Theory of constructed emotion - Wikipedia Theory of constructed emotion From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search The theory of constructed emotion (formerly the conceptual act model of emotion[1]) is a scientific theory to explain the experience and perception of emotion.[2][3] This theory was proposed by Lisa Feldman Barrett to resolve what she calls the "emotion paradox,"[1] which she claims has perplexed emotion researchers for decades, and describes as follows: People have vivid and intense experiences of emotion in day-to-day life: they report seeing emotions like "anger", "sadness", and "happiness" in others, and they report experiencing "anger", "sadness" and so on themselves. Nevertheless, psychophysiological and neuroscientific evidence has failed to yield consistent support for the existence of such discrete categories of experience.[4] Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that what exists in the brain and body is affect, and emotions are constructed by multiple brain networks working in tandem.[5][6] Despite this evidence, most other theories of emotion assume that emotions are genetically endowed, not learned, and are produced by dedicated circuits in the brain: an anger circuit, a fear circuit, and so on. This point of view is very much in line with common-sense conceptions of emotion. The theory of constructed emotion calls this assumption into question. It suggests that these emotions (often called "basic emotions"[7]) are not biologically hardwired, but instead are phenomena that emerge in consciousness "in the moment" from more fundamental ingredients. Contents 1 Statement of the theory 1.1 Earlier incarnations of the theory 1.2 Related thinking 2 References Statement of the theory[edit] The theory is given in simplified form as:[2] "In every waking moment, your brain uses past experience, organized as concepts, to guide your actions and give your sensations meaning. When the concepts involved are emotion concepts, your brain constructs instances of emotion." In greater detail, instances of emotion are constructed throughout the entire brain by multiple brain networks in collaboration. Ingredients going into this construction include interoception, concepts, and social reality.[2] Interoceptive predictions provide information about the state of the body and ultimately produce basic, affective feelings of pleasure, displeasure, arousal, and calmness. Concepts are embodied knowledge (from your culture), including emotion concepts. Social reality provides the collective agreement and language that make the perception of emotion possible among people who share a culture. As an analogy, consider the experience of color. People experience colors as discrete categories: blue, red, yellow, and so on, and these categories vary in different cultures. The physics of color, however, is actually continuous, with wavelengths measured in nanometers along a scale from ultraviolet to infrared. When a person experiences an object as "blue", she is (unconsciously) using her color concepts to categorize this wavelength.[8] And in fact, people experience a whole range of wavelengths as "blue." Likewise, emotions are commonly thought of as discrete and distinct — fear, anger, happiness — while affect (produced by interoception) is continuous. The theory of constructed emotion suggests that at a given moment, the brain predicts and categorizes the present moment via interoceptive predictions and the emotion concepts from one's culture, to construct an instance of emotion, just as one perceives discrete colors. This process instantiates the experience of "having an emotion". For example, if someone's brain predicts the presence of a snake as well as the unpleasant affect that would result upon encountering a snake, that brain might categorize and construct an experience of "fear." This process takes place before any actual sensory input of a snake reaches conscious awareness. In contrast, a "basic emotions" researcher would say that the person first sees the snake, and this sensory input triggers a dedicated "fear circuit" in the brain. Earlier incarnations of the theory[edit] Early incarnations of the theory were phrased in terms of core affect rather than interoception. Core affect is a neurophysiological state characterized along two dimensions:[9] Pleasure vs. displeasure, measured along a continuous scale from positive to negative. High arousal vs. low arousal, measured along a continuous scale between these endpoints. According to the original conceptual act model, emotion is generated when a person categorizes his/her core affective state using knowledge about emotion. This theory combines elements of linguistic relativity and affective neuroscience. The term "core affect" was first used in print by Russell and Barrett in 1999 in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology[10] where it is used to refer to the affective feelings that are part of every conscious state (as discussed by Wundt in his 1889 System der Philosophie).[11] The term "core affect" also appears to have been used as a phrase that relates to neuropsychological understanding of behavior as a morbid affect at the roots of any type of human behavior.[12] Related thinking[edit] Joseph LeDoux has reached similar views.[13] References[edit] ^ a b Barrett, L. F. (2006). "Solving the emotion paradox: Categorization and the experience of emotion". Personality and Social Psychology Review. 