Setu Havanur and Spatica Ramanujam

“Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet. It is the body’s reaction to your mind – or you might say, a reflection of your mind in the body.” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Whether it’s popular psychology or academics, emotions have always captured the curiosity and interest of researchers and the general public as well. The interest stems from the central role emotions play in our actions, decision-making, well-being, and interpersonal relationships to name a few. There has been an increase in the number of people turning to mindfulness and other spiritual practices, which has also contributed significantly to the study of emotions.

Amongst the various facets of human behaviour covered in psychology courses, emotions and psychological disorders intrigue students the most. Psychology is offered as an optional subject in grades 11 and 12 by state, CBSE, ISC, Cambridge, and IB boards. A survey of these curricula revealed that Cambridge and IB boards encourage an inquiry-based learning approach where students review research studies and develop an appreciation for how research is conducted and the findings are applied. This is markedly different from the CBSE and state boards. We specifically looked at how the topic of emotion is being covered in the IB curriculum. The students study published research articles on various aspects of emotion (biological bases, facial expressions, and theories of emotions). While citing an important research study, “Reading the Mind in The Eyes”, by Baron-Cohen et al. (2001), the students are prompted to reflect on whether static images of the eyes are enough to form a comprehensive understanding of emotions or is there more than meets the eye?

A similar approach to studying emotions exists at the undergraduate level. The topic of emotion is usually briefly covered in the Introduction to Psychology course, which includes the following modules: basic emotion theory (Ekman, 1992), components of emotions (which include physiological changes, behavioural or expressive responses through facial expressions, gestures, body posture, cognitive appraisal of emotions and subjective experience), emotion theories and emotions, gender, and culture. A large body of research has focused on emotion recognition based on facial expressions to the exclusion of bodily expressions, gestures, and voice which are significant components of emotional experience and expression (Farley, 2021). In addition, in almost all research on emotions, findings are based on observed emotions (static facial images) rather than the participants observing their own selves for how emotions are produced. A few students who had studied psychology in grades 11 and 12 shared that the predominant teaching method was largely group discussions and traditional classroom teaching.

This being the case, the teaching and learning of emotions requires a dynamic approach and an experiential one, as emotions are after all a lived human experience. Keeping this in mind, at Vidyashilp University, a theatre based experiential learning approach was introduced to address the above-mentioned unexplored aspects of emotions.

To this end, two tutorials were introduced across two semesters. In the first tutorial on ‘emotions, gender, and culture’, an improvisation activity titled ‘Sculpt your Partner’ was introduced to the students. The theme of this improvisation was to explore the ‘cultural’ norms of emotions, their internalization, and expression. These can be understood through breath, voice, posture, and position of the body in relation to space and others.

Instructions for students – “You will be given some word prompts (emotions). In pairs (boys and girls), ‘sculpt’ each other’s bodies and expressions to depict the assigned emotion”.

During the debrief, many students shared that the way they ‘sculpted’ their partners’ bodies was according to what they thought were socially acceptable ways of expressing emotions or behaving. With some emotions, like ‘anger’ and ‘courage’ the gender difference in representing the emotions could be seen with the female students being sculpted to show more ‘resilience’ and stillness in the emotional expression whilst the male students would be sculpted to have more of an open body, chest out, shoulders held straight, their arms more widely opened and torso and legs widely spread to signify active engagement and owning more space. In one of the studies on gender stereotypes and emotions, Plant et al. found that anger and pride were thought to be experienced and expressed more by men than by women (Plant, Hyde, Keltner and Devine, 2000).

The students shared that they became aware that they carry many stereotypes and gender norms about how emotions are experienced and expressed and this propelled them to instinctively sculpt their partner’s body in a certain way.

One student shared that the activity disrupted the linear mapping of emotion labels to expressions thereby revealing how emotions are communicated and understood through various non-verbal cues.

In the second tutorial that followed the introductory lecture on emotions, students were introduced to the concept of ‘Navarasa’ (nine emotions) in the Indian performance tradition as a different approach to understanding emotions. The ‘Navarasa’ offers a nuanced perspective on emotions and serves a definite purpose – to bring alive emotions on stage as a performer. The emotions – shringara (love), adbhutha (wonder), veera (courage), shanti (peace), karuna (sorrow), bheebatsa (disgust), hasya (laughter), bhayanaka (fear), raudra (anger) are carefully crafted and presented to take the audience on an emotional journey through the performance, thereby creating a transformative experience for them.

