काव्ये विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

CHAPTER 2 2. Literature Review

2.1 An overview

One of the objectives of this thesis is to gain an understanding of three mental states – asūyā, garva, and vrīḍā – that are documented in Sanskrit poetics using an Indian psychological approach. A second objective is to compare and contrast these mental states with their corresponding categories in contemporary psychology, namely, self-conscious emotions such as envy, jealousy, pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, a review of literature must clearly embrace two broad disciplines: Indian psychology and contemporary Western psychology. It is convenient to begin with a review of literature about self-conscious emotions and related Western psychological concepts before proceeding to review work on analogous concepts from an Indian psychological standpoint.

2.2 An overall framework for the review of literature on self-conscious emotions

Psychological categories such as self-conscious emotions do not occur as isolated entities but in close association with other psychological categories. Figure 2.1 presents a bird’s eye view of self-conscious emotions in the midst of other conceptual categories, namely, mind, mental states, self, awareness, consciousness, personality, goals, and behavior. A survey of literature on these related conceptual categories can help us appreciate the place of self-conscious emotions in the overall scheme of things. It must be noted that Sanskrit aestheticians often invoke indigenous equivalents (e.g., citta corresponding to mind, cittavṛtti to mental states, jīva to individual self, prakṛti to personality, puruṣārtha-s to goals, anubhāva to behavior) of the above-mentioned concepts for the purpose of theorizing about character mental states and their communication to the audience through the medium of literature.(4)

The review of literature from contemporary psychology shall first touch upon the global concepts of mind, mental functions, behavior, self, consciousness, and personality before zeroing in on the specific concepts of emotion, self-conscious emotions, and the individual self-conscious emotions of envy, jealousy, pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment.

2.3 Literature review from contemporary psychology

2.3.1 Global psychological concepts

2.3.1.1 Mind

The mind, especially as juxtaposed with matter (physical world including the body), has been a subject of constant debate in Western philosophy and psychology. Ludwig (2003) has succinctly summarized the various positions scholars have held on this subject. At one end are the idealists that regard mind alone as real and dismiss the material world as being merely an idea. At the other end are the physicalists that reduce mind to matter or, taking an absolutist stance, deny altogether the existence of mind. In the latter group are those that equate mind with brain, with mental states deriving from genes or functionally organized neural states, and with bodily behavior. In between the two extreme positions are the dualists that accept two realities – mental and physical – without allowing collapse of one into another. As regards the relationship between mental and physical realities, some dualists maintain that the two represent independent, mutually non-interacting realms while others consider them as capable of mutual influence. A third group of dualists – the epiphenomenalists – described the mind as an irreducible by-product of matter. Taking a functionalist view, the American Psychological Association (2015, p. 654) defines mind as “the organized totality of an organism’s mental and psychic processes and the structural and functional cognitive components on which they depend”.

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2.3.1.2 Mental states

Conventionally, the mind’s faculties have been studied under the heads of cognition, affect, and conation (or motivation).(5) These have also been regarded as ways of classifying mental states. According to the American Psychological Association (2015), cognition includes “all forms of knowing and awareness, such as perceiving, conceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, imagining, and problem solving” (p. 201); affect is “any experience of feeling or emotion” (p. 26); and conation is “the proactive (as opposed to habitual) part of motivation that connects knowledge, affects, drives, desire, and instincts to behavior” (p. 227). Conation is related to goal and agency (Huitt & Cain, 2005). Hilgard (1980) brings these mental states together under the term „trilogy of mind‟. Mayer, Chabot, and Carlsmith (1997) propose converting the trilogy into a quaternity by adding consciousness. There are two opposite trends in the area of categorizing mental states. One of the trends, as noted by Mayer et al. (1997), involves retaining the traditional categories of mental states but with strict inclusion and exclusion criteria for each category as well as for the trilogy as a whole. Excluding sensation, perception, will, and consciousness from the trilogy exemplifies this trend (Mayer et al., 1997). The other trend aims at mutual integration of cognition, affect, and conation on the one hand and the trilogy with outside-the-trilogy concepts on the other hand. For example, Duncan and Barrett (2007) suggest that affect and cognition are indistinguishable from one another on the basis of neurobiology and any distinction between the two is grounded in experience. Likewise, Wang, Wang, Patel, and Patel (2004) include sensation, self-consciousness, emotion, and motivation among the 37 cognitive processes isolated by them. The second trend comes with the pitfall of reductionism and highlighting one mental process at the expense of others. Scherer (1993) suggests that the mental trilogy concept must be dropped altogether; one must rather study mental functioning as a real-time dynamic process involving synchronization of affect, cognition, and conation.

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2.3.1.3 Behavior

There is no consensus among psychologists about which events must be designated as „behaviors‟. According to behaviorists, only „overt‟ events – objectively observable activities such as physical movements that can be independently verified by observers (Reese, 1989) – are behaviors.(4) However, cognitivists also bring „covert‟ events – objectively unobservable cognitions and emotions as well as physiological processes – within the ambit of behavior (Cautela & Baron, 1979; Reese, 1989). Whereas an individual’s covert physiological processes can be “objectivized” with the help of suitable apparatuses, “objectivizing” his/her covert mental processes must rely on verbal report or on providing evidence of physiological processes accompanying those mental processes (Cautela & Baron, 1979). It is possible to make an inference of others‟ unobservable mental processes both from their overt behaviors (such as physical movements and verbal reports) and objective evidence of concomitant physiological processes. Shapiro (1999) calls such inference „behavior-to-mind‟ inference. Behavior can therefore be described as „“ambassador of the mind”‟ (Hineline & Wanchisen, 1989, p. 223). Among observable overt behaviors, a distinction can be made between verbal, vocal, and nonverbal behaviors with the first comprising of spoken sentences, the second of phonetic features such as timber and pitch, and the third of facial expressions, gestures, and postures (Ekman, 1957).(5)

Human behaviors are goal-directed (Adler, 1927; Aarts & Elliot, 2012). Put differently, the goal in which an individual engages can help us understand and predict his/her behavior (Chulef, Read, & Walsh, 2001). Chulef, Read, and Walsh (2001) have classified behavior-relevant human goals into family-related goals (including family, marriage, sex, and romance), interpersonal goals (including physical appearance, health, social life, friends, helping others, leadership, etc.), and intrapersonal goals (including ethics, freedom, entertainment, intellect, aesthetics, religion, finances, etc.). (4)

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Interactive situations call attention to special types of verbal and nonverbal behaviors called „displays‟ that perform a communicative function among the interactants. Displays are actions that function “as stimuli capable of influencing the behavior of other individuals” (Smith, 1977, p. 7).(5) The display of fear, for example, is a behavior that communicates to others about the presence of something dangerous and influences their escape behavior. Here, communication is synonymous with the „social act‟ of warning and the display, if it should successfully perform the function of warning, must adhere to locally formulated rules of fear display (Harré & Gillett, 1994).

