Bodily Intelligence of Affect: Evolution and Behavioral Disposition

• In Event: 21081 - Section on Sociology of Body and Embodiment Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Bodies Reimagined

Abstract

This study proposes the notion of the bodily intelligence of affect as an imminent, relational force for social behavior, drawing on evolutionary sociology on innate human predispositions. Affect often refers to the nonconscious, visceral, and pre-linguistic bodily response that precedes conscious cognition, rational thought, and verbal representation. Paradoxically, it is not devoid of intelligence but enacts a different kind of intelligence about the world.
Affectively charged behavioral dispositions are phylogenetic memories embedded in human motor mechanisms through millions of years of evolutionary adaptation. Before the neocortex expansion and the emergence of symbolic culture, natural selection in the Savanna operated on the subcortical regions of hominin brains, significantly enhancing their affective capacities related to social bonding and group-level solidarity. Body language, rooted in visual perception, can be considered humanity’s primary language, as it conveys affect more reliably than Homo Sapiens’ acoustic language.
Affect plays a role in nearly all brain cognitive functions, including perception, attention, memory, and decision-making. It is affect that provides motivation for behavior that cannot be derived solely from logical calculation and reasoning. Thanks to diverse and differentiated behavioral dispositions, humans can develop complex and flexible behaviors that are highly responsive to varying environments.
The bodily intelligence of affect contains a variety of prescriptions for successfully addressing the numerous survival and reproduction challenges that our ancestors faced in the extended evolutionary adaptations. Empathy, fairness/equity sensitivity, and cooperation are representative bodily intelligence that has critically promoted hominin sociality. These dispositions were subject to natural selection even before the emergence of hominins’ rational thinking and linguistic representation and later served as the neurobiological basis for concepts of justice and fairness, which became regulated by culture and language.
Sociological inquiries into ideologies and discourses should pursue their intense neurological underpinnings as the bodily intelligence of affect.

Author

• Hangwoo Lee