Solving the Emotion Paradox
Categorization and the Experience of Emotion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23315609 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lisa Feldman Barrett (0000-0003-4478-2051, Boston College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 20-46 |
| Publication date | 2006-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Personality and Social Psychology Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1532-7957 • E-ISSN: 1088-8683 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1207/s15327957pspr1001_2 |
| PMID | 16430327 |
| OpenAlex | W2110957653 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 315 |
| References cited | 153 |
In this article, I introduce an emotion paradox: People believe that they know an emotion when they see it, and as a consequence assume that emotions are discrete events that can be recognized with some degree of accuracy, but scientists have yet to produce a set of clear and consistent criteria for indicating when an emotion is present and when it is not. I propose one solution to this paradox: People experience an emotion when they conceptualize an instance of affective feeling. In this view, the experience of emotion is an act of categorization, guided by embodied knowledge about emotion. The result is a model of emotion experience that has much in common with the social psychological literature on person perception and with literature on embodied conceptual knowledge as it has recently been applied to social psychology.
Affective science · Categorization · Cognitive psychology · Embodied cognition · Emotion classification · Emotion Perception · Emotion work · Epistemology · Feeling · Perception · Set (abstract data type) · Social perception · Two-factor theory of emotion · Computer Science · Cultural Differences and Values · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment · Social Psychology
Proposing a Role for Maternal Positive Empathy in the Caregiving Relationship
Maternal Emotions at Work
They Not Like Us
Wither Biological Sex? The Gender Takeover
Full Issue PDF of Vol. 6(1)
Cognitive and Behavioral Variations within the Collectivistic Cultural Sphere
No emotion is an island
Malay Traditional Games Are Never a Loss
The Differences Between Individuals Engaging in Nonsuicidal Self-Injury and Suicide Attempt Are Complex (vs. Complicated or Simple)
Affective Responses to Self-Defining Autobiographical Events
Do people essentialize emotions? Individual differences in emotion essentialism and emotional experience
Rethinking butterflies
Emotion words
Charting the development of emotion comprehension and abstraction from childhood to adulthood using observer-rated and linguistic measures
Emotion word production tasks grant insight into the development of emotion word organization and accessibility
Constructing bias
Beyond essentialism
Toward a phenomenology of feelings
Emotions and concerns
Words are a context for mental inference
Hot-headed” is more than an expression
Emodiversity and biomarkers of inflammation
Does counting emotion words on online social networks provide a window into people’s subjective experience of emotion? A case study on Facebook
Feeling hangry? When hunger is conceptualized as emotion
Conflict adaptation in emotional task underlies the amplification of target
The functional organization of preschool-age children’s emotion expressions and actions in challenging situations
Generalizing Duchenne to sad expressions with binocular rivalry and perception ratings
Conceptualizing and experiencing compassion
Affective calculus
Emotion perception, but not affect perception, is impaired with semantic memory loss
Valence focus and self-esteem lability
Multivariate pattern classification reveals autonomic and experiential representations of discrete emotions
Detecting and categorizing fleeting emotions in faces
Interoceptive beliefs moderate the link between physiological and emotional arousal during an acute stressor
Heterogeneity in affective complexity among men and women
Emotions are real
Implicit theories about interrelations of anger components in 25 countries
The representation of emotional experience from imagined scenarios
Emotion-color associations in the context of the face
Reading chimpanzee faces
Individual differences in negative affect repair
An investigation of the neural basis of anger attributions in irritable youth
Speaking to the trained ear
Human anterior and posterior hippocampus respond distinctly to state and trait anxiety
Emotion words shape emotion percepts
The Structure of Estonian Concepts of Emotion
Banned Emotions
The model of the brain as a complex system
Examining the relationship between emotion variability, self-regulated learning, and task performance in an intelligent tutoring system
Diferenciação emocional e regulação emocional em adultos portugueses
El estudio experimental de los conceptos de emoción
Ketupat Palas Sebagai Satu Warisan Tradisi Melayu
O que é emoção? Em busca da organização estrutural do conceito de emoção em crianças
Are visual threats prioritized without awareness? A critical review and meta-analysis involving 3 behavioral paradigms and 2696 observers
The relation between valence and arousal in subjective experience
The hundred-year emotion war
Anger is an approach-related affect
Core Affect and Natural Affective Kinds
Emotion without a word
Social appraisal influences recognition of emotions
Self-focused attention and emotional reactivity
Why group apologies succeed and fail
Experiences and interpersonal consequences of hurt feelings and anger
Unconscious vigilance
Children’s perception of facial expressions
The developing brain as historical artifact
Fear in infancy
Context reconsidered
Changes in emotional granularity under a population‐level stressor predict social anxiety and depressive symptoms
The roles of emotional responding and regulation in adolescent friendship stability
Love, Jealousy, and Compersion
Emotions in Late Modernity
Hatred
Dimensional Approaches to the Structure of Affect
Emotion and Expression
Emotions, Psychological Structure of
Emotion in Cognition
Culture and Emotion
Envy, Poison, and Death
Discourse and identity formation
Cultural Linguistics
Emotional responses to music
The role of language in emotion
Interoceptive predictions in the brain
Affect is a form of cognition
Unpacking Emotion Differentiation
The Experience of Emotion
The Conceptual Act Theory
Variety is the spice of life
Rethinking the Emotional Brain
Emotion Generation and Emotion Regulation
The theory of constructed emotion
Gender and depression in men.
