The Cognitive Structure of Emotions

A psychologically convincing and computationally tractable linking of emotions to their underlying cognitions and value structures.

Andrew Ortony (Author), Gerald L. Clore (Author), Allan Collins (Author)

9781108928755, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 August 2022

240 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.46 kg

'This book is a further leap forward away from essentialist theories of emotions, which tend to be detached from thinking and experience, towards a more humanistic approach.  To read of emotions based on thoughts such as 'It is so good that it happened' is like a breath of fresh air.' Anna Wierzbicka, author of Emotions across Languages and Cultures, Australia

More than 30 years after its initial publication, this new edition of The Cognitive Structure of Emotions refines and updates Ortony, Clore, and Collins's OCC model of emotions. Starting from a three-way classification of construals of the world––events, the attribution of responsibility for events, and objects––the authors propose a systematic account of emotion differentiation. Rejecting the oft-favored features of bodily feelings, emotion-related behaviors, and facial expressions as too intensity-dependent and insufficiently diagnostic, they provide a detailed analysis of emotion differentiation in terms of the cognitive underpinnings of emotion types. Using numerous examples, they explain how different variables influence emotion intensity, and show how emotions can be formalized for computational purposes. Now with a contributed chapter describing the OCC model's influence, this book will interest a wide audience in cognitive, clinical, and social psychology, as well as in artificial intelligence and affective computing, and other cognitive science disciplines.

Preface to second edition
Preface to first edition
1. Introduction
2. Overview of the theory
3. Appraisal, the value system, and primary sources of intensity
4. Factors affecting the intensity of emotions
5. Reactions to events: I
6. Reactions to events: II
7. Reactions to the actions of agents
8. Reactions to objects
9. Formalization of the theory and additional issues
10. There and back again: OCC and affective computing
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Psychology: emotions [JMQ], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]