Emotion Refinement: A Theory Inspired by Chinese Poetics

Abstract

William James made a distinction between coarse and noncoarse emotions. In the present article, we explore the nature of such noncoarse emotions, which we designate as emotions with refinement. We take our cue from the treatment of refined emotions in Chinese poetics and philosophy. The theory and description of savoring(in Chinese, p'in-wei) points to several features of emotion experiences and behavior that are usually absent in direct emotional responses to emotional events, such as self-reflexivity and higher level second-order awareness, detachment, and restraint. Emotions with those features can be found outside savoring and aesthetic contexts, for instance while dealing with actual life events. It appears both feasible and illuminating to analyze such emotion experiences and behavior in terms of current emotion theory, notably by means of the constructs of appraisal and action readiness. Emotions with refinement thus fit general emotion theory while also possessing distinctive character within the motion domain. Our analysis has implications for the structure of emotion experience and the study of consciousness.

Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement.

“…Aesthetic emotions appear to share several features with the larger category of refined emotions such as detachment, self-reflexive awareness, and savoring. Emotion refinement theory maintains that as one moves into a mental space that is detached from pragmatic, self-related concerns, emotions lose their urgency but retain their inner structure and action tendencies (Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007). Though authentic emotions, refined emotions will express themselves more in virtual than in overt actions, more in low-intensity than in high-intensity physiological arousal.…”

An integrative review of the enjoyment of sadness associated with music

“…Nonetheless, musical expres-780 sion gives special meaning to the emotional states it portrays; it is not just pointless sadness, but there is some reason or meaning to it [188]. Such experiences fall under eudaemonia, which refers to life satisfaction, contentment and feeling good [190,191], not dissimilar to the Chinese discourse of savoring that includes negative experiences [192]. Eudaemonia is a departure from hedonic 785 concerns by focussing on insight and meaningfulness of human life.…”

“…This is an open empirical question for cross-cultural study, but existing accounts of contemplative emotions suggest that such notions may not be unique (e.g., Chinese savouring of negative emotions, [192];…”

Toward a Reflexive Positive Psychology

“…Consistent with the construct of Authenticity-focus, the self-reflexive orientation of Confucianism is referred to by Tu (1985a) as 'authenticity': ' … the word "authenticity" ... seems to me more appropriate than narrowly conceived moralistic terms such as "honesty" and "loyalty" to convey the original Confucian sense of learning for the sake of the self' (p. 52). It is against the backdrop of the Authenticity-focus in Chinese culture that we may appreciate the fact that savoring, a self-reflexive emotional concept and action, is more developed in China than its counterpart in the West (Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007), as we shall see. At the level of cultural analysis, moral maps are nonconscious assumptions.…”

“…The Chinese notion of savoring (Frijda & Sundararajan, 2007;Sundararajan, 2004;Sundararajan & Averill, 2007) is broader in scope than the contemporary formulation of this topic in positive psychology (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). Whereas Bryant and Veroff's formulation (2007) is confined to positive experiences, the Chinese savoring includes negative experiences as well, and has a relatively wider scope of temporality that extends to both the after-taste of an experience (Eoyang, 1993) and the subtle incipient phase of things (Sundararajan, 2004).…”