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To cite this Article Oatley, Keith and Johnson-laird, P. N.(1987)'Towards a Cognitive Theory of Emotions',Cognition & Emotion,1:1,29
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COGNITION AND EMOTION, 1 9 8 7 , l (1) 29-50
Towards a Cognitive
Theory of Emotions
Keith Oatley
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, U.K.
P. N. Johnson-Laird
MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge, U.K .
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INTRODUCTION
In the first study of emotions to be based on the theory of evolution,
Darwin (1 872) concluded that emotional expressions are a kind of neural
accident. They result from overflows of neural excitation which may serve
no function in the actions of adults. Had he lived later, Darwin might have
used as an example of this superfluity the facial expressions that people
make when speaking on the telephone. His theory was that emotional
expressions are vestiges of evolutionary history or of childhood habit.
This idea that major aspects of emotions are not functional has been
taken up by later writers, who include Dewey (1895) in his attempt to
reconcile Darwin’s work with James’ (1890). He proposed that emotions
are disturbances which occur when habits are no longer useful in present
contexts.
SOTS, in the way described by Miller, Galanter and Pribram (1960). This
method is familiar both from neurological theorising and from computer
programs with many levels of embedding in which one procedure can call
others as subroutines, these in turn can call sub-sub-routines, and so on.
At the top level of the hierarchy of modules in the human cognitive
system there is a processor corresponding to an operating system, capable
of invoking lower level processors in specific sequences o r according to
particular pattern matches. The operating system needs to include, as
Minsky (1968) implies, some model of the whole system. That is, the
human cognitive system needs to include a model of itself, though the
implications of this idea have as yet to be worked out in cognitive science.
The core of our-proposal is that emotions are based on one of two
specific kinds of communication in such systems. One kind of communi-
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on the basis of the properties of the emotion signals before its functioning
can be fully specified. We imagine it will have some of the properties of
parallel distributed processors (e.g. McClelland and Rumelhart, 1985).
For an emotion to occur, the cognitive system needs to be in one emotion
mode o r oscillating between two. The intensity of an emotion corresponds
to the amount of the system entrained in a particular mode and to the
consequent degree of locking into that mode.
An emotion mode is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the full
experience and expression of an emotion-the distinctive phenomenologi-
cal tone, the somatic changes, the behavioural expressions, and courses of
action. By itself the emotion mode based on non-propositional signals only
prepares for action. In adults, the full emotion typically also includes a
conscious evaluation of the juncture in planning, based on propositional
signals reaching the operating system so that it is able to ascribe a meaning
to the emotion mode, and so that voluntary action can be scheduled.
Less developed states also occur. For example, a person may feel a
dysphoric phenomenological tone without being able to ascribe a meaning
to it, or a speaker may talk loudly while leaning forward, but not until
someone else asks why he or she is angry does the speaker experience the
phenomenological tone.
Distinctions must be drawn between emotions and related psychological
states. One distinction is with predispositions to emotion. Enduring predis-
positions are called temperaments.
Temporary predispositions are more difficult. The evidence of physiolog-
ical and facial changes indicates that emotions are brief transitional
phenomena, lasting usually for a few seconds o r at most for a few minutes
(Ekman, 1986). Phenomenologically, emotional states may last longer
than this. So it seems best to regard the term “mood” as ambiguous. It may
either refer to a temporary predisposition to emotion, o r it may refer to an
emotional state, perhaps of low intensity, capable of lasting for many
minutes or several-hours. Either of these meanings could imply a back-
A COGNITIVE THEORY OF EMOTIONS 35
ground against which more prominent, short-lasting episodes of emotion
occur, and are expressed facially and physiologically.
Other distinctions are with instinctual action patterns such as a carnivore
killing its prey, with motivations like aquisitiveness or hunger, and bodily
states like pain. None of these states are in themselves emotional, although
some motivations or bodily phenomena may lead to a transition by way of
an emotional state.
We propose that a complex emotion, e.g. jealousy or remorse, is an
elaboration of one of the five distinctive modes by means of the proposi-
tional meanings that are ascribed to it, and we will discuss the nature of this
elaboration further.
So far we have described one thread of the argument, that emotions have
evolved as a primitive means of co-ordinating a modular nervous system.
We will now draw out the other main thread, extending the intuition shared
by various theorists since Miller, Galanter, and Pribram (1960), Simon
(1967), and Mandler (1975), that many emotions occur when planned
behaviour is interrupted.
The cognitive system adopts an emotion mode at a significant juncture of
a plan, i.e. typically, as Draper (1985) has pointed out, when the evaluation
(conscious or unconscious) of the likely success of a plan changes. We
assume that these junctures are both distinctive and recurring, so that the
emotional system in mammals has evolved to recognise them and to
establish distinctive responses to them. Indeed the function of these modes
is to organise a transition to a new phase of planned activity directed to the
priorities of the mode with associated goals and certain stored plans for
dealing with what has happened. This mode is then sustained until another
transition occurs.
