define emotion essay

Essays About Emotions: Top 6 Examples and Prompts

We all experience a vast range of emotions; read on to see our top examples of essays about emotions, and thought-provoking writing prompts.

Human beings use their emotions as an internal compass. They guide us through tough challenges and help create memorable moments that build relationships and communities. They give us strength that’s incomparable to intellect. They are powerful enough to drive our survival, bring down invincible-seeming tyrants, and even shape the future.

If you want to express your emotions through writing, creating an essay is a perfect way to materialize your thoughts and feelings. Read on for the best essay examples and help with your next essay about emotions.

1. Managing Emotions by Charlotte Nelson

2. how to deal with your emotions effectively by jayaram v, 3. music affects mood by delores goodwin, 4. emotions, stress, and ways to cope with them by anonymous on ivypanda, 5. essay on emotions: definition, characteristics, and importance by reshma s, 6. the most powerful emotion in marketing may surprise you by oliver yonchev, 9 writing prompts on essays about emotions to write about, 1. what are positive and negative emotions, 2. how to control and manage emotions for emotional people, 3. why it can benefit you to hide your emotions, 4. the power of emotional connection between siblings, 5. emotions make music, and music drives emotions, 6. psychopathic individuals and their emotions, 7. emotions expressed in art, 8. dance: physical expression of emotion, 9. lessons to learn from highly emotional scenes on screen.

“Emotions. They not just leave an impact on the organizations but on the organizational structure as well, and it is vital for leaders in the organization to deal with it.”

Nelson’s essay focuses on how emotions can be harmful if not managed properly. She also differentiates moods from emotions and the proper and improper emotional management methods.

“They are essential for your survival and serve a definite purpose in your life by giving you advance warning signals and alerting you to different situations.”  

Our feelings are important, and this essay points out that negative emotions aren’t always a bad thing. The important thing is we learn how to cope with them appropriately.

“So we just listen and close our eyes, and it is our song for three minutes because the singers understand.”

Goodwin’s essay explores how we feel various moods or emotions from listening to different genres of music. For example, she writes about how rock masks pain and releases daily tensions, how classical music encourages babies’ development, etc.

“Emotions play a unique role in the experiences and health outcomes of all people. A proper understanding of how to cope with emotions and stress can empower more individuals to record positive health outcomes.”

This essay incorporates stress into the topic of emotions and how to manage it. It’s no surprise that people can feel stress as a strong emotion. The essay explores the various methods of managing the two things and promoting health.

“Emotions can be understood as some sort of feelings or affective experiences which are characterized by some physiological changes that generally lead them to perform some of the other types of behavioral acts.”

Reshma uses a scientific approach to define emotion, the types of emotions, and how it works. The essay provides the characteristics of emotions, like being feeling being the core of emotion. It also included the importance of emotions and theories around them.

“The emotional part of the brain processes information five times more quickly than the rational part, which is why tapping into people’s emotions is so powerful.”

Instead of discussing emotions only, Yonchev uses his essay to write about the emotions used in marketing tactics. He focuses on how brands use powerful emotions like happiness and fear in their marketing strategies. A great example is Coca-Cola’s iconic use of marketing happiness, giving the brand a positive emotional connection to consumers.

You’ve read various essays about emotions. Now, it’s your turn to write about them. Here are essay ideas and prompts to help you find a specific track to write about.

Work out the definition of positive and negative emotions. Use this essay to provide examples of both types of emotions. For example, joy is a positive emotion, while irritation is negative. Read about emotions to back up your writing.

Depending on the scenario, many people are very open with their emotions and are quite emotional. The workplace is an example of a place where it’s better to put your emotions aside. Write an essay if you want to explore the best ways to handle your emotions during stressful moments.

You need to know when to hide your emotions, like in a poker game. Even if you don’t play poker, controlling or hiding your emotions provides some advantages. Keeping emotional reactions to yourself can help you remain professional in certain situations. Emotional reactions can also overwhelm you and keep you from thinking of a solution on the fly.

Close-knit families have powerful emotional connections to one another. Siblings have an incredibly unique relationship. You can think back to your experiences with your siblings and discuss how your relationship has driven you to be more emotionally open or distant from them.

Create a narrative essay to share your best memory with your siblings.

There’s a reason so many songs revolve around the “love at first sight” idea. A powerful emotion is something like giddiness from meeting someone for the first time and feeling love-struck by their behavior. Grief, anger, and betrayal are emotions that drive artists to create emotionally charged songs.

Some people have a misbelief that psychopaths don’t have emotions. If you’re diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) , the true definition of a psychopath in psychiatry, this is a perfect essay prompt. You can also use this if you’re studying psychology or have a keen interest in psychopathic behaviors or people around you.

Like music, art also has a deep link to emotions. People who see art have subjective reactions to it. If you’ve been given a piece of art to react to, consider writing an essay to express how you perceive and understand the piece, whether it’s a 2D abstract painting or a 3D wire sculpture.

A widely appreciated branch of art is dance. Contemporary dance is a popular way of expressing emotion today, but other types of dance are also great options. Whether classical ballroom, group hip hop, or ballet, your choice will depend on the type of dance you enjoy watching or doing. If you’re more physical or prefer watching dance, you may enjoy writing about emotional expression through dance instead of writing about art.

Do you have a favorite scene from a film or TV show? Use this essay topic to discuss your favorite scene and explain why you loved the emotional reactions of its characters. You can also compare them to a more realistic reaction.

Write a descriptive essay to describe your favorite scene before discussing the emotions involved.  

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

View all posts

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

No aspect of our mental life is more important to the quality and meaning of our existence than the emotions. They are what make life worth living and sometimes worth ending. So it is not surprising that most of the great classical philosophers had recognizable theories of emotions. These theories typically conceived of emotions as a subject’s phenomenologically salient responses to significant events and as capable of triggering distinctive bodily changes and behaviors. But it is surprising that throughout much of the twentieth-century, scientists and philosophers of mind tended to neglect the emotions—in part because of behaviorism’s allergy to inner mental states and in part because the variety of phenomena covered by the word “emotion” discourages tidy theorizing. In recent decades, however, emotions have once again become the focus of vigorous interest in philosophy and affective science. Our objective in this entry is to account for these developments, focusing primarily on the descriptive question of what the emotions are, but tackling also the normative question of whether emotions are rational. In view of the proliferation of exchanges between researchers of different stripes, it is no longer useful to speak of the philosophy of emotion in isolation from the approaches of other disciplines, particularly psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. This is why we have made an effort to pay significant attention to scientific developments, as we are convinced that cross-disciplinary fertilization is our best chance for making progress in emotion theory.

After some brief methodological remarks intended to clarify what differentiates a philosophical approach from a more general cognitive science perspective on the emotions, we begin by outlining some of the ways researchers have conceived of the place of emotions in the topography of the mind. We will note that emotions have historically been conceptualized in one of three main ways: as experiences, as evaluations, and as motivations. Each of these research traditions captures something true and significant about the emotions, but no theory within any tradition appears immune from counterexamples and problem cases. Concerning the rationality of emotions, we will distinguish two main varieties of it—cognitive rationality and strategic rationality—and explore a number of ways in which the emotions can succeed or fail with respect to different standards of rationality.

1. Defining the Emotions: What are the Desiderata?

2. three traditions in the study of emotions: emotions as feelings, evaluations, and motivations, 3. the early feeling tradition: emotions as feelings, 4. emotions and intentional objects, 5. the early evaluative tradition in philosophy: emotions as judgments, 6. the evaluative tradition in affective science: appraisal theories, 7.1 emotions as evaluative perceptions, 7.2 emotions as evaluative feelings, 7.3 emotions as patterns of salience, 8.1 basic emotion theory: emotions as evolved affect programs, 8.2 the behavioral ecology view, psychological constructionism and social constructionism: emotions as constructions, 9.1 attitudinal and motivational theories: emotions as attitudes and motive states, 9.2 enactivist theories of emotions: emotions as enactions, 10.1 cognitive rationality as fittingness, warrant and coherence, 10.2 instrumental and substantive strategic rationality, 11. concluding remarks, cited works, other internet resources, related entries.

Two broad desiderata have governed the project of defining emotions in both philosophy and affective science: (a) Achieving compatibility with ordinary linguistic usage, and (b) Achieving theoretical fruitfulness. A definition that aims exclusively at (a) is a descriptive definition. A definition that aims at (b) at the cost of possibly violating some ordinary intuitions is prescriptive . To secure ordinary language compatibility, traditional philosophers have relied on introspection, thought experiments, casual observation, gleaning of insights from literary texts and other artistic sources, and more recently, experimental tests of ordinary intuitions and of the psychological processes underlying them performed within “experimental philosophy”.

Scientists have also been interested in the study of folk emotion concepts, and they have applied to them experimental techniques common in the psychology of concepts. These techniques have revealed that emotion concepts, like most ordinary concepts, are prototypically organized (Fehr & Russell 1984). There are better and worse examples of emotions as ordinarily understood (e.g., fear is a better example of emotion than awe) and there are borderline cases, such as boredom: on those, ordinary language users are split as to whether they qualify as emotions. A variety of psychological structures have been proposed by concept theorists to account for membership in folk emotion categories, including similarity to prototypes, exemplars, perceptual symbols and others (Fehr & Russell 1984; Wilson-Mendenhall et al. 2011).

What philosophers and affective scientists aim to offer are prescriptive definitions of emotions that preserve as much ordinary language compatibility as it is compatible with serving interest-dependent theoretical objectives. One reason why theoreticians are not merely interested in outlining the contours of folk emotion concepts through descriptive definitions is that they suspect that such concepts may include widely diverse items that are not amenable to any robust theoretical generalizations.

At first blush, the things we ordinarily call emotions differ from one another along several dimensions. For example, some emotions are occurrences (e.g., panic), and others are dispositions (e.g., hostility); some are short-lived (e.g., anger) and others are long-lived (e.g., grief); some involve primitive cognitive processing (e.g., fear of a suddenly looming object), and others involve sophisticated cognitive processing (e.g., fear of losing a chess match); some are conscious (e.g., disgust about an insect in the mouth) and others are unconscious (e.g., unconscious fear of failing in life); some have prototypical facial expressions (e.g., surprise) and others lack them (e.g., regret). Some involve strong motivations to act (e.g., rage) and others do not (e.g., sadness). Some are present across species (e.g., fear) and others are exclusively human (e.g., schadenfreude). And so on.

This multi-dimensional heterogeneity has led some to conclude that folk emotion categories do not designate natural kinds, either with respect to the generic category of emotion (Rorty 1980b, 2003; Griffiths 1997; Russell 2003; Zachar 2006; Kagan 2007, 2010) or with respect to specific emotion categories such as anger, fear, happiness, disgust, and so on (Scarantino 2012; Barrett 2006, 2017). Others have argued that there is, nevertheless, enough homogeneity among instances of folk emotion categories to allow them to qualify as natural kinds (e.g., Charland 2002; Prinz 2004; Zinck & Newen 2008).

The concept of a natural kind is itself contentious and probably more suitable for discussing the categories affective scientists are interested in, so we will speak of theoretical kinds instead, understood as groupings of entities that participate in a body of philosophically or scientifically interesting generalizations due to some set of properties they have in common.

Whether folk emotion categories are homogeneous enough to qualify as theoretical kinds has important methodological implications. To the extent that they are, the prescriptive definitions of emotions the theorist offers can achieve both theoretical fruitfulness and maximal compatibility with ordinary linguistic usage (in such case, prescriptive definitions will also be descriptively adequate). To the extent that they are not homogeneous enough, prescriptive definitions will have to explicate folk emotion categories, transforming them so as to increase theoretical fruitfulness while giving up on some degree of ordinary language compatibility (Carnap 1950).

Theoretical fruitfulness, however, is conceived differently by philosophers and affective scientists. The former often have as their primary target making sense of the human experience of emotions and sometimes to contribute to other projects in philosophy, such as explaining the origins of rational action or moral judgment, or shedding light on what makes life worth living, or investigating the nature of self-knowledge. Affective scientists, by contrast, are more likely to favor a third-person approach that may be highly revisionary with respect to our first-person self-understanding. And their prescriptive definitions are often designed to promote measurement and experimentation for the purposes of prediction and explanation in a specific scientific discipline.

In this entry, we will assess philosophical and scientific definitions of emotions in terms of both ordinary language compatibility and theoretical fruitfulness, but acknowledge that the field currently lacks clear guidelines for how to strike a proper balance between these two desiderata.

“Emotion” is a term that came into use in the English language in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a translation of the French term “ émotion ” but did not designate “a category of mental states that might be systematically studied” until the mid-nineteenth century (Dixon 2012: 338; see also Dixon 2003; Solomon 2008). At the same time, many of the things we call emotions today have been the object of theoretical analysis since Ancient Greece, under a variety of language-specific labels such as passion , sentiment, affection, affect, disturbance, movement, perturbation, upheaval, or appetite . This makes for a long and complicated history, which has progressively led to the development of a variety of shared insights about the nature and function of emotions, but no consensual definition of what emotions are, either in philosophy or in affective science.

A widely shared insight is that emotions have components, and that such components are jointly instantiated in prototypical episodes of emotions. Consider an episode of intense fear due to the sudden appearance of a grizzly bear on your path while hiking. At first blush, we can distinguish in the complex event that is fear an evaluative component (e.g., appraising the bear as dangerous), a physiological component (e.g., increased heart rate and blood pressure), a phenomenological component (e.g., an unpleasant feeling), an expressive component (e.g., upper eyelids raised, jaw dropped open, lips stretched horizontally), a behavioral component (e.g., a tendency to flee), and a mental component (e.g., focusing attention).

One question that has divided emotion theorists is: Which subset of the evaluative, physiological, phenomenological, expressive, behavioral, and mental components is essential to emotion? The answer to this “problem of parts” (Prinz 2004) has changed at various times in the history of the subject, leading to a vast collection of theories of emotions both in philosophy and in affective science. Although such theories differ on multiple dimensions, they can be usefully sorted into three broad traditions, which we call the Feeling Tradition, the Evaluative Tradition and the Motivational Tradition (Scarantino 2016).

The Feeling Tradition takes the way emotions feel to be their most essential characteristic, and defines emotions as distinctive conscious experiences. The Evaluative Tradition regards the way emotions construe the world as primary, and defines emotions as being (or involving) distinctive evaluations of the eliciting circumstances. The Motivational Tradition defines emotions as distinctive motivational states.

Each tradition faces the task of articulating a prescriptive definition of emotions that is theoretically fruitful and compatible at least to some degree with ordinary linguistic usage. And although there are discipline-specific theoretical objectives, there also is a core set of explanatory challenges that tends to be shared across disciplines:

• Differentiation : How are emotions different from one another, and from things that are not emotions?
• Motivation : Do emotions motivate behavior, and if so how?
• Intentionality : Do emotions have object-directedness, and if so can they be appropriate or inappropriate to their objects?
• Phenomenology : Do emotions always involve subjective experiences, and if so of what kind?

For example, a viable account of anger should tell us how anger differs from fear and from non-emotional states (differentiation), whether and how anger motivates aggressive behaviors (motivation), whether and how anger can be about a given state of affairs and be considered appropriate with respect to such state of affairs (intentionality), and whether and how anger involves a distinctive subjective experience (phenomenology).

We now consider some of the most prominent theories within each tradition, and assess how they fare with respect to these four theoretical challenges and others. As we shall see, each tradition seems to capture something important about what the emotions are, but none is immune from counterexamples and problem cases. As a result, the most recent trend in emotion theory is represented by theories that straddle traditions, in an attempt to combine their distinctive insights. Although we begin our investigation with William James and will occasionally mention earlier accounts, our primary focus will be on theories developed in the last 50 years.

The simplest theory of emotions, and perhaps the theory most representative of common sense, is that emotions are simply a class of feelings, differentiated by their experienced quality from other sensory experiences like tasting chocolate or proprioceptions like sensing a pain in one’s lower back. The idea that emotions are a specific kind of subjective experiences has dominated emotion theory roughly from Ancient Greece to the beginning of the twentieth century.

This idea can be interpreted in either of two ways. The great classical philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Locke—all understood emotions to involve feelings understood as primitives without component parts. An alternative idea was first introduced by William James, who argued that scientific psychology should stop treating feelings as “eternal and sacred psychic entities, like the old immutable species in natural history” (James 1890: 449).

James’ proposal, often labeled as the James-Lange theory because it is rather similar to the one offered around the same time by Lange (1885), stated that emotions are feelings constituted by perceptions of changes in physiological conditions relating to the autonomic and motor functions. When we perceive that we are in danger, for example, this perception directly sets off a collection of bodily responses, and our awareness of these responses is what constitutes fear. James thus maintained that “ our feeling of [bodily] changes as they occur IS the emotion” (James 1884: 189–190, emphasis in original).

The James-Lange theory fared well with respect to the problem of phenomenology, in the sense that it replaced the brute phenomenology favored by earlier accounts with a constructivist account of the “processes that generate and construct…conscious experiences” (Mandler 1990: 180). This approach has acquired new prominence in recent times with the affirmation of the psychological constructionist movement in affective science ( section 8.2 ).

But the James-Lange theory seemed less successful with respect to the challenges of motivation, differentiation and intentionality. First, James stated that common sense is wrong about the direction of causation concerning emotions and bodily changes: a more appropriate statement is that

we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful. (James 1884: 190)

The counterintuitive implication that emotions do not cause their manifestations but rather emerge from them struck many as problematic, because it seemed to undermine the idea that emotions are important to us. How could they be so important, critics like Dewey (1894, 1895) asked, if they have no causal import with respect to actions? And why, one might add, does science not first seek to explain the cause and function of those original “bodily changes”, namely why the emotion is elicited in the first place? (Arnold 1960).

Furthermore, the theory lacked an adequate account of the differences between emotions. This objection was influentially voiced by Walter Cannon (1929). According to a common interpretation of the James-Lange theory, what distinguishes emotions from one another is the fact that each involves the perception of a distinctive set of bodily changes. Cannon countered that the visceral reactions characteristic of distinct emotions such as fear and anger are indistinguishable, and so these reactions cannot be what allows us to tell emotions apart.

Subsequent research has not fully settled whether emotions do, in fact, have significantly different bodily profiles, either at the autonomic, expressive or neural level (for the latest on bodily signatures, see Clark-Polner et al. 2016; Duran et al. 2017; Kragel & LaBar 2016; Nummenmaa & Saarimäki forthcoming; Keltner et al. 2016). Independently of how the empirical debate on bodily signatures is settled, brain or bodily changes and the feelings accompanying these changes can get us only part way towards an adequate taxonomy.

Another major stumbling block for the James-Lange theory is that it does not yield any insight into emotions’ role in our life as rational agents and thinkers. Emotions, however, are capable of being not only explained, but also justified. If someone angers me, I can cite my antagonist’s deprecatory tone; if someone makes me jealous, I can point to his poaching on my emotional property (Taylor 1975). If emotions were merely feelings, as James suggested, it would be difficult to explain why they can be justified in light of reasons, just as we would be hard pressed to justify the sensory experience of tasting chocolate or feeling pain in one’s lower back.

To shed light on the sense in which emotions can be justified requires a brief detour on the topic of their “object-directedness” or “aboutness” or “intentionality”. The first distinction we need to draw is the one between particular objects and formal objects of emotions. As Kenny (1963) first emphasized, any X that I can have emotion E about is a particular object of E , whereas the formal object of E is the property which I implicitly ascribe to X by virtue of having E about X .

For example, the particular object of fear is anything a person can be afraid of, whereas the formal object of fear is “that which constitutes danger”, on the assumption that only what is evaluated as dangerous can intelligibly be feared. Particular and formal objects constitute the two principal aspects of emotional intentionality: emotions are object-directed insofar as they have particular objects, and they are fitting insofar as their particular objects instantiate the formal objects represented by the emotion (see section 10.1 ).

The second distinction we wish to draw is that between two types of particular objects of emotions: target objects and propositional objects (de Sousa 1987). The target object of an emotion is the specific entity the emotion is about. For example, love can be about Mary, or about Bangkok, or about Homer Simpson and so on. These are all possible targets of love, and they may be real or imaginary.

Not every emotion has a target. I may be angry that my life has turned out a certain way, without there being any particular entity—myself or anyone else—at which my anger is directed. Propositional objects capture facts or states of affairs, real or imagined, towards which my emotion is directed. Conversely, not all emotions have a propositional object. For example, if Mary is the target of my love, there may be no proposition, however complex, that captures what it is that I love about Mary (Kraut 1986; Rorty 1987 [1988]).

Finally, there also appear to be affective states that lack both types of particular objects: they are neither directed at a particular entity nor are they about a state of affairs captured by a proposition. For example, I can be depressed or elated but not depressed or elated about any specific target or fact. These seemingly objectless affective states share many properties with object-directed emotions, especially with respect to their physiological and motivational aspects, so we may consider them to be emotions without objects.

On the other hand, some have suggested that such objectless states are better regarded as moods (Frijda 1994; Stephan 2017a). Whether we think of seemingly objectless affective states as emotions or moods, we must decide what kinds of objects they lack. Here two main options are available. The first is to assert that some affective states have neither particular objects nor formal objects. If we think of moods and objectless emotions that way, it becomes hard to explain how such affective states may have conditions of correctness—formal objects being among other things descriptions of what the world must be like for the affective state to be fitting (Teroni 2007).

If instead we think of such affective states as having formal objects and conditions of correctness, then their objectlessness is only apparent, because they need to have targets or propositional objects of some kind to which they implicitly ascribe the property defined by the formal object. This is the view of moods defended among others by Goldie (2000), who thinks moods take the whole world as their object, and by Price (2006), who thinks that moods have generic objects but “watch out” for particular ones.

What are the formal objects of specific emotions? This is a controversial topic, because the ascription of formal objects commits one to the claim that each emotion, on conceptual grounds, ascribes a specific property to its particular object. This is often identified with one of a number of “core relational themes” originally offered by Richard Lazarus (1991a,b) to explain what sorts of evaluations cause emotions, one of the primary concerns of appraisal theories in psychology ( section 6 ).

Within that framework, anger represents slights, fear represents dangers, shame represents failures to live up to an ego ideal, sadness represents losses, happiness represents progress towards goal achievement, pride represents enhancement of one’s ego identity (Prinz 2004; Lazarus 1991b). Once the formal object of an emotion has been clarified, we can use it to justify emotions by citing their conditions of elicitation. For example, if anger represents slights, then my antagonist’s deprecatory tone can be cited as a justification of my anger, because a deprecatory tone instantiates the very property that anger represents.

Evaluative theories of emotions, a.k.a. cognitive theories of emotions, became popular in both philosophy and affective science roughly in the 1960s and come in many flavors. A key distinction is that between constitutive and causal evaluative theories. Constitutive theories state that emotions are cognitions or evaluations of particular kinds, whereas causal theories state that emotions are caused by cognitions or evaluations of particular kinds. The constitutive approach tends to be dominant in philosophy, while the causal approach enjoys significant support in psychology. Let us consider these two strands of cognitivism in turn.

The emergence of the constitutive approach in philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century can be traced to a pair of articles by C.D. Broad (1954) and Errol Bedford (1957), and a book by Anthony Kenny (1963) (see also Pitcher 1965; Thalberg 1964). These authors were not the first to emphasize that emotions are object-directed or endowed with intentionality—Brentano (1874 [1995]) had already done so with inspiration from various medieval authors (King 2010). But these mid-twentieth century philosophers were the first to articulate an influential argument to the effect that, in order to account for their intentionality, emotions must be cognitive evaluations of some kind rather than feelings (see also Meinong 1894).

The argument goes roughly like this. If emotions have intentionality, it follows that there are internal standards of appropriateness according to which an emotion is appropriate just in case its formal object is instantiated (Kenny 1963). But feelings are not the kinds of things that can enter into conceptual relations with formal objects. So, to be properly embedded in conceptual relations of this sort, emotions need to be or involve “cognitive evaluations” of some kind.

What kinds of cognitive evaluations? The most parsimonious type of cognitivist theory follows the Stoics in identifying emotions with judgments. Robert Solomon (1980), Jerome Neu (2000) and Martha Nussbaum (2001) take this approach. On a common interpretation of their view, my anger at someone is the judgment that I have been wronged by that person. To generalize, the proposal is that an emotion E is a judgment that the formal object of E is instantiated (by some particular object X ).

This theory is often referred to as judgmentalism , but the label is potentially misleading, because it suggests that for the theory’s proponents an emotion is nothing but a judgment, understood as an assent to a proposition. This interpretation is indeed presupposed by some of the standard critiques of judgmentalism.

First, it is argued that judgmentalism does not explain how emotions can motivate, because one can hold a judgment—say the judgment that I have been wronged—without being motivated to act on it. Second, it does not explain the phenomenology of emotions, because holding a judgment lacks the bodily, valence and arousal dimensions that typically characterize the experience of emotion. Third, it fails to account for the emotions of animals and infants, who arguably lack the capacity of assenting to propositions (Deigh 1994). Fourth, it does not explain the “recalcitrance to reason” some emotions display when they are not extinguished by judgments that contradict them, as when someone judges that flying is not dangerous but continues to be afraid of it (D’Arms & Jacobson 2003).

Judgmentalists have tried to address these critiques by clarifying what sorts of judgments emotions are (and some, like Nussbaum and Neu, have explicitly rejected the label of judgmentalism). It has been argued for instance that we should think of judgments as “enclosing a core desire” (Solomon 2003: 105–106), which makes them motivational (e.g., fear encloses the core desire to flee). Such judgments are also “dynamic” and able to “house…the disorderly motions of emotion” (Nussbaum 2001: 45), and thus phenomenologically salient; since they involve pre-linguistic and non-linguistic acceptance of how the world seems, they are available to infants and animals; finally, as they are capable of being held jointly with contradictory judgments, they can explain recalcitrance to reason (Nussbaum 2001).

Several objections have been launched against this strategy. Just to pick a prominent example among many, it has been argued is that explaining recalcitrance to reason in terms of contradictory judgments—judging that p and that not- p —ascribes to agents the wrong kind of irrationality (Helm 2001, 2015; see also Döring 2008; Benbaji 2012; Brady 2009; Tappolet 2000, Faucher & Tappolet 2008a, b). There may be a broader problem at work here, namely that judgmentalists stretch the meaning of the concept of “judgment” in an unprincipled way to account for all counterexamples, instead of distinguishing between importantly different types of cognitive states all subsumed under the same heading.

The trouble with this elastic strategy is not only that it is ad hoc, but also that it creates cross-purpose talk and ultimately amounts to a pyrrhic victory for the evaluative theory, because, on a sufficiently expanded notion of judgment, the identification of emotions with judgments becomes at best trivially true and fails to shed light on what emotions are (Scarantino 2010).

Two more promising strategies have been put in place to defend cognitivism from counterexamples. The first, which we call the judgmentalist add-on strategy (Goldie 2000), consists of explicitly adding on to judgments other components of emotions, rather than embedding them into judgments through the elastic strategy. For instance, the motivational dimension of emotions has been accounted for by suggesting that emotions are not just judgments, but rather combinations of judgments (or beliefs) and desires (Marks 1982; Green 1992; Gordon 1987). Other authors have added further elements, proposing that emotions are combinations of judgments, desires and feelings, a move intended to account for both motivational and phenomenological dimensions of emotions (Lyons 1980).

Another strategy, which may be called the alternate cognitions strategy , consists of replacing the broad notion of judgment with a variety of other types of cognitive evaluations that can account for the intentionality of emotions while avoiding some of the critiques that have been raised against judgmentalism. Since most of the action in contemporary philosophy of emotions focuses on which alternate cognitions are to be preferred, we will devote a whole section to the topic. First, we discuss how the Evaluative Tradition has been developed in affective science.

Roughly around the time when the Evaluative Tradition became popular in philosophy, a parallel tradition emerged in affective science through the pioneering work of Magda Arnold and Richard Lazarus. What powered this development was in part the cognitivist revolution, the intellectual movement that replaced behaviorism in the 1960s and put the cognitive processing of mental representations at the heart of the science of psychology.

Arnold argued that emotion research had neglected to explain how emotions are elicited. To shed light on the matter, she introduced the notion of appraisal , the process through which the significance of a situation for an individual is determined. Appraisal gives rise to attraction or aversion, and emotion is equated for Arnold with this

felt tendency toward anything intuitively appraised as good (beneficial), or away from anything intuitively appraised as bad (harmful). (Arnold 1960: 171)

Several authors prior to Arnold had acknowledged that emotions must be produced by some sort of cognitive evaluation of the eliciting circumstances, either in the form of a judgment, a thought, a perception, or an act of imagination. After all, it is quite clear that the same stimulus can generate different emotions in different people, or in the same person at different times, which suggests that it is not stimuli as such that elicit emotions, but stimuli as appraised.

Arnold (1960) was the first to subject the internal structure of the appraisal process to scientific investigation. Appraisals, she suggested, are made along three primary dimensions: eliciting circumstances can be evaluated as good or bad, present or absent, and easy to attain or avoid. For example, the cognitive evaluation that causes fear can be described as the appraisal of an event as bad, absent but possible in the future, and hard to avoid; whereas the cause of joy can be described as the appraisal of an event as good, present and easy to maintain.

Broadly speaking, appraisal theories of emotions are accounts of the structure of the processes that extract significance from stimuli and differentiate emotions from one another. It is also frequently assumed that appraisal is a dynamic process: appraisals are followed by re-appraisals, which follow changes in the environment and in internal variables, and incrementally shape emotions over time.

It should be noted that appraisal theories do not properly qualify as theories of what emotions are, even though individual appraisal theorists often articulate such theories as a complement to their theories of the structure of appraisal. More specifically, appraisal theories are in principle compatible with theories of emotions that identify them as evaluations, feelings, or motivations, as long as such theories acknowledge that appraisals play an essential role in differentiating emotions from one another. This being said, a great many influential appraisal theorists—including Arnold, Lazarus and Scherer—offer theories of emotions that would best fit into the Motivational Tradition.

Scientific theories have significantly developed our understanding of the nature of appraisal, endowing it with even more structure than Arnold originally envisioned (e.g., C. Smith & Ellsworth 1985; Frijda 1986; Lazarus 1991a,b; Roseman 1996; Scherer 2001; Ellsworth & Scherer 2003; Roseman & Smith 2001; Oatley & Johnson-Laird 1987).

Lazarus (1991b), for instance, introduced six structural dimensions of assessment, including (1) goal-relevance, (2) goal-congruence or incongruence, (3) type of ego-involvement, (4) blame or credit, (5) coping potential, and (6) future expectancy. For example, guilt is assumed to be caused by the appraisal of an event as goal relevant, goal-incongruent, involving a moral transgression, and one for which the self is to blame (coping potential and future expectancy appraisals are left open). Lazarus’ own theory of emotions is labeled as cognitive-relational-motivational, because it holds that

emotion is a complex state, an AB, with [appraisal] A as cause and B as a combination of an action tendency, physiological change, and subjective affect, (Lazarus 1991a: 819)

whereby the appraisal is not just a cause of emotion but also a part of it (see Moors 2013 for a critique of this assumption).

Scherer et al. (2001) distinguished between sixteen dimensions of appraisal, labeled Stimulus Evaluation Checks (SECs), which can be grouped into four classes: appraisals of relevance, appraisals of consequences, appraisals of coping potential, and appraisals of normative significance. On Scherer’s component process model,

[e]motion is defined as an episode of interrelated, synchronized changes in the states of all or most of the five organismic subsystems in response to the evaluation of an external or internal stimulus event as relevant to major concerns of the organism. (Scherer 2005: 697)

The five organismic subsystems underlie five emotion components which, when engaged in coordinated changes, instantiate emotions: an appraisal, autonomic physiological changes, an action tendency, a motor expression, and a subjective feeling. In his more recent collaborative work (Moors & Scherer 2013), Scherer has suggested that the point of each stimulus evaluation check is actually to determine action tendencies, which would give pride of place to the motivational component and make his theory an evaluative-motivational hybrid (see also Scherer & Moors forthcoming).

A variant of appraisal theories has recently attracted some interest in affective computing, an interdisciplinary approach that combines insights from affective science and computer science (see Picard 1997). This is the Belief and Desire Theory of Emotions (BDTE) developed by Reisenzein (2009a,b; see also Miceli & Castelfranchi 2015). The BDTE holds that emotions are caused by a combination of cognitive evaluations (beliefs) and conative motivations (desires), whereas standard appraisal theories postulate cognitive evaluations of motive-congruence, which in effect assesses the degree to which the stimulus is congruent with the goals/desires of the agent.

BDTE’s core thesis is that emotions are elicited by hardwired mechanisms whose evolutionary function is to compare newly acquired beliefs with existing desires and existing beliefs, thereby monitoring and updating the central representational system of humans (the belief–desire system). For example, suppose you have a belief that your favorite candidate will lose the election and a desire that she win the election (Reisenzein 2009a). Once new information that she has in fact won the election is acquired, a belief-belief-comparator system produces a belief disconfirmation signal subjectively experienced as surprise, and a belief-desire-comparator system produces a desire fulfillment signal subjectively experienced as pleasure. This in turn leads to adaptive responses which include a refocusing of attention to the new content that one’s favorite candidate won, the deletion of the belief that one’s favorite candidate was going to lose, and the subjective experience of happiness.

To generalize, emotions are for the BDTE combinations of belief disconfirmation/confirmation signals and desire fulfillment/frustration signals experienced as, respectively, surprise/expectancy confirmation and pleasure/displeasure, which blend into an emergent experience of a specific emotion (e.g., happiness, fear, hope, etc.). These signals are non-conceptual, in the sense that they do not presuppose concept use, and they bring about redirection of attention, updates of the belief and desire store, and, when above threshold, distinctive subjective experiences.

A challenge faced by appraisal theories concerns whether appraisals are causes of emotions, entailments of emotions, parts of emotions, or some combination of the above. These questions raise complex conceptual issues we cannot address here (see Moors 2013), but they are essential for assessing the evidentiary support for appraisal theory. A long-running critique of the research program (Oatley 1992; Parkinson & Manstead 1992; Parkinson 1997; Russell 1987; Frijda 1993) has been that the self-report evidence commonly taken to support a causal interpretation of the relation between appraisals and emotions only supports a relation of conceptual entailment between them because it unveils people’s beliefs about what makes emotions appropriate rather than what causes emotions (see Scherer 2009 for a response).

7. The Hybrid Evaluative-Feeling Tradition in Recent Philosophy

We mentioned earlier that a popular response to the critiques received by philosophical judgmentalism has been the alternate cognitions strategy , intended to better account for their intentionality, differentiation, motivational power, and phenomenology, as well as their potential recalcitrance.

This has led to a gradual convergence of the Evaluative and Feeling Traditions, with the former now identifying emotions as evaluative perceptions with a distinctive phenomenology and the latter identifying emotions as evaluative feelings with a distinctive intentionality. As a result, the distinction between evaluative (or cognitivist) theories and feeling theories is increasingly blurred, with most of the dominant accounts in the philosophy of emotions now qualifying as hybrids.

Perceptual theories come in literal/strong and non-literal/weak varieties (Brady 2013; Salmela 2011). Strong versions generally assume that emotions are genuine forms of perception along the lines of sensory perception; weak versions stress key properties emotions share with sensory perception, while also acknowledging important differences.

Prinz’s Neo-Jamesian theory is a good example of a strong perceptual theory. For Prinz (2004), we can speak of a bona fide perceptual system when we are in the presence of a dedicated input system with specialized transducers and mental representations. Sensory perception clearly has input systems dedicated to vision, olfaction, touch, hearing, and taste. Following in the footsteps of Damasio’s (1994, 2003) neuroscientific work, Prinz suggests that emotions can also rely on a dedicated system within the somatosensory system. Thus, emotions literally are perceptions of bodily changes, either at the visceral, hormonal, or musculoskeletal levels, or in the form of changes in the somatosensory brain areas.

Prinz adds that emotions are not just perceptions of bodily changes, from which it follows that two emotions can differ from one another despite involving indistinguishable perceptions of bodily changes. For example, fear is not just the perception of “a racing heart and…other physiological changes” (Prinz 2004: 69): it also has a distinctive function—being elicited by danger—and a specific negative valence marker—less of this!—which motivates avoidant action. Since on a teleosemantic theory of representation mental states represent what they have the function of indicating (Prinz 2004; Dretske 1988), Prinz concludes that perceiving a racing heart can also represents danger insofar as it has the function of indicating it (but see Shargel & Prinz 2018; Robinson 2005). To sum up, subjects literally perceive bodily changes (the nominal content) and indirectly perceive the formal object (the real content) by virtue of the fact that bodily changes represent formal objects.

Weak perceptual theories take emotions to be relevantly analogous to sensory perception or proprioception. In addition, most take emotions to be direct perceptions of formal objects rather than perceptions of bodily changes with the function of tracking formal objects.

