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Social Functions

Social Functions of Emotions


Dacher Keltner
University of California-Berkeley

Jonathan Haidt
University of Virginia

[Full reference: Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2001). Social functions of emotions.
In T. Mayne & G. A. Bonanno (Eds.), Emotions: Current issues and future
directions. New York: Guilford Press. (pp. 192-213).]

Please address correspondence to: Dr. Dacher Keltner, Department of


Psychology, 3210 Tolman Hall, University of California, Berkeley CA, 94720.
Internet: keltner@socrates.berkeley.edu.

Social Functions
Social Functions of Emotions
The primary function of emotion is to mobilize the organism to deal
quickly with important interpersonal encounters (Ekman, 1992, p.171).
Emotions are a primary idiom for defining and negotiating social
relations of the self in a moral order (Lutz & White, 1986, p.417).
Emotion theorists disagree in many ways, but most share the
assumption that emotions help humans solve many of the basic problems of
social living. For evolutionary theorists, emotions are universal, hard-wired
affect programs that solve ancient, recurrent threats to survival (Ekman,
1992; Lazarus, 1991; Plutchik, 1980; Tomkins, 1984; Tooby & Cosmides,
1990). For social constructivists, emotions are socially learned responses
constructed in the process of social discourse according to culturally specific
concerns about identity, morality, and social structure (Averill, 1980; Lutz &
White, 1986). These contrasting approaches conceive of the defining
elements, origins, and study of emotions in strikingly different ways, but both
ascribe social functions to emotion.
In this chapter we present a social-functional account of emotions that
attempts to integrate the relevant insights of evolutionary and social
constructivist theorists. Our account can be summarized in three
statements: 1) Social living presents social animals, including humans, with
problems whose solutions are critical for individual survival; 2) Emotions
have been designed in the course of evolution to solve these problems; 3) In
humans, culture loosens the linkages between emotions and problems so
that cultures find new ways to solve the problems for which emotions
evolved, and cultures find new ways of using emotions. In the first half of
the chapter we synthesize the positions of diverse theorists in a taxonomy of
problems of social living, and then consider how evolution-based, primordial
emotions solve those problems by coordinating social interactions. In the
second half of the chapter we discuss the specific processes according to
which culture transforms primordial emotions, and how culturally shaped,
elaborated emotions help solve the problems of social living.
Primordial Emotion
Evolutionary theorists concern themselves with universal, biologically
based, genetically encoded emotion-related patterns of appraisals and
responses observed across species and cultures, which we will refer to as
primordial emotions. Primordial emotions are shaped by evolutionary forces,
genetically encoded, embedded in the human psyche, linked to biological
maturation, and they involve coordinated physiological, perceptual,
communicative, and behavioral processes that are meant to produce specific

Social Functions
changes in the environment. They occur most typically within the context of
immediate face-to-face interactions, and they are brief, lasting seconds to
perhaps minutes, but not hours or days (Ekman, 1992).
Although functional analyses have been a mainstay of evolutionary
theorizing about emotion (e.g., Campos, Campos, & Barrett, 1989; Darwin,
1872; Izard, 1977; Plutchik, 1980), it is only recently that theorists have
begun to systematically link specific emotions to social functions. This
recent theoretical development can be attributed to several sources (Barrett
& Campos, 1987). Advances in ethology and behavioral ecology have
illuminated the specific advantages and problems posed by group living
(Krebs & Davies, 1993). Working within different traditions, theorists have
begun to characterize the connections between specific emotions and
attachment (e.g., Kunce & Shaver, 1987), mate selection and protection
(Buss, 1992), game theoretical characterizations of altruism, cooperation,
competition, and interpersonal commitment (Frank, 1988; Nesse, 1990;
Trivers, 1971), and dominance and submissiveness (e.g., Keltner & Buswell,
1997; Ohman, 1986).
We believe these recent developments can be summarized in a social
functional approach to emotion (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Keltner & Haidt,
1999; Keltner & Kring, 1998). Social functional accounts operate at multiple
levels of analysis, specifying the social benefits emotions bring about for the
individual, dyad, group, and culture. Across diverse methods and levels of
analysis, social functional accounts share certain assumptions. Most notably,
social functional accounts assume that group living, which has been
characteristic of humans and other species for millions of years, confers
many advantages over solitary living. These advantages include more
proficient food gathering, responses to predation, and raising of offspring.
Group living also creates new problems requiring the coordination of group
members.
To meet these problems and opportunities, humans have evolved a
variety of complex systems. Each system is organized according to a
specific goal (e.g., to protect offspring or maintain cooperative alliances) that
is served by multiple subsystems. These include specific perceptual
processes, higher order cognition, central and autonomic nervous system
activity, as well behavioral responses, both intentional and reflex-like. For
example, theorists have observed that humans form reproductive
relationships with the help of an attachment system (e.g., Bowlby, 1969;
Kunce & Shaver, 1987). The attachment system involves perceptual
sensitivities to potential mates, representations of relationships, autonomic
and hormonal activity related to affiliative, sexual, and intimate behavior,
behavioral routines such as flirtation, courtship, and soothing, and specific
emotions as we discuss below.
Within each system, primordial emotions serve two general functions
(see also Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1992). First, primordial emotions signal

