Introduction: Autonomic Psychophysiology

Abstract The autonomic psychophysiology of emotion has a long thought tradition in philosophy but a short empirical tradition in psychological research. Yet the past 20 years or so have seen the accumulation of an impressive body of replicated findings in which autonomic variables acquire a well-validated psychological meaning. This is particularly true for research areas with well-developed experimental paradigms and an emergence of “minitheories” (some of which are reviewed in chapters 10, 13, and 14). The situation differs, however, if reverberations of specific emotions are sought in autonomic variables. Even though large-scale studies were initiated as long as 50 years ago, consensus among scholars about the psychological meaning of the registered somatovisceral “emotion” profiles is still low (see chapter 11). This ongoing debate is an indication that the field is still struggling with enormous complexities in understanding the psychobiology of emotions and even in studying it properly. An acknowledgment of today’s changing view of the physiology of the autonomic nervous system (see chapter 9) and of methodological considerations (see chapter 12) might play a role in overcoming those complexities. Considering the functions of emotions and the tasks performed by the brain in processing an external or an internally generated emotion stimulus might help to distinguish among research areas in which the activity of autonomic systems during emotion is assessed. All of the contributors to this section mention one or more functions of the emotions. The function of an emotion can be recognized by its goals. To begin with, we have to introduce the terms emotion goal, emotion strategy, emotion tactics, and emotion task. Briefly, an emotion stimulus initiates a processing cascade, which results in solutions for a series of emotion tasks. Emotion tasks prepare the organism for approaching the goal of an emotion. Emotion strategies lead the way to a goal, whereas emotion tactics are specific actions on this way. An emotion goal can be formulated on different levels of abstraction. The top level is a tribute to Charles Darwin: Emotions have the goal to secure survival and procreation. Still on a rather abstract level, emotions, defined as states elicited by rewards and punishers, function “as a mechanism for the genes to influence behavior . . . by specifying the stimuli or events that the animal is built to find rewarding or punishing, so that the genes specify the goals for action, not the actions themselves” (Rolls, 2000, p. 220). In another account, emotions deal with major adaptational dilemmas: The function of disgust is rejection; of anger, destruction; of fear, protection; of sadness, reintegration; of joy, reproduction (Plutchik, 1980). The goal of most (negative) emotions is to “maintain a relatively steady (or ‘normal’) state in the face of interpersonal challenges” (Plutchik, 1997, p. 20), for example, to reinstate one’s dominance or, even more specifically, to win a fight. Emotions provide the cognitive and bodily means to accomplish these goals.