The Laws of Emotion

The Laws of Emotion Nico H. Frijda University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands ABSTRACT: It is argued that emotions are lawful phe- When formulating "'laws" in this article, I am discussing nomena and thus can be described in terms of a set of what are primarily empirical regularities. These regular- laws of emotion. These laws result from the operation of ities--or putative regularities--are, however, assumed to emotion mechanisms that are accessible to intentional rest on underlying Causal mechanisms that generate them. control to only a limited extent. The law of situational I am suggesting that the laws of emotion are grounded meaning, the law of concern, the law of reality, the laws in mechanisms that are not of a voluntary nature and of change, habituation and comparative feeling, and the that are only partially under voluntary control. Not only law of hedonic asymmetry are proposed to describe emo- emotions obey the laws; we obey them. We are subject tion elicitation; the law of conservation of emotional mo- to our emotions, and we cannot engender emotions at mentum formulates emotion persistence," the law of closure will. expresses the modularity of emotion; and the laws of care The laws of emotion that I will discuss are not all for consequence, of lightest load, and of greatest gain per- equally well established. Not all of them originate in solid tain to emotion regulation. evidence, nor are all equally supported by it. To a large extent, in fact, to list the laws of emotion is to list a pro- For a long time, emotion was an underprivileged area in gram of research. However, the laws provide a coherent psychology. It was not regarded as a major area of sci- picture of emotional responding, which suggests that such entific psychological endeavor that seemed to deserve a research program might be worthwhile. concerted research efforts or receive them. Things have changed over the last 10 or so years. The Law of Situational Meaning Emotion has become an important domain with a co- What I mean by laws of emotion is best illustrated by the herent body of theory and data. It has developed to such "Constitution" of emotion, the law of situational mean- an extent that its phenomena can be described in terms ing." Emotions arise in response to the meaning structures of a set of laws, the laws of emotion, that I venture to of given situations; different emotions arise in response describe here. to different meaning structures. Emotions are dictated by Formulating a set of laws of emotion implies not the meaning structure of events in a precisely determined only that the study of emotion has developed sufficiently fashion. to do so but also that emotional phenomena are indeed On a global plane, this law refers to fairly obvious lawful. It implies that emotions emerge, wax, and wane and almost trivial regularities. Emotions tend to be elic- according to rules in strictly determined fashion. To argue ited by particular types of event. Grief is elicited by per- this is a secondary objective of this article. Emotions are sonal loss, anger by insults or frustrations, and so forth. lawful. When experiencing emotions, people are subject This obviousness should not obscure the fact that regu- to laws. When filled by emotions, they are manifesting larity and mechanism are involved. Emotions, quite gen- the workings of laws. erally, arise in response to events that are important to There is a place for obvious a priori reservations the individual, and which importance he or she appraises here. Emotions and feelings are often considered the most in some way. Events that satisfy the individual's goals, or idiosyncratic of psychological phenomena, and they sug- promise to do so, yield positive emotions; events that gest human freedom at its clearest. The mysticism of harm or threaten the individual's concerns lead to neg- ineffability and freedom that surrounds emotions may ative emotions; and emotions are elicited by novel or un- be one reason why the psychology of emotion and feeling expected events. has advanced so slowly over the last 100 years. This mys- Input some event with its particular kind of meaning; ticism is largely unfounded, and the freedom of feeling is out comes an emotion of a particular kind. That is the an illusion. For one thing, the notion of freedom of feeling law of situational meaning. In goes loss, and out comes runs counter to the traditional wisdom that human beings grief. In goes a frustration or an offense, and out comes are enslaved by their passions. For another, the laws of anger. Of course, the law does not apply in this crude emotion may help us to discern that simple, universal, manner. It is meanings and the subject's appraisals that moving forces operate behind the complex, idiosyncratic count--that is, the relationship between events and the movements of feeling, in the same way that the erratic subject's