Feel Good or Do Good? A Valence–Function Framework for Understanding Emotions

Abstract

<jats:p> Previous thinking has often categorized emotions as either pleasant or unpleasant or examined to what extent they are functional or dysfunctional. We suggest that researchers should consider the positivity or negativity of discrete emotions on both dimensions: subjective feelings and constructiveness of outcomes. We discuss how, across contexts, a specific emotion can potentially be categorized differently within the framework. We further suggest that this approach is particularly useful in unique, complex contexts that involve clashes among goals, interests, or values, such as violent intergroup conflicts. Using this context, we demonstrate how emotions that feel good to people can lead to behaviors and attitudes that sustain violence and thwart conflict resolution, whereas emotions that promote conflict resolution are often unpleasant. Such clashes may depend on the presence of embedded contextual factors, such as group membership and relative power. Thus, this framework will be useful for examining specific emotions while taking contextual factors into consideration. Finally, we examine several important questions stemming from our framework and suggest directions for future research. </jats:p>

Feeling and thought in collective action on social issues: Toward a systems perspective

“…Nevertheless, thoughts, feelings, contexts, and cultures are deeply intertwined in how we feel regarding social issues (e.g., Cohen‐Chen et al., 2020). When we examine cases of protest, for instance, we see that there is an underlying assumption that the relationships between the stakeholders are in some way broken.…”

Categorizing the function of positive emotions

“…Of course, a definition of positive emotion as reward-based belies considerable complexity around the concept of rewards. Indeed, pleasant emotions may lead to undesirable consequences, particularly in the case of compulsive behaviors such as addiction, obesity, overspending, and others [23,24 ]. Additionally, emotions that promote some types of rewards (e.g., in conflict resolution) can be subjectively unpleasant-and to the extent that positive emotions are subjectively pleasant, that subjective experience itself can serve as a reward that incentivizes some behavior that preceded it (e.g., a successful social interaction that leads to an enjoyable feeling of connection, gratitude, or pride).…”

A Systems View of Emotion in Socio-political Context

“…Indeed, they find that shame is more frequently about the loss of social image in Japan, whereas it is more about the personal defect in the USA. Cohen-Chen et al ( 2020 ) showed that contexts such as intergroup conflict—where different parties have opposed values, goals, practices—alter the implications of emotion. Anger, for example, may be experienced as pleasant and empowering (rather than unpleasant), by those who view themselves as engaged in conflict to righteously resist oppression (see also Leach, 2016 , 2020 ).…”