2.3.1.4 Self

The American Psychological Association (2015) defines self as “the totality of the individual, consisting of all characteristic attributes, conscious and unconscious, mental and physical” (p. 951). Damasio (2010) describes three developmental stages of self: the protoself, the core self, and the autobiographical self. The protoself is founded on our moment-to-moment awareness of bodily changes; the core self on our objective awareness of the world that must be acted upon; and the autobiographical self on our awareness of ourselves as continuous over time. Put differently, it is because of these three selves that we are aware of ourselves every moment, of our objective worlds, and of ourselves as enduring in time. The autobiographical self is conceptually similar to the narrative self (Gallagher, 2000), the extended self (Neisser, 1988), the longitudinal self (Seeley & Miller, 2005), and personal identity (Northoff, 2014).

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The construction of the autobiographical self is made possible because of the presence of an autobiographical memory (Damasio, 2000, 2010). Autobiographical memory has been described as “the aspect of memory that is concerned with the recollection of personally experienced past events” (Williams et al., 2007) and as a “rich database of knowledge about oneself” (Holland & Kensinger, 2010). If the concept of autobiographical self can be regarded as having two parts to it, „autobiographical‟ and „self‟, autobiographical memory caters to both by incorporating within itself mental representations of past events as well as of self-knowledge. In structural terms, self-knowledge is represented in autobiographical memory as self-concepts or self-schemas (Thagard & Wood, 2015). Content-wise, self-knowledge encompasses all knowledge that a person has about himself/herself. Markus (1983) observes that studies on self-knowledge have particularly focused on personality (physical and psychological) traits and argues for the inclusion of knowledge about other aspects of the self, such as about one’s goals and actions. Since autobiographical memory holds a substantial amount of self-knowledge, a being with such memory must have an „extended‟ consciousness (Damasio, 2010, p. 168). In other words, autobiographical memory and the autobiographical self that emerges in its background go hand-in-hand with the development of an extended self-consciousness.

According to Gergely(2002), the autobiographical self’s emergence is preceded by the appearance of a mature form of agency called „representational agency‟. Such agency is accompanied by the understanding of assumptions that guide and initiate one’s own and others‟ actions (Fonagy et al., 2010). The autobiographical self’s agency is related to long-term goals (Bassi, Sartori, & Delle Fave, 2010) whereas the core self’s agency is related to survival goals (Waterworth, Lindh Waterworth, Riva, & Mantovani; 2015). Additionally, the autobiographical self forms the basis for a trans-situational personality as against the core self that is related to situational subjectivity (Ananthaswamy, 2015). Another difference between the core self and autobiographical self is that the former manifests spontaneous and impulsive behavior (Crawford & Novak, 2014) whereas the latter allows for behavior regulation (Metcalf, 2016).(5)

2.3.1.5 Consciousness

[[20]] According to Northoff (2014), consciousness can be characterized in terms of its content (persons, objects, and events), level (related to the degree of wakefulness), form (the organization of discretely occurring content into a spatiotemporal continuum), qualitative feel, unitary (as opposed to fragmented) nature of experience, intentionality (object-directedness), and relatedness to a particular self. Akin to the stages of the self that were discussed above and running somewhat parallel to them are three stages of consciousness, designated by Tulving (1985) as „anoetic‟ („unknowing‟), „noetic‟ („knowing‟), and „autonoetic‟ („self-knowing‟) consciousness. The rudimentary anoetic consciousness reflects sensory, affective, and homeostatic experience in the absence of objective awareness; the noetic consciousness is associated with having factual, momentary, and non-experiential knowledge about oneself and the world; and the autonoetic consciousness is indicative of trans-temporal and trans-spatial, experientially rich self-reflection (Vandekerckhove, 2009; Vandekerckhove, Bulnes, & Panksepp, 2014).

Core self has been correlated with anoetic affective consciousness (Vandekerckhove, Bulnes, & Panksepp, 2014) and noetic consciousness (e.g., Fabbro & Bergamasco, 2013; Fabbro, Aglioti, Bergamasco, Clarici, & Panksepp, 2015). This means that core self can exist either in the „unknowing‟ anoetic or the „knowing‟ noetic consciousness. The autobiographical self has likewise been linked to the autonoetic self-reflective consciousness (Vandekerckhove & Panksepp, 2009). As regards the protoself, Damasio (2000) describes it as something “we are not conscious of” and as “preconscious biological precedent” (p. 174, p. 153). By „preconscious‟ is meant a “state that is on the verge of becoming conscious though not yet conscious by itself” (Northoff, 2014, p. lix). To summarize, the protoself is associated with preconscious, the core self with anoetic and noetic consciousness, and the autobiographical self with autonoetic consciousness.

2.3.1.6 Personality

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The defining feature of personality is the trans-temporal and trans-situational consistency in a person’s behavior (Carver & Scheier, 2012). Personality is constituted, among other elements, by traits and goals (Emmons, 1999). The consistency of behavior has mostly been studied in relation to traits that are “dimensions of individual differences in tendencies to show consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions” (McCrae & Costa, 2003, p. 25). Among traits, it is possible to make a distinction between narrower „primary‟ traits and broader „trait dimensions‟ that are constituted by a set of correlated primary traits (Matthews, Deary, & Whiteman, 2009). Examples of primary traits include Cattell’s (1973) 16 „personality factors‟ such as emotionally distant, cooperative, shy, and practical. Examples of trait dimensions include Eysenck’s (1967, 1997) neuroticism (including narrow traits such as anxious, shy, irrational, moody, etc.), extroversion (including sociable, lively, dominant, venturesome, etc.), and psychoticism (including aggressive, impulsive, antisocial, toughminded, etc.). At present, personality studies are dominated by five factor models that subsume a number of primary traits under five broad dimensions. McCrae and Costa (1987), for example, propose the dimensions of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness-antagonism, and conscientiousness-undirectedness. Equated with personality „attributes‟, traits can also encompass indicators of geographical origin or ethnicity; social and occupational role categories; physical factors (including language and appearance); attributes indicating social status and the effect one has on social others; attributes indicating eccentricity, deviance, normalcy, or conformity to norms, psychopathological attributes; attitudes and beliefs; and abilities (Saucier, 2009). Like traits, goals are also widely understood as directing our behaviors (Moscowitz, 2012).

