Emotion theory is about more than affect and cognition: Taking triggers and actions into account

Understanding how emotions emerge is difficult without determining what characteristic of the trigger actually triggers them. Knowing whether emotional experiences self-stabilize is difficult without remembering what other processes are set in play as the emotion emerges. It is not clear either that positive feedback is required for the emergence of emotion or that an attractor model captures well what is happening when an emotion arises. Lewis introduces the target article as an effort to create a bridge between emotion theory and neuroscience. The bridge is narrower than the introduction implies, however. The target article is concerned with the processes by which emotions, once triggered, emerge as full experiences, via emotional influence on cognition and cognitive influence on emotions. The article focuses less on facets of the puzzle that interest me most, however: the intrinsic meaning of emotions and their functional (action-related) properties (Carver 2001; 2004; Carver & Scheier 1998). I care particularly about two elements the target article downplays. The first is the properties of the trigger – the event evaluated (appraised) as being important to the self. The second is the behavioral function of the emotion. The target article says little about either of these. In my view the analysis thereby loses some of its potency, because the largest share of the functionality of emotions is left out of the discussion. What triggers emotional experiences? The target article is remarkably abstruse on this key question (sect. 3.3.1). My answer would be that emotional experiences are triggered by events that facilitate or impede either the attainment of a desired condition or the avoidance of an undesired condition. I have characterized facilitating and impeding in terms of rates of progress (Carver & Scheier 1998), though there are other ways to conceptualize them (e.g., moving in the desired direction versus its opposite). A looming object means an approaching impact (undesired). A slow driver willfully obstructing your way means violation of your entitled (desired) place in the world (positive affects are disregarded in this commentary, but see Carver 2003). I believe emotions begin in the (subcortical) registering of such changes. This is where Lewis picks up the story. Lewis presents a dynamic model of the emotional episode (the rising of emotion from trigger to complete experience), in which positive feedback transforms a minimal reaction into a larger one, and negative feedback then limits the reaction’s growth, stabilizing it at a level representing an attractor for that emotional state. I consider the two phases of this depiction in turn. The idea that initial affect biases subsequent perceptual processing, yielding intensification of the affect (a positive feedback cycle), would creatively account for what brings the affect noticeably off baseline. There is another way to look at this flow of events, however. The event Lewis uses as his example – Mr. Smart’s suddenly noticing a slow-moving car in front of him – is sufficiently abrupt in registering that it takes time for the various responses that constitute the emotional reaction to catch up with the perception (it is not just an obstacle but a suddenly appearing one). Further, if affect depends on time (as I believe it does; Carver & Scheier 1998), a 5-second impediment is a smaller provocation to Mr. Smart than a 5-minute impediment. Thus, even without biased information search and confirmation, the mere passing of time creates a steady increase in the trigger’s potency, by increasing the extent of the perturbation. Although positive feedback may occur, it is not needed to account for an increase in emotion from baseline. The second step in Lewis’s analysis is that the emotional experience then stabilizes. Does it? Intuition suggests that people whose entitlement was violated can stay in a state of anger for an extended period if nothing changes the situation. Even when put aside, the anger can be re-evoked fairly readily by a reminder of the event. Moreover, the intensity of the anger seems roughly constant (again, absent situational changes), fitting the level of the perceived violation and extent of entitlement. These intuitions are consistent with an attractor model wherein the person bounces quickly to a level of anger and stays there. But this view leaves several disconcerting questions dangling. Why would stabilizing feedback arise to keep the emotional reaction stable? Further, if the emotion is then in an attractor, why should it change? The target article leaves Mr. Smart stewing in anger. In reality, that is not how such an episode typically ends. It often ends with Mr. Smart acting to reassert his violated sense of entitlement (road rage sometimes leads to violence). Alternatively, he may do something to symbolically reinstate his entitlement (cut someone else off in traffic later, yell at his wife). Another possibility (cognitive, rather than behavioral) is that Mr. Smart can remind himself that he is a particularly saintly person who endures travail with equanimity. Yet another possibility is that he may decide his entitlements are doomed to failure (cf. Carver 2004). In all except the last denouement, Mr. Smart acts to change the situation so that his goals are being better met. He reinstates his entitled position, or he diminishes its relevance to core values he is embodying. Only in the last case does that not happen. The last case entails giving up, anger changing to depression, disengagement from the goal (Carver & Scheier 1998; Klinger 1975; Nesse 2000). In all the other cases, though, Mr. Smart moves himself toward a desired goal, and in so doing he reduces the negative emotion. Return, then, to the question of how self-amplification might give way to self-stabilization. I believe the answer lies in the evoking of action aimed at removing the trigger. This point brings me Commentary/Lewis: Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling 198 BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2005) 28:2 back to my second emotion-theory interest: the behavioral (and eventually affective) consequences of emotion. Behavioral consequences address the emotion’s source (removing the obstruction, or reorganizing one’s goal system to diminish its importance). When these behaviors are successful, the emotion diminishes (thus, the behavioral consequences have emotional consequences). Toward the end of section 3.3.3, Lewis brings up the possibility that functions pertaining to action play some role in stabilization. That seems far too little too late, however. Functions related to action are critical here. Indeed, this view leads to skepticism that self-stabilization actually occurs. If affect emerges with registration of the violation, action tendencies emerge simultaneously to counter the violation (a point Lewis makes in the neuroscience part of the article, sect. 5.1). When those action tendencies yield perceived results, the anger diminishes. What appears to be stabilization may actually be the affect-countering effect of the actions (see Figure 1). Because the action often requires time to be fully effective, the emotion may cease to rise, yet fail to display immediate reduction, creating the illusion that stabilizing forces are acting to maintain it at that level. In this case, however, two directional forces are at work (one pushing emotion higher, the other dampening it) rather than a stabilizing force. To interpret this situation as a negative feedback loop maintaining the emotion at that level seems very misleading. A final note: I am among those inclined to ignore the assumption that appraisal and emotion are distinct functions. How can appraising an event as having adverse implications for the self not imply negative affect? How can negative affect exist apart from registering (at some level, not necessarily conscious) that an event has adverse implications for the self? These seem two sides of the same coin. I do not think abandoning the distinction renders emotion just another class of cognition, however. Valence, which is intrinsic to emotion, renders this class of experience distinctly different from others. Emotions differ from cognitions in other ways, too. The term emotion connotes physiological changes preparing the body to act. These changes are part of registering that the event has an adverse implication for the self, because adverse implications prompt behavioral responses. Such changes are not part of registering that an event constitutes a tree. This also makes emotions different from other experiences called cognition.