Feelings
and Emotions offers a pleasing snapshot of current scientific thinking and
research on emotions. It accurately depicts the contemporary status of feelings
in psychological research by largely downplaying them. Feelings, to most
theorists, are the "tip of the iceberg" (e.g. Scherer, p.139): a
minor facet, passive component or even a distraction in emotion theory. There
are indications, however, that the study of feelings may soon make a resurgence
from an unlikely quarter: neuroscience. There are also hints that previously
fundamentalist positions on the notorious cognition-emotion debate are
converging at last. These are the subtle trends, more implied than declared,
that help to distinguish Feelings and Emotions from similar anthologies.

For many
people, feelings are the sine qua non of emotions. Yet in the emotion
renaissance of the last thirty years or so, feelings have largely escaped
attention, apart from a few scoffs about their confounding subjectivity, or
occasional laments about their perpetual neglect.

This
book scarcely redresses the balance. One gets the distinct feeling that
feelings are still being left out. To illustrate, the description of the book’s
contents on the cover mentions emotions six times but says nothing about
feelings. In the closing summary, discussion of emotions dominates discussion
of feelings by a ratio of about 10:1, and the editors confess that "most
of the work relevant to this issue was not featured in our symposium". So
why mention feelings in the title, then?

The
editors proudly align this book with a tradition of previous publications of
the same name–dating from 1928, 1950 and 1970. In 1928, emotion research was
just beginning to emerge from its prescientific era and feelings had much more
theoretical currency. Since then, under increasing demands for scientific respectability,
greater emphasis was placed on objective measures at the expense of subjective
states. This book is partly a product of that objectivist legacy.

The
majority of the contributors are well known figures in emotion theory, and here
they are mostly peddling their customary fare with only token deference to the
first word in the title. Most of the contributions ignore or sideline
phenomenological issues, reflecting the traditional preoccupation with
observable events or cognitive states. Appraisals, action tendencies, facial
expressions, cultural norms and biological roles dominate the discussions.

So where
have all the feelings gone? Are they too subjective for sober scientific study?
Not any more, it seems. The phenomenological nettle has been grasped with
considerable zeal by neuroscientists. Joel Winston & Raymond Dolan report
on functional imaging studies of the brain showing which neural areas are
responsible for the perception of autonomic activity and its conscious
representation. You can now see feelings on a monitor, it seems. After all,
what more can there be to feelings than feeling what is happening in the body?

The
neurologist Antonio Damasio, author of The Feeling of What Happens,
offers a sophisticated and ecumenical answer. Addressing the distinction
between feelings and emotions most clearly and directly, he accepts a potential
role for appraisals and thoughts in coloring the feeling experience. Critics
who attack him for holding a simplistic Jamesian conception would do well to
take note.

Importantly,
Damasio departs from some other neuroscientists by prioritizing the functional
role of feelings in cognition. Providing a rich classification scheme for
different varieties of feelings and emotions, he argues that feelings offer us
valuable input to the reasoning process, allowing us to draw on our well-honed
evolutionary instincts to guide our decisions and actions.

Jaak Panksepp
also recognizes the importance of feelings, and discusses how self-report and
arousal relate to his work on the brain substrates of affect modules.

Thankfully,
there is little evidence of the customary bickering about the essence of
emotion. Disparities remain, though, particularly on the notorious Zajonc-Lazarus
debate about the autonomy of affect and cognition. Zajonc offers further
empirical data in favor of a functional separation, and in the same vein Öhman
& Wiens marshal an array of studies to challenge standard appraisal
theories. Scherer, however, champions appraisal theory as the only robust and
comprehensive theory in town. This dissonance is a symptom of the continuing
polarity in emotion studies, but thankfully these disputes have lost their
bitter edge and the critical tone is more sympathetic.

In a
summary of his position in Not Passion’s Slaves, Solomon sounds a
cautionary note that we have more control over our emotions than some
biologists might lead us to believe. We cannot disclaim responsibility for our
own emotions. We are, to a degree at least, responsible for understanding and
changing our dispositions and for choosing which emotive situations to promote
or avoid. This echo of Aristotelian wisdom is a retreat from his previous
radical existentialism, but still serves as a useful antidote to the lack of
agency in deterministic science.

Richard Schweder
draws on cross-cultural studies to argue that emotions are complex and
arbitrary concepts, and cannot be treated as cultural universals. He suggests
feelings and the other components should be regarded as fundamentals for the
purposes of research.

