Emotion Theories

Ali Patrice Seyed

SNeRG 2/8/2008

 Philosophy
What is its nature, what is its role in human
life?
Plato
emotions are dangerous for achieving true
knowledge because they can overcome and
subvert reason and the intellect
Emotive and cognitive aspects of human
understanding were seen as in opposition

 Stoicism
Emotion is a judgment that is wrong, untrustworthy and incorrect
Minimize confusion by cultivating more detached states.

Aristotle
Emotion is part of moral/character only when in balance.

Kant
A moral decision cannot be made on emotion.

Hume
Defines emotions as impressions which is his term for
conscious feelings.
Although reason can judge notions, ideas and matters of fact, the
most noticeable results never persuade us to action as much as
the slightest emotion or feeling can do.

Descartes
Located in the soul, the seat of consciousness
Called passions because the soul is passive in
relation to them
species of perception perceptions of the soul,
caused/changed by movement of the spirits
Differ from sensory perceptions, which have
external objects
Passions are related to the soul.

Distinguished from desires, which are caused by

the soul itself.

Descartes (cont.)
Their causation in the condition of the
body gives them an inertia that lends
agents a capacity for follow through
more consistently on their intentions.
A motivator to guide in the face of shifting
thoughts.

Activity of the body that affects the soul.

Psychology
Social psychology
Expressed emotion as communication in group settings

Folk psychology
Ungrounded in scientific study, based on assumptions of
common sense

Neuropsychology
Relationship between brain functioning and psychological
processes
Psychological tasks during brain imaging techniques (fMRI,
MEG, EEG).

 Cognitive neuropsychology
Branch of neuropsychology dealing with studying the
cognitive effects of brain injury in support of models of
normal brain functioning

Damasio
Brain lesions to emotion centers have a practical cost
Emotion different but evaluated by criteria that is connected
to reason
Some emotions are grounded by belief, but not belief
themselves.
Holds "that our most refined thoughts and best actions,
our greatest joys and deepest sorrows, use the body as
a yardstick"

Damasio (cont.)
Phineas Gage case study, railway worked with steel rod
through the pre-frontal lobe region
After the accident Gages personality change, became
more child-like and impulsive, the shrewd businessman
his friends knew before the accident was no longer.
He was incapable of making good and effective
decisions, although his memory, language and traditional
notions of intelligence were untouched.

Kierkegaard and Heidegger hold that without care, concern, and

interest, nothing would be salient, indeed the world would have no
categories.

Somatic Feeling Theory

Rooted in work by William James
Emotions are just the feelings of certain
bodily changes as a result of perception of
some fact
our feelings of the changes as they occur
is the emotion

Somatic Feeling Theory

Part of the nervous system that receives information
about the muscles of the body
Perception of the Object -> Change in bodily state -> Feeling of
bodily change (The emotion)
James, Damasio: emotion is experiences of changes in the body.
Damasio:
Emotions can register changes in the levels of chemicals in the brain
(e.g. changes in hormone levels caused by the endocrine system).
Emotional response can occur in the absence of bodily changes when
brain centers ordinarily associated with bodily change are active
Sensory areas of the brain can be activated endogenously,
Damasio calls this pathway the as-if loop.
Emotions can bypass the body altogether, somatic brain centers
become active when we imagine undergoing an emotion.

Somatic Feeling Theory

Emotional feelings are feelings of bodily changes, but
emotions are not exhausted by feelings.
For definitional purposes, I liken emotional feelings to
sensory awareness or more accurately conscious perception
of the condition known as an emotion. Feelings of the
condition of ones body.
Unconscious neural responses to changes in bodily states
count as emotions for Damasio.

Therefore, Damasio holds:

A somatic theory of emotion
A somatic theory of emotional feelings
BUT NOT a somatic feeling theory of emotion
Emotion need not be consciously observed.
Can bypass the body (bodily changes through sensory
input) and also bypass consciousness

Somatic Feeling Theory

Darwin observed the connection b/w body

changes and emotion.
Our hair stands on end when afraid: in earlier, hairier
mammals this would have increased apparent body
size, scaring off predators.

Darwin inspires not only this link, but also that

one may identify emotions with behaviors to
which bodily changes dispose us.
In essence, we attach emotion to its effect rather than
the root cause

Damasios Somatic Theory

The emotion
Perception
of the object

Changes in
bodily state

As-if loop

Perception of
bodily change

Somatic Feeling Theory

Emotions are therefore cognitive

representations of body states that are
part of a homeostatic mechanism by
which the internal milieu is monitored and
controlled, and by which this internal
milieu influences behavior of the whole
organism.
Emotions are a result of nerve activation
patterns and subsequent bodily changes

Behavioral conditioning theory

Watson: emotions are not behavioral
dispositions but rather are behavioral
responses to reward/punishments.
Naturally behaviorists do not appeal to
inner states.
Rolls holds that emotions are the
responses to rewards and punishment,
but regards emotions as internal states.

