ABSTRACT
THESE THEORIES form a separate group because they define the total situation, the interaction of man and world, in terms of a specific pair of opposites: subject and object. This relationship can be conceived on a more simple and mechanical model as stimulus-response, and even more simply as the conditioned reflex. This simplicity provides an answer to our complaint that the 'situational' view of emotion is too ambiguous and too wide. These theories set out a specific framework so that the specific criteria of emotion can be defined. Webb, for example, proposes a definition of emotion which would mark out the kind of situation in which it is justifiable to use the term:
. . . emotion or emotions, would be inferred in a situation in which responses occurred that are not directly definable in terms of the existent conceptual properties of habit or drive. Emotions would be defined when the responses were lawfully related to some measureable property of the stimulus (either antecedent to or existent with the response situation).
—W. B. Webb, 'A Motivational Theory of Emotions . . .', Psychol Rev., 1948, p. 332.