If you study emotions or emotion-related phenomena in animals (e.g., circuit neuroscience, animal welfare, etc), please please please read this excellent new book by @BatjaMesquita on cultural variation in emotion.
Inherent in the vast majority of studies in animals... 1/
Inherent in the vast majority of studies in animals... 1/
... on emotions, whether those studies are trying to suss out a neural circuit or understand what stimuli capture's animals' attention, is the assumption that emotions are "conserved" across phylogeny - all animals have some set of emotions (with lots of emphasis on fear). 2/
There are a slew of issues with this argument, but IMO one of the most powerful is that emotions aren't even conserved across humans. Cultures vary widely in terms of how emotions are realized, the content of categories, which emotions are valued/(not)acceptable. 3/
Variation in human emotion is the norm, not the exception, and significant and important variation exists even for emotions deemed "basic" (& typically argued to be evolutionarily conserved), like fear.
Further, people see the emotions in others that they themselves have... 4/
Further, people see the emotions in others that they themselves have... 4/
... even if others don't have those emotions. That is, your own cultural set shapes your perception of emotion.
This is long been known and basically 💯 ignored by people working with animals.
@BatjaMesquita's book is a delightful read, an exquisite review of the lit, ... 5/
This is long been known and basically 💯 ignored by people working with animals.
@BatjaMesquita's book is a delightful read, an exquisite review of the lit, ... 5/
... and proposes a model for thinking about two types of emotion orientations (one focused on one's own experience, one focused on the social experience of emotions) that if nothing else should be an awakening to realizing that many of us operate as if ... 6/
... our own emotion experience "carves nature at its joints". Particularly if you're living in a Western context, it does not. And continuing to apply such narrow frameworks to how we work with animals is slowing science. 7/
I think the alternative is to start with different theory and/or focus on different phenomena in animals (e.g., just on valence processing, which seems nearly universal in humans) - something we try to do in my lab... 8/
But first, we have to give up this idea that there's a circuit for fear etc and stop talking like that (b/c I'm regularly told "oh I don't believe that, I just talk like that because it's easy". My dudes, science is hard. Stop being linguistically and theoretically lazy.). 9/
Giving up entrenched ideas often requires replacing them with other ideas - and reading Between Us is a great place to start at developing a more wholistic, culturally inclusive, non-colonial approach to emotion science.
Congrats @BatjaMesquita on a lovely book! fin/
Congrats @BatjaMesquita on a lovely book! fin/
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