Processing mode theory

Emotions lead to systematic changes in
faculties of attention, memory, and
reasoning.
Impacts our overall processing
E.g. sadness makes us pessimistic and sensitive
to our flaws.

Oatley, Johnson, and Laird argue this

applies to an important set of emotions:
anger, anxiety, happiness, and sadness.

A pure cognitive theory of emotion

Emotions are identical to thoughts.
Solomon: Evaluative judgments that provide the
structure of our world.
Although judgments do not cover desires or wishes.
Gordon: emotions involve wish-frustration or wishsatisfaction.

Philosophers hold that the word cognitive pertains

only to beliefs or judgments, and construals/desire
theories do not qualify as pure cognitive theories of
emotion, unless desires are reducible to beliefs.

Hybrid theories
Cognitive labeling theory: If you fail to assign
emotional significance to a physiological
attribute, it doesnt qualify as an emotion at all.
Cognitive cause theory: The reverse of
labeling theory, emotions arise when we form a
thought about a situation and that thought gives
rise to some state.
Cognitive cause theories in psychology can be
called dimensional appraisal theories.

Schachter and Singers Cognitive

labeling theory
The emotion
Emotionally
Significant
event

Recognition
of the event

Arousal

Cognitive
label

Dotted line: It is possible for emotions to arise through misattribution.

Cognitive cause theory

Emotionally
Significant
object

Perception
of the object

Appraisal
judgment

Emotional
state

Dimensional appraisal theory

Primary appraisals
Something is emotionally significant
Goal relevance
Goal congruence
Type of ego-involvement

Secondary appraisals
Pertains to resources one has available for coping
Blame or credit
Coping potential
Future expectancy

Appraisals that Generate Anger

Goal relevance: relevant
Goal congruence: incongruent
Ego involvement: self-esteem, socialesteem, or identity
Blame or credit: some is to blame
Coping potential: attack is viable
Future expectancy: goal congruence
predicted to increase by attack.

Dimensional appraisal theory

Appraisal 1
Emotionally
Significant
event

Appraisal 2
Perception
of the object

Appraisal
judgment3
Appraisal
Appraisal n

Emotional
state

Dimensional appraisal theory

Six appraisal dimensions
molecular appraisals.

Summary or gist of appraisals

molar appraisals
Lazarus calls this core relational themes, a relation
that pertains to well-being.

Relief is an emotion
core relational theme: a distressing goal-incongruent
condition that has changed for the better or gone
away

Prinz: Jamesian-Damasio feeling

theory with appraisal theory
Emotions are valenced embodied
appraisals
Emotions do not just register bodily
changes

Valence as a building block

(Barrett, 2005)
No biological or behavioral basis for usage
of commonsense categories like anger,
sadness, fear.
Error of arbitrary aggregation
Perceptual processes lead people to
aggregate their experiences of themselves
and other people into categories that do not
necessarily reveal the causal structure of the
underlying emotional processing.

Valence as a building block (cont.)

Natural selection
A view holds a protruding chin in humans
helped expand their diet, find mates, develop
language.
But chin is not a morphological/functional
feature of the face that can be shaped by
evolution
People perceive the face in a way such that
that they see a chin

Valence as a building block (cont.)

To understand what an emotion is, you
want to understand the causal processes
that support the perception of it.
To understand the impact an emotion has
on an situation(object,event).
We are asking how the perceptions of the
emotion influence a situation

Valence as a building block (cont.)

Positive/negative valuation, not discrete
emotion categories that is invariant.
Concept of core affect which results from
the process of valuation, e.g. something is
judged as helpful or harmful in a given
instance.
People continually and automatically
evaluate situations and objects

Role of feelings
Scientific perspective excludes what it is like to have an
emotional experience from a personal perspective
(Goldie, 2004).
Appraisal theories are ok, but incomplete without feeling.
At some level, emotional experiences involve characteristic
bodily feelings

Emotion is not just, as (Nussbaum 2001) puts in her

cognitive-evaluative view, judgments of value.
Also, emotional feeling not always accurate.
I.e. You may be mistaken that a feeling is a part of an emotional
experience.

Role of feelings
Intentionality
Emotional feelings directed towards the
condition of ones body.
Can provide reasons for believing one is
experiencing an emotion (introspective knowledge)
Reasons something in the environment that has
led to the emotion (extraspective knowledge)

Directed towards the object of ones emotion

E.g. fear directed towards a burglar
Object: person, thing, event/action, situation

Moods
Some emotions are grounded in belief
Grief, pity, compassion, anger

Others less so, described as moods

Unlike emotions proper, moods do not
clearly have intentional objects, vague
May have a cause, but is not directed
towards that cause

Moods can only be loosely connected to

the propositions in terms of which they
are expressed.

