Abstract
In this critical literature review, we seek to understand why multidimensional, psychological measures of human emotion that have been popular in the study of emotion and learning to date, may not yield the statistical power or construct validity necessary to consistently explain or predict human learning. We compare competing theories and conclude that educational studies tend towards use of multi-dimensional models of human emotions which, while useful in educational psychology and therapeutic practice, suffer from psychometric flaws and generate lower power when used as empirical research constructs compared with the “basic emotion” models and their derivatives popular in the neurobiological, cognitive, and social sciences. Based on our review, we conclude that more extensive use of physiological measures and analysis of spontaneous emotion language, both rooted in the basic emotions tradition rather than continued psychological measurement of multi-dimensional emotions, may yield more consistent and significant results and reduce education researchers’ reliance on self-report measures. Findings from the review may advance the selection of operational definitions and formulation of research questions for new empirical studies of the intersections between emotion and learning.
Highlights
MethodBecause the study of emotion crosses disciplinary boundaries between education, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy, more wide-ranging search methods than the standard procedure of searches through high-rated journals within a discipline were necessary
Despite the clear relevance of emotions for education and the dramatic increase of attention to emotion in other scientific disciplines, such as neuroscience, economics and the humanities, educational psychology has neglected emotions. (Pekrun and Stephens 2012, p. 3)
Hirumi in 1994, the publication of LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain in 1996, and the rush of proposed changes in curriculum and professional development that followed the popularization of emotional intelligence (EI/EQ), Pekrun and Stephens described the state of empirical research on the relationship between emotion and learning as “neglected” in the recent past
Summary
Because the study of emotion crosses disciplinary boundaries between education, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology, and philosophy, more wide-ranging search methods than the standard procedure of searches through high-rated journals within a discipline were necessary. The bibliography of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry “Emotion” (de Sousa 2013) grounded the search, as the majority of recent seminal works on emotion from a philosophical viewpoint are in book format and would not appear in a search through journal databases. Trans-disciplinary work takes on greater methodological rigor when the theoretical underpinnings of operational terms are the main unit of analysis. This approach avoids the serious risks of creating false analogies based on natural language interpretation of terms that authors may use in contestable senses, and of overlooking philosophical similarities between schemes obscured by use of different parts of the immense vocabulary of emotion—a downfall of keyword searches, for example
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