As an alternative to using the concepts of emotion, fear, anger, and the like as scientific tools, this article advocates an approach based on the concepts of core affect and psychological construction, expanding the domain of inquiry beyond “emotion”. Core affect is a neurophysiological state that underlies simply feeling good or bad, drowsy or energised. Psychological construction is not one process but an umbrella term for the various processes that produce: (a) a particular emotional episode's “components” (such as facial movement, (...) vocal tone, peripheral nervous system change, appraisal, attribution, behaviour, subjective experience, and emotion regulation); (b) associations among the components; and (c) the categorisation of the pattern of components as a specific emotion. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 99-110, April 2022. Researchers often disagree as to whether emotions are largely consistent across people and over time, or whether they are variable. They also disagree as to whether emotions are initiated by appraisals, or whether they may be initiated in diverse ways. We draw upon Parallel-Distributed-Processing to offer an algorithmic account in which features of an emotion instance are bi-directionally connected to each other via conjunction units. We propose that such indirect connections (...) may be innate as well as learned. These ideas lead to the development of the Interactive Activation and Competition framework for Emotion which allows us to specify when emotions are consistent and when they are variable, as well as when they are appraisal-led and when they are input-agnostic. (shrink)

Over a century ago, William James outlined the first psychological constructionist model of emotion, arguing that emotions are phenomena constructed of more basic psychological parts. In this article, I outline a modern psychological constructionist model of emotion. I first explore the history of psychological construction to demonstrate that psychological constructionist models have historically emerged in an attempt to explain variability in emotion that cannot be accounted for by other approaches. I next discuss the modern psychological constructionist model of emotion that (...) I take in my own research, outlining its hypotheses, existing empirical support, and areas of future research. I conclude by arguing that psychological constructionist models can help scientists better understand the human mind. (shrink)

Starting with a review of research on love as an emotion, with an emphasis on romantic love, it is argued that despite strong emotional correlates evidence is lacking to conclude that love would meet the criteria of basic emotions. Theoretical developments are proposed where love is conceived of as a combination of an objectless drive, a desire for love, and a mythical and scripted representation that offers the possibility of labeling the current core affect. I argue that the basic motive (...) for love is not so much the partner’s personal attributes, but rather the benefits of the transformative power of being in love. (shrink)

The current article discusses the distinction between affective valence—the degree to which an affective response represents pleasure or displeasure—and semantic valence, the degree to which an object or event is considered positive or negative. To date, measures that reflect positivity and negativity are usually placed under the same conceptual umbrella, with minimal distinction between the modes of valence they reflect. Recent work suggests that what might seem to reflect a monolithic structure of valence has at least two different, confounding underlying (...) sources, affective and semantic, that are fundamentally distinct, dissociable, and that obey different, recognizable rules. The current work discusses this distinction and provides implications for affective science from both the theoretical and the empirical perspective. (shrink)

Two experiments examined how affective values from visual and auditory modalities are integrated. Experiment 1 paired music and videos drawn from three levels of valence while holding arousal constant. Experiment 2 included a parallel combination of three levels of arousal while holding valence constant. In each experiment, participants rated their affective states after unimodal and multimodal presentations. Experiment 1 revealed a congruency effect in which stimulus combinations of the same extreme valence resulted in more extreme state ratings than component stimuli (...) presented in isolation. An interaction between music and video valence reflected the greater influence of negative affect. Video valence was found to have a significantly greater effect on combined ratings than music valence. The pattern of data was explained by a five parameter differential weight averaging model that attributed greater weight to the visual modality and increased weight with decreasing values of valence. Experiment 2 revealed a congruency effect only for high arousal combinations and no interaction effects. This pattern was explained by a three parameter constant weight averaging model with greater weight for the auditory modality and a very low arousal value for the initial state. These results demonstrate key differences in audiovisual integration between valence and arousal. (shrink)

Constructionism can take several forms: one can refer to biological, psychological, or social constructionism. What I want to argue in this article is that if one carefully teases out varied forms of constructionism, the frontiers between some of them will begin to blur.

According to Discrete Emotion Theory, a number of emotions are distinguishable on the basis of neural, physiological, behavioral and expressive features. Critics of this view emphasize the variability and context-sensitivity of emotions. This paper discusses some of these criticisms, and argues that they do not undermine the claim that emotions are discrete. This paper also presents some works in dynamical affective science, and argues that to conceive of discrete emotions as self-organizing and softly assembled patterns of various processes accounts more (...) naturally than traditional Discrete Emotion Theory for the variability and context-sensitivity of emotions. (shrink)

According to some authors, emotions can be unconscious when they are unfelt or unnoticed. According to others, emotions are always conscious because they always have a phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to resolve the ongoing debate about the possibility for emotions to be unfelt. To do so, I focus on the notion of “unconscious emotions”. While this notion appears paradoxical, by way of a distinction between two meanings of emotional consciousness I show that it is not so. These (...) meanings are both compatible with the leading views of consciousness and they do not require one to distinguish different senses of “emotions” or “consciousness”. This distinction is helpful to define how emotions can be unconscious. (shrink)

In the scientific study of the emotions the goal is to find natural kinds. That is, to find categories about which interesting scientific generalizations and predictions can be formed. Core affect is dimensional approach to the emotions which claims that emotions emerge from the more basic psychological processes of valence and arousal. Lisa Feldman Barrett has recently argued that the discrete emotion approach has failed to find natural kinds and thus should be dismissed as a failed paradigm. She offers core (...) affect as an alternative theory that will better capture natural kinds in emotionally salient phenomena. In this thesis I evaluate Barrett’s claim on the basis of a philosophically robust understanding of natural kinds and a careful assessment of the empirical evidence. I argue that while core affect is not a natural kind, subsets of core affect space may be natural kinds. (shrink)

‘Valence’ is used in many different ways in emotion theory. It generally refers to the ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ character of an emotion, as well as to the ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ character of some aspect of emotion. After reviewing these different uses, I point to the conceptual problems that come with them. In particular, I dis- tinguish: problems that arise from conflating the valence of an emotion with the valence of its aspects, and problems that arise from the very idea that (...) an emotion (and/or its aspects) can be divided into mutually exclusive opposites. The first group of problems does not question the classic dichotomous notion of valence, but the second does. In order to do justice to the richness of daily emotions, emo- tion science needs more complex conceptual tools. (shrink)