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Let me state at the outset that I consider man's primary motives to consist of eight innate affects, or feelings. These are the positive affects of excitement, enjoyment and surprise, and the negative affects of distress, anger, fear, shame and contempt. These are innate. One does not learn to smile in enjoyment nor to cry in distress. However, the objects of each affect are both innate and learned. A baby does not learn the birth cry. It is an innate response to the excessive stimulation attendant upon being born. He will later cry when he is hungry or tired or exposed to too loud sounds. None of these are learned responses. But eventually he will learn to cry about many things about which he was initially unconcerned. He may learn to cry in sympathy when others are in distress, and cry. But if the crying of others may be learned to evoke one's own distress cry, so may it also be learned to evoke contempt or shame rather than sympathy. There is thus nothing under the sun which some human beings have not learned to enjoy, to fear, or to hate, to be ashamed of, or to which to respond with excitement or contempt or anger. It is the innate plasticity of the affect mechanism, which permits the investment of any type of affect in any type of activity or object, that makes possible the great varieties of human personalities and societies. Cultural diversity rests upon the biological plasticity of the affect system in man. Puritanism, or negative affect about pleasure, and masochism, or positive affect about pain, are extreme examples of the plasticity of affect investment.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-40265-8_16

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