Patterns of Emotions. A New Analysis of Anxiety and Depression

300 Pages·1972·5.93 MB·English

by  Carrolle E. Izard (Auth.)

patterns of
EMOTIONS
«AHISOF
ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
CARROLL E. IZARD
Department of Psychology
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee
WITH CHAPTERS COAUTHORED BY
EDMUND S. BARTLETT / ALAN G. MARSHALL
Orange Memorial Hospital I Blue Ridge Mental Health Center
Orlando, Florida / Ashville, North Carolina
ACADEMIC PRESS · New York and London · 1972
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Preface
Since the dawn of the species Homo sapiens, the emotions
have played an essential role in human adaptation and personality
functioning. The individual human being has always had some aware­
ness and some understanding of his or her own emotions and their
importance. Much of this awareness and understanding seems intui­
tive rather than rational or logical, and thus a person often has
difficulty sorting out, labeling, and verbalizing his emotions or emo­
tional experiences.
While people have always been concerned with emotions,
scientists have only recently begun to apply their knowledge, skills,
and methods to this area. At last, there are a number of encouraging
signs which point toward the development of a science of the
emotions—a science which will consider the discrete fundamental
emotions of human experience as worthy of study.
Hopefully, a science of the emotions will enhance, rather
than replace, the individual's intuitive grasp of his inner life. Further­
more, scientific advance in this area should facilitate the individual's
effort to reflect on his emotions and the part they play in his life—his
perceptions, his thoughts, his memory, his actions, and his relation­
ships with other people.
The Face of Emotion (Izard, 1971) presented a general
conceptual framework for the study of the personality, a theory of
the emotions, and evidence for the universality of the fundamental
emotions of interest, joy, surprise, distress, anger, disgust, contempt,
shame, and fear. It also discussed the role of these emotions in
human development and the use of emotion concepts in the assess­
ment and treatment of human problems.
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Preface
Patterns of Emotions was a necessary sequel. The delinea­
tion and measurement of the fundamental emotions led to the
discovery that emotions frequently, probably typically, occur in
combinations and patterns. This approach also made possible the
analysis of complex emotional experiences in terms of discrete
fundamental emotions.
The principal purpose of Patterns of Emotions is to pre­
sent a theoretical and empirical analysis of anxiety and depression-
phenomena experienced in some degree by everyone and in crippling
intensity by many. These two human problems have claimed far
more of the attention of clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social
workers, psychiatric nurses, and the related helping professions than
any others—probably more than all others combined. Yet, these
phenomena are still often conceived and treated as global, unitary
states or processes. In the present work they are defined, in the
framework of differential emotion theory, as combinations or pat­
terns of interacting fundamental emotions and bodily feelings. The
differential emotion theory of anxiety and depression is compared
with psychoanalytic theory, cognitive theory, and biogenetic theory.
A number of studies are presented which support the differential
emotion analysis of anxiety and depression.
Finally, the book presents studies of various life situations
in which a particular fundamental emotion is dominant. What has
been found repeatedly is that, in each such situation, the dominant
emotion occurs in a pattern of dynamically related fundamental
emotions. The patterns for a variety of commonly experienced and
universal emotion situations are presented and discussed.
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Acknowledgments
My wife, Barbara Sinquefield, has continually given me a
very special kind of love which helps keep my own anxieties and
depressions within manageable limits, and she and my children Cal,
Camille, and Ashley continue to provide both challenge and insight
for my study of human emotions.
Dr. Hans Strupp, Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt
University, read the sections on psychoanalytic theory and made
helpful comments. Dr. John Davis, Departments of Pharmacology
and Psychiatry, Vanderbilt School of Medicine, served as a critic for
the chapters dealing with the neurophysiology and biochemistry of
the emotions.
A number of graduate students in psychology have helped
in various ways. Edmund Bartlett and Alan Marshall coauthored
chapters. Frank Dougherty helped with the development of the
Differential Emotion Scale. Robert Speth proofed the chapters deal­
ing with neurophysiology and biochemistry and made valuable sug­
gestions and improvements.
