jim.shamlin.com

4 - What is an Emotion?

The authors cite a source (Van Brakel 1994) that listed 22 recent definitions of emotion. "We believe a consensus is developing" and thus propose the following elements of a working definition:

  1. Emotion is experienced as a distinctive type of mental state that is followed by bodily changes such as expressions or actions.
  2. This mental state is caused by a person's conscious or unconscious evaluation of "an event" in relation to a concern. Positive emotions occur when the event is seen to advance the concern, and negative when it is an impediment.
  3. Emotions create a readiness to act, including an inclination to act in certain ways. The action itself is secondary to and separate from the emotional state that prompts it.

"We need not worry that thus definition may not be quite right," the authors stress. "Definitions provide an orientation but they are subject to change."

(EN: My sense is they could worry a little more than they apparently do. Since this is a book about emotions it would stand to reason that the definition of the central topic should be of great concern to the authors, while there may be less important topics that could comfortably be more loosely defined.)

Concepts of Emotion Based on Prototypes

Laymen recognize emotions in a vague sense - they feel them and have a sense they know what they are but cannot quite define them. And yet, they recognize their own emotional states and the emotional state of others, though in a vague and inaccurate manner. It's likely the ongoing difficulty in human relations arises from errors in the recognition of emotion.

Everyday concepts of emotion are prototypical. A person asked to define an emotion can describe a situation familiar to the querent and assume their emotional reactions to be identical. It's imprecise and haphazard, but that does seem to be the quality if thinking in the common man, who is rarely careful in considering the quality of things and causal relationships among them.

"Language and thought have the wonderful property of allowing people to talk and [presume to] be understood quite well when they don't know very much." In casual conversation, words are bandied about without much care, and any uncertainty can be discussed in the course of conversation.

It is a somewhat ironic that scientists in this area evidence many of the same qualities: they do not know that much about emotion, have only a vague ideas about it, but make pronouncements as if they understood them perfectly.

However, there is a striking similarity in the concept of emotions that is common to both laymen and scientists: they recognize that there is a fundamental pattern of stimulus, emotion, and response: something happens, and a person experiences feelings about it, and those feelings cause them to want to take action.

The Emotional Process

Emotions are not instantaneous, but follows a process. It takes some amount of time for a stimulus to be identified and analyzed, an evaluation to be made, an emotion to arise, a reaction to be considered, and the action to be taken. There are other theories about this process, and much conjecture over how each step is undertaken, but they all follow the same basic pattern.

Moreover, emotions are often experienced over a sequence of events that change over time - emotions building upon other emotions as the events unfold, possibly over the course of years.

For example, consider a schoolchild who is faced with a test for which she has not prepared. She feels fear and shame at the prospect, and so tells her teacher that she is feeling ill and cannot take the test. Instead of excusing her, the teacher sends her to the school nurse, who finds nothing wrong with the student and sends her back to class. The student then feels resentful of the nurse.

The student's desired outcome (to avoid taking the test) prompts her to have emotional reactions to each event that assists or impedes her in her goal, each building on the reaction she had before in the broader context of the event.

Appraisal

There is rather a long tradition of regarding emotion as random and spontaneous, a mystical force that lights upon man that cannot be reduced or analyzed any further. However, the causes of emotion can be identified - emotions are reactions to external stimulus, and these reactions bear scrutiny, particularly to identify the internal factors that lead a stimulus to provoke a reaction in some individuals and situations and not in others.

The first step in emotional experience is appraisal: we do not react emotionally to everything we perceive, but react only to those perceptions that we consider to be significant.

One approach to appraisal considers the basic features of an experience and how they relate to the subject. Some examples are:

Questions such as these may be deliberated upon, or the subject may provide a quick and superficial answer, or the subject may have an immediate reaction without conscious thought. Whatever the case, this appraisal determines whether we respond emotionally, whether the emotional theme is positive or negative, and the strength and depth of the emotion we experience.

In general, there are three qualifications an even t must meet to merit emotional reactions:

(EN: I have the sense this is leaving a few things out, but then I am likely reaching forward to the criteria involved in a decision to take action, which is a separate thing that is likely a step or two later in the process. We assess whether to have an emotion before experiencing the emotion, and decided to act based on the emotion we experience.)

Note that this research implies that emotions are optional: a subject may or may not experience emotion based on the assessment. It also suggests that emotions are attached to an object: we do not love in general but attach our love to a specific person, nor do we fear in general but attach our fear to a specific thing or event.

