Cognitive bases of emotions,

emotional disorders, and

psychotherapy

Keith Oatley
University of Toronto, Canada

with the collaboration of

Maja Djikic, Elaine Duncan, Ilaria Grazzani,
Philip Johnson-Laird, Laurette Larocque, Raymond Mar

Quebec City, 23 July 2014

Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
Workshop on modelling cognition-emotion interactions:
Relevance to emotional disorders and psychotherapeutic action
 Herbert Simon’s theory
The most important proposal for the cognitive theory of
emotions is that of Simon (1967).

In intelligent beings that make plans, mental models of the

world are never perfect and action is always limited. When such
beings interact with other agents, the intentions of these other
agents, too, are imperfectly known. Therefore events happen
that are unexpected. Emotions are necessary to manage action
at these junctures.

Though cognitive science at first tended to neglect emotions, all

the main theories of emotions are cognitive.
Simon, H. A. (1967). Motivational and emotional controls of cognition. Psychological Review,
74, 29-39.
 Theories of emotion
Among fruitful theories of emotion for thinking about
emotional disorders and therapy are:
Lazarus’s theory of stress and coping
Frijda’s theory of action readiness
Oatley & Johnson-Laird’s communicative theory
Reisenzein’s belief-desire theory

Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York: Oxford University

Press.
Frijda, N. H. (2007). The laws of emotion. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2014). Cognitive approaches to emotions. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 18, 134-140.
Reisenzein, R. (2009). Emotional experience in the computational belief-desire
theory of emotion. Emotion Review, 1, 206-213.
 Emotions

Frijda proposes that:

Emotions are based on appraisals of events in relation to

concerns

Appraisals are evaluations of events

Each appraisal sets up a mode of action readiness

The function of emotions is to give priority to particular

concerns, and particular kinds of action readiness
 Nico Frijda’s types of action readiness

• 1. Acceptance Accepting presence or interaction

• 2. Nonacceptance Not accepting presence or interaction
• 3. Attending Acquiring information
• 4. Disinterest Not acquiring information
• 5. Affiliate Achieving or accepting close interpersonal interaction
• 6. Avoid Decreasing interaction
• 7. Reject Refusing interaction
• 8. Antagonism Modifying unwanted target action
• 9. Desire Achieving positive hedonic outcome
• 10. Caring for Improving target’s well-being
• 11. Exuberance Promoting gratuitous interactions
• 12. Domination Controlling others’ actions
• 13. Submission Following someone else’s wishes
• 14. Helplessness Desiring to act but not knowing how
• 15. Hyperactivation Increase of relational activity
• 16. Hypoactivation Decrease of relational activity
• 17. Tenseness Simultaneous opposing action tendencies
• 18. Inhibition Inhibition of activated action readiness
 The Communicative Theory of Emotions

Emotions monitor events in relation to goals and action. Recurring

kinds of events: successes, losses, dangers, impediments.

Two kinds of signal:

A. Configurational, of cognitive system and of relationship
B. Propositional, about cause and object of the emotion
 The Communicative Theory of Emotions

Basic emotions (heuristic modes):

Some basic emotions can be either object-directed or object-

independent:
happiness, sadness, fear, anger

Some basic emotions are always object-directed:

three kinds of love, plus disgust & contempt

Theory explains: evolutionary heuristics in relation to the

management of action, for instance when the unexpected
happens

Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2014). Cognitive approaches to emotions. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 18, 134-140.
 Fundamental method of studying emotions:
Emotion diaries

Emotion diary records of 47 employed men and women, classified into five
kinds of emotions
Keith Oatley & Elaine Duncan (1994). The experience of emotions in everyday life. Cognition and
Emotion, 8, 369-381.
 Emotions are communications to the self,
but not always understandable

In a proportion of emotional episodes and moods in

diary studies (6%) the experiencer did not know what
caused them. In emotional disorders, this proportion
increases (Oatley & Duncan, 1992).

In such diary studies 31% of the recorded episodes

involved mixed emotions, with sadness plus anger,
anger plus fear, and happiness plus fear being
common mixtures.

Oatley, K., & Duncan, E. (1992). Incidents of emotion in daily life. In K. T.

Strongman (Ed.), International Review of Studies on Emotion (Vol. 2, pp. 250-
293). Chichester: Wiley.
Interpersonal emotions configure relationships into
distinctive modes

Happiness — cooperation

Sadness — disengagement & helping

Anger — conflict

Fear — collective avoidance of danger

Think of these as scripts (Oatley, 2004). Aubé (e.g.

2009)writes of the relational mode of an emotion as
based on a commitment operator.

