Motivation and emotion/Lectures/Individual emotions

Lecture 09: Individual emotions
This is the ninth lecture for the motivation and emotion unit of study.

Overview

This lecture discusses 20 specific emotions, including what causes them, how they are expressed, and what they motivate.

Take-home messages:

Emotions are purposeful—they guide action tendencies towards adaptive functional response
Learning about the causes, functions, and consequences of individual emotions expands emotion knowledge and makes adaptive responses to different situations more likely

Typical motivational urges generated (functions served) by specific emotions are shown in Table 1.

Table 1

Motivational Urge Generated by Specific Emotions (based on Reeve (2018, p. 340))

Emotion	Motivational urge
Basic
Fear	Flee; protect oneself
Anger	Overcome obstacles; right an illegitimate wrong
Disgust	Reject; get rid of; get away from
Contempt	Maintain dominance and social hierarchy
Sadness	Repair a loss or failure
Joy	Continue goal striving; play; engage in social interaction
Interest	Explore; seek; acquire new information; learn
Self-conscious
Shame	Restore the self; protect the self
Guilt	Make amends
Embarrassment	Appease others; communicate blunder was unintended
Pride	Authentic: Acquire further skill; persist at challenging tasks Hubristic: Self-inflation to boost self-esteem and social standing
Triumph	Display dominance and power over the defeated
Cognitively complex
Envy	Benign: Move up; improve one’s position. Malicious: Tear down; reduce another's position
Gratitude	Act prosocially; grow the relationship
Disappointment	Give up; helplessness
Regret	Undo a poor decision or behaviour
Hope	Keep engaged in pursuit of a desired goal
Schadenfreude	Reinforce feelings of superiority
Empathy	Act prosocially; help the other
Compassion	Reduce suffering

Note. Links go to specific motivation and emotion book chapters. For a table of these emotions with definitions and links to corresponding Wikipedia articles, see the 20 emotions tutorial.

Chapter 14: Individual emotions (Reeve, 2018) or Chapter 13: Individual emotions and feelings (Reeve, 2024)