The Nature of Emotion: Fundamental Questions

The Editors of this unique volume asked some of the world's leading emotion researchers to address 14 fundamental questions about the nature and origins of emotion. Each chapter addresses one of these questions, with often divergent answers from the more than 100 experts represented here. At the end of each chapter, the Editors highlight key areas of agreement and disagreement. In the final chapter, they outline the most important challenges facing the field and the most fruitful avenues for future research. Not a textbook offering a single viewpoint, The Nature of Emotion reveals the central issues in emotion research and theory in the words of the leading scientists working in the field today, providing a unique and highly accessible guide for students, researchers, and clinicians.


About the Author
Dr. Fox is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and a Neuroscience and Behavior Core Scientist in the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis. His work as a translational affective neuroscientist aims to bridge basic neuroscientific findings to our understanding of human emotion.

Dr. Lapate is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published a number of articles in leading psychology and neuroscience journals on the neural bases of emotion regulation and on individual differences in affective style. Her work is currently supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Dr. Shackman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, a member of the executive board for the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) Program, a core faculty member of the Maryland Neuroimaging Center, and the Director of the Affective and Translational Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Maryland. He has published more than 50 articles and chapters focused on the neurobiology of emotion-related traits, states, and disorders and his work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Mental Health and Drug Abuse. He serves as an Associate or Consulting Editor at Emotion; Cognition and Emotion; Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience; and Personality Neuroscience.

Dr. Davidson's research is broadly focused on the neural bases of emotion and emotional style and methods to promote human flourishing including meditation and related contemplative practices. He has published over 375 articles, numerous chapters and reviews and edited 14 books. He was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2006. He is the author (with Sharon Begley) of The Emotional Life of Your Brain published in 2012. Acknowledgments

Contributors

Introduction

Preface to Paul Ekman's Essay
Richard J. Davidson

How emotions might work
Paul Ekman

Question 1. What is an emotion?

Emotions and feelings: William James and the present
Antonio Damasio & Hanna Damasio

Emotions are functional states that cause feelings and behavior
Ralph Adolphs

What is emotion? A natural science perspective
Peter J. Lang & Margaret M. Bradley

Affect is essential to emotion
Kent C. Berridge

Emotions: Causes and consequences
Gerald L. Clore

What are emotional states, and what are their functions?
Edmund T. Rolls

Active inference and emotion
Karl J. Friston, Mateus Joffily, Lisa Feldman Barrett & Anil K. Seth

Emotions are constructed with interoception and concepts within a predicting brain
Lisa Feldman Barrett

Afterword
Regina C. Lapate & Alexander J. Shackman

Question 2. How are emotions, mood and temperament related?

Distinguishing affective constructs: Structure, trait- vs. state-ness, and responses to affect
Kristin Naragon-Gainey

Inhibited temperament and intrinsic versus extrinsic influences on fear circuits
Jennifer Urbano Blackford & David H. Zald

Distinctions among moods and temperaments
Jerome Kagan

Distinctions between temperament and emotion: Examining reactivity, regulation, and social understanding
Lindsay C. Bowman & Nathan A. Fox

Afterword
Alexander J. Shackman, Regina C. Lapate & Andrew S. Fox

Question 3. What are the dimensions and bases for lasting individual differences in emotion?

Personality as lasting individual differences in emotions
Rebecca L. Shiner

The bases for preservation of emotional biases
Jerome Kagan

The psychological and neurobiological bases of dispositional negativity
Alexander J. Shackman, Melissa D. Stockbridge, Edward P. Lemay, Jr. & Andrew S. Fox

Reactivity, recovery, regulation: The three R's of emotional responding
Richard J. Davidson

Afterword
Alexander J. Shackman & Andrew S. Fox

Question 4. What is the added value of studying the brain for understanding emotion?

Studying the brain is necessary for understanding emotion
Tom Johnstone

Brain and emotion research: Contributions of patient and activation studies
Robert W. Levenson

Understanding emotion by unraveling complex structure-function mappings
Luiz Pessoa

Brain studies can advance psychological understanding
Kent C. Berridge

Afterword
Alexander J. Shackman & Regina C. Lapate

Question 5. How are emotions organized in the brain?

