The current article discusses the distinction between affective valence—the degree to which an affective response represents pleasure or displeasure—and semantic valence, the degree to which an object or event is considered positive or negative. To date, measures that reflect positivity and negativity are usually placed under the same conceptual umbrella, with minimal distinction between the modes of valence they reflect. Recent work suggests that what might seem to reflect a monolithic structure of valence has at least two different, confounding underlying (...) sources, affective and semantic, that are fundamentally distinct, dissociable, and that obey different, recognizable rules. The current work discusses this distinction and provides implications for affective science from both the theoretical and the empirical perspective. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople sometimes report both pleasant and unpleasant feelings when presented with affective stimuli. However, what is reported as “mixed emotions” might reflect semantic knowledge about the...

This paper proposes and develops the feelings of goals hypothesis (FGH). It has two aims: first, to describe the evolutionary function of emotional feelings (EFs), and second, to describe the content and the format of EFs. According to FGH, the evolutionary function of EFs is to enable motoric flexibility. Specifically, EFs are a component of a psychological mechanism that permits differential motoric reactions to the same stimulus. Further, according to FGH, EF is a special type of mental representation with the (...) content of an action goal, and with a non-motoric, non-conceptual format. This paper thoroughly clarifies the assumptions underlying FGH and discusses its theoretical implications and empirical predictions. (shrink)

This article examines whether a functionalist approach to emotion classification is a research program that can feasibly be implemented in an experimental environment. I suggest that this is a promise perhaps impossible to keep. The crux of the argument is that if functional taxonomy is to go the full distance and shape experimental conditions to the new boundaries, then stimuli/experimental manipulations must be selected based on functional principles. But this seems implausible or even impossible. I conclude that emotion taxonomy, and (...) thus the metastructure of emotion theory, is both constrained and determined by human emotional feelings, and suggest that feelings have a special epistemological status in emotion research. (shrink)