(EN: I accept this with one reservation - the mood of a person makes them more likely to experience emotion. Someone who is irritated by a recent event is more likely to be provoked to anger by a stimulus that would not have had that reaction were they in a neutral or relaxed mood. So there's a subtle difference between experiencing the emotion of anger and being in an "angry mood" that increases the likelihood the emotion will be evoked. The subject would still be angry at a specific object, but not because of anything intrinsic to that object.)

The author then presents emotion as a sort of decision tree:

(EN: All of this seems a little too orderly and linear, and fails to explain the way that people react to events that have nothing to do with their goals. That is, a person may be angry about something because it does not fit with their sense of the way things ought to be, even if their personal goals are not affected. Or a person may experience emotions out of empathy for parties in an event in which he is not personally involved and has nothing at stake.)

It's noted that this type of analysis seems "cold" while emotions run "hot." For example, a person can easily make a checklist of the attributes they find attractive in another person, but fall in love with someone who has none of those qualities.

The authors pick at this a bit: we are seldom honest, even with ourselves, about our emotions, such that the making of such a list involves a great deal of dishonesty in presenting the things we ought to find attractive rather than those we genuinely do. Second, an evaluation is not always conscious - when we experience emotion there is a reason, such that we may have a knee-jerk reaction but we can later identify it.

As such, we may not be conscious at the moment an emotion is experienced of the appraisal process that has taken place unconsciously - but it has occurred.

Context Evaluation

Cognition is the basis of our experience of emotions, whether a deliberate process or a knee-jerk reaction as we assess external stimuli against our thoughts. Considered thus, the thoughts internal to our mind provide a context in which any external event is assessed in order to evoke an emotion. Having spoken about the assessment, the authors turn to the internal world of the mind.

Coping with emotion requires a process of understanding our own thoughts: psychoanalysts are less interested in the external event than in the internal context of the subject as a means to understand the reason he experienced an emotion, and seek (and succeed) in changing the future emotional reactions by addressing the internal context. Laymen do the same thing: we seek to understand why we feel the way we do and adjust our attitudes in a way that gives us control over our emotions. It is the same thing.

The authors consider journaling as a psychoanalytical tool: the subject is tasked to keep a diary of their thoughts, particularly when they have reacted emotionally, as a method of exploring the context. Doing so enables the analyst to recognize the connection between thoughts and behavior and identify patterns that represent internal mental constructs.

An example is given of a patient who was seeking treatment because she was unable to maintain relationships. Seemingly innocuous events triggered strong emotional reactions, and eventually the triggers were discovered to be associations to her previous relationships with abusive men, and even with her own father, that were carrying forward to influence the emotions she felt in encounters with other men, causing her to become hostile or withdraw to an extent that the events themselves clearly did not merit.

The degree to which mental frameworks influence reactions is very clear in instances in which emotions are dysfunctional, but even normal and function - the patient's mental preoccupation with certain experiences leads her to make a premature and improper assessment of present events. But even when emotions are not dysfunctional, the mental context is significant to the assessment of events.

The authors speak obliquely about mental frameworks - the way in which we form a notion of the way things ought to be based on our past experiences, and the way we react when something happens that does not meet our expectations.

In a cognitive sense, we assess whether we must ignore the unexpected outcome as anomalous or give further consideration to changing our mental framework (that is, learning from the experience).

But in an emotional sense, we feel rather than think - the outcome creates positive or negative emotions. Generally, but not always, an experience that conforms to expectations is positive and one that does not conform is negative, but this is not always so (if our expectations were negative and the outcome was positive, the emotional results are positive).

A critical element of emotion is attribution - deciding how an emotional event was caused. One experiment asked subjects to identify the emotional points of a story: changing certain facts in the exposition changed the nature of the emotion that was identified. For example, a story in which a character caused harm to another, more people chose "guilt" in the version in which there was an opportunity to avoid the action that caused damage. Or in a story about passing a test, students were less likely to choose "pride" if the test were described as being very easy.

The implication is clear: we do not feel emotion because of the outcome of an event (doing harm or passing a test) but because of the context in which the event occurred.

There is here some reference to therapeutic techniques which lead the patient to consider the way in which they attribute their emotions - to understand the choices they made in the past and to make different choices for the future - as contextual to the emotion.

