Mitchell et al. propose that associative learning in humans and other animals requires the formation of propositions by means of conscious and controlled reasoning. This approach neglects important aspects of current thinking in evolutionary biology and neuroscience that support the claim that learning, here exemplified by fear learning, neither needs to be conscious nor controlled.

Evaluative processes have their roots in early evolutionary history, as survival is dependent on an organism’s ability to identify and respond appropriately to positive, rewarding or otherwise salubrious stimuli as well as to negative, noxious, or injurious stimuli. Consequently, evaluative processes are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and are represented at multiple levels of the nervous system, including the lowest levels of the neuraxis. While evolution has sculpted higher level evaluative systems into complex and sophisticated information-processing networks, they do not (...) come to replace, but rather to interact with more primitive lower level representations. Indeed, there are basic features of the underlying neuroarchitectural plan for evaluative processes that are common across levels of organization—including that of evaluative bivalence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt is known that people covertly attend to threatening stimuli even when it is not beneficial for the task. In the current study we examined whether overt selection is affected by the presence of an object that signals threat. We demonstrate that stimuli that signal the possibility of receiving an electric shock capture the eyes more often than stimuli signalling no shock. Capture occurred even though the threat-signalling stimulus was neither physically salient nor task relevant at any point during the (...) experiment. Crucially, even though fixating the threat-related stimulus made it more likely to receive a shock, results indicate that participants could not help but doing it. Our findings indicate that the presence of a stimulus merely signalling the possibility of receiving a shock is prioritised in selection, and exogenously captures the eyes even when this ultimately results in the execution of the threat. Oculomotor capture was particularly pronounced for the fastest saccades which is consistent with the idea that threat influences visual selection at an early stage of processing, when selection is mainly involuntarily. (shrink)

What is the primary function of consciousness in the nervous system? The answer to this question remains enigmatic, not so much because of a lack of relevant data, but because of the lack of a conceptual framework with which to interpret the data. To this end, we have developed Passive Frame Theory, an internally coherent framework that, from an action-based perspective, synthesizes empirically supported hypotheses from diverse fields of investigation. The theory proposes that the primary function of consciousness is well-circumscribed, (...) serving the 'somatic nervous system[. For this system, consciousness serves as a frame that constrains and directs skeletal muscle output, thereby yielding adaptive behavior. The mechanism by which consciousness achieves this is more counterintuitive, passive, and “low level” than the kinds of functions that theorists have previously attributed to consciousness. Passive frame theory begins to illuminate (a) what consciousness contributes to nervous function, (b) how consciousness achieves this function, and (c) the neuroanatomical substrates of conscious processes. Our untraditional, action-based perspective focuses on olfaction instead of on vision and is 'descriptive' (describing the products of nature as they evolved to be) rather than 'normative' (construing processes in terms of how they should function). Passive frame theory begins to isolate the neuroanatomical, cognitive-mechanistic, and representational (e.g., conscious contents) processes associated with consciousness. (shrink)

I present an overview of emotion theories, organised around the question of emotion causation. I argue that theories of emotion causation should ideally address the problems of elicitation, intensity, and differentiation. Each of these problems can be divided into a subquestion that asks about the relation between stimuli and emotions (i.e., the functional level of process description, cf. Marr, 1982) and a subquestion that asks about the mechanism and representations that intervene (i.e., the algorithmic level of process description). The overview (...) reveals that theories of emotion causation sometimes differ with regard to the kind of process that they hold responsible for emotion causation. More precisely, they hold different assumptions regarding the conditions under which the process is supposed to operate (optimal versus suboptimal), the format of the representations involved (propositional versus perceptual), and the object or input of the central process (stimulus versus responses/experience). Further, the overview reveals that theories of emotion causation sometimes differ with regard to the level of process description that they focus on. Finally, the overview brings to light several similarities among the theories discussed. (shrink)

The past 50 years have seen an accumulation of evidence suggesting that associative learning depends on high-level cognitive processes that give rise to propositional knowledge. Yet, many learning theorists maintain a belief in a learning mechanism in which links between mental representations are formed automatically. We characterize and highlight the differences between the propositional and link approaches, and review the relevant empirical evidence. We conclude that learning is the consequence of propositional reasoning processes that cooperate with the unconscious processes involved (...) in memory retrieval and perception. We argue that this new conceptual framework allows many of the important recent advances in associative learning research to be retained, but recast in a model that provides a firmer foundation for both immediate application and future research. (shrink)