10 (1): 20–46. doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_2. PMID 16430327. ^ a b c Barrett, Lisa Feldman (2017). How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 9780544133310. ^ Barrett, L. F. (2016). "The theory of constructed emotion: An active inference account of interoception and categorization". Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. 12 (1): 20–46. doi:10.1093/scan/nsw154. PMC 5390700. PMID 27798257. ^ Barrett, L. F.; Lindquist, K.; Bliss-Moreau, E.; Duncan, S.; Gendron, M.; Mize, J.; Brennan, L. (2007). "Of mice and men: Natural kinds of emotion in the mammalian brain?". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2 (3): 297–312. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00046.x. ^ Barrett, L. F. (2006). "Emotions as natural kinds?". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 1: 28–58. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00003.x. PMID 26151184. ^ Barrett, L. F.; Wager, T. (2006). "The structure of emotion: Evidence from the neuroimaging of emotion". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 15 (2): 79–85. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.470.7762. doi:10.1111/j.0963-7214.2006.00411.x. ^ Ekman, P. (1972). "Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion". In Cole, J. (ed.). Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1971. Current Theory and Research in Motivation. 19. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. pp. 207–283. ISBN 0-8032-5619-1. ^ Davidoff, J (2001). "Language and perceptual categorization" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 5 (9): 382–387. doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01726-5. PMID 11520702. ^ Russell, J. A.; Barrett, L. F. (1999). "Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: Dissecting the elephant". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 76 (5): 805–819. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.5.805. PMID 10353204. ^ Russell, James A.; Barrett, Lisa Feldman (1999). "Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: Dissecting the elephant" (PDF). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 76 (5): 805–819. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.5.805. PMID 10353204. ^ Wundt, Wilhelm Max (1889). System der Philosophie (in German). Leipzig, Germany: Engelmann. ^ Segarra, Efrain (June 1983). "A Neuropsychological of Human Behavior and Therapeutic Change". University of Massachusetts Amherst. Cite journal requires |journal= (help) ^ "A Conversation with Joseph LeDoux". Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology. 79: 279–281. 2014-01-01. doi:10.1101/sqb.2014.79.12. ISSN 0091-7451. PMID 26092896. v t e Emotions (list) Emotions Acceptance Adoration Aesthetic emotions Affection Agitation Agony Amusement Anger Angst Anguish Annoyance Anticipation Anxiety Apathy Arousal Attraction Awe Boredom Calmness Compassion Confidence Contempt Contentment Courage Cruelty Curiosity Defeat Depression Desire Despair Disappointment Disgust Distrust Ecstasy Embarrassment Vicarious Empathy Enthrallment Enthusiasm Envy Euphoria Excitement Fear Flow (psychology) Frustration Gratification Gratitude Greed Grief Guilt Happiness Hatred Hiraeth Homesickness Hope Horror Hostility Humiliation Hygge Hysteria Indulgence Infatuation Insecurity Inspiration Interest Irritation Isolation Jealousy Joy Kindness Loneliness Longing Love Limerence Lust Mono no aware Neglect Nostalgia Outrage Panic Passion Pity Self-pity Pleasure Pride Grandiosity Hubris Insult Vanity Rage Regret Social connection Rejection Remorse Resentment Sadness Melancholy Saudade Schadenfreude Sehnsucht Self-confidence Sentimentality Shame Shock Shyness Sorrow Spite Stress Suffering Surprise Sympathy Tenseness Trust Wonder Worry World views Cynicism Defeatism Nihilism Optimism Pessimism Reclusion Weltschmerz Related Affect consciousness in education measures in psychology Affective computing forecasting neuroscience science spectrum Affectivity positive negative Appeal to emotion Emotion and art and memory and music and sex classification evolution expressed functional accounts group homeostatic perception recognition in conversation in animals regulation interpersonal work Emotional aperture bias blackmail competence conflict contagion detachment dysregulation eating exhaustion expression intelligence and bullying intimacy isolation lability labor lateralization literacy prosody reasoning responsivity security selection symbiosis well-being Emotionality bounded Emotions and culture in decision-making in the workplace in virtual communication history moral self-conscious social social sharing sociology Feeling Gender and emotional expression Group affective tone Interactions between the emotional and executive brain systems Meta-emotion Pathognomy Pathos Social emotional development Stoic passions Theory affect appraisal discrete emotion somatic marker constructed emotion Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theory_of_constructed_emotion&oldid=992198140" Categories: Emotion Psychological theories Hidden categories: CS1 German-language sources (de) CS1 errors: missing periodical Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Français Suomi Türkçe Edit links This page was last edited on 4 December 2020, at 00:57 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement