A life without pain sounds wonderful. It would also be fatal. Pain feels bad because it has a job: measuring damage to your body and motivating you to protect it. Every other feeling has a job too, built by natural selection. Hunger measures your need for calories and motivates you to eat. Envy measures others’ success and motivates you to close the gap. Frustration measures the futility of your current approach and motivates you to try a new one.
In 'All the Feels', evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban explains the evolved function of our emotions and sensations, from anger to the urge to yawn. In today's episode we speak in particular about negative and unpleasant emotions, particularly anxiety and depression. Are they doing something useful for us? Or is evolutionary mismatch causing us to feel worse than we need to?
Rob Kurzban is an evolutionary psychologist who was a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania for over a decade. His new book is titled 'All the Feels: The Evolved Function of Every Human Emotion and Sensation.'
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