Literally hundreds of Vanderbilt undergraduates have
contributed directly or indirectly to this volume. In my course on
the emotions, in independent study, and in honors research they
have brought creative energies and enthusiasm. Bill Kotsch, a senior
honors student, occupies a special place in the research program on
the emotions. He has participated effectively since his sophomore
year. Term papers on anxiety by Harold Simpson II and Robbi
Slocum, and on depression by Stuart McCarthy and Robert Harris,
were quite helpful.
Dorothy Timberlake, Business Manager, Department of
Psychology, set up the bibliography, and she and Jackie Caldwell,
XI
Acknowledgments
Administrative Assistant, have graciously and efficiently provided the
support necessary for the preparation of the manuscript. Pat Burns,
Sue Clark, Carol Darien, Penny Adgent, Pat Harris, and Debbie Keller
helped with the typing and proofing.
xn
CHAPTER ONE
The Emotions and Their Neurophysiological Substrates
An increasing number of psychologists and other be­
havioral scientists are accepting emotion as a legitimate field of
inquiry. Nevertheless, much of the research in the area is fragmented,
and different facets of emotion are sometimes presented as though
they were the whole of it. In The Face of Emotion (Izard, 1971), I
presented a comprehensive theory of emotion and personality to­
gether with supporting cross-cultural, developmental, and clinical
evidence. Here, I shall review a few points that are essential to
formulations and evidence contained in the present volume.
I. A WAY OF CONCEPTUALIZING THE EMOTIONS
The term "emotion" used in a general sense or without
modifiers is necessarily imprecise. Yet, even as a general term it has
usefulness. To describe a state or process as emotion distinguishes it
from other general classes of phenomena such as cognition and
locomotion. These latter terms are likewise imprecise. To say that a
given process is "cognition" does not tell us whether it is perception,
associative learning, thought, memory, or a combination of these and
other types of cognition. Such imprecision does not render the term
"cognition" useless. Rather, it means that theory and research in the
area of cognition will require differentiation among facets and types
of cognition. The case for the term "emotion" is similar. It may refer
either to a discrete fundamental emotion or to a pattern or com­
bination of emotions.
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1. Emotions and Their Neurophysiological Substrates
A. FUNDAMENTAL EMOTIONS
The fundamental emotions are interest, joy, surprise, dis­
tress, anger, disgust, contempt, shame (shyness, guilt), and fear. Each
of these emotions has unique motivational properties of crucial
importance to the individual and the species, and each adds its own
special quality or significance to life experiences. Each emotion has
an inherently adaptive function. They are termed fundamental be­
cause each of them has (a) a specific innately determined neural
substrate, (b) a characteristic neuromuscular-expressive pattern, and
(c) a distinct subjective or phenomenological quality. No one of
these three facets constitutes emotion. Each is an emotion com­
ponent. A complete emotion or complete emotion process requires
all three, though socialization may greatly diminish the expressive
pattern in both duration and intensity. In a sense, each fundamental
emotion is a system made up of its three components and their
interactions. The fundamental emotions have already been identified
and defined empirically at the expressive and phenomenological
levels (Izard, 1971). In the ensuing pages they will be further de­
fined, particularly with respect to their interrelationships (emotion-
emotion dynamics and patterning) and their relationship to certain
nonemotional processes.
In addition to the three principal components of an emo­
tion, there are a number of other organs and systems that become
involved during emotion. Of particular importance are the endocrine,
cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. For a long time it has been
known that emotion is accompanied by changes in the autonomie
nervous system and in the visceral organs (e.g., heart, blood vessels,
glands) which it innervates. Unfortunately, a great deal of research
has mistakenly treated autonomic-visceral processes as though they
constituted emotion. Some eminent investigators who once did this
do so no longer (e.g., Pribram, 1970), but many still do. The fact
that autonomic-visceral processes accompany emotion does not
mean that they define it. Some of them also accompany physical
exertion. Under well-understood conditions, the fact that they ac­
company emotion may mean that they can serve as relatively reliable
indicators of the presence of emotion. As we shall see later, the
indicators in current use usually point to emotion in the general or
imprecise sense rather than to a discrete fundamental emotion. At
present there is only tentative evidence for discrete emotion-specific
autonomic-visceral patterns, and we have this for only a few of the
fundamental emotions. Autonomic-visceral patterns may be quite
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I. Conceptualizing the Emotions
helpful in the study of emotion in general and in the study of
discrete emotion when it is possible to use other evidence, e.g., facial
patterning and phenomenological self-report, to identify the partic­
ular fundamental emotion or emotions.