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Moskowitz (2012, p. 1) defines a goal as “an end state that the organism has not yet attained (and is focused towards attaining in the future) and that the organism is committed to approach or avoid”. Schmuck, Kasser, & Ryan (2000) suggest classification of long-term life goals into two types, intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation, community feeling) and extrinsic (e.g., financial success, appearance, popularity). According to Sheldon, Ryan, Deci, and Kasser (2004), there is a relationship between the well-being of an individual, the type of goal (i.e., intrinsic or extrinsic) pursued by him/her, and the reason why he/she pursues them (i.e., whether due to reflective volition or because of feeling pressurized).

Noting that traits and goals have usually been studied in isolation, McCabe and Fleeson (2016) provide strong evidence to support the proposal that traits serve the purpose of accomplishing goals. Sheldon, Jose, Kashdan, and Jarden (2015) correlate personality, traits, goals, and well-being. According to them, a personality that is distinguished by the presence of „personality strengths‟ – characteristics that facilitate adjustment (King and Trent (2013) - is related to effective goal-striving and enhanced well-being. As summarized by Sheldon et al. (2015), personality strengths include trait dimensions, traits, capacities for self-regulation, capacities for resilience when faced with traumatic and adverse situations, and goal system characteristics. Peterson and Seligman (2004) have listed 24 personality strengths (which they refer to as „character strengths‟) including creativity; curiosity; open-mindedness; love of learning; perspective; bravery; persistence; integrity; vitality; love; kindness; social intelligence; citizenship; fairness; leadership; forgiveness and mercy; humility and modesty; prudence; self-regulation; appreciation of beauty and excellence; gratitude; hope; humor; and spirituality. Among the numerous personality theorists, it is pertinent (in the light of its similarity to an indigenous model, as shall be discussed under 4.4) here to review Fromm’s (1947/2002) humanistic theory.

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Fromm classifies personality into the productive orientation and nonproductive orientations (comprising the exploiting, hoarding, receiving, and marketing types). Both these orientations involve relating to the world in two ways: assimilation (acquisition and assimilation of things) and socialization (inter-relatedness with other people). The productive orientation’s assimilation of objects is through work and his/her inter-relatedness with other people is based in love and reasoning. He/she is able to freely use his/her powers and work towards the realization of inherent potentialities. Love for another person involves caring and taking responsibility of a loved person but also knowing and respecting him/her. Such love is inseparably intertwined with self-love. Reasoning blends intelligence that is needed to pursue practical goals and a depth that grasps the essence of goal-relevant objects. Furthermore, such reasoning is accompanied by concern and respect for such objects. Of the non-productive orientations, the receiving, exploiting, hoarding, and marketing types assimilate objects by accepting (but not giving back proportionally), taking (often unethically), storing, and exchanging (through a process of selling themselves as commodities) them respectively. The socialization of these non-productive orientations, in that order, is characterized by loyalty, authoritative domination, remoteness from others, and superficial attachment.

In this section, an attempt has been made to consolidate current psychological literature on broad-based concepts such as mind, self, consciousness, and personality. The section that follows shall review literature relating to emotions. Given the thesis’s objective of analyzing a target set of Sanskrit mental states (corresponding to certain self-conscious emotions) as they are communicated through literary characters, the literature review shall deal at some length with the narrative methodology for understanding and analyzing emotions.

2.3.2 Emotion

Though the mental states that go by the name of „emotions‟ form an inseparable part of human existence, they are as yet poorly understood. Even the concept of emotion as a naturally given, distinct mental state is contested on the grounds that it is composed of categories too dissimilar to each other to be grouped together under a single head (Griffith, 1997, 2004). Speaking of emotions, Shweder (1994, p.33) opines that “everything from their substance to their distribution to their logical form is a subject of debate”.

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At the heart of this debate are at least four theoretical approaches to emotions: basic emotions approach, appraisal approach, psychological constructionist approach, and social constructionist approach. Irrespective of the approach concerned, it is useful to understand emotions in relation to the following aspects (Frijda, 1986; Gross, 2014; Moors, 2009, 2014; Scherer, 2000):

(a) stimulus object, event, or situation;
(b) perception of the stimulus;
(c) cognitive appraisal or evaluation of the perceived stimulus;
(d) psychological preparation (action tendency) for responding to the appraised stimulus in a specific way;
(e) bodily preparation, via physiological changes, for responding to the appraised stimulus in a specific way;
(f) coordinated set of verbal and/or nonverbal behavioral responses;
(g) subjective experience (feeling); and
(h) regulation of subjective feeling.

Approaches differ from one another in

(a) the aspects they include or exclude while characterizing emotion;
(b) the aspect they regard as the sine qua non of emotion; and ( c) their focus on a finite category of emotions or on an infinite variety of emotional phenomena.

According to the basic emotions approach, there is a finite category of „basic‟ emotions such as „happiness‟, „sadness‟, „fear‟, „surprise‟, „anger‟, and „disgust‟ (Ekman, Sorenson, & Friesen, 1969), each basic emotion is defined by a rigid stimulus-response pairing (Ben-Ze‟ev, 2000) that is mediated by a subcortical neural circuit or „affect program‟ (LeDoux, 2015), and aspects such as feeling and appraisal are not integral to emotion (e.g., LeDoux, 1996; Dougherty, Abe, & Izard, 1996). Basic emotions are regarded as universal because each one of them has a discrete, universally recognized facial expression (Ekman, 2003).

