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Is Tenderness a Basic
RUNNING HEAD: Tenderness Basic Emotion
Is Tenderness a Basic Emotion?
Juan Pablo Kalawski
University of Louisville
This article was originally published in Motivation and Emotion: Volume 34, Issue 2 (2010), Page 158, DOI: 10.1007/s11031-010-9164-y.The original publication is available at
Abstract
The article presents the case to consider tenderness a basic emotion, using the criteria proposed by Ekman (1999). The first part of the article reviews the relationship between tenderness and the related concepts of love and empathy. The next section reviews evidence concerning whether tenderness meets some of Ekman’s criteria. The last section reports an experiment testing whether tenderness meets Ekman’s criterion of distinct subjective experience.Participants watched scenes designed to induce different emotions. Results showed that a scene could induce high levels of tenderness and low levels of joy if that scene also induced high levels of sadness. These results suggest that the subjective experience of tenderness is distinct from that of joy.
Is Tenderness a Basic Emotion?
Emotional phenomena are as pervasive as they are varied.Over a century ago, William James complained that,
As far as "scientific psychology" of the emotions goes, I may have been surfeited by too much reading of classic works on the subject, but I should as lief read verbal descriptions of the shapes of the rocks on a New Hampshire farm as toil through them again. They give one nowhere a central point of view, or a deductive or generative principle. They distinguish and refine and specify in infinitum without ever getting on to another logical level. (1890, p.448)
Since James’ complaint, several scholars have proposed theories that attempt to bridge that gap in abstraction. Of those theories, the basic emotions approach gained increased support during the second half of the twentieth century. There areseveral basic emotions theories, but they all share some basic assumptions. Basic emotion theories propose that the array of human affective phenomena arise out of a handful of basic emotions (e.g., Ekman, 1999; Izard, 1991, 2007). Basic emotions are “those emotions that have been characterized as having evolutionarily old neurobiological substrates, as well as an evolved feeling component and capacity for expressive and other behavioral actions of evolutionary origin” (Izard, 2007, p. 261).Through their interaction with an individual’s experiences and cognitions, basic emotions give rise to a variety of complex and idiosyncratic affective experiences. While these complex emotional reactions can be understood in terms of more basic components, basic emotions cannot. In this sense, they are irreducible, and hence basic. Furthermore, basic emotion theorists proposed that most of the daily emotional experiences of human adults are not basic emotions. “Theorists generallyagree that basic emotions are few in number, relatively infrequent,and short in duration and that nonbasic emotions (emotionschemas) are virtually infinite in number and usually longer induration (cf. Damasio, 1999; James, 1890/1950; Kagan, 1978).” (Izard, 2007, p. 265) Thus, basic emotions include many experiences that laypeople call emotions, but not all of those experiences.For instance, laypeople probably consider jealousy an emotion. Basic emotion theorists would propose that, although jealousy is a real emotional experience, it is not a basic emotion. They would argue that jealousy is a complex phenomenon that arises out of the interaction of basic emotions (especially anger) and specific cognitive processes.
One area of disagreement among different basic emotion approaches is over the list of basic emotions.Shaver, Morgan, and Wu (1996) have summarized the basic emotion lists proposed by several scholars. A review of those lists shows that there is consensus that joy, anger, sadness, and fear are basic emotions. Other emotions like shame and contempt are more controversial. In this article, I will argue that tenderness should be considered a basic emotion.2 In order to understand what tenderness is, I will first discuss its relationships with related concepts.
Tenderness, love, and empathy
One of the concepts related to tenderness is love. Love is conspicuously absent from basic emotion lists. Shaver et al. (1996) have presented several arguments for the inclusion of love as a basic emotion. However, they agreed with Ekman (1999) that the word “love” often does not refer to an emotion but to a disposition to respond emotionally. Shaver et al. pointed out, however, that the emotional disposition of love is punctuated by “surges” of emotion. These surges are temporally discrete in the way other basic emotions are.
In addition, Shaver et al. (1996) noted that the term “love” means different things under different circumstances. In other words, there are several varieties of love. Based on attachment theory, Shaver et al. distinguished among love as attachment, love as caregiving, and love as sexual attraction. Each of these three types of love may occur by itself, or it may combine with one or both other types.Shaver et al. suggested that different types of emotion “surges”may correspond to the different types of love.
