Introduction We have defined emotional contagion as a multiply determined family of psychophysiological, behavioral, and social phenomena. In chapter 1, we reviewed evidence that there is a pervasive tendency automatically to mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person. This mimicry coordinates and synchronizes social interactions while freeing the interactants to think about other issues, such as what one or both of them are trying to achieve and what each is saying. In this chapter, we focus on another important but often overlooked consequence of mimicry: the tendency for mimicked acts to cultivate a convergence of emotions among the interactants. Thus, Proposition 2. Subjective emotional experiences are affected, moment to moment, by the activation and/or feedback from such mimicry . As was outlined in chapter 1, subjective emotional experience could theoretically be influenced by either: the central nervous system commands that direct such mimicry/synchrony in the first place; afferent feedback from such facial, verbal, or postural mimicry/synchrony; or conscious self-perception processes, wherein individuals make inferences about their own emotional states on the basis of their own expressive behavior.

Passionate Love: Inspired by Angels or Demons?

Passionate love is a universal emotion. Researchers have found that people in love have many advantages: it is known to improve both psychological and physical health. When things go badly, however, lovers may suffer: the pangs of rejection, jealousy, sadness, and anger. People can learn both from the joy of fulfilling relationships and pain from the ones that go awry.

The ability to infect others with emotion

Introduction If we pursue the analogy, thinking of the transmission of moods as akin to the transmission of social viruses, it seems reasonable to suppose that some people (the Typhoid Marys of this world) may well possess a natural ability to infect others with the “virus” while others (the Marcel Prousts) stand especially vulnerable to contagion. Norman Mailer (1979), in The Executioners Song , interviewed Nicole Baker, the girlfriend of condemned killer Gary Gilmore. While Gilmore was on death row, Nicole had a brief affair with two men. Nicole loved Tom because he was able to infect her with his cheerful emotions. She loved Cliff Bonnors because he was in tune with her deepest feelings: Cliff Bonnors was great because he always brought his mood around to meet hers. They could travel through the same sad thoughts never saying a word. Tom, she liked, for opposite reasons. Tom was always happy or full of sorrow, and his feelings were so strong he would take her out of her own mood. He wasnt dynamite but a bear full of grease. Always smelled full of hamburgers and french fries. He and Cliff were beautiful. She could like them and never have to worry about loving them one bit. In fact, she enjoyed it like a chocolate bar. Never thought of Gary when making love to them, almost never, (p. 329) In this chapter, we consider the kinds of individual differences that affect mens and womens ability to shape an emotional climate.

Emotional Contagion: Mechanisms of emotional contagion: I. Emotional mimicry/synchrony

I am involved in all mankind. –John Donne Theoretical overview Emotional contagion is best conceptualized as a multiply determined family of social, psychophysiological, and behavioral phenomena. Theoretically, emotions can be “caught” in several ways. Let us begin by considering a few of these. How people might catch the emotions of others A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot; a dog traveling with good men becomes a rational being. –Arabic proverb Conscious cognitive processes . Early investigators interested in how emotions were transmitted from one individual to another focused on complex cognitive processes by which people might come to know and feel what those around them felt. They proposed that conscious reasoning, analysis, and imagination accounted for this transmittal. For example, 18th-century economic philosopher Adam Smith (1759/1976) observed: Though our brother is upon the rack … by the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel some thing which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. (p. 9) Such conscious reveries could spark a shared emotional response (Humphrey, 1922; Lang, 1985).