Psychology
Cognitive Theory of Emotion
The Cognitive Theory of Emotion suggests that our emotions are influenced by our thoughts, perceptions, and interpretations of events. It emphasizes the role of cognitive processes in shaping emotional experiences, proposing that our appraisal of a situation determines our emotional response. This theory highlights the significance of mental processes in understanding and managing emotions.
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10 Key excerpts on "Cognitive Theory of Emotion"
eBook - PDF- Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman, Robert Plutchik, Henry Kellerman(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
This perspective sug-gests that adult humans may well be the most emotional creatures on earth, since our ability to use complex, symbolic cognitive processes permits subtle distinctions to be made and later recalled among many types of information. COGNITIVE APPRAISAL The concept used to denote the evaluative processes that are central to the Cognitive Theory of Emotions is cognitive appraisal (Folkman, et al., 1979; Lazarus, 1966; Lazarus et al., 1970; Lazarus & Launier, 1978). Whether it is couched in terms of information processing (Folkman et al., 1979), tacit knowing (Polanyi, 1958), personal constructs (Kelly, 1955), self-efficacy (Ban-dura, 1977), or whatever, such a concept is essential to understand and deal with the great individual differences in emotional intensity, quality, and fluc-tuation observed in comparable environmental settings. Were it not for such individual differences, found even within the same cultural settings, we would not need to speak of cognitive mediation. However, in the face of such varia-tion among and within persons, theories of emotion must take into account the way what is happening is construed by the person. In its fullest expression, a cognitively oriented theory states that each emo-tion quality and intensity—anxiety, guilt, jealousy, love, joy, or whatever—is generated and guided by its own particular pattern of appraisal (see Beck, 1971; Ellis, 1962; Lazarus & Launier, 1978). Learning, memory, perception, and thought—in short, cognitive activity—are always key causal aspects of the emotional response pattern. The renewed emphasis on cognition brings with it a shift in the central variables of psychological analysis. Instead of needs and transient drives, we must speak of motivational constructs such as commitments (e.g., Klinger, 1975, 1977), goals, and values. These variables affect the personal stakes with respect to which well-being is defined.
eBook - PDF- Benjamin Martin Bly, David E. Rumelhart(Authors)
- 1999(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
But as a definition of “affect” (the cognitive part of the emo-tions) it is the most consistent approach that is seriously concerned with James’s “exciting facts.” Oatley and Johnson-Laird’s (1987) theory of emotion is the only one specifically claiming direct ties to the computational cognitive science enterprise. Their approach is more complex and elaborate than most and it introduces new termi-nologies (though often for old concepts).They propose a system of modular proces-sors in the human information-processing system with emotion modes that are nonpropositional communications setting the whole system for appropriate action, including the switching on and off of appropriate modules. These nonpropositional 8 Emotion 371 signals can function without higher level cognitive evaluations and without con-scious intervention.There are five basic emotion modes (in keeping with other basic emotion models). Complex emotions are not mixtures of the basic ones, but cog-nitive elaborations of them. In addition, the emotion modes coordinate the mod-ular nervous system, and the cognitive system “adopts an emotion mode at a sig-nificant juncture of a plan” (p. 35). These junctures are the equivalent of particular cognitive structures specific to the five basic emotions, and as cognitive structures not much different from the kind of structures envisaged by Ortony et al. For exam-ple, for anger the “juncture” is “active plan frustrated” and a transition occurs to a state of “try harder, and/or aggress.” Richard Lazarus and his co-workers (Folkman & Lazarus, 1990; Lazarus, 1991) define emotion as organized reactions that consist of cognitive appraisals, action impulses, and patterned somatic reactions. Emotions are seen as the result of con-tinuous appraisals and monitoring of the person’s well-being. The result is a fluid change of emotional states indexed by cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptoms.
