When are Emotions Wrong?

"Trust your feelings!" ― But feelings are nothing final or original; behind the feelings there stand judgments and evaluations. ... The inspiration born of feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—and often a false judgment! And in any event not a child of your own! To trust one’s feelings means to give more obedience to one’s grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents than to...our reason and our experience.

― Nietzsche

Inborn behavioral instincts work wonders in the lives of animals. Salmon migrate for breeding, bears hibernate, and birds build nests. Critically, all of these behaviors can occur without any example for the animals to emulate. These behaviors are not mimicked, or learned by trial and error. They are inborn patterns of behavior, evolved over millions of years, which activate in particular contexts, to particular effect.

Our emotions are inborn behavioral instincts, just like these. Infants, held down, will get angry^{panksepp-baby-anger}. Even if blind and deaf, children will laugh^{panksepp-blind-laughter}. Our emotional triggers and patterns of behavior exist within us before we begin to learn.

The fact that our emotions arise from our nature does not make them immutable — humans are incredibly adaptable, especially in our ability to cognitively regulate emotional behavior. On the contrary, knowing the built-in triggers and behavioral patterns can equip us to understand, evaluate, and integrate our emotions and goals into a more holistic harmony.

For our purposes here, there are two critical components of each emotion: the "trigger" and the "behavioral pattern"^terms-aka. Emotional triggers are a kind of perception, and can be correct or incorrect just like any other perception. Emotional behavioral patterns are actions, and can be healthy or unhealthy just like any action can help or hinder an organisms' goals. These two equivalences are the keys to translating emotions into a critical framework. Taken together, triggers and actions can be interpreted as strategies for solving "fundamental life tasks". ^terms-aka: Some literature refers to "triggers" as "appraisals", and "behavioral patterns" as "primed action patterns", "action plans", or "expressions".

 Emotional Perceptions can be Incorrect

You notice the Halloween decorations draped on every tree as you approach the front door. Smoke wafts from the bottom of the door, probably fake, but it scares you a little anyway. You take a step forward and deliver your knock. As your kuckles rap the door, a spider drops down onto you — you shriek and jump in your startle, and swat it off your shoulder. As your hand makes contact, the plastic spider moves readily, and you know you've been tricked.

Emotions are behavioral instincts which are each triggered under specific conditions. These triggers are based on interpretations of events in our environment. An emotion is incorrect if it is trigged by an incorrect perception.

Our emotional perceptions naturally involve both an automatic reaction, and a cognitive appraisal which may inhibit (or invalidate) the initial reaction. The automatic reaction is instinctual, faster, less precise, and overeager, and serves to direct our attention towards a potential emotional event. The cognitive appraisal is slower, but can be far more precise, and tends to inhibit or orient the emotion. If the automatic reaction isn't triggered, then the cognitive appraisal likely won't happen at all — the automatic reaction is what grips cognitive attention. Because of this, well-functioning automatic reactions are overeager, that is, they trigger on potential emotional events, and leave more precise discernment to more cognitive processes.^{ledoux-emotional-cognition ledoux-system-2} When cognitive appraisal is disrupted, humans and animals act out on unvalidated emotional responses.^{brain-lesions}

Cognitive inhibition of emotion is a natural and critical part of human emotion. It is not some strange Stoic or Victorian repressive ideal; it pervades our nature across cultures and across species. Disrupting cognitive inhibition guarantees dysfunction, because the natural balance in our minds is for automatic reactions to be overeager, and for our thoughts to discriminate from among our emotional triggers.

Each class of emotions has specific trigger archetypes, and thus specific ways in which it can be incorrect:

• When is Desire incorrect?
• When is Anger incorrect?
• When is Fear incorrect?

{/* addl:

• "Emotional illusion"
• Emotional perceptions can occur without any learning. Part of our emotional instincts are "natural triggers"^{natural-triggers}, situations which trigger our emotions even if we've never encountered them before. (esp natural triggers as spandrels -> dubious triggers) */}

 Emotional Reactions can be Unhealthy

Not all opportunities should be pursued. Not all enemies should be attacked. Not all threats should be fled. An emotion may correctly perceive some emotionally salient feature of our environment, yet might suggest an unhelpful or ineffective approach.