I conceptualize tendernessas the momentary experience, that is, the emotion “surge,” that corresponds to love as caregiving.Frijda (1986) proposed that, “tenderness can be regarded asthe impulse toward tender—that is, caregiving—behavior; or else as the acute act of recognitionof an object as a fit object for such behavior” (p. 83). To summarizethe conceptual relationship between tenderness and love, whereas love is a disposition to respond emotionally, tenderness is a momentary emotional experience. And whereas there are different varieties of love, tenderness relates specifically to caregiving.
Another concept that is related to tenderness is the concept of empathy. Clinical and counseling psychologists may be familiar with Rogers’ (1957) definition of empathy: “to sense the client’s private world as if it were your own, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ quality” (p. 99). In the context of this definition, the word “sense” probably means two things: a cognitive understanding and a feeling. Batson and Shaw (1991) suggest using the term “perspective taking” to refer to the cognitive aspect. They reserve the term “empathy” for the emotional feeling that may arise from taking someone else’s perspective. In this sense, Batson, Lishner, Cook, and Sawyer (2005) state that,
Empathy (…) refers to an other-oriented emotional responsecongruent with the perceived welfare of another (…). Empathic feelings for someone in need include sympathy, compassion, tenderness, and the like. These feelings have been found to be a potent source of motivation to help relieve the empathy-inducing need. (p.15)
Lishner (2003) reported some evidence consistent with the idea that tenderness and sympathy are distinct empathic feelings. In particular, his results suggest that perceiving someone’s vulnerability elicits tenderness, whereas perceiving someone’s current need elicits sympathy. In addition to differences in what elicits tenderness versus sympathy, it appears that laypeople categorize tenderness apart from sympathy. Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, and O’Connor (1987) found that participants organized the term “tenderness” into a love category and “sympathy” into a sadness category.To summarize the relationship between tenderness and empathy, tenderness is an empathic feeling, but it is more specific, and distinct from sympathy, which appears more closely related to the basic emotion of sadness.
Both love and empathy are complex reactions and therefore they would not qualify as basic emotions. I hypothesize, however, that tenderness probably does qualify as a basic emotion. Ekman (1999) proposed 11 characteristics that any basic emotion must have. They are: (a) distinctive universal signals; (b)distinctive physiology, (c) automatic appraisal, tuned to (d) distinctive universals in antecedentevents; (e) distinctive appearance developmentally; (f) presence in other primates; (g) quickonset; (h) brief duration; (i) unbidden occurrence; (j) distinctive thoughts, memories, images; and(k) distinctive subjective experience (p. 56).Ekman admitted that research had not yet established that any emotion fulfills all thecriteria he proposed.
The present article reports an experiment designed to test whether tenderness meets the criterion of distinctive subjective experience. In particular, given that tenderness is a pleasant, positive emotion (Shaver et. al, 1987), I looked into the subjective distinction between tenderness and joy.If tenderness is not subjectively distinctfrom joy, that may indicate that tenderness, rather than a basic emotion, can be explained in terms of the more basic emotion of joy. Before presenting the rationale for the experiment, I will review some evidence concerning whether tenderness meets some of the other criteria for basic emotions proposed by Ekman.
Distinctive universal signals and physiology
Researchershave found evidence for the physiological and expressive distinctiveness of tenderness in a variety of cultures. In studies with Chilean and Danish participants,Bloch and her colleagues(Bloch, Lemeignan,& Aguilera-T, 1991; Bloch, Orthous, & Santibañez-H, 1987; Santibáñez-H & Bloch, 1986)found that tenderness was associated with a specific breathing pattern, bodyposture, and facial expression, which were different from those of joy, anger, sadness, fear, and sexual arousal. In particular, breathing in tenderness has a slow and even rhythm, inhalation and exhalation are done through the nose, and there is a slight pause at the end of the exhalation. The general muscular tone is relaxed, leaning slightly forward. One of the most distinctive characteristics of the tenderness display is that the head is tilted sideways. Finally, in tenderness, there is a slight smile, and the gaze is directed at an object. Santibáñez-H and Bloch (1986) also found that whereas joy, anger, sadness, fear, and sexual arousalincreased heart rate,tenderness decreased it. In another study, French observers were able to effectivelydistinguish the postural and facial expressions of tenderness from those of joy, anger, sadness, fear, and sexual arousal(Lemeignan,Aguilera-Torres, & Bloch, 1992).
