The thesis of social constructionism is that emotions are shaped by culture and society. I build on this insight to show that existing social constructionist views of emotions, while providing valid research methods, overly restrict the scope of the social constructionist agenda. The restriction is due to the ontological assumption that social construction is indissociable from language. In the first part, I describe the details of the influential social constructionist views of Averill and Harré. Drawing on recent theorizing in psychology, (...) I suggest that their fixation on language makes these approaches inadequate to the analysis of the social construction of human emotional experience. In the second part, I extend the argument to other species, suggesting that these social constructionist views are incapable of accommodating the fact, ascertained by primatologists, that animals have cultures, and that part of animal culture concerns the social molding of their emotions. I conclude that a reconstructed social constructionism should be regarded not as inimical to, but as part and parcel of, a nonreductive biology of emotions. (shrink)

The thesis of social constructionism is that emotions are shaped by culture and society. I build on this insight to show that existing social constructionist views of emotions, while providing valid research methods, overly restrict the scope of the social constructionist agenda. The restriction is due to the ontological assumption that social construction is indissociable from language. In the first part, I describe the details of the influential social constructionist views of Averill and Harré. Drawing on recent theorizing in psychology, (...) I suggest that their fixation on language makes these approaches inadequate to the analysis of the social construction of human emotional experience. In the second part, I extend the argument to other species, suggesting that these social constructionist views are incapable of accommodating the fact, ascertained by primatologists, that animals have cultures, and that part of animal culture concerns the social molding of their emotions. I conclude that a reconstructed social constructionism should be regarded not as inimical to, but as part and parcel of, a nonreductive biology of emotions. (shrink)

Nuestro objetivo es examinar por qué la confianza puede ser considerada como una emoción secundaria y cómo ésta se aborda de diferente manera en un contexto estético u ordinario, lo cual proporciona otro modo de investigar las emociones secundarias_. _Nuestra tesis se desarrolla en tres secciones y una conclusión. En la primera sección, hemos desarrollado ejemplos y hecho observaciones a modo de análisis para probar por qué las narrativas son importantes para nuestras emociones secundarias. En la segunda sección, hemos examinado (...) por qué la confianza puede ser considerara como una emoción secundaria así como establecer un criterio para identificarla como tal_. _En la tercera sección, presentamos una de las funciones de la confianza, el intercambio de conocimiento entre agentes, cuando se comparte conocimiento en un proceso epistémico con otros. Hemos comprobado que la construcción de la relación entre sujetos y objetos se produce mayoritariamente gracias a la confianza. Una emoción secundaria que representa lazos afectivos entre sujetos para acceder a una emoción primaria. (shrink)

Our aim is to examine why trust can be considered a second-order emotion and how the way in which trust plays out differently in aesthetic and ordinary contexts can provide another mode of investigating second-order emotions. Our thesis is developed in three sections and a conclusion.In the first section, we perform an example analysis to show why narratives are important for our emotions. In the second section, we examine how trust can be considered a second-order emotion and establish criteria for (...) identifying it as a second-order emotion. In the third section, we present one of the aims of trust, i.e. sharing knowledge between agents, when a testimony-giver shares knowledge in an epistemic trust process with others. We show how the relationship construction between persons thanks to trust, a second-order emotion that represents emotional ties between agents to achieve a first-order emotion. (shrink)

In this article, I outline a relational-developmental conception of emotion that situates emotional activity within a broader conception of persons as holistic, relational beings. In this model, emotions consist of felt forms of engagement with the world. As felt aspects of ongoing action, uninhibited emotional experiences are not private states that are inaccessible to other people; instead, they are revealed directly through their bodily expressions. As multicomponent processes, emotional experiences exhibit both continuity and dramatic change in development. Building on these (...) ideas, I describe an intersubjective methodology for studying developmental changes in the structure of emotional experience. I illustrate the approach with an analysis of developmental changes in the structure of anger from birth to adulthood. (shrink)