
Emotions You Don’t Feel - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/you-can-have-emotions-you-dont-feel
======
partisan
_" Consider one study from 1974. Researchers had an attractive female
interviewer stop one group of men crossing a scary suspension bridge and
another one crossing a bridge that wasn’t scary. The women asked the men to
fill out a questionnaire. The men on the scary bridge responded to the
questions with more sexual content, and were significantly more likely to try
to contact the interviewer after it was over. This suggests that the men on
the scary bridge interpreted (unconsciously) their body’s reaction to the
bridge as added attraction to the interviewer."_

Personally, I would conclude that the men felt more confident about their
chances after having demonstrated their capabilities as worthy mates.
Additionally, after having overcome the bridge, they were now ready to try
their chances at the challenge of wooing the researcher.

~~~
Terr_
Or perhaps reminders of personal-mortality increase interest in procreation to
sustain the species.

~~~
monomyth
Or perhaps different people in different places react differently.

------
exelius
IMO this is more just that people are really bad at reading themselves. With
someone else, you can see the body language and know that they're upset; but
with yourself it can be harder to observe body language and other clues.

Most people walk around unaware of their mental state on a minute-by-minute
basis. I'm one of them -- I didn't believe it until recently, but once I
started unraveling the anxiety I'd been walking around with for years, it
became obvious to me why most people thought I was just a grumpy jerk. Other
people don't perceive you the way that you do; and in many cases they may have
a better perspective.

~~~
SilasX
I was the same way for a while -- had body pains and discomforts that I
(somehow) misattributed to whoever was demanding my attention and so came off
as (or was) grumpy.

------
jblow
All the studies mentioned in this article are exactly the type that are
currently being debunked en masse and generally causing a crisis of faith in
psychology.

~~~
mkaziz
Do you have references for this claim? I'd love to read more about this.

~~~
adolph
The replication crisis:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis)

------
gr3yh47
I feel inclined to think that there's a huge difference between not feeling an
emotion (which I would argue is impossible) and not being consciously aware of
the feeling (which i would say is what this article is calling 'not feeling')

~~~
shakna
Psychopathy is a spectrum disorder characterised by an inability to feel one
or more emotions.

There's certainly a difference between when the average person says they don't
feel, and when a psychopath does, but it certainly lies in the realm of
possibility.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
No, antisocial personality disorder (usually seen as psychopathy in
criminology for which no paychxological diagnosis exists) is characterized by
impulsive behavior, aggression, anger, lack of empathy, no regard for existing
laws/rules and in inability to learn from discipline. See the Wikipedia page
for more information. Lack of feeling emotions is not a defining trait in
psychopathy. Lack of feeling emotions is a defining trait in schizoid
personality disorder, certain flavors of depression, and dissociative or
trauma based disorders.

~~~
shakna
This touches on something personal, so I'll try to keep this civil, and
encompassing, but I won't respond further.

The definition for psychopathy changes within various countries and even the
industry addressing the issue.

The US conflates what have clear distinctions where I am: sociopathy and
psychopathy.

The definition Wikipedia leans towards would be called sociopathy here.

APD, and several other disorders, get classified as psychopathy here.

The definition I gave is simply the definition I was given post-diagnosis.

However, my point that a lack of emotion is possible, seems to stand
regardless of the name you give to the disorder.

~~~
hosh
There was an experimental procedure using trans-cranial magnetic stimulation
that opened up empathy for an autistic person. (And similarly, TCMS was used
experimentally to temporary induce autism in someone). So I wonder to what
extent TCMS can be used for this. Though, like autism, if TCSM can reduce, it
can also induce.

It's in my experience that psychopathy (or whatever we'd like to call it) is a
consciousness state, and there are some people who can deliberately shift into
it by choice. These are usually folks who experiment with hacking their
consciousness, such as psychonauts or meditators, so I'm not necessarily
talking about people who are born into it, or conditioned by circumstance into
it.

The most interesting thing about consciously shifting into that state is that,
once you are there, you feel zero motivation to shift out of it, even if you
have the knowledge and skill to do so.

And it is not so much that there is a lack of emotion, so much as the lack of
_suffering_ when it comes to experiencing things. At that point, any morality
is driven by choice, rather than by pathos.

~~~
DanBC
One of the English NHS (except they're independent of the NHS) "death panels"
NICE has said there's limited evidence of effectiveness of transcranial
magnetic stimulation as a treatment for depression, but recommended that it's
offered to some people in some situations.

[https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/IPG542/chapter/4-Efficacy](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/IPG542/chapter/4-Efficacy)

------
wu-ikkyu
For anyone interested in "emotional intelligence" or being more conscious of
emotions in yourself and others, check out Emotions Revealed: Recognizing
Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Dr. Paul
Ekman.

[https://www.amazon.com/Emotions-Revealed-Second-
Recognizing-...](https://www.amazon.com/Emotions-Revealed-Second-Recognizing-
Communication/dp/0805083391)

~~~
agumonkey
It's tough to balance, I'm often overwhelmed by always wondering how others
are feeling and trying to decipher their behaviour.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Dr. Ekman is renowned for his research into facial expressions and body
language as it relates to our emotional content. He discovered that there is a
set of universal facial expressions (microexpressions) which human beings from
all cultures unconsciously exhibit when we are feeling certain emotions. His
findings are used by many computer facial recognition systems.