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According to the cognitive appraisal approach, emotions are equated with „emotion episodes‟ that are evoked by a stimulus and constituted by components such as cognitive appraisal, action tendency, physiological changes, behavioral response, and feeling (Moors, 2014). Some researchers (e.g., Lazarus, 1966) consider appraisal as the cause of an emotion episode but not as its component; others (e.g., Clore & Ortony, 2013) regard it as a component of an emotion episode but not as its cause; and yet others (e.g., Ellsworth, 1991) look at it as the cause of an emotion episode as well as its component. If we take the criteria for appraising a stimulus (intrinsic pleasantness, goal-conduciveness, etc.) as dimensional (e.g., less or more goal-conducive) and understand components such as appraisal and feeling as capable of mutual interaction and modulation, it is possible to generate infinite variety within an emotion episode (Ellsworth, 1991). Labeling of the emotional episode, for instance as „fear‟ or „anger‟, is facilitated by an individual’s access to culture-based or self-based knowledge structures that are stored in his/her memory as scripts (Fischer & Frijda, 1992), schemas (Bucci, Maskit, & Murphy, 2015), or prototypes (Scherer & Meuleman, 2013). The bidirectional nature of relationship between the components of an emotion episode has paved way for studying emotions using non-linear dynamical systems models (e.g., Scherer, 2009). These models treat emotion as a phenomenon that emerges when components of an emotion episode interact with and influence one another (Scherer, 2009). To elucidate with a metaphor, the composite dish that is an emotion is the product of several component ingredients blending with one another in such a way that each ingredient lends its flavor to another ingredient and is itself infused with the latter’s flavor. Emotion researchers (e.g., Chakraborty & Konar, 2009) have employed non-linear dynamical systems models to understand not just single emotional states but also complex emotions that involve more than one concurrently aroused emotional state (Chakraborty & Konar, 2009).

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According to the psychological constructionist approach, it is subjective experience that makes an emotion what it is. According to Russell (2003), subjective experience can be conceptualized in terms of „core affect‟ – a neurophysiological primitive that forms the common building block for all mental states (emotion included) and keeps constantly changing (because of more or less obvious, internal or external, stimuli) along its two dimensions of pleasure-displeasure (valance) and activation-deactivation (arousal). An emotional episode, commencing with a change in core affect, can, but does not necessarily, culminate in categorizing and labeling the episode as an instance of say, fear or anger. Barrett (2006) regards categorization and labeling of core affect as crucial in determining action that is optimized for goal-attainment in a given stimulus situation.

According to the social constructionist approach, cultural and social contexts (Mesquita & Boiger, 2014) determine which stimulus must give rise to which response. Whereas cultural contexts influence the construction of emotional episodes by supplying norms, the actual unfolding of an emotional episode calls for an immediate social context (Averill, 2012). Cultural norms that govern emotions are regarded as embedded in the nervous system (Averill, 1982) or in language (Wierzbicka, 2009).

Alternatively, emotions can be seen as produced by people through „discourse‟, i.e., through the use of language (including emotion words) and language-like signs (i.e., expressions) in accordance to local norms (Harré & Gillett, 1994). Beatty (2010) suggests we move beyond discourse and enter the realm of stories and narratives in order to understand what emotions really are. According to Snӕvarr (2010), mental states (including emotions) are akin to stories in having a beginning, middle, and end as well as in forming a unified whole. Stories become narratives when we give them a verbal or non-verbal form (Snӕvarr, 2010). Narratives can be more or less prototypical in comparison to one another (Ochs & Capps, 2001).

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Hogan (2003) defines prototypical narratives as those that “have a telic structure including an agent, a goal, and a causal sequence connecting the agent’s various actions with the achievement or nonachievement of the goal” and regards “stories that have sustained interest within their respective traditions” as exemplifying such narratives (p 205, p. 6). Stressing the pivotal role played by emotions in narratives, he hypothesizes that prototypical narratives are founded on „emotion prototypes‟ that are “mini-narratives” in which the prototypical “eliciting conditions and expressive/actional consequences” of a certain emotion are laid out (p. 83). The prototype of sorrow, for example, is „“what you feel like when someone you love dies and express through weeping”‟ (Hogan, 2003, p. 86). Within prototypical narratives, Hogan identifies two groups of emotions, „junctural emotions‟ and „outcome emotions‟. The former group comprises of emotions such as fear, disgust, anger, wonder, mirth that are temporally limited in their scope within the narrative. Happiness and sorrow make up the latter group though they can also function as junctural emotions. As outcome emotions, happiness and sorrow “define the enduring feelings we prototypically consider the final evaluation points for junctural emotions” (Hogan, 2003, p. 91). Junctural emotions thus find their fulfillment in outcome emotions. Importantly, Hogan concludes that prototypical narratives from across the globe are similar: their heroes pursue the goals of romantic union or power; realization or nonrealization of goals results in the end emotions of happiness or sorrow; and depending on whether its end emotion is happiness or sorrow, a prototypical narrative can fall under the genre of tragi-comedy or tragedy respectively. Elsewhere, Hogan (2011) notes a close relationship between our real-life “ego-centric” emotions and the “empathetic” emotions that we experience while reading a piece of literature. On this basis, he argues that “literature study should have an important place in the scientific study of emotion” (p. 23).

The narrative methodology for studying emotion entails paying attention to the structure of emotional narrative (i.e., whether events described end in a climax or not, pace of the narrative, order of events, temporal and cause-effect relationships among events, juxtaposition of opposing or comparative narratives, emotional nature of an entire narrative such as in structuring it as a comedy or tragedy), narrative construction of agency, and the expression of emotions at the level of words, sentences, and prosody (Kleres, 2010).

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Having reviewed the literature on emotion and the four mainstream approaches for studying it, we can now narrow our focus to self-conscious emotions. The ensuing section shall begin with a review of literature on self-conscious emotions in general before proceeding to deal with the self-conscious emotions that are relevant to this study.