Emotions are behavioral instincts — they suggest action plans as we feel them. An emotion is unhealthy if it motivates an unhealthy reaction.

In almost any situation, there are several possible correct interpretations. Perhaps someone cut you off while you were driving, but perhaps they were also avoiding a threat in their own lane. Perhaps a job in another city will look great on your resume, but perhaps it will also take you away from your friends and family. Some of these emotional interpretations will set you up for failure. Others are empowering and can motivate personal growth. But most emotional interpretations fall somewhere in between — useful in some situations, but not in others.

It is a profound act of self-creation to curate our own emotional interpretations. A curated set of interpretations can be correct and yet still unpleasant to other people, or ineffective at achieving goals. In choosing an interpretation of "anger", we might empower ourselves to lash out at an adversary and might show that we are not to be trifled with, but that same interpretation might cause us to lose a friend. Our interpretations drive our motivations and emotional presence, and, more than most choices, define who we are.

As stated above, an emotion is only "unhealthy" if the emotional reaction is worse than whatever reaction would have happened otherwise. This definition of "unhealthy" does not provide any insight into what is "better" or "worse", it only moves the question from the dark of subjective emotional experience into the light of objective actions. However, because emotions correspond to solving fundamental life tasks, we can assume^{emo-infer-general} that the feeler of an emotion is motivated to solve that emotion's fundamental life task. For example, if someone is angry, we can assume^{emo-infer-general} they want to eliminate the impact of some future threat. When that assumption holds, we can evaluate when emotional reactions are unsuccessful at achieving their own implicit goals, which would make those emotions self-defeating and unhealthy to pursue.

The "goodness" of an emotional reaction is far more subjective than the accuracy of an emotional perception. Whether an action achieves our goals can be very hard to determine, especially because the consequences of actions are hard to know, and because sometimes our goals are hidden even from ourselves. When our goals are clear to us, we can use that as a guide to choose the emotional interpretations which best support those goals. When our goals are unclear, we can look to the emotions themselves to guess at our own intents and avoid clear failure patterns.

Because each emotion corresponds to specific fundamental life tasks, they each have different corresponding unhealthy failure patterns:

• When is Desire unhealthy?
• When is Anger unhealthy?
• When is Fear unhealthy?

 Emotional Instincts can be Transcended

...highly complex [instincts] have been developed through the preservation of variations of pre-existing instincts—that is, through natural selection.
— Darwin

Emotions are behavioral instincts which have been formed by the evolutionary problems of our ancestral environment. But our environment is not the environment of our ancestors.

It is important to understand emotional archetypes, to look into our evolutionary past and appreciate the wondrous adaptivity of our nature. But not all that is natural is good. Our evolved instincts do not have to define us. We can be better than our natural instinctual reactions.

When we are harmed, our anger tells us to harm in retaliation. When we see opportunity, our desire tells us to take it, even if it hurts others. Our care drives us to especially help those we've spent the most time with. But these emotions are not our destiny. Harm can be forgiven. Predation can be scorned. Care can be extended.

We can aim for a transcended nature, and aim to free ourselves from our instinctual shackles from an evolutionary past long passed.

Transcending emotions is more speculative than emotional perceptual accuracy or emotional reaction health. Many religious and social movements throughout the ages have propoposed specific modes of transcendence for different emotions:

• How can we transcend Desire?
• How can we transcend Anger?
• How can we transcend Fear?

 The Journey

With the above framework, we can begin to look critically at each emotion in turn and discover misperceptions, self-defeating goals, and potential for transcendence. To read about specific emotions analyzed in this framework, please visit the following:

• When is desire wrong?
• When is anger wrong?
• ...

For more information on the reasoning behind the above framework, please read these:

- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-epistemology'>How can we investigate emotions?</InternalLink>
- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-teleology'>What is the "purpose" of emotions?</InternalLink>
- <InternalLink to='/seq/critical-feeling/emotional-nature-and-nurture'>How do Nature and Nurture interact with emotions?</InternalLink>