Looking into meta-emotions

Abstract

There are many psychic mechanisms by which people engage with their selves. We argue that an important yet hitherto neglected one is self-appraisal via meta-emotions. We discuss the intentional structure of meta-emotions and explore the phenomenology of a variety of examples. We then present a pilot study providing preliminary evidence that some facial displays may indicate the presence of meta-emotions. We conclude by arguing that meta-emotions have an important role to play in higher-order theories of psychic harmony and that Frankfurt-style accounts, which explain a person’s “reflective self-endorsement” exclusively in terms of volitional hierarchies, are inchoate and need to be augmented by a theory of meta-emotions.