Gervais & Fessler (G&F) provide an illuminating analysis of persisting sentiments such as love, hate, respect, and contempt. Their theory captures the socially adaptive significance of sentiments while also making sense of cultural variation in the ways in which these sentiments are recognized and described. Such anthropological insights are useful, and can help clarify the targets of our everyday affective folk concepts. When it comes to understanding the causal structures involved, however, the Attitude–Scenario–Emotion (ASE) model lacks explanatory power. By identifying sentiments with functional networks of attitudes and emotions, G&F render sentiments themselves causally inert. This analysis may be of interest to anthropologists, but not if the goal is to understand the underlying psychological mechanisms involved. For, if sentiments are merely superficial patterns in one's overall affective life, then any question about the structure of sentiments (what causes them, what their effects are, etc.) will be reducible to questions about evaluative attitudes and the ways in which they interact with appraisals of situations. As a result, we suggest, it might be theoretically more useful to identify sentiments with underlying attitudes.
G&F argue that sentiments are part of the “deep structure” of affect, and they persistently use causal language in describing the work that sentiments do. Respect, for instance, is described as a “proximate mechanism,” and contempt is said to “moderate diverse emotions across contexts.” But on G&F's own account, sentiments cannot be causes. Rather, they are patterns that emerge between (1) an evaluative Attitude, (2) appraisals of Scenarios, and (3) resulting Emotions. On this ASE model, a sentiment should be identified with the entire Attitude–Scenario–Emotion complex rather than any single component within it. In the case of the sentiment respect, for example, one may (1) positively value another as a potential social partner. That valuing attitude, together with (2) an appraisal of a scenario in which the valued person is aware of one's poor performance, for example, will issue in (3) a specific emotional response – in this case, shame. The attitude is a partial cause of the emotional response, as is one's knowledge/appraisal of the scenario. And the emotion of shame will have a variety of further downstream effects on oneself and others by way of impacting occurrent attitudes and appraisals. So, all three components of the ASE model are individually causally efficacious.
Importantly, however, the overall patterning that results from the interaction of this attitude with a variety of different scenarios over time to issue in specific emotional responses is not itself a cause of anything. Far from being the deep structure of anything, respect is merely a superficial patterning of ASE pairings. The real causal work is done by the component parts, and it is to these that we must look if we are to explain the causes and functions of social affect.
Consider psychopathy, for instance. G&F remark that the ASE contempt is plausibly the default social sentiment for those with psychopathy. Although this diagnosis may adequately describe the patterning of a psychopath's interactions with others, it doesn't explain why the psychopath behaves as he does. After all, many people exhibit contempt for specific others, perhaps cued by differences of religion, skin color, or social status. Characterizing psychopathy as a form of generalized contempt offers little in the way of understanding. What we need to know is why the psychopath consistently discounts the value of all others, thereby coming to exhibit the emotional/behavioral markers of contempt in all of his social interactions. As G&F themselves put it, “an inability to value others may be primary in psychopathy and underlie psychopaths' diminished empathy and resistance to socialization” (sect. 6.2). It is the underlying attitude that explains, and which needs to be explained in turn, if psychopathy is to be understood.
In fact, it is quite unclear to us why G&F do not identify sentiments with the underlying attitude-component of the ASE structure. (Indeed, at one point they themselves do precisely this. In Figure 1, the intervening devaluing attitude is labeled “contempt,” instead of that label designating the entire contents of the figure, as the official ASE doctrine would require.) One could say, for example, that contempt is the attitude of disvaluing another as a potential social partner, which issues in a range of different emotions depending on how the circumstances are appraised. Such a view is just as well capable of accommodating all eight features of contempt that G&F list in Section 2. Specifically, as an attitude it is certainly intentional (representing another as uninteresting or unworthy); the attitude is itself an enduring evaluation anchored by character attribution; it takes as input cues to another's relational value (e.g. lack of competence); it will issue in cold indifference when the other remains at a distance, or in hot anger or disgust when the other begins to impinge on one's life; it will be expressed differently based on context and situation; and it will lead to behavioral outcomes such as rejection or exclusion.
Moreover, the reasons G&F give for not identifying contempt as an attitude are quite weak. They say that such an account cannot explain the emotional texture of contempt. But of course it can do so, provided one bears in mind that any evaluative attitude will issue in a range of distinct emotions, resulting from one's appraisals of various situations as differentially relevant to what one values.
So G&F confront a dilemma: Either sentiments are real and causally efficacious attitudes, in which case the ASE model of sentiments is incorrect; or the ASE model is retained, but then sentiments are merely superficial patterns in one's overall affective life. Either way, any analysis of the causal structure of sentiments will at some point boil down to our understanding of evaluative attitudes.
