ed. by Stephanie H.M. van
Goozen, Nanne E. Van De Poll, Joe A.
Sergeant
Ed Hillsdale (N.J.) ; Hove :
L. Erlbaum, 1994 - 333 p
Some titles of books have become classics in
their own right. The expression of emotions in
animals and man of 1872 is one of them. In this
ground-breaking work the great evolutionary
biologist Charles
Darwin categorized emotional expression from
a comparative and evolutionary perspective.
Since then emotions have figured prominently in
human psychology as a subject of interest.
By contrast the term has hardly occurred in
ethological texts (cf McNaughton. 1989).
Students of animal behavior have rarely referred
to emotions, obviously because these have
traditionally been described in terms of
subjective experiences. Ethologists have tended
to avoid the use of such intervening variables
in attempting to relate behavioral sequential
contingencies directly to contextual
contingencies,.
Accordingly characterizations of expressive
states have preferably been put in terms of
behavioral tendencies and their motivating
factors. This is not to imply that there are no
behavioral manifestations in nonhuman species
that are not analogous or even homologous to
emotional expression. It is the great merit of
Frijda (1986) that he has presented a
perspective on emotions and emotional behavior
that integrates the different views and
approaches, psychological, comparative and
evolutionary, and physiological that have been
developed concerning emOtional behavior and its
underlying mechanisms.
In the comparative study of animal behavior
the entrance to the phenomenon of emotional
behavior has been the occurrence of so-called
displays. These were interpreted as ritualized
movements and postures, the form of which hs
been specialized for a communicative function.
In as far as certain movements or postures are
informative to conspecifics or even animals of
other species, and in as far as such information
leads to changes in the behavior of these recel
vers that benefit the fitness of the sender,
natural selection will operate to adapt the
informative behavior elements. By the
exaggerstion of frequency and intensity
characteristics, by their stylization, and by
development of special supportive structures of
form and color, the informative elements we made
conspicuous and unambiguous.
As sources of the derivation of displays
have been recognized. first, intention movements
and intention postures of behaviors near the
threshold of actual release; second, ambivalent
or compromise movements and postures that are
due to a conflict of simultaneously aroused but
incompatible behavior tendencies and, third, the
autonomous processes associated with all
these.
In their nonritualized form the processes
merely are the ethophysiological anticipation of
the necessity of certain forms of action. They
reflect the way the animal has evaluated its
situation, a process that involves cognitive
interpretation, in that the animal assesses its
actual stale and probabilities of the
development of the latter on the basis of
previous experience.
It furthermore involves the appreciation of
the situation in terms of the animal's needs and
the consequent choices of its behavioral
priorities. Roughly speaking, it is at the
moment when this evaluation is done, when
choices from alternative action courses and
coping strategies have to be made, when a choice
has to be earned into a decision of action, that
an action tendency and the preparatory postural
and physiological activation for it take place
that we recognize as emotional behavior (cf.
Frijda, 1986; Schachter & Singer, 1962;
Wicpkema & Kaolhaas, 1992).
In most animals an array of ritualized
expressions can be distinguished that refer to
certain behavioral probabilities. Darwin
(1872) already undertook to categorize these.
More recent comparative studies of the
expression movements of primates and man have
confirmed that there is, across these species, a
set of basic emotional dimensions, and that
there is evolutionary continuity both with
respect to this contextual and motivational
categorization and the respective behavioral
morphology (Frijda, 1986; van Hooff. 1972,
1976). Ethologists have emphasized communicative
aspects of expressive behavior. As Frijda
pointed out communication can mean different
things. In the broadest sense it can mean that
processes in one system influence those in
another. This includes unintended transmission
of information. When, however, the transmission
is intended this can be interpreted in two ways
that do not exclude one another.
First, the sending system may regulate its
display in such a way that it modulates its
displaying in interaction with feed-back
information concerning its effects; it aims at
influencing a receiver in a certain way. Many of
the displays we use have this communicative
intent. Certainly in higher animais we can
recognize the same, namely when displays are
emphatically dIrected at a certain partner and
when the reactions of this partner immediately
modulate the display.
