Emotion Universals—Argument from Nature

Abstract

The discipline of psychology is the natural home of the systematic research of emotions in all their aspects. For almost half a century the mainstream of emotion research has been dominated by the radical universalist framework that there exist at least six panhuman emotion concepts: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise (Ekman et al. 1969). This framework is so entrenched that it has earned the title of the standard view in psychology (Russell 1994). However, both the theory and practice of emotion research has been anything but monolithic in their ideas about and approaches to investigating emotions. This chapter is a historical review of all major theories of emotions starting from Charles Darwin’s observations which predated the emergence of psychology as a scientific discipline, to the contemporary revisionist theories represented by James A. Russell and Lisa Feldman Barrett. The continuous shift between reconciliation and opposition of the universalist and culture–specific views of emotions is shown to be the main driving force in the progress of thought on the nature of emotions.