1009511 research-article2021 CDPXXX10.1177/09637214211009511Ryan et al.Mindfulness and Motivation ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Mindfulness and Motivation: A Process View Using Self-Determination Theory Current Directions in Psychological Science 1­–7 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211009511 DOI: 10.1177/09637214211009511 www.psychologicalscience.org/CDPS Richard M. Ryan1 , James N. Donald2, and Emma L. Bradshaw1 1 Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, and 2University of Sydney Business School Abstract Mindfulness and motivation are both highly researched topics of great consequence for individual and social wellness. Using the lens of self-determination theory, we review evidence indicating that mindfulness is differentially related to different types of motivations, playing a facilitating role for highly autonomous forms of motivation, but not for externally controlled or introjected (self-controlling) forms of motivation. A key contribution of this review is our contention that mindfulness confers a range of intra- and interindividual benefits (e.g., well-being and prosociality) in part through its relation to autonomous motivations, a claim for which we outline preliminary evidence. Finally, we discuss how future research connecting mindfulness and motivation is important for both fields of study, for applied practices in areas such as psychotherapy and business, and for enhancing understanding of the processes underlying human wellness. Keywords mindfulness, motivation, self-determination theory, autonomy In this article, we bring together two phenomena that may at first not seem easily related, namely, mindfulness and motivation. Mindfulness is defined as open attention to the present moment (Brown & Ryan, 2003). Although several definitions of mindfulness have been offered, it is generally considered to be a receptive state of observing without judgment what is occurring, without specific goals or aims (Brown & Ryan, 2003; ­Creswell, 2017; Kabat-Zinn 2003). 1 In contrast, motivation concerns both energy and direction, mobilizing effort toward specific aims. How could these distinct constructs be linked? In what follows, we review research connecting mindfulness and motivation using the framework of self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci, 2017), showing how mindfulness may be particularly important in supporting highly volitional, or autonomous, motivations and in inhibiting unwanted potential actions. SDT research concerns human motivation, and particularly autonomous motivation, which is characterized by people’s full and willing engagement in an activity. SDT researchers have especially focused on factors in social and cultural contexts that enhance or diminish people’s autonomous motivation, such as variations in reward contingencies, leadership styles, types of feedback, and rationales for acting. This focus on social and cultural factors has had practical import because it has shed light on how the strategies of parents, teachers, clinicians, coaches, and managers affect motivation, and it can inform effective interventions to increase autonomous engagement. Yet, given that this is a theory of self-regulation, researchers in SDT are interested not only in how factors external to the person affect motivation, but also in how intrapersonal factors mobilize self-motivation. Perhaps the intrapersonal process most centrally discussed and researched within SDT is mindfulness (Brown & Ryan, 2015; Weinstein et al., 2009). SDT specifically proposes that mindfulness conduces to autonomous forms of motivation, or motives characterized by a sense of volition and self-endorsement (Ryan & Deci, 2017). The theory posits that mindfulness Corresponding Author: Richard M. Ryan, Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University E-mail: richard.ryan@acu.edu.au Ryan et al. 2 affords individuals more awareness of internal phenomena, such as urges, emotions, impulses, and needs, as well external conditions, such as seductions, conflicts, and pressures. Although mindfulness does not “cause” subsequent motivation, the open, nondefensive awareness facilitated by mindfulness puts individuals in a better position to engage in reflective choices and identify self-congruent actions. SDT proposes that mindfulness supports the process of integration, wherein people’s motives become more informed by their intrinsic interests, abiding values, and deep priorities. Persons higher in mindfulness are less likely to be influenced by automatic responses, defenses, and attachments, which makes self-congruent decisions and actions more likely (Levesque & Brown, 2007; Niemiec et al., 2010). Mindful states can be cultivated in various ways, such as via formal meditation practices (see ­Creswell, 2017), but also via present-moment awareness during one’s everyday activities, such as walking, communicating, or working (Fredrickson et al., 2019). Yet according to SDT, mindfulness does not support all forms of motivation. Greater awareness may in fact be associated with less motivation of certain types. For example, one might mindfully observe how peer pressures are leading one to behave against other personal values. That observation of inner conflict then becomes a consideration when one makes subsequent choices concerning whether to conform to these pressures. SDT suggests, in fact, that several forms of motivation, such as ego-driven achievement motivation and externally controlled motivations, will likely not be enhanced by mindfulness and may even be reduced in individuals higher in mindfulness. This formulation and research stemming from it have import both for SDT and for the field of mindfulness. Regarding SDT, the theory proposes that greater autonomy reflects greater integration, such that persons feel more authentic and self-endorsing of their actions. Associations between more autonomous motivation and greater mindfulness are suggestive of the open, nondefensive emotional and cognitive processing required for such integrative processing (Roth et al., 2019). Identifying practical means for enhancing autonomy and integration that can be self-initiated and maintained, such as mindfulness practices, would be of value from an intervention perspective (Brown et al., 2007). A joint focus on mindfulness and motivation may also illuminate areas of existing mindfulness research. For example, there is substantial evidence that greater mindfulness is associated with greater subjective wellbeing, but often there is less clarity about how these positive effects are accrued—that is, how mindfulness leads to greater wellness. The SDT account suggests that one pathway through which mindfulness enhances wellness is by facilitating greater autonomous regulation of behavior, which in turn is associated with a greater sense of congruence and less conflict when acting, more satisfaction, and less stress (e.g., Shannon et al., 2020). That is, SDT predicts that autonomy partially mediates the relations between mindfulness and wellness outcomes. This fits with findings (e.g., ­Weinstein et al., 2009) that more mindful people not only cope more effectively with the stress they encounter, but also tend to incur less stress, presumably through making more self-endorsed and well-integrated choices. SDT also posits that acting with mindfulness and acting with autonomy are elements of eudaimonia—the Aristotelian conception of living a good life that expresses one’s excellences and virtues (Ryan et al., 2013). SDT proposes that human propensities are fundamentally eudaimonic—that is, tending toward growth, cooperation, and altruism, in the absence of social factors that thwart such tendencies. Further, SDT states that humans’ natural inclinations toward eudaimonia are facilitated by motivations that are autonomous in nature. When autonomously motivated, individuals are more likely to internalize adaptive social values and norms, which tend to be prosocial and holistic. Further, autonomous motives are potentiated by mindfulness, insofar as mindfulness facilitates more integrative, reflective processing of values and propensities. Thus, to the extent that mindfulness promotes autonomous motives, it may promote prosociality and eudaimonia more broadly. This theorizing may also help to explain the empirical links among mindfulness, autonomy, and prosociality (Donald et al., 2019, 2020). Taken together, the relations between mindfulness and motivation arguably account, at least in part, for links between mindfulness and benefits for the self (i.e., individual well-being) and for others (i.e., prosociality). SDT’s Continuum of Autonomy Although in many theories, motivation is seen as a unitary variable of which a person has more or less, SDT suggests that motivation has distinct sources that influence its qualities and consequences. Specifically, SDT poses a taxonomy of motives (Fig. 1) that are theoretically ordered along a continuum of relative autonomy. At the low end of autonomy is amotivation, a state in which one has no value or sense of efficacy for acting. Still nonautonomous is external regulation, which refers to acting to comply with externally controlled rewards and sanctions. Midway along the continuum of autonomy is introjection, acting because of “shoulds” and “mustifications” or from motives that concern looking good and avoiding shame in one’s own eyes or in the eyes of other people. Even more autonomy Mindfulness and Motivation 3 Varieties of Motivation Amotivation: Absence of Value and/or Competence External Regulation: Focus on External Rewards and