eBook - PDF- Johnmarshall Reeve(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Appraisal theorists begin their analysis with relatively simple appraisals, such as whether an event signifies harm, threat, or danger (Lazarus, 1991a). They continue with progressively more complex appraisals, such as self/norm compatibility. Cognitive theorists then add emotion knowl- edge to explain further how people make fine-tuned appraisals. In his attributional analysis, Bernard Weiner (1982, 1986) adds yet one more type of cognitive appraisal to help explain emotion—the post-outcome appraisal of why the outcome occurred. Thus, the role of cognition is not only to appraise the meaning of the life event (appraisal) but also to appraise why the life outcome turned out the way it did (attribution) (Leon & Hernandez, 1998). Emotions Affect Cognition The theme of the second part of this chapter has been that cognition affects emotion. But it works the other way too, because emotion affects cognition. The effect that individual emotions have on cognitive events is about the same in magnitude as the effect of emotion on feeling states, bod- ily preparation for action, motivational sense of purpose, and expressive signals (Lench, Flores, & Bench, 2011). That is, emotional states and emotional episodes affect and cause cognitive events such as attentional engagement, judgment, decision making, interpretation, risk taking, reasoning, short-term working memory, and long-term memory storage and retrieval (Angie, Connelly, Waples, & Kligyte, 2011; Blanchette & Richards, 2010; Derakshan & Eysenck, 2010; Lench et al., 2011; Lerner & Keltner, 2001; Yegiyan & Yonelinas, 2011). While this is a very important point, it is not all that surprising, because emotions have such robust effects. Emotions affect and coordinate peo- ple’s feeling states, bodily preparation for action, motivational sense of purpose, expressive signals, and cognition.
eBook - PDF- Renée Jeffery(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Cognitive theories of emotion I 141 of moral criticism’. When used in the first person, the verbs associated with emotions ‘imply the speaker’s assessment of something’. 81 For example, if I say ‘I love these chocolate truffles’ I am making an assess- ment that the chocolate truffles I am eating are very good. Similarly, when used in the third person, emotion verbs ‘carry an implication about an assessment by the person they refer to’. For example, if I say ‘George is a very jealous man’, I am presenting a type of verdict on at least one aspect of George’s character. 82 In short, Bedford argued that the ‘principal functions’ of emotions are ‘judicial’. 83 He suggested that the concepts according to which we understand emotions are thus not ‘purely psychological’ in nature, by which he meant that they cannot be directly equated with feelings. Rather, emotions ‘presuppose concepts of social relationships and institutions, and concepts belong- ing to systems of judgement, moral, aesthetic, and legal’. 84 That is, emotions are not simply affective experiences but require cognitive reflection. 85 Two-factor theory Similarly combining elements of cognition and affect, Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer argued in the early 1960s that ‘an emotional state may be considered a function of a state of physiological arousal and of a cognition appropriate to this state of arousal’. Their ‘two-factor theory’ argued that, by drawing on past experience, cognition provides ‘the framework within which one understands and labels his feelings’. That is, cognitive reflection upon an immediate situation ‘determines whether the state of physiological arousal will be labeled as “anger”, “joy”, “fear”, or whatever’.
eBook - PDF- Andrew Ortony, Gerald L. Clore, Allan Collins(Authors)
- 1988(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The Boundaries of the Theory Any theory of emotion, whatever its focus, is likely to be bounded in the sense that there are aspects of the problem that it does not address and is not intended to address. Certainly, this is the case with the theory that we have proposed. We have chosen to focus on the cognitive antecedents of emotions because we think they play a crucial causal role in the experience of emotion. This focus has led us to concentrate on issues relating to the cognition-emotion interface while neglecting a host of other critically im- portant questions. For example, physiology is essential for emotional expe- rience but we have ignored it because it is not relevant to the question of the role that cognition plays in the elicitation of emotions. Nor have we taken a position on the role of facial expression in emotions. Such issues, while certainly important, simply are not ones that we have chosen to address. In this final chapter, we discuss some of the implications of the view of emotion that we have proposed with the goal of trying to show how and where we think they might be relevant to other issues. At the same time, this will give us an opportunity to identify some of the weaknesses in our approach that we ourselves recognize. This in no way, of course, precludes the possibility that there are other weaknesses that we have not recognized. Emotion Words and Cross-cultural Issues In discussing emotions, particularly individual ones, it is virtually impossi- ble to extricate oneself from the linguistic complications that arise. We have repeatedly stressed throughout this book that our concern has been with characterizing emotion types rather than with defining English emo- tion words. To this end, we proposed a set of emotion types characterized in terms of their eliciting conditions.