In some cases a transition is made by default to an instinctual action, e.g.
to freeze when frightened. Such default options have been wired into the
system in the course of evolution as the best general plans for certain kinds
of recurring juncture, where there is danger or when there is insufficient
time or other resources available for reasoning carefully (cf. Sussman,
1975) in the conscious planning mode.
Table 1 indicates five distinctive types of juncture that occur generally in
plans, and the transitions to new sets of goals that are typically accom-
plished by emotions occurring at these junctures.
TABLE 1
Five Basic Emotions Together With Their Elicitors (the Junctures at Which They
Occur) and Their Effects (the Transitions They Accomplish)
Euphoric
Happiness Subgoals being achieved Continue with plan, modifying
as necessary
Dysphoric
Sadness Failure of major plan or loss D o nothingkcarch for new
of active goal plan
Anxiety Self-preservation goal Stop, attend vigilantly to
threatened environment andor escape
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can be revised.
Euphoric and dysphoric emotions are well illustrated by, respectively, an
experienced and a novice programmer. For an experienced person, compu-
ter programming can be euphorically fascinating (see e.g. Turkle, 1984),
because it is easy to attain a level of skill in which difficulties remain local.
Bugs occur in a form in which the programmer can see what to do about
them. Though some bugs are undeniably difficult to find, their virtue as a
species is that they unambiguously invite a particular kind of solution, a
patch to the existing program.
Novices, however, do not always cope with difficulties smoothly and
locally. They often suffer dysphoric emotions (e.g. anxiety, anger, disgust,
hopelessness). In a typical scenario the computer waits for some input
while the programmer does not know what to do. Two cognitive systems
are interacting-a technological system with some properties of an A1 plan
as discussed earlier, and a human planner used to flexibility and repair.
Suchman (1985) points out that as far as the technological system is
concerned nothing has gone wrong. In consequence there is no way of
letting it know that anything might be wrong. The system is simply in a
particular state waiting for a cue that it can recognise in that state. The
human novice is distressed and confused because he or she can not use
familiar means of repair, such as those used when a misunderstanding
occurs in a conversation. For the human the situation is deeply ambiguous.
Is one being stupid? Is one likely to be judged as such? If the wrong action
is taken will that further damage the situation? Will the effort of learning
the system be worth it? A potentially local difficulty has become global,
and a transition takes place into a dysphoric emotional state.
for existing structures. While many writers have assumed that emotions are
dependent on evolutionarily older parts of the brain, functional arguments
about this evolution are rarer.
Evolution of Emotions
Evolution must have solved a set of design problems in scheduling progres-
sively more complex nervous systems. Switching between action patterns,
characteristic of insect-like invertebrates, has evolved into transitions
between emotion modes characteristic of mammals. We speculate that this
step was taken by an elaboration of nervous systems in which parts became
progressively more specialised for specific goal-directed functions, such as
specific processors to control the escape apparatus of invertebrates like
squids and crayfish, activated by specific cues. Such specialisations form the
basis of nervous systems composed of quasi-autonomous processors, o r
agencies as Minsky (1979) calls them, each with a specific goal, and in
which overall organisation is hierarchical. The emotion of fear o r anxiety
evolved, according to this argument, in animals that had several means of
escape; the choice of freezing or fleeing, the choice of fighting or fleeing.
Darwin (1 872) observed that certain action patterns in lower mammals
have vestigial descendants in humans even though they seem to serve no
useful purpose, e.g. the sneer is a one-sided uncovering of a canine tooth.
Though in humans this expression might accompany a mordant remark, it
no longer prepares for a physical bite. But it may have become a communi-
cation important for the regulation of intra-specific aggression. This type of
progression from innate action pattern to social communication implies an
elaboration of the functions of the emotion of anger, and helps explain how
the sneer has a current human function. At the same time, some expres-
sions including those made by the mouth, which in humans is specialised
for deliberate movements in speech, may have become more subject to
voluntary control.
40 OATLEY AND JOHNSON-LAIRD
TABLE 2
Examples of Social Emotions Developed on the Original Basis of Biological
Emotions of a Single Actor
understanding of them. Only humans reach the last stage (in the last
column) in which instinctual structures of attachment provide foundations
for culture and language.
of itself. The mind is aware of itself, at least to some extent. Part of the
mind’s ability to construct models involves the ability to embed models of
our own mind in our mind. In deliberate action, for instance, we not only
act according to a goal, but we can know that we are able to do so. This
ability, is re-presented in a model of the self, and indeed only with such a
re-presentation would we be said to have an intention to act.
As to content, as argued by Oatley and Bolton (1985), the model of self
develops from culture and language. Selman (1980) and Damon and Hart
(1982) have traced the development of the sense of self. By adolescence
people talk of this self as able to monitor and control some thoughts and
emotions. Harris, Olthof, and Terwogt (1981) have shown that children
are articulate about a range of emotions as “inner” experiences by the age
of 11. We argue that only with the development of a reflective sense of self
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can the full set of complex emotions occur. Some of these depend on a
person feeling the self to be enhanced (e.g. by falling in love), or damaged
(e.g. in betrayal by others, or, as we will describe in a later example, by
contradicting one’s own definition of self). Thus in early childhood an
individual might be anxious and clingy, but to talk of a lack of confidence
depends on an adult sense of self. Though sadness is common in childhood,
low self-esteem in depression is an adult experience.