2.3.3 Self-conscious emotions

2.3.3.1 Self-conscious emotions – a general overview

The American Psychological Association (2015, p. 953) defines self-conscious emotion as “an emotion generated when events reflect on the worth or value of the self in one’s own or others‟ eyes”. Put differently, self-conscious emotions occur only when people “become aware that they have lived up to, or failed to live up to, some actual or ideal self-representation” (Tracy & Robins, 2004, p. 105). Self-conscious emotions necessitate an extended self (Leary, 2007). The category of self-conscious emotions includes both positive emotions such as pride, empathy, respect, honor, and gratitude as well as negative ones such as envy, jealousy, shame, guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation. These emotions have also been termed „emotions of self-assessment‟ (Taylor, 1985), „self-evaluative emotions‟ (Dijkstra & Buunk, 2008), „non-basic emotions‟ (Prinz, 2004), and „self-reflexive emotions‟ (Fontaine, 2009). Tracy and Robins (2007) differentiate self-conscious emotions from basic emotions on the grounds that the former, in comparison to the latter, necessarily require self-awareness and self-representations, emerge later in life, facilitate attainment of social (rather than survival-related) goals, do not have universally recognized facial expressions, and are cognitively complex. An alternative viewpoint to the above argues that the emergence of self-conscious emotions is facilitated not by self-evaluations but by “a reflection on how one is being perceived and evaluated by other people” (Leary, 2004, p. 130). Both these divergent viewpoints concur, however, that the object of evaluation is the same, namely, the self.

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The classification of self-conscious emotions by Niedenthal and Ric (2017) into self-evaluative and social comparison subtypes with the former including guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride and the latter comprising envy and jealously can be seen as an attempt to bridge the two viewpoints. Since reflection on how one will be evaluated by others is related to whether or not one matches social moral values, the self-conscious emotions that result from such reflection are also known as „moral emotions‟ (Niedenthal & Ric, 2017).

As moral emotions, self-conscious emotions influence anticipated as well as actual behavior by providing feedback (Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). To elucidate, an individual chooses a future behavior after evaluating the emotional consequence (in terms of shame, guilt, pride, etc.) of performing it. Likewise, self-conscious emotions that result from actual behaviors inform us about our “social and moral acceptability” (Tangney et al., 2007, p. 22) and aid us in regulating the said behaviors.

A comprehensive model that accounts for self-conscious emotions has been proposed by Tracy and Robins (2007). This model differentiates shame, guilt, embarrassment, and two forms of pride (authentic pride and hubristic pride) from one another. According to this model, self-conscious emotions are an important class of emotions whose elicitation from a stimulus event (e.g., securing the first rank in an exam, failing in an exam) involves the following processes:

(a) Appraisal of the event as not relevant for survival
(b) One’s focus on one’s own self-representations, either actual (e.g., “I am a successful student”) or ideal (e.g., “I want to be a successful student”)
(c) Appraisal of the event as identity-goal relevant, i.e., as important for one’s actual or ideal self-representations (e.g., one may appraise either securing the first rank or failing in an exam as important for one’s self-representation “I am a successful student” or “I want to be a successful student”)
(d) Comparison of current self-representations with actual or ideal self-representations for the presence or absence of any discrepancy between the two (e.g., comparing one’s current self-representation “I am a failing student” with an actual self-representation “I am a successful student” or ideal self-representation “I want to be a successful student” reveals a discrepancy between the two)
(e) Appraisal of the event, on the basis of the above comparison, as congruent or incongruent with the goals for one’s actual or ideal self-representations, i.e., identity-goal congruence (e.g., one of the goals for the actual self-representation “I am a successful student” may be to obtain the appreciation of teachers - a goal with which failing in an exam is appraised as incongruent based on the discrepancy between one’s current selfrepresentation “I am a failing student” and actual self-representation “I am a successful student”)
(f) Appraising something about oneself or related to oneself as the cause of the event (e.g., appraising one’s lack of intelligence or inadequate preparation as the cause of failing in an exam)
(g) Appraising the cause’s stability (whether the cause is something about oneself that is permanent such as lack of intelligence or impermanent such as lack of preparation for this exam), globality (whether the cause is something about oneself that is non-specific such as being unintelligent in everything one does or specific such as being poor in maths), and controllability (whether the cause is something one can control such as lack of preparation or one can‟t such as intelligence)

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According to the model described above, shame results from internal, stable, uncontrollable, and global attributions and guilt from internal, unstable, controllable, and specific attributions. Embarrassment can result from attributions of either kind (internal, stable/unstable, uncontrollable/controllable, and global/specific) in relation to one’s public self. Paralleling the distinction between shame and guilt is the one between hubristic and authentic pride. Internal, stable, uncontrollable, and global attributions lead to the former and internal, unstable, controllable, and specific attributions to the latter.

2.3.3.2 The self-conscious emotions of envy, jealousy, pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment

2.3.3.2.1 Basic emotions approach and specific self-conscious emotions

According to Ekman and Cordaro (2011), shame, guilt, embarrassment, envy, Yiddish „naches‟, and Italian „fiero‟ (the last two being variations of pride) could join the rank of basic emotions whereas others (e.g., jealousy) have a debatable status even as emotions. They define shame as “the response when a person feels that if their true nature was to be known, others would be repulsed”, guilt as “the response when a person regrets having violated an agreement, principle, or value”, embarrassment as “the response when people feel they have broken a social rule, and also when a person has been praised”, envy as “the response to another person’s awards which the envious person wishes to have”, and jealousy as “an „emotional scene‟, with a particular plot and cast of persons” in which the jealous person feels an array of emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, etc. (p. 366). Naches is “the feeling a parent/caregiver, or teacher, feels when witnessing the achievement of their offspring” and fiero “the emotion felt while meeting a difficult challenge” (Ekman & Cordaro, 2011, p. 365).

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Keltner and Buswell (1996) claim that shame, guilt, and embarrassment are distinct emotions by studying the recalled antecedents and facial displays specific to each of them. According to their study, the antecedents of shame include poor performance, hurting others emotionally, failing to meet others‟ expectations, disappointment in oneself usually over not reaching a personal goal and role-inappropriate behavior. Its facial display includes head and gaze down. The antecedents of guilt are failures at duties, lying, neglect of another, breaking a diet or exercise, and cheating. The study did not find any specific guilt display. The antecedents of embarrassment include physical pitfalls such as slipping in the mud, cognitive shortcomings such as forgetting someone’s name, loss of control over the body such as burping, shortcoming in physical appearance such as walking around with toilet paper stuck to one’s shoes, and failure at privacy regulation such as accidentally walking in on others engaged in sexual intercourse. Its display includes a non-Duchenne (non-enjoyment) smile, lip press, gaze down, head movement to the left and down, and a face touch.