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that action is necessary, either because of a deviation from an ideal state of
social relations, or because an opportunity presents itself. Primordial
emotions therefore involve perceptual, appraisal, and experiential processes
that monitor the conditions of ongoing relations, detecting disturbances
(e.g., an infants distress) or opportunities (a potential mate). Once
activated, emotion-related perception and experience interrupt ongoing
cognitive processes and direct information processing to features of the
social environment that allow for the restoration or establishment of
desirable social relations (Clore, 1994; Lazarus, 1991; Lerner & Keltner, in
press; Schwarz, 1990).
Second, primordial emotions motivate behavior that establishes (or
reestablishes) more ideal conditions of social relations. Primordial emotions
involve autonomic, hormonal, and central nervous system activities that are
tailored to specific social actions, such as fighting, copulating, offering
comfort, and signaling dominance (Davidson, 1980, 1993; Frijda, 1986;
Levenson, 1994; Le Doux, 1996; Porges, 1995; Sapolsky, 1989). Primordial
emotions also involve vocal, facial, and postural communication that: provide
quick and reliably identified information to others (Ekman, 1984, 1993; Izard,
1977; Scherer, 1986), which shapes social interactions as we detail in a
section that follows. We now consider how different emotions might help
solve the different problems of group living.
The Problems of Group Living and Primordial Emotions
Functional accounts begin with an analysis of the problems emotions
were presumably designed to solve, either by evolution or cultural
construction (Keltner & Gross, 1999). Our review of the theorizing on the
social functions of emotion identifies three classes of problems related to
group living to which emotions are intimately linked, and we would argue,
have been designed to solve. Table 1 summarizes the nature of these
problems, the general systems that have evolved to meet these problems, as
well as related emotions and their specific functions. We note that Table 1
does not include all states we consider emotions (e.g., amusement does not
fit neatly into the taxonomy); rather it lists the emotions that seem well
suited to solving specific social problems. Additionally, although Table 1
describes how emotions are linked to prototypical social objects (e.g.,
sympathy for vulnerable family members), we believe emotions generalize to
related social objects (e.g., sympathy for downtrodden members of society).
Several theorists have commented on the flexibility of the associations
between emotions and their intentional objects (e.g., Tomkins, 1984), which
we discuss in an ensuing section.
The problems of Physical Survival
First, individuals must solve the problems of physical survival, including
avoiding death by predation, violence, and disease. Fear is the primordial
emotion at the heart of the fight-flight system (Ohman, 1986), which helps

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individuals avoid death by predation or other physical attacks. Much is
understood about the physiology of fear (LeDoux, 1996). On the appraisal
side, the amygdala contains specialized areas that scan incoming sensory
information for patterns that have been associated with danger. The
amygdala can trigger a fear response even before the incoming information
has been sent to the occipital cortex for full processing, and even before an
individual knows what an object is (LeDoux, 1996; see chapter XX for further
elaboration). On the output side, primordial fear involves triggering the
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis, which pumps a quick dose of
cortisol and other stress hormones into the bloodstream, to ready the
organism for fight or for flight. Primordial fear can be seen as the heart of a
system that includes a variety of cognitive and behavioral mechanisms that
make it more effective, e.g., vicarious learning, and the preparedness of
animal phobias (Mineka & Cook, 1988).
Disgust can similarly be seen as the primordial emotion at the heart of
the food-selection system (Rozin, 1976b), which helps humans choose a
balanced and safe diet. Unlike fear, disgust is not found in other animals;
only a simpler precursor, distaste, can be seen in rats, and other generalist
animals. Co-evolving with the tremendous expansion of cognitive ability in
humans, the distaste response has expanded to become the disgust
response (Rozin, Haidt & McCauley, in press). In humans, food rejections are
not based primarily on the sensory properties of the object, but rather on a
knowledge of what it is, or what it has touched (Rozin & Fallon, 1987).
Potential foods elicit disgust if they resemble, or have come in contact with,
certain powerful elicitors of disgust, such as feces and decaying animal
bodies. The food selection system is further expanded by the addition of
learning mechanisms, such as one-trial learning for nausea-inducing foods
(Seligman, 1971), and by cultural mechanisms, such as cuisine, which marks
prepared foods with a reassuringly familiar blend of spices or flavors (Rozin,
1996).
The Problems of Reproduction
Evolutionary and attachment theorists have speculated how a variety
of emotions solve the problems of reproduction, which include procreation
and the raising of offspring to the age of reproduction. The problems of
finding and keeping a mate are in part met by emotions of romantic love and
desire, which facilitate the identification, establishment, and maintenance of
reproductive relations. These emotions involve appraisals, perceptions, and
experiences that are sensitive to cues related to potential mate value. These
include beauty, fertility, chastity, social status, and character (Buss, 1992;
Ellis, 1992), expressive behaviors that signal interest and commitment
(Frank, 1988) and evoke desire and love, and hormonal and autonomic
responses that facilitate sexual behavior (Davidson, 1980). In table 1 we
also contend that the experience and display of emotions related to the loss
of a partner provoke succorance in others, and eventually helps individuals

