Concept of emotion viewed from a prototype perspective.

Abstract

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...

Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion

“…To meet these requirements, we will approach awe from a prototype perspective (e.g., Fehr & Russell, 1984;Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O'Connor, 1987). According to this view, a prototypical instance of an emotion has certain specifiable components, themes, or features.…”

Describing the emotional states that are expressed in speech

“…Two main solutions have been proposed, one quantitative and the other qualitative. Quantitative approaches were pioneered by Fehr and Russell (1984). Following RoschÕs account of semantics (Rosch and Mervis, 1975), they argued that a state counts as an emotion if the associated concept is close enough in conceptual space to the centre of the class, which is marked by prototypical examples of emotions.…”

“…The number that could be regarded as describing emotion proper is smaller, but still substantial. Fehr and Russell (1984) listed 196 emotion words in English; Plutchik (1980) listed 142;Whissell (1989) listed 107;Shaver et al (1987) listed 213;Storm and Storm (1987) considered 135 to be clearly emotional. Ortony et al (1988) classed about 250 words as referring to emotion in a broad sense, and about half as many referring to emotion in a narrower sense.…”

Implicit theories of intelligence in STEM education: perspectives through the lens of technology education students

“…Finally, the prototypical paradigm of investigation has been adopted in studies which examine constructs other than those of intelligence. Notably, it has been adopted in studies concerned with defining the concept of emotion (Fehr and Russell 1984;Russell 1991). This approach was adopted as it is difficult to offer a classical definition for the construct of emotion however when viewed from a prototypical perspective it becomes easier to understand.…”