Action Readiness

Another perspective on emotions considers the way in which they prepare us to take action. (Recall this was Darwin's approach to analyzing facial expressions.) In that sense, emotions prepare us to undertake specific actions.

A few examples are given: The feeling of disgust poises is to avoid contact with the item or person that caused it. The feeling of anger poises is to attack. The feeling of exuberances poises us to undertake demanding physical activity.

Some of the actions that precipitate from emotion are involuntary and arguably instinctive (narrowing the eyes in anger to protect them) but others are clearly learned patterns.

(EN: On instinct versus learning, action readiness is programmable: the way in which boxers are taught to change their expressions of aggression or the way in which a person with a phobia retrains their reaction - in both instances, a subject is still feeling emotions but changing the way in which a subject reacts.)

Expression, Bodily Change, and Action

Emotion occurs internally, and is visible to the observer only by its representation in expressions, bodily changes, and actions that result. These reactions are noticeable because they represent a change, and it's generally (and often incorrectly) assumed that a change that corresponds to an event was caused by the event. As such, the interpretations of emotion is twice removed from the experience within the subject.

Darwin's notion was that an "expression" of emotion was a way of making an external display of an internal state ("expression" as in "expressing" or "expressive") and while the authors feel this term may be misleading, it has "stuck" as a method of describing external evidence of emotional states.

Expression has also focused largely on the facial features, ignoring that other parts of the body often are used to express emotions - posture and hand gestures, for example. There has been a significant lack of research into these areas, and the research that exists treats them as being different to facial expression in that they are presumed to be intentional and learned, much as language, where it is assumed facial expressions are involuntary and instinctive.

The authors consider the variety of hand gestures that are used to demonstrate contempt for another person: extending the middle finger in the US, the first two fingers in Britain, the thumb in Australia, and the first and last finger in Spain and Italy.

Considering the variety and cultural specificity, it would be difficult to argue that they are natural expressions rather than learned. However there are also physical expressions such as raising the shoulders in a shrug, raising the chin to communicate confidence, or making rapid gestures with the hands to express excitement, that do not seem to be conscious or learned.

Ekman (1969) created a five-category system for nonverbal expressions with an eye toward universal application:

  1. Emblems - Voluntary gestures used to communicate emotion
  2. Illustrators - Movements that communicate an emotional state, such as clenching the fists or leaning toward or away from another person
  3. Regulators - The example of nodding during conversation is given without further explanation
  4. Affect Displays - A consciously used expression that communicates an emotion that may not be genuinely experienced, such as the social smile
  5. Adaptors - Displacement activities used to direct attention, such as self-grooming or touching, that signal anxiety or inner conflict

There are also a wide array of systems used to classify and categories facial expressions, and the authors stray through a few. They tend to consider the movement of very specific muscles within the face - the corners of the mouth, the upper and lower eyelid, etc. - generally focusing on the tension of relaxation of specific facial muscles.

Specific attention is given to the muscles that people do not have practice in controlling - that is, to tell a genuine smile from a fake smile because the latter merely involves the movement of the lips, whereas a genuine smile also involves rotational movement around the eyes that is difficult to voluntarily effect. Such research has been of particular interest to military intelligence and law enforcement, to detect when an individual is attempting to suppress anxiety.

Emotion is also expressed in the qualities of voice. One set of experiments (Pittam 1993) made audio recordings of individuals who repeated the same phrase in a neutral voice and in voices that represented nine emotional states. Native speakers of the language were able to recognize the emotions with a high degree of accuracy (70%). People who did not speak the language were also to identify some of the emotions (40%) accuracy. Both groups were more accurate in identifying negative emotions (sadness or fear) than positive ones (interest or happiness).

A separate study is mentioned in which subjects were asked to identify the cues they used to tell when someone living within their household was having an emotion. Most people (97%) were able to identify two or more cues for most emotions, and some individuals listed as many as twelve cues for certain emotions. While the choices represented a mix of facial, verbal, and contextual cues, about two-thirds of cues listed were verbal.

The physiological theory of emotions considers them to be related to the body itself, though acknowledging that the mind processes somatic input, the physiologists consider this to be a secondary emotional reaction.

One study (Hohmann) investigated patients who had suffered spinal injury and lost all physical sensation in the lower half of their bodies. As expected, such individuals experienced a decrease in the intensity emotions related to sexuality, but also experienced diminution of the emotions of anger and fear.