An influential proposal in this vein is offered by Roberts (2003), who holds that “emotions are a kind of perception” (2003: 87) in the form of concern-based construals. Roberts clarifies that construals are “impressions, ways things appear to the subject” (2003: 75) and that they are concern-based by virtue of being based on the subject’s desires and aversions. For example, a father’s fear that a fire will hurt his daughter is a construal of the fire as dangerous based on the father’s desire that nothing bad happen to his daughter.

Along similar lines, Tappolet (2016) suggests that emotions are perceptual experiences of evaluative properties (a.k.a. values) like dangerousness (fear) or slights (anger). Some authors add that such evaluative properties are not available through any others means, just like color properties are not available except by courtesy of visual perception (see, e.g., Johnston 2001).

Tappolet emphasizes that evaluative perception, just like sensory perception, is non-conceptual in nature and cognitively impenetrable (see also Döring 2007; Döring & Lutz 2015; Goldie 2000; Tappolet 2000; Goldie 2002; Wollheim 1999; Charland 1995; Zajonc 2000). This would explain why creatures who do not possess concepts, like animals and pre-linguistic infants, can have emotions, and it would account for emotional recalcitrance, which can be understood along the lines of a visual illusion. As we visually perceive a pencil as bent while judging it to be straight, so we emotionally perceive a transparent platform over the Grand Canyon as dangerous while judging it to be non-dangerous.

Tappolet (2016) lists additional features that help explain why so many authors have come to think of emotions as perceptions: (a) both emotions and perceptions have salient phenomenal properties, (b) both are elicited automatically by real or imagined objects, (c) both have correctness conditions because they represent the world as being a certain way, and (d) both play the epistemic role of providing defeasible reasons for belief (e.g., visual perception for the belief that something is blue, and fear for the belief that something is dangerous).

These analogies notwithstanding, several critics have rejected perceptual theories of emotions (e.g., Salmela 2011; Dokic & Lemaire 2013). A prominent critique concerns their inability to account for emotional recalcitrance. For example, Helm (2001) has argued that perceptualists have ended up removing the irrationality that is distinctive of recalcitrance. If perceiving a transparent platform over the Grand Canyon as dangerous while judging it to be non-dangerous were just like a visual illusion, then there would be nothing irrational about it, as there is nothing irrational in seeing a pencil as bent while judging it to be straight. But there clearly is some measure of irrationality involved in recalcitrant emotions: unlike perceptual illusions, they motivate us to act. In other words, they involve a passive assent which contradicts the active assent captured by the contradicting judgment.

Several authors have proposed theories that endow feelings with intentionality. A notable example is that of Goldie (2000), who identifies the intentionality of emotions with that of feelings towards , which are not just bodily feelings that borrow their intentionality from somewhere else, as in Prinz’s account, but are instead supposed to have their own, intrinsic intentionality (see also Döring 2007; Pugmire 1998). For example, when I feel fear about slipping on ice, my feeling is towards the ice as being dangerous. This sort of feeling is a matter of thinking of the ice with feeling, and cannot be reduced to a combination of a non-intentional bodily feeling and a non-emotional evaluative thought. As Goldie puts it,

emotional feelings are inextricably intertwined with the world-directed aspect of emotion, so that an adequate account of an emotion’s intentionality…will at the same time capture an important aspect of its phenomenology. (Goldie 2002: 242; see also Ratcliffe 2005, 2017)

In a similar vein, Helm (2009: 8) proposes that “emotions are intentional feelings of import” which are either pleasurable or unpleasant. On Helm’s view,

[f]or something to have import to you—for you to care about it—is (roughly) for it to be worthy of attention and action. (Helm 2009: 252)

This explains why emotions motivate action: feeling that something is worthy of attention and action is being motivated. It also explains what makes a recalcitrant emotion irrational. By judging a transparent platform over the Grand Canyon as not dangerous and yet fearing it, the subject is judging that what he or she feels is worthy of attention and action actually isn’t, thereby undertaking evaluative commitments at odds with one another (Helm 2015: 430–431).

Some of the views that ascribe intentionality to feelings are inspired by the broader research program of representationalism in the philosophy of mind, which is the view that phenomenal properties are identifiable with, or at least reducible to, intentional properties (Dretske 1995; Horgan & Tienson 2002). In some variants of representationalism, the emotional phenomenology that gets to be reduced is merely somatic, in the sense that the feeling is directed at bodily events (e.g., Tye 1995). In other variants, the phenomenology is much richer, as it comprises somatic, cognitive, conative and irreducibly affective components directed at particular and formal objects in the world (e.g., Kriegel 2012).

An alternative embraced by some contemporary feeling theorists is to argue that emotions are feelings devoid of any intentional objects. The contrary impression is an illusion, deriving from the fact that the feelings we call emotions are typically caused by thoughts with an intentional structure with which they are associated in a “composite” experience (Whiting 2011; Goldstein 2002). On this view, fear of the ice is a composite mental state consisting of an emotion—the objectless feeling of fear—plus a thought with the ice as its intentional object. In themselves, emotions are merely hedonic feelings without intentionality. The grounds claimed for this view are explicitly phenomenological, however, and since most researchers’ introspection appears to deliver the contrary verdict that emotions are themselves object-directed, the composite view fails to persuade (for a different argument for objectlessness based on social psychology data, see Shargel 2015).

Another influential approach in recent philosophy of emotions takes them to be

mechanisms that control the crucial factor of salience among what would otherwise be an unmanageable plethora of objects of attention, interpretations, and strategies of inference and conduct. (de Sousa 1987: xv; see also Elgin 2006; Evans 2001; Ben-Ze’ev 2000)

For example, there are innumerable things I could in principle be focusing on as I find myself face to face with a grizzly bear on a hike, but my fear focuses my attention squarely on the bear, on how to interpret its movements, and on how to infer and execute an escape strategy. This approach may be taken to have a “perceptual flavor” (Prinz 2004: 223) because it describes emotions as mechanisms for changing salience, and perceptions can certainly affect salience. But de Sousa aims to draw attention to the broader role emotions play in providing the framework for cognitions of both perceptual varieties (e.g., what we see and hear) and non-perceptual varieties (e.g., what we believe and remember).

Some philosophers suggest that the directive power that emotions exert over cognitions is partly a function of their essentially dramatic or narrative structure (Rorty 1987 [1988]). Goldie (2012) offers a particularly subtle examination of the role of narrative in constituting our emotions over the long term. It seems conceptually incoherent to suppose that one could have an emotion—say, an intense jealousy or a consuming rage—for only a fraction of a second (Wollheim 1999). One explanation of this feature of emotions is that a story plays itself out during the course of each emotional episode, and stories take place over stretches of time. Interestingly, Goldie argues that the narrative structure of emotions is the same whether emotions are experienced towards real or fictional objects, which explains why we can respond to fictional characters with full-fledged, although motivationally muted, emotional responses (for a review of other solutions to the so-called paradox of fiction , see Cova & Friend forthcoming).

De Sousa (1987) has suggested that the stories characteristic of different emotions are learned by association with “paradigm scenarios”. Paradigm scenarios involve two aspects: first, a situation type providing the characteristic objects of the specific emotion-type (where objects can be particular and formal), and second, a set of characteristic or “normal” responses to the situation, where normality is determined by a complex and controversial mix of biological and cultural factors. These scenarios are drawn first from our daily life as small children and later reinforced by the stories, art, and culture to which we are exposed. Later still, they are supplemented and refined by literature and other art forms capable of expanding the range of one’s imagination of ways to live (de Sousa 1990; Faucher and Tappolet 2008b).

Once our emotional repertoire is established, we interpret new situations through the lens of different paradigm scenarios. When a particular scenario suggests itself as an interpretation, it arranges or rearranges our perceptual, cognitive, and inferential dispositions. When a paradigm scenario is evoked by a novel situation, the resulting emotion may or may not be appropriate to the situation that triggers it. Thus, a childhood fear of clowns may be reappraised and overcome in adult life as a result of a more realistic appraisal. In that sense at least, emotions can be assessed for rationality (see section 10 for further discussion).

8. The Motivational Tradition in Affective Science and Its Opponents

The third tradition in the study of emotions identifies them essentially with special kinds of motivational states, where a motivational state broadly understood is an internal cause of behaviors aimed at satisfying a goal. Members of this research tradition think that the central problem a theory of emotions needs to solve is explaining how emotions and actions are related, because it is ultimately what we do when we emote that produces significant personal and social consequences.

The Motivational Tradition was anticipated by many theorists of emotions in Ancient Greece and throughout the Middle Ages who emphasized the constitutive relation between emotions and behavioral impulses (King 2010), but it finds its first modern precursor in Dewey (1894, 1895). Dewey was unhappy with the reversal of common sense entailed by the Jamesian idea that emotions are feelings that emerge in response to proprioceptions. If we truly were angry because we strike, Dewey countered, anger could not cause the striking, and this would deprive anger, as well as other emotions, of their explanatory importance.

Dewey’s main suggestion was that there is a difference between the feeling of anger and anger itself: an emotion “in its entirety” is “a mode of behavior which is purposive” and “which also reflects itself into feeling” (Dewey 1895: 15). When we say that someone is angry, Dewey concluded, “we do not simply, or even chiefly, mean that [such person] has a certain ‘feel’ occupying his consciousness”. Rather, “[w]e mean He…has assumed a readiness to act in certain ways” (Dewey 1895: 16–17). The view that emotions are essentially either mechanisms that change one’s readiness to act or states of action readiness themselves has since been developed in a variety of ways in affective science and in the philosophy of emotions. Let us begin from an influential evolutionary variant of the Motivational Tradition in affective science.

Basic emotion theory emerged in the 1970s from the pioneering work of Silvan Tomkins, whose orienting insight was that “the primary motivational system is the affective system” (Tomkins 2008: 4). Tomkins proposed that there are nine basic or innate affects controlled by inherited programs: interest, enjoyment, surprise, fear, anger, distress, shame, contempt and disgust. Their motivational power comes from their feeling pleasurable or painful, with such hedonic feelings emerging from the perception of facial changes providing “motivating feed-back” (Tomkins 2008: 623).

Tomkins’ theory of basic affects was followed by two related developments. The first was the birth of modern-day basic emotion theory, with its consuming attention for the universality of facial expressions, present especially in the work of Paul Ekman (Ekman et al. 1972; Ekman 1980, 1999a, 2003; Ekman & Friesen 1969) and Carrol Izard (1971, 1977, 1992, 2007). The second was the emergence of the evolutionary psychology approach to emotions understood as solutions to recurrent evolutionary problems, with prominent contributions by Plutchick (1980) and Tooby and Cosmides (2008) (see also Shand 1920 and McDougall 1908 [2001] for earlier examples of evolutionary theories of emotions).

Starting in the 1990s, the two approaches have progressively merged, although evolutionary psychologists are more inclined than basic emotion theorists to conclude that a given emotion solves an evolutionary problem merely on the basis of plausibility arguments. According to Ekman (1999a: 46), “emotions evolved for their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life tasks” such as

[f]ighting, falling in love, escaping predators, confronting sexual infidelity, experiencing a failure-driven loss in status, responding to the death of a family member. (Tooby & Cosmides 2008: 117; see also Keltner & Haidt 2001)

They have adaptive value because they quickly mobilize and coordinate resources needed to successfully deal with life tasks, and because they communicate socially relevant information via bodily expressions. As soon as a basic emotion program is activated, a

cascade of changes (without our choice or immediate awareness) occurs in split seconds in: the emotional signals in the face and voice; preset actions; learned actions; the autonomic nervous system activity that regulates our body; the regulatory patterns that continuously modify our behavior; the retrieval of relevant memories and expectations; and how we interpret what is happening within us and in the world. (Ekman & Cordaro 2011: 366)

From this follows the central empirical hypothesis of traditional BET: there should be bodily signatures for each basic emotion consisting of highly correlated and emotion-specific changes at the level of facial expressions, autonomic changes and preset and learned actions. More specifically, Ekman defined basic emotions in terms of (a) distinctive universal signals, (b) distinctive physiology, (c) distinctive thoughts, memories and images, (d) distinctive subjective experiences, (e) predictable developmental appearance, (f) homologous presence in other primates, (g) automatic appraisals tuned to distinctive universals in antecedent events, (h) quick onset, brief duration, and unbidden occurrence (Ekman 1999a: 5). Some basic emotion theorists have also suggested that basic emotions are associated with distinctive hardwired neural circuits (e.g., Izard 2011; Levenson 2011; Panksepp 1998, 2000).

Armed with this definition, Ekman proceeded to argue that we have empirical evidence for six basic affect programs (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise), later on expanding the list to include states whose basic status is likely to be proven in the future such as amusement, contempt, embarrassment, excitement, guilt, pride in achievement, relief, satisfaction, wonder, ecstasy, sensory pleasure, and shame (Ekman & Cordaro 2011). Scientifically-minded philosophers often restrict their discussions of emotions to the basic affect programs, since these are argued to be the only natural kinds so far discovered in the affective domain (Griffiths 1997; DeLancey 2002).

The main source of evidence for basic affect programs arguably comes from cross-cultural studies on facial expressions that use a recognition technique first described by Darwin (1872). It consists of showing pictures of emotional expressions and asking observers what emotions they express from a list of six to ten emotion terms in the observer’s language. As reported by Ekman (1999b), experiments of this sort have so far been performed with observers from dozens of countries, revealing significant agreement on which emotion is portrayed (the recognition rates are strongest for happiness, sadness and disgust). This being said, membership to a given culture increases recognition of expressions from that culture, which has led some to argue that emotional expressions are a universal language with different dialects (Elfenbein et al. 2007).

In combination with complementary data on the production of facial expressions (Matsumoto et al. 2008), the recognitional data have been taken to speak in favor of the hypothesis that affect programs are evolutionary adaptations producing the same mandatory facial changes in all cultures, although culturally specific display rules can partially mask such cross-cultural universality.

The evidence for universality has been criticized on methodological and conceptual grounds. Methodologically, it has been argued that the experiments are defective because they rely on a forced choice paradigm which inflates consensus and because they rely on ecologically unrealistic stimuli such as actors’ posed faces (Russell 1994). Conceptually, it has been argued that the evolutionary hypothesis that selection would favor the production of mandatory facial expressions is implausible, because in conflict situations it may not be in the evolutionary interest of the emoter to let observers know about what emotions they are experiencing (e.g., communicating fear during a confrontation). And even if there were universality of recognition and production of emotional expressions, alternative explanations like species constant learning would be able to account for the data (Fridlund 1994).

An influential alternative to the Basic Emotions view of facial expressions is the Behavioral Ecology view (Fridlund 1994), which replaces the notion of expressions of emotion with that of displays produced in an audience-dependent fashion when signalers expect benefits from them. Audience-dependence entails that signalers tailor their context-sensitive facial displays to their audience and do not produce them mandatorily upon experiencing a given emotion. Displays are rather

declarations that signify our trajectory in a given social interaction, that is, what we will do in the current situation, or what we would like the other to do. (Fridlund 1994: 130)

For example, what Ekman would describe as an anger face, a sad face or a happy face is described by behavioral ecologists as, respectively, a display of readiness to attack, a display of intent to affiliate and a display of recruitment of succor (Fridlund 1994). A number of theorists have argued that Ekman’s and Fridlund’s approaches can be reconciled: emotions can at the same time express emotions and make declarations that are credible precisely because they are associated with emotions (M. Green 2007; Scarantino 2017; Hess, Banse, & Kappas 1995; see also Bar-On 2013).

The broader problem with traditional BET is that the distinctive response profiles allegedly produced in cascade-like fashion have not been convincingly demonstrated either at the level of expressive responses or at the level of autonomic changes, neural changes, preset actions or learned actions (Ortony & Turner 1990; Mauss et al. 2005; Barrett 2006; Lindquist et al. 2012). This lack of clear and distinctive bodily signatures has led to a variety of attempts to save BET from empirical refutation. Some basic emotion theorists have suggested, for instance, that basic emotions can be regulated, which would mask their mandatory effects, or that they cannot be elicited at the right level of intensity by laboratory stimuli, or that they often mix with other affective and cognitive states in ways that blur their distinctive responses (Ekman & Cordaro 2011).

Others have offered new meta-analyses that are more favorable to the existence of emotion-specific biological signatures, especially at the level of autonomic and neural changes (Kreibig 2010; Stephens et al. 2010; Nummenmaa & Saarimäki forthcoming). A third option is to transition to a New Basic Emotion Theory which replaces the assumption of cascade-like responses with that of action tendencies with control precedence, which would account for some of the variability of responses while preserving the core idea that basic emotions are geared towards solving evolutionary problems (Levenson 2011; Scarantino & Griffiths 2011; Scarantino 2015).

A more radical proposal has been offered by psychological constructionists, who have suggested that we should abandon entirely the “latent variable” model distinctive of basic emotion theory, replacing it with an “emergent variable” model according to which emotions do not cause facial expressions, autonomic changes and preset and learned actions but rather emerge from them (Barrett & Russell 2015). Specifically, psychological constructionists have argued that there is no one-to-one correspondence between anger, fear, happiness, sadness, etc. and any neurobiological, physiological, expressive, behavioral, or phenomenological responses, and that the different responses allegedly diagnostic of basic emotions are not even strongly correlated with one another.

Psychological constructionists have concluded that this variability calls into question the very idea that

emotions have ontological status as causal entities [and that they] exist in the brain or body and cause changes in sensory, perceptual, motor, and physiological outputs. (Barrett 2005: 257)

This view is at the polar opposite of the Motivational Tradition, which takes emotions to be motives—causal determinants of the changes in outputs we observe.

It has also been suggested that the folk psychological categories commonly invoked by basic emotion theorists—e.g., anger, fear, disgust, etc.—are not suitable objects of scientific investigation, and should be replaced by categories that describe emotion components rather than discrete emotions themselves (Russell 2003; Barrett 2006, 2017).

Constructionists are convinced that emotions are put together on the fly and in flexible ways using building blocks that are not specific to emotions, roughly in the way cooked foods are constructed from ingredients that are not specific to them and could be used according to alternative recipes. One of the ingredients out of which emotions are built is said to be core affect , which is a

neurophysiological state that is consciously accessible as a simple, nonreflective feeling that is an integral blend of hedonic (pleasure–displeasure) and arousal (sleepy–activated) values. (Russell 2003: 147)

Psychological constructionists emphasize that we are always in some state of core affect, which is a sort of barometer that informs us of our “relationship” to the flow of events. The readings of the barometer are feelings, understood as blends of pleasure-displeasure and activation-deactivation. These readings can be represented as points along a “circumplex structure”, with the vertical axis representing the degree of activation-deactivation and the horizontal axis representing the degree of pleasure-displeasure (Russell 1980):

Different constructionists describe the way in which emotions are built out of core affect and other ingredients in different ways. For example, in Barrett’s influential Conceptual Act View, conceptualization plays a key role (Barrett 2006, 2013, 2017; Barrett & Satpute 2013). Being afraid amounts to categorizing a core affective state of high arousal and high displeasure under the “fear” concept. Being happy amounts to categorizing a core affective state of high arousal and high pleasure under the “happiness” concept. More generally, Barrett (2017) takes emotions to be experiences that emerge from the categorization of sensations from one’s own body and the world. This view, which resembles Schachter and Singer’s (1962) cognition-arousal theory and merges themes from the Feeling Tradition and the Evaluative Tradition, has been criticized for conflating emotions with verbal labeling, for making it impossible for adult humans to mislabel their own emotions, and for preventing infants and animals from having emotions in the first place (e.g., Scherer 2009, see Barrett 2015 for a reply).

Russell (2003) considers conceptualization to affect only the meta-experience of emotion, i.e., the realization that one is afraid, and allows emotion episodes to be constructed without the involvement of categorization. On his view, there are a variety of independent causal mechanisms, rather than any emotion-specific mechanism, that explain why there is some degree of correlation between expressive, autonomic and behavioral changes in emotional episodes, even though it is emphasized that the correlations are much weaker than what Ekman’s (1999a) model would predict (Russell 2012).

In recent times, some proposals have been made to integrate psychological constructionism with other research programs. Some have suggested that progress lies in merging appraisal theory with Russell’s version of psychological constructionism and have offered a general theory of how emotional action tendencies are caused by the weighing of the expected utilities of action options (Moors 2017). Others have proposed that we sharply distinguish between the phenomenological and the motivational side of affective phenomena, handing out the motivational side of (some) basic emotions to a new theory of survival circuits and reserving folk psychological emotion terms to designate feelings exclusively, with the latter understood as cognitively constructed (LeDoux 2015, 2017; note the contrast with LeDoux 1996).

Another option with some elements of overlap with psychological constructionism is social constructionism. The social constructionist approach found its first advocates in the 1920’s when a number of anthropologists and social scientists started questioning Darwin’s (1872) evidence for the universality of emotional expressions (e.g., Allport 1924; Landis 1924; Klineberg 1940).

These researchers initiated what we may call the “cultural variability” strand of social constructionism, related to the thesis that emotions are different in several essential respects in different cultures. These differences have since been shown with respect to both the emotion lexicon (e.g., Russell 1991; Wierzbicka 1999) and the diagnostic characteristics of emotions (e.g., Mesquita & Frijda 1992; Mesquita & Parkinson forthcoming).

The strand of social constructionism that is more germane to the Motivational Tradition is the “social role” strand, related to the thesis that emotions fulfill social functions by virtue of which they should be considered actions or roles rather than passions (see, e.g., Solomon 1976 and Averill 1990 on the “myth of passions”). Jean Paul Sartre (1939 [1948]) can be considered the first to offer a general, although idiosyncratic, theory of emotions as social roles, a view developed in the early 1980s by philosophers (e.g., Harré 1986, Armon-Jones 1986), psychologists (e.g., Averill 1980), and anthropologists (e.g., Lutz 1988). In recent times, Parkinson (1995, 2008, 2009), Parkinson, Fischer, and Manstead (2005), Griffiths (2004), Mesquita and Boiger (2014) and Van Kleef (2016) have articulated sophisticated social constructionist accounts that add to the social constructionist tradition themes from evolutionary accounts.

9. The Motivational Tradition in Recent Philosophy

There are two main flavors of the Motivational Tradition in contemporary philosophy of emotions. The phenomenological version , articulated by Deonna and Teroni (2012, 2015), assumes that emotions are feelings of action readiness. The non-phenomenological version , articulated by Scarantino (2014, 2015) identifies emotions as causes of states of action readiness which may or may not be felt. Both versions agree that the fundamental aspect of an emotion is the way it motivates the emoter to act.

Deonna and Teroni argue that both judgmentalist and perceptual theories of emotion make the mistake of identifying emotions in terms of content rather than in terms of attitude or mode . As Searle (1979: 48) points out, “[a]ll intentional states consist of a representative content in a psychological mode”. For example, believing and desiring are different psychological modes or attitudes, and they each have a content—respectively, what is believed or desired as captured by a proposition.

If emotions were special kinds of judgments or perceptions, they would differ from other kinds of judgments or perceptions not in terms of attitude but merely in terms of content— what is judged or perceived when we emote. Furthermore, the emotions themselves would differ from one another only in terms of content rather than attitude, because there would be no attitude specific to, say, anger, shame, guilt and so on, but rather a common attitude—the judging attitude or the perceiving attitude—towards different contents. Deonna and Teroni (2015) think that this approach fails to capture not only what differentiates emotions from one another, but also what makes them special as motivational states.

As an alternative, they propose an attitudinal theory of emotions. On this view, fear of a tiger is neither the judgment nor the perception that there is something dangerous at hand, but rather the attitude of taking-as-dangerous directed towards the content that there is a tiger. What gives emotional attitudes their content, Deonna and Teroni continue, are their cognitive bases , which are the ways in which the content that there is a tiger is cognized—e.g., through perception, imagination, inference and so on (e.g., the perception that there is a tiger).

But what sort of attitude is the one that constitutes an emotion rather than, say, a judgment or a perception? Deonna and Teroni consider emotional attitudes to be essentially experiences of feeling one’s body ready for action. For example, fear of a dog amounts to “an experience of the dog as dangerous” insofar as it is “an experience of one’s body being prepared” for avoidance (Deonna & Teroni 2015: 303). Similarly, anger at a person “is an experience of offensiveness insofar as it consists in an experience of one’s body being prepared to retaliate” (2015: 303). Thus, emotions are felt attitudes of action readiness irreducible to non-emotional attitudes and specific to each emotion (for a critique of the attitudinal theory, see Rossi & Tappolet forthcoming).

The starting point of Scarantino’s (2014) Motivational Theory of Emotions is the conviction that emotions are irreducible not just to judgments and perceptions, but also to feelings, and should be understood instead as special kinds of “central motive states” or “behavioral programs”. Central motive states or behavioral programs are defined by what they do rather than by how they feel. And what they do is to provide a “general direction for behavior by selectively potentiating coherent sets of behavioral options” (Gallistel 1980: 322).

This selective potentiation can result in feelings, but the phenomenal changes are not necessary to the potentiation itself, which consists of changes in the probabilities of behavioral options. To exemplify, fear involves the selective potentiation of options that share the goal of avoiding a certain target appraised as dangerous, anger involves the selective potentiation of options that share the goal of attacking a certain target appraised as offensive, guilt involves the selective potentiation of options that share the goal of repairing a relationship appraised as damaged by actions that fell short of one’s moral standards, and so on.

The Motivational Theory of Emotions is inspired by Frijda’s (1986) theory of emotions as action tendencies, but there are some differences. Scarantino (2014, 2015) draws a distinction between an emotion and an episode of emotion , with the emotion corresponding to what causes a change in action readiness and the episode of emotion corresponding to the actual change of action readiness. But Scarantino borrows a key ingredient from Frijda’s (1986) theory, namely the assumption that action tendencies must have control precedence to become emotional. Control precedence involves interrupting competing processes, preempting access—in memory, inference, perception, etc.—to information not related to the avoidance goal and preparing the body for action.

The idea that emotions are behavioral programs that bring about prioritized impulses to act can be combined with an origin story about how some of such programs evolved to deal with fundamental life tasks, leading to what Scarantino (2015) has labeled the New Basic Emotion Theory. According to it, learning can affect both what activates the evolved program (input) and what responses the program brings about (output) through the interplay of the prioritized action tendency and regulation. This will result in massive variability of the actual responses observed upon the activation of any basic emotion, shielding the New BET from the lack of “bodily signatures” problem.

Finally, Scarantino (2014) endorses a teleosemantic theory of content for emotions to deal with the problem of intentionality, and proposes that different emotions differ from one another and from non-emotional states both in terms of the state of prioritized action tendency they cause (the attitude) and in terms of what they represent (the content). On this view, fear is a prioritizing action control program which represents dangers because it has the function of causing avoidant behaviors in the presence of danger, anger is a prioritizing action control program which represents slights because it has the function of causing aggressive behaviors in the presence of slights, and so on.

A central challenge for motivational theories of emotions of both phenomenological and non-phenomenological varieties is to account for the states of action readiness distinctive of different emotions. First, many emotions do not appear to motivate action at all. Grief and depression, for example, seem to involve a general depotentiation of the readiness to act. Second, it is unclear which action tendencies “backward-looking” emotions like regret could elicit, because they focus on what happened in the past, which cannot be changed. Third, emotions like joy involve the selective potentiation of a fairly open range of behavioral options, so it is unclear what action tendency may be associated with them. Fourth, it seems to be possible for the same action tendency to be associated with different emotions, and for different emotions to be associated with the same action tendency, provided that these tendencies are described at a sufficiently abstract level of analysis (for critiques of motivational approaches, see, e.g., Reisenzein 1996; Prinz 2004; Tappolet 2010, 2016; Eder & Rothermund 2013).

Enactivism is an interdisciplinary research program which begins with dissatisfaction with the way cognitive processes have long been studied in cognitive science (Di Paolo & Thompson 2014; Gallagher 2017). Two enactivist themes in particular are relevant for emotion theory. The first is the focus on the active role played by the cognizer in his or her relation with the external world, which is for enactivists not given and passively detected but rather enacted and actively shaped by the “sense making” powers of the cognizer. This “sense making” activity is at the heart of cognition as enactivists understand it, and it is available to all living beings, no matter how simple they may be, insofar as they are autonomous and adaptive systems (Thompson 2007).

The second theme is the focus on the embodied , embedded and extended character of cognitive processes (the theme of embodiment looms large in affective science as well; see, e.g., Niedenthal 2007; Wilson-Mendenhall et al. 2011; Carr et al. forthcoming). Whereas traditional cognitive science and neuroscience have focused on the brain in isolation from the rest of the body and from the environment, enactivists argue that we will fail to understand cognition if we neglect the reciprocal causal interactions between brain, body and environment as they dynamically unfold over time.

The idea that complex cognitive abilities can rely on the scaffolding provided by the external environment has proven especially popular among emotion theorists. It has led on the one hand to a renewed attention to the role played by interpersonal communication in social environments (Griffiths & Scarantino 2009), and on the other hand to the suggestion that emotions are ontologically extended beyond the narrow confines of the cranium (Stephan et al. 2014; Krueger 2014; Colombetti & Roberts 2015; Colombetti 2017).

To which tradition of research do enactivist theories of emotions belong? The focus on experience might appear to nudge enactivism towards the Feeling Tradition (see, e.g., Ratcliffe 2008). Enactivism is indeed influenced by the notion, central to the phenomenological philosophical tradition, that the body is an experienced structure (Husserl 1952 [1989]; Merleau-Ponty 1945 [1962]) rather than simply a physical structure. And what we can experience limits the world we inhabit, our “ Umwelt ” (Uexküll (1934 [2010]).

Colombetti (2014) has made the case that the phenomenological tradition can enrich the affective neuroscience of emotions. Relying on Varela’s (1996) method of neurophenomenology , Colombetti has developed a framework for integrating third-person methods like brain imaging with first-person methods like self-reports. It is also quite clear that enactivists, in opposition to the “disembodied stance” (Colombetti & Thompson 2008) of many cognitivist theories, view emotions as bodily and experiential processes rather than intellectual ones.

Nevertheless, it is more appropriate to slot the enactivist movement into the phenomenological side of the Motivational Tradition. This is because enactivists also greatly emphasize the role of action in cognition. A number of them have recently offered accounts of emotions that emphasize their action-oriented nature (Hufendiek 2016; Slaby & Wüschner 2014; Shargel & Prinz 2018). Cognition is said to be enacted by inherently teleological living systems for the purposes of action. More radically, some cognitive processes like perception are described as constitutively dependent on motoric processes, as in the sensorimotor theory of visual consciousness (Hurley 1998; O’Regan & Noë 2001).

There is no unified understanding of the relation between emotions and action among enactivists, but rather a number of distinct proposals. In Colombetti’s work, for instance, the notion of self-organization plays an orienting role. Her view is that emotional episodes are “self-organizing patterns of the organism, best described with the conceptual tools of dynamical systems theory”, a branch of mathematics designed to account for the temporal evolution of systems that change over time (Colombetti 2014: 53; see also Lewis 2005).

Self-organization is the capacity of a complex system to reach and preserve a state of order through reciprocal causal influences among simpler component parts. When applied to the emotions, the idea is that emotion components self-organize, which helps explain the variability of emotional episodes, because self-organizing systems can end up in multiple end states depending on how their components interact (see A. Clark 2001: 113–114).

Although there are analogies between this view and psychological constructionism, especially with respect to the emphasis on emotions as emergent and flexible phenomena, Colombetti denies that conceptual acts bring about emotions, assuming that “sense making” is a much more primitive phenomenon available from bacteria to humans. Creatures engage in “sense making” when they assess the environment in terms of whether it promotes their self-maintenance, and act so as to improve their viability within the environment, as a bacterium does when swimming away from a noxious substance.

At the same time, Colombetti uses the assumption of self-organization of emotional phenomena to oppose the notion that emotional episodes are caused either by affect programs (contra the basic emotion tradition) or by appraisals (contra the appraisal tradition). Incidentally, Colombetti (2014) thinks that the very notion of basic emotion is arbitrary and not worth keeping because it discourages research on the neural, behavioral, and bodily features of allegedly non-basic emotions. Hufendiek (2016) makes the complementary case that allegedly non-basic emotions manifest a great many of the characteristics distinctive of basic emotions (see also J. Clark 2010).

Another distinctive feature of enactivism is its anti-representational stance (Varela et al., 1991; Hutto & Myin 2013; Gallagher 2017). For example, Hutto (2012) has proposed that “we let go of the idea that emotions represent situations in truth-evaluable ways” (2012: 4), suggesting that emotions do not represent core relational themes. For instance, fear does not represent that there is danger at hand, and anger does not represent that there has been a slight against me or mine. Hutto’s (2012) main concern with respect to ascribing representational powers to emotions is that such powers are posited despite not having explanatory value (see Hufendiek 2018 for discussion). Specifically, Hutto (2012) follows Ramsey (2007) in assuming that a mental state counts as a representation only if it is consumed by other systems in light of what it says or indicates, and concludes that emotions fail to play this larger explanatory role in the cognitive economy of the organism and should therefore not be considered representations.

Prinz (2004) used to think that emotions represent core relational themes because they have the function of correlating with them, but in his recent work he has changed his mind. Schargel and Prinz (2018) have argued that a teleosemantic approach is a threat to the truly embodied character of a theory of emotions in the James-Lange mold, the approach they favor. This is because any non-embodied vehicle—e.g., a disembodied judgment—that has the function of correlating with a core relational theme would just as well represent such theme as an embodied vehicle does (Shargel 2014).

As an alternative, Shargel and Prinz (2018) embrace a non-representational, enactivist theory of content for emotions, according to which emotions create, by virtue of the bodily preparation they involve, action possibilities (see also Griffiths & Scarantino 2009; Hufendiek 2016). These action possibilities, unlike standard affordances in the Gibsonian tradition, which pre-exist emotions and are motivationally inert, are “state-dependent (they typically arise only once the emotion has been initiated), and imperatival (they motivate action)” (Shargel & Prinz 2018: 119). On this view, fear generates possibilities for escape which would not be there in the absence of fear, and which work as dynamic attractors, pulling the agent towards escape. The enactive content of fear, then, is not danger, but the presentation of a certain situation as something to be escaped, jointly with an impulse to move away from it, a content that is essentially embodied since it involves bodily preparation for escape.

A central challenge for enactivist theories of emotions of the non-representational variety is to account for our normative practices with respect to emotions. Once we realize that someone’s fear moved him or her to avoid a certain state of affairs, or that someone’s anger motivated him or her to attack someone, we still ask whether or not what motivated avoidance is a danger and whether or not what motivated retribution is a slight. In other words, we still treat emotions as appropriate and inappropriate with respect to their circumstances of elicitation, and it is an open question if and how these forms of appropriateness can be made sense of if emotions do not represent core relational themes (see Hufendiek 2016, 2017, 2018 for further discussion).

10. Rationality and Emotions

We distinguish between the cognitive rationality of emotions, consisting of their ability to represent the world as it is and properly relate to other evidence-sensitive evaluative processes, and the strategic rationality of emotions, consisting of their ability to lead to actions that promote the agent’s interests and properly relate to other action-influencing processes (De Sousa 1987, 2011; see also Greenspan 2000; Mulligan 1998; Solomon 1980; Thagard 2006; Stephan 2017b).

Emotions have long been thought to score poorly in terms of both cognitive and strategic rationality. The Stoics famously argued that emotions are false judgments. For example, fearing a tiger would involve the false judgment that one’s endangered life is important, whereas the sage should be indifferent to everything except virtue. Failures of the emotions at the strategic level are also deeply ingrained in both theoretical approaches and common sense. Ira brevis furor , said the Romans: anger is a brief bout of madness. In recent times, the pendulum has swung back, and researchers in both philosophy and affective science have started rehabilitating the emotions in terms of both cognitive and strategic rationality. A proper appreciation of the role of emotions with respect to rationality requires a number of distinctions.

Our first distinctions pertain to three varieties of cognitive rationality for emotions: rationality as fittingness , rationality as warrant and rationality as coherence . The dominant view on emotions is that they are representations of core relational themes or formal objects. Therefore, a first dimension of assessment for rationality concerns whether or not such core relational themes/formal objects are instantiated. We may for instance say that fear is rational in terms of fittingness just in case it is directed towards things that are truly dangerous, because this is what fear represents. Being afraid of a shark swimming alongside you is fitting, because the shark is dangerous. As D’Arms and Jacobson (2000) have emphasized, fittingness is importantly different from forms of appropriateness that are moral or strategic. For example, amusement at a funny joke may be fitting even if being amused by it is both morally inappropriate due to the sexist content of the joke, and costly in terms of self-interest, because those who witness the amusement may form a bad opinion of the amused agent.

Suppose now that fear is elicited by something that is not dangerous. Fear could still manifest rationality as warrant if its particular object manifests relevant evidential cues of dangerousness. For example, being afraid of a realistic replica of a shark moving alongside you in the water would be rational in the warrant sense, even though, unbeknownst to you, the shark replica is being remote-controlled by a group of innocuous marine biologists.

A third dimension of cognitive rationality concerns the consistency of emotions with other representations of what the world is like. If someone experiences fear of flying and believes that flying is dangerous, there is rationality as coherence between what they fear and what they believe (even though fear is unfitting given the extremely low likelihood of plane accidents).