Punishments Introjection: Self-Esteem Pressures, Ego Involvement Low Autonomy Identified Regulation: Personally Valuing the Activity Intrinsic Motivation: Finding Interest and Enjoyment in the Activity High Autonomy Fig. 1. The taxonomy of motivational forms within self-determination theory and their relative autonomy. is evident in identified regulation, defined as taking action that one personally values. Finally, the highly studied phenomenon of intrinsic motivation is an autonomous form of motivation, manifest when a person engages in actions out of inherent enjoyment and interest. We note that within SDT, motivational states characterized by relatively high autonomy (i.e., identified regulation and intrinsic motivation) are said to reflect integrated functioning, and thus in the current context, we use these terms interchangeably. The presumed continuum underlying SDT’s taxonomy was initially supported by studies testing the theory’s prediction of an ordered set of correlations between motivation types, or a simplex pattern. Specifically, motives that are adjacent along the hypothetical continuum should be most highly correlated, and relations between motives that are further apart on the continuum should be lower in a graded way (Ryan & Connell, 1989). This simplex pattern has been reliably observed, as shown by a recent meta-analysis (i.e., a study that aggregates the results of earlier studies. Data extracted from 486 studies involving more than 200,000 participants provided clear support for a continuumlike structure (Howard et al., 2017). Experiences of autonomy are relevant and consequential across multiple domains. Greater feelings of autonomy predict greater persistence, greater wellbeing, and, in contexts where quality of motivation matters, better performance (Vansteenkiste et al., 2020). The large body of evidence for this effect is beyond the scope of this review, but we point to other reviews on how autonomous motivation relates to an array of outcomes (e.g., Howard et al., 2021; Ryan & Deci, 2017). Mindfulness and Its Facilitation of Autonomy As an observing, not judging, state, mindfulness would appear to support autonomous functioning in multiple ways. When individuals are more open to what is occurring without distortion, their subsequent behavior can be more informed, selective, and volitionally supported (Hodgins & Knee, 2002; Niemiec et al., 2010). Being mindful of the present, free of defenses and judgments, allows information to flow and for what is pertinent to become clearer and more salient. Put another way, mindfulness precipitates less ego involvement, reactivity, and attachment to phenomena, and this allows for more deeply valued, authentic responses, which are wholly endorsed. In SDT, mindfulness is expected to promote integrative tendencies through open attention to the present moment, which allows more clarity and deeper processing of experiences (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Thus, mindful processing makes integrated self-functioning more likely, as individuals are more able to access the full range of important considerations when making choices (Brown et al., 2007). Further, mindfulness is expected to be most strongly and positively linked with intrinsic motivation, the most autonomous form of motivation within SDT, because it promotes individuals’ innate tendencies toward mastery, curiosity, and interest in activities. The initial research on the relations between mindfulness and autonomy (Brown & Ryan, 2003) used a method called experience sampling, which involves participants making frequent self-reports about their experiences over time. The results showed that variations in daily autonomy were predicted by both trait and state mindfulness. In other studies, greater mindfulness has been associated with the pursuit of more autonomous values and with increased intrinsic motivation on some tasks (e.g., Brown et al., 2016). More recently, Shannon et al. (2020) examined the role of autonomy in accounting for the relations among mindfulness, well-being, and stress in student athletes. Mindfulness was associated with lower stress, greater well-being, and higher satisfaction of the need for autonomy. Crucially, autonomy partially explained the links between mindfulness and both well-being and stress. This suggests that mindfulness enhanced wellbeing and reduced stress in part by increasing athletes’ capacity to autonomously regulate their behavior. This Ryan et al. 4 Intrinsic Motivation Type Identified Introjected External Amotivated −.4 −.3 −.2 −.1 .0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 Effect Size (Pearson’s r ) Fig. 2. Meta-analytic associations between mindfulness and varieties of motivation proposed by self-determination theory (Donald et al., 2021). Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals. is consistent with other findings on the role of autonomy in mediating links between mindfulness and wellness and performance outcomes. However, further well-designed experimental studies are needed in order to rigorously test these potential pathways. These findings also converge with Ludwig et al.’s (2020) suggestions that greater mindful awareness allows the reward value of behaviors to be more accurately assessed and revised, thus providing information that helps people change their behaviors in a less effortful way. That is, mindfulness awakens the processing of relevant experiences and comparisons, such that choices are more informed and changes in behavior are experienced as more valued and less conflicted. Mindfulness does not, however, and theoretically should not, enhance all forms of motivation, and may even reduce motivation of certain types (e.g., H ­ afenbrack & Vohs, 2018), particularly those not characterized by autonomy (Ludwig et al., 2020; Weinstein et al., 2009). Mindfulness has, for example, been found to inhibit the pursuit of extrinsic rewards and goals across a range of settings and to be associated with reduced reactivity in emotionally arousing situations (e.g., Brown et al., 2013). Because mindfulness facilitates greater alignment of actions with internalized values, the pursuit of extrinsic goals, such as status or wealth, is less likely among more mindful individuals because such goals are not readily or wholly self-endorsed. Another recent meta-analysis, by Donald et al. (2020), summarized how mindfulness relates to SDT’s different types of motivation. The authors identified 89 studies, involving more than 25,000 participants, in which measures of mindfulness were examined in relation to SDT-based measures of motivation. As illustrated in Figure 2, there was consistent support for mindfulness being positively associated with autonomous forms of motivation and being unrelated or negatively related to external regulation and amotivation. In fact, mindfulness was associated with SDT’s autonomy continuum in the predicted, graded way. Donald et al. also examined experimental evidence across 21 studies, again finding evidence that mindfulness interventions lead to more autonomous (i.e., identified and intrinsic) motivations, though they noted the need for further, high-quality intervention studies to corroborate these findings. Mindfulness, Autonomy, and Their Self-Related and Social Consequences It may seem ironic to claim that greater mindfulness, a state characterized by an egoless, no-self emphasis, leads to greater autonomy, or fuller self-functioning (Ryan & Rigby, 2015). It may also seem ironic to claim that the greater self-functioning associated with autonomy is positively associated not only with greater wellbeing, but also with more selfless acts (Martela & Ryan, 2016). Yet SDT predicts both of these “ironic” relationships, and they have been supported by research studies. Studies have long shown the strong causal relations between greater autonomy and higher well-being, as we have described. Perhaps more surprising is the increasing evidence linking autonomy and autonomysupportive environments with more prosocial and less antisocial behaviors. For example, Assor et al. (2018) Mindfulness and Motivation reported on a program to enhance teachers’ support of autonomy in dealing with problems such as violence and bullying. The program not only reduced teachers’ controlling behaviors, but also led to less violence and more caring among students. On the controlling side, Joussemet et al. (2008) assessed the trajectories of aggressive behavior in children ages 6 through 12. Although children generally became less aggressive with age, the children of mothers who were more controlling remained on a more aggressive trajectory. A new meta-analysis by Donald et al. (2021) is a first step toward pulling such scattered findings together. Summarizing across 138 studies, the results revealed support for direct links between autonomy and prosociality and between controlled motives and antisociality, findings consistent across cultures and genders. Discussion A growing body of findings supports the SDT view that one way in which mindfulness operates to increase well-being, reduce aggressiveness, and promote prosocial behavior is by facilitating autonomy—helping individuals to bring their goals, actions, and responses to the pressures and pulls of the world into alignment with personal values, and to be less susceptible to ego involvement, defensive reactions, and undue stress appraisals. In asserting these connections, we do not argue that mindfulness is equivalent to, or automatically leads to, autonomy; rather, we are saying that mindfulness facilitates more autonomous functioning. Indeed, mindfulness, properly