A separate theory (Zajonc 1989) proposes that constriction of the muscles of the face also result in restriction of blood flow within certain parts of the brain. One experiment involved asking subjects to read aloud paragraphs that contained an unusually high number of long-U vowels (such as the u in "ususal"), which causes a contraction of muscles similar to frowning, and another asked subjects to hold a pen in their teeth to stimulate the muscles used in smiling. Both studies reported that subjects emotional states were biased to the facial expressions.

(EN: This seems rather silly, and in doing a bit of research I found that even Zajonc expressed doubts that emotions could be changed by facial expressions - though I expect the popular media had a field day with the findings of his experiments.)

Broader physical reactions are also related to emotions, such as the way in which the posture of two people who are speaking to one another. While there are cultural differences, postures such as leaning forward, making eye contact, mirroring or following gestures, and the like are signs of comfort and the opposite are signs of discomfort.

In one experiment, a scenario was filmed in a way that the faces of the actors could not be seen, and it was played without sound to subjects who were asked to guess the emotions of the characters. Recognition was 57% accurate among audiences who were members of the same culture as the actors and 52% among audiences who were members of a different culture.

However, it's also conceded that physical displays such as posture are even more heavily influenced by culture than facial expressions, and because there are fewer involuntary movements of bodily muscles, it is far more likely that our physical demonstrations of emotion are culturally modeled or trained.

Relations among Elicitors, Experience, Expressions, and Bodily Change

Most theories of emotion expect that there is consistency and idiosyncrasy in the elicitors and behaviors related to emotion: it is in the nature of science to attempt to mace statements of fact with an air of certainty. When X happens then Y results, assuming:

  1. Whenever X happens, Y will happen without fail
  2. When X does not happen, Y will not happen
  3. There is nothing other than X that will cause Y
  4. Nothing other than Y will result from X

Obviously, this is simplistic to the point of foolishness, as the world clearly does not work that way and scientific pronouncements fail because one of these four beliefs proves to be untrue.

The physiological school of theory is likely the most guilty of absolutism, as the physical reaction of the body and its tissues and organs to external stimuli can be readily observed: passing current through a muscle causes it to contract, a given chemical causes the tissues of the stomach lining to dissolve, exposure to intense heat causes the flesh to burn, striking the body in a certain place causes a muscular reflex. Instances in which the cause does not bring about the effect are so rare as to be dismissed as anomalous with relative safety.

The relation of emotion to bodily changes has been thoroughly researched and the results have been largely conclusive. There is little argument of evidence to the contrary that ...

But while certain emotions have physical symptoms, the emotion cannot be diagnosed from the symptoms because there is not a one-to-one correspondence. For example, decreased pulse and respiration (as compared to their rates when a person is unperturbed) are characteristic of both happiness and sadness as well as disgust, and increased skin temperature occurs due to anger, shame, and elation.

The physiological school of emotion has had some success in being more discriminating in its approach to analyzing physical symptoms of emotion - measuring the precise degree of change in bodily changes, but has thus far failed to produce a reliable diagnostic algorithm that will accurately identify emotion.

The effort has meanwhile led them in some bizarre directions, such as equivocating emotions based on physical symptoms - e.g., because the bodily changes of fear are so similar to those of elation, the two must be the very same emotion. This makes for entertaining cocktail-party conversation, but contributes little to scientific inquiry.

Research into the relationship between emotion and expression are clouded by experience: A person's reaction to a stimulus depends on their previous exposure to similar stimuli, and there is often a discrepancy between the emotion suggested by facial expression and the one reported by the subject.

An experiment was mentioned in which subjects viewed a film that was designed to be disgusting (surgical procedures and the like) and subjects reported feeling other emotions (chiefly, fear) even though their facial expressions registered disgust about 50% of the time. (EN: The results are likely tainted by self-reporting - when giving an account, the subject is relying on memory and may be confabulating to exaggerate or understate their actual reactions.)

Another set of experiments observed the facial expressions of bowlers, reckoning that satisfaction with a good throw or disappointment with a bad one would result in a corresponding emotional expression. (It's noted that the expression was observed when the bowler was facing the pins, as many of them demonstrated confidence when they turned away and faced their companions in the gallery.) However, there was no correspondence between expression and stimulus. On average, bowlers' expressions suggested satisfaction only 3.4% of the time, whereas their performance was good 22.4% of the time.

