Direct and Indirect Verbal and Bodily Insults and Other Forms of Aggressive Communication - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 236

positive image of ourselves so that others may adopt our goals, thereby gaining more
“ power of .” The image we present is generally functional to the type of adoption we
aim at: to hire me as a real-estate seller you evaluate me as to my extraversion
or argumentation skills, to choose me as a friend, as to my affective qualities. In
general, to be adopted, we must elicit a positive evaluation, i.e., show an image of
power in some areas (people adopt our goals because they esteem us); in rare cases
we obtain adoption by presenting an image of a lack of power (people help us out
of compassion), while an image of noxious power or moral lack of power results in
contempt, inducing others to reject us.
Since a third agent, Z, in choosing whether to adopt the goal of X or Y, compares
their respective values, a new kind of power stems from a power comparison:
to have “ more power than ” another. We all have a “ goal of image ” and a “ goal
of positive image ” (goal of esteem), including the goal of being evaluated better
than others, and all the goals against which we want to be evaluated positively by
others make up part of our goal of (positive) image .Wealsohavea self-image
(evaluative and nonevaluative beliefs about ourselves), a goal of self-image (we
want to know our actual worth, to decide which goals to pursue, leaving aside ones
beyond our reach), and a goal of positive self-image, or goal of self-esteem , to feel
confident about ourselves while pursuing goals. A person's image and self-image
are tightly connected since they determine each other, but a person's adaptation
mainly depends on his self-confidence, which mainly holds when his self-image is
not too dependent on the image other people have of him. Preserving a good image
and self-image is among the most important goals of a person, since it is a primary
source of power and a means to gain adoption, so much so that to discredit a person
is an aggressive act aimed at lowering his actual power.
To discredit someone or something (a person as well as a commercial product or
an institution) means to spoil its image before some audience, and it is a deliberate
or nondeliberate effect of some communicative action (Poggi and D'Errico 2012a ;
D'Errico et al. 2012 ). The object of discredit is some Target T, and discredit may
be cast on T either by some action performed by T itself or, deliberately or not,
by some communicative action by some Sender S that spoils T's image before
some Audience AU, showing that T is not so good, smart, powerful as he tries
to look. Politicians on political talk shows often try to discredit their opponents
by communicative acts of accusation, criticism, and insult performed verbally or
through bodily gestures.

13.2.2 Emotions

In this framework, emotions are multifaceted subjective states, encompassing inter-
nal feelings and cognitive, physiological, expressive, or motivational aspects that are
triggered any time an important adaptive goal of a biological system is, or is likely
to be, achieved or thwarted (Castelfranchi 2000 ). They monitor the achievement or
thwarting of important adaptive goals, like survival and wellbeing, the acquisition