2.3.3.2.2 Cognitive appraisal approach and specific self-conscious emotions

Lazarus (1991) includes guilt, shame, envy, and jealousy among goal-incongruent emotions, pride among goal-congruent emotions, and humiliation, embarrassment among the synonyms of shame. Here, the terms „goal-congruent‟ and „goal-incongruent‟ primarily relate to one’s appraisal of an event or a situation as facilitating or inhibiting the attainment of one’s goals; thus goal-congruent and goal-incongruent emotions results from evaluating an event as goal-congruent or goal-incongruent respectively. Lazarus (2001) specifies what he calls as the “holistic” (p. 64) meaning or „core relational theme‟ of several emotions. The core relational theme for shame is “failing to live up to an ego-ideal”, for guilt “having transgressed a moral imperative”, for envy “wanting what someone else has”, for jealousy “resenting a third party for loss or threat to another’s affection or favor”, and for pride “enhancement of one’s ego-identity by taking credit for a valued object or achievement, either one’s own or that of someone or group with whom we identify” (p. 64). According to Roseman (2011), pride results from appraising a situation as motiveconsistent. In it, there are feelings of self-worth and of being big and powerful; the head is held back and the posture is expanded; the behaviors of exhibitionism and assertiveness are prominent; and one is motivated to achieve the goals of recognition and dominance.

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As contrasted with pride, shame and guilt result from appraising a situation as motive-inconsistent. In shame, one feels small and the self as unworthy; the head and gaze are down; withdrawal, concealment, and submission behaviors are evident; and there is a strong motivation to get out of sight. In guilt, one has the feelings of transgression and heaviness; the gaze is shifting; behaviors of self-reproach and self-punishment are manifest; and motivation is directed at the goal of redressing what one did. Based on a model proposed by Roseman, Antoniou, and Jose (1996) in which six appraisal criteria have been used to differentiate 17 emotions, Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters (2012) compare the appraisal patterns of two forms of envy - benign envy and malicious envy – that are related to the emotions of admiration and resentment respectively. According to them, benign envy is a “non-malicious form aimed at improving one’s own situation” and malicious envy is “aimed at pulling down the envied person” (p. 195). Van de Ven et al. observe that benign envy results from appraising envy-eliciting situations as not undeserved and oneself as capable of influencing situations easily. Malicious envy, on the contrary, stems from appraising envy-eliciting situations as underserved and oneself as incapable of influencing such situations easily. The comprehensive model of self-conscious emotions that was detailed above (under 2.3.3.1) is a cognitive appraisal model.

2.3.3.2.3 Psychological constructionist approach and specific self-conscious emotions

Fehr and Russell (1984) argue that individuals conceive of anger, fear, etc. as better exemplars of emotion than they do pride, envy, etc. Core affect alone cannot account for selfconscious emotions (Barrett & Russell, 1999; Russell, 2003). Rather, it is the prototype-based categorization of one’s core affect as shame, guilt, etc. that can explain the conscious, subjective experience of having those emotions. According to the psychological constructionist approach, what one person labels, for example, as „pride‟ might not be labeled

[[34]] as such by another person and two instances labeled by the same person as „pride‟ might not resemble each other in their features.

According to Goetz and Keltner (2007), cultures differ in the extent to which they emphasize a self-conscious emotion (through the elaboration of its lexicon and scripts), value it, consider it useful in accomplishing specific functions, and give it a moral connotation. Averill (1982) regards guilt, pride, and envy as clearly social in nature. He discusses emotions such as shame, guilt, embarrassment, pride, envy, and jealousy in the context of their relationship with anger. According to him, shame and embarrassment figure among emotions that (unlike anger) do not call for a response from others but are nevertheless social because they involve responses “played for and to an audience” (Averill, 1980, p. 323).

Prototype analyses of shame (Fischer & Tangney, 1995), embarrassment (Parrott & Smith, 1991), pride (Fischer & Tangney, 1995), and jealousy (Sharpsteen, 1991; Sharpsteen & Kirkpatrick, 1997) have characterized the best instance of these self-conscious emotions. To exemplify, the prototypical script for shame, based on the North American concept of that emotion, includes

(a) antecedents such as a dishonorable/deplorable action/characteristic, oneself being a witness to such an action/characteristic, and being judged by others negatively;
(b) consequent responses such as preoccupation, feeling powerless, turning away, escaping from observation or judgment, and a shrinking feel; and
(c) self-control procedures such as denying one’s action (Fischer & Tangney, 1995).

In Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, and O‟Connor’s (1987) study of emotion prototypes that conceptualize “people’s knowledge about emotions” (p. 1061), some self-conscious emotions occur as subordinate categories under one of the six basic categories (love, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and surprise) that themselves fall under either of the two superordinate categories, namely, positive emotion or negative emotion. Thus, shame, guilt, and [[35]] embarrassment come under sadness (a negative emotion), envy and jealousy under anger (a negative emotion), and pride under joy (a positive emotion).

It is important for the purpose of this thesis to review studies that analyze selfconscious emotions in literary narratives. Hogan (2011) analyzes the emotions of guilt, shame, and jealousy in „Macbeth‟, „The Strong Breed‟, „Kagekiyo‟, and „Othello‟. He considers literature as valuable for understanding the aforementioned emotions that “involve complex interactions of emotion systems” (p. 216). Patient, Lawrence, and Maitlis (2003) explore workplace envy by examining excerpts from Richard Russo’s novel „Straight Man‟. Smith (2004) analyses Shakespeare’s Cassius as “a literary prototype of the envying person” (p. 43). Oatley (2012) discusses the emotion of shame in the self-written story „One Another‟ and concludes that “much of male violence derives from the anger of suppressed shame and humiliation” (p. 142). Weidman and Tracy (2013) have analysed the characters of Saleem and Shiva in Salman Rushdie’s „Midnight Children‟ as personifications of hubristic and authentic pride respectively.

Research has also focussed on the depiction of specific selfconscious emotions in classical Greek and Roman texts. The analysis of envy and jealousy in ancient Athens by Sanders (2014), of the psychology of shame in ancient Greek by Cairns (1992), of jealousy in Roman love elegy by Caston (2012), and of pride and shame in ancient Rome by Rich (2015) exemplify such research.

Thus far, the literature review has revolved around intrapersonal phenomena such as mind, self, consciousness, personality, behaviour, emotion, and self-conscious emotions that have been categorized and studied as such by contemporary Western psychology. The engagement of Indian knowledge systems with more or less overlapping phenomena is often governed by concerns (e.g., spiritual or aesthetic) that mirror an alternate worldview in which those concerns take precedence over others.