speaking, is not a motivational state at all—it is an observational, receptive one. Whereas motivation provides energy for behavior, mindfulness helps individuals be more aware of and better process their experience. Mindful awareness thus provides fertile ground for autonomy, unveiling information that allows for more integrative decision making. This has important implications for practices from psychotherapy to business, as it suggests a role for mindfulness in fostering high-quality, volitional, motivation. For a behavior to be autonomous, it is not necessary that it always be explicitly consciously reflected upon in that moment. It does require, however, that the behavior be informed by one’s sensibilities and values, and if reflected upon, that it would be authentically endorsed (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Although many of the processes through which people gain a sense of autonomy and congruence are nonconscious, having organismic mechanisms yet to be explored (Di Domenico et al., 2016), the evidence thus far suggests that mindful awareness can provide important inputs 5 to such processes, contributing to autonomous motivation and well-being. We should also emphasize, however, that in addition to having these positive effects on autonomous functioning, mindfulness can have its own direct effects on wellness-related outcomes, such as through its immediate impacts on mood, physiological arousal, worry, and other processes (e.g., Donald et al., 2016; Schultz & Ryan, 2019). Although we have summarized a growing body of evidence establishing connections among mindfulness, autonomy, wellness, and prosocial propensities, there is much more to uncover. The practical import of this research area is potentially great, as it suggests that, just as social conditions that support people’s autonomy can contribute to their experiencing more wellness and being more caring, individuals can enhance their own authenticity, well-being, and social contributions through cultivating mindful awareness. Recommended Reading Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). (See References). Presents several studies showing that both trait and state (momentary) mindfulness predict well-being and the first studies linking mindfulness with more autonomous motivation. Donald, J. N., Bradshaw, E. L., Ryan, R. M., Basarkod, G., Ciarrochi, J., Duineveld, J. J., Guo, J., & Sahdra, B. K. (2020). (See References). Presents a meta-analysis of the associations between mindfulness and self-determination theory’s different types of motivation. Howard, J. L., Gagné, M., & Bureau, J. S. (2017). (See References). Reviews studies of self-determination theory’s taxonomy of motives and reports a meta-analysis that establishes the continuum nature of the motives specified in the theory and in Figure 1. Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2017). (See References). Presents self-determination theory as a whole, including how it applies in schools, workplaces, sports, therapy, parenting, and other settings. Ryan, R. M., & Rigby, C. S. (2015). (See References). Reviews both Buddhist and Western conceptions of self, showing how they differ and where they converge, and discusses the role of mindfulness in self-cultivation and well-being. Transparency Action Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article. ORCID iDs Richard M. Ryan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2355-6154 Emma L. Bradshaw https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6423-5499 6 Note 1. See Nilsson and Kazemi (2016) for more a more detailed overview of how mindfulness has been defined and operationalized within modern psychology, including conceptualizations of mindfulness as both a state and a trait. References Assor, A., Feinberg, O., Kanat-Maymon, Y., & Kaplan, H. (2018). Reducing violence in non-controlling ways: A change program based on self-determination theory. 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Current Directions in Psychological Science 2021, Vol. 30(3) 274­–279 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211003892 DOI: 10.1177/09637214211003892 www.psychologicalscience.org/CDPS Fabrizio Benedetti Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin Medical School, and Plateau Rosà Laboratories, Plateau Rosà, Switzerland Abstract Placebos are fake therapies that can induce real therapeutic effects, called placebo effects. It goes without saying that what matters for inducing a placebo effect is not so much the fake treatment itself, but rather the therapeutic ritual that is carried out, which is capable of triggering psychobiological mechanisms in the patient’s brain. Both laypersons and scientists often accept the phenomenon of the placebo effect with reluctance, as fiction-induced clinical improvements are at odds with common sense. However, it should be emphasized that placebo effects are not surprising after all if one considers that fiction-induced physiological effects occur in everyday life. Movies provide one of the best examples of how fictitious reality can induce psychological and physiological responses, such as fear, love, and tears. In the same way that a horror movie induces fear-related physiological responses, even though the viewer knows everything is fake, so the sight of a syringe may trigger the release of pain-relieving chemicals in the patient’s brain, even if the patient knows there is a fake painkiller inside. From this perspective, placebos can be better conceptualized as rituals, actions, and fictions within a more general framework that emphasizes the power of psychological factors in everyday life, including the healing context. Keywords placebo effect, nocebo effect, brain mechanisms, film psychology, therapeutic rituals A placebo is a fake therapy involving an inert treatment with no specific therapeutic properties, and the placebo effect is the response to that therapy. However, it is important to emphasize that a placebo does not consist of the inert treatment alone, but rather includes its administration within a psychosocial context, a set of sensory and social stimuli that tell the patient that a beneficial therapy is being given. A placebo is the whole ritual of the therapeutic act, which is made of many things, such as words, rituals, symbols, and meanings (Benedetti, 2013, 2014, 2020; Colloca & Barsky, 2020; Price et al., 2008). These, in turn, induce positive expectations in the patient. If the outcome goes in the opposite direction, clinical worsening, the effects are referred to as nocebo effects, whose main mechanisms are attributable to negative expectations. It should be noted, however, that observed clinical improvements can arise for several reasons, and this is a major source of confusion. For example, if spontaneous remission occurs after administration of a placebo, the improvement may be misinterpreted as an effect of the placebo itself. Also, methodological biases can make the experimenter believe that a placebo has had an ameliorative effect when the supposed benefit is actually attributable to the patient’s biased report and/or the experimenter’s biased measurement. For example, in the setting of clinical trials, patients may tend to please the experimenter even though they perceive no real benefit. This bias is usually overcome by performing objective measurements, which are less sensitive to biases. Regression to the mean, a tendency for extreme values to move closer to the mean after repeated measurements, is another source of bias that may erroneously give the impression of an improvement (Benedetti, 2020; ­Colloca & Barsky, 2020). Within the scientific community, there is persisting confusion and misconception about the terms placebo Corresponding Author: Fabrizio Benedetti, Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin Medical School E-mail: fabrizio.benedetti@unito.it Placebos and Movies and placebo effect, and only recently has a consensus been reached on the terminology and the role of placebos in clinical practice (Evers et al., 2018, 2021). This confusion comes mainly from the different meaning that this word has in clinical trials and in neuroscientific or psychological research. In fact, the scientist who performs a clinical trial is mainly interested in comparing a therapy with a placebo to establish whether the therapy is superior to the placebo. Conversely, the neuroscientist or the psychologist wants to isolate the psychobiological component from the spontaneous fluctuations of the symptom, the patient’s biased reports, and the experimenter’s biased measurements. Therefore, when neuroscientists and psychologists talk about placebos and placebo effects, they are referring to the psychobiological component of the clinical improvement, namely, all those psychological factors that contribute to changing the time course of a symptom or ailment. How is it possible that a fake treatment leads to clinical amelioration? This question is central to neuroscience, psychology, and medicine, and it leads to many open questions that need to be addressed in some detail. For example, the notion that fake treatments can induce improvements is at odds with common sense, both for the layperson and for the scientist, who often accept the idea with some degree of reluctance. However, it should be pointed out that placebo-induced physiological changes and clinical improvements are not so surprising after all if considered within a more general context of people’s daily lives. Movie-Induced Physiological Responses It has long been known that movies are powerful triggers of strong emotional responses, ranging from love and tears to heartache and fear. These emotional reactions take place despite the fact that the viewer is aware that everything is a fiction. Horror movies, such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, present fake victims, fake knives, and fake blood. On the opposite end of the spectrum, actors in romantic movies, such as James Cameron’s Titanic, fall in love, cry, and laugh. The crucial point here is that the viewer knows the blood, knives, victims, tears, and laughs are not real, but nonetheless shows powerful emotional and behavioral responses. Considering human evolution and biology, this is quite surprising, as these reactions are supposed to have evolved for social interaction and survival. The fact that they take place during movie viewing even though neither social interaction nor survival is at stake indicates that emotional and behavioral responses can 275 be elicited unconsciously (automatically) by merely simulating situations of real life. The vast literature on film psychology shows the powerful psychological and physiological effects of movies (Fischer et al., 2011; Martin, 2019; Tan, 2018). Movies are simulations of real life, and even though the viewer knows they represent a fictitious reality, they can induce changes in behavior, perception, and physiology. The changes that are produced range from autonomic activation to emotional distress and from cognition to behavior, and these changes are associated with changes in brain activity (Kinreich et al., 2011; Yoshihara et al., 2016). Bloodcurdling movies can also affect various blood functions, such as coagulation (Nemeth et al., 2015) and blood flow (Matsukawa et al., 2017, 2018). It should be emphasized that these emotional, behavioral, and brain responses are elicited by the movieinduced negative or positive emotions even though movie viewers are perfectly aware that they are watching fiction, not reality. Thus, these effects appear to be highly relevant for better understanding placebo effects in the healing context; they suggest that placebo effects can be conceptualized within a broader framework of everyday life. Placebo-Induced Physiological Responses A placebo is a fiction in all respects, as it is a fictitious treatment that simulates a real one. Placebo effects can be conceived as arising from either deceptive treatments, in which the patient is unaware that the therapy is fake, or open-label treatments, in which the patient is told that it is a fake therapy. I consider these two types of placebos separately, as they provide different insights into placebo effects. Whereas deceptive placebos have been studied extensively and have provided important information on the psychobiological underpinnings of placebo effects, open-label placebos have been investigated much less. Placebo and nocebo effects induced by the deceptive administration of placebos are today considered an excellent model to understand how the psychosocial context around the patient and the therapy may affect the response to a treatment and the course of a disease (Fig. 1). The complex psychosocial component involved in caring and healing, as well as in the doctor-patient relationship, can be investigated with a biological and neuroscientific approach that uses modern tools to probe different brain functions (Benedetti, 2020; C ­ olloca & Barsky, 2020; Finniss et al., 2010; Price et al., 2008). The main concept that has emerged is that placebos Benedetti 276 Fake Reality (Rituals and Simulations of Reality) Open Simulation Hidden Simulation Reality Is Correctly Perceived as Fake (Open-Label Placebos, Movies) Reality Is Errroneously Perceived as Real (Deceptive Placebos) No Expectations of Psychobiological Effects Expectations of Psychobiological Effects Psychobiological Effects Occur Psychobiological Effects Occur Expectations Do Not Matter Do Expectations Really Matter? The Ritual Is Unconsciously (Automatically) Associated With the Psychobiological Effects Is the Ritual Unconsciously (Automatically) Associated With the Psychobiological Effects? Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the events taking place when fake reality is presented through rituals and simulations and is perceived either as fake (left) or as real (right). The fact that psycho­ biological effects take place regardless of whether reality is perceived as fake or real and whether expectations are or are not involved casts doubt on the assumption that expectations are always involved in placebo effects. Rather, an unconscious (automatic) association between rituals and psychobiological effects is likely to be involved. modulate the same biochemical pathways that are modulated by drugs. Most current knowledge about these mechanisms comes from the field of pain, and this research constitutes a biomedical, psychological, and philosophical enterprise that is changing the way medicine, psychology, and human biology are approached and interpreted. Several biochemical pathways and brain regions that are affected by placebos and nocebos have been identified. These include, for example, the opioid and cannabinoid systems in the case of pain (Benedetti et al., 2011) and the dopamine system in the case of motor disorders (de la Fuente-Fernández et al., 2001). In the same way that the mechanisms of drug action have been revealed, it is now possible to explore how the clinician-patient interaction may affect different biological functions. This is an epochal transition in which the distinction between biology and psychology is progressively becoming less relevant within the context of caring and healing. The study of placebo effects presents a melting pot of concepts and ideas for neuroscience and psychology, as these effects involve many mechanisms, ranging from anxiety to expectancy responses and from classical conditioning to social learning. It has now been demonstrated that words, on the one hand, and drugs, on the other, may affect similar regions in the patient’s brain, Placebos and Movies for example, in pain (Amanzio et al., 2013; Zunhammer et al., 2018). Recently, the appealing idea that deception is not a necessary condition for inducing placebo effects has emerged as a result of studies using open-label placebos (Colloca & Howick, 2018; Kaptchuk, 2018; Kaptchuk & Miller, 2018). Patients given an open-label placebo are told that it is a fake treatment. Therefore, in this case there is no deception, and, more important, the patients have no expectations of therapeutic benefit (Fig. 1). The idea that unconscious (automatic) mechanisms are involved in some responses to placebos had already been suggested by studies showing that expectation of benefit is not always crucial in such responsiveness (Benedetti et al., 2003). For example, in an experiment involving a conditioning procedure, a painkiller was given to patients several days in a row, and then the painkiller was replaced with a placebo described as an antibiotic (Amanzio & Benedetti, 1999). The placebo had an analgesic effect even though the patients did not have any expectation of analgesia following its administration. This is a clear indication that expectations are not crucial in some instances. In other words, even though the patients expected an antibiotic—hence, no analgesic effect—their pain was reduced, probably because the ritual of the placebo’s administration mimicked (unconsciously, or automatically) the ritual of the painkiller’s administration. Therefore, the mere ritual of an injection may produce an effect, regardless of whether or not the effect is expected. The repeated administration of effective treatments (i.e., conditioning) is often critical in inducing robust placebo effects, although there is some evidence that the role of conditioning varies across different conditions and interventions (Benedetti, 2020). It should be pointed out that conditioning might act as a reinforcement of the therapeutic ritual. In other words, rituals may acquire more power if repeated many times. Positive effects of open-label placebos have been shown for a variety of conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome, depression, pain, itch, and cancerrelated fatigue (Colloca & Howick, 2018; Kaptchuk, 2018). This demonstrated effectiveness shows that patients’ expectations are not always necessary to induce an effect; the mere ritual of administration may lead to a clinical improvement. Beliefs in placebos can moderate the effect of openlabel placebo treatments. It is also tempting to speculate, within the context of evolution, that humans (and nonhuman animals as well) are particularly sensitive and responsive to all those rituals that are important for everyday life, from social interactions to survival. Any ritual, situation, or circumstance that is important for life can potentially affect human and animal 277 perception and behavior even though it is perceived as fake. In this sense, the similarity of placebos’ and movies’ ability to induce psychobiological effects appears to be straightforward (Benedetti, 2020). A recent study found that placebos administered without deception reduced self-report and neural measures of emotional distress (Guevarra et al., 2020). It is therefore legitimate to ask whether the psychobiological effects of deceptive placebos always involve expectations, or whether they might be attributable instead, at least in some conditions, to unconscious (automatic) mechanisms, as in the case of open-label placebos and movies (Fig. 1). In this regard, it is crucial to understand what “automatic association between rituals and psychobiological effects” means exactly. Without