 De Sousa
Takes Modern Cognitivist position
A thought requirement in emotion
Defends charge emotion is irrational and argues for
their intelligence

A fully developed emotion has a belief, which is

true/false or at least justifiable.
E.g. grief - directed at a terrible event, if belief is
false, the emotion goes away.
w/o grounding in belief there is no emotion

 Relational Schema
Emotions are relations between the subject and the
various kinds of objects.
R(Stfacmp)

R emotive type
S subject
t target
f focal property
a motivating aspect (which in standard case identical to f)
c the cause
m the aim
p the proposition specifying the ground

 Formal object: for each emotion, the

second-order property that must be
implicitly ascribed to the motivating aspect
if the emotion is to be intelligible.
implicit in the species of the emotion
involved and each emotion type is a
unique species defined by its formal
object

 Not all emotions have the same number of

relevant constituent factors
Depression is typically targetless
Love typical lacks a propositional object,
typically thoughtless
Jealousy may have two targets instead of
one.

Service to rational thinking

(Greenspan, 1999)
At the very least emotions can function as
"enabling" causes of rational decision-making
(despite the many cases in which they are
disabling) insofar as they direct attention
toward certain objects of thought and away
from others. They serve to heighten memory
and to limit the set of salient practical options
to a manageable set, suitable for "quick-anddirty" decision-making.

Cognitive Structure of Emotions

(Ontony, Clore, and Collins, 1988)
Strives to give a systematic account of the
qualitative differences among individual
emotions such as fear, envy, anger, pride, relief,
and admiration.
Explains how peoples construals of the world
cause them to experience emotions.
System as a whole
Individual emotion makeup

Valenced reactions to events, agents, or objects,

with their particular nature being determined by
the way in which the eliciting situation is
construed

Cognitive Structure of Emotions

(cont.)
Effort to distinguish genuinely emotion
states and those that are not.
Includes broad classes of emotion
Focus on distinct emotion types, rather than
emotion states

3 elements to appraisal
Goals, standards, and attitudes

Emotional coherence theory, Dr.

Thagard of U. of Waterloo
In a purely cognitive coherence problem
the elements are divided into ones that are
accepted and rejected in such a way as to
satisfy the most constraints

Emotional coherence problem

Have positive and negative valences
Reflect the emotional attitudes associated with
different representations

Emotional coherence theory (cont.)

Elements can have positive and negative
emotional connections to other elements
Valence of an element is determined by the
valences and acceptability of all the elements
to which it is connected.

Emotional reactions result from emotional

valences attached to the goals that affect
decision-making

Computational model of emotional

inference
HOTCO, a type of ANN.
Activation of artificial neurons is interpreted as
a measure of their degree of acceptability
Each unit has a valence, a numerical
measure of emotional appeal of what is
represented

Activation corresponds to cognition, where

valence corresponds to emotion.

Computational model of emotional

inference (cont.)
HOTCO not very neurologically realistic, in
that it uses single artificial neurons to
stand for complex representation
Compatible with GAGE
models decision making using distributed
representations over spiking neurons that are
organized into anatomical groups,
prefontal cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and
nucleus accubens.

Computational Models of Emotion

Approached at different levels of abstraction
Architecture Level
Overall processing
Cognitive Appraisal Theory of emotion, Ortony, Collins, and
Clore implemented by Bates, Elliot, Reilly.
The Affective Reasoner A process model of emotions in a
multiagent system, dissertation of Clark Elliot

Task level
NLP or problem-solving
Annotating Expressions of Opinions and Emotions in
Language, Weibe, Wilson, Cardie

Mechanism level
Emulate some specific aspect of affective processing

References
Barrett, L. 2005. Valence is a basic building block of emotional life. Journal of
Research in Personality.
Ortony, Clore, and Collins, 1988. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions.
Cambridge University Press.
Prinz, J. 2004. Gut Reactions. Oxford University Press.
Goldie, P. Emotion, Feeling, and Knowledge of the World. In Thinking about
Feeling, Oxford University Press.
Greenspan, P. 1999. Emotions, Rationality, and Mind/Body. In Thinking about
Feeling. Oxford University Press.
Barnes, A. and P. Thagard. 1996. Emotional Decisions. Proceedings of the
Eighteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Erlbaum,
426-429.
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http://emotion.nsma.arizona.edu/Emotion/EmoRes/CompAI/Framework.html
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