In spite of different worldviews bearing upon them, a common interest in understanding the inner workings of man has the power to initiate [[36]] a dialogue between Western psychology and Indian knowledge systems. The approach to psychology that goes by the name of „Indian psychology‟ epitomizes the realization of such a dialogue at multiple conceptual levels. The section that follows shall begin with an introduction to Indian psychology before proceeding to review literature on specific topics that are relevant to this study.

2.4 Literature review from Indian psychology

2.4.1 The approach of Indian psychology

By the word „Indian psychology‟, Cornelissen, Misra, and Varma (2011) understand “an approach to psychology that is based on ideas and practices that developed over thousands of years within the Indian subcontinent” (p. xi). They identify three key areas in contemporary psychology to which Indian psychology can contribute: a meta-theoretical framework that is compatible with psychology; a large array of psychological practices; and an elaborate assortment of psychological theories. According to them, „consciousness‟ is the key word in Indian intellectual tradition. Not only is consciousness central to the metatheoretical framework of Indian knowledge systems; it also guides practices such as meditation that are first-person-based and informs all theoretical endeavor, be it the conceptualization of personality, cognition, emotion, motivation, or any other psychological construct.

Rao and Paranjpe (2016) make a distinction between the terms „psychology in India‟, „indigenous psychology‟, and „Indian psychology‟. They understand „psychology in India‟ as referring to the evolution of contemporary psychology as a discipline in India, „indigenous psychology‟ as an approach to psychology that is relevant to the Indian cultural milieu (without much pan-cultural significance), and „Indian psychology‟ as an approach to psychology that, in spite of its Indian roots, holds relevance for all humans across the globe. According to them, the subject matter of Indian psychology can be conveniently broken down [[37]] into two parts, one dealing with the psychophysical apparatus and its relation to behavior and the other with the interaction between consciousness and the psychophysical apparatus. The authors observe that this twofold classification of the subject matter mirrors the twofold nature of personhood as encompassing the transactional and transpersonal realms.

Dalal and Misra (2010) provide a list of nine features that characterize Indian psychology:

(a) laying stress on life-goals (discussed below under 2.4.2);
(b) studying consciousness as many-sided;
(c) regarding reality as emergent rather than as something given;
(d) advocating the dynamic and transformative nature of life-processes;
(e) highlighting the importance of employing a range of third-person, second-person, and first-person methods for understanding human experience;
(f) viewing action as value-laden;
(g) accounting for human action by invoking the mutual interaction between personal and spatiotemporal elements;
(h) emphasizing on the development of positive attributes rather than being merely descriptive; and
(i) championing the cause of work and sociality that follows from the notion of a transcendental self.

2.4.2 Overarching conceptual categories studied in Indian psychology

In keeping with what was discussed above, it can be concluded that the concept of consciousness reigns supreme in the Indian intellectual tradition. Cornelissen, Misra, and Varma (2011) underscore differences in the Western and Indian conception of consciousness with the former upholding objectivity, revealed to us through our waking-state consciousness, as the golden standard for understanding reality and the latter invoking subjectivity, enduring across different states of consciousness, to understand the real nature of all phenomena.

As noted by Singh (1961), “„objective exploration‟ is no more than a socialized subjectivity supported on technical or statistical jargon” (p. 253). Consciousness is regarded as existing in the state of wakefulness (jāgrat), dream (svapna), deep sleep (suṣupti), or „super-consciousness‟ (turīya) and each such state is [[38]] described as coinciding with a uniquely characterized self (Sinha, 1986).

Rao and Paranjpe (2016) clarify the different senses in which contemporary scholars working on Indian knowledge systems employ the words „consciousness‟ and „self‟. In a limited sense, these words describe an individual being as separated from other beings. In a broader sense, however, they connote the Supreme Self (Brahman), an all-encompassing principle transcending the individuating limitations of embodied beings. As noted by Rao and Paranjpe (2016), „consciousness‟ as used in Indian psychology mostly means „consciousness-as-such‟, i.e., consciousness without content or agency; „self‟, on the other hand, may be used to denote either „consciousness-as-such‟ or the personality that sets each individual apart from others.(4)

In contrast to the dualism of mind and matter that has occupied central stage in Western intellectual thought, it is the dualism of matter and consciousness or the unity of consciousness that enjoys advocacy in the Indian tradition. The Samkhya system of Indian philosophy (that is highly relevant to this study and shall be subjected to a detailed examination in Chapter 3) regards mind as a manifestation of matter (Misra, 2011).

Chennakesavan (1980) observes that “the problem of the nature of mind and its relation to matter may be satisfactorily solved only if we think of mind as a higher form of matter capable of reflecting the nature of self that is consciousness” (p. x). She notes that unless the material mind is energized by consciousness, purposive human behavior cannot emanate.

Rao and Paranjpe (2016) see parallels between the concept of mental trilogy and the Indian tradition’s notion of a person as knower (jñātā), enjoyer (bhoktā), and agent (kartā). At the same time, they also point out that the Western concept of mental trilogy compartmentalizes the functions of mind whereas Indian tradition stiches them together using the conceptual thread of personhood (subsumed under the terms „puruṣa‟ and „jīva‟). It is not rare to find theoretical studies on specific mental functions such as cognition, affect, and motivation from an Indian psychological perspective.

Mishra (2006) examines cognitive processes as they are [[39]] described in the Indian tradition by classifying them under the heads of consciousness, perception, memory, imagination, and thinking (It is important to note here that such a classification is not indigenous but derives from mainstream Western psychology).

Framarin (2009), in his study on the psychology of motivation from an Indian standpoint, argues that the theories of motivation advanced in traditional Indian texts are “plausible” (p. 3).While compiling traditional Indian knowledge on emotions, Sinha (1986) allots considerable space to Sanskrit poetics over and above the different schools of Indian philosophy. He also occasionally compares and contrasts the treatment of specific mental states in Sanskrit poetics with that of their corresponding Western psychological counterparts. Though Indian knowledge systems are a conceptually rich ground for understanding mental states such as cognition and affect, “the lack of coherent models that may serve as the basis for evolving meaningful psychological research programs” (Mishra, 2006, p. 278) is cited as an important reason for the slow evolution of Indian psychology as an alternative psychological approach.