referring to movies such as Psycho or Titanic, the concept of automatic response is well explained by the example of a very simple act: cutting and squeezing a lemon. This ritual is so powerful that viewing a film showing a lemon being cut and squeezed is associated with the sour and harsh taste of lemon juice, and even induces a salivary response, sometime painful, though the viewer is perfectly aware that the lemon will not touch his or her tongue. Similarly, the sight of health professionals, syringes, and pills, as well as the mere visit to the doctor’s office, triggers the release of a variety of chemicals in the patient’s brain, and these chemicals are responsible for a number of placebo effects. These unconscious (automatic) associations do not require any expectation, but they are probably based on previous life experiences. Indeed, past experience plays a key role in responsiveness to placebos across a variety of medical conditions and therapeutic interventions (for a detailed account, see Benedetti, 2020). Telling Stories and Performing Rituals in the Healing Context: Boons and Banes Placebos and movies share many features, particularly if one considers open-label placebos. Seeing a syringe and knowing there is water inside is analogous to watching a horror movie and being aware that the knives are made of plastic and the blood is tomato juice. The real situation is not necessary for emotional and behavioral responses to be elicited: A simulation is sufficient to induce similar psychophysiological reactions. I believe that if placebo effects are viewed in the broader context of everyday life and behavior, they can be accepted even though they challenge common sense. However, some questions are still awaiting satisfactory responses. For example, is fear a necessary response to viewing a horror movie? Is salivation a necessary response to viewing a lemon being squeezed? Benedetti 278 Probably, the answer is no: There is no apparent advantage to being scared or to salivating when one merely watches a video. In contrast, placebo effects can be advantageous: For example, there is an advantage for people whose pain is shut down by the mere social and empathic interaction with the therapist, and this should be harnessed in routine clinical practice. Many patients are very sensitive to words, stories, and rituals. Placebo effects and the associated physiological responses should be enhanced whenever the psychological component of a disease plays a crucial role, both in the course of the illness and in the response to a therapy. Telling stories and performing rituals should be part of any treatment, be it pharmacological or not, and anyone interacting with patients should consider these elements to play a crucial part in the therapeutic outcome. Overall, health professionals should acquire better communication skills and adopt more effective nonverbal practices that may help improve the therapist-patient relationship. There is, however, a danger around the corner. Words, stories, and rituals may boost pseudoscience when they are delivered by charlatans and quacks (Benedetti, 2019). The number of nonmedical organizations and healers that use the hard science on the psychobiological underpinnings of placebo effects to justify their work has increased over the past few years. Their main claim is that any word, story, or ritual inducing positive expectations and psychophysiological changes in the patient is acceptable because it can activate the same biochemical pathways and neural networks that have been identified through hard science. This is the paradoxical side of placebos, and it needs a thorough ethical discussion. Although a definitive solution to this ethical issue will surely be difficult to find, I believe that at least two areas need to be considered in depth: education and communication. Education and communication can help patients and health professionals better understand the placebo effect. A first point that should be emphasized is that placebos do not cure, but rather may sometimes improve quality of life. There is plenty of confusion on this point, and unfortunately, many people claim that they can cure virtually all illnesses with placebos. Hard science has shown that placebos can reduce symptoms like pain and muscle rigidity in Parkinson’s disease, yet the progression of the disease is not affected; neurons keep degenerating even though some symptoms can be reduced for a short time. The second point is related to the first. The type of disease is crucial, and people must understand that pain is different from cancer and that anxiety differs from infectious diseases. The psychological component of some illnesses can indeed be modulated by placebos, but there is no evidence that placebos can stop the growth of cancer or kill the bacteria that cause pneumonia. Therefore, placebos, words, stories, and rituals should be delivered by experienced health professionals if, and only if, they deem it necessary and appropriate. Conclusions Placebo effects should not be seen as weird and bizarre phenomena at odds with common sense. Today they are recognized as real psychobiological phenomena that are worthy of scientific inquiry and need to be understood in greater depth. Putting placebo effects in the broader framework of human emotional and behavioral responses to the environment is helpful for understanding their very nature in more detail. Movie-induced responses provide a useful analogy in this sense. They suggest that placebo effects are nothing but a specific aspect, in the healing setting, of a more general functioning of the human mind. Sometimes the simulation of reality, as occurs in movies, is sufficient to trigger physiological reactions; in the same way, the simulation of a therapy, as occurs with placebos, is enough to trigger therapeutic effects. However, the placebo phenomenon still remains a paradox and an effect not easy to handle. Caution and vigilance are needed to prevent the findings of this new science of placebos from being exploited in harmful ways. Recommended Reading Benedetti, F. (2013). (See References). A review on the new physiological approach to the placebo effect and the therapist-patient relationship, illustrating how these complex topics can now be approached from a neuroscientific standpoint. Benedetti, F. (2020). (See References). A comprehensive volume describing all placebo effects across a number of diseases and therapeutic interventions, putting placebo effects within the broader context of the therapist-patient relationship, from a neuroscientific, evolutionary, and clinical perspective. Colloca, L., & Barsky, A. J. (2020). (See References). A recent review that covers all aspects of placebo and nocebo research, including both the biological and the clinical aspects, with particular emphasis on the relationship between basic research and the clinic. Transparency Action Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article. Placebos and Movies 279 ORCID iD Fabrizio Benedetti https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4057-1150 References Amanzio, M., & Benedetti, F. (1999). Neuropharmacological dissection of placebo analgesia: Expectation-activated opioid systems versus conditioning-activated specific subsystems. The Journal of Neuroscience, 19(1), 484–494. Amanzio, M., Benedetti, F., Porro, C. A., Palermo, S., & Cauda, F. (2013). Activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of brain correlates of placebo analgesia in human experimental pain. Human Brain Mapping, 34(3), 738–752. Benedetti, F. (2013). Placebo and the new physiology of the doctor-patient relationship. Physiological Reviews, 93(3), 1207–1246. Benedetti, F. (2014). Placebo effects: From the neurobiological paradigm to translational implications. Neuron, 84(3), 623–637. 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(2018). Placebo effects on the neurologic pain signature: A meta-analysis of individual participant functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Journal of the American Medical Association: Neurology, 75(11), 1321–1330. 1007451 research-article2021 CDPXXX10.1177/09637214211007451Sznycer et al.Social Emotions ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Current Directions in Psychological Science 1­–8 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211007451 DOI: 10.1177/09637214211007451 www.psychologicalscience.org/CDPS Forms and Functions of the Social Emotions Daniel Sznycer1 , Aaron Sell2,3, and Debra Lieberman4 1 Department of Psychology, University of Montreal; 2Department of Psychology, Heidelberg University; Department of Criminology, Heidelberg University; and 4Department of Psychology, University of Miami 3 Abstract In engineering, form follows function. It is therefore difficult to understand an engineered object if one does not examine it in light of its function. Just as understanding the structure of a lock requires understanding the desire to secure valuables, understanding structures engineered by natural selection, including emotion systems, requires hypotheses about adaptive function. Social emotions reliably solved adaptive problems of human sociality. A central function of these emotions appears to be the recalibration of social evaluations in the minds of self and others. For example, the anger system functions to incentivize another individual to value your welfare more highly when you deem the current valuation insufficient; gratitude functions to consolidate a cooperative relationship with another individual when there are indications that the other values your welfare; shame functions to minimize