Emotion: Competing theories and philosophical issues

Abstract

This chapter discusses the controversial issues in the psychology of emotion, including whether emotions are primarily cognitive or physiological, conscious or unconscious, and homogenous or heterogeneous. Scientist argues that all emotions involve similar neural mechanisms. This chapter describes several ways in which emotions can valuably contribute to reasoning. Emotions are important for decision making, for evaluative judgment, for social behavior, and for motivating action. Emotions also play important roles in perception and memory. The diametrically opposed theories of emotions have been proposed and their adherents continue to disagree. Some of the disagreements are surveyed in the chapter. A debate between two camps is considered in the chapter: those who regard emotions as cognitive and those who regard emotions as noncognitive. Within these camps, very different theories of emotions have been proposed. Emotions serve to make certain things more salient, and thus lead to attend to the most relevant information. Emotions do not always lead to better decisions. In some cases, emotions lead to do things that go against one's best interests. Sometimes emotions lead to do things that are neither rational nor irrational.