ABSTRACT
A general consensus concerning the meaning of emotions has emerged among emotions researchers. Emotions are commonly viewed as reactions, of humans and other animals alike, to events, interruptions, threats, dangers, and opportunities in the environment. Emotions play a central organizing role in an individual’s experience of reality, sense of self, and cooperative or competitive orientations toward others. Emotion will be understood as a prototypical, conscious, subjective, psychophysiological, state of mind – such as anger, pride, or confidence, which arises in response to a danger or opportunity in the environment or to an event or situation in the social world, and which prepares one for a potentially adaptive, expressive, and/or communicative behavioral reaction. The term “emotion” traces to the Latin emovere, where e- means “out” and movere means “move.” As stated by Frijda (1986), an emotion: (i) is usually triggered when a person consciously or unconsciously evaluates an event relevant to a concern or goal; (ii) stimulates a readiness to react to this event in an appropriate way, giving a sense of urgency to a small set of potential actions; (iii) can interrupt, or compete with, alternative mental processes or actions; and (iv) is experienced as a distinct type of mental state, often associated with bodily changes, expressions, or actions. Emotions are intrinsically social, and their primary adaptive function is interpersonal communication (D. A. Miller et al. 2004). So defined, emotions can be distinguished from instincts, which are seen in both cognitive and affective terms as domain-specific information-processing modules that have evolved to detect relevant stimuli, either external or internal, and to respond with adaptive behaviors. Like emotions, instincts are adaptive reactions having evolutionary significance.