You have
Access
Gervais & Fessler (G&F) provide an illuminating analysis of persisting sentiments such as love, hate, respect, and contempt. Their theory captures the socially adaptive significance of sentiments while also making sense of cultural variation in the ways in which these sentiments are recognized and described. Such anthropological insights are useful, and can help clarify the targets of our everyday affective folk concepts. When it comes to understanding the causal structures involved, however, the Attitude–Scenario–Emotion (ASE) model lacks explanatory power. By identifying sentiments with functional networks of attitudes and emotions, G&F render sentiments themselves causally inert. This analysis may be of interest to anthropologists, but not if the goal is to understand the underlying psychological mechanisms involved. For, if sentiments are merely superficial patterns in one's overall affective life, then any question about the structure of sentiments (what causes them, what their effects are, etc.) will be reducible to questions about evaluative attitudes and the ways in which they interact with appraisals of situations. As a result, we suggest, it might be theoretically more useful to identify sentiments with underlying attitudes.
G&F argue that sentiments are part of the “deep structure” of affect, and they persistently use causal language in describing the work that sentiments do. Respect, for instance, is described as a “proximate mechanism,” and contempt is said to “moderate diverse emotions across contexts.” But on G&F's own account, sentiments cannot be causes. Rather, they are patterns that emerge between (1) an evaluative Attitude, (2) appraisals of Scenarios, and (3) resulting Emotions. On this ASE model, a sentiment should be identified with the entire Attitude–Scenario–Emotion complex rather than any single component within it. In the case of the sentiment respect, for example, one may (1) positively value another as a potential social partner. That valuing attitude, together with (2) an appraisal of a scenario in which the valued person is aware of one's poor performance, for example, will issue in (3) a specific emotional response – in this case, shame. The attitude is a partial cause of the emotional response, as is one's knowledge/appraisal of the scenario. And the emotion of shame will have a variety of further downstream effects on oneself and others by way of impacting occurrent attitudes and appraisals. So, all three components of the ASE model are individually causally efficacious.
Importantly, however, the overall patterning that results from the interaction of this attitude with a variety of different scenarios over time to issue in specific emotional responses is not itself a cause of anything. Far from being the deep structure of anything, respect is merely a superficial patterning of ASE pairings. The real causal work is done by the component parts, and it is to these that we must look if we are to explain the causes and functions of social affect.
Consider psychopathy, for instance. G&F remark that the ASE contempt is plausibly the default social sentiment for those with psychopathy. Although this diagnosis may adequately describe the patterning of a psychopath's interactions with others, it doesn't explain why the psychopath behaves as he does. After all, many people exhibit contempt for specific others, perhaps cued by differences of religion, skin color, or social status. Characterizing psychopathy as a form of generalized contempt offers little in the way of understanding. What we need to know is why the psychopath consistently discounts the value of all others, thereby coming to exhibit the emotional/behavioral markers of contempt in all of his social interactions. As G&F themselves put it, “an inability to value others may be primary in psychopathy and underlie psychopaths' diminished empathy and resistance to socialization” (sect. 6.2). It is the underlying attitude that explains, and which needs to be explained in turn, if psychopathy is to be understood.
In fact, it is quite unclear to us why G&F do not identify sentiments with the underlying attitude-component of the ASE structure. (Indeed, at one point they themselves do precisely this. In Figure 1, the intervening devaluing attitude is labeled “contempt,” instead of that label designating the entire contents of the figure, as the official ASE doctrine would require.) One could say, for example, that contempt is the attitude of disvaluing another as a potential social partner, which issues in a range of different emotions depending on how the circumstances are appraised. Such a view is just as well capable of accommodating all eight features of contempt that G&F list in Section 2. Specifically, as an attitude it is certainly intentional (representing another as uninteresting or unworthy); the attitude is itself an enduring evaluation anchored by character attribution; it takes as input cues to another's relational value (e.g. lack of competence); it will issue in cold indifference when the other remains at a distance, or in hot anger or disgust when the other begins to impinge on one's life; it will be expressed differently based on context and situation; and it will lead to behavioral outcomes such as rejection or exclusion.
Moreover, the reasons G&F give for not identifying contempt as an attitude are quite weak. They say that such an account cannot explain the emotional texture of contempt. But of course it can do so, provided one bears in mind that any evaluative attitude will issue in a range of distinct emotions, resulting from one's appraisals of various situations as differentially relevant to what one values.
So G&F confront a dilemma: Either sentiments are real and causally efficacious attitudes, in which case the ASE model of sentiments is incorrect; or the ASE model is retained, but then sentiments are merely superficial patterns in one's overall affective life. Either way, any analysis of the causal structure of sentiments will at some point boil down to our understanding of evaluative attitudes.