Reconstructing Basic Emotions with More Situated Social Interactions

Mason and Capitanio offer an explanation of how emotions develop in organisms that departs from the traditional nature–nurture dichotomy for an approach closer to epigenetics. The authors apply this explanation of basic emotions to the development of nonhuman primates raised in isolation, in a nursery, or by peers. Although this may be a good starting point that incorporates how social interactions affect the development of basic emotions, this approach should explain in a more complex way how individuals raised in a socially impoverished environment may not be able to develop behaviors that are functionally integrated emotional states. There should be a further explanation of why they may exhibit behaviors that the other members of the group will not understand, that seem to “cause confusion in more completely socialized animals” (Mason & Capitanio, 2012, p. xxx). I suggest that Mason and Capitanio should take their organismic approach a step further and consider how the specific social practices of a group are also part of the information that makes a difference in the developmental self-organization of the individual.

Nonhuman primates exhibit cultural/social conventions. In chimpanzees, research done by Whiten et al. (1999) emphasized that communication is sensitive to the varying practices of different communities within the same species. For example, these researchers showed how the behavioral signal used to request grooming in chimpanzees from the Mahale and Kasakela communities (two communities that are not far apart) varies from hand-clasp to branch-clasp; there are no ecological explanations for this difference. Perry and Manson (2008), through social conventions like games, demonstrated a similar diversity in different groups of capuchin monkeys. These variations in communication can be extended to basic emotions; it is very likely that the expression of basic emotions in individuals, and how other members of the community understand these emotional expressions, are going to be specific to the groups where these emotions were developed. What is missing from Mason and Capitanio’s approach is a way to incorporate these cultural variations as part of the interplay between experience and biology in the development of basic emotions. One way of incorporating these elements is to introduce a definition of an emotional state that describes how the biological makeup of the infant is affected and developed in the back-and-forth interaction between mother and infant, and how this interaction occurs within the practices of the group in which the mother–infant pair lives.

For example, a primate infant that is separated from its mother will experience basic emotions akin to grief-like reactions (Bowlby, 1980). According to Mason and Capitanio this is only possible if the environment guides the infant’s development in species-typical ways; however, not only the specific typical characteristics of the environment have to be taken into account, but also how the cultural aspects of this environment can alter grief-like reactions. In an observation of six mother–infant chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) pairs from the Kasekela community in Gombe National Park (Botero, MacDonald, & Miller, 2012) it was found that the behavior of two orphans, Titan and Flirt, differed from the rest of the subjects observed. Both of these subjects displayed low play and higher anxiety levels, measured as rough scratching (RSS). These observations suggest that it is likely that both Titan and Flirt experienced grief-like reactions when they lost their mothers and found it difficult to engage in social interactions. Since the 1950s, (Harlow & Zimmermann, 1959) we have known that mother–infant interaction in primates affects the kinds of behaviors in which the infant engages (e.g., rocking, thumb-sucking) and the infant’s capacity to understand others and engage in interactions (e.g., sexual, play, aggressive). This suggests that when the mother is missing, more than food, protection, and comfort are missing. There is something in the absence of the mother–infant interaction that affects the way the infant relates with others. One way of explaining this is to show how, in primates, because of secondary altriciality, mothers play a fundamental role in helping infants learn how to self-regulate their emotional states according to specific cultural practices and how this allows them to be calm enough to interact with others (Botero & Shanker, 2012).

When analyzing Titan and Flirt’s behavior through the Mason and Capitanio theory, we would argue that the absence of the mother did not allow species-typical schemas to develop. However, it remains unexplained why the absence of the mother–infant interaction in these orphans affected the capacity of other members of the group to understand the emotional expressions of these infants and the ability to engage in social behaviors with them. Thus, an explanation is needed that acknowledges not only how different mother–infant interactions may play a role in variations among the development of emotions, but also how mother–infant interactions are situated in the specific social practices of the community in which the infants are born and how this affects the development of basic emotions. This entails a more complex definition of basic emotions, one that includes how the meaning of an emotion depends on the cultural-social practices of a group and presupposes that we observe different kinds of grief, anger, fear, etcetera as defined by the social practices of the group where the infant develops.