On Emotions That Last Longer

Distinguishing between emotions and cognitions does not seem entirely straightforward. Both are said to involve some form of computational activity and both to require a decision-making process. For example, according to Lazarus’ appraisal theory of emotions, “the person must decide whether what is going on is relevant to important values or goals” (Lazarus 1991, 30). Conversely, feelings seem to be easier to separate from other experiences and, accordingly, those having a feeling are usually in position to contrast them with, say, what they would describe as their thoughts. Moreover, people would claim without much hesitation that they are able to distinguish between feelings: some are “good” and some are “bad,” whereas others are “deep” and others still “shallow.” The reliability of feelings—as judged by, for example, how we currently feel about something that seemed to be a good feeling some time ago—is certainly imperfect, but this does not necessarily negate their value.

Rosfort and Stanghellini (2009) raise several important and complex issues about emotions and provide us with several good reasons to think more about feelings. They argue that, if, as some proponents of the cognitive theory of emotions claim, we can have emotions and not even know about them, then, at least, whenever we have feelings we are in position to know that we have emotions. For the authors, this is one of the main reasons why feelings are so crucial in “uncovering a person's situatedness in the world.” Feelings “reveal the diverse phenomenal structure” of emotions and, thus, according to the authors there is a need to distinguish between fundamental states such as moods and affects. The distinction is one classically made in continental psychopathology and the authors draw on interesting, and little known, aspects of the phenomenological tradition in doing so. They base their distinction on three dimensions, namely intentionality, temporality, and narrativity—these they consider as three core aspects of personhood.

The authors’ strategy is yielding and it seems worthwhile that their work be further pursued. A great number of very interesting questions arising from Rosfort and Stanghellini's article. For example, the authors state that moods and affects are “opposites” of each other. Although they seem distinguishable on the basis of what the authors say, there is no compelling reason to see them as opposites. To use one of their examples, the fact that anxiety is different from fear because it lasts longer and because it is more diffuse does not mean that the two are either polar opposites or orthogonal to each other. Perhaps more important, it could be argued that short and focused emotional states, such as fear, may be predicated upon the more enduring ones, in this case anxiety. Conversely, it could mean that the occurrence of a shorter, more focused state, of an affect in the authors’ terminology, will trigger longer-lasting and diffuse states, that is, moods. Furthermore, how long is long enough for something to constitute an affect? According to the authors, sadness is an example of a mood, whereas grief is classified as an affect. But sadness may be short lived and be highly focused; grief, on the other hand, can persist for months. And what is grief if not an instance of sadness? The authors wisely concede some of these points in their paper.

It seems that a more general question needs to be asked: how long may emotions last? Emotions are regarded by many as short-lived and transient phenomena. However, within each person there is probably a fair degree of consistency in some patterns of emotional reactions. Thus, not least according to common belief, it is the angry man who is prone to angry outbursts (in Aristotle, the swiftly moving to anger, εὐκίνητος πρὸς ỏργὴν is the angry man, ỏργίλος or ỏξύθυμος).). This view seems justified by some evidence. Consider, for example, the predictions of temperamental characteristics at age three from the Dunnedin study (Caspi 2000); those children found to be emotionally labile, restless, and impulsive are, compared with so-called inhibited children, about three times more likely to become adults with antisocial personality. Or consider how predictive...