Re: [xmca] Emotion at Work

Michael, Steve, David and all:

I so enjoy a good discussion revolving around a unit of analysis for CHAT.
Such a great topic ripe with options: Goal directed activity, word,
communities of practice and now emotion being foisted into the discussion.
I still can't help but think that the method of double stimulation and
combined motor method have something to add to the unit of analysis
discussion. My purpose for reading the CHAT literature is for the purpose
of providing best practice educational experiences for my students as well
as providing opportunities for my students to blossom in their individual
personalities and social networks. So, that said, a unit of analysis I
look for in my practice is the level of courtesy the students bring to the
learning environment. That is because of the nature of the population I
work with (severly emotional disturbed teenagers and young adults).
Courtesy falls into the emotional realm. . .

have I added anything to the discussion or spun my overheated summer brain?

eric

                                                                                                                               
                      "Mike Cole"
                      <lchcmike@gmail. To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
                      com> cc:
                      Sent by: Subject: Re: [xmca] Emotion at Work
                      xmca-bounces@web
                      er.ucsd.edu
                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                               
                      07/30/2007 10:03
                      PM
                      Please respond
                      to mcole; Please
                      respond to
                      "eXtended Mind,
                      Culture,
                      Activity"
                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                               

Steve, with respect to the following I have a question:
 It must be able to a)
describe the relevant surrounding activity
systems, and the person's needs and motives
within those systems (note that these needs and
motives may be contradictory), b) describe that
person's internal physical, emotional and
cognitive processes (also potentially highly
contradictory), and c) describe the external
operations, actions and behaviors they carry out
(which we know by observing ourselves and others
can also be highly contradictory and not necessarily "on purpose").
Are~'t you describing a kind of perspectivalism around a single unit of
analysis? Is this what you (and you,michael) are gesturing toward, or am I
misunderstanding?
mike

