Name: 12. Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part II
Uploaded: 2014-02-13T01:28:08.000Z
Duration: 56 min 7 s
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Professor Paul Bloom: So what we're doing today is

"Emotions" is a two-part lecture and we're continuing

along certain themes. I want to begin by responding

to a question which was raised in the last class concerning

smiling and nonhuman primates. It was a very good question.

different sorts of smiles to convey different sorts of

"do nonhuman primates, like chimpanzees or gorillas or

gibbons, have the same many sorts of smiles?"

So, I contacted the world's expert on smiling,

who did not return my e-mails. So, I contacted the second

world's expert on smiling who told me that the answer is "no,"

that primate--nonhuman primate smiles actually correspond

They're "don't hurt me" smiles. They're equivalent to the "coy

smile" that we saw on humans. But that nonhuman primates do

not use smiles for greetings; there's no equivalent to the

nor do they use them as genuine expressions of happiness.

There's no equivalent to the "Duchenne smile."

That's as far as I know. If the world's expert gets back

to me and says something different, I'll keep you posted.

Another thing. Going back to the beginning

theme of the class, what we started--just to

review, we talked about the different functions of emotions.

And then we talked about smiling and facial expressions.

And then we turned to some--to a nonsocial emotion,

the case of fear. And then we shifted to social

emotions towards kin and the special evolutionary reasons

that would lead them to evolve. And as we were ending,

we were talking about the relationship between an animal

and its children, particularly in cases like

humans and birds and mammals where there tends to be a close

relationship with our children. We invest in quality,

children in my life. And my evolutionary trick then

is to focus very intently on them and make sure they survive.

If I were to produce 100 children, I could stand to lose

a few, but if I just produce five in my lifetime or two or

And so, the story of the evolution of a species like us

involves a long period of dependence and deep,

deep bonds between the parent and the child.

And I want to begin this class by giving an illustration from a

documentary about parental response to children,

but I want to give it in a species that's not us.

And here is why. I'll explain why with an

He studies why people hold religious beliefs.

And he tells me that when he's talking to a non specialist,

somebody not in the field, he doesn't ever tell them,

"Yeah, I'm really interested in why people believe in the Bible

or why people light the candles on Sabbath or why people go to

church" because these are religions that people around

study them they'll sort of be puzzled, "why would you want to

If you want to talk about the psychology of religion to an

audience like this, what you do is you start with

the exotic. So, you start by talking about

Dan Sperber talks about a culture where the men put butter

on their heads in the summer. And it kind of melts and that's

part of--one of the things that they do or--you talk about a

culture that believes in spirits or that trees can talk.

You say you're studying it and they say, "Oh,

that's interesting. I wonder why they believe that?"

And you use that as a way to look at more general facts that

exist even in our culture. You use the fact that we don't

take the exotic for granted as a way to motivate the scientific

And this is, of course, true more generally.

This was the point in the William James quote when he

talked about things that are natural to us and noticed that

some very odd things are equally natural to other species.

And it's true, I think, in particular when we

talk about things like the love we have for our children.

So, one way to look at the love we have for our children

scientifically, isn't to look at it head-on,

because the love we feel towards our own children feels

sacred, it feels special, but look at it in other species.

And so, one of the nicest illustrations of this is the

childcare and mating practices were dramatized in a wonderful

And this is interesting because they had this incredibly

elaborate and quite precarious system of generating and taking

care of offspring. So, I want to show you a brief

clip of the movie to illustrate some parts of this.

What they do at the beginning, which is not--which leads up to

this, is they take a very long trek from the water to their

breeding grounds. Their breeding grounds is--are

protected from the wind and they're on a firm piece of ice

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12. Evolution, Emotion, and Reason: Emotions, Part II

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