This is likely in many manifestations of
threat, submission, courting, and the like.
Other forms of emotional communication do not
have this form, in particular in those cases
where the expression is not directed at any one
receiver in particular; in our species we can
occasionally notice that the effects generated
by emotional displays are embarrassing to the
sending subject, for example, when blushing or
yawning. Nevertheless some of these may
nevertheless be regarded as evolutionarily
adaptive displays. That is, natural selection
has led to the development of ritualized
displays, the particular form and dynamics of
which have evolved, because they led to
adjustments in the behavior of respondents that
beneffited the fitness of the sender.
An interesting example is the behavior of
yawning. Analysis of the temporal
patterning of yawning has confirmed the
folk wisdom that in our own species it is
associated, as is stretching (Provine
Harnernik & Churchak. 1987), with drowsiness
and boredom. It differs from stretching in that
it occurs both in the pre and the postsleeping
phase, whereas stretching occurs primarily in
the postsleeping stage.
One of the most curious features of
yawning is its high degree of social
infectiousness, suggesting that it has been
ritualized as a signal, possibly synchronizing
states of rest taking (Provine,
1986). Students of primate behavior have
reported yawning to occur in states of
fatigue, drowsiness, stress, uneasiness and
tension (e.g., Hinde & Rowell, 1962; Redican
1975).
In some cercopithecines, notably in macaques
and baboons, exposure of the canines during
yawning is assumed to be a signal of
threat, because it signals an uneasiness that in
dominant animals spells danger (e.g, Bertrand,
1969; see Schino
& Aureli, 1989, for a review, Darwin,
1872, Hall & DeVore, 1965.
Altmann
(1967) distinguished three kinds of
yawns:
(a) the "true" yawn of
drowsiness,
(b) the conflict yawn, shown in
anxiety-producing situations,
(c) the semantic yawn, as a show of
weaponry.
Hadidian
(1980) analyzed the occurrence and the age-sex
distribution of yawning in a macaque
species. The situations ranged from drowsiness
to tension. In the later there was a temporal
association with male aggressiveness, although
the display itself did not release immediate
responses on the part of recipients. Remarkably,
the performance of the display showed a strong
sexual dimorphism (cf. Troisi.
Aureli, Schino et al, 1990).
When males grew to adults they began to show
yawns with a comparatively high frequency
(Fig. 7.1). In a chimpanzee community
yawning was shown particularly by the
dominant group members (Boekhorst, de Weerth,
& van Hooff, 1991). The fact that there is
no evidence for a similar sex-age-status
differentiation in yawning in the human
species (Provine loc.cit.; Schino & Aureli
1989) suggests that there are interspecific
differences in the degree of evolutionary
ritualization of this response, even though the
response itself appears to be unintended and
autonomic in probably all species.
In this presentation we focus our attention
on behavioral and physiological indicators of
anxious stress and their relation to social
processes and social position.
-Altmann
SA Social communication among primates. Univ
Chicago press. 1967
-Aureli
F, de Waal FB Inhibition of social behavior
in chimpanzees under high-density conditions.Am
J Primatol 1997;41; 3; 213-28
-Hadidian J
Yawning in old world monkey; Macaca nigra;
Behaviour 1980; 75; 133-147
-Deputte
BL Study of yawning in two species of
Cercopithecidae; Cercocebus albigena albigena
gray and Macaca fascicularis raffles: Research
on causal and functional factors; A
consideration of socio-bioenergetic factors.
Thèse presentée devant
l'Universite de Rennes; pour obtenir le titre de
Docteur en Troisième Cycle; February
1978.
-Deputte
BL Revue sur le comportement de
bâillement chez les
vertébrés Bull interne
société française pour
l'étude du comportement animal.1974;1:
26-35.
-Deputte BL;
Fontenelle A Menace et bâillement chez
Macaca Fascicularis: intérêt de
l'étude électomyographique
comparée.Biology of behaviour 1980; 5;
47-54
-Deputte
BL Ethological study of yawning in primates
Ethology 1994; 98; 221-245
-Schino
G, Aureli F Do men yawn more then women ?
Ethol. sociobiol. 1989; 10; 375-378