Knowing what these facial expressions look like can help you become much more
adept at perceiving emotions.

However, once you have identified the facial expression/emotion, the big
question is _why_ they are feeling that emotion. Ekman advises using great
caution and open mindedness when trying to determine the answer to this
question.

------
mcjiggerlog
As someone who has suffered badly from anxiety in the past this really rings
true. Sometimes I would be completely unaware of what was causing a particular
bout only to later have it become abundantly clear once having talked through
things with my therapist.

It's amazing how much is going on in your brain at the subconscious level,
it's far more than just processing stimuli etc.

~~~
hga
Yeah, anxiety can be weird like that.

The key I've found is keeping something of a diary, initially it was a sleep
diary so the next time a doctor screws up and prescribes me a drug that makes
me manic, I'll figure it out quickly.

I added any medications I take, various other things (especially weird dreams
are fun), and when I feel unusually anxious I write that down, and mentally go
through the things that have happened in the last day or so. The one(s) that
make me feel noticeably more anxious right then and there as I enumerate
through the list, well, that's the tipoff.

I recommend learning cognitive therapy, now with an added "behavioral"
component, if you want to try something like this out, and it can help in
general to the extent it helps you realize some of the things that bother you
are cognitive distortions.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
Most of the process of me getting better was learning to understand and
recognise my own thoughts, so I totally agree. For me personally it was
talking therapy that really worked.

------
hosh
This has been my experience.

Let's be more precise. There are emotions you are _aware_ of and emotions that
you are not. When we say "consciously feel" it, we are talking about
awareness.

Awareness can be trained and expanded. Awareness can also be conditioned to
avoid painful and unpleasant experiences. In such a way, emotions can be
buried deep in the psyche, with mental constructs that filter someone from
feeling it.

It's also been in my experience that burying painful emotions leads to rot.

------
mettamage
Reminds me of a neuroscience article of Berridge where he talks about emotions
that we're not conscious of. I did some digging and found of articles of
Berridge. It seems that he mainly worked with another researcher who knows
more about this: Piotr Winkielman.

Berridge wrote a lot about unconscious liking and unconscious wanting. He
showed that in rats there are different neural areas being activated. There is
a wanting pathway and there are liking hotspots ('islands' close or on the
wanting pathway).

Disclaimer: bsc. psychology, typing this from memory so subtle errors are
probably there.

I hope the links aren't paywalled, I didn't look into it.

Links:

[http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/3/120.full.pdf](http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/13/3/120.full.pdf)

[http://lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publicatio...](http://lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publications/Berridge%20&%20Winkielman%20unconscious%20emotion%202003.pdf)

[http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~pwinkiel/winkielman_zajonc_ER-2010.pdf](http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~pwinkiel/winkielman_zajonc_ER-2010.pdf)

Pages of the researchers.

Berridge:
[http://lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/research/a...](http://lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/research/affectiveneuroscience.html)

Winkielman: [http://winkielmanlab.ucsd.edu/](http://winkielmanlab.ucsd.edu/)

------
knoke
I think a good way to think about emotions and feelings is by strictly
separating them conceptually: Feelings are bodily effects like fear, anger,
hunger, arousal... while emotions are learned acts of communication. Emotions
are interpretations of feelings and Emotions are communicated feelings,
arranged in complex patterns or "scripts" that are culturally highly variable.
So you could say that all emotions (outward, visible acts of communication)
are based on more "invisible" feelings. Take mourning for example. The
feelings are a mixture of fear, but how you mourn is extremely variable over
cultures, times and even intrapersonally. Emotions have to be learned,
feelings are the raw material or puzzle pieces the body/mind offers from
birth.

~~~
monomyth
To deprive yourself of future confusion you can separate this further into:
feelings, emotions and "bodily effects". I present you a slightly less morbid
example: you feel happy and you smile. Act of smiling is an expression of
emotion that is not named in the prior statement. The happy feeling is
expression-less in this example and merely a conscious record of your internal
self-observation.

------
pessimizer
“We find that we have nothing left behind, no ‘mind-stuff’ out of which the
emotion can be constituted.”

This is Holmes at work. "Emotion" is a social construct and a rationalization
after the fact. What we have is a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous
system that react to instinctual stimulus and its derivatives, and streams of
consciousness that instantly try to rationalize those reactions. Theory-theory
has no physical basis.

~~~
hosh
I disagree with that. There is a certain socialization (and mimicry) involved.
However, if you were to strip out the socialization as well as strip out the
pattern of physical sensations that arises, there will still be something,
which is the emotion.

I am not speaking metaphorically. I'm talking about using your own
consciousness as the laboratory and your awareness as the instrument to
examine and experience this directly. It is possible to concentrate on an
emotion as it is being experienced, and mentally distinguish between what is
the socialization and what is not. The same with distinguishing what are
patterns of physical sensations related to the emotion.

