Does a prosocial-selfish distinction help explain the biological affects? Comment on Buck (1999).
R. Buck (1999) argued that a conceptual distinction between prosocial and selfish motivation is necessary to understand the biological affects (consciously experienced feelings and desires having an innate neurochemical basis). However, at a biological level of analysis, a prosocial-selfish distinction is doubtful empirically and conceptually. For this reason, Buck's proposed typology of biological affects is unclear. Moreover, a prosocial-selfish distinction is not necessary to explain hemispheric differences in brain activity associated with affect. In contrast, an approach-withdrawal distinction explains some data uniquely well, although numerous exceptions imply that simple models are inadequate. To extend hemispheric models of experienced emotion, a prosocial-selfish distinction is unlikely to be explanatory, whereas an alternative account based on a distinction between verbal and nonverbal working memory may be useful.
Gray
Jeremy R
JR
Psychology Department, Harvard University, USA. jeremy_gray@post.harvard.edu
D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D009042:Motivation; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012919:Social Behavior