Language as context for the perception of emotion
Appraisal Theory
Sharing Tourism Experiences
Why Do People Regulate Their Emotions? A Taxonomy of Motives in Emotion Regulation
Chapter 4 Affect as a Psychological Primitive
See it with feeling
A practice theory of emotion for International Relations
Mathematical thinking in the social sciences.
Affective Neuroscience
The principles of psychology.
Human Emotions
Emotion And Adaptation
The Cognitive Structure of Emotions
Language in Mind
Dual-Process Models in Social and Cognitive Psychology
Subcortical and cortical brain activity during the feeling of self-generated emotions
A Constructivist View of Emotion
Identification and inferential processes in dispositional attribution.
Four systems for emotion activation
What's basic about basic emotions?
Social Functions of Emotions at Four Levels of Analysis
Looking at pictures
How shall a thing be called?
A General Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion
Functional Neuroanatomy of Emotion
Fear, Vigilance, and Ambiguity
The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale
Social Embodiment
Re-representing consciousness
The Relationship of Emotion to Cognition
Knowing what you're feeling and knowing what to do about it
Grounding conceptual knowledge in modality-specific systems
Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex.
Color categories are not universal
Ii.—what Is an Emotion ?
Masked Presentations of Emotional Facial Expressions Modulate Amygdala Activity without Explicit Knowledge
Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion
The amygdala
Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience
Appraisal determinants of discrete emotions
Color realism and color science
Socially Situated Cognition
Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion
Stress
Are Emotions Natural Kinds?
Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior
Autonomic Nervous System Activity Distinguishes Among Emotions
Discrete Emotions or Dimensions? The Role of Valence Focus and Arousal Focus
Somatotopic Representation of Action Words in Human Motor and Premotor Cortex
Voluntary Facial Action Generates Emotion‐Specific Autonomic Nervous System Activity
Concept of emotion viewed from a prototype perspective.
A cognitive-affective system theory of personality
Stress, appraisal, and coping
Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion.
Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state.
Perceptual symbol systems
Language, Thought, and Reality
The Social construction of emotions
Situating Abstract Concepts
Forming impressions from stereotypes, traits, and behaviors
Situated simulation in the human conceptual system
What do people think they're doing? Action identification and human behavior
Core knowledge
Sound on the rebound
Convergences and challenges in the search for consistency
Valence Focus and the Perception of Facial Affect
A functional MRI study of human amygdala responses to facial expressions of fear versus anger
Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? A review of the cross-cultural studies
Cognitive and physiological antecedents of threat and challenge appraisal
Automaticity of social behavior
Effects of emotion concepts on perceptual memory for emotional expressions
Valence focus and arousal focus
Perceptual and inferential determinants of behavior-correspondent attributions
The perceptual organization of ongoing behavior
Attributions in the sports pages
Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1969
On the whys and wherefores of E, P, and A
Do facial expressions signal specific emotions? Judging emotion from the face in context
Affect Grid
Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion
What more is there to emotion concepts than prototypes
Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span
On the self-serving function of social anxiety
Independence and bipolarity in the structure of current affect
Subjective, physiological, and behavioral effects of threat and challenge appraisal
Feelings or Words? Understanding the Content in Self-Report Ratings of Experienced Emotion
Structure of self-reported current affect
Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion
Attribution and the unit of perception of ongoing behavior
Interoceptive Sensitivity and Self-Reports of Emotional Experience
Automatic activation of impression formation and memorization goals
A circumplex model of affect
The Structure of Current Affect
Emotion
Talking about emotions
Basic emotions, rationality, and folk theory
An argument for basic emotions
The language of emotions
Social Cognition
The Repertoire of Nonverbal Behavior
Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity and Dual-Process Theories of the Mind
Culture and the categorization of emotions
Beyond behaviorism
Turkish color terms
| Unique citing works | 315 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 15,75 |
| Citation span | 2006 - 2026 (21) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 247 |