Emotive cycles with individual and social emotions

Graf describes a 2-system approach with emotive-cognitive cycles, the KiE trilogy, from which the human decision-making process and all human behavior and thinking can be derived.

In purely emotive cycles, the cognitive system is not triggered or is no longer reached. Two typical constellations lead to emotive cycles:

1. a situation, a sensory stimulus, can be handled by the emotion system alone (autopilot)
2. in case of high emotional agitation the cognition system is no longer reached (emotional reaction)

A coherent world view is no longer created. Consequently, this means that we can neither remember nor can we explain why we have behaved this way. In the case of the autopilot, we simply do not know how the emotion system guids us, as in the case of “thoughtless” driving. In case of high emotional agitation, the happened is formed into a coherent world view in later emotive-cognitive cycles by sensory stimuli from the different internal and external simulations. The memory is seldom true, but it does reveal the emotions from which it was formed.

What led to the discovery of the purely emotive cycles

Joseph-LeDoux (1998) and Joachim Bauer (2011) support the work on the KiE trilogy with their research on the emotive cycles of individual basic emotions.

This period has since been associated with the crucial question: “Are we running away from the bear because we are afraid, or are we afraid because we are running away?

Herbert S. Simon’s theses on limited rationality (1960), like the James-Lange theory, also call for a second system that is not subject to cognitive limitations and reaches the measured speeds.

The countless books and widely debated insights on the question of “head or gut?” allowed Graf to continue to pursue the path to the 2-system approach. This included the Vedic scripts with indications that emotions are directly connected to the senses. In addition, the experiments on blind sight by Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran (1993) and Beatrix de Gelder (2003) could only be explained by emotive cycles.

The works of Luc Ciompi (1982) and Joseph LeDoux (1998) as well as António Rosa Damásio (1995) also gave clear indications and descriptions of emotive cycles.

The trilogy explains how to run faster without cognition

The biological reactions, described as Freeze (Alan Gray 1988), Flight or Fight (Walter Cannon 1915), could be put into an evolutionary order as well as into a sequence of movements with the KiE trilogy.

This is not really a choice between flight or fight, but the flight precedes the fight and both require a high level of anxiety. If the dysfunktional area of anxiety is too high, rigidity results, which makes neither flight nor fight possible.

The conclusions of William James (1884) and Carl Lange (1885) that feelings precede physical changes confirm the KiE trilogy. The answer to James’ question, “Are we running away from the bear because we are afraid, or are we afraid because we are running away?” is that fear, as a neurological emotional program, makes us run away before the cognition system is activated. The emotive-cognitive cycle is not reached and the bear does not emerge in the cognitive world view. Only in later emotive-cognitive cycles is the bear, of which one already had run away, created in the coherent world view.

The purely emotive cycles explain fight not only as a biological reaction but also as courage as a death-defying behaviour as well as as sovereign courageous behavior which originates from emotive-cognitive cycles.

The work and hypotheses of António Rosa Damásio on social emotions, especially on the importance of the prefontal cortex, have been supplemented by Graf in a complete model of emotive-cognitive cycles. The systemic work of Gregory Batson and the pioneers of constructivism have provided further building blocks.

Emotion Research

KiE research means bringing together different and contradictory things into a coherent unity, just as the emotive-cognitive cycles of the KiE trilogy in the coherent world view demand.

The Book

You can find more information in the book by Richard Graf:
Chapter 5 “The theory of Emotion Logic – how people are moved”

Richard Graf „Die neue Entscheidungskultur“ – Mit gemeinsam getragenen Entscheidungen zum Erfolg, Hanser Verlag 2018

“The emotional system is the origin and end of all thinking. New thinking with conscious emotion logic extends both human and artificial intelligence.”

https://www.k-i-e.com/buch/