I will take the following two statements as derived from the HPCT
view of emotions.
(1) A person who is experiencing a positive emotion is having
some error signal reduced.
(2) A person who is experiencing a negative emotion is having
some error signal increased.
In the beginning of therapy work with a person, I give him/her
the "Life Perception Survey" which asks them to rate each area of
his/her life in te
hich a person is strongly dissatisfied are ones which have
mostly negative emotions associated. Areas with which a person
is stongly satisfied are one which have mostly positive emotions
associated. Areas in the middle may have no emotion or mixed
emotions. A copy of the Life Perception Survey appears in the
Modern Psychology textbook by Robertson and Powers(eds.)
Some questions which I have about hpct and emotions:
It does not seem that all or even most error signal changes
(increases or decreases) result in emotions. A person is not
emotional all the time. An error signal change does not seem
like a sufficient condition for emotional experience. What is
the difference between circumstances when error signal changes
result in emotions and when they do not?
The only explanation which occurs to me is that some error signal
changes are more important than others. Maybe the concept of
gain is important here. I have no idea what sets the gain for
control systems.
Sometimes a person experiences a situation when things work out
even better than expected, wanted. A person might be pleasantly
surprised. A person experiences an error signal increase (better
than expected) but has a pleasant emotion. How does this work
given the above two hpct derived statements?
The only way that I can think of is that an error signal increase
at a lower level can lead to an error signal decrease at a higher
level. The surprised feeling draws awareness to the issue. A
person thinks abo
ter, or not as bad as I had expected " which results in an
error signal decrease.
ยทยทยท
To: Bill Powers, Bruce Nevin, Greg Williams, others
Subject: emotions and hpct 2
Date: 09/08/93