Comments on: Where Did I Leave My Arousal? http://popsych.org/where-did-i-leave-my-arousal/ The Internet's Best Evolutionary Psycholo-guy Wed, 03 Jan 2018 01:05:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Jesse Marczyk http://popsych.org/where-did-i-leave-my-arousal/#comment-986 Jesse Marczyk Thu, 26 Jun 2014 15:50:51 +0000 http://popsych.org/?p=3236#comment-986 It is important to differentiate the generation of emotions and appropriate behavior in response to them from the cognitive labeling of the reasons we experience them. The part of the brain doing the labeling - or talking, as it were - might not have access to information from the part of the brain which generated the emotion or made the decision. Also, the brain does not need to label the emotion to tell other parts of itself why it's doing what it's doing; the labeling likely occurs instead to tell <i>other</i> people why we did what we did. There are other reasons people might stay in relationships with costs beyond "they mistook fear for arousal or love", which is what I hoped this post would address. The "mistake" explanations don't see to be viable for me, except in cases where their effects are minor enough to have escaped selective pressures. It is important to differentiate the generation of emotions and appropriate behavior in response to them from the cognitive labeling of the reasons we experience them. The part of the brain doing the labeling – or talking, as it were – might not have access to information from the part of the brain which generated the emotion or made the decision. Also, the brain does not need to label the emotion to tell other parts of itself why it’s doing what it’s doing; the labeling likely occurs instead to tell other people why we did what we did.

There are other reasons people might stay in relationships with costs beyond “they mistook fear for arousal or love”, which is what I hoped this post would address. The “mistake” explanations don’t see to be viable for me, except in cases where their effects are minor enough to have escaped selective pressures.

]]> By: Clubfoot http://popsych.org/where-did-i-leave-my-arousal/#comment-985 Clubfoot Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:13:17 +0000 http://popsych.org/?p=3236#comment-985 If we are susceptible to mislabeling our emotions of course it needs to explained WHY we have evolved to do this. Claiming it's just a fault in the design of our minds isn't enough. This is something psychologists who aren't evolutionarily minded fail to understand. Mislabeling of emotions is often used to explain why many women stay with abusive and violent partners. The standard explanation goes that abused women mislabel their emotions of fear and adrenaline as arousal or something and this causes them to mistakenly believe that their abusive partners love them. But the bigger question is why have women evolved to think like this? Staying with abusive partners is such a common and particular behaviour that it's likely to be a specific adaptation and not just a result of some general design fault of the female mind. In primitive tribes the men often beat their wives and the women view this as an act of love. They show off their bruises to the other women saying things like "Look what my husband did to me yesterday. Look how much he loves me!". The other women probably then get jealous and think things like "Luck bitch! I wish my husband would give me a slapping like that.". Abused women in our societies go through the same kind of thought processes. I think what's really happening here is that women are using the violence inflicted on them as a measure of how much their partners are emotionally invested in them. We're not allowed to say so but the truth is that women often deliberately try to wind up their partners to test how much they care about them. If a man was to respond to a test with indifference and just walk off saying "Yeah whatever, bitch.", a woman would probably feel like she's been abandoned and that he doesn't care about her. Responding with anger and violence would show that he is emotionally invested in her and I imagine that this paradoxically gives women some sense of security in the relationship. These behaviours probably go way back to our archaic human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago. So when it boils down to it, this isn't really an irrational mislabeling of emotions at all but a judgement that fulfills a biological purpose. The same is probably true for other supposed cognitive mislabeling phenomena. If we are susceptible to mislabeling our emotions of course it needs to explained WHY we have evolved to do this. Claiming it’s just a fault in the design of our minds isn’t enough. This is something psychologists who aren’t evolutionarily minded fail to understand.

Mislabeling of emotions is often used to explain why many women stay with abusive and violent partners. The standard explanation goes that abused women mislabel their emotions of fear and adrenaline as arousal or something and this causes them to mistakenly believe that their abusive partners love them. But the bigger question is why have women evolved to think like this? Staying with abusive partners is such a common and particular behaviour that it’s likely to be a specific adaptation and not just a result of some general design fault of the female mind.

In primitive tribes the men often beat their wives and the women view this as an act of love. They show off their bruises to the other women saying things like “Look what my husband did to me yesterday. Look how much he loves me!”. The other women probably then get jealous and think things like “Luck bitch! I wish my husband would give me a slapping like that.”. Abused women in our societies go through the same kind of thought processes. I think what’s really happening here is that women are using the violence inflicted on them as a measure of how much their partners are emotionally invested in them. We’re not allowed to say so but the truth is that women often deliberately try to wind up their partners to test how much they care about them. If a man was to respond to a test with indifference and just walk off saying “Yeah whatever, bitch.”, a woman would probably feel like she’s been abandoned and that he doesn’t care about her. Responding with anger and violence would show that he is emotionally invested in her and I imagine that this paradoxically gives women some sense of security in the relationship. These behaviours probably go way back to our archaic human ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago.

So when it boils down to it, this isn’t really an irrational mislabeling of emotions at all but a judgement that fulfills a biological purpose. The same is probably true for other supposed cognitive mislabeling phenomena.

]]>