Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA05914 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 6 Dec 2000 14:33:58 GMT Subject: Fwd: eeing how the spirit moves us Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 09:30:05 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: <skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu>, "memetics list" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Message-ID: <20001206142849.AAA20741@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Seeing how the spirit moves us
By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff, 12/6/2000
Show people scenes from the life of Mother Teresa, laboring in the filth
of Calcutta, and they will get a feeling often described by prophets and
poets, but not recognized by science.
Even a glimpse of human kindness - a hand placed on a leper's forehead,
or a newborn, once fragile and abandoned, being lifted from its crib -
can be enough to evoke what University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan
Haidt calls ''elevation.'' A branch of the vagus nerve is activated, he
said, giving the chest a ''sensation of expansion,'' provoking chills,
causing the tear ducts to well up, and, in some cases, clenching the
throat.
Haidt has embarked on a quest to prove that elevation deserves
recognition as a distinct emotion, like anger, with its own constellation
of physical symptoms.
''People of many cultures imagine a ladder with God above and the devil
below. When we see someone move down, we feel disgust,'' said Haidt.
''But what if we see someone move up?''
Modern psychology has been rediscovering emotion, as brain imaging
improves dramatically and researchers share a sense of embarrassment
that, to date, they have agreed on only six emotions - happiness,
sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger - and that most of them are
downers. Amusement and relief are now in their sights, but the greatest
feeling, love, is still too elusive to be defined by sudden physiological
changes.
Haidt's initial research is especially interesting, researchers say,
because there are hints that elevation functions as a kind of moral
inspiration, motivating people to be more social and more giving. And if
scientists can identify the emotional roots of charity, and the
conditions that foster them, that would bring closer the dream of
religious visionaries like Mother Teresa: a society in which the season
of giving lasts all year.
''In the last 30 years, we've come to see emotions as important for
survival, for making good decisions. What Haidt is doing is showing that
they also have these moral functions,'' said Dacher Keltner, an associate
professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley who
is studying the feeling of awe. ''To the extent that you can find a state
that makes people adhere to moral principles, that suggests you can
improve things.''
From the beginning, the inspiring behavior of some people has posed what
evolutionary theorists call ''the problem of altruism'' - that is, why
does charity exist at all? In the Darwinian crucible where only the
fittest survive, one would expect that creatures who give away food would
quickly go extinct. Any altruistic tendencies should have disappeared,
washed away in the acid bath of competition.
Yet, this theory can be difficult to reconcile with the fact that, for
example, Americans gave $190 billion to charity last year, according to
Giving USA, an annual philanthropy report.
The solution, scientists think, lies in the insight that humans, like
chimpanzees or dolphins, are social animals that communicate and
cooperate to survive in a hostile environment. Even the simple innovation
of having someone keep watch for threats while others sleep would bring
huge evolutionary advantages.
Thus, they theorize, a system of ''reciprocal altruism,'' in which
members of a group trade favors over time, could take hold.
In a seminal paper nearly three decades ago, Robert Trivers explained how
this system would create the foundations of morality, in which creatures
commit acts that will bolster the group's survival, and even punish those
who break the rules and threaten stability. As animals adapted to
function in the complex new social order, they would develop a capacity
for sympathy and trust.
''We have built up our morality on a firm foundation that you can see in
the animal world,'' said Frans de Waal, author of ''Good Natured: The
Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals.'' He has shown
that chimpanzees share, mediate, console, and reconcile after conflict.
''We have a lot of psychological continuity with chimpanzees,'' he said.
Still, de Waal said, humans are unique in that they will help strangers.
Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi argues that charity is just a form of
''showing off,'' of gaining social status, or impressing potential mates.
Even anonymous donors, he said, could be trying to impress their spouses,
or secretly hoping that their identity gets out.
Others theorize that as humans have developed the ability to reason
abstractly, they have also broadened their notion of who belongs to their
tribe, so that they can feel kinship with, and thus sympathy for, someone
they have never met.
The answer has not been settled, but, still, biologists are increasingly
convinced that the roots of goodness run deep. Morality, they say, is not
solely a human creation, invented by philosophers and religious leaders
to tame a sinning beast, but part of our core being, driven by instinct
and emotion.
To study elevation, Haidt and University of Virginia student Anita Tam
divided subjects into two groups. One was shown a television documentary
on Mother Teresa, and, to distinguish elevation from happiness, the other
group was shown ''America's Funniest Home Videos.''
The results, which have not yet been published, showed that viewers
reported different physical responses, and that the comedy viewers were
more likely to be focused on themselves, while the Teresa viewers were
more likely to feel like doing ''prosocial'' activities such as
volunteering.
The next step, which Haidt has begun, will be to describe more precisely
what the physical elevation response is, in the laboratory, and then
demonstrate that it is distinctive and reproducible.
Also crucial will be showing that the results hold in different cultures,
said Paul Ekman, who established the list of six basic emotions that have
been widely accepted as benchmarks. Ekman is a professor of psychology at
the University of California Medical School in San Francisco.
For a response to qualify as an emotion, researchers will need to show
that it is an immediate reaction to a change in the environment - not a
broader ''sentiment,'' like love - and that, while activated, it causes a
person to think differently.
Ekman and others speculated that elevation might be a kind of awe, which
has become a favored topic of research among emotion specialists. Just as
the dizzying, rough-hewn walls of the Grand Canyon can inspire a
transforming feeling of being in the presence of something greater, so
can acts of what Haidt calls ''moral beauty.''
Haidt said that he became interested in elevation after he studied what
he considers its opposite - the kind of ''social disgust'' one feels at
hearing that someone has, for example, sold a child. Just as that feeling
is nature's warning of someone to avoid, Haidt reasons, elevation could
be a signal that you are near someone that would be good to cooperate
with.
And if these feelings are, as Haidt thinks, an essential part of us, then
the theory would help explain how moral leaders such as Jesus or Buddha
or Mohammed could have such a foundation-shaking influence on so many.
It could also explain why nonviolent protest, of the kind championed by
Gandhi or Martin Luther King, can have such power. Righteousness, they
argue, would by its example go straight to a person's heart, literally
changing it.
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 12/6/2000. © Copyright
2000 Globe Newspaper Company.
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