On 7/30/07, Steve Gabosch <sgabosch@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I see CHAT as being on an historic quest to find
> a model and a unit of analysis that can outline
> the essential psychological functions and
> processes, both internal as well as the more
> familiar external, of an individual engaged in
> everyday activities such as work. As
> Wolff-Michael points out, emotion has generally
> been left out of previous efforts in CHAT.
>
> I think that this coveted model and its
> accompanying unit of analysis needs to be able to
> simultaneously describe the essential dynamics of
> at least three levels of human social and
> psychological reality. It must be able to a)
> describe the relevant surrounding activity
> systems, and the person's needs and motives
> within those systems (note that these needs and
> motives may be contradictory), b) describe that
> person's internal physical, emotional and
> cognitive processes (also potentially highly
> contradictory), and c) describe the external
> operations, actions and behaviors they carry out
> (which we know by observing ourselves and others
> can also be highly contradictory and not necessarily "on purpose").
>
> With a model and a unit of analysis that can
> generate coherent simultaneous descriptions of
> these "levels" of reality, CHAT (a future CHAT,
> whatever that will look like) could then continue
> on to provide explanations of human behavior and
> activity that include an individual's
> motivations, emotions, thoughts, and actions. (I
> am leaving out the category "identity" that
> Michael emphasizes - that is a side discussion in
> the scheme I am outlining here). Achieving a
> model and unit of analysis that can provide such
> an integrated, simultaneous description of the
> social context, the internal psychological
> processes, and the external behaviors of an
> individual in action is a tall order. The
> ability to do this is an historic quest which all
> of us that related to the CHAT community are part of, in one way or
> another.
>
> A feature of the model that Michael proposes and
> begins to outline in his article that bothers me
> is his suggestion that emotional payoffs drive
> motivation. This is certainly the common sense
> view of individual psychology held by most
> thinking people, that humans are driven by the
> desire to increase their "emotional valence" and
> therefore organize their choices of activities to
> participate in, and the actions they carry out, accordingly.
>
> A way to address this difference of perspective
> is to ask these simple questions: Do we have
> needs and motives because we are emotional (and
> cognitive)? Or are we emotional (and cognitive)
> because we have needs and motives?
>
> Michael seems to be answering the first question
> affirmatively - we have needs and motives because
> we have emotions, which we strive to increase the
> valence of. "Motivation arises from the
> difference between the emotional valence of any
> present moment and the higher emotional valence
> at a later moment, to be attained as a
> consequence of practical action." (pg 60).
>
> My inclination is to answer the second question
> affirmatively - we have emotions, and in fact
> have the specific emotions that we do at any
> given time, because we have needs and
> motives. We have needs and motives because must
> cope with our contradictory surrounding social
> environment. This perspective takes the view
> that the surrounding social environment and its
> contradictions compel us to have specific but
> often contradictory needs and motives, which
> generate conflicting emotions and thoughts within
> us, which emerge externally as contradictory
> behaviors, operations, and actions, some of which
> we are conscious of, some of which we are not.
>
> Many of Michael's excellent points and insights
> are still incorporated in my revision. This is
> not a matter of one perspective being totally
> wrong, the other, totally right. Both models can
> generate important insights and take into account
> many features of CHAT and many aspects of human
> psychology, in the workplace and any everyday situation.
>
> Methodologically, I would consider this
> discussion an investigation of the
> "genetic-historic" relationship of emotion and
> motive within an activity system. Michael seems
> to place emotion in the genetic-historic sequence
> as prior to motive. I place motive as prior to emotion.
>
> What would a unit of analysis of either model
> look like? We like to point to the water
> molecule as a unit of analysis of that chemical
> compound. Among other things, this unit clearly
> expresses itself in all the states of H2O - ice,
> water, steam. The molecule retains its
> conceptual cohesiveness in all conditions, in all
> its transformations. But what unit of analysis
> can be developed that can remain cohesive through
> these three socio-psychological levels of reality
> I am attempting to sketch? What unit of analysis
> can remain cohesive while it is a set of
> contradictory needs and motives in one state, a
> collection of rapidly changing and interacting
> body processes, emotions and thoughts in another,
> and then a collection of conscious and
> unconscious behaviors, actions and operations in a third?
>
> Clearly, we need a unit of analysis much more
> complex than a molecule. In fact, we need what
> will have to be the most complex unit of analysis
> ever developed. As I say, this is an historic
> quest, a long-term challenge. We have quite a
> distance to go and much to learn.
>
> In the meantime, it seems to me we can focus on
> developing the model, which includes getting the
> basic components of the model in the right
> genetic-historic sequence. My inclination is to
> reverse the order of motive and emotion from that proposed by Michael.
>
> Best,
> - Steve
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> At 09:54 PM 7/29/2007 -0700, you wrote:
> >Dear Wolff-Michael:
> >
> > Yes, I immediately recognized (and
> > appreciated) the double-entendre in the title.
> > I also appreciate (now that I think about it)
> > your remarks about how individual activity
> > realizes a potential that exists on the
> > collective level (though I think that is not
> > ALL it does, else individual creativity would not be possible).
> >
> > Once more on Damasio. I found this today in:
> >
> > Volosinov, V.N. (1976) ¡°A Critique of
> > Marxist Apologias of Freudianism¡± In.
> > Freudianism: A critical sketch. Bloomington and
> > Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
> >
> > Volosinov takes on a number of Marxist
> > writers who have defended psychoanalysis. He
> > dismisses with a wave of the hand Trotsky's
> > remarks in Literature and Revolution (where
> > Trotsky speculates on the compatibility of
> > Marxism and psychoanalysis) and he is
> > particularly hard on Luria's youthful enthusiasm for Freud. On p. 125
he
> says:
> >
> > ¡°It is an outright falsehood to represent
> > the doctorine of erogenous zones as an
> > objective physiological theory. According to
> > this theory, the body is drawn into the
> > personality¡¯s mental system, not vice versa.
> > It is drawn, of course, not as an objective,
> > external body, but as an experience of things
> > corporeal, as an aggregate of internal
> > instincts, desires, and notions. It is, so to
> > speak, the body seen form the inside out.¡±
> >
> > Volosinov continues (pardon my triple quote marks):
> >
> > 'The attempt to ascribe an objective
> > character to the psychoanalytical concept of
> > "drives" is also completely incorrect. Luria
> > writes "¡¦for psychoanalysis, drives are not a
> > purely psychological concept, but have a much
> > broader sense "¡(r)acting as a bridge between the
> > mental and the somatic,¡¯ and are more of a
> > biological nature."' No biologist would agree,
> > of course, with such an odd definition of the
> > biological as being a bridge between the soma
> > and the psyche (¡¦). Thus the psychoanalytic
> > concept of the whole personality contains not
> > one objective quantity that would make it
> > possible for that personality to be
> > incorporated into the surrounding material
> > reality fo the natural world. It is no easier
> > to incorporate it into the objective
> > socioeconomic process of history. We already
> > know, after all, that Freud derives all
> > objective, historical formations (the family,
> > the tribe, the state, the church and so forth)
> > from those same subjectively mental roots and that their
> > existence begins and ends with that same
> > interplay among internal subjective forces
> > (power as the ego-ideal; societal solidarity as
> > mutual identification, given the common nature
> > of the ego-ideal; capitalism as the sublimation of anal eroticism, and
> so on.)'
> >
> > Thus speaks Volosinov. But it seems to me
> > that the SAME problem exists with Damasio's
> > version of the James-Lange theory: it merely
> > takes the objective world and turns it into
> > psychological object. Not only is there no
> > place for the social, there is no place for
> > material culture as the product of sensuous human activity.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >---------------------------------
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Received on Tue Jul 31 07:41 PDT 2007