concerns, and not events as such. Thus, in goes path of an ant, to borrow Simon's (1973) well-known a personal loss that is felt as irremediable, and out comes parable, manifests the simple structure of a simple ani- grief, with a high degree of probability. In goes a frustra- mal's mind. tion or an offense for which someone else is to blame and The word law may give rise to misunderstanding. could have avoided, and out comes anger--almost cer- May 1988 • American Psychologist 349 Copyright 1988 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/88/$00.75 Vol. 43, No. 5, 349-358 tainly. The outputs are highly probable, but are not ab- (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) or reactance solutely certain because the inputs can still be perceived (Wortman & Brehm, 1975), depending on one's cognitive in different fashions. One can view serious, irremediable set. Erratic behavior in one's friends enrages when one is personal loss as unavoidable, as in the nature of things; used to control and saddens when one is used to being there will be resignation then instead of grief. Frustration controlled. or offense can be seen as caused by someone powerful The workings of the law of situational meaning are who may have further offenses in store, and fear then is not always transparent because they can be overridden likely to supplant anger as the emotional response. These by conscious control or by less conscious counterforces subtleties, rather than undermining the law of situational that I will discuss later. The law is most evident when meaning, underscore it. Emotions change when meanings resources for control and counterforces fail, such as in change. Emotions are changed when events are viewed illness or exhaustion. Posttraumatic syndromes show that, differently. Input is changed, and output changes accord- under these conditions, almost every obstruction is a ingly. stimulus for angry irritation, every loss or failure one for The substance of this law was advanced by Arnold sorrow, every uncertainty one for insecurity or anxiety, (1960) and Lazarus (1966). Evidence is accumulating that and almost every kindness one for tears. it is valid and that a number of subsidiary laws--for the Under more normal circumstances, too, the auto- elicitation of fear, of anxiety, of joy, and so forth--can be matic workings of the law of situational meaning are ev- subsumed under it. The evidence is indirect because it ident. I mention two examples. One is "sentimentality," consists mainly of correlations between subjects' reports the almost compulsive emergence of tearful emotions of their emotional states and their conscious appraisals when attachment themes are touched on in films or stories of events, which are not faithful reflections of the cognitive about miracle workers (Efran & Spangler, 1979), brides antecedents. Still, the correlations are strong (see, e.g., marrying in white, or little children who, after years of Frijda, 1987; Smith & Ellsworth, 1987) and suggest hardship, find a home or are lovingly accepted by their mechanisms. In fact, a computer program has been writ- grandfathers. Tears are drawn, it seems, by a precise kind ten that takes descriptions of event appraisals as its input of sequence: Latent attachment concerns are awakened; and that outputs plausible guesses of the emotion's names. expectations regarding their nonfulfillment are carefully It shows the beginnings of success. When given the de- evoked but held in abeyance; and then one is brusquely scriptions by 30 subjects of affective states corresponding confronted with their fulfillment. The sequence is more to 32 emotion labels, the computer achieved a hit rate of potent than the observer's intellectual or emotional so- 31% for the first choice and of 71% for the first five choices phistication, a fact to which probably every reader can (with chance percentages of 3% and 17%, respectively; testify. Frijda & Swagerman, 1987). The other example concerns falling in love. Data The law of situational meaning provides the over- from questionnaire studies (Rombouts, 1987) suggest that arching framework to organize findings on the cognitive it is also triggered by a specific sequence of events, in variables that account for the various emotions and their which the qualities of the love-object are of minor im- intensity (see also Ortony, Clore, & Collins, in press). portance. A person is ready tO fall in love because of one These cognitive variables pertain not merely to how the of a number of reasonsmloneliness, sexual need, dissat- individual thinks the events might affect him or her but isfaction, or need of variety. An object then incites in- also to how he or she might handle these events. They terest, again for one of a number of reasons, such as nov- include secondary as well as primary appraisals, in Laz- elty, attractiveness, or mere proximity.

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