eBook - PDFBrain-mind Machinery: Brain-inspired Computing And Mind Opening
Brain-Inspired Computing and Mind Opening
- Gee-wah Ng(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- World Scientific(Publisher)
104 C h a p t e r 6 EMOTION AND COGNITION Introduction W hy is emotion related to cognition? Nobel laureate Herbert Simon emphasized that a general theory of thinking and problem solving must incorporate the influences of emotion (Simon, 1967). Psychological research has revealed that there is a direct behavioral link between cognition and emotion, i.e. our thoughts affect the way we feel about stimuli and vice versa. Emotion theorists have argued that emotions play an important role in cognition, influencing perception and creativity, and also act as a powerful motivator. Neuroscientists and biologists have also observed the link between the amygdala (center of emotion chem-ical secretion), the limbic system (which encompasses the amygdala and is involved in emotion and motivation), and the neocortex (center of higher intelligence). Some scientists have argued that the demands of a system with finite resources operating in a complex and unpredictable environment naturally give rise to the need for emotions, to address multiple concerns in a flexible, intelligent, and efficient way. However, there are also concerns that emotion is not logical and strong emotion may impair rational decision-making. Acting “emotionally” implies acting irrationally, with poor judgment. Professor Picard, MIT media lab, explains that emotion not only contributes to a richer quality of interaction, but also directly Emotion and Cognition 105 impacts a person’s ability to interact in an intelligent way (Picard, 1997, Affective Computing). For example: • Communication. Emotional skills are important to communica-tion; this includes the way we express ourselves in body action, facial expression, verbal tone, and choice of words. • Fast decisions. Emotions help us to make fast decisions in crucial situations. For example, when one sees a tiger approaching, the fear will force one to make a decision to run or do something quickly to avoid falling prey to the tiger.
eBook - PDFMoral Responsibility and the Psychopath
The Value of Others
- Jim Baxter(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
However, I argued that perceptual theories in fact mischaracterise these relations in a way that makes them poorly suited as a model for emotions. I also argued that, as with feeling theories, cognitive elements appear to be present in cases of emotional experience which are candidates for explanation along perceptualist lines, so that, again, we need a special reason to exclude those elements from the set of what constitutes the emotion. So where does this leave us? If each of the prevailing families of theories has problems which they have great difficulty addressing, what should we conclude about the nature of emotions? I believe this very difficulty of fitting emotions into an existing category points us towards the most plausible answer, which is that emotions are complex entities with elements of both feeling and cognition. When we experience an emotion, we make judge- ments, or entertain beliefs, with evaluative content, but we also experience the embodied feelings that those judgements or beliefs cause in us. My suggestion is that it is our combined experience of these thoughts and feelings that we call the emotion. When I see the girl I like apparently flirting with the handsome stranger at the party, I believe that she is flirting with him. Perhaps I judge this situation to be threatening to my plans, projects or desires: perhaps I was planning to flirt with her myself, or would like to. Perhaps I thought she was interested in me, and this flirtation – when she knows I am right here, after all – is an indication that this belief is mistaken. This storm of cognitive activity also sets off a visceral response in me, and I experience this from the inside in combination with these various cogni- tions. My combined physiological upheaval together with cognitive upheaval, I experience as jealousy. Crucially, the elements of thought and feeling involved in this experience are intimately connected with each other and act on each other in subtle and complex ways.