Discrete and dimensional contributions to emotion arise from multiple brain circuits
Ralph Adolphs

Brain limbic systems as flexible generators of emotion
Kent C. Berridge

At primal levels, via vast subcortical brain networks that mediate instinctual emotional reactions that help program higher-order emotional-cognitive abilities in higher regions of the brain and mind.
Jaak Panksepp

Brain architecture and principles of the organization of emotion in the brain
Luiz Pessoa

Variation and degeneracy in the brain basis of emotion.
Lisa Feldman Barrett

How are emotions organized in the brain?
Tor D. Wager, Anjali Krishnan & Emma Hitchcock

The brain is organized to emote
Andrew S. Fox

Neural circuit mechanisms for switching emotional tracks: From positive to negative and back again
Kay M. Tye

Afterword
Alexander J. Shackman & Andrew S. Fox

Question 6. When and in what ways are emotions adaptive and maladaptive?

The ambiguous issue of adaptive emotions
Jerome Kagan

Maladaptive emotions are inseparable from inaccurate appraisals
Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Emotions aren't maladaptive
Aaron S. Heller

Cultural neuroscience of emotion
Joan Y. Chiao

Positive emotions broaden and build: Consideration for how and when pleasant subjective experiences are adaptive and maladaptive
Barbara L. Fredrickson

The social nature of emotions: Context matters
Amy Lehrner & Rachel Yehuda

Afterword
Andrew S. Fox & Regina C. Lapate

Question 7. How are emotions regulated by context and cognition?

Emotion as an evolutionary adaptive pattern: The roles of context and cognition
D. Caroline Blanchard & Brandon L. Pearson

Individual differences in fear conditioning and extinction paradigms: Insights for emotion regulation
Marie-France Marin & Mohammed R. Milad

The role of context and cognition in the placebo effect
Lauren Y. Atlas

Emotional Intensity: It is the thought that counts
Gerald L. Clore & David A. Reinhard

Emotion regulation as a change of goals and priorities
Carien M. van Reekum & Tom Johnstone

Searching for implicit emotion regulation
Matthew D. Lieberman

Fighting fire with fire: Endogenous emotion generation as a means of emotion regulation
Haakon G. Engen & Tania Singer

Afterword
Alexander J. Shackman & Regina C. Lapate

Question 8. How do emotion and cognition interact?

The interplay of emotion and cognition
Hadas Okon-Singer, Daniel M. Stout, Melissa D. Stockbridge, Matthias Gamer, Andrew S. Fox & Alexander J. Shackman

The impact of affect depends on its object
Gerald L. Clore

Thoughts on cognition-emotion interactions and their role in the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathology
Keren Maoz and Yair Bar-Haim

Beyond cognition and emotion: Dispensing with a cherished psychological narrative
Alexandra Touroutoglou & Lisa Feldman Barrett

Can we advance our understanding of emotional behavior by reconceptualizing it as involving valuation?
Roshan Cools, Hanneke den Ouden, Verena Ly & Quentin Huys

Beyond the threat bias: Reciprocal links between emotion and cognition
Nick Berggren & Nazanin Derakshan

The cognitive-emotional brain
Luiz Pessoa

Emotional vs. rational systems, and decisions between them
Edmund T. Rolls

Afterword
Alexander J. Shackman & Regina C. Lapate

Question 9. How are emotions embodied in the social world?

Connections between emotions and the social world: Numerous and complex
Nancy Eisenberg & Maciel M. Hernández

Effects of emotion on interpersonal behavior: A motivational perspective
Edward P. Lemay, Jr.

Emotion in the social world
Carolyn Parkinson

The affective nature of social interactions
Dominic S. Fareri & Mauricio R. Delgado

On the significance of implicit emotional communication
Andrew S. Fox

Deconstructing social emotions: Empathy and compassion and their relation to prosocial behavior
Haakon G. Engen & Tania Singer

Afterword
Andrew S. Fox & Alexander J. Shackman

Question 10. How and why are emotions communicated?