The investigation of personality in Indian tradition owes mainly to the Samkhya theory of guṇa-s – three basic elements that constitute the material world. The guṇa theory assumes importance in the context of Indian psychology not only because it informs a traditional Indian tripartite classification of personality but also because it has recently led to the development of various psychometric instruments (=questionnaires) that can aid us in the measurement of personality (Rao & Paranjpe, 2016). As noted by Rao and Paranjpe (2016), such psychometric instruments have been constructed on the basis of theoretical information mined from the Samkhya philosophical corpus or texts (principally the Hindu holy text of Bhagavad Gītā and texts relating to the Indian medical tradition of Ayurveda) that have been influenced by the Samkhya system in their classification of personality.

Human action and the life-goals at which those actions are directed constitute the concept of „puruṣārtha‟ (Gaur, 2011). A detailed discussion of this concept is presented in [[40]] Chapter 3 (under 3.3.3.3). Here, it suffices to mention that the Indian intellectual tradition postulates the following four life-goals: artha (material prosperity), kāma (material enjoyment), dharma (ethical conduct), and mokṣa (spiritual liberation). Rajasakran, Sinnappan, and Raja (2014) hypothesize conceptual similarity between the Western notion of motivation as theorized by Maslow (1943) and the category of puruṣārtha.

2.4.3 Indian psychology and the study of emotion

Among Indian knowledge systems, it is aesthetics that has contributed significantly to the study of emotions (Paranjpe, 2002). Paranjpe (2009) situates the Indian aesthetic theory of emotions close to the social constructionist approach.

Some researchers focus on specific conceptual categories in this theory. For instance, Vadekar (1943) identifies sthāyibhāva-s with instincts; Oatley and Johnson-Laird (1996) map the sthāyibhāva-s onto basic emotions; and Jaitly (1975) presents novel classifications of vyabhicāribhāva-s based on valence and similarity with contemporary psychological categories.

Yet others have engaged with this theory in order to understand psychological processes underlying the “transmission” of emotions by literary texts to their audience. For example, Paranjpe (2002) compares Indian and Western views on aesthetically experienced emotions; Mar, Oatley, DjiKic, and Mullin (2011) invoke Indian aesthetics to explain the emotional experience consequent to reading fictional narratives; and Sundararajan and Raina (2016) explore the concept of „the appreciative critic‟ as understood in Indian aesthetics, commenting in the process that “Indian notions of aesthetic appreciation require a different approach than that prevalent in mainstream psychology” (p. 789).

A third class of researchers has looked at practical implications of the Indian aesthetic theory within the purview of psychology. Hogan (2011) employs the Indian aesthetic concept of „rasa‟ (“nonegocentric emotion”; p. 232) to analyze the interplay of ethics and emotions in the literary works of Rabindranath Tagore. While doing so, he also resorts to the concept of puruṣārtha. Likewise, Oatley (2012) analyzes „One [[41]] Another‟, a self-written story, using principles borrowed from the Indian aesthetic theory of emotions. He comments, for example, that the „rasa‟ of the heroic, correlating with the dayto-day emotion of perseverance, informs the first part of „One Another‟. Ramaprasad (2013) and Rajaraman and Menon (2015) examine the relevance of Indian aesthetics and its theory of emotions for a therapeutic setting. Lastly, Hogan’s (2003) theoretical method for analyzing the emotions of literary characters draws heavily from the Indian aesthetic tradition.

As a passing note, it is important to mention that a substantial number of studies in Indian psychology dealing with the Indian aesthetic theory of emotions regard the abundant knowledge that this theory has produced as relevant only to the aesthetic context of literary texts and performing arts. While there is a great deal of truth in the assertion that the Indian aesthetic theory was formulated as a tool for understanding and explaining aesthetic mental states (including emotions), it must not be forgotten that this very theory postulates aesthetic mental states as ontologically related to everyday mental states – a point that was discussed in Chapter 1. Unless this is clear, the Indian aesthetic theory’s extended relevance as a “legitimate psychology of emotion (emphasis in the original)” (Paranjpe, 2009, p. 3) may not be appreciated.

2.4.4 Indian psychology and the study of self-conscious emotions

Given self-conscious emotions have arrived rather late in the history of emotion studies and are only recently making their presence felt, it is not surprising if there is a paucity of studies in Indian psychology that address them. If we should name one mental state that finds documentation in Indian aesthetics, corresponds to a self-conscious emotion in contemporary psychology, and has been the subject of some psychological investigation, it must be vrīḍā, a mental state that shares some similarity with shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Here again, rather than vrīḍā per se, it is „lajjā‟ or „lajya‟ - commonly employed synonyms of „vrīḍā‟ that have mostly been examined by researchers.

Menon and Shweder’s (1994) study focuses [[42]] on the facial expression of „biting the tongue‟ that accompanies lajya.

Shweder, Haidt, Horton, and Joseph (2008) caution against the simplistic translation of the word „lajya‟ as „shame‟, „embarrassment‟, „shyness‟, „modesty‟, or „coyness‟ adding further that unlike shame or embarrassment, with which it shares certain response tendencies, lajya evokes respect for social hierarchy and public responsibility.

Bhawuk (2017) uses a lexical approach to develop the concept of lajjā by examining its synonyms and antonyms as well as by analyzing its usage in the Bhagavad Gītā and Durgāsaptaśatī, two popular scriptural texts and Kāmāyanī, a modern Hindi epic. The author discusses lajjā as a self-evaluation process, a virtue, a mediator between desire and action, an emotion with several behavioral markers, a concept that is akin to the personality dimension of conscientiousness, and an indigenous construct that represents the coming together of shame and guilt.

Based on the literature review presented above, it is possible to identify following gaps in the Indian psychological approach towards studying emotions in general and selfconscious emotions in particular:

a. The lack of coherent models for understanding indigenous psychological constructs, both as standalone constructs and as mutually interacting ones
b. Delimitation of the applied aspect of Indian psychology due to the lack of coherent models
c. The tendency of researchers to treat Indian aesthetic theory as relevant only to the study of aesthetic emotions, thereby downplaying its importance for understanding real-world emotions
d. The paucity of research that bridges self-conscious emotions and Indian, predominantly Sanskrit, poetics.

As will become evident in the chapters to come, this study shall address each of the concerns expressed above.