It is a common assumption that representations of the self are inherently
social, and first become accessible in consciousness as a result of relation-
ships with others. Mead (1912, p. 141) wrote: “Inner consciousness is
socially organized by the importation of the social organization of the outer
world.” Like James (e.g. 1890) he proposed that there was an aspect of the
self that can be an object of thought. It corresponds to the model of self.
Mead (1913, p. 145) also argued that this aspect of self acts to monitor
ongoing activity, “criticising, approving and suggesting, and consciously
planning.” Though without the computational metaphor, Mead described
some of the functions and reasons for an operating system containing a
model of the whole system, including some of its goals and operations.
The content of the model of self includes an abstraction of what we have
experienced in others’ reactions to us. At first it is parents who hold up the
social mirror. Mead (1913, pp. 146-147) states that:
The child can think about his conduct as good or bad only as he reacts to his
own acts in the remembered words of his parents . . . and the self which is a
fusion of the remembered actor and this accompanying chorus is somewhat
loosely organized and very clearly social. Later the inner stage changes into
the forum and workshop of thought. The features and intonations of the
dramatis personae fade out and the emphasis falls upon the meaning of the
inner speech, the imagery becomes the barely necessary cues.
Mutual Plans
Many adult human plans are mutual: They are social, but unlike the
attachment activities of infant and caregiver, they depend partly on con-
scious negotiation and cultural conventions. Mutual plans cannot be
innately wired into the cognitive system; they must be created in the minds
of more than one individual by implicit or explicit agreement. Such plans
are among the most important that we make: in marriage, parenthood,
employment, friendships etc. Many of our more intense and problematic
emotions concern plans where mutuality has been sought for, set up, o r
assumed.
The creation of a mutual plan requires a more complex kind of operation
than one to schedule actions in the physical world. One cannot model other
people merely as complicated physical objects, o r treat them by simple
44 OATLEY AND JOHNSON-LAIRD
One condition for the emotion of remorse is a sincere promise which has
been broken. A promise, in Searle’s sense, involves the act (A) being
anticipated. In remorse non-A is remembered. Xavier would not feel
remorse for the loss of Yolande’s cat if he had not made any promise, if his
promise had been insincere, or if he had amnesia for his omission.
To experience remorse, however, more is needed than the mismatch
between the obligation or goal of doing A and the non-performance of A:
it is a higher order cognitive appraisal with at least some conscious
components, and based on the model of the self that played an essential
part in mediating the mutually agreed plan. To experience remorse Xavier
must infer that Yolande will regard his broken promise as an instance of
untrustworthiness, and this perception of him by Yolande becomes dis-
crepant with Xavier’s own model of himself, that he is trustworthy. It is
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For X: For Y:
1. X intends G Y intends G
2. X knows (X intends G) Y knows (Y intends G)
3. X knows what Y knows Y knows what X knows
46 OATLEY AND JOHNSON-LAIRD
Line 2 of this analysis is not in Power’s account but is important, and part
of the idea that social actors must have a model of the self. It follows from
this analysis that for two actors to make a mutual promise is to set up these
cognitive structures. Together they must establish the mutual goal G, each
person’s action A to fulfil it, and a joint knowledge of everything relevant
to that goal. A promise, therefore, is the paradigm of the type of speech act
by which a mutual understanding, alliance o r contract is established.
Mutuality is important for the theory of emotions, partly because achiev-
ing social co-operation itself creates an emotion mode (happiness), and
partly because failures to achieve o r sustain it have dysphoric emotional
consequences. The emotion mode arising from mutuality or its breach is
communicated to oneself and other persons involved. Moreover, euphoric
emotions themselves can become goals to be achieved by mutual action.
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CONCLUSION
We have proposed that emotions serve two principal functions. First they
are a form of internal communication that sets cognitive processors into
one of a small number of characteristic modes. This system of non-
propositional communication has evolved as a method of changing the
relative priorities of goals, and maintaining these priorities, within a
parallel system of planning. The cognitive evaluation of the situations that
create such junctures contributes to the phenomenology of emotional
experience. Second, emotions are a form of external communication,
important in the adjustment of social relations, Complex emotions charac-
teristic of adult life arise at junctures in social plans, which often concern
mutual goals and a model of self.
The theory resembles some existing theories of emotion at several
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points, but the constellation of its proposals is novel. Amongst its major
implications are the following. There is a small number of innately deter-
mined emotion modes that underlie all emotional experiences, facial
expressions, and behaviours, based on a specific cognitive signalling sys-
tem. The indefinite number of complex emotions derives not from mixtures
of these primitive emotions, but on propositional evaluations that interpret
specific basic emotion modes. These evaluations of junctures of plans are
likely to vary from one culture to another. They cannot, however, modu-
late just any state of arousal to produce a specific emotion. The basic
emotion modes are physiologically as well as psychologically distinct.
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