As noted in section 7.1 , emotions are often recalcitrant to reason : many people do not believe that flying is dangerous, and yet continue to fear it. But emotions manifest rationality as coherence in a great many cases. This is due in part to the fact that emotions have cognitive bases , which consist of cognitions whose function is to provide emotions with their particular objects—I must believe, perceive or imagine being on an airplane prior to fearing it.

When such cognitions are beliefs, their modification tends to be coherently reflected in changes of the emotions. For example, if I am angry at Tom based on my belief that he has bad mouthed me with a colleague, my anger is unlikely to survive the realization that he has not, in fact, bad mouthed me with a colleague. On occasion, however, my anger toward Tom will persist despite my belief that no slight whatsoever has taken place, thereby revealing irrationality as incoherence.

A special case of rationality as coherence regards the coherence of sets of emotions. Helm (2009) has argued that emotions come in rational patterns centered around the things that have import for the agent. For instance, if avoiding death is a concern of mine, then I should not only feel fear when my life is threatened by a deadly disease, but I should also feel, on pain of irrationality, relief once the threat dissipates and sadness or disappointment if the disease progresses instead.

The strategic (or prudential) rationality of emotions concerns their ability to lead to actions that promote the agent’s interests and properly relate to other processes that affect actions, notably decision-making. Although emotions that are strategically rational will also generally be cognitively rational in the fittingness and in the warrant sense, exceptions are possible. For example, some instances of anger which are not produced in the presence of either actual slights (fittingness) or evidential cues of slights (warrant) end up promoting the agent’s interests. A case in point may be the anger of a customer whose interests would be best served by returning used merchandise but who has lost the receipt, and angrily dresses down a blameless clerk, which gets him the sought-after concession because the clerk gets intimidated.

We can distinguish two components of strategic rationality: an emotion is strategically rational insofar as it leads an agent (i) to select means conducive to the agent’s ends (instrumental strategic rationality) and (ii) to pursue ends that align with the agent’s interests all things considered (substantive strategic irrationality). An example of instrumental irrationality would be that of an agent who gets into a panic while trying to exit a house on fire, fails to listen to the fireman’s directions, goes for the closest door forgetting that it leads into the only area of the house without an exit, and perishes in the process. There is nothing wrong here with the end towards which panic predisposes the agent—seeking safety—but the means chosen are clearly suboptimal.

Substantive irrationality can be argued for with respect to both emotion types and emotion tokens. For instance, some have proposed that grief is a substantively irrational emotion type , because it always involves the belief that a person dear to the grieving agent is dead and the desire that such person is not dead, which is an unsatisfiable desire given what one believes (Gustafson 1989; see Cholbi 2017 for a response).

More commonly, theorists have argued that specific tokens of certain emotion types can be substantively irrational. For example, it would be contrary to an agent’s interests to get angry at a potential employer during a job interview, since it will likely result in not getting the job offer and thus frustrate self-interest.

By contrast, anger at someone cutting the line at the airport can be substantively rational, since the end of stopping the offensive behavior is conducive to one’s interests. Nussbaum (2016) has recently argued that this can only be the case if the angry agent’s focus is not at all on payback for the offensive behavior but entirely on preventing the offensive behavior from happening again, because the desire for payback is either straightforwardly irrational or problematic in other ways (Nussbaum refers to the unproblematic forms of anger as transition-anger ).

A common reason for doubting the strategic rationality of emotions is that they often appear to lead to impulsive physical and mental actions. Impulsivity involves acting quickly prior to having considered all relevant information (Frijda 2010; Elster 1999, 2010). Some have argued that this is precisely what helps emotions provide an optimal compromise between speed and flexibility, allowing emotions to function as “decoupled reflexes” (Scherer 1984).

Others have noted that emotions often lead to “arational” actions, namely emotional actions not performed “for a reason” (Hursthouse 1991). Paradigmatic examples include actions like jumping up and down out of joy or rolling around in one’s dead wife’s clothes out of grief. In such cases, Hursthouse argued, there is no belief and desire pair that can be posited to provide a Humean reason for such actions, which are to be explained simply by saying that the agent is in the grip of an emotion. The debate on arational actions has taken off in recent philosophy of emotions, and a number of proposals, both in favor and against Humeanism, are available (see M. Smith 1998; Goldie 2000, Döring 2007; Kovach & De Lancey 2005; Scarantino & Nielsen 2015).

Emotions are notoriously apt to make us act in ways we regret. Notably, they can be a source of weakness of the will, the failure to act on one’s best reasons (Davidson 1970 [1980]). But they just as often help agents stick to their long-term goals (Tappolet 2016: 227). For example, a gut feeling of guilt may help an agent resist a cheating temptation and is in this sense a means to the end of successfully exercising self-control. On occasion, emotions can even ground the phenomenon of inverse akrasia (McIntyre 1990; Arpaly & Schroder 2000), which consists in failing to do what you judged best only to discover that you in fact did what was best for you, contrary to your former judgment. For example, one may judge best to become a professional musician, but be crippled by stage fright and end up in law school, only to later realize that this course of action best serves one’s long-term interests.

A further threat to the strategic rationality of emotions comes from their relation to self-deception (Fingarette 1969; Mele 1987; van Leeuwen 2007), which is commonly regarded as irrational. Roughly, self-deception involves forming beliefs that are contrary to what the available evidence supports but conformant to what the self-deceived agent desires. Emotions can cause self-deception because they can lead to powerful desires that something be or not be the case, which causally impact the subject’s ability to process evidence.

This feature is principally related to the fact that emotions determine salience among potential objects of attention. Poets have always known that the main effect of love is to redirect attention: when I love, I notice nothing but my beloved, and nothing of his or her faults. But this carries a risk, because I may fail to notice that there is massive evidence that I am being deceived in some harmful way. My desire that I not be deceived, motivated by my love, is what drives the faulty processing of evidence, resulting in self-deception.

This potential of emotions for “skewing the epistemic landscape” (Goldie 2004: 259) in negative ways is compensated by emotion’s important role in promoting rational epistemic thinking. Epistemic emotions are those that are particularly relevant to our quest for knowledge and understanding. Curiosity motivates inquiry; interest keeps us at it, and, as both Plato and Descartes noted, doubt is crucial to our ability avoid prejudice. These “epistemic” emotions can guide us specifically in the context of our attempts to gain knowledge (Silvia 2006; Brun, Doğuoğlu, & Kuenzle 2008; Morton 2010).

But even garden-variety, non-epistemic emotions can promote understanding of the world and of the self within it (see also the feeling-as-information hypothesis in affective science; Schwarz 2012). According to Brady (2013), the principal way in which emotions can do so is by motivating us to search for information that has a bearing on the fittingness of our emotions, and on the adequacy of their underlying concerns. Once again, the mechanism is that of changing salience among potential objects of attention. Suppose for instance you feel afraid when about to give a toast at a wedding. Your fear promotes understanding because it prompts you to determine whether the situation is truly dangerous, and whether you should care that much about giving a brilliant toast.

More broadly, it has been argued that the ability of emotions to shift attention on some features rather than others provides an essential solution to the so-called frame problem , which is the problem of sorting relevant from irrelevant information in decision-making. De Sousa has made the case in philosophy, suggesting that

emotions spare us the paralysis potentially induced by [the frame problem] by controlling the salience of features of perception and reasoning…[thereby] circumscribing our practical and cognitive options. (de Sousa 1987: 172)

For example, being afraid of a bear focuses attention exclusively on the features of the situation that are relevant to escaping it, without wasting time on deciding what irrelevant factors to ignore.

Damasio (1994, 2003) has given neurobiological foundations to this proposal, suggesting that emotions simplify the decision process by quickly marking deliberative options in the prefrontal cortex as positive or negative in light of their expected emotional consequences. Patients with ventromedial prefrontal damage, Damasio argued, become irrationally Hamlet-like when faced with trivial decisions such as choosing a date for their next doctor’s appointment, irrationally risk-prone when faced with gambling decisions, and irrationally impatient when faced with decisions demanding deferred gratification. The debate on whether the empirical evidence supports Damasio’s “somatic marker hypothesis” is still ongoing (see, e.g., Dunn, Dalgleish, & Lawrence, 2006; Reimann & Bechara, 2010; Beer 2017).

Another influential view on the rationality of emotions is that they help solve the commitment problem (Schelling 1960; Hirshleifer 1987; Frank 1988), which is the problem of convincing potential cooperative partners that one will fulfill promises and threats even when narrowly self-interested considerations would demand otherwise. For example, Frank (1988) has described the expression of sympathy as a mechanism to convince potential cooperators that one will behave honestly in future interactions even in the presence of temptation, and the expression of anger as a mechanism to convince potential cooperators that one will behave aggressively if messed with even when aggression is costly. These emotional signals are said to be credible because hard to fake, and they end up benefitting both partners, because they help secure the parties’ willingness to cooperate honestly in mutually beneficial projects (see also Ross & Dumouchel 2004; O’Connor 2016).

One may be tempted to conclude from this overview of emotion theories across disciplines that the field is deeply divided on just about everything. This would be hasty. Despite the great diversity of views on the nature and function of emotions we have documented, a broad consensus has emerged on a number of topics. Here is a tentative list of what a plurality of emotion theorists agree about, with brief mention of where the disagreements begin:

• The degree to which these correlations are instantiated continues to be a central topic of theoretical debate: latent variable models assume that emotions cause the changes in components and expect to find strong correlations, whereas emergent variable models assume that emotions emerge from changes in components caused by something other than emotions and expect to find weak correlations.
• Researchers disagree on whether underlying all this variability there exist measurable bodily patterns of some kind that are still distinctive of different emotions.
• Researchers disagree on whether emotions represent descriptively or imperatively or both, on what exact contents they represent, and on what grounds the emotion-world representation relation. A small minority of researchers, hailing mostly from the enactivist movement, have argued that emotions lack representational qualities.
• Researchers disagree on how exactly the brain implements tokens of different emotion types, and whether emotional phenomena are best understood in terms of emotion-specific or emotion-unspecific neural mechanisms.
• A handful of influential researchers such as LeDoux (2017) and Barrett (2017) continue to identify emotions with conscious experiences.
• Researchers continue to debate whether there is sufficient empirical evidence for basic emotions and other special-purpose emotion mechanisms. Some see the role of evolution as limited to the shaping of general-purpose adaptations, such as core affect and the ability to categorize, which jointly lead to the emergence of emotions.
• Researchers continue to debate the circumstances in which emotions manifest various kinds of cognitive and strategic irrationality.
• Researchers debate the grounds of, and distinctions between, different forms of appropriateness (e.g., fittingness, moral appropriateness).
• Researchers debate what the structure of appraisals is, and whether appraisals cause or constitute emotions or both.
• Some researchers think emotions cause or consist in such changes in motivation, whereas others think that changes in motivation have other causes, or are too unspecific to ground a theory of what emotions are.

The exploration of these insights and the resolution of the disagreements around them is a thriving interdisciplinary project in contemporary emotion theory. Philosophers and affective scientists will continue to engage in it for years to come, putting their distinctive theoretical skills at the service of projects of common interest.

• Allport, Floyd Henry, 1924, Social Psychology , Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Armon-Jones, Claire, 1986, “The Thesis of Constructionism”, in Harré 1986: 32–56.
• Arnold, Magda B., 1960, Emotion and Personality , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Arpaly, Nomy and Timothy Schroder, 2000, “Praise, Blame and the Whole Self”, Philosophical Studies , 93(2): 161–188. doi:10.1023/A:1004222928272
• Averill, James R., 1980, “Emotion & Anxiety: Sociocultural, Biological and Psychological Determinants”, in Rorty 1980a: 37–72.
• –––, 1990, “Inner Feelings, Works of the Flesh, the Beast within, Diseases of the Mind, Driving Force, and Putting on a Show: Six Metaphors of Emotion and their Theoretical Extensions”, in David E. Leary (ed.), Metaphors in the History of Psychology , New York: Cambridge University Press, 104–132.
• Bar-On, Dorit, 2013, “Origins of Meaning: Must We ‘Go Gricean?’”, Mind & Language , 28(3): 342–375. doi:10.1111/mila.12021
• Barrett, Lisa Feldman, 2005, “Feeling is Perceiving: Core Affect and Conceptualization in the Experience of Emotion”, in Lisa Feldman Barrett, Paula M. Niedenthal, and Piotr Winkielman (eds.), Emotion and Consciousness , New York: Guilford Press, 255–284.
• –––, 2006, “Are Emotions Natural Kinds?”, Perspectives on Psychological Science , 1(1): 28–58. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00003.x.
• –––, 2013, “Psychological Construction: The Darwinian Approach to the Science of Emotion”, Emotion Review , 5(4): 379–389. doi:10.1177/1754073913489753
• –––, 2015, “Ten Common Misconceptions about the Psychological Construction of Emotion”, in Barrett and Russell 2015: 45-79.
• –––, 2017, How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of The Brain , New York, NY: Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt.
• Barrett, Lisa Feldman, Michael Lewis, and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones (eds.), 2016, Handbook of Emotions , fourth edition, New York, NY: Guilford Press.
• Barrett, Lisa Feldman and James A. Russell (eds.), 2015, The Psychological Construction of Emotion , New York: Guilford Press.
• Barrett, Lisa Feldman and Ajay Bhaskar Satpute, 2013, “Large-Scale Brain Networks in Affective and Social Neuroscience: Towards an Integrative Architecture of the Human Brain”, Current Opinion in Neurobiology , 23(3): 361–372. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2012.12.012
• Bedford, Errol, 1957, “Emotions”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 57: 281–304. doi:10.1093/aristotelian/57.1.281
• Beer, Jennifer S., 2017, “Current Emotion Research in Social Neuroscience: How Does Emotion Influence Social Cognition?”, Emotion Review , 9(2): 172–180. doi:10.1177/1754073916650492
• Benbaji, Hagit, 2012, “How is Recalcitrant Emotion Possible?”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy , 91(3): 577–599, doi:10.1080/00048402.2012.699078
• Ben-Ze’ev, Aaron, 2000, The Subtlety of Emotions , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Brady, Michael S., 2009, “The Irrationality of Recalcitrant Emotions”, Philosophical Studies , 145(3): 413–430. doi:10.1007/s11098-008-9241-1
• –––, 2013, Emotional Insight: The Epistemic Role of Emotional Experience , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199685523.001.0001
• Brentano, Franz, 1874 [1995], Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte , Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Translated as Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , Antos C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linda L. McAlister (trans.), London: Routledge and K. Paul 1973; reprinted with an introduction by P. Simons, London: Routledge 1995.
• Broad, Charlie Dunbar, 1954 [1971], “Emotion and Sentiment”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , 13(2): 203–214; reprinted in Broad’s Critical Essays in Moral Theory , David R. Cheney (ed.), London: Allen & Unwin, 1971. doi:10.2307/425913
• Brun, Georg, Ulvi Doğuoğlu, and Dominique Kuenzle (eds.), 2008, Epistemology and Emotions , Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Cannon, Walter B., 1929, Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage , second edition, New York: Appleton.
• Carnap, Rudolf, 1950, Logical Foundations of Probability , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Carr, Evan W, Anne Kever, and Piotr Winkielman, forthcoming, “Embodiment of Emotion and Its Situated Nature” in Albert Newen, Leon de Bruin, and Shaun Gallagher (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 529–551.
• Charland, Louis C., 1995, “Feeling and Representing: Computational Theory and the Modularity of Affect”, Synthese , 105(3): 273–301. doi:10.1007/BF01063560
• –––, 2002, “The Natural Kind Status of Emotion”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , 53(4): 511–537. doi:10.1093/bjps/53.4.511
• Cholbi, Michael, 2017, “Grief’s Rationality, Backward and Forward”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 94(2): 255–272. doi:10.1111/phpr.12353
• Clark, Andy, 2001, Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Clark, Jason A., 2010, “Relations of Homology between Higher Cognitive Emotions and Basic Emotions”, Biology & Philosophy , . 25(1): 75–94. doi:10.1007/s10539-009-9170-1
• Clark-Polner, Elizabeth, Timothy D. Johnson, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 2016, “Multivoxel Pattern Analysis Does Not Provide Evidence to Support the Existence of Basic Emotions”, Cerebral Cortex , 27(3): 1944–1948. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhw028
• Colombetti, Giovanna, 2014, The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• –––, 2017, “Enactive Affectivity, Extended”, Topoi , 36(3): 445–455. doi:10.1007/s11245-015-9335-2
• Colombetti, Giovanna and Tom Roberts, 2015, “Extending the Extended Mind: The Case for Extended Affectivity”, Philosophical Studies , 172(5): 1243–1263. doi:10.1007/s11098-014-0347-3
• Colombetti, Giovanna and Evan Thompson, 2008, “The Feeling Body: Towards an Enactive Approach to Emotion”, in Developmental Perspectives on Embodiment and Consciousness , Willis F. Overton, Ulrich Müller, and Judith L. Newman (eds.), New York: Erlbaum, 45–68.
• Cova, Florian and Stacie Friend, forthcoming, “How Does Fiction Elicit Emotions?”, in Scarantino forthcoming.
• Damasio, Antonio R., 1994, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain , New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
• –––, 2003, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain , Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
• D’Arms, Justin and Daniel Jacobson, 2003, “The Significance of Recalcitrant Emotion (or, Anti-quasijudgmentalism)”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement , 52: 127–45.
• –––, 2000, “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the ‘Appropriateness’ of Emotion”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 61: 65–90.
• Darwin, Charles, 1872 [1998], The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals , Introduction, Notes and Commentaries by Paul Ekman, London: Harper Collins.
• Davidson, Donald, 1970 [1980], “How is Weakness of Will Possible?”, in Moral Concepts , (Oxford Readings in Philosophy), Joel Feinberg (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press; reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 21–43. doi:10.1093/0199246270.003.0002
• de Sousa, Ronald, 1987, The Rationality of Emotion , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• –––, 1990,“Emotions, Education and Time”, Metaphilosophy , 21: 434–446.
• –––, 2011, Emotional Truth , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Deigh, John, 1994, “Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions”, Ethics , 104(4): 824–854. doi:10.1086/293657
• DeLancey, Craig, 2002, Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal about Mind and Artificial Intelligence , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195142713.001.0001
• Deonna, Julien A. and Fabrice Teroni, 2012, The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction , London: Routledge. Based on Qu’est-ce qu’une émotion? , Paris: Vrin, 2008.
• –––, 2015, “Emotions as Attitudes”, Dialectica , 69(3): 293–311. doi:10.1111/1746-8361.12116
• Dewey, John, 1894, “The Theory of Emotion. (I) Emotional Attitudes”, Psychological Review , 1(6): 553–569. doi:10.1037/h0069054
• –––, 1895, “The Theory of Emotion. (2) The Significance of Emotions”, Psychological Review , 2(1): 13–32. doi:10.1037/h0070927
• Di Paolo, Ezequiel and Evan Thompson, 2014, “The Enactive Approach”, in Lawrence Shapiro (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition , New York: Routledge, 68–78.
• Dixon, Thomas, 2003, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490514
• –––, 2012, “‘Emotion’: the History of a Keyword in Crisis”, Emotion Review , 4(4): 338–344. doi:10.1177/1754073912445814
• Dokic, Jérôme and Stéphane Lemaire, 2013, “Are Emotions Perceptions of Value?”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 43(2): 227–247. doi:10.1080/00455091.2013.826057
• Döring, Sabine A., 2007, “Seeing What to Do: Affective Perception and Rational Motivation”, Dialectica , 61(3): 363–394. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2007.01105.x
• –––, 2008, “Conflict Without Contradiction”, in Brun, Doğuoğlu, and Kuenzle 2008: 83–104.
• Döring, Sabine A. and Anika Lutz, 2015, “Beyond Perceptualism: Introduction to the Special Issue”, Dialectica , 69(3): 259–270. doi:10.1111/1746-8361.12106
• Dretske, Fred, 1988, Explaining Behavior , Cambridge, MA: Bradford/MIT.
• –––, 1995, Naturalizing the Mind , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Dunn, Barnaby D., Tim Dalgleish, and Andrew D. Lawrence, 2006, “The Somatic Marker Hypothesis: A Critical Evaluation”, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews , 30(2): 239–271. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.07.001
• Durán, Juan I., Rainer Reisenzein, and José-Miguel Fernández-Dols, 2017, “Coherence between Emotions and Facial Expressions: A Research Synthesis”, in José-Miguel Fernández-Dols and James A. Russell (eds.), The Science of Facial Expression , New York: Oxford University Press, 107–129.
• Eder, Andreas B. and Klaus Rothermund, 2013, “Emotional Action: An Ideomotor Model”, in Changiz Mohiyeddini, Michael Eysenck, and Stephanie Bauer (eds.), Handbook of Psychology of Emotions: Recent Theoretical Perspectives and Novel Empirical Findings , Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers. [ Eder and Rothermund 2013 available online ]
• Ekman, Paul, 1980, “Biological and Cultural Contributions to Body and Facial Movement in the Expression of Emotions”, in Rorty 1980a: 73–102.
• –––, 1999a, “Basic Emotions”, in Tim Dalgleish and Mick J. Power (eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion , Chichester, UK: Wiley and Sons, 45–60. doi:10.1002/0470013494.ch3
• –––, 1999b, “Facial Expressions”, in Tim Dalgleish and Mick J. Power (eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion , Chichester, UK: Wiley and Sons, 301–320. doi:10.1002/0470013494.ch16
• –––, 2003, Emotions Revealed , New York: Times Books.
• Ekman, Paul and Daniel Cordaro, 2011, “What is Meant by Calling Emotions Basic”, Emotion Review , 3(4): 364–370. doi:10.1177/1754073911410740
• Ekman, Paul and Wallace V. Friesen, 1969, “The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior”, Semiotica , 1(1): 86–88. doi:10.1515/semi.1969.1.1.49
• Ekman, Paul, Wallace V. Friesen, and Phoebe Ellsworth, 1972, Emotion in the Human Face: Guidelines for Research and an Integration of Findings , New York: Pergamon Press.
• Elfenbein, Hillary Anger, Martin Beaupré, Manon Lévesque, and Ursula Hess, 2007, “Toward a Dialect Theory: Cultural Differences in the Expression and Recognition of Posed Facial Expressions”, Emotion , 7(1): 131–146. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.1.131
• Elgin, Catherine Z., 2008, “Emotion and Understanding”, in Brun, Doğuoğlu, and Kuenzle 2008: 33–49.
• Ellsworth, Phoebe C., and Klaus R. Scherer, 2003, “Appraisal Processes in Emotion”, in Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Scherer, and H. Hill Goldsmith (eds.), Handbook of Affective Sciences , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 572–595.
• Elster, Jon, 1999, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139173308
• –––, 2010, “Emotional Choice and Rational Choice”, in Goldie 2010: 263–281.
• Evans, Dylan, 2001, Emotion: The Science of Sentiment , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Evans, Dylan and Pierre Cruse (eds.), 2004, Emotion, Evolution, and Rationality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198528975.001.0001
• Faucher, Luc and Christine Tappolet, 2008a, “Introduction: Modularity and the Nature of Emotions”, in L. Faucher and C. Tappolet (eds.), The Modularity of Emotions , ( Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Supplementary Volume 32), vii-xxxi.
• –––, 2008b, “Facts and Values in Emotional Plasticity”, in L. Charland and P. Zachar (eds.), Fact and Value in Emotion , Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 101-137.
• Fehr, Beverley and James A. Russell, 1984, “Concept of Emotion Viewed from a Prototype Perspective”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 113(3), 464–486. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.113.3.464
• Fingarette, Herbert, 1969, Self-Deception , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Frank, Robert H., 1988, Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of Emotions , New York: Norton.
• Fridlund, Alan J., 1994, Human Facial Expression: An Evolutionary View , San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
• Frijda, Nico H., 1986, The Emotions , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1993, “The Place of Appraisal in Emotion”, Cognition and Emotion , 7(3–4): 357–387. doi:10.1080/02699939308409193
• –––, 1994, “Varieties of Affect: Emotions and Episodes, Moods and Sentiments”, in Paul Ekman & Richard J. Davidson (eds.), The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions , New York: Oxford University Press, 59–67.
• –––, 2010, “Impulsive Action and Motivation”, Biological Psychology , 84(3): 570–579. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.01.005
• Gallagher, Sean, 2017, Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gallistel, Charles R., 1980, The Organization of Action: A New Synthesis , Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Gibson, James J., 1979, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Goldie, Peter, 2000, The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199253048.001.0001
• –––, 2002, “Emotions, Feelings and Intentionality”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences , 1(3): 235–254. doi:10.1023/A:1021306500055
• –––, 2003, “Emotion, Feeling, and Knowledge of the World”, in Solomon 2003: 91–106.
• –––, 2003, “Narrative, Emotion and Perspective”, in Matthew Kieran and Dominic McIver Lopes (eds.), Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts , London: Routledge, 55–69.
• –––, 2004, “Emotion, Reason and Virtue”, in Evans and Cruse 2004: 249–268. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198528975.003.0013
• ––– (ed.), 2010, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199235018.001.0001
• –––, 2012, The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199230730.001.0001
• Goldstein, Irwin, 2002, “Are Emotions Feelings? A Further Look at Hedonic Theories of Emotions”, Consciousness and Emotion , 3(1): 21–33. doi:10.1075/ce.3.1.04gol
• Gordon, Robert M., 1987, The Structure of Emotions: Investigations in Cognitive Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Green, Mitchell S., 2007, Self-Expression , Oxford: Clarendon Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199283781.001.0001
• Green, Otis Howard, 1992, The Emotions: A Philosophical Theory , Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
• Greenspan, Patricia, 2000, “Emotional Strategies and Rationality”, Ethics , 110(3): 469–487. doi:10.1086/233320
• Griffiths, Paul E., 1997, What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 2004, “Towards a ‘Machiavellian’ Theory of Emotional Appraisal”, in Evans and Cruse 2004: 89–105. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198528975.003.0005
• Griffiths, Paul and Andrea Scarantino, 2009, “Emotions in the Wild: the Situated Perspective on Emotion”, in Philip Robbins and Murat Aydede (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 437–453. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511816826.023
• Gunther, York H., 2003, “Emotion and Force”, in York H. Gunther (ed.), Essays on Nonconceptual Content , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 279–288.
• –––, 2004, “The Phenomenology and Intentionality of Emotion”, Philosophical Studies , 117(1–2): 43–55. doi:10.1023/B:PHIL.0000014524.65244.9d
• Gustafson, Donald, 1989, “Grief”, Noûs , 23(4): 457–479. doi:10.2307/2215878
• Harré, Rom, 1986, The Social Construction of Emotions , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Helm, Bennett W., 2001, Emotional Reason: Deliberation, Motivation, and the Nature of Value , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511520044
• –––, 2009, “Emotions as Evaluative Feelings”, Emotion Review , 1(3): 248–255. doi:10.1177/1754073909103593
• –––, 2015, “Emotions and Recalcitrance: Reevaluating the Perceptual Model”, Dialectica , 69(3): 417–433. doi:10.1111/1746-8361.12119
• Hess, Ursula, Rainer Banse, and Arvid Kappas, 1995, “The Intensity of Facial Expressions is Determined by Underlying Affective State and Social Situation”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 69(2): 280–288.
• Hirshleifer, Jack, 1987, “On the Emotions as Guarantors of Threats and Promises”, in John Dupré (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality , 307–26, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Horgan, Terence and John Tienson, 2002, “The Intentionality of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Intentionality”, in David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 520–533.
• Hufendiek, Rebekka, 2016, Embodied Emotions: A Naturalist Approach to a Normative Phenomenon . London: Routledge.
• –––, 2017, “Affordances and the Normativity of Emotions”, Synthese , 194(11): 4455–4476. doi:10.1007/s11229-016-1144-7
• –––, 2018, “Explaining Embodied Emotions—With and Without Representations”, Philosophical Explorations , 21(2): 319–331. doi:10.1080/13869795.2018.1477985
• Hurley, Susan L., 1998, Consciousness in Action , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Hursthouse, Rosalind, 1991, “Arational Actions”, Journal of Philosophy , 88(2): 57–68. doi:10.2307/2026906
• Husserl, Edmund [d. 1938], 1952 [1989], Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie , Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Translated as Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution , Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (trans.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989.
• Hutto, Daniel D., 2012, “Truly Enactive Emotion”, Emotion Review , 4(2): 176–181. doi:10.1177/1754073911430134
• Hutto Daniel D. and Erik Myin, 2013, Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Izard, Carroll E., 1971, The Face of Emotion , New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• –––, 1977, Human Emotions , New York, Plenum.
• –––, 1992, “Basic Emotions, Relations Among Emotions, and Emotion-Cognition Relations”, Psychological Review , 99(3): 561–565. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.99.3.561
• –––, 2007, “Basic Emotions, Natural Kinds, Emotion Schemas, and a New Paradigm”, Perspectives on Psychological Science , 2(3): 260–275. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00044.x
• –––, 2011, “Forms and Functions of Emotions: Matters of Emotion-Cognition Interactions”, Emotion Review , 3(4): 371–378. doi:10.1177/1754073911410737
• James, William, 1884, “What is an Emotion?”, Mind , 9(2): 188–205. doi:10.1093/mind/os-IX.34.188
• –––, 1890, The Principles of Psychology , New York: Holt.
• Johnston, Mark, 2001, “The Authority of Affect”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 63(1): 181–214. doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2001.tb00097.x
• Kagan, Jerome, 2007, What is Emotion? History, Measures, and Meanings , New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• –––, 2010, “Once More into the Breach”, Emotion Review , 2(2); 91–99. doi:10.1177/1754073909353950
• Keltner, Dacher and Jonathan Haidt, 2001, “Social Functions of Emotions”, in Tracy J. Mayne and George A. Bonanno, (eds.), Emotions: Current Issues and Future Directions , New York: Guilford Press, 192–214.
• Keltner, Dacher, Jessica Tracy, Disa A. Sauter, Daniel C. Cordaro, and Galen McNeil, 2016, “Expression of Emotion”, in Barrett, Lewis, & Haviland-Jones 2016: 467–482.
• Kenny, Anthony, 1963, Action, Emotion and Will , London, New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Humanities Press.
• King, Peter, 2010, “Emotions in Medieval Thought”, in Goldie 2010: 167–187.
• Klineberg, Otto, 1940, Social Psychology , New York, Holt.
• Kovach, Adam and Craig De Lancey, 2005, “On Emotions and the Explanation of Behavior”, Noûs , 39(1): 106–122. doi:10.1111/j.0029-4624.2005.00495.x
• Kragel, Philip A., and Kevin S. LaBar, 2016, “Decoding the Nature of Emotion in the Brain”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 20(6): 444–455. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.03.011
• Kraut, Robert, 1986, “Love De Re ”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 10: 413–430. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4975.1987.tb00549.x
• Kreibig, Sylvia D. , 2010, “Autonomic Nervous System Activity in Emotion: A Review”, Biological Psychology , 84(3): 394–421. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.010
• Kriegel, Uriah, 2012, “Towards a New Feeling Theory of Emotion”, European Journal of Philosophy , 22(3): 420–442. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00493.x
• Krueger, Joel, 2014, “Varieties of Extended Emotions”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences , 13(4): 533–555. doi:10.1007/s11097-014-9363-1
• Landis, Carney, 1924, “Studies of Emotional Reactions: II. General Behavior and Facial Expression”, Journal of Comparative Psychology , 4(5): 447–509. doi:10.1037/h0073039
• Lange, Carl Georg, 1885 [1922], Om sindsbevægelser: et psyko-fysiologisk Studie . Translated as The Emotions (along with William James “What is an Emotion?”), A. Haupt (trans.), Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.
• Lazarus, Richard S., 1991a, “Progress on a Cognitive-Motivational-Relational Theory of Emotion”, American Psychologist , 46(8): 819–834. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.46.8.819
• –––, 1991b, Emotion and Adaptation , New York: Oxford University Press.
• LeDoux, Joseph E., 1996, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life , New York: Simon and Schuster.
• –––, 2015, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety , New York: Viking.
• –––, 2017, “Semantics, Surplus Meaning, and the Science of Fear”, Trends in Cognitive Science , 21(5): 303–306. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.02.004
• Levenson, Robert W., 1999, “The Intrapersonal Function of Emotion”, Cognition and Emotion , 13(6): 481–504. doi:10.1080/026999399379159
• –––, 2011, “Basic Emotion Questions”, Emotion Review , 3(4): 379–438. doi:10.1177/1754073911410743
• Lewis, Marc D., 2005, “Bridging Emotion Theory and Neurobiology through Dynamic Systems Modeling”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 28(2): 169–193. doi:10.1017/S0140525X0500004X
• Lewis, Michael, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett (eds.), 2008, Handbook of Emotions , third edition, New York: Guilford Press.
• Lindquist, Kristen A., Tor D. Wager, Hedy Kober, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, 2012, “The Brain Basis of Emotion: A Meta-Analytic Review”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 35(3): 121–202. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11000446
• Lormand, Eric, 1985, “Toward a Theory of Moods”, Philosophical Studies , 47(3): 385–407. doi:10.1007/BF00355211
• Lutz, Catherine, 1980, Emotion Words and Emotional Development on Ifaluk Atoll , Harvard University, PhD thesis.
• Lyons, William, 1980, Emotion , (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mandler, George, 1990, “William James and the Construction of Emotion”, Psychological Science , 1(3): 179–180. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1990.tb00193.x
• Marks, Joel, 1982, “A Theory of Emotion”, Philosophical Studies , 42(2): 227–242. doi:10.1007/BF00374036
• Matsumoto, David, D. Keltner, M. N. Shiota, M. G. Frank, and M. O’Sullivan, 2008, “What’s in a Face? Facial Expressions as Signals of Discrete Emotions”, in Lewis, Haviland-Jones, & Barrett 2008: 211–234.
• Mauss, Iris B., Robert W. Levenson, Loren McCarter, Frank H. Wilhelm, and James J. Gross, 2005, “The Tie that Binds? Coherence Among Emotion Experience, Behavior, and Physiology”, Emotion , 5(2): 175–190.
• McDougall, William, 1908 [2001], An Introduction to Social Psychology , Batoche Books, Kitchener.
• McIntyre, Alison, 1990, “Is Akratic Action Always Irrational?”, in Identity, Character, and Morality , Owen Flanagan and Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 379–400.
• Meinong, Alexius, 1894, “Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie” [Psychological-ethical investigations concerning the theory of value], Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky; reprinted in R. Haller & R. Kindinger (Hg.) (1968), Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe Band III (S. 3–244). Graz: Akademische Druck—und Verlagsanstalt.
• Mele, Alfred R., 1987, Irrationality: an Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1945 [1962], Phénoménologie de la perception , Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Translated as Phenomenology of Perception , Colin Smith (trans.), London: Routledge & K. Paul.
• Mesquita, Batja and B. Parkinson, forthcoming, “Social Constructionist Theories of Emotions”, in Scarantino forthcoming.
• Mesquita, Batja and Michael Boiger, 2014, “Emotions in Context: A Sociodynamic Model of Emotions”, Emotion Review , 6(4): 298–302. doi:10.1177/1754073914534480
• Mesquita, Batja and Nico H. Frijda, 1992, “Cultural Variations in Emotions: A Review”, Psychological Bulletin , 112(2): 179–204. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.112.2.179
• Miceli, Maria and Christiano Castelfranchi, 2015, Expectancy and Emotion , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Moors, Agnes, 2013, “On the Causal Role of Appraisal in Emotion”, Emotion Review , 5(2): 132–140. doi:10.1177/1754073912463601
• –––, 2017, “Integration of Two Skeptical Emotion Theories: Dimensional Appraisal Theory and Russell’s Psychological Construction Theory”, Psychological Inquiry , 28(1): 1–19. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2017.1235900
• Moors, Agnes and Klaus R. Scherer, 2013, “The Role of Appraisal in Emotion”, in M. Robinson, E. Watkins, and E. Harmon-Jones (eds.), Handbook of Cognition and Emotion , 135–155, New York: Guilford.
• Morton, Adam, 2010, “Epistemic emotions”, in Goldie 2010: 385–400.
• Mulligan, Kevin, 1998, “From Appropriate Emotions to Values”, Monist , 81(1): 161–188. doi:10.5840/monist199881114
• Neu, Jerome, 2000, A Tear is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion , Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Niedenthal, Paula M., 2007, “Embodying Emotion”, Science , 316: 1002–05.
• Nummenmaa, Lauri and Heini Saarimäki, forthcoming, “Emotions as Discrete Patterns of Systemic Activity”, Neuroscience Letters , published online: 10 July 2017. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2017.07.012
• Nussbaum, Martha C., 2001, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511840715
• –––, 2016, Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• O’Connor, Cailin, 2016, “The Evolution of Guilt: a Model-Based Approach”, Philosophy of Science , 83(5), 897–908. doi:10.1086/687873
• O’Regan, J. Kevin and Alva Noë, 2001, “A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 24(5): 883–917. doi:10.1017/S0140525X01000115
• Oatley, Keith, 1992, Best Laid Schemes: The Psychology of Emotions , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Oatley, Keith and P.N. Johnson-Laird, 1987, “Towards a Cognitive Theory of Emotions”, Cognition and Emotion , 1(1): 29–50. doi:10.1080/02699938708408362
• Ortony. Andrew and Terence J. Turner, 1990, “What’s Basic About Basic Emotions?”, Psychological Review , 97(3) 315–331. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.97.3.315
• Panksepp, Jaak, 1998, Affective Neuroscience: the Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions , New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2000, “Emotion as a Natural Kind within the Brain”, in Michael Lewis and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones (eds.), Handbook of Emotions , second edition, New York: Guilford University Press, 137–155.
• Parkinson, Brian, 1995, Ideas and Realities of Emotion , London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 1997, “Untangling the Appraisal-Emotion Connection”, Personality and Social Psychology Review , 1(1): 62–79. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0101_5
• –––, 2008, “Emotions in Direct and Remote Social Interaction: Getting through the Spaces between Us”, Computers in Human Behavior , 24(4): 1510–1529. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2007.05.006
• –––, 2009, “What Holds Emotions Together? Meaning and Response Coordination”, Cognitive Systems Research , 10(1): 31–47. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2008.03.003
• Parkinson, Brian, Agneta H. Fischer, and Antony S. R. Manstead, 2005, Emotion in Social Relations: Cultural, Group, and Interpersonal Processes , New York: Psychology Press.
• Parkinson, Brian and Antony S. R. Manstead, 1992, “Appraisal as a Cause of Emotion”, in M. S. Clark (ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology , Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 13: 122–149.
• Picard, Rosalind W., 1997, Affective Computing , Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Pitcher, George, 1965, “Emotion”, Mind , 74(295): 326–346. doi:10.1093/mind/LXXIV.295.326
• Plutchik, Robert, 1980, Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis , New York: Harper and Row.
• Price, Carolyn, 2006, “Affect without Object: Moods and Objectless Emotions”, European Journal of Analytic Philosophy , 2(1): 49–68.
• Prinz, Jesse, 2004, Gut Reactions: a Perceptual Theory of Emotion , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Pugmire, David, 1998, Rediscovering Emotion , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• –––, 2005, Sound Sentiments: Integrity in the Emotions , Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Ramsey, William M., 2007, Representation Reconsidered , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511597954
• Ratcliffe, Matthew, 2005, “The Feeling of Being”, Journal of Consciousness Studies , 12(8–10): 43–60.
• –––, 2008, Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry, and the Sense of Reality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/med/9780199206469.001.0001
• –––, 2017, “Grief and the Unity of Emotion”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 41: 154–174. doi:10.1111/misp.12071
• Reimann, Martin and Antoine Bechara, 2010, “The Somatic Marker Framework as a Neurological Theory of Decision-Making: Review, Conceptual Comparisons, and Future Neuroeconomics Research”, Journal of Economic Psychology , 31(5): 767–776. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2010.03.002
• Reisenzein, Rainer, 1996, “Emotional Action Generation”, in W. Battmann and S. Dutke (eds.), Processes of the Molar Regulation of Behavior , Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science, 151–165.
• –––, 2009a, “Emotions as Metarepresentational States of Mind: Naturalizing the Belief-Desire Theory of Emotion”, Cognitive Systems Research , 10(1): 6–20. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2008.03.001
• –––, 2009b, “Emotional Experience in the Computational Belief-Desire Theory of Emotion”, Emotion Review , 1(3): 214–222. doi:10.1177/1754073909103589
• Roberts, Robert C., 2003, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology , New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511610202
• Robinson, Jenefer, 2005, Deeper than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music and Art , New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0199263655.001.0001
• Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg (ed.), 1980a, Explaining Emotions , Los Angeles: University of California Press, 103–126.
• –––, 1980b, “Explaining Emotions”, in Rorty 1980a: 103–126.
• –––, 1987 [1988], “The Historicity of Psychological Attitudes: Love is Not Love Which Alters Not When it Alteration Finds”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 10(1): 3997–412; reprinted in her Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind , Boston: Beacon Press, 1988, 121–134. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4975.1987.tb00548.x
• –––, 2003, “Enough Already with Theories of Emotion”, in Solomon 2003: ch. 17.
• Roseman, Ira J., 1996, “Why These Appraisals? Anchoring Appraisal Models to Research on Emotional Behavior and Related Response Systems”, in Nico H. Frijda (ed.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference of the International Society for Research on Emotions , Toronto: International Society for Research on Emotions, 106–110.
• Roseman, Ira J. and Craig A. Smith, 2001, “Appraisal Theory: Overview, Assumptions, Varieties, Controversies”, in Scherer, Schorr, and Johnstone 2001: 3–34.
• Ross, Don and Paul Dumouchel, 2004, “Emotions as Strategic Signals”, Rationality and Society , 16(3): 251–286. doi:10.1177/1043463104044678
• Rossi, Mauro and Christine Tappolet, forthcoming, “What Kind of Evaluative States Are Emotions? The Attitudinal Theory vs. the Perceptual Theory of Emotions”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , published online: 5 June 2018, pp. 1–20. doi:10.1080/00455091.2018.1472516
• Russell, James A., 1980, “A Circumplex Model of Affect”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 39(6): 1161–1178. doi:10.1037/h0077714
• –––, 1987, “Comment on Articles by Frijda and by Conway and Bekerian”, Cognition and Emotion , 1(2): 193–197. doi:10.1080/02699938708408045
• –––, 1991, “Culture and the Categorization of Emotions”, Psychological Bulletin , 110(3): 426–450. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.110.3.426
• –––, 1994, “Is There Universal Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expressions? A Review of the Cross-Cultural Studies”, Psychological Bulletin , 115(1), 102–141. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.115.1.102
• –––, 2003, “Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion”, Psychological Review , 110(1): 145–172. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.145
• –––, 2012, “From a Psychological Constructionist Perspective”, in Zachar and Ellis 2012: 79–118. doi:10.1075/ceb.7.03rus
• Salmela, Mikko, 2011, “Can Emotion be Modelled on Perception?”, Dialectica , 65(1): 1–29. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2011.01259.x
• Sartre, Jean-Paul, 1939 [1948], Esquisse d’une théorie des émotions , France. Translated as The Emotions: Outline of a Theory , Bernard Frechtman (trans.), New York: Philosophical Library.
• Scarantino, Andrea, 2010, “Insights and Blindspots of the Cognitivist Theory of Emotions”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science , 61(4): 729–768. doi:10.1093/bjps/axq011
• –––, 2012, “How To Define Emotions Scientifically”, Emotion Review , 4(4): 358–368. doi:10.1177/1754073912445810
• –––, 2014, “The Motivational Theory of Emotions”, in Justin D’Arms andy Daniel Jacobson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Agency , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 156–185. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198717812.003.0008
• –––, 2015, “Basic Emotions, Psychological Construction and the Problem of Variability”, in Barrett and Russell 2015: 334–376.
• –––, 2016, “The Philosophy of Emotions and Its Impact on Affective Science”, in Barrett, Lewis, & Haviland-Jones 2016: 3–48.
• –––, 2017, “How to Do Things with Emotional Expressions: The Theory of Affective Pragmatics”, Psychological Inquiry , 28(2–3): 165–185. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2017.1328951
• ––– (ed.), forthcoming, Routledge Handbook of Emotion Theory , Routledge.
• Scarantino, Andrea and Paul Griffiths, 2011, “Don’t Give up on Basic Emotions”, Emotion Review , 3(4): 444–454. doi:10.1177/1754073911410745
• Scarantino, Andrea and Michael Nielsen, 2015, “Voodoo Dolls and Angry Lions: How Emotions Explain Arational Actions”, Philosophical Studies , 172(11): 2975–2998. doi:10.1007/s11098-015-0452-y
• Schachter, Stanley and Jerome Singer, 1962, “Cognitive, Social and Physiological Determinants of Emotional States”, Psychological Review , 69(5): 379–399. doi:10.1037/h0046234
• Schelling, Thomas C., 1960, The Strategy of Conflict , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Scherer, Klaus R., 1984, “On the Nature and Function of Emotion: A Component Process Approach”, in Klaus R. Scherer & Paul Ekman, Approaches to Emotion . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• –––, 2001, “Appraisal Considered as a Process of Multilevel Sequential Checking”, in Scherer, Schorr, and Johnstone 2001: 92–120.
• –––, 2005, “What are Emotions? And How Can They be Measured?”, Social Science Information , 44(4): 695–729. doi:10.1177/0539018405058216
• –––, 2009, “The Dynamic Architecture of Emotion: Evidence for the Component Process Model”, Cognition and Emotion , 23(7): 1307–1351. doi:10.1080/02699930902928969
• Scherer, Klaus R. and Agnes Moors, forthcoming, “The Emotion Process: Event Appraisal and Component Differentiation”, Annual Review of Psychology , first online 15 August 2018. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011854
• Scherer, Klaus R., Angela Schorr, and Tom Johnstone (eds.), 2001, Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research , (Series in Affective Science), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Schwarz, Norbert, 2012, “Feelings-As-Information Theory”, in Paul A.M. Van Lange, Arie W. Kruglanski, and E. Tory Higgins (eds.), Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology , volume 1, London: Sage Publications, 289–308.
• Searle, John R., 1979, “The Intentionality of Intention and Action”, Inquiry , 22(1–4): 253–280. doi:10.1080/00201747908601876
• Shand, Alexander F., 1920, The Foundations of Character: A Study of the Emotions and Sentiments , second edition, London: Macmillan.
• Shargel, Daniel, 2014, Constitutively Embodied Emotions , Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York. [ Shargel 2014 available online ]
• –––, 2015, “Emotions without Objects”, Biology & Philosophy , 30(6): 831–844. doi:10.1007/s10539-014-9473-8
• Shargel, Daniel and Jesse Prinz, 2018, “An Enactivist Theory of Emotional Content”, in Hichem Naar and Fabrice Teroni (eds.), The Ontology of Emotions , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 110–129. doi:10.1017/9781316275221.007
• Silvia, Paul J., 2006, The Psychology of Interest , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195158557.001.0001
• Slaby, Jan and Philipp Wüschner, 2014, “Emotion and Agency”, in Sabine Roeser and Cain Todd (eds.), Emotion and Value , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 212–228. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199686094.003.0014
• Smith, Craig A. and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, 1985, “Patterns of Cognitive Appraisal in Emotion”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 48(4): 813–838. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.48.4.813
• Smith, Michael, 1998, “The Possibility of Philosophy of Action”, in Jan Bransen and Stefaan E. Cuypers (eds.), Human Action, Deliberation and Causation , The Netherlands: Springer, 17–41. doi:DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-5082-8_2
• Solomon, Robert C., 1976, The Passions , Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor.
• –––, 1980, “Emotions and Choice”, in Rorty 1980a: 251–81.
• ––– (ed.), 2003, Thinking About Feelings: Philosophers on Emotions , (Series in Affective Science), Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2008, “The Philosophy of Emotions”, in Lewis, Haviland-Jones, & Barrett 2008: 3–16.
• Stephan, Achim, 2017a, “Moods in Layers”, Philosophia , 45(4): 1481–1495. doi:10.1007/s11406-017-9841-0
• –––, 2017b, “On the Adequacy of Emotions and Existential Feelings”, Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia , 8(1): 1–13. doi:10.1007/s11406-017-9841-0
• Stephan, Achim, Sven Walter, and Wendy Wilutzky, 2014, “Emotions Beyond Brain and Body”, Philosophical Psychology , 27(1): 98–111. doi:10.1080/09515089.2013.828376
• Stephens, Chad L., Israel C. Christie, and Bruce H. Friedman, 2010, “Autonomic Specificity of Basic Emotions: Evidence from Pattern Classification and Cluster Analysis”, Biological Psychology , 84(3): 463–473. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.014
• Tappolet, Christine, 2000, Emotions et Valeurs , Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• –––, 2010, “Emotions, Action, and Motivation: the Case of Fear”, in Goldie 2010: 325–345.
• –––, 2016, Emotions, Values, and Agency , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199696512.001.0001
• Taylor, Gabriele, 1975, “Justifying the Emotions”, Mind , 84(1): 390–402. doi:10.1093/mind/LXXXIV.1.390
• Teroni, Fabrice, 2007, “Emotions and Formal Objects”, Dialectica , 61(3): 395–415. doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2007.01108.x
• Thagard, Paul, 2006, Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Thalberg, Irving, 1964, “Emotion and Thought”, American Philosophical Quarterly , 1(1): 45–55.
• Thompson, Evan, 2007, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Tomkins, Silvan S., 2008, Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition , vols. I, II, III, IV, New York: Springer Publishing Company.
• Tooby, John and Leda Cosmides, 2008, “The Evolutionary Psychology of the Emotions and Their Relationship to Internal Regulatory Variables”, in Lewis, Haviland-Jones, & Barrett 2008: 114–137.
• Tye, Michael, 1995, Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Uexküll, Jakob von, 1934 [2010], Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen ; translated as A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans. With a Theory of Meaning , Joseph D. O’Neill (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.
• Van Kleef, Gerben A., 2016, The Interpersonal Dynamics of Emotion: Toward an Integrative Theory of Emotions as Social Information , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107261396
• Van Leeuwen, D.S. Neil, 2007, “The Spandrels of Self-Deception”, Philosophical Psychology , 20(3): 329–348. doi:10.1080/09515080701197148
• Varela, Francisco J., 1996, “Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem”, Journal of Consciousness Studies , 3(4): 330–350.
• Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, 1991, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Whiting, Demian, 2011, “The Feeling Theory of Emotion and the Object-Directed Emotions”, European Journal of Philosophy , 19(2): 281–303. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0378.2009.00384.x
• Wierzbicka, Anna, 1999, Emotions across Languages and Cultures: Diversity and Universals , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511521256
• Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine D., Lisa Feldman Barrett, W. Kyle Simmons, and Lawrence W. Barsalou, 2011, “Grounding Emotion in Situated Conceptualization”, Neuropsychologia , 49(5): 1105–1127. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.12.032
• Wollheim, Richard, 1999, On the Emotions , New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Zachar, Peter, 2006, “The Classification of Emotion and Scientific Realism”, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology , 26(1–2): 120–138. doi:10.1037/h0091270
• Zachar, Peter and Ralph D. Ellis (eds.), 2012, Categorical Versus Dimensional Models of Affect: A Seminar on the Theories of Panksepp and Russell , (Consciousness and Emotion book series), Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins. doi:10.1075/ceb.7
• Zajonc, Robert, 2000, “Feeling and Thinking: Closing the Debate over the Independence of Affect”, in Joseph P. Forgas (ed.) Feeling and Thinking: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 31–58.
• Zinck, Alexandra and Albert Newen, 2008, “Classifying Emotion: A Developmental Account”, Synthese , 161(1): 1–25. doi:10.1007/s11229-006-9149-2