the spread of discrediting information about yourself and the threat of being devalued by others; and pride functions to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued by others. Using the lens of social valuation, researchers are now mapping these and other social emotions at a rapid pace, finding striking regularities across industrial and small-scale societies and throughout history. Keywords emotion, anger, gratitude, shame, pride, social valuation In engineering, structure is narrowly dictated by the desired function—roads for traveling, locks for locking up valuables, chromatographers for analyzing mixtures, and so on. This principle can be exploited in reverse, that is, when an engineered object is before you and your task is to characterize it. Reverse engineering in light of candidate functions is illuminating also when it comes to emotion systems and other complex products of natural selection. The social emotions—gratitude, pride, anger, shame, guilt, envy, jealousy, and others— evolved because they each orchestrated physiology, cognition, and behavior in ways that tended to solve challenges and exploit opportunities posed by the social interactions human ancestors engaged in. A central function of these emotions appears to be the recalibration of social evaluations in the minds of self and others (Sznycer, Cosmides, & Tooby, 2017; Tooby & Cosmides, 2008). Being valued by others is a critical resource for humans (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). When other people value you, they are inclined to attend to you, to associate with you, to come to your aid when you are in need, to side with you in conflicts with third parties, and to refrain from exploiting you. And when other people do not value you, they are not so inclined. The fact that people can value and have concern for the welfare of other people is not trivial. Valuing others often carries costs (e.g., lost resources, forgone opportunities), which the valuer’s genes must somehow recoup, on average, if the psychology of valuation is to persist in the brain over the generations. Nor is the human psychology for valuing others common across species. For example, most nonhuman primates seldom confer benefits on genetically unrelated individuals, and when they do, it is often a response to coercion. Corresponding Author: Daniel Sznycer, Department of Psychology, University of Montreal E-mail: dsznycer3@gmail.com 2 Over the past 60 years, evolutionary biologists have modeled the narrow set of conditions in which it pays to benefit another individual, even (within limits) at a personal cost. To this mathematical mix, anthropologists, archaeologists, and behavioral ecologists have added findings relevant to the social ecology of early humans (e.g., caring for the sick in the hominin lineage; Sugiyama, 2004). Together, these models and knowledge have informed the study of the human psychology of social valuation. This psychology appears to compute the social value of each fellow group member (with reference to the self, the focal individual) on the basis of available cues relevant to the various biological games that determine social value among humans (e.g., value of individual x as kin, value of individual x as ally; Tooby et al., 2008). The evolution of the human psychology of social valuation would have led, in turn, to novel adaptive problems of valuation. By hypothesis, the social emotions evolved because they solved these problems reliably. For example, the anger system functions to incentivize the target of one’s anger to value one’s welfare more highly when one deems the target’s current level of valuation insufficient. Gratitude functions to jump-start and maintain a cooperative relationship with another individual when there are indications that the other values one’s welfare. Shame functions to minimize the spread of discrediting information about oneself and the threat of being devalued by others. Pride functions to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued and respected by others. And so on. This form-function approach can account for many known features of the social emotions (Table 1). In addition, this approach can be used deductively, to predict and guide the search for heretofore unknown features of social emotions. Next, we briefly review anger, gratitude, shame, and pride to illustrate this approach. (For an evolutionary approach emphasizing the phylogeny of human emotions, see, e.g., Weisfeld & Dillon, 2012.) Anger It is a problem for you when other individuals attach insufficient weight to your welfare—less weight than what you can cost-effectively enforce from them. When people value you insufficiently, they will impose costs on you even when they stand to gain little, they will fail to help you when you are in need, they will pay little attention to your predicaments, and so on (Sell et al., 2017). The adaptive problem of being valued insufficiently would have selected for neurocognitive machinery that functions to incentivize the undervaluer to place more value on the focal individual. It has been Sznycer et al. argued that anger is this mechanism (Sell, 2011; Sell et al., 2009). Anger is triggered when cues indicate that another individual undervalues you. Note that mere disregard of your welfare is insufficient to elicit anger if you do not expect the target individual to value you in the first place (e.g., a refusal to help you move to your new apartment might elicit less anger in you if the refuser is a mere acquaintance than if the refuser is a close friend of yours). Harm, too, is insufficient to elicit anger if the harm is not diagnostic of insufficient valuation (e.g., your friend ruined your scarf by using it as a tourniquet to save her daughter’s life). Research findings indicate that an offender’s action reliably elicits anger in the victim when the offender (a) knows the identity of the victim ahead of taking the action, (b) imposes large costs on the victim, and (c) derives small benefits from the action (Sell et al., 2017). For example, if your friend ruins your scarf, you might feel more anger at her if (a) you learn that your friend knew the scarf was yours, (b) it was an heirloom silk scarf, and (c) your friend used the scarf to wipe her mouth after a meal, and you might feel less anger at her if (a) you learn that your friend mistakenly thought the scarf was someone else’s, (b) the scarf was a cheap one, and (c) your friend used the scarf as a tourniquet to save a life. Anger can also be triggered by insulting beliefs, such as when someone thinks that you are ungenerous, weak, or unskilled. Those factors determine how much humans value other humans, and so indications that someone underestimates your value on those factors augur poor treatment. Once triggered, the anger system deploys tactics to incentivize the target of the anger to value the angry individual more highly. These tactics carry the implicit message “Pay the cost of valuing me more highly (e.g., help me next time), or I will exact an even higher cost from you.” One type of anger tactic involves threatening to withhold or actually withholding benefits. Another type of anger tactic involves threatening to impose or actually imposing costs through aggression. The increases in heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration rate that accompany anger (Siegel et al., 2018) suggest preparation for combat. The aggression deployed by anger—when it is deployed at all—increases in measured steps and is terminated by indications that the target has recalibrated his or her valuation appropriately (see Sell, 2011). Thus, the aggression of anger is designed to bargain for better treatment rather than to eliminate the target. The form-function approach raises questions that are invisible to other perspectives. For example, why does the anger face look the way it does? Using this approach, researchers have hypothesized that the facial expression of anger was engineered by natural selection to Social Emotions 3 Table 1. Elicitors, Adaptive Functions, Modulating Factors, and Outputs of the Anger, Gratitude, Shame, and Pride Systems Emotion Input (elicitor) Adaptive function Modulating factors Outputs (in addition to the respective feelings) Anger Cues that another individual values your welfare insufficiently (e.g., benefits at your expense) Incentivizing the target to value your welfare more highly Anger is mobilized more intensely when • The cost imposed on you is high (vs. low) • The benefit derived by the target is low (vs. high) • The target takes action knowing the recipient of the harm would be you (vs. a third party) • Information search in order to estimate the true weight the target attaches to your welfare (e.g., “perhaps she refused to help me because she didn’t know how much I needed help”) • Nonverbal communication of anger (e.g., facial expression of anger) • Threatening to withhold or actually withholding benefits from the target (e.g., refusal to help the target) • Threatening to impose or actually imposing costs on the target (e.g., telling others about the target’s offense, punching the target) Gratitudea Cues that another individual causes you to obtain benefits, attaches a high weight to your welfare, or both (e.g., does you a favor) Upregulating the value attached to the welfare of the target individual in order to better reflect the target’s positive contributions to your welfare Gratitude is mobilized more intensely when • The target causes you to obtain a high (vs. low) benefit • The target incurs a high (vs. low) cost in order to benefit you (or in order to prevent you from