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establish bonds with new mates. We label this emotion sadness (for similar
analysis of distress, see Dunn, 1977; for analysis of grief, see Lazarus, 1991).
The protection of potential mates from competitors is equally critical.
Jealousy, the literature shows, relates to mate protection, and is triggered by
cues that signal potential threats to the relationship, such as possible sexual
or emotional involvement of the mate with others (Buss, 1992). Jealousy
motivates possessive and threat behaviors that discourage competitors and
prevent sexual opportunities for the mate (Wilson & Daly, 1996).
Mammalian neonates are extremely dependent and vulnerable to
predation, and continue to be so for much longer periods of time compared
to other species. As a consequence, social species have evolved caregivingrelated emotions of parental and child love and sympathy, which facilitate
protective relations between parent and offspring (Bowlby, 1969; Kunce &
Shaver, 1987). The caregiving system involves perceptions and experiences
that sensitize parents to infantile cues (e.g., of neotany, distress) and infants
to vocal and visual cues of parenthood (Fernald, 1992). Filial love and
sympathy are characterized by experiences and expressive behavior such as
mutual smiles and gaze patterns. These are elements of interactions that
strengthen loving bonds, and physiological responses that help caretakers
respond to others distress (e.g., Eisenberg, et al., 1989).
The Problems of Group Governance
Finally, theorists have argued that emotions help solve two subclasses
of problems related to group governance, which arise in several contexts,
including the allocation of resources and distribution of work (Fiske, 1991).
First, to avoid the problems of cheating and defection and to encourage
cooperation, in particular among non-kin, humans reciprocate cooperative
and non-cooperative acts towards one another (Trivers, 1971). Reciprocity is
a universal social norm (Gouldner, 1960), and is evident in gift giving, eyefor-an-eye punishment, quid-pro-quo behavior in other species (de Waal,
1996), and the tit-for-tat strategy (Axelrod, 1984). Several emotions signal
when reciprocity has been violated and motivate reparative behavior (de
Waal, 1996; Frank, 1988; Nesse, 1990; Trivers, 1971). Guilt occurs following
violations of reciprocity and is expressed in apologetic, remedial behavior
that re-establishes reciprocity (Keltner & Buswell, 1996; Tangney, 1991).
Moral anger motivates the punishment of individuals who have violated rules
of reciprocity, and is defined by the sensitivity to issues of justice and
unfairness (Keltner et al., 1993). Gratitude at others altruistic acts is a
reward for adherence to the contract of reciprocity (Trivers, 1971). Envy
motivates individuals to derogate others whose favorable status is
unjustified, thus preserving equal relations (Fiske, 1991).
Second, humans must solve the problem of group organization. Status
hierarchies provide heuristic solutions to the problems of distributing
resources, such as mates, food, and social attention, and the labor required
of collective endeavors (Fiske, 1990; de Waal, 1986, 1988). Hierarchies are