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Emotion Researcher
• International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE )
• Society for Affective Science (SAS)
• Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA)
• European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions
• de Sousa, Ronald, “Emotion”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/emotion/ >. [This was the previous entry on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — see the version history .]

[Please contact the author with other suggestions.]

action-based theories of perception | bodily awareness | consciousness | decision-making capacity | definitions | desire | emotion: 17th and 18th century theories of | emotion: in the Christian tradition | emotion: medieval theories of | empathy | envy | fitting attitude theories of value | frame problem | Indian Philosophy (Classical): concept of emotion | intentionality | intentionality: phenomenal | love | moral sentimentalism | natural kinds | pleasure | practical reason | rationality: instrumental | self-deception | social construction: naturalistic approaches to

Acknowledgments

We want to thank Manula Adhihetty for his valuable work helping us edit the entry and completing the bibliography. We received excellent feedback on a previous draft of this entry from a number of colleagues and friends, including Giovanna Colombetti, Phoebe Ellsworth, Rebekka Hufendiek, Agnes Moors, Jesse Prinz, Jim Russell, Disa Sauter, Dan Shargel, Achim Stephan, Christine Tappolet, Fabrice Teroni and an anonymous referee. Fabrice also gave us very valuable comments on the previous version of this entry, for which we are very grateful.

Copyright © 2018 by Andrea Scarantino < ascarantino @ gsu . edu > Ronald de Sousa < ronald . de . sousa @ utoronto . ca >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2024 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

What Is an Emotion? William James’s Revolutionary 1884 Theory of How Our Bodies Affect Our Feelings

By maria popova.

“Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote in her masterful treatise on the intelligence of the emotions , “they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.” But the emotions and the intellect are just two parts of our creaturely trifecta of experience. The third, which can’t be disentwined from the other two and which is in constant dynamic dialogue with them, is the physical — the reality of the body.

More than a century before Nussbaum, the trailblazing psychologist William James (January 11, 1842–August 26, 1910) — who shaped our understanding of the psychology of habit — made a revolutionary case for “how much our mental life is knit up with our corporeal frame” in an 1884 essay titled “What is an Emotion?” included in The Heart of William James ( public library ).

Long before scientists came to demonstrate how our emotions affect our bodies , James argued that the relationship is bidirectional and that while “bodily disturbances” are conventionally considered byproducts or expressions of the so-called standard emotions — “surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed, and the like” — these corporeal reverberations are actually the raw material of the emotion itself.

James writes:

Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion . Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colourless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we could not actually feel afraid or angry.

The subtleties of our body language and physical instinct, James argues, are in concordance with the subtleties of our emotional experience:

No shade of emotion, however slight, should be without a bodily reverberation as unique, when taken in its totality, as is the mental mood itself. The immense number of parts modified in each emotion is what makes it so difficult for us to reproduce in cold blood the total and integral expression of any one of them. […] Our whole cubic capacity is sensibly alive; and each morsel of it contributes its pulsations of feeling, dim or sharp, pleasant, painful, or dubious, to that sense of personality that every one of us unfailingly carries with him.

Pointing out that we’re each familiar with the bodily experience of emotional states — the instinctual furrowing of the brow when troubled, the lump in the throat when anxious — James delivers the central point of his theory:

If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. […] Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition of it in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the only thing that can possibly be supposed to take its place is some cold-blooded and dispassionate judicial sentence, confined entirely to the intellectual realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner of grief: what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feelingless cognition that certain circumstances are deplorable, and nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story. A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

It’s only in the past decade, more than a century after James developed his theory, that Western scientists have come to study this relationship through the field of embodied condition . But millennia-old Eastern traditions are built upon a foundational understanding of this osmotic interplay of flesh and feeling. Ancient mind-body practices like vipassana meditation are so effective because, in bringing us back into our bodies, they decondition our mental spinning and make us better able to simply observe our emotions as we experience them rather than being wound up and dominated by them.

Noting that his theory “grew out of fragmentary introspective observations,” James offers an empirical testament from his own interior life:

The more closely I scrutinise my states, the more persuaded I become, that whatever moods, affections, and passions I have, are in very truth constituted by, and made up of, those bodily changes we ordinarily call their expression or consequence; and the more it seems to me that if I were to become corporeally anaesthetic, I should be excluded from the life of the affections, harsh and tender alike, and drag out an existence of merely cognitive or intellectual form.

He notes that the purely cognitive experience of things is “more allied to a judgment of right than to anything else” — for instance, analyzing a symphony’s composition rather than letting the music, in the immortal words of Oliver Sacks, “pierce the heart directly.” Curiously, James argues that intellectual mastery of a specific domain blunts one’s ability to feel these physiological-aesthetic ripples of emotion:

Where long familiarity with a certain class of effects has blunted emotional sensibility thereto as much as it has sharpened the taste and judgment, we do get the intellectual emotion, if such it can be called, pure and undefiled. And the dryness of it, the paleness, the absence of all glow, as it may exist in a thoroughly expert critic’s mind, not only shows us what an altogether different thing it is from the “standard” emotions we considered first, but makes us suspect that almost the entire difference lies in the fact that the bodily sounding-board, vibrating in the one case, is in the other mute. “Not so very bad” is, in a person of consummate taste, apt to be the highest limit of approving expression.

The great physicist Richard Feynman, of course, vehemently disagreed . But James certainly had a point: I once knew a hard scientist, in every sense of the word, who very much embodied this withering of the expansive warmth of aesthetic appreciation in the grip of the cold intellect. On one occasion, she sent me a photograph from an autumn hike, depicting hills of trees covered in beautiful foliage at sunset. “Not bad,” she wrote.

James considers the interplay of these two faculties:

In every art, in every science, there is the keen perception of certain relations being right or not, and there is the emotional flush and thrill consequent thereupon. And these are two things, not one. In the former of them it is that experts and masters are at home. The latter accompaniments are bodily commotions that they may hardly feel, but that may be experienced in their fulness by Crétins and Philistines in whom the critical judgment is at its lowest ebb. The “marvels” of Science, about which so much edifying popular literature is written, are apt to be “caviare” to the men in the laboratories. Cognition and emotion are parted even in this last retreat, — who shall say that their antagonism may not just be one phase of the world-old struggle known as that between the spirit and the flesh? — a struggle in which it seems pretty certain that neither party will definitively drive the other off the field.

The essay, like every piece collected in The Heart of William James , is a magnificent read in its entirety. Complement it with James on choosing purpose over profit and the psychology of the second wind , then revisit immunologist Esther Sternberg on how our emotions affect our susceptibility to burnout and disease and Rilke on the relationship between the body and the soul .

— Published January 11, 2016 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/01/11/what-is-an-emotion-william-james/ —

www.themarginalian.org

PRINT ARTICLE

Email article, filed under, books culture health philosophy psychology william james, view full site.

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy . (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

6.3 Emotions and Interpersonal Communication

Learning objectives.

• Define emotions.
• Explain the evolutionary and cultural connections to emotions.
• Discuss how we can more effectively manage our own and respond to others’ emotions.

Have you ever been at a movie and let out a bellowing laugh and snort only to realize no one else is laughing? Have you ever gotten uncomfortable when someone cries in class or in a public place? Emotions are clearly personal, as they often project what we’re feeling on the inside to those around us whether we want it to show or not. Emotions are also interpersonal in that another person’s show of emotion usually triggers a reaction from us—perhaps support if the person is a close friend or awkwardness if the person is a stranger. Emotions are central to any interpersonal relationship, and it’s important to know what causes and influences emotions so we can better understand our own emotions and better respond to others when they display emotions.

Emotions are physiological, behavioral, and/or communicative reactions to stimuli that are cognitively processed and experienced as emotional (Planlap, Fitness, & Fehr, 2006). This definition includes several important dimensions of emotions. First, emotions are often internally experienced through physiological changes such as increased heart rate, a tense stomach, or a cold chill. These physiological reactions may not be noticeable by others and are therefore intrapersonal unless we exhibit some change in behavior that clues others into our internal state or we verbally or nonverbally communicate our internal state. Sometimes our behavior is voluntary—we ignore someone, which may indicate we are angry with them—or involuntary—we fidget or avoid eye contact while talking because we are nervous. When we communicate our emotions, we call attention to ourselves and provide information to others that may inform how they should react. For example, when someone we care about displays behaviors associated with sadness, we are likely to know that we need to provide support (Planlap, Fitness, & Fehr, 2006). We learn, through socialization, how to read and display emotions, although some people are undoubtedly better at reading emotions than others. However, as with most aspects of communication, we can all learn to become more competent with increased knowledge and effort.

Primary emotions are innate emotions that are experienced for short periods of time and appear rapidly, usually as a reaction to an outside stimulus, and are experienced similarly across cultures. The primary emotions are joy, distress, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Members of a remote tribe in New Guinea, who had never been exposed to Westerners, were able to identify these basic emotions when shown photographs of US Americans making corresponding facial expressions (Evans, 2001).

Secondary emotions are not as innate as primary emotions, and they do not have a corresponding facial expression that makes them universally recognizable. Secondary emotions are processed by a different part of the brain that requires higher order thinking; therefore, they are not reflexive. Secondary emotions are love, guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, envy, and jealousy (Evans, 2001). These emotions develop over time, take longer to fade away, and are interpersonal because they are most often experienced in relation to real or imagined others. You can be fearful of a the dark but feel guilty about an unkind comment made to your mother or embarrassed at the thought of doing poorly on a presentation in front of an audience. Since these emotions require more processing, they are more easily influenced by thoughts and can be managed, which means we can become more competent communicators by becoming more aware of how we experience and express secondary emotions. Although there is more cultural variation in the meaning and expression of secondary emotions, they are still universal in that they are experienced by all cultures. It’s hard to imagine what our lives would be like without emotions, and in fact many scientists believe we wouldn’t be here without them.

Perspectives on Emotion

How did you learn to express your emotions? Like many aspects of communication and interaction, you likely never received any formal instruction on expressing emotions. Instead, we learn through observation, trial and error, and through occasional explicit guidance (e.g., “boys don’t cry” or “smile when you meet someone”). To better understand how and why we express our emotions, we’ll discuss the evolutionary function of emotions and how they are affected by social and cultural norms.

Evolution and Emotions

Human beings grouping together and creating interpersonal bonds was a key element in the continuation and success of our species, and the ability to express emotions played a role in this success (Planlap, Fitness, & Fehr, 2006). For example, unlike other species, most of us are able to control our anger, and we have the capacity for empathy. Emotional regulation can help manage conflict, and empathy allows us to share the emotional state of someone else, which increases an interpersonal bond. These capacities were important as early human society grew increasingly complex and people needed to deal with living with more people.

A dependable and nurturing caregiver helps establish a secure attachment style that will influence emotions and views of relationships in later life.

Justhiggy – Mom and baby – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Attachment theory ties into the evolutionary perspective, because researchers claim that it is in our nature, as newborns, to create social bonds with our primary caretaker (Planlap, Fitness, & Fehr, 2006). This drive for attachment became innate through the process of evolution as early humans who were more successful at attachment were more likely to survive and reproduce—repeating the cycle. Attachment theory proposes that people develop one of the following three attachment styles as a result of interactions with early caretakers: secure, avoidant, or anxious attachment (Feeney, Noller, & Roverts, 2000). It is worth noting that much of the research on attachment theory has been based on some societal norms that are shifting. For example, although women for much of human history have played the primary caregiver role, men are increasingly taking on more caregiver responsibilities. Additionally, although the following examples presume that a newborn’s primary caregivers are his or her parents, extended family, foster parents, or others may also play that role.

Individuals with a secure attachment style report that their relationship with their parents is warm and that their parents also have a positive and caring relationship with each other. People with this attachment style are generally comfortable with intimacy, feel like they can depend on others when needed, and have few self-doubts. As a result, they are generally more effective at managing their emotions, and they are less likely to experience intense negative emotions in response to a negative stimulus like breaking up with a romantic partner.

People with the avoidant attachment style report discomfort with closeness and a reluctance to depend on others. They quickly develop feelings of love for others, but those feelings lose intensity just as fast. As a result, people with this attachment style do not view love as long lasting or enduring and have a general fear of intimacy because of this. This attachment style might develop due to a lack of bonding with a primary caregiver.

People with the anxious attachment style report a desire for closeness but anxieties about being abandoned. They regularly experience self-doubts and may blame their lack of love on others’ unwillingness to commit rather than their own anxiety about being left. They are emotionally volatile and more likely to experience intense negative emotions such as anxiety and anger. This attachment style might develop because primary caregivers were not dependable or were inconsistent—alternating between caring or nurturing and neglecting or harming.

This process of attachment leads us to experience some of our first intense emotions, such as love, trust, joy, anxiety, or anger, and we learn to associate those emotions with closely bonded relationships (Planlap, Fitness, & Fehr, 2006). For example, the child who develops a secure attachment style and associates feelings of love and trust with forming interpersonal bonds will likely experience similar emotions as an adult entering into a romantic partnership. Conversely, a child who develops an anxious attachment style and associates feelings of anxiety and mistrust with forming interpersonal bonds will likely experience similar emotions in romantic relationships later in life. In short, whether we form loving and secure bonds or unpredictable and insecure bonds influences our emotional tendencies throughout our lives, which inevitably affects our relationships. Of course, later in life, we have more control over and conscious thoughts about this process. Although it seems obvious that developing a secure attachment style is the ideal scenario, it is also inevitable that not every child will have the same opportunity to do so. But while we do not have control over the style we develop as babies, we can exercise more control over our emotions and relationships as adults if we take the time to develop self-awareness and communication competence—both things this book will help you do if you put what you learn into practice.

Culture and Emotions

While our shared evolutionary past dictates some universal similarities in emotions, triggers for emotions and norms for displaying emotions vary widely. Certain emotional scripts that we follow are socially, culturally, and historically situated. Take the example of “falling in love.” Westerners may be tempted to critique the practice of arranged marriages in other cultures and question a relationship that isn’t based on falling in love. However, arranged marriages have been a part of Western history, and the emotional narrative of falling in love has only recently become a part of our culture. Even though we know that compatible values and shared social networks are more likely to predict the success of a long-term romantic relationship than “passion,” Western norms privilege the emotional role of falling in love in our courtship narratives and practices (Crozier, 2006). While this example shows how emotions tie into larger social and cultural narratives, rules and norms for displaying emotions affect our day-to-day interactions.

Display rules are sociocultural norms that influence emotional expression. Display rules influence who can express emotions, which emotions can be expressed, and how intense the expressions can be. In individualistic cultures, where personal experience and self-determination are values built into cultural practices and communication, expressing emotions is viewed as a personal right. In fact, the outward expression of our inner states may be exaggerated, since getting attention from those around you is accepted and even expected in individualistic cultures like the United States (Safdar et al., 2009). In collectivistic cultures, emotions are viewed as more interactional and less individual, which ties them into social context rather than into an individual right to free expression. An expression of emotion reflects on the family and cultural group rather than only on the individual. Therefore, emotional displays are more controlled, because maintaining group harmony and relationships is a primary cultural value, which is very different from the more individualistic notion of having the right to get something off your chest.

There are also cultural norms regarding which types of emotions can be expressed. In individualistic cultures, especially in the United States, there is a cultural expectation that people will exhibit positive emotions. Recent research has documented the culture of cheerfulness in the United States (Kotchemidova, 2010). People seek out happy situations and communicate positive emotions even when they do not necessarily feel positive emotions. Being positive implicitly communicates that you have achieved your personal goals, have a comfortable life, and have a healthy inner self (Mesquita & Albert, 2007). In a culture of cheerfulness, failure to express positive emotions could lead others to view you as a failure or to recommend psychological help or therapy. The cultural predisposition to express positive emotions is not universal. The people who live on the Pacific islands of Ifaluk do not encourage the expression of happiness, because they believe it will lead people to neglect their duties (Mesquita & Albert, 2007). Similarly, collectivistic cultures may view expressions of positive emotion negatively because someone is bringing undue attention to himself or herself, which could upset group harmony and potentially elicit jealous reactions from others.

Emotional expressions of grief also vary among cultures and are often tied to religious or social expectations (Lobar, Youngblut, & Brooten, 2006). Thai and Filipino funeral services often include wailing, a more intense and loud form of crying, which shows respect for the deceased. The intensity of the wailing varies based on the importance of the individual who died and the closeness of the relationship between the mourner and the deceased. Therefore, close relatives like spouses, children, or parents would be expected to wail louder than distant relatives or friends. In Filipino culture, wailers may even be hired by the family to symbolize the importance of the person who died. In some Latino cultures, influenced by the concept of machismo or manliness, men are not expected or allowed to cry. Even in the United States, there are gendered expectations regarding grieving behaviors that lead some men to withhold emotional displays such as crying even at funerals. On the other hand, as you can see in Video Clip 6.1, the 2011 death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il brought out public mourners who some suspected were told and/or paid to wail in front of television cameras.

Video Clip 6.1

North Koreans Mourn Kim Jong-Il’s Death

(click to see video)

Expressing Emotions

Emotion sharing involves communicating the circumstances, thoughts, and feelings surrounding an emotional event. Emotion sharing usually starts immediately following an emotional episode. The intensity of the emotional event corresponds with the frequency and length of the sharing, with high-intensity events being told more often and over a longer period of time. Research shows that people communicate with others after almost any emotional event, positive or negative, and that emotion sharing offers intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits, as individuals feel inner satisfaction and relief after sharing, and social bonds are strengthened through the interaction (Rime, 2007).

Our social bonds are enhanced through emotion sharing because the support we receive from our relational partners increases our sense of closeness and interdependence. We should also be aware that our expressions of emotion are infectious due to emotional contagion , or the spreading of emotion from one person to another (Hargie, 2011). Think about a time when someone around you got the giggles and you couldn’t help but laugh along with them, even if you didn’t know what was funny. While those experiences can be uplifting, the other side of emotional contagion can be unpleasant. One of my favorite skits from Saturday Night Live , called “Debbie Downer,” clearly illustrates the positive and negative aspects of emotional contagion. In the skit, a group of friends and family have taken a trip to an amusement park. One of the people in the group, Debbie, interjects depressing comments into the happy dialogue of the rest of the group. Within the first two minutes of the skit, Debbie mentions mad cow disease after someone orders steak and eggs for breakfast, a Las Vegas entertainer being mauled by his tiger after someone gets excited about seeing Tigger, and a train explosion in North Korea after someone mentions going to the Epcot center. We’ve probably all worked with someone or had that family member who can’t seem to say anything positive, and Debbie’s friends react, as we would, by getting increasingly frustrated with her. The skit also illustrates the sometimes uncontrollable aspects of emotional contagion. As you know, the show is broadcast live and the characters occasionally “break character” after getting caught up in the comedy. After the comment about North Korea, Rachel Dratch, who plays Debbie, and Jimmy Fallon, another actor in the scene, briefly break character and laugh a little bit. Their character slip leads other actors to break character and over the next few minutes the laughter spreads (which was not scripted and not supposed to happen) until all the actors in the skit are laughing, some of them uncontrollably, and the audience is also roaring with laughter. This multilayered example captures the positive, negative, and interpersonal aspects of emotional contagion.

In order to verbally express our emotions, it is important that we develop an emotional vocabulary. The more specific we can be when we are verbally communicating our emotions, the less ambiguous they will be for the person decoding our message. As we expand our emotional vocabulary, we are able to convey the intensity of the emotion we’re feeling whether it is mild, moderate, or intense. For example, happy is mild, delighted is moderate, and ecstatic is intense, and ignored is mild, rejected is moderate, and abandoned is intense (Hargie, 2011). Aside from conveying the intensity of your emotions, you can also verbally frame your emotions in a way that allows you to have more control over them.

We can communicate ownership of our emotions through the use of “I” language. This may allow us to feel more in control, but it may also facilitate emotion sharing by not making our conversational partner feel at fault or defensive. For example, instead of saying “You’re making me crazy!” you could say, “I’m starting to feel really anxious because we can’t make a decision.” However, there may be times when face-to-face communication isn’t possible or desired, which can complicate how we express emotions.

In a time when so much of our communication is electronically mediated, it is likely that we will communicate emotions through the written word in an e-mail, text, or instant message. We may also still resort to pen and paper when sending someone a thank-you note, a birthday card, or a sympathy card. Communicating emotions through the written (or typed) word can have advantages such as time to compose your thoughts and convey the details of what you’re feeling. There are also disadvantages, in that important context and nonverbal communication can’t be included. Things like facial expressions and tone of voice offer much insight into emotions that may not be expressed verbally. There is also a lack of immediate feedback. Sometimes people respond immediately to a text or e-mail, but think about how frustrating it is when you text someone and they don’t get back to you right away. If you’re in need of emotional support or want validation of an emotional message you just sent, waiting for a response could end up negatively affecting your emotional state and your relationship.

“Getting Critical”

Politicians, Apologies, and Emotions

Politicians publicly apologizing for wrongdoings have been features in the news for years. In June of 2011, Representative Anthony Weiner, a member of the US Congress, apologized to his family, constituents, and friends for posting an explicit photo on Twitter that was intended to go to a woman with whom he had been chatting and then lying about it. He resigned from Congress a little over a week later. Emotions like guilt and shame are often the driving forces behind an apology, and research shows that apologies that communicate these emotions are viewed as more sincere (Hareli & Eisikovits, 2006). However, admitting and expressing guilt doesn’t automatically lead to forgiveness, as such admissions may expose character flaws of an individual. Rep. Weiner communicated these emotions during his speech, which you can view in Video Clip 6.2. He said he was “deeply sorry,” expressed “regret” for the pain he caused, and said, “I am deeply ashamed of my terrible judgment and actions” (CNN, 2001).

• After viewing Rep. Weiner’s apology, do you feel like he was sincere? Why or why not?
• Do you think politicians have a higher ethical responsibility to apologize for wrongdoing than others? Why or why not?

Video Clip 6.2

Rep. Anthony Weiner Apologizes for Twitter Scandal, Racy Photo

Managing and Responding to Emotions

The notion of emotional intelligence emerged in the early 1990s and has received much attention in academic scholarship, business and education, and the popular press. Emotional intelligence “involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action” (Salovey, Woolery, & Mayer, 2001). As was noted earlier, improving our emotional vocabulary and considering how and when to verbally express our emotions can help us better distinguish between and monitor our emotions. However, as the definition of emotional intelligence states, we must then use the results of that cognitive process to guide our thoughts and actions.