What makes this study of emotions a nuanced and deep engagement is its ‘embodied’ nature. The simple, yet profound connection between breath and emotion is a somatic learning experience that goes beyond just intellectual understanding. Through constant practice, the performer is able to create the breath cycle that is associated with every emotion, thereby creating a believable journey for the audience. This is how many performers are able to deliver convincing shows for many runs and evoke the same emotional journey time after time for the audience!

Students of psychology then develop an appreciation for the study of emotions to be layered and dynamic rather than a static entity that can be studied in isolation. They were also introduced to the concepts of bhava (mental attitude and mental state of mind) that reside below the rasa (emotional essence) and hasthas (the gestures used in Indian classical performance tradition) that enhance the expression of the rasa (emotions).

An interesting question arose from one of the students – are emotions universal?

Paul Ekman’s research on facial expressions reveal that certain facial expressions seem to have a universal meaning regardless of the culture in which one is raised (Ekman, 1992). Accumulating evidence has shown that although Ekman’s theory has support, there only seems to be ‘minimal universality’, suggesting people everywhere can infer something from facial behaviour (Russell, 1995). The universality of certain emotional expressions supports Darwin’s claim that they are innate responses within an evolutionary history (Darwin, 1872).

As a way to provoke the students’ imagination to think about emotions being a universal experience, they were shown a video performance by Mummenschantz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A5c4jjwanY). Founded in 1972, this theatre group is a poetic journey into a world of silence (https://kmpartists.com/mummenschanz/). Emotions are depicted but not through any recognizable human form. Performers use pipes, toilet paper, notepads to make the audience laugh, cry, and experience a range of emotions. This highlights an important aspect of emotions – that they are always created by the performer and the audience together reinforcing the shared experience of emotions. The audience always ‘leans in’ projecting emotions onto everyday objects that are used in the performance thereby making the atmosphere and the experience a very ‘charged’ one.

The students shared that from the Navarasa exercise and the Mummenschantz performance, they could appreciate that emotions could at once be universal, and yet are shaped by cultural norms.

In this tutorial, the students had to pick an emotion of their choice and depict it through an improvisation or a scenario. In this activity, it was observed how emotions affected breath, for example, faster and shorter breath intakes while experiencing anger/fear and so on.

A few students shared their observations.
“It was interesting for me to see how the entire body and gestures are involved in expressing emotions.”
“Before the session, my list of emotions was very small and the spectrum grew after the session. Expressions can be complex…two things can be related but not similar or identical.”
“Although I knew I was acting, I came to experience the emotion I was portraying.”

In closing, we realized that the study of emotions needs to be based on ‘lived’ experience and an engagement with an ‘embodied’ approach with the performing arts like theatre, dance, movement which can enhance the students’ understanding. This can enrich the teaching experience as well.

These activities can serve as a source of reflection for future classes and form an integral pedagogical tool to teach emotions.

References
• Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Hill J, Raste Y, Plumb I. The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes”. Test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2001 Feb;42(2):241-51. PMID: 11280420.
• Darwin, C. (1872). The expression of emotion in man and animals. New York: Philosophical Library.
• Ekman, P. (1992). Are there basic emotions? Psychological Review, 99, 550-553.
• Farley, S.D. Introduction to the Special Issue of the Scientific Study of Laughter: Where We Have Been, Current Innovations, and Where We Might Go From Here. J Nonverbal Behav 46, 321-326 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-022-00413-6.
• Plant, Ashby & Hyde, Janet & Keltner, Dacher & Devine, Patricia. (2000). The Gender Stereotyping of Emotions. Psychology of Women Quarterly. 24. 81-92. 10.1111/j.1471-6402.2000.tb01024.x.
• Russell JA. Facial expressions of emotion: what lies beyond minimal universality? Psychological Bulletin. 1995 Nov;118(3):379-91. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.118.3.379. PMID: 7501742.

Dr. Setu Havanur is Assistant Professor, Psychology in the School of Liberal Arts and Design Studies at Vidyashilp University. She has over five years of teaching experience at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her most recent experience comes from working in a dementia research project at the prestigious National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS). Her broad research interests lie in the areas of cognition, pedagogy and mental health. She can be reached at setu.havanur@vidyashilp.edu.in.
Spatica Ramanujam is a visiting professor at Vidyashilp University. She teaches communication skills, leadership and teamwork skills, and theatre. She is also a theatre practitioner and artistic director of the theatre company, MukhaMugam. She has facilitated many arts integration programmes for educational institutions in India and abroad, providing focused theatre and storytelling training for teachers, students, and storytellers for over 10 years. She can be reached at spatica.r@vidyashilp.edu.in.