Two kinds of phenomena militate against the study of
fundamental emotions separately. First, emotion tends to involve the
whole organism rather than to remain a process confined to a single
system. For example, the activation of sympathetic mechanisms that
accompany one emotion may activate other sympathetic mechanisms
that subserve other emotions. This point will· be discussed further in
a later section. Second, emotions tend to occur in certain combina­
tions or patterns. Discrete fundamental emotions undoubtedly occur
in the life of an individual, but they probably exist separately for
only a very short time before other emotions are activated. Moments
of experience characterized by a single fundamental emotion are
relatively rare in terms of the total time they occupy, and they are
very difficult to obtain for sufficient duration and under conditions
required for systematic study.
B. PATTERNS OF EMOTIONS
The combinations or patterns of emotions that will be
dealt with most extensively in this book are anxiety and depression.
These terms have been conceived in science and in popular thinking
as unitary concepts and often viewed as discrete emotions. The
theory and evidence to be presented in this book run counter to this
conceptualization and favor the position that anxiety and depression
are combinations or patterns of two or more fundamental emotions.
The evidence also suggests that, while the fundamental emotions are
the principal constituents, somatic and cognitive components are also
involved. Cognitive components may be represented most effectively
as attitudes, or psychological phenomena wherein emotion and cog­
nition themselves join or interact.
It is tempting to simplify the nomenclature and refer to
phenomena such as anxiety and depression as complex emotions.
The problem with this is that "complex emotion" tends to signify a
single though complicated process. It has the ring of entity and
unity. To be accurate, the term "complex" should be used in this
context only as a noun, as is the case for the terms "combination" or
"pattern." In most cases, "combination" and "pattern" are preferred
to "complex," since they imply greater possibility of independence
among interacting parts. Thus, in the present theoretical framework,
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1. Emotions and Their Neurophysiological Substrates
it is preferable to speak of phenomena like anxiety as a combination
of emotions or as a pattern of emotions. The awkwardness created
by constant use of the preferred phrases, together with other lan­
guage problems or deficits in this area, has led me to the ungram-
matical use of "emotion" as a noun modifier. In this way, the
slightly shorter terms such as emotion pattern may be used inter­
changeably with "pattern of emotions."
My theory suggests that certain emotions tend to interact,
cycle, or alternate with sufficient regularity to be identified as
relatively stable patterns. I have maintained that fundamental emo­
tions have unique motivational-experiential characteristics. The oc­
currence of a particular emotion in a combination of emotions does
not change its essential or genotypic properties, but its inter­
actional effect and the consequent observable behavior may differ in
different patterns. Fear in combination with interest produces alter­
nating approach and avoidance behaviors. Fear in combination with
guilt yields only avoidance or withdrawal behaviors. Anger in com­
bination with contempt may produce destructive aggression, while
anger in combination with interest may yield constructive criticism
or other socially responsible and less apparently aggressive action.
These illustrations may be somewhat oversimplified, but they point
out how the organism's functioning in relation to a specific emotion
(e.g., fear-related functioning) may result in different behaviors.
Unless we are aware that the underlying genotypes (fear-interest
combination versus fear-guilt combination) are different and that
both fear and interest are motivational, we may look at the behavior
and draw the wrong inference about fear.
Both the biological nature of the individual emotions and
experiential learning in person-environment interactions help deter­
mine the characteristics of a particular pattern. The characteristics of
a pattern are the qualities, intensities, and durations of the configurai
emotions. Emotion-emotion dynamics have been discussed exten­
sively by Tomkins (1962, 1963), and the concepts of patterning,
interaction, and mixing by Izard (1971). These concepts will be
explored further and evaluated empirically in this book.
II. NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL AND BIOCHEMICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Experts in neurophysiology and biochemistry generally
agree that the internal processes associated with phenomena like
anxiety and depression are not completely understood. While neither
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