Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Central to most conceptions of emotion is the idea that emotions are characterized by subjective experiences of certain types. Despite emotion's complexity and the considerable disagreement among theorists about its nature, there is remarkable consensus that subjective experience (“feeling”) is an important aspect of emotion, at least in humans. Many areas of psychology have contributed to our understanding of emotion, and social psychology has been among the most influential, especially in addressing emotional experience. This article surveys the major theories of emotional experience; it emphasizes social psychology's contributions but includes other perspectives as well.An adequate understanding of emotional experience must address two fundamental questions. First, what is an emotion? Then, what is it about emotions that produces their characteristic subjective experiences?It is easy to name examples of emotion: this concept includes such states as fear, anger, happiness, and sadness. There is disagreement, however, about what these states have in common and how they can be distinguished from nonemotional states. In everyday usage the term “emotion” refers to a wide range of phenomena that may have little in common. Some researchers have proposed that the concept of emotion is therefore intrinsically “fuzzy” and will never be defined more precisely than by describing what seem ... log in or subscribe to read full text