A Different Look at Emotion Processing Models

Abstract

One of the methods in which scientists from various fields have attempted to fathom the nature of emotion processing has been through the construction of models. These models are typically focused critically on the components of emotion processing specific to a given emotion theory. Even considering psychological models alone, there are a great variety of models, some of them described and visualized in more detail than others. Fairly universally, however, these models emphasize the hierarchy between their fundamental components to such a degree that the temporal aspect of emotion processing is obscured. In this chapter a selection of emotion processing models is reanalyzed and visualized to emphasize the temporal aspect of emotion processing which is crucial for emotional prosody processing. Reanalyzing the emotion theories and models using a temporal algorithm reveals aspects of model components and structures which allow for a new temporal classification of psychological models of emotion processing. Thus the James–Lange, Cannon–Bard, and Schachter–Singer belong to the classic stage of development, Schlosberg’s (Psychol Rev 61:81–88, 1954) three-dimensional model and Ekman’s (Cogn Emot 6:169–200, 1992) basic emotions model belong to the transitional stage, and the appraisal model, the circumplex (Russell in J Pers Soc Psychol 39:1161–1178, 1980), and the Conceptual Act Model (Barrett in Psychol Topics 20:359–380, 2011) all belong to the advanced stage of emotion modeling. This chapter details the logic behind this new classification of emotion processing models.