Social Functions
dynamic processes, and require continual negotiation and redefinition. The
establishment, maintenance, and preservation of status hierarchies is in part
accomplished by emotions related to dominance and submission (de Waal,
1996; Ohman, 1986). Embarrassment and shame appease dominant
individuals and signal submissiveness (Keltner & Buswell, 1996; Miller &
Leary, 1992), whereas contempt is defined by feelings of superiority and
dominance vis-a-vis inferior others. Awe tends to be associated with the
experience of being in the presence of an entity greater than the self (Keltner
& Loew, 1996). In some cases, awe is elicited by nature or art (Shin, Keltner,
Shiota, & Haidt, 2000). In other instances, awe is elicited by the presence of
higher status others, and thereby endows higher status individuals with
respect and authority (Fiske, 1991; Weber, 1957).
Primordial emotions and social interaction
We believe that emotions most typically solve the problems of social
living in the context of ongoing face to face interactions (e.g., Frijda &
Mesquita, 1994; Keltner & Kring, 1998). This view has typically been
espoused by those who argue that emotions are constructed within social
relationships, and by implication, are not biologically based or universal (e.g.,
Lutz & Abu-Lughod, 1991). Evolutionary theorists, however, have long
suggested that humans evolved adaptive responses to the emotional
responses of others (e.g., Darwin, 1872; Ohman & Dimberg, 1978),
consistent with the claim that communicative behavior of senders and
receivers co-evolved (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Hauser, 1996). From this
perspective, one individual's emotional expression serves as a "social
affordance" which evokes "prepared" responses in others. Primordial
emotions structure social interactions in at least three ways.
First, emotional displays evoke complementary emotional responses in
others (for more complete review, see Keltner & Kring, 1998). These
complementary emotions are core elements of interactions such as
courtship, bonding, appeasement, and reconciliation (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989).
Thus, soothing interactions involve sympathetic responses to anothers
distress. Some socialization interactions involve angry responses to
anothers transgression, followed by a shamed or guilty response to the
anger (Ausubel, 1955; Gibbard, 1990). Appeasement interactions involve
displays of submissive emotions, such as embarrassment and shame, that
evoke reconciliation related emotions in the observer, such as amusement
(in the case of embarrassment) and sympathy (in the case of shame)
(Keltner, Young, & Buswell, 1997). Displays of love and desire coordinate the
flirtatious interactions of potential romantic partners (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989).
Second, emotional communication conveys information about the
senders mental states, intentions, and dispositions, which are critical to
social interactions (Fridlund, 1992). The empirical literature suggests that
emotional displays provide rapid, fairly reliable cues of the senders emotion,

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intentions, and disposition (for review, see Keltner & Kring, 1998).
Contagious emotional responses provide a more direct route to the
understanding of others mental states, leading individuals to experience
similar responses to objects or events in the environment, coordinating
individuals perception and action (Hatfield, Rapson, & Cacioppo, 1994).
Finally, emotions serve as incentives for others social behavior: an
individuals expression and experience of emotion may reinforce another
individuals social behavior within ongoing interactions (e.g., Klinnert et al.,
1983). For example, the display of positive emotion by both parents and
children rewards desired behaviors and shifts in attention, thus increasing
the frequency of those behaviors (e.g., Tronick, 1989). The literature on
social referencing indicates that displays of more negative emotions deter
others from engaging in undesirable behavior (Klinnert et al., 1983).
To summarize, we have argued that group living presents humans with
the problems of physical survival, reproduction, and group governance.
Humans have evolved complex systems to meet these problems and
opportunities, and emotions serve important functions within these systems
by signaling that problems or opportunities exist and by coordinating the
actions of interacting individuals. We now consider how culture elaborates
upon primordial emotions.
Culture and the social functions of elaborated emotions
Evolutionary perspectives on emotion have always included a role for
culture. Darwin begins The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(1872) with a description of a cross-cultural study in which he sent
questionnaires to missionaries around the world, asking them to comment on
the facial and bodily expressions of emotions shown by non-Western people.
He concluded that some expressions are highly universal, whereas others are
more variable, a conclusion that has withstood the test of time (Haidt &
Keltner, 1999). Ekman has also always included an important role for culture
in his neuro-cultural theory of emotions (1972). Ekman built on Tomkins
(1963) notion of universal affect programs, suggesting that culture plays
its role as a modulator of both inputs (what counts as an insult, or a loss?)
and outputs (display rules about which emotions can be expressed in which
circumstances).
While Ekmans critics have often ignored his writings about culture
(e.g., Ekman, 1972), they have also pointed out ways in which culture may
play a more profound role in human emotional life. Impressed by how culture
and language give humans flexibility and creativity in designing their lives
and societies, social constructivists concern themselves with the total
package of meanings, social practices, norms, and institutions that are built
up around emotions in human societies (Lutz, 1988; Lutz & Abu-Lughod,
1990; Shweder, 1993; White, 1990). We refer to these complex meanings as
elaborated emotions. Elaborated emotions are shaped by social discourse

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and interaction, and by concepts of the self, morality, and social order
(Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder & Haidt, in press). Elaborated emotions
vary across cultures, they cannot be experienced by infants, and they can
last for years or centuries. For example, the hatred felt towards an historical
enemy, although at any one moment in time comprised of brief emotional
experiences, is made up of values, beliefs, images, action tendencies, and
affective dispositions or sentiments that can pass from one generation to the
next and last for extended periods of time1.
In human beings, culture alters the use and expression of many
evolved traits or systems, including primordial emotions, in several ways.
Childhood instruction, culturally specific environmental conditions, and
personal experiences determine culture specific elicitors of emotions, and
shape the manner in which primordial emotions develop and are expressed.
We will analyze cultural variation in emotion by applying our functionalist
perspective to the sorts of objects that anthropologists and social
constructivists are concerned with: meaning systems and emergent social
phenomena such as institutions and practices.
Modern approaches to culture often focus on how humans create the
symbolic and material worlds that then shape, constrain, and enable them,
as in Shweders (1989) succinct formulation, culture and psyche make each
other up. Cultures draw on many sources to create their symbolic worlds,
including the human body and the phenomenological experiences it provides
(Geertz, 1973; Lakoff, 1987). All cultures have noticed that people
experience hunger, fatigue, illness, and sexual arousal, and all cultures have
developed ethnotheories, customs, and practices that explain the origins and
govern the interpretation of these experiences. Primordial emotions, we
propose, provide universally available patterns of perception, experience,
and action that cultures work into their ethnotheories, values, practices, and
institutions. The primordial emotion of anger, for example, might be
elaborated into a codified defense of the social-moral order, linked to
satisfying feelings of righteousness, and valued as a prosocial force (e.g., the
Ifaluk emotion of song, Lutz, 1988). Conversely, anger might be elaborated
as a childish and destructive response whose expression is suppressed,
leading to the use of other methods to solve interpersonal disputes (Briggs,
1970).
Culture and the elaboration process loosen the link between a
primordial emotion and the social problem it was designed to solve in two
ways, as we elaborate below. First, cultures find new solutions to the ancient
problems that emotions were designed to solve. Second, cultures find new
uses for old emotions that have little to do with their original function.
Once this loosening is recognized it becomes easier to reconcile evolutionary
approaches (which focus on primordial emotions, and therefore find
universality) and social constructionist approaches (which focus on
elaborated emotions and therefore find cultural variation).

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New solutions to old problems: Artifacts and institutions
Humans have developed an enormous variety of artifacts and
technological solutions to the problems of survival, reproduction, and group
governance. Cole (1995, p.32) writes that the basic function of these
artifacts is to coordinate human beings with the environment and each
other." For example, the invention of weaponry, walls, and towns largely
solves the problem of predator-avoidance and reduces the need for
primordial fear reactions towards non-human animals, although such
technological developments may then create new reasons to fear other
people. Social institutions are a related means by which humans solve
ancient problems.
How do evolved artifacts, institutions, social structures, and
technologies change the emotional profile of a culture? We perceive at least
two possibilities. First, social institutions may work together with emotional
systems, formalizing their functions and extending them into new domains.
For example, the institution of marriage can build upon sexual and
attachment-related emotions in cultures that practice love-based marriage,
to create stable environments for child-rearing. Or marriage can build upon
the emotions of the reciprocal altruism system in cultures that practice
arranged marriages, to bind families together that trade daughters. Other
social institutions formalize the functions of emotions. For example, Moore
(1993) has observed how court related mediations between defendant and
victim formalize exchanges of shame and forgiveness, and forge bonds
following transgressions. Goffman (1967) likewise observed how group
based status rituals that revolve around social practices, such as teasing and
manners of dress and diction, ritualize displays of embarrassment and pride.
In these circumstances, emotions may serve their original social functions in
more pronounced, consistent, and consciously recognized ways.
Second, innovations in technology, social structure, or social
institutions may bypass certain emotional mechanisms, making those
emotions less prevalent in a society. For example, cultures must address the
problem that young women can become pregnant in their mid-teens, and
that men who are not bound by marriage often do not help to raise their
offspring. Many cultures therefore make girls marry right after their first
menses. But another common solution is to delay female sexual activity by
making a virtue of chastity, and by linking female sexuality outside of
marriage to shame. This linkage was clearly in place in the United States
until recently. The word modesty used to connote a feminine virtue in
which properly socialized women felt shame when confronted by issues of
sexuality, particularly their own. In this way American women experienced
deferential, modesty related feelings such as embarrassment and shame
that are comparable to the experience of lajya of Oriya women (Mennon &
Shweder, 1994) and hasham of Awlad-Ali women (Abu-Lughod, 1986). But
new technology (birth control), new social and economic facts (women

