Motivation and emotion/Lectures/Individual emotions

Lecture 09: Individual emotions

Resource type: this resource contains a lecture or lecture notes.

This is the ninth lecture for the Motivation and emotion unit of study.

Overview[edit | edit source]

This lecture discusses 20 individual emotions:

Take-home message:

The more sophisticated and complex our emotional repertoire, the more likely we are to have adaptive emotional responses in different situations

Emotions are purposeful. The main motivational urge generated specific emotions are shown in Table 1.
These motivational can also be understood as "action tendencies" or "functions served through adaptive response".

Table 1

Motivational Urge Generated by Specific Emotions (based on Reeve (2018, p. 340); links go to motivation and emotion book chapters)

Emotion	Motivational urge
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.
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.
Triumph	Display dominance and power over the defeated.
Envy (Benign)	Move up; improve one’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.