Dear Self Interested Ontologists,

I found this video of Peter Snyder explaining how Darwin experimented on 24 people using a single blind experiment related to emotions:

http://video.scientificblogging.com/video/Peter-Snyder-Darwin-experiment;Neurosciences

He describes it as:

the first example of a prospective "single-blind" study of human perception of emotional _expression_

Snyder also claims that this experiment was echoed ever since by experimental psychologists looking for emotional behaviors.

There is a good Wikipedia write-up describing how emotions evolved at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_emotion

Describing Darwin’s work:

His work looked at not only facial expressions in both humans and animals, but attempted to point out parallels between behaviors in animals and in humans.

It concludes:

Primal emotions, such as fear, are associated with ancient parts of the brain and presumably evolved among our premammal ancestors. Filial emotions, such as a human mother's love for her offspring, seem to have evolved among early mammals. Social emotions, such as guilt and pride, evolved among social primates. Sometimes, a more recently evolved part of the brain moderates an older part of the brain, such as when the cortex moderates the amygdala's fear response. Evolutionary psychologists consider human emotions to be best adapted to the life our ancestors led in nomadic foraging bands.

I hope those of you who are interested in emotional behaviors as explanations of human actions find these two references useful.

-Rich

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2