The future harbours the potential for myriad threats to the fitness of organisms, and many species prepare accordingly based on indicators of hazards. Here, we distinguish between defensive responses on the basis of sensed cues and those based on autocues generated by mental simulations of the future in humans. Whereas sensed threat cues usually induce specific responses with reference to particular features of the environment or generalized responses to protect against diffuse threats, autocues generated by mental simulations of the future (...) enable strategic preparation for hazards that may not require an immediate response. The overlap of these mechanisms makes defence effective and versatile, yet can manifest as contemporary anxiety disorders in humans. (shrink)

Interactionism holds that explanatory and interpretive projects are mutually enriching. If so, then the evolutionary and cognitive science of religions’ explanatory theories should aid interpretive projects concerning religious meaning. Although interpretive accounts typically focus on the local and the particular, interpreters over the past century have construed Freud and Marx as offering general interpretive theories. So, precedent for general interpretive theorizing exists. 4E cognitive science, which champions how cognition is embedded in natural and cultural settings, extended into external structures, enacted (...) via motor routines, and embodied via representations rooted in human bodily form, has encouraged interpretive researchers. Theories of embodied cognition especially have embraced a sweeping view of meaning that attends to the emotions’ role and to their evolutionary origins. That inspires a 6E cognitive science that attends to the emotional and evolved dimensions of cognition too and opens up the possibility of general interpretive theories of broadly Darwinian character. Evolved cognitive systems qualify as maturationally natural cognition, which exhibits a distinctive constellation of features. The by-product theory holds that religious representations’ engagement of maturationally natural cognition fosters religions’ success. Representations with some minimal violation of intuitive expectations concerning some ontological category grab attention, stick in memory, and preserve the many automatic inferences accompanying the category. The empirical evidence for this and other elaborations of the by-product view suggests that it discloses dynamics of evolved cognition and associated emotions that tend to guide the pursuit of religious meanings systematically toward well-worn grooves in the semantic landscape. (shrink)

Threat avoidance involves both detection of a threatening stimulus and reaction to it. We demonstrate with empirically validated stimuli that threat detection is more pronounced among males, whereas threat reactivity is more pronounced among females. Why women are less efficient detectors of threat challenges Benenson et al.'s conceptual analysis.

Why do we watch and like horror films? Despite a century of horror film-making and en-tertainment, little research has examined the human motivation to watch fictional horror and how horror film influences individuals’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional re-sponses. This review provides the first synthesis of the empirical literature on the psy-chology of horror film using multi-disciplinary research from psychology, psychotherapy, communication studies, development studies, clinical psychology, and media studies. The paper considers the motivations for people’s decision to watch horror, why (...) people enjoy horror, how individual differences influence responses to, and preference for, hor-ror film, how exposure to horror film changes behaviour, how horror film is designed to achieve its effects, why we fear and why we fear specific classes of stimuli, and how lik-ing for horror develops during childhood and adolescence. The literature suggests that (1) low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror film but that specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people’s re-sponses than are others; (2) there is a positive relationship between sensation-seeking and horror enjoyment/preference but this relationship is not consistent; (3) men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy and seek our horror more than do women and girls; (4) women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror; (5) younger children are afraid of symbolic stimuli whereas older children become afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli; (6) in terms of coping with horror, physical coping strategies are more successful in younger children; priming with information about the feared object reduces fear and increases children’s enjoyment of frightening television and film. A number of limitations in the literature are identified, including the multifarious range of horror stimuli used in studies, disparities in methods, small sample sizes, and a lack of research on cross-cultural differences and similarities. Ideas for future research are explored. (shrink)

We argue that the claim that essence-based causal explanations emerge, hydra-like, from an inherence heuristic is incomplete. No plausible mechanism for the transition from concrete properties, or cues, to essences is provided. Moreover, the fundamental shotgun and storytelling mechanisms of the inherence heuristic are not clearly enough specified to distinguish them, developmentally, from associative or causal networks.