Just as we are likely to engage in emotion sharing following an emotional event, we are likely to be on the receiving end of that sharing. Another part of emotional intelligence is being able to appraise others’ expressions of emotions and communicatively adapt. A key aspect in this process is empathy, which is the ability to comprehend the emotions of others and to elicit those feelings in ourselves. Being empathetic has important social and physical implications. By expressing empathy, we will be more likely to attract and maintain supportive social networks, which has positive physiological effects like lower stress and less anxiety and psychological effects such as overall life satisfaction and optimism (Guerrero & Andersen, 2000).

When people share emotions, they may expect a variety of results such as support, validation, or advice. If someone is venting, they may just want your attention. When people share positive emotions, they may want recognition or shared celebration. Remember too that you are likely to coexperience some of the emotion with the person sharing it and that the intensity of their share may dictate your verbal and nonverbal reaction (Rime, 2007). Research has shown that responses to low-intensity episodes are mostly verbal. For example, if someone describes a situation where they were frustrated with their car shopping experience, you may validate their emotion by saying, “Car shopping can be really annoying. What happened?” Conversely, more intense episodes involve nonverbal reactions such as touching, body contact (scooting close together), or embracing. These reactions may or may not accompany verbal communication. You may have been in a situation where someone shared an intense emotion, such as learning of the death of a close family member, and the only thing you could think to do was hug them. Although being on the receiving end of emotional sharing can be challenging, your efforts will likely result in positive gains in your interpersonal communication competence and increased relational bonds.

Key Takeaways

• Emotions result from outside stimuli or physiological changes that influence our behaviors and communication.
• Emotions developed in modern humans to help us manage complex social life including interpersonal relations.
• The expression of emotions is influenced by sociocultural norms and display rules.
• Emotion sharing includes verbal expression, which is made more effective with an enhanced emotional vocabulary, and nonverbal expression, which may or may not be voluntary.
• Emotional intelligence helps us manage our own emotions and effectively respond to the emotions of others.
• In what situations would you be more likely to communicate emotions through electronic means rather than in person? Why?
• Can you think of a display rule for emotions that is not mentioned in the chapter? What is it and why do you think this norm developed?
• When you are trying to determine someone’s emotional state, what nonverbal communication do you look for and why?
• Think of someone in your life who you believe has a high degree of emotional intelligence. What have they done that brought you to this conclusion?

CNN, Transcripts , accessed June 16, 2001 http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1106/07/ltm.01.html .

Crozier, W. R., Blushing and the Social Emotions: The Self Unmasked (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

Evans, D., Emotion: The Science of Sentiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 5–6.

Feeney, J. A., Patricia Noller, and Nigel Roberts, “Attachment and Close Relationships,” in Close Relationships: A Sourcebook , eds. Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 188.

Guerrero, L. K. and Peter A. Andersen, “Emotion in Close Relationships,” in Close Relationships: A Sourcebook , eds. Clyde Hendrick and Susan S. Hendrick (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 171–83.

Hargie, O., Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 69.

Kotchemidova, C., “Emotion Culture and Cognitive Constructions of Reality,” Communication Quarterly 58, no. 2 (2010): 207–34.

Lobar, S. L., JoAnne M. Youngblut, and Dorothy Brooten, “Cross-Cultural Beliefs, Ceremonies, and Rituals Surrounding Death of a Loved One,” Pediatric Nursing 32, no. 1 (2006): 44–50.

Mesquita, B. and Dustin Albert, “The Cultural Regulation of Emotions,” in Handbook of Emotion Regulation , ed. James J. Gross (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 486.

Planlap, S., Julie Fitness, and Beverly Fehr, “Emotion in Theories of Close Relationships,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships , eds. Anita L. Vangelisti and Daniel Perlman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 369–84.

Rime, B., “Interpersonal Emotion Regulation,” in Handbook of Emotion Regulation , ed. James J. Gross (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 466–68.

Safdar, S., Wolfgang Friedlmeier, David Matsumoto, Seung Hee Yoo, Catherine T. Kwantes, and Hisako Kakai, “Variations of Emotional Display Rules within and across Cultures: A Comparison between Canada, USA, and Japan,” Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science 41, no. 1 (2009): 1–10.

Salovey, P., Alison Woolery, and John D. Mayer, “Emotional Intelligence: Conceptualization and Measurement,” in Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes , eds. Garth J. O. Fletcher and Margaret S. Clark (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 279–307.

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Emotion Theory and Research: Highlights, Unanswered Questions, and Emerging Issues

Carroll e. izard.

Psychology Department, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716-2577; email: ude.ledu.hcysp@drazi

Emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity, the key component of emotions and emotion-cognition interactions. Emotion schemas, the most frequently occurring emotion experiences, are dynamic emotion-cognition interactions that may consist of momentary/ situational responding or enduring traits of personality that emerge over developmental time. Emotions play a critical role in the evolution of consciousness and the operations of all mental processes. Types of emotion relate differentially to types or levels of consciousness. Unbridled imagination and the ability for sympathetic regulation of empathy may represent both potential gains and losses from the evolution and ontogeny of emotion processes and consciousness. Unresolved issues include psychology’s neglect of levels of consciousness that are distinct from access or reflective consciousness and use of the term “unconscious mind” as a dumpster for all mental processes that are considered unreportable. The relation of memes and the mirror neuron system to empathy, sympathy, and cultural influences on the development of socioemotional skills are unresolved issues destined to attract future research.

INTRODUCTION

This prefatory chapter, like every essay, review, or data-based article, is influenced by its author’s feelings about the topics and issues under consideration as well as the author’s personality and social and cultural experiences. To help counterbalance the effects of such influences on this article and provide some perspective on its contents, I present below the major theses that have emerged in my theorizing and research on emotions.

THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES

The key principles of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard 2007a ) have changed periodically. They change primarily because of advances in methodology and research. They may also change as a result of theoretical debates that highlight the need for some clarifications and distinctions among constructs. The current set of principles highlight distinctly different types of emotions and their roles in the evolution and development of different levels of consciousness/awareness and of mind, human mentality, and behavior. The ongoing reformulations of DET principles are facilitated by advances in emotion science, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental clinical science, as well as in social and personality psychology. For the present article, the seven principles below guided the choice of topics and the selective review of the literature on emotions and their relations to cognition, action, and consciousness. They led to a new perspective on emotion-related gains and losses from evolution and opened the door to theoretical development and research on emerging topics such as the role of the mirror neuron system in emotion experiences, empathy, and sympathy and memes and their relations to emotion schemas.

An overarching aspect of the theoretical perspective represented in the following principles and in this article is that emotion and cognition, though often treated correctly as having functionally separate features and influences (e.g., Bechara et al. 2000 , Talmi & Frith 2007 ), are interactive and integrated or mingled in the brain (cf. Lewis 2005 , Pessoa 2008 , Phelps 2006 ). This thesis is consistent with the long-standing recognition of the high degree of connectivity among the brain’s neural structures and systems. I hypothesize that emotion will have substantial and measurable effects on cognition and action when the stimulus or situation is a personally or socially significant one. The foregoing general thesis and the more specific hypothesis seem to run counter to extreme constructivist positions. Such positions (e.g., Barrett 2006 ) define or locate emotion at the level of perception and apparently have no place for the idea of interactions among distinct features of emotion (e.g., motivation/feeling) and cognition (e.g., higher-order conceptual processes). The present position may bear some similarity to componential–dynamic approaches, at least in terms of continuously changing aspects or configurations of mental processes (e.g., Ellsworth 1994 , Scherer 2000 ). However, the present position may differ from the latter in viewing emotion and cognition as always interacting and thus normally precluding pure cognitive and emotion states.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES

• Emotion feeling ( a ) derives from evolution and neurobiological development, ( b ) is the key psychological component of emotions and consciousness, and ( c ) is more often inherently adaptive than maladaptive.
• Emotions play a central role in the evolution of consciousness, influence the emergence of higher levels of awareness during ontogeny, and largely determine the contents and focus of consciousness throughout the life span.
• Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior.
• Basic emotion feelings help organize and motivate rapid (and often more-or-less automatic though malleable) actions that are critical for adaptive responses to immediate challenges to survival or wellbeing. In emotion schemas, the neural systems and mental processes involved in emotion feelings, perception, and cognition interact continually and dynamically in generating and monitoring thought and action. These dynamic interactions (which range from momentary processes to traits or trait-like phenomena) can generate innumerable emotion-specific experiences (e.g., anger schemas) that have the same core feeling state but different perceptual tendencies (biases), thoughts, and action plans.
• Emotion utilization, typically dependent on effective emotion-cognition interactions, is adaptive thought or action that stems, in part, directly from the experience of emotion feeling/motivation and in part from learned cognitive, social, and behavioral skills.
• Emotion schemas become maladaptive and may lead to psychopathology when learning results in the development of connections among emotion feelings and maladaptive cognition and action.
• The emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes.

Elaboration and empirical support for principles 1–6 can be found in the following sources and their reference lists ( Ackerman et al. 1998 ; Izard 2002 , 2007a ; Izard et al. 2008a , b , c ; Silvia 2006 ). Principles 1–3 apply to all emotions, and 4–6 primarily concern emotion schemas. Principle 7 consists of propositions about the most ubiquitous of all human emotions—interest-excitement. Specific empirical support does not exist for the hypothesis of continual interest in the normal mind.

In this article, I discuss the issues of defining the term “emotion” and types of emotion, emotion-cognition interactions, emotions and consciousness, relations among types of emotions and types of consciousness, and note some remarkable gains and losses from the evolution of emotions and multiple levels consciousness.

This article addresses a critical need for clear distinctions between basic positive and basic negative emotions and particularly between brief basic emotion episodes and emotion schemas. Unlike basic negative emotions that occur in brief episodes and involve very little cognition beyond minimal perceptual processes, emotion schemas involve emotion and cognition (frequently higher-order cognition) in dynamic interactions ( Izard 1977 , 1984 ; cf. emotional interpretation, Lewis 2005 ).

This article also contrasts phenomenal (primary) and access (reflective) consciousness, considers the construct of levels of consciousness, and questions the integrity of current conceptualizations of the unconscious mind. Typically, psychologists ignore the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and levels of consciousness and do not distinguish these constructs from the unconscious. I conclude by identifying some unanswered questions and briefly comment on a few emerging topics—continuous emotion-cognition interactions, memes and emotions, and the mirror neuron system and empathy—that seem destined to become more prominent in psychological science in the coming years.

ON THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS

None of the many efforts to make a widely acceptable definition of emotion has proved successful ( Izard 2006 , Panksepp 2003a ). Yet, I dare once again to raise the 124-year-old storied question asked by James (1884) : What is emotion? It happens that the answer James gave to his own question has a rather popular reprieve in the annals of contemporary neuroscience. Like James, Damasio (1999) argued that brain responses constitute emotion or the body expression of emotion and that emotion feeling is a consequence of the neurobiological (body) expression. In contrast, I propose that emotion feeling should be viewed as a phase (not a consequence) of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ).

The Origins of Emotions

Russell (2003) proposed that core affect is continuous in the brain and provides information on the pleasure/displeasure and arousal value of stimuli. In contrast, I have maintained that a discrete emotion or pattern of interacting emotions are always present (though not necessarily labeled or articulated) in the conscious brain ( Izard 1977 , ch. 6; Izard 2007a , b ). Barrett (2006) suggested that discrete emotions arise as a result of a conceptual act on core affect or as a function of “conceptual structure that is afforded by language” ( Barrett et al. 2007 , p. 304). In contrast, we have proposed that discrete emotion feelings cannot be created, taught, or learned via cognitive processes ( Izard & Malatesta 1987 ; Izard 2007a , b ). As Edelman & Tononi (2000) observed, “… emotions are fundamental both to the origins of and the appetite for conscious thought” (p. 218, cf. Izard 1977 , ch. 6). So, perceptual and conceptual processes and consciousness itself are more like effects of emotions than sources of their origin. Discrete emotion experiences emerge in ontogeny well before children acquire language or the conceptual structures that adequately frame the qualia we know as discrete emotion feelings. Moreover, acquiring language does not guarantee that emotion experiences can always be identified and communicated verbally. Even adults have great difficulty articulating a precise description of their emotion feelings (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ).

Thus, emotion feelings can be activated and influenced by perceptual, appraisal, conceptual, and noncognitive processes ( Izard 1993 ), but cannot be created by them. In describing the origins of qualia—conscious experiences that include emotion feelings— Edelman & Tononi (2000) wrote, “We can analyze them and give prescription for how they emerge, but obviously we cannot give rise to them without first giving rise to appropriate brain structures and their dynamics within the body of an individual organism” (p. 15). They maintained that such structures arise as a result of brain changes due to “developmental selection” (p. 79), an aspect of neural Darwinism. Eschewing the cognitive-constructivist approach advocated by Barrett (2006) , Edelman & Tononi (2000) concluded that “the development of the earliest qualia occurs largely on the basis of multimodal, bodycentered discriminations carried out by proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and autonomic systems that are present in the embryo and infant’s brain, particularly in the brainstem” (p. 157).

Emotion Feeling as Neurobiological Activity

Apparently consistent with the position of Edelman (2006) , Langer (1967/1982) , and Panksepp (2003a , b ), I propose that emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity that is sensed by the organism. It is sensed and expressed even in children without a cerebral cortex ( Merker 2007 ). This component of emotion is always experienced or felt, though not necessarily labeled or articulated or present in access consciousness.

Emotion feeling, like any other neurobiological activity, varies from low to high levels of intensity. The autonomic nervous system may modulate the emotion feeling but does not change its quality or valence (cf. Tomkins 1962 , 1963 ). Neither a moderate nor a high level of autonomic nervous system activity is necessary for the emergence of emotion feelings. The conscious mind is capable of detecting and discriminating among slight changes in neurobiological activity and among the resultant qualia ( Edelman 2006 ) that include emotion feelings. [Contrary to earlier formulations ( Izard 1971 , Tomkins 1962 ), neural processes in observable facial expressions may or may not be a part of the critical neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling.]

Emotion feelings arise from the integration of concurrent activity in brain structures and circuits that may involve the brain stem, amygdale, insula, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortices (cf. Damasio 2003 ; Lane et al. 1997 ; Panksepp 2003a , b ). Levels of emotion feelings, like other neurobiological activities, range from low and subtle to high and extreme. Current theory and evidence suggest that the feeling component of emotions contributed to the evolution of consciousness and to the affective, cognitive, and action processes involved in goal-oriented behavior.

Defining emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process circumvents the argument that feeling is nonphysical and hence cannot be causal. A counterargument, though, is that at best, feelings are only the qualia of neurobiological processes and not neurobiological activity per se. However, even if this were true, Edelman (2006) maintains that qualia could still be described as causal because they are true representations of core thalamo-cortical activity. Thus, whether or not one accepts the present proposal that feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity, they can still be conceived as causal processes.

The present formulation of the origins and nature of emotion feelings differs from those that describe emotion feeling and emotion state (or emotion-related neurobiological activity) as separate and independent (e.g., Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). Moreover, the view of emotion feeling as a phase of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion differs from the idea that neurobiological or body expression must precede emotion feeling ( Damasio 1999 , p. 283). The current description of emotion feeling is tantamount to saying that it is evolved and unlearned neurobiological activity. For those who think that the idea of emotion feelings as evolved neurobiological processes is strange or unfounded, the tough questions are: Where else could emotion feelings come from? What else could they be?

Feeling is the Key Psychological Aspect of Emotion: Motivation and Information

Feeling is the dynamic component in emotion (cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ) and in two related psychobiological processes—entrainment and individuation (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). The motivational, cue-producing, and informational functions of feelings enable them to entrain, or simplify and organize, what might become (particularly in challenging situations) an overwhelming number of impulses into focused cognitive processes and a few adaptive actions (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Such feeling-mediated entrainment of impulses across situations and developmental time facilitates the formation of feeling-cognition-action patterns that constitute individuation—the organization of traits and their assembly into a unique personality. However, feeling an emotion does not guarantee that it will be labeled, articulated, or sensed in reflective consciousness or at a high level of awareness. The level of awareness of an emotion feeling depends in part on its intensity and expression, and after language acquisition, on labeling, articulating, and acknowledging the emotion experience. These capacities, critical to personality and social development, depend on the neural activity and resultant processes involved in symbolization and language.

Through development, the conceptual self becomes important to the process of feeling and expressing an emotion, but a higher-order conceptual “self ” is not essential for either. Infants experience and express basic emotions long before they can provide any evidence of a self-concept ( Izard et al. 1995 ), and so do children without a cerebral cortex ( Merker 2007 ).

Motivational and cue-producing emotion-feeling provides information relevant to cognition and action ( Izard 1971 , p. 185). Others have conceptualized emotion as information, and the topic has inspired a considerable body of related research ( Clore et al. 2001 , Schwarz & Clore 1983 ). Consistent with the idea that emotion feelings are cue-producing and informational phenomena, they may also afford a kind of prescience. Feelings may predict the effect of future stimulations by anticipating the link between future critical situations and subsequent emotion experiences and needs, e.g., danger→fear→safety or loss→sadness→social support (cf. Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 101). Such anticipatory activities can facilitate the socialization processes associated with the learning of emotion-related social skills in an imagined or “as if ” world.

Although an emotion feeling may begin to form reciprocal relations with perception or cognition by the time that it is fully sensed, there is no reason to assume that its quality is altered by perceptual and conceptual processes ( Panksepp 2003a , b ). Actually, the particular quality of each discrete emotion feeling evolved because its effects on other senses, cognition, and action are generally adaptive (cf. Edelman & Tononi 2000 ). For all basic emotions, motivational and action processes occur in similar fashion across situations. Among emotion schemas, however, there are wide differences in motivational, cognitive, and action processes across individuals. The determinants of which particular emotion feeling and what cognitive content occurs in a specific emotion schema include individual differences, learning, culture, and the conceptual processes influenced by them ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Shweder 1994 ).

Agreement on Components and Characteristics of Emotion

Though there is no consensus on a general definition of the term “emotion” (cf. Kleinginna & Kleinginna 1981 ), many experts do agree that emotions have a limited set of components and characteristics ( Izard 2006 ). Although they do not agree in all details, they agree that emotions have an infrastructure that includes neural systems dedicated, at least in part, to emotion processes and that emotions motivate cognition and action and recruit response systems. We may also be reaching a consensus that there are different forms of emotions, e.g., basic emotions rooted and defined primarily in evolution and biology and emotion schemas that include cognitive components that differ across individuals and cultures ( Izard 2007a , Panksepp 2007 ).

Emotions as Causal Processes

Although experts agree that emotions motivate or influence cognition and action, not all agree on precisely what mediates the effects of emotions. The answer may depend on whether it is a basic emotion or an emotion schema. It may also depend on whether and how a distinction is made in the roles of emotion neurophysiology and emotion feelings (cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ).

Arguably, no one thing (even emotion) is ever the sole mediator of personally or socially significant behavior. Other person and contextual variables typically contribute to the causal processes. Yet, I propose that emotion feeling is virtually always one of the mediators of action in response to basic emotion and a mediator of thought and action in response to emotion schemas. Thus, the specific impact of emotion feeling in generating and altering behavior depends on the type of emotion involved in the causal process. Feeling in basic emotion affects action but not higher-order cognition, which has little or no presence in basic emotion processes. Feeling in emotion schemas may frequently affect action and will surely affect cognition. Thinking is a key agent in regulating (sometimes suppressing; Gross 2002 ) and guiding behavior that stems from emotion schemas.

TYPES OF EMOTIONS

Emotions can be usefully divided into two broad types or kinds—basic emotion episodes and dynamic emotion-cognition interactions or emotion schemas. Failure to make and keep the distinction between these two kinds of emotion experiences may be the biggest source of misunderstandings and misconceptions in current emotion science ( Izard 2007a , Gray et al. 2005 ). I included an update on the distinction between types of emotions here for two reasons. First, I see the fundamental nature of emotions and the closely connected issue of emotion-cognition-action processes as central to emotion science, now and for the foreseeable future. Second, I think researchers often look for the correlates and effects of basic emotions (labeled simply as emotions) when the variables in their experiments are actually emotion-cognition interactions or emotion schemas.

Basic Emotions

In the past, I have used the term “basic emotion” in referring to any emotion that is assumed to be fundamental to human mentality and adaptive behavior ( Izard 1977 ). Recently, misunderstandings and debates about its meaning led me to draw a sharp distinction between basic emotions and affective-cognitive structures or emotion schemas ( Izard 2007a ). Here, consistent with that distinction, the term “basic emotion” refers to affective processes generated by evolutionarily old brain systems upon the sensing of an ecologically valid stimulus ( Izard 2007a ).

Basic positive emotions

The basic positive emotions of interest and joy (e.g., an infant’s interest activated by the human face; Langsdorf et al. 1983 ) and joy activated by the familiar face of her mother ( Izard et al. 1995 ) are equally essential to survival, evolution, and development. However, their structure and time course may differ significantly from each other. The infant’s experiences of joy may be relatively brief by comparison with experiences of interest. The basic positive emotion of interest motivates play in early development and thus may have short or relatively long duration.

Basic positive emotions emerge in early ontogeny ( Izard et al. 1995 ). Like the basic negative emotions, they are subject to developmental changes. The most critical of these changes is mediated by the acquisition of language and emotion labels and the ability to communicate (or share) emotion experiences through symbolic processes or language ( Izard 1971 , Izard et al. 2008 ).

Basic negative emotions

Basic negative emotions (sadness, anger, disgust, fear) typically run their course automatically and stereotypically in a brief time span. The basic emotion of fear (or a fear-action episode) was described rather precisely in the earliest human records: “A man who stumbles upon a viper will jump aside: as trembling takes his knees, pallor his cheeks; he backs and backs away …” (Homer’s Iliad , c. 7000 BCE, p. 68).

Research has repeatedly demonstrated that in mammals, the experience and expression of basic fear is mediated by the amygdala ( LeDoux 1996 , Mobbs et al. 2007 ). Typically, basic negative emotions are activated by subcortical sensory-discriminative processes in response to ecologically valid stimuli ( Ekman 2003 , LeDoux 1996 , Öhman 2005 ). Perceptual processes and action usually follow and run their course rapidly and automatically to enhance the likelihood of gaining an adaptive advantage (cf. LeDoux 1996 , Öhman 2002 , Tomkins 1962 ). Because of their nature, some basic negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger, fear) are difficult to study in the laboratory. Thus, most extant research on what are usually called emotions (most often negative emotions) actually concerns negative emotion schemas.

Basic or fundamental emotions?

The discrete emotions of shame, guilt, and contempt (sometimes called the social or self-conscious emotions) and the pattern of emotions in love and attachment may be considered basic in the sense that they are fundamental to human evolution, normative development, human mentality, and effective adaptation. After language acquisition, the emotions related to the self-concept or self-consciousness are typically emotion schemas that involve higher-order cognition (e.g., about self and self-other relationships) and have culture-related cognitive components ( Tangney et al. 2007 ).

Emotion Schemas: Dynamic Emotion-Cognition Interactions

The core idea of dynamic interaction between emotion and cognition has a long and venerable history dating back at least to the earliest written records: “… Peleus … lashed out at him, letting his anger ride in execration …” (Homer’s Iliad , c. 7000 BCE). The idea was prominently displayed in seventeenth-century philosophy ( Bacon 1620/1968 , Spinoza 1677/1957 ) and was most eloquently elaborated by Langer (1967/1982) .

In the vernacular, as well as in much of the literature of emotion science, the term “emotion” most frequently refers to what is described here as an emotion schema. An emotion schema is emotion interacting dynamically with perceptual and cognitive processes to influence mind and behavior. Emotion schemas are often elicited by appraisal processes but also by images, memories, and thoughts, and various noncognitive processes such as changes in neurotransmitters and periodic changes in levels of hormones ( Izard 1993 ). Any one or all of these phenomena, as well as goals and values, may constitute their cognitive component. Appraisal processes, typically conceived as mechanisms of emotion activation (for a review, see Ellsworth & Scherer 2003 ), help provide the cognitive framework for the emotion component of emotion schemas. Their principal motivational component of emotion schemas consists of the processes involved in emotion feelings. Emotion schemas, particularly their cognitive aspects, are influenced by individual differences, learning, and social and cultural contexts. Nevertheless, the feeling component of a given emotion schema (e.g., a sadness schema) is qualitatively identical to the feeling in the basic emotion of sadness. Though there may be some differences in their underlying neural processes, the sadness feeling in each type of emotion shares a common set of brain circuits or neurobiological activities that determine its quality (cf. Edelman 2006 , Edelman & Tononi 2000 ).

Positive and negative emotion schemas may have a relatively brief duration or continue over an indefinitely long time course. A principal reason why they can endure more or less indefinitely is because their continually interacting cognitive component provides a means to regulate and utilize them. Evidence indicates that experimentally facilitated formation of emotion schemas (simply learning to label and communicate about emotion feelings) generates adaptive advantages ( Izard et al. 2008a ; cf. Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Although we have very little data relating to their normative development, neuroscientists have begun to increase our knowledge of the substrates of emotion-cognition interactions ( Fox et al. 2005 , Gross 2002 , Lewis 2005 , Northoff et al. 2004 , Phelps 2006 ).

Emotion schemas and traits of temperament/personality

Frequently recurring emotion schemas may stabilize as emotion traits or as motivational components of temperament/ personality traits ( Diener et al. 1995 , Goldsmith & Campos 1982 , Izard 1977 , Magai & Hunziker 1993 , Magai & McFadden 1995 ; cf. Mischel & Shoda 1995 , Tomkins 1987 ). In normal development, the cognitive content of emotion schemas should enhance the regulatory, motivational, and functional capacities of their feeling components. However, in some gene X environment interactions, a cluster of interrelated emotion schemas may become a form of psychopathology (e.g., anxiety and depressive disorders: Davidson 1994 , 1998 ; J.A. Gray 1990 ; J.R. Gray et al. 2005 ; Izard 1972 ; Magai & McFadden 1995 ).

Early-emerging emotion schemas

Aside from the simple emotion-cognition connections that a prelinguistic infant forms (e.g., between her own feelings of interest and joy and a perception/image of her mother’s face), the earliest emotion schemas probably consist of attaching labels to emotion expressions and feelings. Development of emotion labeling and the process of putting feelings into words begin toward the end of the second year of life and continue during the preschool and elementary school years ( Izard 1971 ) and throughout the life span. Indeed, games and activities that promote the accurate labeling of emotion expressions and experiences have been a component of intervention processes for many years (see Domitrovich & Greenberg 2004 and Denham & Burton 2003 for reviews).

Emotion schemas or affective-cognitive units?

The concept of affective-cognitive structure or emotion schema ( Izard 1977 , 2007a ) seems quite similar to that of the affective-cognitive unit as described in the cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) theory of personality ( Mischel & Shoda 1995 , 1998 ). One significant difference may be that in the CAPS approach, an affective-cognitive unit is conceived mainly as a stable or characteristic mediating process or part of the personality system. In DET, an emotion schema may be either a temporally stable trait-like phenomenon (affective-cognitive structure) or a brief emotion-cognition interaction that may mediate behavior in a specific situation. Compared to the CAPS approach, DET gives emotion a greater role in motivation and assumes that the emotion component of the emotion schema drives the behavior mapped or framed by perceptual-cognitive processes. DET also emphasizes that, as seen particularly clearly in early development and in emotion-based preventive interventions, connecting appropriate cognition to emotion feelings increases the individual’s capacity for emotion modulation and self-regulation ( Izard et al. 2008a ). DET and CAPS agree in assigning a significant causal role to the dynamic interplay of emotion and cognition in determining human behavior. Both approaches also conceptualize the interplay of emotion and cognitive processes as sources of data on ideographic or within-subject differences in emotion-cognition-behavior relations.

In brief, emotion schemas are causal or mediating processes that consist of emotion and cognition continually interacting dynamically to influence mind and behavior. It is the dynamic interaction of these distinct features (emotion and cognition) that enables an emotion schema, acting in the form of a situation-specific factor or a trait of temperament/personality, to have its special and powerful effects on self-regulation and on perception, thought, and action ( Izard et al. 2008a ).

Transitions from Basic Emotions to Emotion Schemas

In early development, the first steps in the transition from basic positive emotions to positive emotion schemas consists simply of the infant using her increasing cognitive and emotion processing capacities to make connections between positive emotion feelings and positive thoughts, memories, and anticipations of people, events, and situations. Through learning and experience, the same stimuli that once elicited a basic positive emotion may become stimuli for positive emotion schemas and greater expectations (cf. Fredrickson 1998 , 2007 ).

Basic negative emotions occur relatively more frequently in infancy than in later development. Moreover, the transition from basic negative emotions to basic negative emotion schemas and the regulatory advantage provided by their cognitive component may prove difficult and challenging. The transition from basic anger (protests) and sadness (withdrawal) of a toddler being separated from mom, to the interest-joy response of a four-year-old being dropped off at kindergarten, may involve several rather stressful times for many children.

For adults, transitions from a basic emotion to an emotion schema may start abruptly but finish smoothly and quickly. Simply sensing that the object in your path and just a step ahead of you is long, round, and moving may activate the basic emotion of fear and the accompanying high-intensity neurobiological reactions. However, if language, learning, and another 50 ms enable you to recognize and label the object as a harmless garden snake (i.e., construct an emotion schema), you might even take it gently into your hands rather than engage in extreme behavior. The concomitant change in neural and neuromotor circuits would constitute a paradigmatic transition across types and valences of emotion and emotion-related phenomena. In this case, one would make a transition from basic fear to interest-cognition-action sequences in a positive emotion schema.

EMOTIONS AND CONSCIOUSNESS

Whatever else it may be, emotion feeling is at bottom sensation. Thus emotion feelings, like other sensations, are by definition processes that are felt or at least accessible (in the broad sense of that term) in some level of consciousness. Level of cognitive development as well as top-down processes, such as attention shifting and focusing, may influence (or preclude) the registration of feeling in reflective or cognitively accessible consciousness ( Buschman & Miller 2007 ). When that happens, emotion feelings/experiences occur in phenomenal consciousness (or at a low level of awareness). Phenomenal consciousness of an emotion feeling, the experience itself, generally co-occurs with some level of reflective/reportable consciousness (cf. Chalmers 1996 ). Thus, I propose that there are usually interactions among the neural systems that support these two types of consciousness (cf. Pessoa 2008 ). These interactions between the two sets of neural systems enable emotion feelings to retain their functionality in influencing thought and action, even in prelingual infants ( Izard et al. 2008b ).

Factors Affecting Emotion-Consciousness Relations

Another determinant of our level of awareness of emotion is the intensity of the neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling. Low-intensity emotion feeling (e.g., interest arousal motivating learning skills related to aspects of one’s work) would not ordinarily grab attention in the same way as a viper and might go unnoticed. In this case (and in other instances of low arousal), “unnoticed” does not mean that the feeling is “unconscious.” It may register and be fully functional at some level of consciousness (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). The development of theory and techniques to examine the operations of emotion feelings in different levels of awareness should help reduce the number of psychological processes that are currently relegated to the ambiguous concept of the unconscious ( Izard et al. 2008b ; cf. Bargh & Morsella 2008 ).

Emotion Feelings and Consciousness

As the foregoing formulation suggests, the neurobiological processes involved in emotions generate conscious experiences of feelings (emotional sensations) just as in seeing green neurobiological activities in the visual brain create the experience/sensation of greenness (cf. Humphrey 2006 ). The sensory processes involved in emotion feelings like joy, sadness, anger, and fear may represent prototypical emotion experiences. Such emotion feelings are critical to the evolution of human mentality and reflective consciousness (cf. Edelman 2006 , Langer 1967/1982 ).

Emotion experiences/sensations continue to be critical in the maintenance and functioning of consciousness. When trauma leads to damage or dysfunction of a sensory system, it affects the whole person, including the sense of self and of others as self-conscious. For example, when a dysfunctional visual cortex resulted in blindsight, the blindsighted person could guess rather accurately the location of objects in the environment and learn to navigate around them. Yet, she experienced her sensation-less vision as emotionless and reported that “seeing without emotion is unbearable” ( Humphrey 2006 , p. 68–69). She may also think of herself as “less of a self ” and one that could not feel “engaged in the ‘hereness, nowness, and me-ness’ of the experience of the moment” ( Humphrey 2006 , p. 70). In the social world, the blind-sighted person lacks a basis for empathy and for understanding the mental states of others by simulation.

Taken together, these observations on the aftermath of the loss of the visual sensory system (which provides the bulk of our incoming information) suggest that having sensations may be the starting point of consciousness ( Humphrey 2006 , pp. 66–71). The emergence of the capacity to experience and respond to emotion feelings may have been the most critical step in its evolution (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Discrete emotion feelings play a central role in anticipating the effects of future stimulations and in organizing and integrating the associated information for envisioning strategies and entraining impulses for targeted goal-directed cognitive processes and actions. The coalescence of the emotion-driven anticipatory processes, entrainment (organizing and integrative processes), and the resultant individuation and sense of agency may have constituted the dawn of human consciousness (cf. Edelman 2006 , Humphrey 2006 , Langer 1967/1982 ).

TYPES OF EMOTION AND TYPES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The concepts of consciousness and awareness have received very little attention in contemporary psychology. With a few exceptions, the contributors to a recently edited volume on emotion and consciousness dealt with many interesting issues other than some critical ones on the nature of consciousness and its relation to emotions ( Barrett et al. 2005b ). Most contributors explicitly or implicitly assumed that access or reflective consciousness was either the only kind of consciousness or the only one that mattered to psychologists (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 , Merker 2007 ).

Basic Emotions and Phenomenal Consciousness

It is quite reasonable to assume that human infants (and all nonhuman mammals; Panksepp 2003a , b ) have some form of consciousness ( Izard et al. 2008b , Merker 2007 ). Wider acceptance of this notion should save young infants a lot of pain. Various invasive procedures (including circumcisions and needle pricks to draw blood for analyses) are still performed without analgesic. The facial expression of infants undergoing such procedures constitutes the prototypical expression of pain. With increasing age, the prototypical expression of pain in response to these procedures alternates with the prototypical expression of anger ( Izard et al. 1987 ).

Developmental data suggest that young infants experience basic emotions ( Izard et al. 1995 ). Their inability to report their emotion experiences via language rules out the idea that they experience emotions in access (verbally reportable) consciousness and suggests that their emotion feelings must occur in some other level of awareness or in phenomenal consciousness. Current conceptualizations of phenomenal consciousness, however, may not explain all emotion experiences in infancy ( Izard et al. 2008b ).

Developmental scientists have obtained evidence that shows that prelinguistic infants not only experience objects and events, but they also respond to and communicate nonverbally about objects and events in meaningful ways ( Izard et al. 2008b ). Moreover, their experience often involves emotion that is indexed by emotion-expressive behavior and other forms of action that influence the social and physical world ( Claxton et al. 2003 , Izard et al. 1995 ). Apparently, these behaviors reflect the development of different levels or complexities of awareness, and further studies of them may offer possibilities of extending current conceptualizations of ways to access phenomenological experiences. These experiences do not fit precisely into the categories of “phenomenal” or “access” consciousness as traditionally defined. Yet these experiences are surely part of the infant’s phenomenology, and the functionality of these experiential processes clearly demonstrates that they are accessible by noncognitive routes ( Izard et al. 2008b , Merker 2007 ; cf. Block 2008).

Emotion Feelings and Phenomenal Consciousness

The conceptualization of emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process is congruent with the idea that emotions can be sensed and registered in phenomenal consciousness and at low levels of awareness without being perceived. Such emotion feelings are often described erroneously, I think, as unconscious emotion (cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). What may be unconscious is not the feeling but the perception of the feeling, and this lack of perception could account for the failure of the feeling to register in access consciousness. Insofar as emotion feeling is at bottom sensation, then generating a feeling ipso facto generates a state of consciousness. Thus, an emotion feeling always registers in phenomenal consciousness. Often, if not always, it also registers in some other level of consciousness that is accessible by various routes. After language acquisition, emotion feelings can often (but not always) be reported via symbolic processes. In prelingual infants, young children, and others with insufficient emotion vocabulary, it may be manifested in emotion-mediated behavior (cf. Izard et al. 2008b ). Evidence suggests that emotion feelings are operative and expressible via facial and body movement and other behavior even when not reportable (cf. Lambie & Marcel 2002 ).

Happily, an enormous amount of information processing proceeds very well in the realm of the unconscious, but I propose that the functionality of emotion feelings (that are not in access or reflective consciousness) might be explained better in terms of phenomenal or other levels of consciousness. The term “unconscious” emotion implies nonfelt emotion. It seems very difficult if not impossible to identify and explain the mediators of the effects of nonfelt or nonconscious emotion (e.g., de Gelder 2005 ). Much of what has been called nonconscious emotion has not met the “requirement of deliberate probing by indirect measures” ( Lambie & Marcel 2002 , p. 16). Nor have data on unconscious emotions been examined in terms of the functional correlates of hypothesized emotion feelings. Such research might suggest replacing the concept of psychological unconscious with that of phenomenal consciousness or some other level of consciousness that cannot be verbally reported.

