Life

Editorial: Uh-oh, more emotions to worry about

CAN you name the six basic emotions? Take a straw poll of your friends and we guarantee that you will find no consensus. Yet psychologists are unequivocal: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. These are the Big Six, quite literally, the in-your-face emotions - the ones that everyone the world over exhibits with the same dramatic and characteristic facial expressions. They have been the subjects of intense research for over half a century, not least because of the role they have played in our survival as a species.

Times have changed, though. Our ancestors may have had daily need of fear to flee predators, anger to conquer foes and disgust to avoid diseases, but we live in a more subtle world in which other emotions have come to the fore. There are many contenders. Avarice, embarrassment, boredom, depression, jealousy and love, for example, might epitomise the modern age. Yet some more obscure emotions may be increasingly relevant today. Here we explore five of them, any one of which could make a case to be promoted to a place alongside the Big Six.

ELEVATION

The uplifting emotion         

"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

In the midst of last year's economic turmoil President Barack Obama's inauguration speech was powerful, inspiring stuff. Some of his supporters, hanging on his every word, will have had tears in their eyes, a tingling sensation on the back of their necks and a warm feeling in their chest as though it was opening up to let love and hope flood out. This feeling is what Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, has labelled "elevation".

Elevation seems to be a universal feeling. Although not yet studied in modern-day pre-literate societies, it has been documented in people from Japan, India, the US and the Palestinian territories. That puts it in the same league as the Big Six. But to be considered as a basic emotion it should also have a purpose. If emotions are to fulfil their role as survival aids, they must motivate activities that help us thrive. So what is elevation for? Originally Haidt thought that it makes us nobler towards others. But when he asked volunteers to watch either an uplifting episode of Oprah or a non-uplifting scene from the sitcom Seinfeld, and then gave them a chance to help a stranger, there was no difference in behaviour between the two groups.

Haidt's next idea was born of the choked feelings that people often report when they describe experiencing elevation. This hints that the vagus nerve is involved because it is responsible for stimulating the throat and neck muscles. Activation of the vagus nerve is also linked to the release of a hormone called oxytocin, which generates warm, calm feelings - just the sort associated with elevation. Could oxytocin be the key? The inspiration for how to test this idea came from his student, Jennifer Silvers, who pointed out that oxytocin makes nursing mothers release milk.

So in a second round of experiments, Haidt and Silvers showed the same videos to breastfeeding mothers. They found that after watching Oprah mothers were more likely to leak milk into a nursing pad. They also spent more time nursing and hugging their babies than the mothers who watched the Seinfeld video (Emotion, vol 8, p 291). "Oxytocin doesn't make people go out and give money to charity, it doesn't make people help strangers jump-start their cars, it makes them want to touch, hug and be more open and trusting with each other," says Haidt.

So elevation has a physiological component and motivational one too. However, unlike the Big Six emotions, it does not have an obvious characteristic facial expression, which may explain why it has slipped under the research radar for so long. If you appreciate the context, you may be able to detect a slight softening of the features, says Haidt. Sometimes the eyebrows are raised as if the person is sad.

Elevation is also relatively rare. People typically experience it less than once a week, although there are wide individual differences. Where it does score, though, is in being highly significant. "If you ask people to remember their most cherished experiences of their whole life, elevatory moments are likely to feature in their top five," says Haidt. What's more, if we can harness elevation to build trust, it could have particular relevance in the modern world for strengthening or repairing personal relationships. Haidt envisages a time, for example, when marital therapists might try to induce it so as to enhance the effectiveness of couples' counselling sessions.

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