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working, and reducing the power differential with men), and new institutions
(womens groups and magazines) have greatly reduced the association of
sexuality with shame. We cannot be certain, but it seems quite likely that
the frequency of sexual shame/modesty experiences has greatly diminished
for American women, as has the link between shame/modesty and
appeasement or submissiveness functions in the context of sexuality.
New problems for old solutions: Pre-adaptation and the creativity of
culture
In the course of evolution physical structures and behavioral patterns
evolve under selection pressures for one purpose, but often are serviceable
for a different purpose (Mayr, 1960; Rozin, 1976a). For example, the human
tongue evolved as a mechanism to select and handle food, but it was preadapted to play a role in speech production, which has affected its current
form. If the re-use of such a pre-adapted feature gives an advantage to
certain individuals, the new use will become more common in succeeding
generations, guided by a new set of selection pressures. This process can
happen in biological evolution over the course of thousands of generations,
or in cultural evolution over the course of a few years or decades.
The process of cultural pre-adaptation is visible in the transition from
primordial emotions to their elaborated forms. As a general principle, we
suggest that primordial emotions will be recruited for new uses when
features of their antecedents, appraisal patterns, or behavioral patterns
match characteristics of the new domain where a solution to a similar social
problem is needed. Certain emotion-related appraisals can be extended into
new domains with slight changes. For example, because ideas can spread
quickly from person to person, like germs, primordial disgust and its defense
against microbial contagion is easily recruited and elaborated into a defense
against ideological contagion, such as communist infiltration during the cold
war. Once ideas are seen as contaminating, the solution to the problem is
clear: infected individuals must be isolated, or expelled from the community.
(See Lakoff, 1987, for more on the importance of metaphor in human
thought.) Thus, the food rejection of primordial disgust (or core disgust,
Rozin, Haidt & McCauley, 1993) is easily adaptable to social rejection, and
most cultures seem to have some form of socio-moral disgust in response to
certain classes of offensive social violations (Haidt et al., 1997).
Pre-adaptation can occur at the level of emotion-related behavior as
well, according to similar principles of similarity and generalization. Thus,
many contexts requiring politeness, such as more formal interactions or
those involving strangers, resemble those involving individuals in social
hierarchies: the interactions are defined by potential threat. Theorists have
argued that appeasement-related behaviors, including submissive displays
and embarrassment, have been elaborated into more complex politeness
and deference rituals (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Visser, 1991). As one example,
negotiating locations of limited space (e.g., doorways) often involve polite

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smiles, gaze aversion and specific gestures (head bows in other cultures)
that draw upon the nonverbal cues of embarrassment. Emotion-related
displays can be extended into new domains, thereby developing new uses. It
will be important for future research to establish the extent to which the
different components of primordial emotion are activated when one
component of emotion (appraisals, display behavior) are generalized to a
new domain.
In sum, primordial emotions are universal, biologically based,
coordinated response systems that have evolved to enable humans to meet
the problems of physical survival, reproduction, and group governance. The
creative process of culture, however, loosens the link between the primordial
emotions and their functions, finding new solutions to old problems and new
uses for old emotions. Evolutionary theorists are therefore right when they
document high degrees of cross-cultural similarity in (primordial) emotion
and emotion based preferences, interactions, and practices (e.g., Buss, 1992;
Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989; Ekman, 1992). Social constructionists are also right
when they document striking cultural variation in the uses and functions of
(elaborated) emotions in human societies. We now apply this framework to a
discussion of the biologically and culturally determined social functions of
two specific emotions, disgust and embarrassment.
Two case studies of primordial and elaborated emotion
Disgust
The dangers of parasites and bacteria are particularly acute for
humans, who live in close quarters and eat a great variety of potentially
dangerous foods. Humans are aided by a variety of food-related emotions,
strategies and learning mechanisms, which work together as a functional
system to achieve the right balance between exploration of new foods and
the avoidance of dangerous foods (Rozin, 1996). Humans show neophobia,
nibbling, and preparedness to associate nausea with new foods, even after a
long delay (Seligman, 1971; Rozin, 1996). In humans, disgust is at the
center of the food-selection system, having evolved from the more primitive
reaction of distaste into a way of making people concerned about the contact
history and nature of their potential foods, rather than just their sensory
properties (Rozin, Haidt & McCauley, 1993). Disgust pushes against
sensation seeking as part of the omnivores dilemma: the simultaneous
interest in and fear of new foods (Rozin, 1976b).
Human societies have developed diverse ways to safeguard their food
supplies and to minimize the threats of bacteria and parasites. These
solutions include technological innovations (cooking or curing meat, boiling
or filtering water), institutions (government food inspectors), and cultural
norms and food taboos whose violation triggers disgust or outrage. More
recently, newspapers and television reports offer consumers advice from
experts on what foods to eat, and how to prepare them.

