What is an emotion?

Abstract

In 1884, William James, the American psychologist, famously posed the question: what is an emotion? After more than a century of scientifi c inquiry, however, emotions remain essentially contested concepts: scientists disagree on how they should be defi ned, on where to draw the boundaries for what counts as an emotion and what does not, on whether conscious experiences are central or epiphenomenal, and so on. Such disputes have sown great discord among scientists, leaving the fi eld in perpetual upheaval, and without a unifi ed framework for guiding scientifi c inquiry and accumulating knowledge. What follows is a dialogue between two neuroscientists who study emotions in humans: Ralph Adolphs (The Neuroscience of Emotion: A New Synthesis) and Lisa Feldman Barrett (How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain). Adolphs and Barrett agree that commonsense notions about emotion do not provide a solid ground on which to build a mature science of emotion. But they take very different scientifi c approaches, disagreeing on the most fundamental assumptions of what emotions are and how they work. We hope that this dialogue, moderated and edited by the theoretical physicist and noted science writer Leonard Mlodinow (Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior; Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World), clarifi es some of the key points of debate that may help with an eventual solution.

Physical Activity Level, Mediterranean Diet Adherence, and Emotional Intelligence as a Function of Family Functioning in Elementary School Students

“…This term can be defined as a set of interactions that take place between objective and subjective factors. These factors pertain to a neuronal-hormonal means of producing affective experiences and are manifested in determined behaviours [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. The appropriate use of emotions provokes a state of positive wellbeing in elementary students as it attributes them with sufficient skills and resources to overcome adverse situations [ 19 , 20 , 21 ].…”

Individual differences in trait creativity moderate the state-level mood-creativity relationship

“…Last but not least, while the mood states were categorized into positive and negative moods, it might be necessary to have a more fine-grained categorization. Specifically, it has been recently re-ignited to explore the specific impact of different kinds of fine-grained affect or mood on daily life [ 25 , 73 , 74 ].…”

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Emotion in Machine Learning: A Critical Appraisal and Recommendations from Psychology

“…Throughout human history, emotions have often been characterized as forces of disruption by many cultures: in the Buddhist tradition, Tanhā, a Pāli word meaning thirst, craving and/or desire, is regarded as the fundamental source of human suffering (Harvey, 2012); the Stoics sustained that emotions arose from incorrect judgement, and once an individual attains moral and intellectual perfection, it would not engage in such mistakes anymore (Sorabji, 2000); and the Christian Doctrine, regards emotions like envy, wrath, and lust among the seven deadly sins (Manning, 1874). In sharp contrast with this line of thinking, the functionalist theory on emotion see emotions as fundamentally beneficial forces, which facilitate adaptation to our natural and social environments, even "unpleasant" emotions as anger and fear (Adolphs, Mlodinow, & Barrett, 2019;Anderson & Adolphs, 2014;Averill, 1980;Keltner & Gross, 1999).…”

“…Broadly speaking, functionalist views on emotion can be divided into the ones that emphasize their biological basis and evolutionary origin (Adolphs et al, 2019;Anderson & Adolphs, 2014;Keltner & Gross, 1999) and the ones the that emphasize their social goals (Averill, 1980;Gordon, 1991). An example of the former is Keltner & Gross' (1999) view of emotion as "an episodic, relatively short-term, biologically based patterns of perception, experience, physiology, action, and communication that occur in response to specific physical and social challenges and opportunities."…”

“…If emotion categories are ontologically subjective categories, then they can be thought of as collective cognitive tools that allow members of the same culture (and even different cultures, depending on the categories, of course) to represent and shape the social meaning of physical events." (p. 419) At the individual level, such ontologically subjective categories are created by a blend of mental representations and body reactions, meaning that emotions can be understood as "those embodied representations that shape the animal's action and become the animal's experience of the world in that upcoming moment" (Adolphs et al, 2019). In this sense, emotions are active inference processes enacted by the brain as needed on the basis of past experiences and the current circumstances (Barrett, 2017b).…”