Automatic appraisal tuned to distinctive universals in antecedent events
There is little on the appraisals and antecedents that elicit tenderness. Lishner (2003) reported a reanalysis of data from a previous experiment showing that reading a story about a human adult led to less tenderness than reading the same story about a child, a dog, or a puppy. In two subsequent experiments, Lishnerfound that watching a video of a human infant led to high levels of tenderness, regardless of the infant’s emotional display or reported health state. This pattern was more reliable among women than men. In a third experiment, he found that, for both men and women, imagining a child led to more tenderness than imagining an adult.Lishner proposed that appraising vulnerability in a target elicits tenderness and that,
Perceptions of vulnerability will likely occur when an observer makes certain inferences about a target such as whether he or she can control his or her situation, whether the target is naïve or not, and possibly whether the target displays heuristic vulnerability cues (e.g., childlike features, attributes, or behaviors; Eibl-Ebesfeldt, 1971; Lorenz, 1971). Furthermore, if current need is perceived, then the likelihood of perceiving vulnerability increases because the existence of current need indicates that some dimension of well-being is not sufficiently regulated. (p.73)
The little extant evidence thus suggests that an appraisal of vulnerability is associated with tenderness. Observing an animal, an infant, or a child appears to be a common antecedent of tenderness. However, not all infants may elicit the same level of tenderness.Langlois, Ritter,Casey, and Sawin (1995) reported that mothers of attractive infants displayed more interactionsthat were affectionate towards their children than did mothers of unattractive infants.
Presence in other primates
As previously discussed, tenderness is related to caregiving. Caregiving behavior is present not only among primates, but among mammals more generally. Panksepp (2000) described a “CARE/nurturance” emotional system in mammals, mediated by the anterior cingulate, bed nucleus of stria terminalis, preoptic area, ventral tegmental area, and periaqueductal gray. Oxytocin, prolactin, dopamine, and opioidsare the key neuromodulators of this system. Bell (2001) proposed a theory which traces the evolution of caregiving behavior back to the premammalian reptiles.Bell provided an especially compelling argument for the evolutionary primitiveness of caregiving:
Attachment theory has described how an attachment behavioral control system could provide survival advantages to primates and humans within the environment of evolutionary adaptedness. However, as Bowlby’s (1982) analysis showed but did not emphasize, the evolutionary advantages of attachment can only be realized if there is a preexisting caregiving behavioral control system (Bell & Richard, 2000). Crying, one of the prototypical attachment behaviors, would be an evolutionary disadvantage if there were no caregiver to respond because crying attracts predators. Crying is only an advantage to the extent that it usually attracts the caregiver faster than it attracts the predator. As a result, any evolutionary analysis of attachment must account for the prior emergence of the caregiving behavioral control system as a prerequisite for the emergence of an attachment behavioral control system (p. 226).
Bell argued that attachment theory had focused excessively on the cognitiveaspects of caregiving at the expense of the emotional impulse towards caregiving. Bell’s“caring emotion” appears to be equivalent to tenderness.
Quick onset, brief duration, and unbidden occurrence
As previously discussed, it is important to distinguish the emotion of tenderness from the emotional disposition of love. Tenderness probably meets the criteria of quick onset and brief duration, although research is needed in this area. In addition, the emotion of tenderness cannot be willed. The feeling that arises upon seeing, for instance, a cute baby, is automatic.