The concept of unlabeled, unarticulated, and linguistically inaccessible emotion feeling in phenomenal consciousness or some other cognitively inaccessible level of consciousness is compatible with the notion that this component of emotion is felt and functions as a mediator of behavior (cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Izard et al. 2008b , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ). Because it is felt, the emotion feeling retains its characteristic motivational and informational qualities. To say that the feeling component of emotion can reside unfelt in phenomenal consciousness, any other level of consciousness, or the unconscious seems to be a pure non sequitur.

To acknowledge that the subjective component of emotion is felt and real in phenomenal and other cognitively inaccessible levels of consciousness may inspire theory and research on how an emotion feeling remains functional and motivational without being symbolized and made accessible in reflective consciousness via language. Evidence of the functionality of emotion feelings in prelingual infants and children without a cerebral cortex seems to support the argument for more research on the functionality of emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness. So do the observations that patients who suffer blindsight report feelings without having corresponding visual experiences ( Weiskrantz 2001 ). On the other hand, subjects with blindsight can perceive objects and make accurate perceptual judgments without any corresponding sensation or feeling at all ( Humphrey 2006 ). The extent to which these seemingly disparate observations on people with blindsight inform normative relations among perception, sensation, and emotion feelings is not yet clear. Neither are the effects and limits of top-down control of sensation in relation to perception and to emotion feelings and their registration at some level of consciousness ( Buschman & Miller 2007 ).

Emotion Schemas and Access Consciousness

Emotion feelings can operate in phenomenal consciousness with little or no cognitive content. This fact is easy to appreciate while remembering that phenomenal experience is the modal variety in prelingual infants and nonhuman mammals. Although prelingual infants apparently demonstrate higher levels of awareness than phenomenal consciousness, they definitely cannot exhibit reflective consciousness as traditionally defined in terms of cognitive accessibility.

Once development enables emotion experiences to become connected to higher-order cognition, children begin to link emotion feelings and concepts and to form more and more complex emotion schemas. The language associated with a given emotion feeling in particular situations becomes a tool in emotion management, self-regulation, and other executive functions ( Izard et al. 2008a ).

Gains and Losses in the Evolution of Emotions and Consciousness

Darwin recognized many turns in evolution that pointed to the seeming cruelty of natural selection—life-threatening parasites, killer reptiles, and the bloody work of predators ( Dawkins 1989 ). He also recognized the adaptive advantages in positive emotions and their expressions in social interactions: “… the mother smiles approval, and thus encourages her children on the right path, or frowns disapproval” ( Darwin 1872/1965 , p. 304). Gains related in some way to the emotions and their interactions with perception and cognition may represent the finest—and possibly most challenging—products of evolution.

Among the finest and most interesting products of evolution was gaining the capacity for language and eventually the learning of vocabulary for labeling emotions and describing and sharing emotion experiences. These gains also helped enable humans to anticipate future desirable and undesirable emotion feelings. Taken together, these newly emerged capacities represent enormous gains in executive functions, particularly for understanding and managing emotions and self-regulation ( Izard 2002 , Izard et al. 2008a ). They have direct and indirect benefits for the cognitive and action processes involved in adaptive idiosyncratic and social functioning ( Izard et al. 2008b , Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Some have argued that the enormous gains that resulted from brain evolution, the acquisition of language, and the accompanying increases in cognitive abilities did not come without some accompanying losses ( Langer 1967/1982 ).

A possible loss: the evolutionary empathy-sympathy exchange

Basic empathy depends mainly on neurophysiological response systems that do not require or involve the higher-order cognitive processes involved in sympathy ( Hoffman 2000 ). Thus, long before human evolution produced language and its accompanying cognitive prowess, a high-level of ability for empathy and empathic responding emerged in nonhuman animals ( Langer 1967/1982 ). This great capacity for empathy apparently accounts for the lack of con-specific predation and cannibalism among nonhuman mammals. “Among the higher animals few, if any, of the carnivores—bears, wolves, lions and other great cats—habitually prey on their own kind” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 141). They are restrained from predation, not by signals of appeasement or surrender, but by “a ready empathetic response, so common and effective that it takes no principle, moral or other, to safeguard the members of a species against each other’s appetites in ordinary conditions” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 142).

The animal empathy that constitutes a safeguard against con-specific predation establishes a special kind of relationship that enables an essentially physiological transmission of the “feeling of one creature to another so it appears to the latter as its own” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 140). In contrast, as the media are wont to remind us through blow-by-blow accounts of flagrantly aggressive and ethically and morally devious behavior, humans prey on each other with considerable frequency. And such predation often leads to death and destruction, even genocide. Furthermore, although cannibalism (a total breakdown in empathy) is generally absent among higher-order nonhuman animals, it has been observed in many human cultures.

Compared to instantaneous empathy, sympathy depends in important ways on conceptual processes (including the projected costs and benefits of helping) that are notably slower and less certain of occurrence. Sympathetic responses are also more subject to top-down control (e.g., mental manipulations stemming from biases and imagined consequences) than rapid, automatic, animal empathy. Thus, sympathetic responses may often be too little and too late for the victims of disasters, some of which result from only slightly disguised human predation exemplified in transactions between rich and poor and between high- and low-status ethnic groups. Thus, a potentially grave question remains: Does the evolutionary shift in capacities for empathy and sympathy represent a net loss or a net gain?

The pros and cons of unbridled imagination

There is also some question as to whether the evolutionary increases in the power of imagination should be judged a net gain or loss in weighing the emotion-related products of evolution. In some individuals and circumstances, unbridled imagination can facilitate tragedies on a personal as well as a national and global scale. Imagination can be fueled by either positive or negative emotion feelings or the interaction of both, and in turn, it can produce a cornucopia of both positive and negative emotion stimuli and behavioral responses (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). Imagination doubtless played a role in the creation of nuclear weapons and still plays a role in planning their projected uses. It is also a factor in the development of factories, products, and policies that increase global warming and the pollution of the earth and the atmosphere at a dangerous rate.

In contrast, during early ontogeny the feeling-thought patterns of unbridled imagination facilitate cognitive and social development from the first moment that the young child engages in make-believe or pretend play. In these developmental processes and throughout the life span, imagination remains part emotion feeling and part cognition. It continues to add to individual and cultural accomplishments through the creative endeavors of artists and scientists.

Thus, “In the evolution of mind, imagination is as dangerous as it is essential” ( Langer 1967/1982 , Vol. 1, p. 137). Nurturing imagination through the life span with a good balance of emotion feelings and the encouragement of empathy, sympathy, and reason, and an appreciation of how these ingredients can interact and work together for the common good, ubiquitous peace, and the preservation and flourishing of the species seem equally essential.

Remarkable Gains from Linking Emotion Feelings and Language

The process of symbolizing emotion in awareness has the potential to add significantly to adaptive personality and social functioning. Language is by far the most common method of symbolization across individuals and cultures, and researchers have verified at the behavioral and neural levels the positive effects of linking words to discrete emotion expressions and feelings ( L. Greenberg & Paivio 1997 , Izard 1971 , Izard et al. 2008a , Kennedy-Moore & Watson 1999 , Lieberman et al. 2007 ). Major among the positive effects that accrue when we can use language to symbolize emotion feelings, especially in early development but also throughout the life span, are those relating to increases in emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and emotion utilization.

Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion’s inherently adaptive motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions ( Izard 1971 , 2002 , 2007a ; Izard et al. 2008c ; cf. Mayer & Salovey 1997 ). Emotion utilization involves spontaneous as well as planned actions, and it is conceptually different from direct attempts to regulate emotion or emotion-related behavior (cf. Eisenberg & Spinrad 2004 ). Although emotion regulation and emotion utilization are different constructs, they interact dynamically. Emotion utilization may be viewed as the optimal mode of emotion regulation, and various forms of the latter enhance the former.

It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the civilizing and socializing effects of learning to recognize, articulate, and utilize emotion feelings constructively, not only in early development but also throughout the life span. A key process here is developing connections between feelings, words, and thoughts. Unfortunately, linking emotion feelings to maladaptive thoughts like those that characterize racism, sexism, ageism, unbridled profit motives, and plans for vengeance, revenge, or terrorism can wreak extensive havoc to individuals, ethnic groups, and all of human kind. For an abundance of evidence supporting the foregoing assertion, read history and watch or listen to any daily news program.

UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND TOPICS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Two unresolved issues seem to impede scientific advances in the study of consciousness and levels of awareness. The first concerns the role of phenomenal consciousness and various linguistically inaccessible levels of awareness in research on mind and behavior. The second concerns the relation of phenomenal consciousness and the psychological unconscious, their similarities and differences.

Psychologists’ Neglect of Phenomenal Consciousness

Several factors may have contributed to the general neglect of phenomenal consciousness in psychological theory and research. The first is a long-standing reluctance to acknowledge the extent to which emotions drive cognition and action and the possibility that some of the driving emotions register only in phenomenal consciousness. The second is the strong tendency of mainstream psychology to neglect developmental perspectives on critical issues and thus to ignore evidence of the existence and functionality of phenomenal consciousness and other linguistically inaccessible levels of awareness in early development and probably in various forms of psychopathology. A third problem is that many psychologists think that most emotions are episodic, of limited duration, and in focal awareness. A related misconception is that once an emotion episode ends, the mind is free for purely rational processes. This notion persists despite eloquent arguments suggesting that there is no such thing as pure reason ( Creighton 1921 , Langer 1967/1982 ), especially in relation to personally or socially significant matters. Evidence suggests that in humans it may not be possible to study cognition and emotion separately ( Lewis 2005 , Phelps 2006 ). This conclusion is quite consistent with the present position, if the term “emotion” refers to emotion schemas.

A more appropriate goal would be to develop more effective ways to study emotion-cognition interactions and integration/mingling and consequent behavior change, particularly in research that involves constructs like emotion schemas ( Izard 1977 , 2007a ), emotional interpretations ( Lewis 2005 ), or affective-cognitive units ( Mischel & Shoda 1995 ). This would include most emotion research that does not focus on basic negative emotion episodes.

A final and perhaps most worrisome reason why phenomenal consciousness is still not a major concern of psychologists is that it is conflated with the psychological “unconscious.” Clearly, a vast amount of the processes of the brain and the rest of the body (blood circulation, digestion) often do occur without our awareness of them and, in normal circumstances, without direct effects on thought and action. When significant behavioral effects do occur without readily observable causes, they are often assigned to the psychological unconscious, where mechanisms are difficult to identify and explain ( Kihlstrom 1999 ).

More parsimonious and accurate explanations of unconscious behavior might accrue if we looked for mediators of thought and action (e.g., emotions) that reside in phenomenal consciousness. An example is the phenomenological (feeling) component of an unlabeled and thus unarticulated emotion experience, a feeling that you know you are experiencing but cannot specifically identify or describe. Inability to put the feeling into words bars it from linguistic accessibility and thus from access consciousness as typically defined, but not from phenomenal consciousness and various levels of awareness. An emotion feeling in phenomenal and other nonlinguistic levels of consciousness retains its properties, including its power to motivate and regulate cognition and action. Thus, conceptualizing fully functional emotion feelings as processes in phenomenal consciousness ( Panksepp 2005 ) provides an alternative way of explaining much of what has been attributed by others to the psychological unconscious (e.g., Kihlstrom 1999 , Winkielman et al. 2005 ; cf. Clore et al. 2005 , Lambie & Marcel 2002 ).

Concern about types of consciousness may stimulate further thought and research about which mental processes relate to phenomenal consciousness and which are truly unconscious. Such research could look for processes that reside at a level of awareness that is unavailable via cognitive or verbal access but not necessarily via other forms of access. Several types of nonverbal behaviors reflect the operations of mental processes that clearly are not in linguistically accessible consciousness and that may reside in phenomenal consciousness ( Izard et al. 2008b ; cf. Merker 2007 ). The lack of linguistic accessibility does not render an emotion or emotion feeling nonfunctional.

Phenomenal consciousness and other forms of linguistically inaccessible consciousness may be better concepts for psychology than is the concept of unconscious. The latter concept is notoriously vague and ill defined in the psychological literature. Dictionary definitions characterize it as not conscious as a state, without awareness, or sensation, virtually nonphysical, and thus make some uses of it very close to the domains of spookiness and Cartesian dualism.

The Psychological Unconscious: A Default Explanatory Construct?

Although there is considerable agreement on the qualities of thought processes in psychological or access (verbally reportable) consciousness, there is no consensus on the contents and processes of the unconscious (cf. Bargh & Morsella 2008 ). The behavior of prelingual infants suggests that it is not prudent to label all verbally unreportable processes as unconscious, a practice that may impede or misguide the search for causal processes. Better heuristics might come from the conceptualization of causal-process mechanisms operating at different levels of awareness and as accessible by multiple behaviors other than verbal report. Dividing the mind and all mental processes into two domains—conscious and unconscious—might be the greatest oversimplification in current psychological science. Moreover, misattribution of causal processes to the unconscious may open a Pandora’s Box replete with blind alleys and dead ends.

Four things have contributed to psychologists’ penchant for attributing causal processes to the unconscious rather than to emotion feelings, including emotion feelings in phenomenal consciousness. First, many psychologists have typically looked for nonemotion mediators to explain changes in cognition and action. Second, emotion feelings (and their roles in influencing cognitive processes) are notoriously difficult to identify and describe in words ( Creighton 1921 , Langer 1967/1982 ). However, infants and young children experience emotions and respond to them in meaningful ways long before they can label or describe emotions ( Izard et al. 2008b ). Such evidence points to the utility of assessing emotion feelings by measuring their functional correlates. Third, many psychologists remain reluctant to attribute to emotion a significant causal role in ordinary as well as critical thinking, decision making, and action despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary (e.g., Bechara et al. 2000 , DeMartino et al. 2006 , Lerner & Tiedens 2006 , Miller 2006 , Naqvi et al. 2006 ). Fourth, many psychological scientists tend to think that emotions are typically brief and that emotion feelings are always sufficiently intense to grab and hold attention. Actually, plausible arguments suggest that emotion feelings are phenomena that vary on a very wide dimension of intensity while retaining their functional/causal properties ( Izard 2007a ).

Emerging Issues: Continuous Emotion, Memes, and the Mirror Neuron System

The topics of continuous emotion or continuous emotion-cognition interaction and integration, memes, and the mirror neuron system (MNS) may prove to be critical for emotion science and to psychology in general. The idea of continuous emotion in phenomenal consciousness or access consciousness will prove difficult to address in empirical research, but that may soon change with improved technology for studying brain-emotion-behavior relations. Already there is some convergence among theorists and researchers who argue that there is no such thing as a conscious mind without emotion or affect ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Lewis 2005 , Phelps 2006 , Russell 2003 ). The other two, memes and the MNS, relate to emotion and behavior in ways not completely understood. Yet, they have already become hot topics for those interested in new approaches to understanding within- and across-generations transmission of cognitive and action structures and the neurobiological bases for the transmission of emotion feelings in empathy and the processes in empathic and sympathetic responding.

Continuous Emotion-Cognition Interaction

The notion that some emotion or emotion-cognition interaction is continuous in phenomenal or access consciousness or some level of awareness is not new (e.g., Bacon 1620/1968 ). The hypothesis implicit in that idea may prove difficult to falsify. Yet, without the attribution of causal power to emotion (feeling) and the concept of continual emotion-cognition interaction, we may have no way to explain selective attention. And selective attention is a necessary factor in the simplest forms of exploration and learning as well as in higher-order cognition and sequences of organized behavior.

I have hypothesized that the brain automatically generates the emotion of interest to capture and sustain attention to particular objects, events, and goals. This mode of operation is standard when the brain is not responding to internal or external conditions that activate other emotions, emotion schemas, or emotion-cognition-environment interactions ( Izard 2007a ; cf. Panksepp 2003a , b ).

A major challenge for future research is to understand how emotion and cognition behave in their continual interaction. One possibility is that they achieve complete integration and influence behavior as a unified force or single factor. However, I propose that although emotion and cognition continually interact, they do not lose their separate identities. They retain separate and distinct functional properties (cf. Pessoa 2008 ). Whereas emotion feeling undoubtedly contains a kind of information ( Clore et al. 2001 ) or cues for behavior ( Izard 1971 , 2007a ), emotion remains primarily about motivation. Cognition (particularly about goal concepts that typically have an emotion component) may be conceived as having a motivational aspect, but it remains primarily about knowledge.

Memes and Emotions

Memes are one of several epigenetic mechanisms that challenge the dominance of DNA as the central life force (cf. Noble 2006 ). Natural selection may operate on not only genes, DNA, or RNA. It can also act on “replicant” units (memes) that consist of cognition and action patterns, things other than biological structures that can be transmitted through imitative learning ( Dawkins 1989 ). Apparently, memes emerged to serve unique adaptive functions in social interactions.

In the course of evolution, the brain continued to evolve and increase in complexity until learning via imitation became a major tool in the human repertoire and a way of acquiring memes. Imitation and make-believe play in early development should prove a fertile ground for studying the transmission of memes. Even newborn infants can imitate simple facial behavior ( Meltzoff & Moore 1994 ) that may constitute part of the emotion expressions that they display later in infancy ( Izard et al. 1995 ). By age three years, children show great imitative skills while enjoying the fantasyland of make-believe play and learning socioemotional skills by assuming the roles of persons far beyond them in age, knowledge, skills, and experience. Thus, it was both phylogenetic transmission and the highly creative processes of ontogenetic development ( Noble 2006 ) that produced the capacity for imitative learning, which in turn essentially created a context where memes could replicate and compete ( Jablonka & Lamb 2005 ).

Though memes were originally described in terms of cognition and action patterns ( Dawkins 1989 ), the exclusion of emotion as a component may have been inadvertent. Indeed, emotion schemas seem perfect candidates for attaining status as memes. They not only have a cognitive component but also an emotion component and a kind of action component (the action tendencies in emotion states; Izard 2007a , b ). Thus, emotion schemas are well suited to emerge and operate as memes. Their emotion feeling component is often expressed through facial, vocal, and body-movement signals that are easily imitated, even by young children. In addition, imitating the expressive behavior of another person may activate neural and sensory motor processes that increase the likelihood of experiencing the emotion (and action tendencies) of the other person ( Izard 1990 , Niedenthal 2007 ). Young children’s imitation of their parents’ positive emotion expressions and interactions may contribute to the development of memes that represent significant social skills. Thus, emotion-schema memes (ESMs) as replicant units with a feeling/motivational component seem to be an expectable (epigenetic) extension of biogenetic-evolutionary processes.

Because emotions are contagious ( Hatfield et al. 1993 , Tomkins 1962 ), memes that are essentially emotion schemas can propagate profusely. They can do so for two reasons. First, such schemas have the attention-grabbing and motivational power of an emotion ( Youngstrom & Izard 2008 ). Second, they are highly functional phenomena independent of their relations to biological fitness and survival (cf. Aunger 2002 , Blackmore 1999 , Distin 2004 ). The idea that an emotion schema might form a replicant unit opens another door to investigations of the transfer of adaptive as well as maladaptive patterns of emotion, cognition, and action within and across generations.

Emotion schema memes begin to develop early in ontogeny, become plentiful, and may relate substantially to the MNS. There has been a surge of interest in the MNS, in part because it may be among the neural substrates of social perspective taking and empathy (e.g., Carr et al. 2003 , Keysers & Perrett 2004 , Rizzolatti & Craighero 2004 ).

Mirror Neuron Systems, Emotions, and Empathy

If the concept of memes becomes a staple in psychology, it may happen for two reasons. First, perhaps the most interesting and socially significant memes have an emotion component and are essentially emotion schemas whose behavioral manifestations (facial, vocal, gestural expressions of emotion) can be readily observed and analyzed. Second, they may depend in part on the MNS, which seems to mediate capabilities for perspective taking and empathy. The MNS may enable one to take the perspective of another and provide the shared emotion feeling that defines the essence of empathy (cf. Dapretto et al. 2006 , Keysers & Perrett 2004 ). The MNS apparently translates one’s sensory-perceptual experiences and accompanying conceptions of the expressions and movements of others into patterns of neural activity in the observer (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). This neural activity and its products help the observer to understand and predict the thoughts and feelings of the observed person.

The MNS may relate to sympathy and altruism as well. The cognitive component of an emotion schema, in interaction with its feeling component, may transform empathy to sympathy. This transformation would entail a shift from a response governed primarily by neuro-physiological or motor-system contagion to one that requires conceptual processes (cf. Langer 1967/1982 ). An MNS that facilitates sympathy, altruism, and mimetic processes would facilitate highly adaptive advantages ( Miller 2008 , Talmi & Frith 2007 ).

Empathy alone is not always sufficient to motivate helping behavior ( Rosenthal 1964/1999 ). The cognition (particularly the action plans) in an ESM provides the context for its feeling component, and the interaction of the cognition and feeling in the meme can guide sympathetic actions. Dysfunction of the MNS may help account for the deficits in socialization that are observed in autism spectrum disorders ( Oberman & Ramachandran 2007 ) and in antisocial personality or perhaps in any disorder involving deficits or dysfunction in social skills ( Iacoboni 2007 ).

The possibility that the MNS and associated emotion systems mediate the generation and propagation of memes suggests the fruitfulness of studying memes that can be clearly identified as ESMs. ESMs should prove plentiful because they have an enormous appeal to forces that generate and propagate memes. The emotion component of an ESM has the motivational power to influence perception, grab attention, generate more emotion-cognition structures, and influence action. ESMs may constitute a major factor that shapes consciousness, personality and social functioning, and culture ( Youngstrom & Izard 2008 ).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Emotion research has increased exponentially since Tomkins’s (1962 , 1963 ) landmark volumes helped bring a nascent emotion science into an unevenly matched competition with the forces of the contemporaneous revolution that produced cognitive science. The two disciplines are becoming increasingly collaborative and progressing toward becoming one. As the realization of this exciting prospect proceeds, great challenges await scientists who will seek to understand how the brain assigns weights or significance to emotion and cognition (which assumedly retain distinct functions) as they are integrated or mingled in different periods of development, personalities, and contexts. They will find equally interesting challenges in research on ways to facilitate these processes to gain adaptive advantages, bolster constructive and creative endeavors, and prevent destructive and maladaptive behavior.

SUMMARY POINTS

• Emotion feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity and the key psychological/motivational aspect of emotion. They constitute the primary motivational systems for human behavior.
• Emotion feelings are prime factors in the evolution, organization, and operations of consciousness and the different levels of awareness.
• The ability to symbolize feelings and put them into words provides a powerful tool for emotion regulation, influencing emotion-cognition relations, and developing high-level social skills.
• The term “emotion” has defied definition mainly because it is multifaceted and not a unitary phenomenon or process. Use of the unqualified term “emotion” makes for misunderstandings, contradictions, and confusions in theory and research.
• Basic emotions, emotion schemas, and emotion-schema memes are distinctly different in terms of their origin, content, causes, and effects.
• Transitions from basic emotions to emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes are major milestones in development and in achieving social and emotion competence.
• The psychological unconscious is an ill-defined and potentially misleading term. There is no consensus regarding its contents and functions. The concept of levels of awareness may provide a better bridge to understanding human mentality and brain/mind processes.
• Emotion utilization is the harnessing of an emotion’s inherently adaptive emotion motivation/feeling component in constructive affective-cognitive processes and actions. Symbolization and effective communication of emotion feelings play a key role in emotion utilization, particularly in real or simulated social interactions.
• The concept of emotion-cognition interaction, well validated in neuroscience and behavioral research, suggests that the presence of functionally distinct features in the interactants would increase both the flexibility and generality of the resultant processes.

FUTURE ISSUES

• Experimental validation of the hypothesis that the feeling component of some emotion or emotion schema is continuous at some level of awareness should prove an interesting challenge for future research. So should studies designed to verify the hypothesis that interest or an interest schema is the default emotion or emotion-cognition interaction.
• Insights on the early development and life-span growth of emotion-schema memes should add substantially to our understanding of the contributions of social and cultural factors in mental processes and behavior.
• Distinguishing between emotion regulation and emotion utilization may provide new insights on the independence and interdependence of these two constructs.
• Determining how the emotion and cognitive components of emotion schemas and emotion-schema memes integrate or mingle in the brain should provide leads for translational research. The findings from such research should contribute to preventive interventions that facilitate the development of emotion and social competence and the prevention of psychopathology.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Work on this article was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grants R21 MH068443 and R01 MH080909.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The author is not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

LITERATURE CITED

• Ackerman BP, Abe JA, Izard CE. Differential emotions theory and emotional development: mindful of modularity. In: Mascolo M, Griffn S, editors. What Develops in Emotional Development? Emotions, Personality, and Psychotherapy. New York: Plenum; 1998. pp. 85–106. [ Google Scholar ]
• Aunger R. The Electric Meme: A New Theory of How We Think. New York: Free Press; 2002. 392 pp. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bacon F. Novum Organum. In: Spedding J, Ellis RL, Heath DD, editors. The Works of Francis Bacon: Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England. New York: Garrett Press; 16201968. pp. 47–69. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bargh JA, Morsella E. The unconscious mind. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2008; 3 :73–79. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF. Are emotions natural kinds. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2006; 1 :28–58. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Lindquist KA, Bliss-Moreau E, Duncan S, Gendron M, et al. Of mice and men: natural kinds of emotions in the mammalian brain? A response to Panksepp and Izard. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 2007; 2 :297–312. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Niedenthal PM, Winkielman P. Emotion and Consciousness. New York: Guilford; 2005a. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barrett LF, Niedenthal PM, Winkielman P. Introduction. 2005b:1–18. See Barrett et al. 2005a . [ Google Scholar ]
• Bechara A, Damasio H, Damasio A. Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal cortex. Cereb. Cortex. 2000; 10 :295–307. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Blackmore S. The Meme Machine. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 1999. [ Google Scholar ]
• Block N. Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience. Behav. Brain Sci. 2007; 30 :481–99. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Buschman TJ, Miller EK. Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 2007; 315 :1860–1862. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Carr L, Iacoboni M, Dubeau M-C, Mazziotta JC, Lenzi GL. Neural mechanisms of empathy in humans: a relay from neural systems for imitation to limbic areas. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 2003; 100 :5497–5502. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chalmers DJ. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 1996. [ Google Scholar ]
• Claxton LJ, Keen R, McCarty ME. Evidence of motor planning in infant reaching behavior. Psychol. Sci. 2003; 14 :354–356. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Clore GL, Storbeck J, Robinson MD, Centerbar DB. Seven sins in the study of unconscious affect. 2005:384–408. See Barrett et al. 2005a . [ Google Scholar ]
• Clore GL, Wyer RS, Jr, Dienes B, Gasper K, Gohm C, Isbell L. Affective feelings as feedback: some cognitive consequences. In: Martin LL, Clore GL, editors. Theories of Mood and Cognition: A User’s Guidebook. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 2001. pp. 27–62. [ Google Scholar ]
• Creighton JE. Reason and feeling. Philos. Rev. 1921; 30 :465–481. [ Google Scholar ]
• Damasio AR. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace; 1999. [ Google Scholar ]
• Damasio A. The person within. Nature. 2003; 423 (6937):227. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dapretto M, Davies MS, Pfeifer JH, Scott AA, Sigman M, et al. Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nat. Neurosci. 2006; 9 :28–30. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Darwin C. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 18721965. [ Google Scholar ]
• Davidson RJ. Asymmetric brain function, affective style, and psychopathology: the role of early experience and plasticity. Dev. Psychol. 1994; 6 :741–758. [ Google Scholar ]
• Davidson RJ. Affective style and affective disorders: perspectives from affective neuroscience. Cogn. Emot. 1998; 12 :307–330. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dawkins R. The Selfish Gene. London: Oxford Univ. Press; 1989. [ Google Scholar ]
• de Gelder B. Nonconscious emotions: new findings and perspectives on nonconscious facial expression recognition and its voice and whole-body contexts. 2005:123–149. See Barrett et al. 2005a . [ Google Scholar ]
• De Martino B, Kumaran D, Seymour B, Dolan RJ. Frames, biases, and rational decision-making in the human brain. Science. 2006; 313 :684–687. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Denham SA, Burton R. Social and Emotional Prevention and Intervention Programming for Preschoolers. New York: Kluwer Acad./Plenum; 2003. [ Google Scholar ]
• Diener E, Smith H, Fujita F. The personality structure of affect. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1995; 69 :130–141. [ Google Scholar ]
• Distin K. The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press; 2004. [ Google Scholar ]
• Domitrovich CE, Greenberg MT. Preventive interventions with young children: building on the foundation of early intervention programs. Early Educ. Dev. 2004; 15 :365–370. [ Google Scholar ]
• Edelman GM. Second nature: the transformation of knowledge. In: Edelman GM, editor. Second Nature: Brain Science and Human Knowledge. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press; 2006. pp. 142–157. [ Google Scholar ]
• Edelman GM, Tononi G. A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination. New York: Basic Books; 2000. 274 pp. [ Google Scholar ]
• Eisenberg N, Spinrad TL. Emotion-related regulation: sharpening the definition. Child Dev. 2004; 75 :334–339. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ekman P. Emotions Revealed. New York: Times Books; 2003. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ellsworth PC. William James and emotion: Is a century of fame worth a century of misunderstanding? Psychol. Rev. 1994; 101 :222–229. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ellsworth PC, Scherer KR. Appraisal processes in emotion. In: Davidson RJ, Scherer KR, Goldsmith HH, editors. Handbook of Affective Sciences. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 2003. pp. 572–595. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fox NA, Henderson HA, Marshall PJ, Nichols KE, Ghera MM. Behavioral inhibition: linking biology and behavior within a developmental framework. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2005; 56 :235–262. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fredrickson BL. What good are positive emotions? Rev. Gen. Psychol. 1998; 2 :300–319. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fredrickson BL. Positive emotions. In: Snyder CR, Lopez S, editors. Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 2007. pp. 120–134. [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldsmith HH, Campos JJ. Toward a theory of infant temperament. In: Emde RN, Harmon RJ, editors. The Development of Attachment and Affiliative Systems. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum; 1982. pp. 231–283. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gray JA. Brain systems that mediate both emotion and cognition. Cogn. Emot. 1990; 4 :269–288. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gray JR, Schaefer A, Braver TS, Most SB. Affect and the resolution of cognitive control dilemmas. 2005:67–94. See Barrett et al. 2005a . [ Google Scholar ]
• Greenberg LS, Paivio SC. Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy. New York: Guilford; 1997. [ Google Scholar ]
• Gross JJ. Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology. 2002; 39 :281–291. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hatfield E, Cacioppo JT, Rapson RL. Emotional contagion. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 1993; 2 :96–99. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hoffman ML. Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press; 2000. [ Google Scholar ]
• Humphrey N. Seeing Red. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Iacoboni M. Face to face: the neural basis of social mirroring and empathy. Psychiatr. Ann. 2007; 37 :236–241. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. The Face of Emotion. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts; 1971. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Patterns of Emotions: A New Analysis of Anxiety and Depression. New York: Academic; 1972. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Human Emotions. New York: Plenum; 1977. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Emotion-cognition relationships and human development. In: Izard CE, Kagan J, Zajonc RB, editors. Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press; 1984. pp. 17–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Facial expressions and the regulation of emotions. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1990; 58 :487–498. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Four systems for emotion activation: cognitive and noncognitive processes. Psychol. Rev. 1993; 100 :68–90. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Translating emotion theory and research into preventive interventions. Psychol. Bull. 2002; 128 :796–824. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Experts’ Definitions of Emotion and Their Ratings of Its Components and Characteristics. Delaware, Newark: Unpubl. manuscr., Univ.; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Basic emotions, natural kinds, emotion schemas, and a new paradigm. Personal. Psychol. Sci. 2007a; 2 :260–280. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE. Levels of emotion and levels of consciousness. Behav. Brain Sci. 2007b; 30 :96–98. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE, Fantauzzo CA, Castle JM, Haynes OM, Rayias MF, Putnam PH. The ontogeny and significance of infants’ facial expressions in the first 9 months of life. Dev. Psychol. 1995; 31 :997–1013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE, Hembree EA, Huebner RR. Infants’ emotion expressions to acute pain: developmental change and stability of individual differences. Dev. Psychol. 1987; 23 :105–113. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE, King KA, Trentacosta CJ, Laurenceau JP, Morgan JK, et al. Accelerating the development of emotion competence in Head Start children. Dev. Psychol. 2008a; 20 :369–397. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE, Malatesta CZ. Perspectives on emotional development: differential emotions theory of early emotional development. In: Osofsky JD, editor. Handbook of Infant Development. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley Intersci.; 1987. pp. 494–554. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard CE, Quinn PC, Most SB. Many ways to awareness: a developmental perspective on cognitive access. Behav. Brain Sci. 2008b; 30 :506–507. [ Google Scholar ]
• Izard C, Stark K, Trentacosta C, Schultz D. Beyond emotion regulation: emotion utilization and adaptive functioning. Child Dev. Perspect. 2008c In press. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jablonka E, Lamb MJ. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2005. 462 pp. [ Google Scholar ]
• James W. What is emotion? Mind. 1884; 4 :188–204. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kennedy-Moore E, Watson JC. Expressing Emotion: Myths, Realities, and Therapeutic Strategies. New York: Guilford; 1999. [ Google Scholar ]
• Keysers C, Perrett DI. Demystifying social cognition: a Hebbian perspective. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2004; 8 :501–507. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kihlstrom JF. The psychological unconscious. In: Pervin LA, John OP, editors. Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research. New York: Guilford; 1999. pp. 424–442. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kleinginna PR, Kleinginna AM. A categorized list of emotion definitions, with suggestions for a consensual definition. Motiv. Emot. 1981; 5 :345–379. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lambie JA, Marcel AJ. Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: a theoretical framework. Psychol. Rev. 2002; 109 :219–259. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lane RD, Ahern GL, Schwartz GE, Kaszniak AW. Is alexithymia the emotional equivalent of blindsight? Biol. Psychiatry. 1997; 42 :834–844. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Langer SK. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press; 19671982. [ Google Scholar ]
• Langsdorf P, Izard CE, Rayias M, Hembree E. Interest expression, visual fixation, and heart rate changes in 2- to 8-month-old infants. Dev. Psychol. 1983; 19 :375–386. [ Google Scholar ]
• LeDoux JE. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Schuster; 1996. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lerner JS, Tiedens LZ. Portrait of the angry decision maker: how appraisal tendencies shape anger’s influence on cognition. J. Behav. Decis. Mak. 2006; 19 :115–137. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lewis M. Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling. Behav. Brain Sci. 2005; 28 :169–245. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lieberman MD, Eisenberger NI, Crockett MJ, Tom SM, Pfeifer JH, Way BM. Putting feelings into words. Psychol. Sci. 2007; 18 :421–428. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Magai C, Hunziker J. Tolstoy and the riddle of developmental transformation: a lifespan analysis of the role of emotions in personality development. In: Lewis MB, Haviland JM, editors. Handbook of Emotions. New York: Guilford; 1993. pp. 247–259. [ Google Scholar ]
• Magai C, McFadden SH. The Role of Emotions in Social and Personality Development: History, Theory, and Research. New York: Plenum; 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mayer JD, Salovey P. What is emotional intelligence? In: Salovey P, Sluyter D, editors. Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for Educators. New York: Basic Books; 1997. pp. 3–31. [ Google Scholar ]
• Meltzoff AN, Moore MK. Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons. Infant Behav. Dev. 1994; 17 :83–99. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Merker B. Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: a challenge for neuroscience and medicine. Behav. Brain Sci. 2007; 30 :63–134. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller G. Neuroscience: The emotional brain weighs its options. Science. 2006; 313 :600–601. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miller G. Neuroscience: Mirror neurons may help songbirds stay in tune. Science. 2008; 319 :269. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mischel W, Shoda Y. A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychol. Rev. 1995; 102 :246–268. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mischel W, Shoda Y. Reconciling processing dynamics and personality dispositions. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 1998; 49 :229–258. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mobbs D, Petrovic P, Marchant JL, Hassabis D, Weiskopf N, et al. When fear is near: Threat imminence elicits prefrontal-periaqueductal gray shifts in humans. Science. 2007; 317 (5841):1079–1083. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Naqvi N, Shiv B, Bechara A. The role of emotion in decision making: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2006; 15 :260–264. [ Google Scholar ]
• Niedenthal PM. Embodying emotion. Science. 2007; 316 :1002–1005. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Noble D. The Music of Life. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Northoff G, Heinzel A, Bermpohl F, Niese R, Pfennig A, et al. Reciprocal modulation and attenuation in the prefrontal cortex: an fMRI study on emotional-cognitive interaction. Hum. Brain Mapp. 2004; 21 :202–212. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Oberman LM, Ramachandran VS. The simulating social mind: the role of the mirror neuron system and simulation in the social and communicative deficits of autism spectrum disorders. Psychol. Bull. 2007; 133 :310–327. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Öhman A. Automaticity and the amygdala: nonconscious responses to emotional faces. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci. 2002; 11 :62–66. [ Google Scholar ]
• Öhman A. The role of the amygdala in human fear: automatic detection of threat. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2005; 30 :953–958. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Panksepp J. Neurologizing the psychology of affects: how appraisal-based constructivism and basic emotion theory can coexist. Personal. Psychol. Sci. 2007; 2 :281–295. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Panksepp J. Damasio’s error? Conscious. Emot. 2003a; 4 :111–134. [ Google Scholar ]
• Panksepp J. At the interface of the affective, behavioral, and cognitive neurosciences: decoding the emotional feelings of the brain. Brain Cogn. 2003b; 52 :4–14. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Panksepp J. Affective consciousness: core emotional feelings in animals and humans. Conscious. Cogn. 2005; 14 :30–80. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Pessoa L. On the relationship between emotion and cognition. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 2008; 9 :148–158. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Phelps EA. Emotion and cognition: insights from studies of the human amygdala. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2006; 57 :27–53. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rizzolatti G, Craighero L. The mirror-neuron system. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 2004; 27 :169–192. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosenthal AM. Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press; 19641999. [ Google Scholar ]
• Russell JA. Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. Psychol. Rev. 2003; 110 :145–172. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Scherer K. Emotion. In: Hewstone M, Stroebe W, editors. Introduction to Social Psychology: A European Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell Sci.; 2000. pp. 151–191. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwarz N, Clore GL. Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: informative and directive functions of affective states. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol. 1983; 45 :513–523. [ Google Scholar ]
• Shweder RA. “You’re not sick, you’re just in love”: an attributional theory of motivation and emotion. In: Ekman P, Davidson R, editors. The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 1994. pp. 32–44. [ Google Scholar ]
• Silvia PJ. Exploring the Psychology of Interest. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Spinoza B. The Ethics of Spinoza. New York: Citadel; 16771957. [ Google Scholar ]
• Talmi D, Frith C. Neurobiology: feeling right about doing right. Nature. 2007; 446 :865–866. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tangney JP, Stuewig J, Mashek DJ. Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2007; 58 :345–372. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Tomkins SS. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness: Vol. I. The Positive Affects. New York: Springer; 1962. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tomkins SS. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness: Vol. II. The Negative Affects. New York: Springer; 1963. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tomkins SS. Script theory. In: Aronoff J, Rabin AI, Zucker RA, editors. The Emergence of Personality. New York: Springer; 1987. pp. 72–97. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weiskrantz L. Blindsight-putting beta (β) on the back burner. In: De Gelder B, De Haan EHF, Heywood CA, editors. Out of Mind: Varieties of Unconscious Processes. New York: Oxford Univ. Press; 2001. pp. 20–31. [ Google Scholar ]
• Winkielman P, Berridge KC, Wilbarger JL. Emotion, behavior, and conscious experience: once more without feeling. 2005:335–362. See Barrett et al. 2005a . [ Google Scholar ]
• Youngstrom EA, Izard CE. Functions of emotions and emotion-related dysfunction. In: Elliot AJ, editor. Handbook of Approach and Avoidance Motivation. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 2008. pp. 363–380. [ Google Scholar ]

• More from M-W
• To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

Definition of emotion

feeling , emotion , affection , sentiment , passion mean a subjective response to a person, thing, or situation.

feeling denotes any partly mental, partly physical response marked by pleasure, pain, attraction, or repulsion; it may suggest the mere existence of a response but imply nothing about the nature or intensity of it.

emotion carries a strong implication of excitement or agitation but, like feeling , encompasses both positive and negative responses.

affection applies to feelings that are also inclinations or likings.

sentiment often implies an emotion inspired by an idea.

passion suggests a very powerful or controlling emotion.