eBook - PDFShame and Philosophy
An Investigation in the Philosophy of Emotions and Ethics
- P. Hutchinson(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
William James (1884) and Carl Lange (1885) independently advanced the theory that the emotions were responses to patterned changes in the body (sensa- tions). In advancing theories of the emotions which took them to be constituted by ‘thoughts’, Kenny and Solomon, and the many that have followed since, see emotions as rational responses to, or perceptions of, our environment. The name ‘cognitivism’ in the philosophy of emotions, therefore, denotes an account which explains emotions in terms of the thoughts which constitute them (or are, at least, necessary to their intelligibility). This is only part of the story. Of course ‘thought’ is a somewhat imprecise term; by this I mean merely that when one invokes ‘thoughts’ the invoc- ation often merits the response: ‘what sort of thoughts precisely?’ And this has served to fuel much of the debate within cognitivism. What is the nature of these thoughts? Are they beliefs? Are they evaluative beliefs? Are they judgements? Are they combinations of distinct beliefs and desires? Are they perceptions? Or are they combinations of some of these plus a little affect, a little context, a little feeling, or a little narrative? In what follows, I shall explore some answers to these questions by way of leading us to a way in which I think it fruitful to think about emotion. I ended Chapter 1 by hinting at a role for—a form of—‘conceptual analysis’. This chapter will take the hint and try to implement it. We saw that Griffiths was apt to mislead us into thinking, with him, that noth- ing could be learned about what the emotions really are by engaging in Emotion, Cognition, and World 89 any form of conceptual analysis. We also saw that Griffiths’ alternative, an approach rooted in a reconstructed natural kind semantics, faced insurmountable problems.
eBook - PDF- Gary D. Phye(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
Cognition and Emotion, 13, 129-148. Examining Emotional Diversity in the Classroom 87 Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion . New York: Springer-Verlag. Weiner, B. (1995). Judgments of responsibility: A foundation for a theory of social conduct . New York: Guilford. Weiner, B. (2006). Social motivation, justice, and the moral emotions . Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum. 88 Bernard Weiner CHAPTER 6 A Macro Cultural-Psychological Theory of Emotions CARL RATNER Institute for Cultural Research and Education Educators typically emphasize conveying information and facts; rarely have they articulated or modeled the full learning process replete with emotions of confusion, fear, sorrow, apathy, anger, jealousy, pride, and enthusiasm. Be-cause emotions are integral to such educational practices as learning, persua-sion, concentrating, and cooperating on projects, it is vital to understand and address them. Understanding emotions requires comprehending both their specific, distinctive qualities (e.g., palpable visceral qualities) and their general psychological features that they share with other psychological phenomena. We may imagine a model that looks like a funnel. At the top are general aspects of psychological phenomena that they have in common. As the funnel narrows, we find ‘‘emotions,’’ which are specific psychological phenomena. At the bottom of the funnel stand specific emotions in specific situations (e.g., classrooms). Each lower level of the funnel incorporates upper levels. Consequently, comprehend-ing and addressing specific emotions (in education) requires understanding emotions in general, and psychological phenomena in general. This chapter shall elucidate an explanation of emotions as psychological phenomena that has relevance to the cultural practice of education.
eBook - PDF- Michelle Maiese(Author)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
Prinz rightly denies that emotions require conceptualized apprais- als or necessarily are constituted by propositional attitudes. In his view, a state is cognitive just in case it involves representations that are controlled by structures in executive systems, and which are activated, maintained, and manipulated by the organism rather than by the environment. Because he believes that emotions are passive and often not under the organism’s control, he concludes that, most of the time, emotions are not cognitive. Thus, in Prinz’s view, emotions are not cognitive appraisals, but rather men- tal states that detect and register bodily changes, represent objects or events as having some bearing on one’s interests and concerns, and thereby track organism–environment relations. For example, fear registers an array of bodily changes, tracks danger, and represents events as posing a threat to one’s interests and concerns. As Prinz readily points out, danger is a rela- tional property, for ‘something can be dangerous only to some creature or other, and whether or not something is dangerous depends on the creature in question’ (p. 63). Drawing from the work of Paul Lazarus, Prinz describes these relational properties that pertain to well-being as ‘core relational themes,’ and maintains that emotions track these core relational themes by registering changes in the body (p. 68). Insofar as certain bodily changes reliably co-occur with certain organism–environment relations (core rela- tional themes), emotions use our bodies to tell us how we are faring in the world. Such accounts all imply that emotional intentionality generates neuro- biological processes that are distinguishable and separable from associated affects or feelings. Sizer’s account, for example, separates bodily changes 80 Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition and emotional response from affectivity and feeling.
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