incurring a cost) • The target takes the action knowing the recipient of the benefit would be you (vs. a third party) • Acknowledging to the target (a) the benefit the target caused you to obtain, (b) the cost incurred by the target, and (c) the target’s implied valuation of your welfare • Upregulation of the weight attached to the welfare of the target Shame Cues indicating the prospect or actuality of being devalued by others because of the spread of reputationally damaging information about you Limiting the spread of discrediting information about yourself and the likelihood and costs of any ensuing devaluation by others when that information spreads Shame is mobilized more intensely when • You take an action or have a trait that others consider highly (vs. mildly) negative • There is a high (vs. low) probability that discrediting information about you will reach the minds of others • Others respond to your actions and traits with intense negativity (vs. mild negativity, neutrality, or positivity) • Forgoing the candidate course of action that you value but others view negatively • Interrupting your execution of a disgraceful action when detection is impending • Hiding • Paranoid thoughts • Increased cortisol • Shame display (slumped posture, averted gaze) • Appeasement • Threats, aggression Pride Cues indicating opportunities to become, or the actuality of being, more highly valued by others Promoting more positive evaluations of yourself by others Pride is mobilized more intensely when • You take an action or have a trait that other people value (or fear) highly (vs. mildly) • Motivation to take actions or cultivate characteristics that are valued (or feared) by others • Perseverance at costly or difficult endeavors whose outcomes are valued by others • Pride display (expansive posture, gaze directed at audience) • Heightened sense of entitlement following achievement Note: The elicitors and adaptive functions are hypothesized on the basis of an adaptationist, form-function approach. The modulating factors and outputs are based on empirical findings. Some of these findings are cited in the main text; for other findings, see references cited by Sell et al. (2017) for anger, by Lim (2012) and Smith et al. (2017) for gratitude, by Tangney et al. (1992) and Sznycer et al. (2016) for shame, and by Sznycer, Al-Shawaf, et al. (2017) for pride. a Motivation to balance benefit inflow with corresponding outflow (indebtedness) is different from gratitude, but can co-occur with gratitude in some contexts. Sznycer et al. 4 enhance cues of physical formidability in the face in ways similar to how nonhuman animals aggrandize their body size or weaponry during aggression (e.g., by erecting their hair or baring their fangs). Consistent with this hypothesis, research has shown that each of the seven muscle contractions that constitute the anger face increases participants’ perception of the expresser’s physical strength (Sell et al., 2014). The form-function approach has also been used to understand the content of the verbal arguments made by offenders and their angry victims. When anger in a victim is triggered by, for example, an offender benefiting at the expense of the victim, the offender can defuse that anger if the victim can be convinced that, in reality, (a) the cost incurred by the victim was small, (b) the benefit derived by the offender was large, or (c) the offense was not directed specifically at the victim. That is, the anger of a victim is switched off if the victim encounters clarifying information that the offense does not actually indicate insufficient valuation on the part of the offender. Research conducted by Sell et al. (2017) has provided support for these predictions and also shown that offenders capitalize on their implicit knowledge of the logic of anger: Offenders choose to make precisely those verbal arguments that mollify anger in victims. These findings were obtained in five industrial nations and one hunter-horticulturalist population of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Gratitude The existence and actions of other people have effects on the focal individual that can range from highly detrimental to highly beneficial. Some of these effects are simple side effects of other people’s activities (e.g., dumping trash in a common area); other effects are intended (e.g., helping). In general, people have a stake in the well-being of those individuals whose existence and actions cause them to benefit (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). This evolutionarily recurrent situation would have selected for machinery to identify individuals from whom one derives benefits, to correspondingly upgrade how much one values those individuals (and thus to make investments in their continued existence and well-being), and to signal one’s upgraded valuation to those individuals. These functions appear to be realized by the gratitude system (Lim, 2012). Gratitude is a complex emotion. Everything else being equal, the more a benefactor values your welfare, the more that benefactor will go out of his or her way to benefit you, and the more you will derive benefits from him or her—and therefore the more gratitude you will feel and the more your valuation of the benefactor will be increased. Everything else is not always equal, however. Some individuals cause you to benefit as a side effect of their actions even when they do not value your welfare particularly highly. Other individuals value your welfare highly, but their actions cause you to obtain benefits that are modest in size. Both benefactor types contribute to your welfare, and so both may elicit gratitude and enhanced valuation of their welfare on your part. However, they may warrant somewhat different modes of gratitude. Indeed, this emotion appears to be sensitive to different kinds of information relevant to different benefactor types. Gratitude is sensitive to the benefits delivered by a benefactor (Forster et al., 2017; Tesser et al., 1968). This would allow the gratitude system to not miss benefactors who cause you to benefit as a mere side effect of their actions. In addition, gratitude is sensitive to cues of how much the benefactor values your welfare, including how much the benefactor intended to benefit you (Tesser et al., 1968; Tsang, 2006; see also Smith et al., 2017) and how much cost the benefactor incurred to benefit you by a given amount (the ratio of costs to benefits; Lim, 2012). This would allow the gratitude system to not miss benefactors who value your welfare and who will therefore tend to benefit you reliably, even if modestly. Gratitude and increased valuation directed at a person who provides a benefit tend to give that person a stake in the well-being of the focal individual. This dynamic can lead to a cycle of mutual escalating valuation, which can result in, for example, friendship (Algoe et al., 2008; Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Gratitude is thus a key emotion in jump-starting and maintaining cooperative relationships. Shame Humans devalue and shun individuals who are poor social partners. This would have selected, on the recipient’s end, for adaptations to solve the adaptive problem of being devalued. Shame appears to be a primary defense against this adaptive problem (Gilbert, 1998; Sznycer et al., 2016). Shame is triggered by the prospect or actuality of being devalued by others. Once active, the shame system mobilizes a host of responses geared to minimizing the likelihood and costs of being devalued. Shame is associated with depression, anxiety, and paranoid ideation (Tangney et al., 1992), which may prepare the focal individual to face a less benign social landscape. Shame is also associated with increased cortisol and increased pro-inflammatory cytokine activity (­Dickerson et al., 2004); the latter might be advantageous if devaluation is followed by aggression and injury or infection. Social Emotions The behavioral repertoire of shame is broad. From the perspective of the disgraced or to-be-disgraced individual, a trait (e.g., incompetence) or course of action (e.g., theft) that fellow group members view negatively can be shielded from others’ censure at each of various junctures: imagination, decision making, action, information diffusion within the community, and audience reaction. Shame appears to have authority over devaluation-­minimizing responses relevant to each of these junctures. For example, shame can lead people to turn away from courses of actions that might lead others to devalue them, to interrupt their execution of discrediting actions, to conceal and destroy reputationally ­damaging information about themselves, and to hide. When an audience finds discrediting information about the focal individual and condemns or attacks that individual, the shamed individual may apologize, signal submission, appease, cooperate, obfuscate, lie, shift the blame to others, or react with aggression. These behaviors are heterogeneous from a tactical standpoint; some even work at cross-purposes if mobilized concurrently. But each of these behaviors appears to have the strategic potential to limit the threat of devaluation in certain contexts, combinations, or sequences. Such shame-inspired behaviors as hiding, scapegoating, and aggressing are undesirable from the standpoint of victims and third parties. This has led to the view that shame is an ugly and maladaptive emotion (­Tangney et al., 1996). However, note that those behaviors can enhance the welfare of the focal individual, who is pressed to escape detection and minimize or counteract devaluation by others. Whereas