Examples of emotion in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'emotion.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle French, from emouvoir to stir up, from Old French esmovoir , from Latin emovēre to remove, displace, from e- + movēre to move

1579, in the meaning defined at sense 2b

Articles Related to emotion

Name That Emotion

It's a whole mood

10 Uncommon Emotional Words

Once more with (obscure) feeling

Dictionary Entries Near emotion

emotionable

Cite this Entry

“Emotion.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emotion. Accessed 28 Apr. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of emotion, medical definition, medical definition of emotion, more from merriam-webster on emotion.

Nglish: Translation of emotion for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of emotion for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about emotion

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

More commonly misspelled words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, hypercorrections: are you making these 6 common mistakes, forming compound words | guide to compound types, popular in wordplay, the words of the week - apr. 26, 9 superb owl words, 'gaslighting,' 'woke,' 'democracy,' and other top lookups, 10 words for lesser-known games and sports, your favorite band is in the dictionary, games & quizzes.

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Mia Belle Frothingham

Author, Researcher, Science Communicator

BA with minors in Psychology and Biology, MRes University of Edinburgh

Mia Belle Frothingham is a Harvard University graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Sciences with minors in biology and psychology

Learn about our Editorial Process

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, understand, and manage one’s own emotions and relationships. It involves being aware of emotions in oneself and others and using this awareness to guide thinking and behavior. Emotionally intelligent individuals can motivate themselves, read social cues, and build strong relationships

Some researchers propose that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others argue it is an inborn characteristic.

The ability to express and manage emotions is essential, but so is the ability to understand, diagnose, and react to the emotions of others. Imagine a world in which one could not understand when a friend felt sad or a classmate was angry.

Why is Emotional Intelligence Critical?

Emotional Intelligence is the “ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions, to discriminate between different emotions and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior” (Salovey and Mayer, 1990).

Having a higher level of emotional intelligence allows one to empathize with others, communicate effectively, and be both self and socially aware. How people respond to themselves and others impacts all types of environments.

Living in this world signifies interacting with many diverse kinds of individuals and constant change with life-changing surprises.

Being emotionally intelligent is key to how one reacts to what life throws. It is furthermore a fundamental element of compassion and comprehending the deeper reasons behind other people’s actions.

It is not the most intelligent people who are the most prosperous or the most fulfilled in life. Many people are academically genius and yet are socially incompetent and unsuccessful in their careers or their intimate relationships.

Intellectual ability or intelligence quotient (IQ) is not enough on its own to achieve success in life. Undoubtedly, IQ can help one get into university, but your Emotional Intelligence (EI) will help one manage stress and emotions when facing final exams.

IQ and EI exist in tandem and are most influential when they build off one another.

Emotional intelligence is also valuable for leaders who set the tone of their organization. If leaders lack emotional intelligence , it could have more far-reaching consequences, resulting in lower worker engagement and a higher turnover rate.

While one might excel at one’s job technically, if one cannot effectively communicate with one’s team or collaborate with others, those specialized skills will get neglected.

By mastering emotional intelligence, one can positively impact anywhere and continue to advance one’s position and career in life. EI is vital when dealing with stressful situations like confrontation, change, and obstacles.

Emotional intelligence helps one build stronger relationships, succeed at work or school, and achieve one’s career and personal goals, as well as reduce group stress, defuse conflict, and enhance job satisfaction.

It can also help connect with one’s inner feelings, turn purpose into action, and make informed decisions about what matters most to oneself.

During these times, it is essential to remember to practice kindness, and being in touch with our emotions can help us do just that.

Examples of Emotional Intelligence

How does one become emotionally intelligent? Below we will discuss what one can do to learn to improve the skills that are behind emotional intelligence (EI).

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize the meanings of emotions and to reason and problem-solve based on them (Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 1999).

By working on and improving these skills, one can become more emotionally intelligent and, therefore, more successful!

Emotional Awareness and Understanding

Self-awareness, or the ability to recognize and comprehend one’s own emotions, is a vital emotional intelligence skill. Beyond acknowledging one’s feelings, however, is being conscious of the effect of one’s actions, moods, and emotions on other people.

According to research by Tasha Eurich, an organizational psychologist, 95% of individuals believe they are self-aware. Still, only 10 to 15 percent genuinely are, which can cause problems for the people one interacts with.

Being with people who are not self-aware can be frustrating and lead to increased stress and decreased encouragement.

To become self-aware, one must be capable of monitoring one’s emotions while recognizing different emotional reactions and correctly identifying each distinct emotion.

Self-aware individuals also can recognize the connections between the things they feel and how they act.

These individuals also acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, are open to new data and experiences, and learn from their exchanges with others.

Furthermore, people who maintain self-awareness have a fine sense of humor, are confident in themselves and their capabilities, and know how others perceive them.

Here are some tips on improving one’s self-awareness:

Ask for constructive feedback from others.

Keep a journal of one’s thoughts and feelings.

Practice mindfulness – try meditating.

Pay careful attention to one’s thoughts and emotions.

Pursue one’s passions and do what makes one happy.

Learn new skills and set goals for oneself.

Reflect on one’s experiences and be grateful.

Use positive self-talk daily.

Work on building a growth mindset.

Emotional Self Regulation (Managing Emotions)

In addition to being aware of one’s own emotions and the impact one has on others, emotional intelligence requires one to regulate and manage one’s emotions .

This does not mean taking emotions out of sight and essentially “locking” them away, hence hiding one’s true feelings. It just means waiting for the right time and place to express them. Self-regulation is all about communicating one’s emotions appropriately in context. A reaction tends to be involuntary.

The more in tune one is with one’s emotional intelligence, the easier one can transition from an instant reaction to a well-thought-out response. It is crucial to remember to pause, breathe, compose oneself, and do what it takes to manage one’s emotions.

This could mean anything to oneself, like taking a walk or talking to a friend, so that one can more appropriately and intentionally respond to tension and adversity.

Those proficient in self-regulation tend to be flexible and acclimate well to change. They are also suitable for handling conflict and diffusing uncomfortable or difficult situations.

People with healthy self-regulation skills also tend to have heightened conscientiousness. They reflect on how they influence others and take accountability for their actions.

Here are some tips on improving one’s self-regulation:

Look at challenges as opportunities.

Be mindful of thoughts and feelings.

Build distress and anxiety tolerance skills.

Work on accepting reflections and emotions.

Find ways to manage difficult emotions.

Practice communication and social skills.

Recognize that one has a choice in how one responds.

Use cognitive reframing to change emotional responses and thought patterns.

Social Empathy (Perceiving Emotions)

Empathy , or the capability to comprehend how other people are feeling, is crucial to perfecting emotional intelligence.

However, it involves more than just being able to identify the emotional states of others. It also affects one’s responses to people based on this knowledge.

How does one respond when one senses someone is feeling sad or hopeless? One might treat them with extra care and consideration, or one might make a push to lift their mood.

Being empathetic also allows one to understand the authority dynamics that frequently influence social relationships, especially in the workplace.

This is essential for guiding one’s daily interactions with various people. In fact, it is found that empathy ranks as the number one leadership skill.

Leaders proficient in empathy perform more than 40% higher in coaching, engaging others, and decision-making. In a different study, researchers found that leaders who show more empathy toward their co-workers and constructive criticism are viewed as better performers by their supervisors.

Those competent in this element can recognize who maintains power in different relationships. They also understand how these forces impact feelings and behaviors. Because of this, they can accurately analyze different situations that hinge on such power dynamics.

Here are some tips on improving social empathy:

Be willing to share emotions.

Listen to other people.

Practice meditation.

Engage in a purpose like a community project.

Meet and talk to new people.

Try to imagine yourself in someone else’s place.

Social Skills (Using Emotions)

The ability to interact well with others is another vital aspect of emotional intelligence. Solid social skills allow people to build meaningful relationships with others and develop a more robust understanding of themselves and others.

Proper emotional understanding involves more than just understanding one’s own emotions and those of others. One also needs to put this information to work in one’s daily interactions and communications.

In the workplace or professional settings, managers benefit by being able to build relationships and connections with employees.

Workers benefit from developing a solid rapport with leaders and co-workers. Some prefer to avoid conflict, but it is crucial to address issues as they arise correctly.

Research shows that every unaddressed conflict can waste almost eight hours of company time on unproductive activities, damaging resources and morale. Essential social skills include active listening , verbal communication, nonverbal communication, leadership , and persuasiveness.

Here are some tips on improving social skills:

Ask open-ended questions.

Find icebreakers that will help start conversations.

Practice good eye contact.

Practice active listening with the entire body.

Notice other people’s social skills.

Show interest in others and ask them personal questions.

Watch one’s body language and that of others.

In The Workplace

Emotional intelligence includes showing genuine compassion, empathizing with the needs of individuals, and encouraging the ongoing personal growth of individuals.

When a leader takes into account the emotions of their followers, they then learn how to best engage with them.

1. Lending a Compassionate Ear to a Frustrated Co-Worker

Employees will inevitably get upset, have bad moods, argue, and just generally have bad days. In practice, compassion, understanding, and awareness are definite signs of emotional intelligence.

Awareness of and reacting to other people’s emotional states shows an understanding that all humans experience intense emotions and says that a person’s feelings matter.

2. Listening to Others Respectfully

Ever been to a conference when it seems like everyone is speaking over each other, trying to get the last word?

This is not only an indication of egos taking over and a lack of consideration for others; these are also indications of there being a lack of emotional intelligence.

When individuals are allowed to speak, and others listen without persistent interruptions, it is a good sign of EI. It shows reciprocal respect between parties and is more likely to lead to a productive conclusion in meetings.

3. Being Flexible

Flexibility is a critical term in organizations today. Building flexibility into how people function can be the difference between keeping the best workers and drifting out the door.

Emotionally intelligent leaders comprehend the changing needs of others and are ready to work with them rather than attempting to impose rigid restrictions on how people go about their work.

They do not expect everyone to work the hours they do, hold the same priorities, or live by precisely the same values.

In Healthcare

1. being patient with hurting individuals.

When in healthcare, it is expected that doctors and nurses will have to manage people in pain. Emotional intelligence not only allows for better patient care but also for better self-care.

For instance, if a patient is lashing out, and one can see that they are in pain, one will be far less likely to take their combativeness personally and treat them better.

2. Acting as the Effective Leader

In healthcare, there is a necessity to have influential leaders, a trusting environment with a helpful team, critical thinking, and quality patient and family-centered care.

A higher emotional intelligence will allow healthcare professionals to respond and react better to patients. Studies have shown a correlation between emotional intelligence and positive patient outcomes.

3. Responding Better to Stressful Situations

Multiple occasions in healthcare involve an urgent situation involving a life or death scenario. Doctors and nurses must check their own emotions.

Being in healthcare is a highly emotional career, and being aware of your feelings when they come up is key to effective self-care.

Interacting with patients can cause overwhelming joy or deep sadness, and these fluctuations can be utterly exhausting.

The ability to deal with these feelings, take breaks, and ask for help when you need it is another example of good emotional intelligence that nurses should practice.

Tips for Improving EI

Be more self-aware.

Awareness of one’s emotions and emotional responses to others can significantly improve one’s emotional intelligence. Knowing when one is feeling anxious or angry can help process and communicate those feelings in a way that promotes healthy results.

Recognize how others feel

Emotional intelligence could start with self-reflection, but measuring how others perceive one’s behavior and communication is essential. Adjusting one’s message based on how one is being received is an integral part of being emotionally intelligent.

Practice active listening

People communicate verbally and nonverbally, so listening and monitoring for potentially positive and negative reactions is essential. Taking the time to hear others also demonstrates a level of respect that can form the basis for healthy relationships.

Communicate clearly

Solid communication skills are critical for emotional intelligence. Knowing what to express or write and when to offer information is crucial for building strong relationships.

For instance, as a manager in a work environment, communicating expectations and goals is required to keep everyone on the same page.

Stay positive

A positive attitude is incredibly infectious. Emotionally intelligent people comprehend the power of positive words, encouraging emails, and friendly gestures. When one can also remain positive in a stressful situation, one can help others stay calm. It can also encourage further problem-solving and collaboration.

Thinking about how others might be feeling is an essential quality of emotional intelligence. It means you can empathize with feelings that one may not be feeling oneself and respond in a way that is respectful and relaxing to others.

Be open-minded

Emotionally intelligent people are comfortable to approach because they are good listeners and can consider and understand other viewpoints. They are also receptive to learning new things and embracing novel ideas.

Listen to feedback

It is essential to be the type of person who can hear feedback, whether it is positive on a recent presentation or more critical advice on how you should commission tasks more efficiently.

Being receptive to feedback means taking responsibility for one’s actions and being willing to improve how one communicates with others.

Stay calm under pressure

It is essential to approach stressful situations with a calm and positive attitude. Pressures can quickly escalate, primarily when people are operating under deadlines, so keeping steady and concentrating on finding a solution will help everyone complete their goals.

History of Emotional Intelligence

In the 1930s, psychologist Edward Thorndike explained the concept of “social intelligence” as the ability to get along with other individuals.

During the 1940s, psychologist David Wechsler suggested that different practical elements of intelligence could play a critical role in how successful people are in life.

In the 1950s, the school of thought was known as humanistic psychology, and scholars such as Abraham Maslow concentrated attention on how people could build emotional strength.

Another critical concept to arise in the development of emotional intelligence was the concept of multiple intelligences . This idea was put forth in the mid-1970s by Howard Gardner, presenting the idea that intelligence was more than just a single, broad capacity.

Emotional intelligence did not come into our vernacular until around 1990. The term “emotional intelligence” was first utilized in 1985 as it was presented in a doctoral dissertation by Wayne Payne.

In 1987, there was an article written by Keith Beasley and published in Mensa Magazine that used the term emotional quotient or EQ.

Then in 1990, psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey published their milestone article, Emotional Intelligence , in the journal Imagination, Cognition, and Personality .

They described emotional intelligence as the capability to monitor one’s and others’ feelings and emotions, discriminate among them, and use this knowledge to guide one’s thinking and actions.

Salovey and Mayer also initiated a research study to develop accurate measures of emotional intelligence and explore its significance. For example, they found in one investigation that when a group of people saw an upsetting film, those who ranked high on emotional clarity, or the ability to recognize and label a mood that is being experienced, recovered more quickly.

In a different study, people who scored higher in the ability to perceive accurately, understand and appraise others’ emotions were sufficiently capable of responding flexibly to changes in their social environments and building supportive social networks.

But despite it being a relatively new term, attraction to the concept has grown tremendously. In 1995, the concept of emotional intelligence was popularized after the publication of Daniel Goleman’s book  Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is emotional intelligence important in the workplace.

Researchers have indicated that emotional intelligence influences how excellently employees interact with their colleagues, and EI is also considered to play a role in how employees manage stress and conflict.

It also affects overall performance on the job. Other studies have connected emotional intelligence with job satisfaction.

Studies have shown that workers with higher scores on measures of EI also tend to be ranked higher on criteria of interpersonal functioning, leadership abilities, and stress management.

While standard intelligence was associated with leadership success, it alone was not enough. People who are prosperous at work are not just brilliant; they also have a high EI.

But emotional intelligence is not simply for CEOs and senior executives.

It is a quality that is essential at every level of a person’s career, from university students looking for internships to seasoned workers hoping to take on a leadership role.

Emotional intelligence is critical to success if one wants to succeed in the workplace and move up the career ladder.

Can emotional intelligence be taught?

As it turns out, the question whether emotional intelligence can be learned is not a straightforward one to answer.

Some psychologists and researchers claim that emotional intelligence is a skill that is not quickly learned or improved. Other psychologists and researchers, though, believe it can be improved with practice.

One key to improving EI is sustained practice – especially in high-stakes situations. Referring back to the above tips, one could read them and say those guidelines are pretty straightforward.

But, the challenging task is to do these practices in real-time and consistently. It takes practice to develop these skills. Then as you acquire them, you have to rehearse them under stress.

Can emotional intelligence be measured?

Several different assessments have arisen to gauge levels of emotional intelligence. These trials typically fall into one of two types: self-report tests and ability tests.

Self-report tests are the most abundant because they are the quickest to administer and score. Respondents respond to questions or statements on such tests by rating their behaviors.

For example, on a comment such as “I sense that I understand how others are feeling,” a test-taker might describe the statement as strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree.

On the other hand, ability tests involve people responding to situations and assessing their skills. These tests often require people to demonstrate their abilities, which a third party rates.

If one is taking an emotional intelligence trial issued by a mental health professional, here are two measures that could be used: Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory (ESCI).

What is the dark side of emotional intelligence?

The dark side of emotional intelligence is using one’s understanding of emotions manipulatively, to deceive, control, or exploit others.

High emotional intelligence can mask hidden agendas, enabling insincere charm or feigned empathy, potentially leading to deceitful or self-serving actions.

Boyatzis, R. E., & Goleman, D. (2011). Emotional and social competency inventory (ESCI): A user guide for accredited practitioners.  Retrieved December ,  17 , 2019.

Eurich, T. (2018). What self-awareness really is (and how to cultivate it).  Harvard Business Review , 1-9.

Gardner, H. E. (2000). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century . Hachette UK.

Goleman, D. (1996).  Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ . Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (1999). Emotional intelligence meets traditional standards for an intelligence.  Intelligence, 27 (4), 267-298.

Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1993). The intelligence of emotional intelligence.  Intelligence, 17 (4), 433-442.

Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (2007).  Mayer-Salovery-Caruso emotional intelligence test . Toronto: Multi-Health Systems Incorporated.

Payne, W. L. (1985). A study of emotion: developing emotional intelligence; self-integration; relating to fear, pain and desire.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). Emotional intelligence .  Imagination, cognition and personality ,  9 (3), 185-211.

Thorndike, R. L., & Stein, S. (1937). An evaluation of the attempts to measure social intelligence.  Psychological Bulletin ,  34 (5), 275.

Wechsler, D., & Kodama, H. (1949).  Wechsler intelligence scale for children  (Vol. 1). New York: Psychological corporation.

Psychology Discussion

Essay on emotions: definition, characteristics and importance.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

In this article we will discuss about:- 1. Meaning and Definitions of Emotions 2. Characteristics of Emotions 3. Kinds 4. Importance 5. Theories.

Meaning and Definitions of Emotions:

Emotion plays a major role in influencing our behaviour. Life would be dreary without feelings like joy and sorrow, excitement and disappointment, love and fear, hope and dismay. Emotion adds colour and spice to life.

Emotions are feelings such as happiness, disappointment and sorrow that generally have both physiological and cognitive elements that influence behaviour. The word emotion is derived from the Latin word ‘Emover’ which means to stir up’ or to excite’. Emotion can be understood as an agitated or excited state of our mind and body.

1. Charles G Morris:

“Emotion is a complete effective experience that involves diffuse physiological changes and can be expressed overtly in characteristic behaviour patterns”.

2. Crow and Crow:

“Emotion is an affective experience that accompanies generalized linear adjustment and mental and physiological stirred up states in the individual and that shows itself in his overt behaviour”.

3. Woodworth:

“Emotion is a ‘Moved or ‘stirred up’ state of an organism. It is a stirred up feeling, that is the way it appears to the individual himself. It is a disturbed muscular and glandular activities, that is the way it appears to an external observer”.

4. McDougall:

Emotion is an affective experience that one undergoes during an instinctive excitement. For example, when a child perceives a bull coming towards him (cognition) he experiences an affective experience in the form of the arousal of accompanied emotion of fear and consequently tries to run away. McDougall discovered 14 basic instincts and concluded that each and every emotion, whatever it may be is the product of some instinctive behaviour.

These instincts, with their associated emotions, are listed as follows:

On the basis of these definitions, emotions can be understood as some sort of feelings or affective experiences which are characterized by some physiological changes that generally lead them to perform some or the other types of behavioural acts.

Characteristics of Emotions:

Some of the important characteristics of emotions are as follows:

1. Emotional experiences are associated with some instincts:

Every emotional experience is associated with one or the other innate instinct. An emotion is aroused under the influence of an instinctive excitement. One can experience emotion of anger only after riding on the instinctive waves of pugnacity or combat.

2. Emotions are the product of perception:

Perception of a proper stimulus (object or situation) is needed to start an emotional experience. The organic changes within the body (favourable or unfavourable) then, may intensify the emotional experience.

3. Emotions bring physiological changes:

Every emotional experience involves many physical and physiological changes in the organism. Some of the changes which express themselves as overt behaviour are easily observable. For example, the heart beating, reddened eyes, flushed cheeks, choke in the voice, or an attack on an emotion aroused stimulus.

In addition to these easily observable changes, there are internal physiological changes, e.g. changes in the circulation of blood, impact on the digestive system and changes in the functioning of some glands like adrenal glands.

4. The core of an emotion is feeling:

Actually every emotional experience, whatever it may be involves feelings—a sense of response aroused in the heart. Feeling and emotions—both are affective experiences. There is only the difference of degrees. After perceiving a thing or a situation, pleasure or displeasure feelings can be aroused. There may be some intensity or degree of strength in these feelings.

Some Other Characteristics of Emotions:

1. Emotions are prevalent in every living organism.

2. They are present at all stages of development and can be aroused in young as well as in old.

3. One emotion can give rise to a number of similar emotions.

4. Emotions are individualistic, and they differ from person to person.

5. Emotions rise abruptly but subside slowly. An emotion once aroused, tends to persist and leaves behind an emotional need.

6. Some emotions can be aroused by a number of different stimuli, objects or situations.

7. There is a negative connection between the upsurge of emotions and intelligence. Reasoning and sharp intellect can check sudden upsurge of emotions. Also under emotional experiences, the reasoning and thinking powers are decreased.

8. Emotions have the quality of displacement. The anger aroused on account of one stimulus gets transferred to another situation. The anger resulting from being rebuked by the boss gets transferred to beat the children at home.

Kinds of Emotions:

Emotions have both positive as well as negative effects.

1. Negative emotions:

Unpleasant emotions like fear, anger and jealousy which are harmful to the individual’s development are termed as negative emotions.

2. Positive emotions:

The pleasant emotions like affection (love), amusement, curiosity and happiness which are very helpful and essential for normal development are termed as positive emotions.

By their nature of being both positive and negative, it should not be assumed that all the positive emotions are always good; and the negative emotions are bad. While weighing their impact, other factors like frequency and intensity, nature of situations and the stimuli aroused should also be considered. Excess of everything is bad.

Emotions with too much of intensity and frequency, whether positive or negative, bring harmful effects. But the so-called negative emotions are essential for human welfare. The emotion of fear prepares an individual to face the danger ahead. The child who has no emotions of fear is sure to get affected because it does not learn to save itself against a possible danger.

Importance of Emotions:

Emotions occupy a very important position in a person’s life, as they motivate many in their job endeavors. A person in love makes sacrifices for the object of his love. The love of their offspring spurs the parents to great sacrifices.

Emotions have a stimulating effect, for example, a person who is in a happy state of mind invariably makes others also happy and sees happiness around him. Similarly, a person who is angry makes others angry. Thus emotion is contagious. Emotions also play a crucial role in creative and artistic activities.

The ability to understand and interpret the emotional states of others is very important in our social life. It is clear that emotions play a major role in our behaviour and in understanding other’s behaviour. Sometimes, emotions are beneficial and at other times they are harmful.

It depends on the intensities and duration of emotion. When emotion becomes intense, whether pleasant or unpleasant, they usually result in some description of thought or behaviour. So also when emotions are prolonged or excessive they do harm because of the sustained physiological changes that accompany them.

Theories of Emotions:

(a) James-Lange theory of emotion:

One of the earliest theories of emotion was started by the American Psychologist William James as “we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble” this theory presented in the late 19th century by James and the Spanish psychologist Carl Lange. This theory proposes the following events in emotional states.

Perceiving an emotion inducing event or situation.

(b) Cannon-Bard theory of emotions:

In response to the difficulties seen in the James-Lange theory, Walter Cannon and later Philip Bard suggested an alternative view. Their theory assumes that both physiological arousal and the emotional experience are produced simultaneously by the same nerve impulse, which cannon and Bard said it starts in the brain from thalamus.

According to the theory, after an emotion inducing stimulus is perceived the thalamus initiates the emotional response. In turn, the thalamus sends a signal to the automatic nervous system thereby producing a physiological response. At the same time the thalamus communicates a message to the cerebral cortex regarding the nature of the emotion being expressed.

In contrast, the James-Lange theory holds that bodily reactions are not the base of felt emotions. This theory has led to a lot of research but now we understand that it is the hypothalamus and the limbic system and not the thalamus that plays a major role in emotional experience, also that the physiological and emotional responses occur at the same time has yet to be conclusively demonstrated.

Perceiving an emotion inducing an event or situation.

(c) Schachter-Singer theory of emotion:

This theory maintains that the emotion we feel is due to our interpretation of an arousal or stirred up. Bodily state of emotion arousal is much the same for most of the emotions we feel that even if there are physiological differences in the body’s pattern of responses, people cannot perceive them.

Since the bodily changes are ambiguous, the theory says any number of emotions can be felt from stirred up bodily condition. People are said to have different subjective felt emotions because of difference in the way they interpret and label a particular state of arousal. We experience the emotion that seems appropriate to the situation in which we find ourselves.

Perceiving an emotion inducing event to situation.

The sequence of events in the production of emotional feeling according to this theory:

a. Perception of a potential emotion producing situation.

b. An aroused bodily state which results from this perception and which is ambiguous.

c. Interpretation and labelling of the bodily states so that it fits the perceived situation.

Schachter and Singer devised an experiment to test this theory. In the study, subjects were told that they would receive an injection of a vitamin called suproxin. In reality, they were given epinephrine, a drug that causes an increase in physiological arousal including higher heart rate, respiration rates and a reduced facies, responses that typically occur during strong emotional reaction. Although one group of subjects was informed of the actual effects of drugs, another was not informed.

Subject in both the groups was then individually placed where an assistant of the experimenter acted in one or two ways. In one condition he acted angry and hostile that he would refuse to answer the personal questions on a questionnaire that the experimenter has asked him to complete. In the other condition his behaviour was quite the opposite. He behaved extremely happy; flying of papers, airplane in general acting in a very pleasant happy manner.

The purpose of the experiment was to determine how the subjects would react emotionally to the assistant’s behaviour. When they were asked to describe their own emotional state at the end of the experiments.

Subjects who had been told of the effects of the drugs were un-effected by the behaviour of the assistant. They thought their psychological arousal was due to the drug, and therefore, did not have the need to find reasons for their arousal. Hence they reported experiencing no emotion.

On the other hand, subject who had not been told of the drugs real effects was influenced by the assistant’s behaviour. The subjects exposed to the angry assistant reported that they felt angry. While those exposed to happy assistant felt happy. The result suggests that uniform subjects turned to the environment and the behaviour of others of expectations of the physiological arousal they were permitted.

The result of the Schachter experiments support a cognitive view of emotion in which emotions are determined jointly by a relatively non-specific kind of psychological arousal and labelling of the arousal based on the cues from the environment.

(d) Cognitive appraisal theory of emotion:

This theory emphasizes the appraisal of information from several sources, since appraisal involves cognition or the processing of information from the environment, memory and the body, this theory is a cognitive one. The theory says that the emotions we feel result from appraisal of the environmental situation and within the body.

(e) Donald B Lindsley’s theory of activation:

The implications of the Cannon- Bard theory are suggesting that “emotions serve an emergency function by preparing the organism for appropriate action” led the way to the modern activation theory of emotion. The theory was actually propounded in 1951 by Donald B Lindsley.

In general, activation theory refers to the view that emotion represents a state of heightened arousal rather than a qualitatively unique type of psychological, physiological or behavioural process. Arousal is considered to lie on a wide continuum, ranging from a very low level such as deep sleep, to such extremely agitated states as rage or extreme anger.

Emotion-provoking stimuli activate the reticular activating system in the brain stem which in turn sends impulses both upward, towards the cortex and downward, towards the musculature. To evoke a significant emotional behaviour, the reticular system must be properly activated. However, the activating system tries to serve only a general function and the specific structures in the brain organize the input and determine the particular form of emotion to be expressed.

Related Articles:

• Theories of Emotions: Notes on 3 Theories of Emotions
• Emotion: Meaning, Characteristics and Education
• Essay on Language: Definition, Structure and Characteristics
• Importance of Knowledge of Emotions for a Nurse

Essay , Psychology , Emotions

JAVASCRIPT IS DISABLED. Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site.

• How to Chat with Al
• How to Use this Website
• Glossary of Terms

Al Turtle's Relationship Wisdom

My essays, articles and discussions.

• Map of Relationships
• Safety and Trust
• Reliable Membership
• Communication
• Feelings and Emotions
• Healing the Past
• Solving Problems
• Peace Building
• Couple’s Histories
• Around the US
• Drive Abouts
• Pacific Northwest
• Istanbul, January 2005

Feelings and Emotions: The Essay, Part One

Part One: A plumber’s version

© Al Turtle 2000 Print this Paper in PDF

So many time I have found it useful to have learned about emotions.  I was not taught any of this when I was kid, and I went through so many experiences in life completely confused when it came to understanding, managing, and living with feelings.  I was also at a complete disadvantage when someone would flash their knowledge of feelings.  Like so  many, I learned to be respectful when someone shifted, saying, “I think you are being unfair. No, I feel you are being unfair.”

When I entered graduate school in counseling, my advisor asked my what a “feeling” was.   Whatever I said to him I do not recall, but he told me that I needed to get into the counseling program quick, to fix my woeful ignorance.

My Masters paper was written upon Anger: A Resource Paper for Teachers.  I had come a long way in a year. That paper, like my early training in Counseling, was a major turning point in my life.  It marked the path that lead to this set of Essays, which I think of as a plumber’s version of emotions – i.e. a description of emotions that even an uncomplicated guy could learn from.

And so, if you are confused about the role of emotions in your life, here we go with all the answers.

Thoughts vs Emotions

Before I launch into the guts of the matter, let me settle an important point.  Feelings are feelings and feelings are not thoughts.   People use the word “feeling” when they are speaking of thoughts often.  I think they learn this along the way, but also I think that many people are somewhat intimidated by the word “feeling” and thus people who use it are often treated as more believable.  Whatever, let me set the record straight right up front.

As I move along, you may get the impression that feelings are a bit more real than thought.  I believe that.  Feelings are very real.  They happen.  They exist even when people say they are not there.  People can misunderstand feeling, mis-label them, but the underlying feelings are still present. Feelings are very objective.  Researchers know what babies are feeling in the womb.  I can measure the contents of  your blood stream and thus measure and describe some of  your feelings.

I can not do that about your thoughts.  Thoughts or thought processes seem to be much more vague.  I can think one thing all morning and think the opposite all afternoon.  I can fully believe that which I fully disbelieve in 10 minutes.  I think of thoughts a little the way I think of data in a computer.  Words, words, words.

But feelings seem very solid.  I believe it is silly to trust thoughts and be hesitant about feelings.  Still that seems to be what our culture teaches.

Feel that.. vs Think that..

One thing I want to encourage you to do right now.  Stop saying. “I feel that….” or “I feel like….”   Those are some of the more misleading statements in the English language.  Use the word “feel” for a feeling and use the word “think” for a thought.

“I feel that you are cheating me.” Is a nice sentence, but critically defective.  The feeling is left out of it.  The sentence should read “I feel angry when I think you are cheating me.”  Now the “feeling” has been put back in.  And notice that the feeling, that was left out, is pretty important.

Learn to use “thought words” and separate them from “feeling words”.  I have found this to significantly clear up a great amount of confusion.

Thought words: think, believe, recall, imagine, guess, have a hunch.  Most thought words are followed by “that”.  “I believe that you are….”

I think that if you hear the word “feel” followed by “that”, we are not into talking about “feelings.”

Words and Symbols

That counseling profession taught me that all psychology was based on this wheel.   So here it is.

The sentence was taught me as, “Words and Symbols evoke Feelings, which evoke Thought Processes, which are full of Words and Symbols.”

I think of words as symbols.  They have spelling and use letters and when spoken, have sounds.  Other symbols may not have letters, may have only sounds, or just gestures.  Objects can be a symbol.

Studying General Semantics years ago, I learned that “words” do not have meaning.  People have meaning and people use words to try to communicate the meaning they have.  A dictionary, I recall, was a history book of the meanings that people have used a word for.   I learned to never argue about the meaning of a word, but to ask the user what they meant by it.  Who knows if they have the same meaning I have for a certain word?

The same is true of all symbols.  They mean different things to different people.  There is no right meaning for a word or a symbol. I suggest you get used to this idea.

Still all these words or symbols evoke feelings.  Yes, the feelings come first, before the thoughts.  I guess this is pretty basic to the way our brains work – fast.  If I show you a symbol of danger, your body starts to respond to that danger before the good old cortex decides what to do.  (See my Chapter on Safety, The Lizard.)  Apparently you body does not wait to think.  It moves.

My favorite word for this “evoking” is the word TRIGGER.  I use it a lot.  For me it means a “little thing” that kicks off something that may be a lot bigger.   Also it suggests a connection but not a causal connection.  I like that.  A symbol may trigger an emotion one time and may not the next time.

Emotions, Feelings, Affect

While I will define these words more fully later, here is my short description.  A feeling is an event in a person’s body that can be strong or weak or in-between.

I use the word Feeling and Emotion in the same way.  I think we have enough trouble getting the idea without splitting hairs over the difference between them.

