How socially-derived are emotions?

[RNGRX]

Re: How socially-derived are emotions?

okay who's alt is this

[Arch0wl]

Re: How socially-derived are emotions?

... accurately measuring emotional states so far is impossible. Furthermore, even if we could measure them, the ethics surrounding the experiments necessary to solidly determine whether I or you is correct would, hopefully, prevent them from being done. What I can do, however, is point towards other neurological development studies and make hypotheses that align with the results of knowledge we DO have.

For instance, vision simply doesn't develop without light, and the physiology necessary for the development of vision stops working after a certain point in time. Plenty of studies about that, famous one was done on cats. We also automatically learn language, but only at certain points in time, whereas afterwards we suddenly have to make conscious effort into doing so.

Also, kids and animals raised in pauce environments end up underperforming on a variety of measures of things, to the point of mental retardation. Look into studies on underfunded orphanages, there's a well-known one on some place in eastern Europe circa 1960 I think. Also, look into any studies about rats and rich vs. poor environments.

Regarding emotional states, there are definitely strong ideas about the environmental impact of poor parenting on things like personality disorders, involving messed up emotional states. Abusive, cold or inconsistent parenting, especially at very young ages, is known to play important roles for the development of personality disorders.

Even then, this wouldn't make the emotions socially-derived.

The emotions still happen because of your physiological configuration. If I were to read what you're saying in the most charitable way, and give it the most contribution to the conclusion they would support, you're at most saying that environmental changes predispose your body to evoke some type of feeling over another.

But the feeling itself is still a physiological response that the environment didn't create. Your environment doesn't reorganize your brain to create new emotions.

""Jealousy" doesn't exist as some single real thing in the way that oxytocin does, basically; it's just a linguistic shortcut to refer to real things without knowing precisely what those things are."

Come again? Jealousy isn't real, it's just a referral to something real...??

The emotions that 'jealousy' refers to are real. They are physiological responses from the brain.

The word 'jealousy' is our understanding of these responses as we've understood their function in a social context. The actual emotion would exist as part of our physiological toolbox regardless of whether anyone actually provoked jealousy in us.