There are problems on both ends of the analysis. Presuming that a given stimulus will cause an emotion ignores the factor of personal experience, and the degree to which our emotional reactions are shaped not only by the stimulus, but by our previous experience: what disgusts one person might intrigue another. Presuming that a given emotion will cause certain physiological symptoms is also difficult to assess because emotions are communicative and cultural: people show their emotions in varying degrees and in varying ways, and the "universal" signs of emotion are often subdued even when they are present. Add to that the awkward relationship people have with their own emotions and their inability or reluctance to report their actual emotion, which is entirely speculative but entirely plausible. All of this causes the interpretation of emotion to be "one of the most confounding" subjects of scientific inquiry.

The authors return to the idea of emotions as communicative tools: from a very early age, they are used to communicate information to others with the intent of influencing the behavior of those to whom they are communicated. A display of anger or irritation is a warning to refrain from doing something, a display of happiness or approval is encouragement to do so. In that sense, the emotion is a goal-oriented behavior rather than an entirely somatic reflex.

A study done of Chinese infants demonstrate that they are more likely to smile at the sight of their mothers than at the sight of a toy. The infants were also more likely to smile, and to smile in a more exaggerated manner, when their mothers were showing interest in them rather than maintain a passive or disinterested emotion. This demonstrates that even before verbal language is learned, emotional language is used to communicate in a way that elicits a response in other people.

There's a brief mention of microexpressions, which last a fraction of a second before being replaced by a different expression - which his interpreted to be evidence of communicative intent contrary to physical reaction (a person wants to hide their fear or demonstrate approval for social reasons).

However, the same change is evident in nonsocial situations: observations of pilots flying in bad weather have shown that there are microexpressions of fear that are suppressed to retain control, and that an expression of fear, albeit mitigated, only remains when there have been a sequence of negative events over a period of time. In this instance the pilot is not facing another person, but their expressions demonstrate their effort to grapple with their own emotions.

There is a physiological basis to the impact of emotion over time, as corresponding to the release of hormones. In experiments involving hockey players, levels of adrenaline (associated to aggression) and epinephrine (associated to pain management) build over time, as a sequence of events triggers a sequence or hormonal releases that gradually increases their concentration in the bloodstream. Some specific details:

It's noted that different hormones are released in other emotional states, but not in as pronounced and specific a way as adrenaline and epinephrine are released in relation to anger and fear.

What Are Emotions, Really?

Traditionally, psychology has regarded emotions as a secondary matter, far less important than perception and thought. However, the authors are of the opinion that emotions are far more important, and are at the "very center of human mental life."

There is some mention of Antonio Damasio, whose approach to emotions are as a motivation (or demotivation) to action: we plan and act in a fairly haphazard manner because there is insufficient time to think through every possible outcome of every possible outcome. As such emotions form shortcuts that encourage us to consider some things and discourage us from considering others.

Emotions are, in effect, mental shortcuts that substitute for more protracted deliberation. They are likened to stored procedures in a computer system that react based on probability. They are cognitive, which is to say that they are created and can be modified or replaced.

They are also entirely fallible - as Western drama often depicts, people do what they feel to be right at the time, based on limited perception and their cognitive patterns - and only after action has been taken do they learn where they were wrong and have the opportunity (which is seldom taken) to correct our wiring for the future.

The net effect of emotions are influencing the planning process for any action - and as such the emotions are responsible for the tactics we choose and the outcomes we achieve as a result. That is to say that our individual actions and our entire lives are driven by our emotions.

Ultimately, this leads to the perspective that emotions are not the nemesis of reason, but the product of it. And further, thought and emotion are essentially the same thing, the latter being a convenient shortcut derived from the former prior to action, and which adjust it once action has been taken and the results recognized and evaluated.

Emotions, Moods, and Dispositions

The term "emotion" is used in a very broad sense, for a sensation that lasts but a second or another that lasts for many years. The authors separate this a bit:

In this context, and "emotional expression" is limited to the immediate reaction to a stimulus, and one of which the subject may be unaware. "Expression" is often used to conscious and deliberate signals used to communicate emotion that is not genuinely occurring in the subject (the social smile or a gesture to demonstrate empathy).

An "emotional episode" is also a genuine instance of emotion rather than one that is mimicked as a pretense to provoke a reaction in others. People are generally aware of their emotions, and can report what they were feeling at a given time. It's also implied that emotional episodes are involuntary - attempting to control an emotion is in effect a rational decision to choose a more deliberate response.