Affect is a word often used in the medical world to refer to signs of the feelings a person is experiencing.  A nurse might make a note that a patient’s affect was agitated, which seems be the same as “the patient displayed behavior that indicates he feels agitated.”  Most people won’t run into the word “affect.”

Now, these events in the body have an effect on the brain.  Often the event is chemical and the chemicals (hormones, etc.) cause all sorts of shifts in the brain.  Still the important idea is that the events, the feelings, trigger thought processes – chains of thoughts.

Differing events trigger differing thought processes.  When a person is angry, some parts of the cortex are shut down and others are awakened.  When a person is scared, other parts are affected.   I think it is fascinating to watch people when their emotions are strong and to witness how different are the memories available to them in one state of emotions from another.

Thought Processes

I think of thought processes as strings of symbols like sentences.  They start, have a middle and come to an end.  Paragraphs are to me a little like a single thought process.  If I am trying to make a point, I will start, say some more and then finally reach an end.

I don’t think of thought processes as having any sort of reality to them per se.  I can think of a green elephant, but that doesn’t make a green elephant appear.  I can think that you are a crook, but that doesn’t make you a crook.

However, thought processes are full of symbols and words.  That’s the way our cortexes work and store things.  And those wonderful words and symbols may trigger new emotions.

And round we go, day in day out, all through our lives.  Fascinating and simple.

My profession told me that all kinds of therapy work on one or more parts of this wheel.

Giving people medicine attempts to interfere with the emotions that are triggered by the words and symbols.

Psycho Education or teaching, and that is what I am doing here, tries to change the thought processes that are kicked off by the emotions.  It also attempts to change the words and symbols those thought processes contain.

Behavior Modification often seeks to change the link between a word or a symbol and the emotions that are evoked.

Again, pretty simple, but fascinating.

Simplest of all emotions: Attraction

This paper will lead you to some interesting places and so let me start with something fun.  The simplest of all emotions is the emotion of attraction.   There are lots of words for this emotion but what I want you to do is experience it, now.

Think of the foods in your refrigerator and think of whether they “attract” you or “repel” you.  Just observe yourself and this one dimension of attraction. Now think of attraction as a measurable scale.

Plus 10 to minus 10

Absolute, powerful attraction, is a plus 10.  “Who cares”, or a neutral feeling is a zero.   Absolute and powerful feelings of getting away from it are minus 10.

Try this on a menu in a restaurant.  I bet you can “score” everything.

Now look around and everything and everyone in your life.  See the scores!  We often gather a lot of high plus score objects to us and put a lot of high negative things in the garbage.

This is a feeling.   Ask yourself, “Do feelings stay the same?”  Nope.  Is there any “right” or “wrong” about these scores?  Nope.  Does anyone have the same scores you have?  Nope.

Welcome to the world of feelings!  They are part of you, unique to you, and cannot be wrong!  They just are.

And so here I go with the best definition for feelings or emotions that I can come up with.  After I give you this definition I will give three examples that illustrate all parts of the definition.  Then I will describe the four prime emotions.

Remember that these are my definitions, not the “official” definitions.

An emotion has five distinct qualities: facticity, amount, consciousness, label and value.

An event in the body

An emotion is an event in your body. It actually happens.  It is measurable.  A person does not even need to be conscious to have emotions.  An emotion is not a figment of the imagination.

Since it is an event, an emotion exists in time.  They start, and the end.

It is possible to identify what babies feel even before they are born.  (The primary emotion they feel is pleasure, by the way.)

Chemical in nature: Intensity

Most emotions are chemicals.  All emotions act as if they were chemical.  The point here is that emotions do not click on and off.  And emotion starts, grows bigger and bigger and then may decrease until finally it ends.

Emotions always have an “amount” or intensity to them.  The question is never are you angry or not angry – yes or no.  The question is how angry are you.  How angry are you now?  And now?

As I mentioned in the simple emotion of attraction, I find it useful to put a number on the level of an emotion.  Zero means none.  I think of five as maximum.  And so to accurately speak of emotions one can say, “I was scared at a 5 level for a bit, but it decreased a while ago to about 3.  Now I am just a bit nervous, perhaps a 1.”

A decrease in intensity is often called a release or is spoke of as relief.  Remember this for later.

There is a component of awareness that comes with emotions.  One can be completely unaware of an emotion ripping through the body.  Or one can be unaware until an emotion reaches a certain level of intensity.  Or some even can bring an emotion to your awareness.

Some people are almost completely unaware of their own emotions.  Some are exquisitely sensitive.

One confusion about emotions is the difference between the emotion as an event, and the emotion as an experience.  It is possible for an emotion to begin at one time and to start affecting your behavior while you are still not aware of it.  At some point you become aware of the emotion and at that point your subjective awareness begins.  That awareness may continue until the level of that emotion is quite a bit lower.  Then the event may continue for a bit after you are no longer aware. If I ask you about your experience and I measure your emotional experience, reports may be quite different.

Another very difficult problem is that I can be having an emotion, I can be displaying signs of that emotion, others can observe these signs, and I can be completely unaware. Others may be much more aware of my feelings than I am.  In many ways I am an open book about some of my emotions.  I can try to keep them hidden, but feelings can be hard to hide.

When we speak about emotions, really we are reporting on them.  We are labeling what we are feeling.  And we can mislabel feelings quite easily.  When my professor asked me to describe an emotion and when I could not, he handed me a large list of words people have used for emotions.  I found this quite useful and include this list at the end of this chapter.

Social Value

Finally, emotions have value in our culture.  Some emotions are desirable at certain times and undesirable at others.  Some emotions are considered “bad” emotions.

For instance, I was taught that all emotions just “get in the way.”  In contrast I have learned that life is greatly more enjoyable when I treasure the emotions that move in me and others.

Before I go to work sharing my thoughts about the “big” emotions, I would like to give you some examples that I hope will illustrate all the parts of the definition.

Many would not thing of hunger as an emotion, but I think it is an excellent starting place.  Hunger is an event in your body.  It comes and goes.  It gets stronger and weaker.  Its chemistry relates to blood sugar levels in your body.

Note how awareness is involved.  Aren’t there times when you have worked for a while and then suddenly become aware of how hungry you are?  Truly, you’ve been hungry for some time, but just haven’t noticed.  “Wow! Am I famished! I could eat a horse.”  This is the exclamation of a person who has been distracted from the slow growing feeling of hunger.

Heck, I can remain hungry for some time during dinner. And I may still be eating while my hunger goes away.

Most people do not have any trouble reporting on their hunger.

But look at the issue of social value.  Ask yourself, what is the value of being hungry one hour before dinner time?  I’ve found it is a good time to not snack even though my stomach is growling. Then “dinner is served” and hunger is suddenly of high value.  “Aren’t you hungry, dear?  What’s the matter?”

This is a similar emotion in that it happens, grows larger and grows smaller (chemical).  The question is not “Are you thirsty?” but “How thirsty are you?”  I think thirst has something to do with inter-cellular water levels (event).

Again, a person can get thirsty without noticing it.  Think of how taverns take advantage of awareness.  They show customers pictures of water running, of salty products and even put popcorn on the tables, all to bring you awareness of your levels of thirst.  If you were only slightly thirsty when you arrived, the scene will not raise the level of your thirst, but will raise your awareness of it.

Most people are clear about their reporting of thirst, and speak clearly.

And again the social value of being thirsty is pretty simple. In most situations I think being thirsty is socially acceptable.

But do take notice that a person may say they are “thirsty for a cold beer,” when that is not exactly the emotion of thirst, but a matter of a desire for a particular taste or temperature. The label “thirsty” is being used differently.

Now let’s get into some fun.  Alertness I think of as the feeling of being awake or sleepy.  The more alert you are, the wider your eyes are and the more you tend to want to move.  The less alert you are, the more you yawn, look sleepy and tend to move less.

Alertness has to do with the reticular activating system in our brain.  It happens.  (Event)

The feeling of alertness goes up and down during the day and all night.  It becomes more or less intense (chemical).  Most adults have about a 90 minute cycle: alert at some point and then much slower about 45 minutes later.  Dreams take place in the alert part of our sleep periods.

A person can be sleepy and yawning while they think they are wide awake.  Here is an emotion that is quite visible to others, and yet may be out of our awareness.

Here is a story I tell my clients.  Imagine an 8-year old boy.  It is about 7:30 in the evening.  He is yawning.  A parent says to him, “Are you sleepy?”  The boy jerks, widens his eyes and says, :”Nope, definitely not!”  Here is a report about an emotion that is obviously out of sync with the “actual” emotion.  He is sleepy, but says he is not.  People can lie about their emotions quite easily.  What is going on here?  Well, the boy is actually answering a different question that the one being asked.  He is answering the question, “Do you want to be sent to bed?”  His answer is now obviously valid, where before it was confusing.

My point is that reports of emotions can be and are normally widely different from the emotion being felt or being observed.

And what of the social value of alertness?  During a school class or at church yawning is frowned on.  On Christmas Eve being wide awake is a handicap.

Need to pee

Not often thought of as an emotion, still it has all the characteristics.  The need does happen in your body (event). It involves chemical changes in the tissues of and surrounding your bladder. It grows more and more intense over time.

One can need to pee for quite some time before one becomes aware of it.  As an older man, I am quite aware of this phenomenon in the early morning.  Sometimes awareness can seem to increase the intensity.

But now I want to introduce another point about reporting.  Let’s say a friend is picking me up for a drive.  He asks if I need to use the bathroom.  I say, “No.”  He says that there will be not place to stop for about 2 hours, and now I change my report.  I say, “Yes.”  The report of an emotion can change based on a change in the situation while there is no change in the subjective feeling.

The social value of this “emotion” is also fascinating.  I think of how one person saying, “I need to visit the facilities,” can trigger many people getting up and going there together.  And, I recall once in military boot camp a sailor who was not allowed to go to the “head” as a kind of training incident – he was shamed.

Summary of Emotions: Part 1

Let us see where we have gotten so far.

• Emotions are not thoughts, beliefs or ideas
• Emotions are triggered within a person, never caused by the external world.
• Different emotions lead to different thoughts
• Emotions actually happen and have intensity that varies.
• Emotions and the reports of them can be quite different.
• Emotions occur whether we are aware of them or not.
• Other people can sometimes see our emotions, which we unaware of.
• Society has all sorts of rules around emotions.
• My boundary rules: All emotions are valid. and No one can make you feel anything.

Next Part on Feelings and Emotions

Feelings and Emotions: The Essay, Part One — 9 Comments

Curious in reference to emotions vs thoughts in the context that all emotions are not only reflective of past experiences (memories) but also the present state of mind also encompassing any current environmental factors.These must be considered relevant in relation to an action occurring. As we react to a situation, symbols – verbal and visual – are we not relying on the core basic thought pattern that is most paramount for all species – Survival ? Therefore I wonder if the topic regarding the chicken and the egg need to be discussed. I wish to say this is the first article of yours I have read and intend to follow up with additional research of your past articles. Thank you for the insight.. Enjoy the Day – with PMA Benny

Dear Al Turtle,

I refer to your essay about Emotion vs Thoughts.

I love your writing style! You make it so easy for a new comer to grasp the concept in the most simple way. I would like to read more of your essays…where can i look them up?

Thanks for the compliments. Most of my writings are in two places. This website http://www.alturtle.com has a couple of hundred articles. I have written quite alot more on http://www.marriageadvoceates.com in a section called Turtle’s Whiteboard . Enjoy.

i love the article

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2023 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

Emotional Intelligence: How We Perceive, Evaluate, Express, and Control Emotions

Is EQ more important than IQ?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Shereen Lehman, MS, is a healthcare journalist and fact checker. She has co-authored two books for the popular Dummies Series (as Shereen Jegtvig).

Hinterhaus Productions / Getty Images 

• How Do I Know If I'm Emotionally Intelligent?
• How It's Measured

Why Is Emotional Intelligence Useful?

• Ways to Practice
• Tips for Improving

Emotional intelligence (AKA EI or EQ for "emotional quotient") is the ability to perceive, interpret, demonstrate, control, evaluate, and use emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively. This ability to express and control  emotions  is essential, but so is the ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. Some experts suggest that emotional intelligence is  more important than IQ  for success in life.

While being book-smart might help you pass tests, emotional intelligence prepares you for the real world by being aware of the feelings of others as well as your own feelings.

How Do I Know If I'm Emotionally Intelligent?

Some key signs and examples of emotional intelligence include:

• An ability to identify and describe what people are feeling
• An awareness of personal strengths and limitations
• Self-confidence and self-acceptance
• The ability to let go of mistakes
• An ability to accept and embrace change
• A strong sense of curiosity, particularly about other people
• Feelings of empathy and concern for others
• Showing sensitivity to the feelings of other people
• Accepting responsibility for mistakes
• The ability to manage emotions in difficult situations

How Is Emotional Intelligence Measured?

A number of different assessments have emerged to measure levels of emotional intelligence. Such tests generally fall into one of two types: self-report tests and ability tests.

Self-report tests are the most common because they are the easiest to administer and score. On such tests, respondents respond to questions or statements by rating their own behaviors. For example, on a statement such as "I often feel that I understand how others are feeling," a test-taker might describe the statement as disagree, somewhat disagree, agree, or strongly agree.

Ability tests, on the other hand, involve having people respond to situations and then assessing their skills. Such tests often require people to demonstrate their abilities, which are then rated by a third party.

If you are taking an emotional intelligence test administered by a mental health professional, here are two measures that might be used:

• Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is an ability-based test that measures the four branches of Mayer and Salovey's EI model. Test-takers perform tasks designed to assess their ability to perceive, identify, understand, and manage emotions.
• Emotional and Social Competence Inventory (ESCI)   is based on an older instrument known as the Self-Assessment Questionnaire and involves having people who know the individual offer ratings of that person’s abilities in several different emotional competencies. The test is designed to evaluate the social and emotional abilities that help distinguish people as strong leaders.

There are also plenty of more informal online resources, many of them free, to investigate your emotional intelligence.

Try Our Free Emotional Intelligence Test

Our fast and free EQ test can help you determine whether or not your responses to certain situations in life indicate a high level of emotional intelligence:

What Are the 4 Components of Emotional Intelligence?

Researchers suggest that there are four different levels of emotional intelligence including emotional perception, the ability to reason using emotions, the ability to understand emotions, and the ability to manage emotions.  

• Perceiving emotions : The first step in understanding emotions is to perceive them accurately. In many cases, this might involve understanding nonverbal signals such as body language and facial expressions.
• Reasoning with emotions : The next step involves using emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. Emotions help prioritize what we pay attention and react to; we respond emotionally to things that garner our attention.
• Understanding emotions :   The emotions that we perceive can carry a wide variety of meanings. If someone is expressing angry emotions, the observer must interpret the cause of the person's anger and what it could mean. For example, if your boss is acting angry, it might mean that they are dissatisfied with your work, or it could be because they got a speeding ticket on their way to work that morning or that they've been fighting with their partner.
• Managing emotions : The ability to manage emotions effectively is a crucial part of emotional intelligence and the highest level. Regulating emotions and responding appropriately as well as responding to the emotions of others are all important aspects of emotional management.

Recognizing emotions - yours and theirs - can help you understand where others are coming from, the decisions they make, and how your own feelings can affect other people.

The four branches of this model are arranged by complexity with the more basic processes at the lower levels and the more advanced processes at the higher levels. For example, the lowest levels involve perceiving and expressing emotion, while higher levels require greater conscious involvement and involve regulating emotions.

Interest in teaching and learning social and emotional intelligence has grown in recent years. Social and emotional learning (SEL) programs have become a standard part of the curriculum for many schools.

The goal of these initiatives is not only to improve health and well-being but also to help students succeed academically and prevent bullying. There are many examples of how emotional intelligence can play a role in daily life.

Thinking Before Reacting

Emotionally intelligent people know that emotions can be powerful, but also temporary. When a highly charged emotional event happens, such as becoming angry with a co-worker, the emotionally intelligent response would be to take some time before responding.

This allows everyone to calm their emotions and think more rationally about all the factors surrounding the argument.

Greater Self-Awareness

Emotionally intelligent people are not only good at thinking about how other people might feel but they are also adept at understanding their own feelings. Self-awareness allows people to consider the many different factors that contribute to their emotions.

Empathy for Others

A large part of emotional intelligence is being able to think about and empathize with how other people are feeling. This often involves considering how you would respond if you were in the same situation.

People who have strong emotional intelligence are able to consider the perspectives, experiences, and emotions of other people and use this information to explain why people behave the way that they do.

How You Can Practice Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can be used in many different ways in your daily life. Some different ways to practice emotional intelligence include:

• Being able to accept criticism and responsibility
• Being able to move on after making a mistake
• Being able to say no when you need to
• Being able to share your feelings with others
• Being able to solve problems in ways that work for everyone
• Having empathy for other people
• Having great listening skills
• Knowing why you do the things you do
• Not being judgemental of others

Emotional intelligence is essential for good interpersonal communication. Some experts believe that this ability is more important in determining life success than IQ alone. Fortunately, there are things that you can do to strengthen your own social and emotional intelligence.

Understanding emotions can be the key to better relationships, improved well-being, and stronger communication skills. 

Press Play for Advice On How to Be Less Judgmental

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast , shares how you can learn to be less judgmental. Click below to listen now.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts

Are There Downsides to Emotional Intelligence?

Having lower emotional intelligence skills can lead to a number of potential pitfalls that can affect multiple areas of life including work and relationships. People who have fewer emotional skills tend to get in more arguments, have lower quality relationships, and have poor emotional coping skills.

Being low on emotional intelligence can have a number of drawbacks, but having a very high level of emotional skills can also come with challenges. For example:

• Research suggests that people with high emotional intelligence may actually be less creative and innovative.
• Highly emotionally intelligent people may have a hard time delivering negative feedback for fear of hurting other people's feelings.
• Research has found that high EQ can sometimes be used for manipulative and deceptive purposes.

Can I Boost My Emotional Intelligence?

While some people might come by their emotional skills naturally, some evidence suggests that this is an ability you can develop and improve. For example, a 2019 randomized controlled trial found that emotional intelligence training could improve emotional abilities in workplace settings.

Being emotionally intelligent is important, but what steps can you take to improve your own social and emotional skills? Here are some tips.

If you want to understand what other people are feeling, the first step is to pay attention. Take the time to listen to what people are trying to tell you, both verbally and non-verbally. Body language can carry a great deal of meaning. When you sense that someone is feeling a certain way, consider the different factors that might be contributing to that emotion.

Picking up on emotions is critical, but we also need to be able to put ourselves into someone else's shoes in order to truly understand their point of view. Practice empathizing with other people. Imagine how you would feel in their situation. Such activities can help us build an emotional understanding of a specific situation as well as develop stronger emotional skills in the long-term.

The ability to reason with emotions is an important part of emotional intelligence. Consider how your own emotions influence your decisions and behaviors. When you are thinking about how other people respond, assess the role that their emotions play.

Why is this person feeling this way? Are there any unseen factors that might be contributing to these feelings? How to your emotions differ from theirs? As you explore such questions, you may find that it becomes easier to understand the role that emotions play in how people think and behave.

Drigas AS, Papoutsi C. A new layered model on emotional intelligence . Behav Sci (Basel). 2018;8(5):45. doi:10.3390/bs8050045

Salovey P, Mayer J. Emotional Intelligence . Imagination, Cognition, and Personality.  1990;9(3):185-211.

Feist GJ. A meta-analysis of personality in scientific and artistic creativity . Pers Soc Psychol Rev . 1998;2(4):290-309. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0204_5

Côté S, Decelles KA, Mccarthy JM, Van kleef GA, Hideg I. The Jekyll and Hyde of emotional intelligence: emotion-regulation knowledge facilitates both prosocial and interpersonally deviant behavior . Psychol Sci . 2011;22(8):1073-80. doi:10.1177/0956797611416251

Gilar-Corbi R, Pozo-Rico T, Sánchez B, Castejón JL. Can emotional intelligence be improved? A randomized experimental study of a business-oriented EI training program for senior managers . PLoS One . 2019;14(10):e0224254. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0224254

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Empathy Defined

What is empathy.

The term “empathy” is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.

Contemporary researchers often differentiate between two types of empathy : “Affective empathy” refers to the sensations and feelings we get in response to others’ emotions; this can include mirroring what that person is feeling, or just feeling stressed when we detect another’s fear or anxiety. “Cognitive empathy,” sometimes called “perspective taking,” refers to our ability to identify and understand other people’s emotions. Studies suggest that people with autism spectrum disorders have a hard time empathizing .

Empathy seems to have deep roots in our brains and bodies, and in our evolutionary history . Elementary forms of empathy have been observed in our primate relatives , in dogs , and even in rats . Empathy has been associated with two different pathways in the brain, and scientists have speculated that some aspects of empathy can be traced to mirror neurons , cells in the brain that fire when we observe someone else perform an action in much the same way that they would fire if we performed that action ourselves. Research has also uncovered evidence of a genetic basis to empathy , though studies suggest that people can enhance (or restrict) their natural empathic abilities.

Having empathy doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll want to help someone in need, though it’s often a vital first step toward compassionate action.

For more: Read Frans de Waal’s essay on “ The Evolution of Empathy ” and Daniel Goleman’s overview of different forms of empathy , drawing on the work of Paul Ekman.

What are the Limitations?

When Empathy Hurts, Compassion Can Heal

A new neuroscientific study shows that compassion training can help us cope with other…

Does Empathy Reduce Prejudice—or Promote It?

Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton explains how to make sense of conflicting scientific evidence.

How to Avoid the Empathy Trap

Do you prioritize other people's feelings over your own? You might be falling into the…

Featured Articles

Who Finds Joy in Other People’s Joy?

Who feels good when a good thing happens for someone else? Our GGSC sympathetic joy quiz results suggest it has almost nothing to do with money or…

How Accurate Are Media Portrayals of Foster Families?

Movies and TV often paint the youth foster system in a negative light. But do people who went through the system agree?

Can Artificial Intelligence Help Human Mental Health?

A conversation with UC Berkeley School of Public Health professor Jodi Halpern about AI ethics, empathy, and mental health.

The Best Greater Good Articles of 2023

We round up the most-read and highly rated Greater Good articles from the past year.

Our Favorite Books of 2023

Greater Good’s editors pick the most thought-provoking, practical, and inspirational science books of the year.

Is It Actually Helpful to Talk About Toxic Masculinity?

Research suggests that men are changing their behavior in positive ways, including around emotions.

Why Practice It?

Empathy is a building block of morality—for people to follow the Golden Rule, it helps if they can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. It is also a key ingredient of successful relationships because it helps us understand the perspectives, needs, and intentions of others. Here are some of the ways that research has testified to the far-reaching importance of empathy.

• Seminal studies by Daniel Batson and Nancy Eisenberg have shown that people higher in empathy are more likely to help others in need, even when doing so cuts against their self-interest .
• Empathy is contagious : When group norms encourage empathy, people are more likely to be empathic—and more altruistic.
• Empathy reduces prejudice and racism : In one study, white participants made to empathize with an African American man demonstrated less racial bias afterward.
• Empathy is good for your marriage : Research suggests being able to understand your partner’s emotions deepens intimacy and boosts relationship satisfaction ; it’s also fundamental to resolving conflicts. (The GGSC’s Christine Carter has written about effective strategies for developing and expressing empathy in relationships .)
• Empathy reduces bullying: Studies of Mary Gordon’s innovative Roots of Empathy program have found that it decreases bullying and aggression among kids, and makes them kinder and more inclusive toward their peers. An unrelated study found that bullies lack “affective empathy” but not cognitive empathy, suggesting that they know how their victims feel but lack the kind of empathy that would deter them from hurting others.
• Empathy reduces suspensions : In one study, students of teachers who participated in an empathy training program were half as likely to be suspended, compared to students of teachers who didn’t participate.
• Empathy promotes heroic acts: A seminal study by Samuel and Pearl Oliner found that people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust had been encouraged at a young age to take the perspectives of others.
• Empathy fights inequality. As Robert Reich and Arlie Hochschild have argued, empathy encourages us to reach out and want to help people who are not in our social group, even those who belong to stigmatized groups , like the poor. Conversely, research suggests that inequality can reduce empathy : People show less empathy when they attain higher socioeconomic status.
• Empathy is good for the office: Managers who demonstrate empathy have employees who are sick less often and report greater happiness.
• Empathy is good for health care: A large-scale study found that doctors high in empathy have patients who enjoy better health ; other research suggests training doctors to be more empathic improves patient satisfaction and the doctors’ own emotional well-being .
• Empathy is good for police: Research suggests that empathy can help police officers increase their confidence in handling crises, diffuse crises with less physical force, and feel less distant from the people they’re dealing with.

For more: Learn about why we should teach empathy to preschoolers .

How Do I Cultivate It?

Humans experience affective empathy from infancy, physically sensing their caregivers’ emotions and often mirroring those emotions. Cognitive empathy emerges later in development, around three to four years of age , roughly when children start to develop an elementary “ theory of mind ”—that is, the understanding that other people experience the world differently than they do.

From these early forms of empathy, research suggests we can develop more complex forms that go a long way toward improving our relationships and the world around us. Here are some specific, science-based activities for cultivating empathy from our site Greater Good in Action :

• Active listening: Express active interest in what the other person has to say and make him or her feel heard.
• Shared identity: Think of a person who seems to be very different from you, and then list what you have in common.
• Put a human face on suffering: When reading the news, look for profiles of specific individuals and try to imagine what their lives have been like.
• Eliciting altruism: Create reminders of connectedness.

And here are some of the keys that researchers have identified for nurturing empathy in ourselves and others:

• Focus your attention outwards: Being mindfully aware of your surroundings, especially the behaviors and expressions of other people , is crucial for empathy. Indeed, research suggests practicing mindfulness helps us take the perspectives of other people yet not feel overwhelmed when we encounter their negative emotions.
• Get out of your own head: Research shows we can increase our own level of empathy by actively imagining what someone else might be experiencing.
• Don’t jump to conclusions about others: We feel less empathy when we assume that people suffering are somehow getting what they deserve .
• Show empathic body language : Empathy is expressed not just by what we say, but by our facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, and eye contact (or lack thereof).
• Meditate: Neuroscience research by Richard Davidson and his colleagues suggests that meditation—specifically loving-kindness meditation, which focuses attention on concern for others—might increase the capacity for empathy among short-term and long-term meditators alike (though especially among long-time meditators).
• Explore imaginary worlds: Research by Keith Oatley and colleagues has found that people who read fiction are more attuned to others’ emotions and intentions.
• Join the band: Recent studies have shown that playing music together boosts empathy in kids.
• Play games : Neuroscience research suggests that when we compete against others, our brains are making a “ mental model ” of the other person’s thoughts and intentions.
• Take lessons from babies: Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy program is designed to boost empathy by bringing babies into classrooms, stimulating children’s basic instincts to resonate with others’ emotions.
• Combat inequality: Research has shown that attaining higher socioeconomic status diminishes empathy , perhaps because people of high SES have less of a need to connect with, rely on, or cooperate with others. As the gap widens between the haves and have-nots, we risk facing an empathy gap as well. This doesn’t mean money is evil, but if you have a lot of it, you might need to be more intentional about maintaining your own empathy toward others.
• Pay attention to faces: Pioneering research by Paul Ekman has found we can improve our ability to identify other people’s emotions by systematically studying facial expressions. Take our Emotional Intelligence Quiz for a primer, or check out Ekman’s F.A.C.E. program for more rigorous training.
• Believe that empathy can be learned : People who think their empathy levels are changeable put more effort into being empathic, listening to others, and helping, even when it’s challenging.

For more : The Ashoka Foundation’s Start Empathy initiative tracks educators’ best practices for teaching empathy . The initiative gave awards to 14 programs judged to do the best job at educating for empathy . The nonprofit Playworks also offers eight strategies for developing empathy in children .

What Are the Pitfalls and Limitations of Empathy?

According to research , we’re more likely to help a single sufferer than a large group of faceless victims, and we empathize more with in-group members than out-group members . Does this reflect a defect in empathy itself? Some critics believe so , while others argue that the real problem is how we suppress our own empathy .

Empathy, after all, can be painful. An “ empathy trap ” occurs when we’re so focused on feeling what others are feeling that we neglect our own emotions and needs—and other people can take advantage of this. Doctors and caregivers are at particular risk of feeling emotionally overwhelmed by empathy.

In other cases, empathy seems to be detrimental. Empathizing with out-groups can make us more reluctant to engage with them, if we imagine that they’ll be critical of us. Sociopaths could use cognitive empathy to help them exploit or even torture people.

Even if we are well-intentioned, we tend to overestimate our empathic skills. We may think we know the whole story about other people when we’re actually making biased judgments—which can lead to misunderstandings and exacerbate prejudice.

This article — and everything on this site — is funded by readers like you.

Become a subscribing member today. Help us continue to bring “the science of a meaningful life” to you and to millions around the globe.

What Exactly Does Social-Emotional Mean?

How our emotions are largely mirrors of our social worlds..

Posted May 12, 2023 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• A nuanced and evolutionarily informed understanding of the concept of “social-emotional” helps shed light on the human condition.
• In many ways, social outcomes lead to emotional outcomes, such as when a negative interaction with a friend leads to despair.
• Emotional outcomes can lead to social outcomes, like when a person acts confidently and makes more friends as a result.

Earlier in my career as a behavioral scientist, I never quite understood why social behaviors and outcomes were often framed as so integrally connected to our emotion systems—so much so that the adjective “social-emotional” is quite prevalent in behavioral science literature.

Years later, I’ve come to form a deep appreciation as to why our social functioning and our emotional functioning are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. In other words, I genuinely get why the term “social-emotional” is spot-on.

It turns out that our social worlds and our emotional worlds are, in many ways, mirrors of one another. And we evolved this way for very specific reasons. Having an emotion system that is sensitive to one's social standing helped our ancestors to maintain critical social connections and roles as they navigated the treacheries of life.

In his groundbreaking work on the evolutionary psychology of the emotion system, Randy Nesse (see Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009) developed an evolution-based framework for understanding different emotional states—largely making the case that specific emotions (e.g., anxiety ) are integrally connected with evolutionarily relevant outcomes, such as the ability to form close bonds with others and to be able to develop meaningful mateships. Setbacks in the social sphere tend to lead to adverse emotional outcomes, such as anxiety. And this fact makes strong sense.

Imagine a human ancestor who ran into various social conflicts across a few days. If that ancient hominid didn’t feel anxious about this fact, that fact could spell trouble. If he didn’t feel anxious, he would possibly continue doing whatever it was that was leading to social conflict with others in his group. And such a pattern could easily lead to outcomes such as estrangement, punishment , being the target of gossip, and even all-out ostracism. In this context, anxiety, although it may well not feel good, serves a pivotal evolutionary function.

In a study that tested this model, my team (see Guitar et al., 2018) found strong evidence for the idea that emotional states track specific social situations and outcomes very strongly. So strongly, in fact, that the phrase “social-emotional” actually makes perfect sense. Often, our inner emotional worlds are direct reflections of our external social worlds. We evolved this way. And, in fact, I would argue that the details of our emotion system largely evolved specifically to help motivate positive outcomes in our social worlds.

How Social Outcomes Lead to Emotional Outcomes

Often, social outcomes lead to emotional states. Being elected to some desirable position (e.g., chair of some great committee) might lead to happiness . Having a negative interaction with a friend might lead to anxiety and despair. Having someone in a position of power tell you that “we need to talk” might lead to anxiety and fear .

In many ways, social outcomes lead to emotional outcomes. Thus, the term “social-emotional” matches so much about the connection between our social and emotional worlds.

How Emotional Outcomes Lead to Social Outcomes

And it works the other way. In the behavioral sciences, we call this phenomenon “bi-directional causality.” Not only do social outcomes shape emotional outcomes, but often emotional outcomes shape social outcomes.

For instance, consider someone who has an uncontrollable fit of anger in some typical social context—such as a parent screaming uncontrollably at an umpire during a Little League game. That situation might not work out so great for that angry parent—this situation may well be at the root of all kinds of gossip in the community for a while.

Or imagine someone who goes to a party in a new town and instead of feeling socially anxious, she feels confident, optimistic , and downright happy going into the place. These emotional states may well shape her social experiences at the party. She may get to know more people, become involved in more group conversations, make important connections with others, etc.

So while our social outcomes shape our emotions, it’s also the case that our emotions have the capacity to shape our social outcomes.

Some Clear Implications for Living

Understanding what “social-emotional” means, as well as understanding the evolutionary origins of this critical part of the human condition can help us better understand the world around us. This basic idea of using evolutionary work to help shed light on the positives of life is referred to as positive evolutionary psychology (see Geher & Wedberg, 2020). And this approach to behavior seems to have extraordinary potential to help us better understand the world and our place in it.

Here are just a few examples of how holding an evolutionarily informed take on “social-emotional” can help us better understand the human condition.

• Knowing the integral connection between social and emotional outcomes can help us better understand someone who is anxious or depressed . From the “social-emotional” perspective, such a person likely has had some adverse social outcomes that they’ve experienced. So, next time you see someone feeling anxious or sad, it might be helpful to try to understand what has been going on in their social world.
• Similarly, knowing the integral connection between the social and emotional worlds can help us understand erratic social behavior. If someone is behaving oddly in some kind of social interaction, instead of just branding that person as “ weirdo,” we can step back and make the inference that this person may well be having some kind of emotional problems at the time. Someone who is too talkative in a social setting—or unnecessarily belligerent—or conspicuously withdrawn—likely betrays some sort of problems at the emotional level. People demonstrating these kinds of social problems may well be anxious or fearful or sad. Understanding the connection between our social and emotional worlds from an evolutionary perspective is, in fact, critical to our understanding of the human condition writ large.

Bottom Line

Behavioral scientists often put social and emotional processes in the same bucket. Thus the term “social-emotional.” In fact, when examined from a deep evolutionary perspective (see Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009), it makes good sense that our emotions track social outcome—and vice versa.

Want to better understand the human condition? Having a deep, nuanced, and evolutionarily informed understanding of the concept of “social-emotional” can go a long way.

Note: This post is a variant of a post I wrote for my Substack titled "The Human Condition." I own the copyright to the content.

Geher, G. & Wedberg, N. (2020). Positive Evolutionary Psychology: Darwin’s Guide to Living a Richer Life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Guitar, A, E., Glass, D. J., Geher, G., & Suvak, M. K. (2018). Situation-specific emotional states: Testing Nesse and Ellsworth’s (2009) model of emotions for situations that arise in goal pursuit using virtual-world software. Current Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9830-x

Nesse, R. M., & Ellsworth, P. C. (2009). Evolution, emotions, and emotional disorders. American Psychologist, 64(2), 129-139.

Glenn Geher, Ph.D. , is professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• International
• New Zealand
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Sophia Bush comes out as queer, confirms relationship with Ashlyn Harris

Actor Sophia Bush came out as queer in an emotional essay in Glamour and confirmed she’s in a relationship with retired U.S. Women’s National Team soccer player Ashlyn Harris. 

“I sort of hate the notion of having to come out in 2024,” Bush wrote in a cover story for the fashion magazine published Thursday. “But I’m deeply aware that we are having this conversation in a year when we’re seeing the most aggressive attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community in modern history.” 

Bush noted that there were more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in state legislatures last year and said this motivated her to “give the act of coming out the respect and honor it deserves.” 

“I’ve experienced so much safety, respect, and love in the queer community, as an ally all of my life, that, as I came into myself, I already felt it was my home,” she wrote. “I think I’ve always known that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines it is queer . I can’t say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great.”

The “One Tree Hill” star filed for divorce from entrepreneur Grant Hughes in August. People magazine first reported in October that Bush and Harris were dating, but neither confirmed nor commented on the report. The pair later attended an Oscar’s viewing party together in March . 

In the essay, Bush addressed online rumors that her relationship with Harris began before Harris had officially divorced from fellow soccer star Ali Krieger, in September. 

“Everyone that matters to me knows what’s true and what isn’t,” Bush wrote. “But even still there’s a part of me that’s a ferocious defender, who wants to correct the record piece by piece. But my better self, with her earned patience, has to sit back and ask, What’s the f------- point? For who? For internet trolls? No, thank you. I’ll spend my precious time doing things I love instead.”

Bush said that after news about her and Harris became public, her mom told her that a friend called and said, “Well, this can’t be true. I mean, your daughter isn’t gay .” 

“My mom felt that it was obvious, from the way her friend emphasized the word, that she meant it judgmentally,” Bush wrote. “And you know what my mom said? ‘Oh honey, I think she’s pretty gay. And she’s happy .’”

Bush wrote that she felt like she was wearing a weighted vest that she could finally put down. 

“I finally feel like I can breathe,” Bush wrote. “I turned 41 last summer, amid all of this, and I heard the words I was saying to my best friend as they came out of my mouth. ‘I feel like this is my first birthday,’ I told her. This year was my very first birthday.”

For more from NBC Out, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Jo Yurcaba is a reporter for NBC Out.