Content area
Full Text
The reigning experimental paradigm in affective neuroscience research posits that emotions can be divided into discrete and independent categories and that specific neural structures and pathways subserve each of these emotional categories. This theory of basic emotions has yielded significant advances in the understanding of affect and yet, in the fields of clinical psychology and psychiatry, it has left unsettled many important questions. The theory of basic emotions, for example, has not explained the near ubiquitous comorbid illnesses among mood disorders, nor has it resolved confusion over the neurophysiological underpinnings of affective disorders. Moreover, basic emotion theory is largely incompatible with recent findings in behavioral genetics and temperament research. Given these empirical and heuristic limitations of the theory of basic emotions, we propose that a shift is needed in the conceptual approaches taken to the study of emotion. We propose that clinicians and researchers move away from a strictly basic emotion model of affective states, where each emotion is thought to emerge from independent neural systems, to more dimensional models of emotions, in which all affective states are understood to arise from common, overlapping neurophysiological systems.
Although poorly represented in psychiatry, dimensional models have a long history in psychology (Larsen & Diener, 1992; Russell, 2003; Schlosberg, 1952; Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999). One particular dimensional approach, termed the circumplex model of affect, proposes that all affective states arise from two fundamental neurophysiological systems, one related to valence (a pleasure-displeasure continuum) and the other to arousal, or alertness (Russell, 1980). Each emotion can be understood as a linear combination of these two dimensions, or as varying degrees of both valence and arousal (see Figure 1). Joy, for example, is conceptualized as an emotional state that is the product of strong activation in the neural systems associated with positive valence or pleasure together with moderate activation in the neural systems associated with arousal. Affective states other than joy likewise arise from the same two neurophysiological systems but differ in the degree or extent of activation. Specific emotions therefore arise out of patterns of activation within these two neurophysiological systems, together with cognitive interpretations and labeling of these core physiological experiences.
A graphical representation of the circumplex model of affect with the horizontal axis representing the valence...