The term "mood" is more difficult to define because it lasts for hours, days, or weeks, often as a low-intensity sensation that is in the background. Whereas episodes and emotions have a readily identifiable cause, moods tend to be free floating - sometimes we can attribute our mood to a specific cause, sometimes we're simply 'in a mood" for no reason we can identify.

Whereas emotions prepare a subject to take action, a mood primes the subject to interpret stimuli. A person who is in a "sad mood" tends to become sullen and interpret stimuli accordingly. It can be said that a mood motivates us to react differently - i.e., a person in a sad mood is more likely to avoid social contact - but in an indirect manner: contact is avoided due to a feeling of awkwardness, and the reason the subject felt awkward was due to their sad mood.

Measurement of mood was extremely popular in the 1950s, driven by mass marketing's interest in the mood of shoppers, and the desire to tailor their approach to selling to accommodate the customer's mood. The influence of mood was already well recognized by laymen, as it is common in social situations to gauge an individual's mood before approaching them with a proposition of any kind. There was also at this time significant interest in mood-altering drugs, for a variety of purposes that ranged from occupational (using stimulants to make employees more productive), therapeutic (using drugs to counter the mood swings of manic or depressive patients), and recreational (using alcohol to place oneself in a more relaxed mood).

In the simplest sense, moods are characterized as "good" or "bad" with a specific objective in mind (a mood that supports performance at a task) or in a general sense of making a person inclined to experience positive or negative emotional reactions. Some efforts have been made to characterize moods more granularly, related to a proclivity to a given activity: a person may be in a chatty or contemplative mood.

It's also noted that when moods are in the background, subjects often do not notice them and need to be asked about their mood, at which point they become self-aware. There is some argument that the introspection caused by analyzing mood can itself be mood-altering.

The notion of a "personality" involves the characteristics that are typical of a subject for long periods of time - years, and perhaps their lifetime. It's at this point that people no longer consider a person to be "in an anxious mood" but to be "an anxious person" - which is to say, their moods are considered to be traits.

Personality traits generally have the same effect of mood - they do not cause a reaction, but prime a person to react in a given way

Moods and personalities interact with one another in determining the overall emotional state. That is to say that the idiosyncratic way in which a person reacts to a stimulus depends on both. Not only will a subject with a given personality react differently depending on his mood, but a subject with a different personality who is in the same mood will also react differently.

Emotional Disorders

As an aside, it's also mentioned that emotional disorders tend to fall into the category of moods and dispositions. The definition of "disorder" is a bit touchy, but generally is considered to be disorderly when it interferes with normal function.

That is, if a person goes about their ordinary life, it is a mood. If their emotional state obstructs them from doing so, it is a disorder. In a more specific sense, the American Psychiatric Association considers the following to be symptoms of a disorder if they occur daily and persist for more than two weeks:

(EN: This seems a bit too narrow for my liking. A definition I learned years ago involved either activity or negligence that caused harm to self or others as the criterion for a disorder, and I strongly suspect that loosening the definition to include things like feeling tired for a few weeks is likely mercenary in intent, to convince people to seek and pay for treatment when they are not really suffering from anything quite so serious as a disorder.)

The line between a mood disorder and a personality disorder is likewise hazy: it depends on the amount of time that the situation has persisted. Anything that has gone on for years is likely personality-related, a few weeks is mood-related, and between a few weeks and a year is in a grey zone.

Components or Basic Emotions

There is also a distinct possibility that emotional states are what researchers define them to be. That is, to get a grasp on emotion and all its complexity, researchers define specific emotional states such as "angry" or "happy" that may correspond to a range of actual emotions experienced by subjects.

One attempt to define emotions considers the various "components" of emotions - the way in which they influence behavior and the physiological changes that are evident. This is similar to the way in which linguists attempt to understand language by defining the meaning of individual words or word components while a living language seems to be fluid and adaptive - both in the respect that the definition attempts to prescribe the meaning of a word rather than describe it, and in the way that understanding words does not impart knowledge of language.

Ultimately, the debate over the definition of emotion is ongoing. The authors maintain some basic components of the way in which they understand emotions, and the way in which they hope the reader will understand them:

(EN: This goes on for a bit, and it seems like clutching at straws. My sense is that the authors convey their sense of what emotion is by the way in which they describe it in this book, and do not seem to be very adept at consolidating it into a single definition with much specificity. I'm entirely OK with that.)

JIM.SHAMLIN.COM
DISCLAIMERS · CONTACT