Form of facial expression communication originates in sensory function
Daniel H. Lee & Adam K. Anderson

Expression of emotion: New principles for future inquiry
Dacher Keltner, Daniel T. Cordaro, Jessica Tracy, & Disa Sauter

The (more or less accurate) communication of emotions serves social problem solving
Ursula Hess

Making sense of the senses in emotion communication
Wen Li, Lucas R. Novak, & Yuqi You

Movement and manipulation: the how and why of emotion communication
Lasana T. Harris

Concepts are key to the "communication" of emotion
Maria Gendron & Lisa Feldman Barrett

The web of emotion understanding in human infants
Betty M. Repacholi and Andrew N. Meltzoff

The dynamic-interactive model approach to the perception of facial emotion
Jonathan B. Freeman

Afterword
Regina C. Lapate & Andrew S. Fox

Question 11. How are emotions physically embodied?

How and why emotions are embodied
Adrienne Wood, Jared Martin & Paula Niedenthal

Emotion in body and brain: Context-dependent action and reaction
Margaret M. Bradley & Peter J. Lang

The importance of the mind for understanding how emotions are embodied
Naomi I. Eisenberger

How are emotions physically embodied?
Rosalind W. Picard

Pain as an embodied emotion
Tim V. Salomons

How are emotions organized and physically embodied?
Bruce S. McEwen

The complex tapestry of emotion: immune and microbial contributions
Melissa A. Rosenkranz

Afterword
Andrew S. Fox & Alexander J. Shackman

Question 12. What is the role of conscious awareness in emotion?

Emotions are more than their subjective feelings
Kent C. Berridge

Reactive emotional processing in the absence of conscious awareness
Joshua M. Carlson

What is the role of unconscious emotions and of conscious awareness in emotion?
Beatrice de Gelder and Marco Tamietto

Self-regulating our emotional states when we are conscious of them and when we are not
Leanne Williams

Regulatory benefits of conscious awareness: Insights from the emotion misattribution paradigm and a role for lateral prefrontal cortex
Regina C. Lapate

Afterword
Regina C. Lapate & Andrew S. Fox

Question 13. How are emotions integrated into choice?

How can affect influence choice?
Brian Knutson & Mirre Stallen

Emotions through the lens of economic theory
Agnieszka Tymula & Paul Glimcher

Emotions as computational signals of goal error
Luke J. Chang & Eshin Jolly

Affect is the foundation of value
Catherine Hartley & Peter Sokol-Hessner

Emotion, value, and choice
Jolie Wormwood & Lisa Feldman Barrett

Emotions can bias decision-making processes by promoting specific behavioral tendencies
Jan B. Engelmann & Todd A. Hare

Emotions are important for advantageous decision-making: A neuropsychological perspective
Justin Reber & Daniel Tranel

From emotion to motion: Making choices based on current states and biological needs
Elisabeth A. Murray

Afterword
Andrew S. Fox & Regina C. Lapate

Question 14. What develops in emotional development?

The recognition of emotion during the first years of life
Julia Cataldo & Charles A. Nelson

Everything develops during emotional development
Hill H. Goldsmith

Stability and change in emotion-relevant personality traits in childhood and adolescence
Rebecca L. Shiner

Normative trajectories and sources of psychopathology risk in adolescence
Leah H. Somerville & Katie A. McLaughlin

What happens in emotional development? Adolescent emotionality
Eveline A. Crone & Jennifer H. Pfeifer

Goals change with age and benefit emotional experience
Candice Hogan, Tamara Sims & Laura L. Carstensen

Ideal ends in emotional development
Carol D. Ryff

Afterword
Regina C. Lapate & Alexander J. Shackman

Epilogue-The nature of emotion: A research agenda for the 21st century

Andrew S. Fox, Regina C. Lapate, Richard J. Davidson & Alexander J. Shackman

References

Index