Search

This article sets out to replace the concept of basic emotions with the notion of “ur-emotions,” the functionally central underlying processes of action readiness, which are not emotions at all. We propose that what is basic and universal in emotions are not multicomponential syndromes, but states of action readiness, themselves variants of motive states to relate or not relate with the world and with oneself. Unlike emotions, ur-emotions can be held to be universal and biologically based.

The term ur-emotion is proposed to replace basic emotion as a name for the aspects of emotion that underlie perceived similarities of emotion types across cultures and species. The ur- prefix is borrowed from the German on analogy to similar borrowings in textual criticism and musicology. The proposed term ur-emotion is less likely to be interpreted as referring to the entirety of an emotional state than is the term basic emotion. Ur-emotion avoids reductionism by indicating an abstract underlying structure that accounts for similarities between emotions without implying that the differences are unimportant. This article is dedicated to the memory of Bob Solomon, and is framed in terms of his decades-long analysis and critique of the concept of basic emotions.

Consensus that emotions are functional and adaptive has reached such a level that contradictory evidence is no longer seriously considered, and the complex determinants of functionality are not fully appreciated. To remedy this complacency, the author draws attention to the nontrivial amount of dysfunctional emotion in everyday life, as well as to the many long-standing philosophical and religious traditions that counsel dispassion. This exercise is useful for tempering functionalist zeal and restoring scientific skepticism. It also demonstrates that the functionality of emotions depends critically on the appraisals that give rise to emotions, the choice and control of the behaviors motivated by emotions, and the socialization and training of emotions. These parameters, whether or not they are considered part of an emotion, must be considered part of what makes emotions functional.

American and Japanese university students’ shame (haji)-related reactions across a number of diverse situations, and the personality correlates of these reactions, were studied. With age, shame ratings decreased significantly in situations describing defects in the “private selffiamong American students, and haji ratings decreased significantly in situations in which the “public selffiwas ridiculed or discomforted among Japanese students. Also with age, individual differences in personality, particularly internal self-introspection, played an increasingly important role in predicting shame reactions among American students, whereas among Japanese students, individual personality differences became increasingly unimportant in determining haji-related phenomena. Finally, American students showed an increasing, and Japanese students a decreasing, integration of internal- and external-oriented elements of personality with development. Results are discussed in terms of theories of emotional development and cultural differences in self-concept.

Although many scholars have argued that individual differences in proneness to envy can have wide-ranging implications for social interactions, the empirical testing of these claims is largely undeveloped. We created a single-factor Dispositional Envy Scale (DES) to measure individual differences in tendencies to envy, and examined some of the implications of such differences. Study 1 indicated that the DES is a reliable, stable measure, containing items suiting theoretical criteria for the makeup of dispositional envy. Study 2 supported the construct validity of the DES by showing that it is correlated with other individual difference measures in theoretically compatible ways. Studies 3 and 4 supplied diverse ways of establishing the criterion-related validity of the DES by showing that it moderated envious responses to another person’s superiority and that it predicted envy beyond other correlated individual measures of neuroticism, self-esteem, cynical hostility, and socially desirable responding.

Comparison of human and animal emotions reveals a fuzzy yet discernible boundary. Their undeniable similarities are more aptly described as ur-emotions than as basic emotions. This article describes how the concept of ur-emotion can be useful to animal researchers as well as to social constructionists by making sense of emotional variation both across species and across cultures.

This experiment investigated the circumstances that lead to embarrassment. Two theories of embarrassment were tested, one based on social interaction, the other based on self-esteem. The predictions of these two theories were compared in a situation in which the theories make contrasting predictions, namely, one in which esteem-threatening feedback is delivered to a person under the guise of a pleasant but transparent pretext. Subjects (N= 90) reported feelings of embarrassment and of self-esteem that were most consistent with the interaction theory. The implications of these findings for other theories of social anxiety are discussed.

Although traditional scholarly views suggest that envy and jealousy produce distinct affective experiences, empirical work is contradictory. The present study treated this problem from both semantic and experiential perspectives. First, subjects described situations in which they had felt strong envy and strong jealousy. These descriptions were coded for whether they conformed to traditional definitions of the two emotions. The results demonstrated that although the words envy and jealousy have overlapping meanings, the source of this overlap is the broad meaning of the word jealousy. Whereas the word jealousy may denote either jealousy (romantic jealousy, most commonly) or envy, the word envy will tend to be used in one sense alone, as a social-comparison-based emotion. In the second part of the study, subjects indicated for a series of affective states whether each was more characteristic of strong envy or strong jealousy. The results suggested that each emotion is associated with a differing profile of feelings. Reasons for the discrepancy between these results and previous empirical work are discussed.