Phenomenology therefore has another advantage over traditional reductive methods. In contrast to reductive approaches, phenomenology need not rely upon folk wisdom to generate hypotheses, because “phenomenology, in its practice of phenomenological reduction, suspends the common senses attitude (“natural attitude”) of folk psychology and aims to develop precise descriptions of experience as it is” (Gallagher, 2007 , pp. 130–131). The word “reduction” here should not be confused with “reductionism.” Whereas biological reductionism is aimed at elimi- nating the problem of consciousness by explaining it as composed of a simpler, physiological, and mechanical event in the nervous system, the phenomenological reduction is an attitude that sets aside assumptions about the reality of the natural world in order to observe precisely how experience unfolds before us. Such a radical step, rooted in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, is able to step back and observe experience with less reliance upon traditional metaphysical categories such as sub- jectivity, objectivity, mind, and body, which are presupposed by most cognitive science. The step of the phenomenological reduction is absolutely necessary because folk psychology is riddled with dualistic presuppositions, including the mind-body split and the cognitive- affective divide, which has plagued cognitive science and neuropsychology for more than a century. Only a radical phenomenological reduc- tion, which brackets such categorical distinctions, has a chance at truly building an experientially congruent description of affective phenomena.
At the same time that phenomenological description can bracket the natural atti- tude and place it in abeyance, the results of phenomenological research can be placed back into dialogue with correlational and experimental research on cogni- tion, affect, and the brain. This kind of dialogue between phenomenological and experimental research is described by Christopher Mruk ( 2008 ) as an “integrative phenomenological” approach. When restricted to a dialogue between cognitive neu- roscience and phenomenology, Francisco Varela, Shaun Gallagher, and others have referred to it as neurophenomenology (e.g., Gallagher, 2007 ; Varela, 1996 ; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991 ).
In addition, there has already been some success in the development of a mixed- method, phenomenological approach to understanding experiences of emotion. For example, in my phenomenological research on embarrassment, I studied the fi rst- person narratives of participants, which yielded the eidetic fi nding that, in essence, what it means to be embarrassed is to fi nd oneself subject to unwanted exposure (Robbins & Parlavecchio, 2006 ). The fi nding is “eidetic” in that it utilized the sec- ond step of the phenomenological method following Husserl’s phenomenological reduction. This second step, called the eidetic reduction , varies aspects of the phe- nomenon until what is left are only those aspects of the phenomenon that are essen- tial to its meaning. What remained as essential to embarrassment, after careful qualitative analysis, is the essential meaning of embarrassment as “fi nding oneself subject to unwanted exposure.” Then, in a subsequent study, I used a quantitative, experimental methodology to vary this theme in second-person perspective narra- tives (Robbins & Fleming, 2008 ). Using fi rst-person descriptions of embarrassment by participants from a prior study, the pronouns in the narratives were changed from fi rst-person to second-person pronouns. This had the effect of helping participants
read the descriptions in a way that allowed them to identify with the experience being described. After reading the narratives, participants numerically rated how embarrassed they would be if they actually experienced the situation described in the story. When participants read a narrative that included the theme of unwanted exposure, they, on average, rated it to be signifi cantly more embarrassing than when the theme of unwanted exposure was removed. The results clearly supported and validated the previous phenomenological fi ndings.
Likewise, in recent research published in The Humanistic Psychologist , I studied the phenomenology of suppressed laughter and again was able to validate these fi ndings using a quantitative method that varied thematic elements of second-person narratives (Robbins & Vandree, 2009 ). The qualitative, eidetic analysis identifi ed essential themes of suppressed laughter. A key fi nding was that suppressed laughter is a profoundly social phenomenon. A social context that included at least three actors was necessary for the suppressed laughter to occur. In addition, the social context necessitated a situation in which laughter was inappropriate, such as a class- room or funeral. A follow-up experimental study used second-person narrative descriptions of suppressed laughter and varied the themes of the social context. As predicted based on the eidetic analysis in the former study, the experimental results found that situations were rated as more humorous when laughter was inappropriate to the social context and also when a friend was present.
These mixed-method studies of embarrassment and laughter are a few examples of what could be a new paradigm of mixed-method phenomenological research.
Invariant thematic descriptions of phenomena, by the use of this method, can be better generalized beyond the small data set required for careful, methodical phe- nomenological description. These fi ndings, therefore, provide a fairly secure ground upon which to build a description of emotional experience that can be put into dia- logue with research in neuroscience. For example, the studies of embarrassment predict that genuine experiences of embarrassment and laughter involve a basic capacity for the social cognition of other minds, as well as the imagined perception of one’s self through the perspective of the other person. Neuroscience research shows that different brain regions are involved in the process of self-awareness from a fi rst-person perspective versus third-person perspective awareness of other per- sons (Banissy, Kanai, Walsh, & Rees, 2012 ; David et al., 2006 ; Vogeley, May, Ritzl, Falkai, Zilles, & Fink, 2004 ), and the capacity for third-person perspectivity is a developmental milestone that emerges in conjunction with the expression of embar- rassment (Moriguchi, Ohnishi, Mori, Matsuda, & Komaki, 2007 ). Consequently, emotions that involve complex social cognition, such as embarrassment and sup- pressed laughter, ought to involve brain regions closely associated with these social cognitive processes. For example, based on research on the development of the perception of other minds over the course of child and adolescent development, we might predict that embarrassment and suppressed laughter hinge upon activation of the superior temporal sulcus (STS), the temporal pole (TP), and the medial prefron- tal cortex (MPFC) (Moriguchi et al., 2007 ). Future imaging studies may bear this out or, if not, would lead to further questions in order to refi ne our understanding of these complex human emotions.
Using a different approach that is more about linking phenomenal experience to cognitive and brain function, Lutz, Lachaux, Martinerie, and Varela ( 2002 ) com- bined phenomenological descriptions by participants with EEG recordings and behavioral measures and were able to show, as described by Gallagher ( 2007 ), “cor- relations between experience (attention level), reaction times, and dynamic descrip- tions of the transient patterns of local and long-distance synchrony occurring between oscillating neural populations, specifi ed as dynamic neural signature (DNS)” (pp. 123–124). For more examples of this type of research, see Gallagher and Sorensen ( 2006 ).
So we are situated at a new frontier in affective neuroscience, and standing at this threshold, phenomenology has a unique opportunity to assert its relevance to the problems that are facing this highly infl uential subfi eld of psychological study. Yet some may question why it matters. Why should psychologists and neuroscientists be interested in a phenomenological approach? Within a reductive neuroscientifi c approach, the aim essentially is to eliminate psychological constructs from the picture. However, in contrast, neurophenomenology demonstrates why such a reductionism is neither possible nor desirable, because the structure of experience is more ontologically primary than physiological facts. To demonstrate this, I will turn to the philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. By gaining an understanding of the ontological primacy of experience, we can later return to address the benefi ts of an approach to emotion that gives primacy to emo- tional experience prior to examination of the physiological correlates of emotion.