Berridge
addresses the difference between pleasure and wanting and examines the function
of the nucleus accumbens, the well-known dopaminergic "pleasure
center".

Other
notable offerings from Frijda, Ekman and others make this book worth more than
a casual browse. Some of the debates require a previous acquaintance with the
material, and might be quite challenging for a general readership.

The
latter portion of the book contains a spread of more specialized papers,
dealing with positive affect, culture, animal empathy and social transactions.
There are advantages to an interdisciplinary mix, but this assemblage of
disparate interests somewhat disrupts the thematic focus of the book.

Professionals
and graduates should be pleased with the contents of this resource, though it
can be a little disorienting to read sequentially.

Contents

1:  Introduction. Antony
S. R. Manstead, Nico H. Frijda and Agneta H. Fischer. (pp.1-4).

 

PART I. THE NATURE OF
FEELINGS AND EMOTION

2:  On the Passivity
of the Passions. Robert C. Solomon. (pp.11-29).

3:  Emotions and
Rationality. Jon Elster. (pp.30-48).

4:  Emotions and
Feelings: A Neurobiological Perspective. Antonio R. Damasio. (pp.49-57).

5:  The Concept of an
Evolved Fear Module and Cognitive Theories of Anxiety. Arne Ohman and
Stefan Wiens. (pp.58-80).

6:  Deconstructing the
Emotions for the Sake of Comparative Research. Richard A. Shweder. (pp.81-97).

7:  From the Emotions
of Conversation to the Passions of Fiction. Keith Oatley. (pp.98-115).

 

PART II. BASIC
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS

8:  What We Become
Emotional About. Paul Ekman. (pp.119-135).

9:  Feelings Integrate
the Central Representation of Appraisal-driven Response Organization in Emotion.
Klaus R. Scherer. (pp.136-157).

10:  Emotions and
Action. Nico H. Frijda. (pp.158-173).

11:  Basic Affects and
the Instinctual Emotional Sustems of the Brain: The Primordial Sources of
Sadness, Joy, and Seeking. Jaak Panksepp. (pp.174-193).

12:  Exposure Effects:
An Unmediated Phenomenon. Robert B. Zajonc. (pp.194-203).

13:  Feeling States in
Emotion: Functional Imaging Evidence. Joel S. Winston and Raymond J. Dolan.
(pp.204-220).

 

PART III. FEELINGS AND
EMOTIONS: THE PLACE OF PLEASURE

14:  The Affect
System: What Lurks below the Surface of Feelings? John T. Cacioppo, Jeff T.
Larsen, N. Kyle Smith and Gary G. Bernston. (pp.223-242).

15:  Pleasure, Unfelt
Affect, and Irrational Desire. Kent C. Berridge. (pp.243-262).

16:  Some Perspectives
on Positive Feelings and Emotions: Positive Affect Facilitates Thinking and
Problem Solving. Alice M. Isen. (pp.263-281).

17:  Pleasure,
Utility, and Choice. Barbara A. Mellers. (pp.282-300).

 

PART IV. FEELINGS AND
EMOTIONS IN THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT

18:  The Development
of Individual Differences in Understanding Emotion and Mind: Antecedents and Sequelae.
Judy Dunn. (pp.303-320).

19:  Emotional
Intelligence: What Do We Know? Peter Salovey, Marja Kokkonen, Paulo N.
Lopes and John D. Mayer. (pp.321-340).

20:  Culture and
Emotion: Models of Agency as Sources of Cultural Variation in Emotion. Batja
Mesquita and Hazel Rose Markus. (pp.341-358).

21:  Emotion norms,
Emotion Work, and Social Order. Peggy A. Thoits. (pp.359-378).

 

PART V. FEELINGS,
EMOTIONS, AND MORALITY

22:  On the
Possibility of Animal Empathy. Frans B. M. de Waal. (pp.381-401).

23:  Emotional Gifts
and "You First" Micropolitics: Niceness in the Socioemotional Economy.
Candice Clark. (pp.402-421).

24:  Introducing Moral
Emotions into Models of Rational Choice. Robert H. Frank. (pp.422-440).

25:  Virtue and
Emotional Demeanor. Nancy Sherman. (pp.441-454).

26:  Epilogue:
Feelings and Emotions €“ Where Do We Stand? Nico H. Frijda, Antony S. R. Manstead
and Agneta H. Fischer. (pp.455-467).

 

© 2004 Sam Brown

 

Sam
Brown is currently completing a PhD on the cognitive science of emotion. He has
an MA in Philosophy and an MPhil in Cognitive Science.

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology