I have found a source of some more plausible mechanisms tied to common emotions here: Dares, costly signals, and psychopaths (which references The Psychopath Code, see raw text on Github). These sources are focused on psychopaths but give extremely well-suited descriptions of the following classes of emotions:
The predator emotions help us hunt and capture prey.
The defense emotions prepare us to detect and deal with predators and competitors.
The sexual emotions drive us to find sexual partners.
The family emotions let us talk to our parents and care for our offspring.
The group emotions let us form small social groups.
The social emotions let us form looser and larger social groups.
Some examples:
Hunger [...] Your digestion slows. Your vision and hearing gets sharper and you focus on distinguishing prey from threats. You feel the need to move, yet you are careful to stay invisible. You walk without haste, and keep your posture relaxed. Your breathing is regular, slow.
Euphoria [...] Your hearing switches off and your vision tunnels in on your target. Your breathing and heartbeat accelerate. Blood flows to your muscles, and glucose feeds into your blood. Your eyes widen, your mouth opens, and you bare your teeth.
Surprise [...] “startle response.” You flinch away from the threat, and raise your arms in self-defense. You lift your eyebrows and open your eyes wide to see better. Your hearing gets sharp. You exhale hard to clear your lungs of carbon dioxide. Your heart accelerates and you breathe in deep to oxygenate your body for action.
Love - [...] We establish “closeness” by mutual physical contact. The kinds of contact depend on the relationship. The closer you are to another person the more you feel the emotion. Your eyebrows rise, your pupils widen, you smile and laugh and feel happy. You use open and dominant body language. You are more childlike: playful and uninhibited. You seek more contact. You need less sleep.
All of the descriptions are like this, and I think an excellent source when looking for mechanisms that facilitate the recognition of the more abstract patterns.
I have found a source of some more plausible mechanisms tied to common emotions here: Dares, costly signals, and psychopaths (which references The Psychopath Code, see raw text on Github). These sources are focused on psychopaths but give extremely well-suited descriptions of the following classes of emotions:
The predator emotions help us hunt and capture prey.
The defense emotions prepare us to detect and deal with predators and competitors.
The sexual emotions drive us to find sexual partners.
The family emotions let us talk to our parents and care for our offspring.
The group emotions let us form small social groups.
The social emotions let us form looser and larger social groups.
Some examples:
All of the descriptions are like this, and I think an excellent source when looking for mechanisms that facilitate the recognition of the more abstract patterns.