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Emotions and Affect Theory

This Reddit reply from r/AcademicPsychology had a very good summary academic study of emotion, with basic emotion vs constructed theory of emotion (Barret):

Emotions vs. Constructionism

First, a good intro to Basic Emotions vs. Constructionism in the words of the heavy hitters, Ekman and Feldman Barrett:

  • Ekman, P. (1992). An argument for basic emotions. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 169-200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699939208411068
  • Barrett, L. F., & Russell, J. A. (2015). An introduction to psychological construction. The psychological construction of emotion, 1-17.

Constructionism

Constructionism is heavily built on neural evidence, so it's important to get a good idea of that work:

  • Barrett, L.F. (2017). The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 1-23. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsw154
  • Panksepp, J. (2007). Neurologizing the psychology of affects: How appraisal-based constructivism and basic emotion theory can coexist. Perspectives on psychological science, 2(3), 281-296.

The way we measure emotions

A big reason for the continued debate between Basic vs. Constructed emotions is the way we measure emotions. Ultimately we still don't have a shared definition of what an emotion even is! Thus it's really important to understand how theoretical differences have consequences for what evidence we collect:

  • Barrett, L. F., & Westlin, C. (2021). Navigating the science of emotion. In H. L. Meiselman (Ed.), Emotion measurement (2nd ed., pp. 39–84). https://doi-org.ccl.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-821124-3.00002-8
  • Mauss, I.B. & Robinson, M.D. (2009). Measures of emotion: A review. Cognition & Emotion, 23(2), 209-237.

Other theories

And Basic Emotions vs. Constructionism aren't the only big theories out there. They differ in many ways, from the universality of emotions to emotions as discrete vs. dimensional constructs, and other theorists fall in between or agree with some arguments of one but not all. Some other influential emotion theories:

  • Core Affect Theory: Russell, J.A. (2003). Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. Psychological Review, 110(1), 145-172. DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.145
  • Scherer, K.R. (2009). The dynamic architecture of emotion: Evidence for the component process model. Cognition & Emotion, 23(7), 1307-1351. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930902928969
  • Cowen, A.S. & Keltner, D. (2021). Semantic space theory: A computational approach to emotion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(2), 124-136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.11.004

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And a similar Reddit thread contained this breakdown:

  • Categorical theories of emotion: Ekman, Panksepp
  • Dimensional theories of emotions: Russell & Bullock (1985), Cacioppo & Barrett (1999), Thayer’s model (1989; Shimmack & Grob, 2000)
  • Appraisal (cognitive) theories of emotion: Marinier, Laird and Lewis (2009).
  • Constructionist theories of emotion: Constructed theory of emotions, Barret which came from Conceptual Act Theory.