Distinctive thoughts, memories, images
As previously discussed, Bloch et al. (1987; 1991; Santibáñez-H & Bloch, 1986) found that tenderness was associated with a specific breathing pattern, bodyposture, and facial expression. These authors also discovered that they could teach participants the “effector patterns” of each emotion, and that the voluntary reproduction of these patterns induced the corresponding subjective feeling in the participant. In Chile, I conducted a study exploring the use of these patterns in psychotherapy (Kalawski, 1997).In one of the sessions studied, the client/participant was talking about a conflict with her boyfriend. Her discourse was generally one of blaming him without understanding his perspective. Then Igave her instructions to reproduce the pattern of tenderness, but without naming the target emotion. During this exercise, I asked her to think about her boyfriend. After the exercise, the participant reported having felt tenderness. She added that when I asked her to think about her boyfriend she was able to see the whole situation in a different way, understanding his position. Also concerning thoughts associated with tenderness, Lishner (2003) reported that tenderness was positively correlated to feeling “protective” and to valuing the welfare of the tenderness-inducing target.
Distinctive subjective experience and the present experiment
An affective phenomenon cannot be considered a basic emotion if it “feels” like another emotion. An example of this is jealousy, which does not have a specific subjective feeling. Often, a jealous person may feel anger or another basic emotion, but there is no “jealous” feeling distinct from the way basic emotions feel. With regards to tenderness, it could not be considered a basic emotion unless it has its own, unique subjective experience. Lishner’s results suggest that the experience of tenderness is distinct from the experience of sympathy. However, I am not aware of any studies directly testing whether the subjective experience of tenderness is distinct from that of other basic emotions.Given tenderness’ pleasant quality, it is possible that persons reporting feeling tenderness will also report feeling joy. This intuitivehypothesis may be one of the reasons why theorists do not consider tenderness a basic emotion. I assumed that a positive correlation between tenderness and joy would be likely. However, it is possible that this correlation is not due to tenderness’ lack of a distinct subjective experience.Instead, a positive correlation between joy and tenderness may reflect the fact that many situations call for bothtenderness and joy. It is also possible that people use words such as “joy” to refer to pleasantfeelings in general, but, if required, are able to tell joy from tenderness. Therefore, an experiment that uses stimuli that selectively preclude the experienceof either joy or tenderness may have a better chance of findinga subjective distinctionbetween the two, if such distinction exists. The question then is what kinds of stimuli can selectively preclude either joy ortenderness. A possible answer to this question may come from the intuitive notions that joy is theopposite of sadness and that tenderness is the opposite of anger. Some research findings areconsistent with this possibility. Lorr & McNair, for instance, (1988) reported the discovery of sixbipolar mood factors. One factor had “elated” (joy) and “depressed” (sadness) as their poles.Another factor’s poles were “agreeable” (tenderness) and “hostile” (anger). There are severalways to interpret this kind of results. The first interpretation is that the two poles of each factorrepresent opposite extremes of a single process. Another interpretation is that emotions such as joy anddepression result from different processes that somehow inhibit each other. Thirdly, one mightview these results as reflecting the fact that situations that induce one polar emotion normally donot induce the emotion considered its opposite. Under this interpretation, sadness is notnecessarily opposite to joy; they just tend to occur in different situations. Whatever theinterpretation, it appears that stimuli that induce certain emotions also tend to preclude theexperience of other specific emotions. If this were the case, and in particular, if anger precludestenderness and sadness precludes joy, adding anger-inducing features to a joyful stimulus andsad features to a tender stimulus would increase the contrast between joy and tenderness.The present study employed five types of stimuli, as presented in Table 1. The stimulivaried along two hypothetical dimensions: sadness-inducing vs. joy-inducing, and anger-inducing vs. tenderness-inducing. For the purposes of the presentstudy, I called “pitiful” a stimulus expected to induce both tenderness and sadness, whereas a“cute” stimulus would induce tenderness but not sadness. Both are “tender” stimuli. Similarly, Icalled “ironic”, a stimulus expected to induce both joy/amusement and anger, and “funny” oneexpected to induce joy/amusement but no anger. Both are “amusing” stimuli. The mainhypothesis was that tender stimuli would lead to higher levels of tenderness and lower levels ofjoy as compared to the amusing stimuli. Another hypothesis was that tender stimuli would leadto higher tenderness than a “neutral” stimulus would. Likewise, amusing stimuli would lead tohigher joy/amusement than the neutral stimulus would.