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Many have sought but no one has found a commonly acceptable definition for the concept of emotion. Repeated failure raises the question whether a definition is possible, at least a definition in the classical sense of individually necessary and jointly sufficient attributes. A series of seven studies explored an alternative possibility that the concept of emotion is better understood from a prototype perspective than from a classical perspective. Specifically it is argued that membership in the concept of emotion is a matter of degree rather than all-or-none (that the concept has an internal structure) and that no sharp boundary separates members from nonmembers (that the concept has fuzzy boundaries).As hypothesized, the concept of emotion has an internal structure: happiness, love, anger, fear, awe, respect, envy, and other types of emotion can be reliably ordered from better to poorer examples of emotion. In turn, an emotion's goodness of example (prototypicality) ranking was found to predict how readily incomes to mind when one is asked to list emotions, how likely it is to be labeled as an emotion when one is asked what sort of thing it is, how readily it can be substituted for the word emotion in sentences without their sounding unnatural, and the degree to which it resembles other emotion categories in terms of shared features.In response to an argument made by Armstrong, Gleitman and Gleitman (1983), the evidence for internal structure is acknowledged not to imply fuzzy boundaries. Thus, it was further shown that the concept of emotion, and several other of Rosch's prototypically organized concepts, lacks sharp boundaries and thus can be empirically distinguished from classically defined concepts: Peripheral members of classical concepts but not of fuzzy concepts are nonetheless unequivocal members of the concept.Finally, implications of a prototype view for the psychology, of emotion are discussed. Issues raised include extension of the prototype analysis to anger, fear, and other types of emotion; scientific versus everyday folk concepts; and emotion concepts versus emotion events.Everyone knows what an emotion is, until amining, not emotional experiences, but the asked to give a definition. Then, it seems, no concept of emotion. one knows. Most may agree that anger, fear, Attempts to define emotion can be traced sadness, and excitement are among the emo-back at least as far as Plato and Aristotle. The tions. But is pain, hunger, alienation, courage, nature of emotion (or passion, as it was then loneliness, religious awe, startle, or lust? Are called) was debated by philosophers, including emotions mental, physiological, or behavioral Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, events? Are some emotions more "basic" than Spinoza, and Kant, followed by the psyeholothers, and if so, which ones? Is it legitimate ogists, including Wundt, James, McDougall, to speak of emotions in infants, cats, birds, ,and Watson. Wundt (1912Wundt ( /1924 and Titchinsects? We have yet to reach agreement on ener (1910) thought t...

A compassionate love scale was developed that can be used, in alternative forms, to assess compassionate or altruistic love for different targets (e.g., close others and all of humankind). Using three samples (total N= 529), the Compassionate Love scale was developed and piloted. Three studies (total N = 700) were then conducted to provide validation of the scale and to examine correlates of compassionate love. In support of our predictions, compassionate love was found to be associated positively with prosocial behavior, as directed both to close others and to all of humanity. Those who were more religious or spiritual experienced more compassionate love than those who were less religious or spiritual. Evidence was found that compassionate love is distinct from empathy. In the final study, we introduced a relationship-specific version of the Compassionate Love scale, and found that compassionate love for a specific close other was associated with the provision of social support for that person.

Attachment working models were conceptualized from the perspective of current social-cognitive theory. In Studies l and 2, most people reported experience with multiple styles of relating; at the same time, the general attachment style they endorsed was related to (a) the percentage of their significant relationships fitting different attachment-style descriptions, (b) the ease with which they could generate exemplar relationships matching these descriptions, and (c) their interpersonal expectations in these relationships. In Study 3, priming different types of attachment experiences affected participants' attraction to potential dating partners who displayed particular attachment orientations. These findings suggest that most people possess relational schemas corresponding to a range of attachment orientations and that the relative availability and accessibility of this knowledge determine their thinking about relationships.

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