The biopsychology of emotion: Current theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives

摘要

Emotion has been an enduring topic in psychology since the field emerged as a distinct discipline in the latter part of the 19th century. This is not a surprising observation, in view of the central role that affect plays in human experience and behavior. The inextricable connection between emotion and the body was notably recognized by William James (1884,1890), who advanced the first major theory of the biopsychology of emotion. Theoretical debate ensued, spawning an empirical tradition that diverged along many lines throughout the 20th century on into the present. Nevertheless, emotion research has also been conspicuously absent during certain eras in psychology. Under the influence of radical behaviorists and activation theorists, who considered affective phenomena to be too subjective and elusive to be part of an objective behavioral science, emotion all but disappeared from the psychological literature in the 1930-1950s. For similar reasons, emotion was neglected by cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists in subsequent influential movements in behavioral science (Damasio, 1998).