The emotional toolkit: Lessons from the science of emotion

Abstract

What do emotions do for people? This chapter presents a framework that emotions function much like a precision toolkit, with particular emotions best used to fix particular problems. This means that emotions are not always functional or always dysfunctional. Instead each emotion prepares people to deal with particular issues. The key to promoting functional emotion in our own lives, then, is to recognize what emotions do and to regulate how we express them. This chapter also brings together perspectives from the science of emotion to identify the next big questions about emotion.