Emotions sit in the middle of this interaction—being influenced both by the shifting world outside and the underlying and constantly-shifting psychosocial template and somatic template that reside in our psyche. Furthermore, changes in our emotions will influence our psychosocial template (and eventually our somatic template). Conversely, emotional shifts will inevitably alter the way in which we see our current setting and what we anticipate regarding changes in our current setting and any accompanying events, especially as related to behavior in which we are about to engage.
Anticipating the Lion (or Horse)
Anticipation and the polystatic process are built on the foundation of imagination. Unlike any other animal, human beings can imagine things that do not exist. They can envision a future that is yet to occur or a setting (Shangri-La) or entity (unicorn) that has never existed and probably never will exist. Robert Sapolsky has focused on one source of imagination that often serves no positive purpose. He observes that we can “imagine” lions (Sapolsky, 2004). These “lions” can be an upcoming due date for an important project or absence of our teenage son after curfew. A demanding boss or a frustrated spouse can be menacing. It is not hard for us to imagine a world that is saturated with many threatening people and situations.
Actually, we don’t imagine lions existing in our current setting, for there are no lions present in our life. However, we can anticipate lions. When we dwelled on the African Savannah, there were actual lions that threatened us. The Savannah was indeed quite threatening, given that we were weaker and slower than most of its other inhabitants. Furthermore, many of these animals wished to eat us or at least scare us away from their offspring. Engaging the Semantic Differential criteria, they were not interested in our welfare, were strong (relative to us), and were quite active (faster than us).
Given this situation, we were not in a place to fight the threatening beast (unless we were Tarzan). Flight was also not an option. The best we could do was Freeze, thus emulating the behavior of other weak and slow residents of Savannah. Most of our fellow freezers were rodents of many sorts. Like us, these small animals would hold very still and hope that the threatening beast would either not see us or would lose interest in us. I witnessed the value of this strategy when visiting the lions while consulting with a corporation in South Africa. Sitting on a jeep with several other human beings, I was told to remain very still when we drove up to a pack of lions. Not much has changed since we humans dwelled in large numbers on the Savannah.
While we emulated the rodents, they held one advantage over us. After several seconds, they would shake off the adrenaline that had accumulated while they were frightened yet also frozen. We humans are not inclined to shake off this energizing neurochemical; furthermore, we are likely to remain frozen for more than a few seconds. Especially when we are imagining the lion, the freeze might remain in place for many minutes, given that our imaginary lion is likely to linger with us for a long time.
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