Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love (39 page)

11
. Interestingly, a subsequent similar study demonstrated that the psychological impact of washing one’s hands extends beyond the moral domain and ‘washes away’ the typical conflict we feel each time we choose something over something else. For instance, choosing whether to go to Rome or to Paris on holiday causes a conflict that while not dramatic is still unpleasant. Both options are valuable. Normally, in order to avoid this conflict, we tend to justify our choice by finding reasons why the preferred choice is far more attractive than the option we rejected. The study showed that washing one’s hands after taking such a decision reduces this typical reaction. It removes traces of past decisions and makes the rejected option less unattractive. In other words, by reducing the participants’ need to justify their option, the act of physically cleaning the hands served the purpose of preventing regret; Lee, S. W. S., and Scharz, N., ‘Washing away post-decisional dissonance’,
Science
, 328 (2010), 709.

12
. Atik, A.,
How It Was: A Memoir of Samuel Beckett
, Faber and Faber, 2001.

13
. Escobedo, J. R., and Adolphs, R., ‘Becoming a better person: Temporal remoteness biases autobiographical memories for moral events’,
Emotion
, 10 (2010), 511–18.

14
. The dilemma of the drowning child is adapted from an example given by Joshua Greene at a conference on the science of morality: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality.greene.html; and from Unger, P.,
Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence
, Oxford University Press, 1996.

15
. Greene, J., ‘From neural “is” to moral “ought”: What are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?’,
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
, 4 (2003), 847–50. The original study by Joshua Greene and colleagues probing the ‘emotional’ networks underlying moral judgement is Greene, J. D., Sommerville, R. B., Nystrom, L. E., Darley, J. M., and Cohen, J. D., ‘An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment’,
Science
, 293 (2001), 2105–8.

16
. Basile, B., Mancini, F., Macaluso, E., Caltagirone, C., Frackowiak, R. S., and Bozzali, M., ‘Deontological and altruistic guilt: Evidence for distinct neurobiological substrates’,
Human Brain Mapping
, 32 (2011), 229–39; Moll, J., Oliveira-Souza, R., Garrido, G. J., Bramati, I. E., Caparelli-Daquer, E. M., Paiva, M., Zahn, R., and Grafman, J., ‘The Self as a moral agent: Linking the neural bases of social agency and moral sensitivity’,
Social Neuroscience
, 2 (2007), 336–52; Kedia, G., Berthoz, S., Wessa, M., Hilton, D., and Martinot, J. L., ‘An agent harms a victim: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study on specific moral emotions’,
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
, 20 (2008), 1788–98; Takahashi, H., Yahata, N., Koeda, M., Matsuda, T., Asai, K., and Okubo, Y., ‘Brain activation associated with evaluative processes of guilt and embarrassment: An fMRI study’,
Neuroimage
, 23 (2004), 967–74.

17
. Wagner, U., N’Diaye, K., Ethofer, T., Vuilleumier, P., ‘Guilt-specific processing in the prefrontal cortex’,
Cerebral Cortex
, 21 (2011), 2461–70. I am grateful to Dr Ullrich Wagner for his friendly availability to discuss his work on guilt and moral emotions.

18
. Fendez, M. F., ‘The neurobiology of moral behavior: Review and neuropsychiatric implications’,
CNS Spectre
, 14 (2009), 608–20.

19
. A growing field of research explores the body’s reactions to looking at art and the empathic engagement of spectators with the feelings portrayed in a work of art. This research is intended to unravel some of the basic neural mechanisms involved when viewing art. I write about empathy in chapter 5. For a magnificent and comprehensive study of the neurobiology of aesthetic appreciation, see Kandel, E.,
The Age of Insight
, Random House, 2012.

20
. My main sources for the life of Caravaggio are the excellent biographies by Andrew Graham-Dixon:
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
, Penguin, 2010, and Francine Prose:
Caravaggio, Painter of Miracles
, Harper Perennial, 2010.

21
. Graham-Dixon,
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
, p. 333.

22
. Harris, J. C., ‘Caravaggio’s Narcissus’,
American Journal of Psychiatry
, 67 (2010), 1109.

23
. Graham-Dixon,
Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
, p. 333.

24
. For an overview of the principles of fMRI, see Logothetis, N. K., ‘What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI’,
Nature
, 453 (2008), 869–78; see also Fitzpatrick, S.,‘Functional brain imaging. Neuro-turn or wrong Turn?’, in Littlefield, M., and Johnson, J. M. (eds),
The Neuroscientific Turn: Transdisciplinarity in the Age of the Brain
, University of Michigan Press, 2012.

25
. Jueptner, M., and Weiller, C., ‘Review: Does measurement of regional cerebral blood flow reflect synaptic activity? Implications for PET and fMRI’,
Neuroimage
, 2 (1995), 148–56.

26
. Logothetis, ‘What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI’ (supplementary material) and Pauling, L., and Coryell, C., ‘The magnetic properties and structure of hemoglobin’,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
, 22 (1936), 210–16.

