The Cognitive Structure of Emotions - Softcover

Ortony, Andrew; Clore, Gerald L.; Collins, Allan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521386640 ISBN 13: 9780521386647

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1990

Synopsis

What causes us to experience emotions? What makes emotions vary in intensity? How are different emotions related to one another and to the language used to talk about them? What are the information processing mechanisms and structures that underlie the elicitation and intensification of emotions? Despite an abundance of psychological research on emotions, many fundamental questions like these have yet to be answered. The Cognitive Structure of Emotions addresses such questions by presenting a systematic and detailed account of the cognitive antecedents of emotions. The authors propose three aspects of the world to which people can react emotionally. People can react to events of concern to them, to the actions of those they consider responsible for such events, and to objects. It is argued that these three classes of reactions lead to three classes of emotions, each based on evaluations in terms of different kinds of knowledge representations. The authors characterize a wide range of emotions, offering concrete proposals about the factors that influence the intensity of each. In doing so, they forge a clear separation between emotions themselves and the language of emotion, and offer the first systematic, comprehensive, and computationally tractable account of the cognitions that underlie distinct types of human emotions.

About this title

Book Description

Three aspects of the world to which people can react (events, actions of agents and objects) are used to characterize a wide range of emotions and reveal the cognitions that underlie distinct types of human emotion.

From the Back Cover

"The Cognitive Structure of Emotions"--the first systematic, comprehensive, and computationally tractable account of the cognitions that underlie a broad spectrum of human emotions--will interest a wide audience in cognitive, clinical, and social psychology, as well as in artificial intelligence and other cognitive science disciplines.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521386640
• ISBN 13: 9780521386647
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224