Skip to content
Culture & Religion

Are Emotions Manipulative by Nature?

“According to a controversial new theory, our emotions have evolved as tools to manipulate others into cooperating with us.” The New Scientist says emotions are the currency of relationships.
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

“According to a controversial new theory, our emotions have evolved as tools to manipulate others into cooperating with us.” The New Scientists reports on a new study that says emotions such as anger and gratitude are less about reacting to immediate circumstances and more about negotiating commitment levels in our relationships: “You get angry not when someone hurts you, but when their actions betray a setting of their cooperation dial that is lower than you expect, and your anger is both a threat to turn down your own dial and an inducement to them to turn theirs up.”

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related
Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations. Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers.