Scientists disconfirm belief that humans' physiological reaction to emotions are uniform

Indigophoton · Apr 18, 2018

How do you feel when you're angry? Tense? Jittery? Exhausted? Is it the same every time? Is it identical to how your best friend, co-worker, or barista feel when they experience anger? In all likelihood the answer is no, that how you experience anger varies between situations, and that how you experience it varies from others.

According to new research from Northeastern, how your body physically changes during anger and other emotions can also widely vary—findings that upend hundreds of years of conventional wisdom.

Psychologists have long operated under the notion that categories of emotion—anger, sadness, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise—each have its own physiological fingerprint. For example, your blood pressure should go up when you're angry or your heart rate should rise when you're scared. That assumption, however, is not true. That's according to new research led by Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern...

"We conclusively show across hundreds of studies that this common-sense belief—that each emotion has its own bodily fingerprint—is just false," Barrett said.

For example, Barrett said bodily responses such as heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure fluctuate significantly across all emotion categories. The new study suggests there is not, in fact, a single physiological fingerprint for each emotion, but rather a population of potential responses.
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Neil Harrison, who is now on the CMRC and doing the FND trial mentioned during the PACE debate, comments in the article,

Neil Harrison, Wellcome Clinician Scientist and Reader in Neuropsychiatry at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the United Kingdom, studies how changes in the body interact with the brain to modulate emotion. He said the question of whether emotional categories have bodily fingerprints has stumped scientists "dating back at least to the time of Darwin."

"This impressive study by Barrett and colleagues represents perhaps the most ambitious attempt yet to address this question," Harrison said. "The findings suggest that rather than adopting a classical approach, there is a more fundamental need to reappraise the whole concept of emotion-specific patterning of automatic nervous system responses."
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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-04-scientists-disconfirm-belief-humans-physiological.amp

Impact Statement

Public Significance Statement—This meta-analytic investigation demonstrates that there is no 1-to-1 mapping between an emotion category and a specific autonomic nervous system response pattern. In addition, we observed substantial variability in autonomic nervous system changes during instances of the same emotion category that was not accounted for by experimental moderators (such as the way the emotion was induced). These findings suggest that autonomic nervous system changes during emotion are less like a bodily fingerprint and more like a population of variable, context sensitive instances.
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The paper (paywalled), http://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/bul0000128

Indigophoton · Apr 18, 2018

I saw this and immediately wondered if the same would be true for fatigue as perceived by the central sensitization model of ME, according to which, fatigue is an emotion (eg Fatigue is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates the Exercise Behavior to Ensure the Protection of Whole Body Homeostasis)

From a summary of the latter paper (I'm not recommending the site, just found the summary useful)

The essence of the central governor model is that fatigue is not a physical event but rather an emotion that is used by the brain to regulate exercise stress. An important implication is that all forms of exercise are submaximal since there is always a reserve of motor units that are never fully utilized.

Research shows that motor recruitment and fatigue during exercise will be affected by a huge variety of factors, including emotional state, mental fatigue, recovery from previous exercise, motivation, self belief, prior knowledge of the duration of exercise, cerebral and arterial oxygenation, muscle glycogen storage, fluid loss, thirst, heat, and more. In fact, "the prediction of this model is that potentially everything ... can potentially affect athletic performance. But that the most important of these effects begin and end in the brain."

Because fatigue is produced by the brain based on its opinions about what is going on in the body, it is subject to error, as noted by Bainbridge in 1919:

the sense of fatigue is often a very fallacious index of the working capacity of the body there is not necessarily any correspondence between the subjective feelings of fatigue and the capacity of the muscles to perform work. It is a protective feeling which tends to restrain the man from continuing to perform muscular work when this would cause injury.
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(Emphasis added).

I guess this idea underpins BPS as well as central sensitization.

TiredSam · Apr 18, 2018

I always feel at my best when angry. Second best is grumpiness. I find happiness vastly over-rated.

Indigophoton · Apr 18, 2018

TiredSam said: ↑

I always feel at my best when angry. Second best is grumpiness. I find happiness vastly over-rated.
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There's always one

Mithriel · Apr 19, 2018

There was an article in the New Scientist about fatigue about 20 years ago. It mentioned CFS (not in a good way sigh) but was primarily about athletics. It spoke about fatigue in marathon runners who would get exhausted if there was suddenly a hill on their route but were fine if they knew it was coming. This must have been near the start of the fatigue as emotion thing.

They were doing OK until they spoke about a cyclist I think who died after using cocaine to feel less tired during a race. They concluded that the drug prevented his body realising he had reached the point of exhaustion.

So, basically, the article was saying that fatigue is a protective feeling that the body produces to prevent death but that we should be finding ways to stop feeling it so we can carry on longer. never seemed to cross their minds that the exhaustion in ME could be like fainting, protective and forces us into a position where we are not under threat.

It could be that, rather than our disease being a feeling of fatigue when we are actually healthy (as the BS have it) we have damaged systems which would kill us if we did not feel the exhaustion that stops us. I know that Paul Cheney said we have diastolic heart failure which prevents us doing things but he had systolic heart failure which has no symptoms until the heart is so overworked it fails and you need a transplant.

Just realised this is off topic but refuse to waste so much effort

Barry · Apr 19, 2018

TiredSam said: ↑

I always feel at my best when angry. Second best is grumpiness. I find happiness vastly over-rated.
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Quite so. I'm most 'impressed' by those folk who only seem happy when they are miserable.

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Scientists disconfirm belief that humans' physiological reaction to emotions are uniform

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