Humans display more conditioned fear when the conditioned stimulus in a fear conditioning paradigm is a picture of an individual from another race than when it is a picture of an individual from their own race (Olsson, Ebert, Banaji, & Phelps, 2005). These results have been interpreted in terms of a genetic “preparedness” to learn to fear individuals from different social groups (Ohman, 2005; Olsson et al., 2005). However, the associability of conditioned stimuli is strongly influenced by prior exposure to (...) those or similar stimuli. Using the Kalman filter, a normative statistical model, this article shows that superior fear conditioning to individuals from other groups is precisely what one would expect if participants perform optimal, Bayesian inference that takes their prior exposures to the different groups into account. There is therefore no need to postulate a genetic preparedness to learn to fear individuals from other races or social groups. (shrink)

According to the pragmatic hypothesis testing theory, how much evidence we require before we believe something varies depending on the expected costs of falsely believing and disbelieving it. This theory has been used in the self-deception debate to explain our tendencies towards self-deceptive belief formation. This article argues that the application of this theory in the self-deception debate has overlooked the distinction between belief and acceptance, and that the theory in all likelihood models acceptance rather than belief, in which case (...) it is probably not relevant to the explanation of self-deception. It is suggested, however, that doxastic error costs might be relevant to explaining some types of self-deception, though they feature in an evolutionary explanation of it rather than a psychological one. (shrink)

Countless studies have reported that individuals detect threatening/angry faces faster than happy/neutral faces. Two classic views have been used to explain this phenomenon—that negative valence drives the effect, or conversely, that low-level perceptual characteristics of the stimuli are responsible for their rapid detection. In the current review, I question whether dichotomous perspectives are the most parsimonious way to explain a large and inconsistent literature. Further, I argue that nondichotomous, multicomponent accounts for the detection of emotionally valenced stimuli might help take (...) us beyond traditional approaches to visual detection research, and I suggest various ways in which future research can use these newer approaches to more effectively elucidate the mechanisms underlying the rapid detection of emotionally valenced stimuli. (shrink)

Angry faces have been shown to be detected more efficiently in a crowd of distractors compared to happy faces, known as the anger superiority effect (ASE). The present study investigated whether the ASE could be modified by top-down manipulation of working memory (WM), in central and peripheral visual fields. In central vision, participants held a colour in WM for a final memory test while simultaneously performing a visual search task that required them to determine whether a face showed a different (...) expression from other coloured faces. The colour held in WM matched either the colour of the target face (target-matching), the colour of a distractor face (distractor-matching), or neither (non-matching). Results showed that the ASE was observed when the probability of target-matching trials was low. However, when the top-down WM effect was strengthened by raising the probability of target-matching trials, the ASE in the target-matching condition was completely eliminated. Intriguingly, when the visual search task was substituted by a peripheral crowding task, similar results to central vision were found in the target-matching condition. Taken together, our findings indicate that the ASE is subject to the top-down WM effect, regardless of the visual field. (shrink)

This paper examines the adequacy of an evolutionary-oriented notion of rationality—ecological rationality—that has recently been proposed in economics. Ecological rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, and in this sense is a version of what philosophers call ‘practical rationality’. Indeed, the question of the adequacy of ecological rationality as it is understood in the paper, is the question of whether ecological rationality is a genuine notion of practical rationality. The paper first explicates and motivates the notion of (...) ecological rationality by explicating the notion of practical rationality, grounding ecological rationality in an evolutionary approach to the emotions which is mainly illustrated by the example of fear, and outlining the reasons adduced in economics for generalizing ecological rationality beyond the emotions. The paper then argues that the raison d’être of practical rationality is first and foremost a specific role it plays in the explanation of behavior, or in telling why it has occurred. Finally, based on –, the paper argues that ecological rationality lacks a constitutive feature of practical rationality—namely, normativity—which is related to the latter’s basic explanatory role, and thus cannot be considered a genuine notion of practical rationality. While the paper focuses on the economic version of ecological rationality, its conclusions apply just as well to other, related, versions of the ecological notion that have been proposed in biology and evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Ahead of Print. The question “what is emotion?” has long been at the core of theoretical debates. The IAC-E is a useful framework for understanding relationships among responses in emotional situations. However, this approach cannot address the nature of emotion. Researchers determine what counts as emotion in the IAC-E, and this decision impacts the relationships detected and inferences made. The assumptions of researchers about emotion change the output. Further, the model is not theoretically agnostic and is best suited (...) to examine emotion perception/knowledge, as in the simulations presented. According to some theories, experienced emotion is qualitatively different than situations that involve perceiving others' emotion or semantic knowledge. Addressing the nature of emotion requires empirical examination of the assumptions made in each theory. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 114-116, April 2022. The question “what is emotion?” has long been at the core of theoretical debates. The IAC-E is a useful framework for understanding relationships among responses in emotional situations. However, this approach cannot address the nature of emotion. Researchers determine what counts as emotion in the IAC-E, and this decision impacts the relationships detected and inferences made. The assumptions of researchers about emotion change the output. Further, the model is not theoretically (...) agnostic and is best suited to examine emotion perception/knowledge, as in the simulations presented. According to some theories, experienced emotion is qualitatively different than situations that involve perceiving others' emotion or semantic knowledge. Addressing the nature of emotion requires empirical examination of the assumptions made in each theory. (shrink)

