Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology: An Introduction

Abstract

Speculation and research on the emotions has a long but not consistently venerable history. Many branches of science, as well as religion, philosophy, and law, have some interest in studying and in controlling or regulating these phenomena. In confronting and dealing with the problems of living and adapting to our circumstances, just about everyone is from time to time keenly concerned with the expression, disguise, or suppression of emotions; their effects on our judgment and actions; and their effects, whether expressed or suppressed, on our biological and psychological well-being. Some poets, playwrights, philosophers, and theologians have through the ages recognized the complexity of emotions and their resistance to being categorized as simply good or bad. Some scientists in the tradition of Darwin and Spencer have held that the emotions do not yield to categorization as good or bad, positive or negative, because they are essentially adaptive, a part of the biopsychological equipment that emerged as a result of the pressures of selection through which our species evolved. This does not mean that the subjective experiences or conscious feelings of the various emotions are equally pleasant/desirable or equally unpleasant/undesirable for the individual human being. What has come to us through evolution has to be evaluated in relation to the species as well as in terms of the individual. The variation in the indi-vidual's experience of the pleasantness and tension associated with different emotions, however, guarantees variability of response to the eliciting situations , and a wide repertory of behavioral alternatives is generally adaptive for CARROLL E.IZARD • University of Delaware. Newark. Delaware.