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Laws of Emotions PDF
Laws of Emotions PDF
ABSTRACT: It is argued that emotions are lawful phe- When formulating "'laws" in this article, I am discussing
nomena and thus can be described in terms of a set of what are primarily empirical regularities. These regular-
laws of emotion. These laws result from the operation of ities--or putative regularities--are, however, assumed to
emotion mechanisms that are accessible to intentional rest on underlying Causal mechanisms that generate them.
control to only a limited extent. The law of situational I am suggesting that the laws of emotion are grounded
meaning, the law of concern, the law of reality, the laws in mechanisms that are not of a voluntary nature and
of change, habituation and comparative feeling, and the that are only partially under voluntary control. Not only
law of hedonic asymmetry are proposed to describe emo- emotions obey the laws; we obey them. We are subject
tion elicitation; the law of conservation of emotional mo- to our emotions, and we cannot engender emotions at
mentum formulates emotion persistence," the law of closure will.
expresses the modularity of emotion; and the laws of care The laws of emotion that I will discuss are not all
for consequence, of lightest load, and of greatest gain per- equally well established. Not all o f them originate in solid
tain to emotion regulation. evidence, nor are all equally supported by it. To a large
extent, in fact, to list the laws of emotion is to list a pro-
For a long time, emotion was an underprivileged area in gram of research. However, the laws provide a coherent
psychology. It was not regarded as a major area of sci- picture of emotional responding, which suggests that such
entific psychological endeavor that seemed to deserve a research program might be worthwhile.
concerted research efforts or receive them.
Things have changed over the last 10 or so years. The Law of Situational Meaning
Emotion has become an important domain with a co- What I mean by laws of emotion is best illustrated by the
herent body of theory and data. It has developed to such "Constitution" of emotion, the law of situational mean-
an extent that its phenomena can be described in terms ing." Emotions arise in response to the meaning structures
of a set of laws, the laws of emotion, that I venture to of given situations; different emotions arise in response
describe here. to different meaning structures. Emotions are dictated by
Formulating a set of laws of emotion implies not the meaning structure of events in a precisely determined
only that the study of emotion has developed sufficiently fashion.
to do so but also that emotional phenomena are indeed On a global plane, this law refers to fairly obvious
lawful. It implies that emotions emerge, wax, and wane and almost trivial regularities. Emotions tend to be elic-
according to rules in strictly determined fashion. To argue ited by particular types of event. Grief is elicited by per-
this is a secondary objective of this article. Emotions are sonal loss, anger by insults or frustrations, and so forth.
lawful. When experiencing emotions, people are subject This obviousness should not obscure the fact that regu-
to laws. When filled by emotions, they are manifesting larity and mechanism are involved. Emotions, quite gen-
the workings of laws. erally, arise in response to events that are important to
There is a place for obvious a priori reservations the individual, and which importance he or she appraises
here. Emotions and feelings are often considered the most in some way. Events that satisfy the individual's goals, or
idiosyncratic of psychological phenomena, and they sug- promise to do so, yield positive emotions; events that
gest human freedom at its clearest. The mysticism of harm or threaten the individual's concerns lead to neg-
ineffability and freedom that surrounds emotions may ative emotions; and emotions are elicited by novel or un-
be one reason why the psychology of emotion and feeling expected events.
has advanced so slowly over the last 100 years. This mys- Input some event with its particular kind of meaning;
ticism is largely unfounded, and the freedom of feeling is out comes an emotion of a particular kind. That is the
an illusion. For one thing, the notion of freedom of feeling law of situational meaning. In goes loss, and out comes
runs counter to the traditional wisdom that human beings grief. In goes a frustration or an offense, and out comes
are enslaved by their passions. For another, the laws of anger. Of course, the law does not apply in this crude
emotion may help us to discern that simple, universal, manner. It is meanings and the subject's appraisals that
moving forces operate behind the complex, idiosyncratic c o u n t - - t h a t is, the relationship between events and the
movements of feeling, in the same way that the erratic subject's concerns, and not events as such. Thus, in goes
path of an ant, to borrow Simon's (1973) well-known a personal loss that is felt as irremediable, and out comes
parable, manifests the simple structure of a simple ani- grief, with a high degree of probability. In goes a frustra-
mal's mind. tion or an offense for which someone else is to blame and
The word law may give rise to misunderstanding. could have avoided, and out comes anger--almost cer-
358 M a y 1988 9 A m e r i c a n P s y c h o l o g i s t