Emotions

Erika Lombart, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
erika.lombart@uclouvain.be

Various academic fields have approached the study of emotions in different ways. We will focus here on philosophy and psychology. Traditionally, philosophers have focused on the subjective experience of emotions. This perspective is exemplified in the definition of emotions as all those things through which people change and evolve in their judgements, accompanied by pain (e.g., pity, fear, terror) or pleasure (e.g., desire, hope). In the Descartian tradition, emotions are naturally good, and they incline the soul to desire the things that benefit the body. In contrast, Spinoza views negative emotions as signs of human passivity and diminished power, considering them problematic when they result from external causes that limit our rational autonomy. Hochschild argues that emotions are not merely private experiences but are shaped by ‘feeling rules’ reflecting cultural norms and institutional expectations. Psychologists have studied the physiological and behavioural components of emotions. William James defined emotion as the ‘consciousness by the subject of bodily modifications triggered by the apprehension of certain objects or facts.’ In other words, crying does not stem from sadness but rather generates it. Ekman posits that emotions are subjective experiences, physiologically driven states, and expressive behaviours resulting from internal or external stimuli. Ekman’s research has demonstrated that humans from all cultures express six fundamental emotions - joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust - in similar ways. Plutchik expanded this theory by identifying four primary emotions (fear, anger, joy, and sadness), which can combine with cognitive processes such as memory and reflection to generate secondary emotions.

Keywords: emotional theory; physiological response; cognitive appraisal

References:
Ekman, P. (1992). Are there basic emotions? Psychological Review, 99(3), 550-553.
Hochschild, A. R. (2003). The managed heart: Commercialisation of human feeling (20th anniversary ed.). University of California Press. (Original work published 1983)
James, W. (1884/1894). La théorie de l’émotion. Alcan.
Plutchik, R. (1980). Emotion: A psychoevolutionary synthesis. Harper and Row.
Spinoza, B. (1994). Ethics (E. Curley, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1677).