27
. McCabe, D. P., and Castel, A. D., ‘Seeing is believing: The effect of brain images on judgments of scientific reasoning’,
Cognition
, 107 (2008), 343–52.

28
. For an excellent perspective on how brain scans have become iconic images in the public domain, see Dumit, J.,
Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity
, Princeton University Press, 2003.

29
. As reviewed in Fitzpatrick, ‘Functional brain imaging. Neuro-turn or wrong turn?’.

30
. Logothetis, ‘What we can do and what we cannot do with fMRI’ (supplementary material).

31
. Website for the IgNobel Prizes: www.improbable.com

32
. The study is Bennett, C. M., Baird, A. A., Miller, M. B., and Wolford, G. L., ‘Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic salmon: An argument for proper multiple comparisons correction’,
Journal of Serendipitous and Unexpected Results
, 1 (2010), 1–5.

33
. For another excellent critical discussion of the statistical calculations behind fMRI data on emotions, see Vul, E., Harris, C., Winkielman, P., and Pashler, H., ‘Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition’,
Perspectives on Psychological Science
, 4 (2009), 274–90. This article refers to another problematic aspect of statistical analysis in fMRI: the fact that when researchers calculate correlations between fMRI data and personality traits or measures of emotion, they often make a separate correlation for each unit (voxel) of the area of the brain involved. They then report results from those voxels that go beyond certain significant value thresholds, thus possibly inflating the correlations.

34
. Darwin, C.,
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
(originally published 1872), in Wilson, E. O. (ed.),
From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin
, Norton, 2006, p. 1414.

35
. The correspondence between Freud’s theory of the mind and the brain’s physical map has been put forward by Mark Solms, a pioneer in the field of neuropsychoanalysis, a discipline that seeks to confirm theories of psychoanalysis through the methods of neuroscience. For a review, see Solms, M., ‘Freud returns’,
Scientific American
, May 2004, 83–8.

36
. Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Tibi-Elhanamy, Y., and Aharon-Petrez, J., ‘The green-eyed monster and malicious joy: The neuroanatomical bases of envy and gloating (Schadenfreude)’,
Brain
, 130 (2007), 1663–78; Takahashi, H., Kato, M., Matsuura, M., Mobbs, D., Suhara, T., and Okubo, Y., ‘When your gain is my pain and your pain is my gain: Neural correlates of envy and Schadenfreude’,
Science
, 323 (2009), 937–9.

37
. For instance, Marc Hauser argues that we are equipped with a universal ‘moral grammar’ engraved in our biological make-up that makes us formulate moral judgements intuitively. See Hauser, M. D.,
Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong
, Ecco/HarperCollins, 2006. It is important to point out, however, that a university investigation concluded in 2010 found Hauser responsible for scientific misconduct, casting doubt on some of his findings. See Johnson, Carolyn Y., ‘Ex-Harvard scientist fabricated, manipulated data, report says’,
Boston Globe
, 5 September 2012.

38
. For a review of the challenges of locating emotions in the brain, see Hamann, S., ‘Mapping discrete and dimensional emotions onto the brain: Controversies and consensus’,
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
, 16 (2012), 458–66.

39
. In the rest of this book I am going to cite several studies involving brain-imaging techniques which have been useful in exploring the neural geography of various aspects of mental life. In each case I will highlight what they have revealed about emotions, but all the technical limitations I have illustrated in this chapter are to be taken into account.

40
. Abad, H.,
Recipes for Sad Women
(trans. Anne McLean), Pushkin Press, 2012.

41
. Wilde, O.,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, Penguin, ebook, 2006.

Chapter 3

1
. Auden, W. H.,
The Age of Anxiety
(originally published 1947), Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 3.

2
. Ibid.

3
. Ibid. As annotated in Introduction, p. xiii.

4
. Campbell, D., ‘Recession causes surge in mental health problems’,
Guardian
, 1 April 2010.

5
. As stated on the NHS fact sheet on generalized anxiety disorder: http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/anxiety/Pages/Introduction.aspx

6
. As published on the statistics page for anxiety disorders of the National Institute of Mental Health and based on: Kessler, R. C., Chiu, W. T., Demler, O.,
et al.
, ‘Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of twelve-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R)’,
Archives of General Psychiatry
, 62 (2005), 617–27; http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYANX_ADULT.shtml

7
. Helm, Toby, ‘Victims of recession to get free therapy’,
Guardian
, 8 March 2009.

8
. Collier, R., ‘Recession stresses mental health’,
Canadian Medical Association Journal
, 181 (2009), 3–4; http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Anxiety/ Pages/; Smith, K., ‘Trillion-dollar brain drain’,
Nature
, 478 (2011), 15.

9
. Nesse, R., ‘Proximate and evolutionary studies of anxiety, stress and depression: Synergy at the interface’,
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
, 23 (1999), 895–903.