Emotion plays an important role in securing social stability. But while emotions like fear, anger, and guilt have received much attention in this context, little work has been done to understand the role that anxiety plays. That’s unfortunate. I argue that a particular form of anxiety—what I call ‘practical anxiety’—plays an important, but as of yet unrecognized, role in norm-based social regulation. More specifically, it provides a valuable form of metacognition, one that contributes to social stability by helping individuals negotiate (...) the challenges that come from having to act in the face of unclear norms. (shrink)

Individuals with trypophobia have an aversion towards clusters of roughly circular shapes, such as those on a sponge or the bubbles on a cup of coffee. It is unclear why the condition exists, given the harmless nature of typical eliciting stimuli. We suggest that aversion to clusters is an evolutionarily prepared response towards a class of stimuli that resemble cues to the presence of parasites and infectious disease. Trypophobia may be an exaggerated and overgeneralised version of this normally adaptive response. (...) Consistent with this explanation, individuals with trypophobia, as well as comparison individuals, reported aversion towards disease-relevant cluster stimuli, but only the trypophobic group reported aversion towards objectively harmless cluster stimuli that had no relevance to disease. For both groups the level of aversion reported was predicted uniquely by a measure of disgust sensitivity. Scaled emotion ratings and open-ended responses revealed that the aversive response was predominantly based on the disease avoidance emotion, disgust. Many open-ended responses also described skin sensations. These findings support the proposal that individuals with trypophobia primarily perceive cluster stimuli as cues to ectoparasites and skin-transmitted pathogens. (shrink)

Mimicry is often cited as a compelling demonstration of the power of natural selection. By adopting signs of a protected model, mimics usually gain a reproductive advantage by minimising the likelihood of being preyed upon. Yet while natural selection plays a role in the evolution of mimicry, it can be doubted whether it fully explains it. Mimicry is mediated by the emergence of formally analogous patterns between unrelated organisms and by the fact that these patterns are meaningfully perceived as similar. (...) The perception of similarity is always perceiver-dependent. Similarities between for instance colours are psychophysical phenomena, and their existence is conditioned by an intimate interdependence between perceivers and perceptible reality. In this sense, mimicry is by its very nature dualistic. The analogy in form needed to establish a mimicry does not emerge out of the blue. It depends on the ecological context and the morphogenetic potential of a species. In our proposal, we take into account both the developmental generators of formally analogous structures and the perceptual and cognitive processes that lead to the emergence of mimicry. We show that some of the rather controversial and nowadays largely neglected ideas found in non-Anglo-Saxon literature on mimicry deserve closer attention. We suggest that the diversity of mimicry types is due to differences in variational properties of form-generating and perceptual systems among diverse groups of organisms. We also anticipate that processes studied within social psychology and emotion research probably take place, at least in a simplified form, also in non-human animals. Finally, we argue that these meaning-attributive processes underlie the functionality of mimicry. (shrink)

In addition to active wake, emotions are generated and experienced in a variety of functionally different states such as those of sleep, during which external stimulation and cognitive control are lacking. The neural basis of emotions can be specified by regarding the multitude of emotion-related brain states, as well as the distinct neuro- and psychodynamic stages (generation and regulation) of emotional experience.