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Perhaps because it has been partially freed from its original mission -as a guardian of the mouth against dangerous foods -- disgust has been put
to a variety of new uses. Its eliciting conditions have expanded so much that
disgust may now be described as a social emotion whose function is to guard
the social order against certain forms of deviance, and to guard the soul
against certain forms of debasement (Rozin, Haidt and McCauley, in press).
The link between material progress and the expansion of disgust in European
history has been pointed out by Elias (1978). Disgust and its associated
cognitions about contamination and purity are recruited into the
maintenance of social groups with distinct boundaries, (e.g., the Indian caste
system, upper class attitudes towards the lower class). Disgust is used in
initiation rites (e.g., of American college fraternities) in which new members
are forced to touch or eat the body products of others, thereby deliberately
courting the risk of disease, yet simultaneously marking individuals as
members of a communal sharing group.
Embarrassment
The establishment, maintenance, and preservation of status
hierarchies is in part accomplished by dominance and submissive emotions
(de Waal, 1996; Ohman, 1986). Embarrassment is a primary example. The
primordial form of embarrassment involves submissive related behavior
(Keltner, 1995) much akin to the appeasement displays of other species
(e.g., gaze aversion, head movements down, controlled smiles) and
submissive phenomenology (e.g., feelings of smallness and weakness)
(Keltner & Buswell, 1996; Miller & Leary, 1992). Empirical evidence indicates
that displays of embarrassment appease dominant individuals by evoking
affiliative emotion and forgiveness (Keltner & Buswell, 1997).
Several interactions that systematically recruit and revolve around
embarrassment and other submissive emotions reinforce status hierarchies
and status based relations. Status demarcating rituals, such as greeting and
teasing, involve the ritualized display and elicitation of embarrassment
(Goffman, 1967; Keltner, Young, Heerey, Oemig, & Monarch, 1998; de Waal,
1986, 1988), thus signaling the hierarchical relations between interacting
individuals.
Culture has evolved several new solutions to the problem of
coordinating hierarchies. These include class and caste systems, aristocracy,
status arrangements in groups and organizations, status signaling clothing
(e.g., the length of a doctors lab coat in medical hospitals), linguistic
practices (Brown & Levinson, 1987), status determinant, role-related norms
for women and men, and moral codes dictating the individuals place within
a community (Shweder et al., in press). Status-related emotions have also
been coopted in several more recent human social practices. Politeness
systems, including table manners and conversational pragmatics,
incorporate submissive emotion and gesture (Brown & Levinson, 1987;
Keltner, Young, & Buswell, 1997). In many Hindu and Islamic cultures the

Social Functions
expression of submissive emotions demonstrates feminine virtue (AbuLughod, 1986; Menon & Shweder, 1994). Flirtation and courtship involve
submissive smiles of embarrassment (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989) and dominant
displays (Fisher, 1992).
Conclusions and Future Prospects
We have argued that emotions are part of systems that solve problems
related to physical survival, reproduction, and group governance. Biologically
based, universal primordial emotions involve experience, perception,
physiology, and communication that solves these problems in the context of
ongoing social interactions. Elaborated emotions are the total package of
meanings, behaviors, social practices, and norms that are built up around
primordial emotions in actual human societies. This approach integrates the
insights of evolutionary and social constructionist approaches and points to
the systematic role of emotion in social interactions, relationships, and
cultural practices.
We have intentionally focused on classes of emotions that solve
specific social problems. Other emotions are likely to serve more contextgeneral social functions: amusement may relate to the transformation of
dangerous situations into safe ones (Keltner & Bonanno, 1997); interest may
motivate general exploratory behavior and learning; happiness or
contentment may signal to the individual her or his general level of social
functioning (Nesse, 1990). These sorts of issues await further investigation.
Our hope in this article is to prompt researchers to continue to examine
the social functions of emotions, both in their universal and culturally
elaborated forms. Towards this end, we make the following
recommendations for future research. A first is to study emotion within
theoretically relevant relationships. Many studies of emotion and social
interaction have looked at strangers or, in more ambitious cases, friendships.
We would suggest that the net needs to be cast more broadly, that
researchers need to study emotion in different kinds of relationships. The
study of embarrassment and shame may be most appropriate in interactions
between superiors and subordinates. Love, desire, and jealousy are most
fruitfully examined in interactions between actual or potential romantic
partners.
We further suggest, following our functional analysis, that empirical
research may be most revealing when it focuses on the nature and
consequences of emotions when relationship relevant problems (e.g., the
maintenance of reciprocity between friends) are most salient, for example
when stances towards them are being established, negotiated, or changed.
The functions of love and desire are likely to be most clearly documented
during initial stages of courtship or when a romantic bond is threatened. The
manner in which shame and embarrassment help define status related roles
is likely to be most illuminated when studying groups during dynamic times