the consequences of social devaluation are certainly ugly for the individual being devalued, the form-function approach suggests instead that shame is an elegantly engineered system that transmits bad news of the potential for devaluation to the array of counter-devaluation responses available to the focal individual. It is a common view that shame occurs when the focal individual attributes a negative outcome (e.g., a failure) to a defect of the global self (Tangney et al., 2007). However, being devalued by numerous or powerful others elicits shame even when the devalued individual knows propositionally that he or she did not cause a negative outcome (Robertson et al., 2018). The form-function approach has been used to understand how shame is modulated. The intensity of anticipatory shame that people feel regarding a given potential action that others view negatively (e.g., theft) tracks the precise degree to which fellow group members devalue those individuals who take that specific action. This allows the shame system to be mobilized cost-effectively: to activate neither insufficiently nor excessively relative to the magnitude of the devaluative 5 threat. These findings were obtained consistently across three industrial societies (Sznycer et al., 2016) and 15 traditional small-scale societies highly different from one another in their languages, belief systems, and subsistence bases (Sznycer, Xygalatas, Agey, et al., 2018). Shame even tracks the evaluations of lawmakers from ancient, culturally foreign societies: The intensity of shame that laypeople report they would feel if they committed offenses excerpted from ancient Mesopo­ tamian and Chinese laws tracks the actual punishments provided for those offenses by those ancient laws (Sznycer & Patrick, 2020). These findings raise questions about theories positing massive cultural differences in shame (e.g., Benedict, 1946) and suggest instead that shame is part of a universal human nature. Pride Becoming more highly valued by others results in a greater inflow of benefits, and the brain may have been selected to exploit the relevant opportunities. The pride system appears to be the resulting adaptation. A system realizing this function is expected to (a) motivate the pursuit of achievements or the cultivation of traits that are valued (or feared) by others, (b) motivate the advertisement of achievements, and (c) motivate the achiever to profit from the increased valuation by others. Findings about pride are consistent with these hypotheses. Pride is triggered by acts, traits, and events indicative of the focal individual’s enhanced capacity to confer benefits (e.g., job promotion) or impose costs (e.g., winning a fight) on others (Lewis et al., 1992; Tracy, 2016). The feeling of pride is highly pleasant and rewarding. This feeling motivates the individual to persevere and to invest in courses of action necessary to bring about further achievement (Gilchrist et al., 2018). Once attained, achievements are advertised with a full-body display featuring erect and expansive posture and gaze trained at the audience. The pride display develops in the absence of visual input: Congenitally blind individuals produce the pride display when they succeed (Tracy, 2016). Adults across cultures perceive the pride display as an indication that the displayer is successful or physically formidable (Tracy, 2016). Pride motivates the focal individual to profit from the enhanced social landscape that follows achievement. Pride leads people to pursue new challenges previously beyond reach. In addition, the enhanced capacity to confer benefits or impose costs on others— elicitors of pride—leads the focal individual to expect others to value him or her more highly (Sznycer & Cohen, 2021), and to become angry when that expectation is not met (Sell et al., 2009). Sznycer et al. 6 United States Fig. 1. Linkage of social emotions to a common psychology of social valuation. The scatterplots show the association between people’s valuation of 25 positive personal characteristics in others (e.g., trustworthiness, bravery, ambitiousness, good table manners) and the anticipated intensity of a focal individual’s pride (for having those characteristics), anger (toward someone who fails to acknowledge that the focal individual has those characteristics), gratitude (toward someone who convinces others that the focal individual has those characteristics), sadness (if someone who had those characteristics dies), and guilt (for harming someone who has those characteristics). Each point in each panel represents the mean valuation rating and mean emotion rating of one personal characteristic. Ratings of valuation, pride, anger, gratitude, sadness, and guilt were given by different participants (between-participants design). The data in (a) through (e) are from the United States, and the data in (f) through (j) are from India. From “The Emotion–Valuation Constellation: Multiple Emotions Are Governed by a Common Grammar of Social Valuation,” by D. Sznycer and A. W. Lukaszewski, 2019, Evolution and Human Behavior, 40(4), p. 399. Copyright 2019 by Elsevier. Reprinted with permission. India a f 7 r 2: .76 Pride r 2: .65 1 b g 7 r 2: .14 Anger r 2: .39 The form-function approach has been used to understand how pride is modulated. As in the case of shame, pride tracks the values of audiences. More specifically, the intensity of anticipatory pride regarding a given achievement is modulated to match the precise degree to which fellow group members value those individuals who attain that specific achievement. These findings were observed in 16 industrial societies (Sznycer, ­Al-Shawaf, et al., 2017; Sznycer & Lukaszewski, 2019) and in 10 traditional small-scale societies (Sznycer, Xygalatas, Alami, et al., 2018). Similar modulation relative to social value was observed in other social emotions as well (Sznycer & Lukaszewski, 2019; Fig. 1). 1 c h 7 r 2: .70 Gratitude r 2: .66 1 d i 7 Concluding Remarks The human psychology of social valuation is highly complex and specialized. This psychology likely constitutes the environment that selected for the social emotions over evolutionary time and that social emotions target in their moment-to-moment operation. These conjectures help explain the ways people feel, think, and act when under the spell of anger, gratitude, shame, pride, guilt, envy, and other emotions. These conjectures also help identify the things over which people feel anger, gratitude, shame, pride, guilt, envy, and other emotions. The form-function approach appears to be a powerful framework for dissecting the social emotions. r 2: .65 Sadness r 2: .66 1 e j 7 r 2: .26 Guilt r 2: .61 Recommended Reading 1 1 7 Valuation 1 7 Valuation Fig. 1. (continued on next column) Lieberman, D., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2007). The architecture of human kin detection. Nature, 445(7129), 727–731. A landmark study showing cue-based estimation of genetic relatedness and downstream calibration of altruism and sexual disgust toward siblings. Social Emotions 7 Sznycer, D. (2019). Forms and functions of the self-conscious emotions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(2), 143–157. An extended analysis of the fit between form and function in pride, shame, and guilt. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2008). (See References). An early proposal of the view that emotions have orchestrating and recalibrating functions. Transparency Action Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Editor: Robert L. Goldstone Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article. Funding This research was funded by a Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture grant (2020-NP-267363) and a Subventions d’exploration – Subvention institutionnelle du CRSH–Université de Montréal grant to D. Sznycer. ORCID iD Daniel Sznycer https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6510-3313 References Algoe, S. B., Haidt, J., & Gable, S. L. (2008). Beyond reciprocity: Gratitude and relationships in everyday life. Emotion, 8(3), 425–429. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497– 529. Benedict, R. (1946). The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture. Houghton Mifflin. Dickerson, S. S., Gruenewald, T. L., & Kemeny, M. E. (2004). When the social self is threatened: Shame, physiology, and health. Journal of Personality, 72(6), 1191–1216. Forster, D. E., Pedersen, E. J., Smith, A., McCullough, M. E., & Lieberman, D. (2017). 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Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., Sell, A., Lieberman, D., & Sznycer, D. (2008). Internal regulatory variables and the design of human motivation: A computational and evolutionary approach. In A. J. Elliot (Ed.), Handbook of approach and avoidance motivation (pp. 251–271). Erlbaum. Tracy, J. (2016). Pride: The secret of success. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Tsang, J.-A. (2006). The effects of helper intention on gratitude and indebtedness. Motivation and Emotion, 30(3), 198– 204. Weisfeld, G. E., & Dillon, L. M. (2012). Applying the dominance hierarchy model to pride and shame, and related behaviors. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 10(1), 15–41. For each article you choose to review, you will be required to write a 500-1,000 words summary (1-2 pages) on an article from one of the approved sources. That is, the paper MUST be a minimum of 500 words (one FULL page; not 495 words) and should be from one of the journals mentioned above to be accepted. 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