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of status negotiation.
Our second recommendation follows quite closely from the first:
namely, study emotion in the context of social interactions and practices. A
great deal of the study of emotion, even of the more social nature of
emotion, examines the individuals response to controlled stimuli. This sort
of work is no doubt necessary; the understanding of emotion in social
interaction rests upon the understanding of individual emotional response.
Yet given the advances in the study of emotion, it may be time to study
social interactions and practices that revolve around emotions. In the course
of this review we have identified ways that cultural practices elaborate upon
more primordial emotions (e.g., appeasement rituals), and ways in which
primordial emotions are generalized to new practices (e.g., disgust related to
unsavory ideologies). These different social practices have begun to be and
should continue to be a focus of emotion research. The emphasis on
emotions within social practice raises difficult conceptual issues. In studies
of emotion related interactions, such as teasing, it will be necessary to treat
the dyad or group as the unit of analysis (see comments below). Studies of
how culture elaborates upon emotion will direct researchers to cultural
objects and practices, such as etiquette manuals, religious texts, or
institutions, that do not appear, from the traditional point of view, to involve
emotion. Yet it is precisely in looking at these sorts of interactions and
practices where one will find culturally elaborated emotion.
Finally, a functional approach suggests that it is important to study
systematic consequences. The functions of a specific emotion will in part be
revealed by its regular consequences (e.g., Keltner & Gross, 1999). This view
shifts the emphasis from looking at emotion as an outcome or dependent
measure to the view that emotions themselves have important outcomes.
As a field we know all too little about the systematic consequences of
emotions, and this remains a very important line of inquiry. Relevant
research can proceed at multiple levels of analysis. At the individual level of
analysis, one would expect the disposition to experience and express specific
emotions, for example anger or the lack of embarrassment, to be associated
with specific social consequences. In moving to the dyad as the unit of
analysis, one might look at how patterns of emotional expression and
experience lead to specific consequences for ongoing interactions. Thus, we
would expect timely displays of love and desire to predict more interest and
intimacy in ongoing interactions between potential romantic partners. One
could look at the long term consequences of patterns of emotional
experience and expression for relationships. For example, following the
analysis offered in this chapter, one might expect frequent displays of
gratitude to predict the long term sense of fairness in friendships. Finally, it
will be important for researchers to document the consequences of emotion
for groups and cultures. Ritualized displays and experiences of
embarrassment may contribute to the stability of group hierarchy. The

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culturally elaborated experience of disgust may correlate at the cultural level
with specific stereotypes and outgroup prejudices.
Emotion researchers have long moved across and around discipline
specific theoretical inclinations and methodological practices. This tradition
has led to great debate in the study of emotion (is emotion universal or
culturally specific?), and great advances. The study of the social functions of
emotion, we contend, depends vitally on the integration of ideas and
evidence from different disciplines.

Footnotes
1. An example may clarify the distinction: Is motherhood universal? We
might speak of primordial motherhood as a system of tightly coordinated
physical and psychological processes (involving gestation, parturition, and
hormones that increase attachment) that is universal to humans and similar
to motherhood in many nonhuman species. On the other hand, many
researchers have documented cross-cultural variation in elaborated
motherhood, e.g., single versus multiple mothering, breast versus bottle
feeding, and valuation versus devaluation of the role of the mother (Kurtz,
1992).

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Table 1. A taxonomy of problems and the functional systems and emotions
that solve them.

PROBLEM
FUNCTIONAL SYSTEMS
EMOTIONS
SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Problems of Physical Survival
Predation

Fight-Flight

Disease

Fear
Rage

Avoidance of threat to self


Removal of threat to self

Food-Selection
Interest

Disgust
Avoid
microbes/parasites
Learn about new
foods/resources

Problems of Reproduction
Finding a mate

Keeping mate

Attachment

Mate protection

Protecting vulnerable

Caregiving

children

Desire

Increase likelihood of sexual


contact
Romantic Love
Commit to long term bond
Sadness
Replace loss of mate
Jealousy

Protect mate from rivals

Filial love
Increase bond between parent,
offspring
Sympathy
Reduce distress of vulnerable
individuals

Problems of Group Governance


Cooperation
& Defection

Reciprocal Altruism

Group Organization

Dominance-Submissive

Guilt
Moral Anger
Gratitude
Envy

Repair own transgression of reciprocity


Motivate other to repair transgression
Signal, reward cooperative bond
Reduce unfair differences in equality

Shame &
Pacify likely aggressor
Embarrassment
Contempt
Reduce status of undeserving other
Awe
Endow entity greater than self with
status
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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