Michel Aubé, M. (2009). Unfolding commitments management: A systemic

view of emotions. In J. Valverdu & D. Casacuberta (Eds.), Handbook of
research on synthetic emotions and sociable robotics: New applications
in affective computing and artificial intelligence (pp. 198-227). Hershey,
PA: IGI Global.
Keith Oatley (2004). Emotions: A brief history. Oxford: Blackwell.
 Emotions configure relationships

In William Shakespeare’s (1595) A Midsummer Night’s Dream members

of the audience witness the effects of having the juice of “a little
western flower ” (as we might now say a peptide) dripped into a
sleeper’s eyes. It causes the sleeper to fall in love with the first person
he or she sees on waking.

So when, on waking after receiving such an administration, Titania sees

Bottom (transformed into a donkey), she falls in love with him.

She says:
I pray thee gentle mortal, sing again.
Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;
And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee (3, 1, 130-133).
A joint error … cartoon by Peg Parsons
Event-prompted diaries: Mean ratings, on 0-10 scales, given by participants for the
importance to them of the joint plan in which an error occurred and of the
relationship with the other person involved in the plan, in Italy and in Canada.

Ilaria Grazzani-Gavazzi & Keith Oatley (1999). The experience of emotions of interdependence and
independence following interpersonal errors in Italy and Anglophone Canada. Cognition and
Emotion, 13, 49-63.
 A conception of empathy

Empathy has been described by de Vignemont &

Singer as based on mirror-neurons, and
involving:

(i) having an emotion, which

(ii) is in some way similar to that of another person, which
(iii) is elicited by observation or imagination of the other’s emotion, and
which involves knowing that
(iv) the other is the source of one’s own emotion.

Frederique de Vignemont & Tania Singer (2006). The empathetic brain: How,
when, and why. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 435-441.
 Four empathetic modes of emotion

Imagine two people, Anna and Beatrice

Beatrice smiles at Anna; Anna feels happy and smiles back

Beatrice is in tears; Anna is sad and tries sympathetically to

help

Beatrice frowns; Anna senses opposition and feels slightly

angry

Beatrice cries out in alarm; Anna becomes frightened

 Mental disorders
Among cognitive theories of emotion, ours (see e.g.
Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 2014) is the only one that has
explicitly served as a basis for understanding emotional
disorders (see, Oatley & Jenkins, 1992; Power &
Dalgleish, 2008; Johnson-Laird, Mancini, & Gangemi,
2006.) According to Johnson-Laird et al. emotional
disorders are hyperemotions.

Johnson-Laird, P. N., Mancini, F., & Gangemi, A. (2006). A hyper-emotion theory of

psychological illnesses. Psychological Review, 113, 822-841.
Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1987). Towards a cognitive theory of emotions.
Cognition and Emotion, 1, 29-50.
Keltner, D., Oatley, K., & Jenkins, J. M. (2013). Understanding emotions, third edition.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Oatley, K., & Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2014). Cognitive approaches to emotions. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 18, 134-140.
Power, M., & Dalgleish, T. (2008). Cognition and emotion: From order to disorder, 2nd
edition. Hove: Psychology Press.
 Life events (life stress)
In medical-related conditions the important starting point is
epidemiology. This is true for emotional disorders, where the
important study is that of Brown and Harris (1978). They found
that first episodes of depression were caused not primarily by
something going wrong in people’s mindsbut something going
wrong in their lives—a severe life event—most typically a loss,
in conjunction with a vulnerability factor such as lack of social
support. Subsequently, genetics have been found to be critical,
too (e.g. Caspi et al., 2003) but the importance of life events
must not be minimized.

Brown, G. W., & Harris, T. O. (1978). Social origins of depression: A study of psychiatric disorder
in women. London: Tavistock.
Caspi, A., Sugden, K., Moffitt, T., E., Taylor, A., Craig, I. W., Taylor, A., et al. (2003). Influence on
life stress on depression: moderation by a polymorphism in the 5-HTT gene. Science, 301,
386-389.
Oatley, K., & Bolton, W. (1985). A social-cognitive theory of depression in reaction to life events.
Psychological Review, 92, 372-388.
Oatley, K. (2007). Slings and arrows: Depression and life events. The Psychologist, 20, 228-230.
 Sadness and depression

.
Depression and some anxiety states have the same
structure of causation, and are based on the same
underlying processes as ordinary emotions of sadness
and fear, in relation to losses and dangers.

Mayberg, H. S., Liotti, M., Brannan, S. K., McGinnis, S., Maharin, R., K., Jerabek, P. A., et
al. (1999). Reciprocal limbic cortical function and negative mood: Converging PET
findings in depression and normal sadness. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156,
675-682.
 Some current approaches to therapy
Emotion focused therapy, understanding one’s emotions
(e.g. Greenberg, 2008)
Cognitive-behavioural therapy, keeping diaries,
understanding what gives rise to emotions (see outcome
studies)
Psychoanalytic therapy as developing a story in which
intentions have gone missing (Freud’s case of “Dora”)
more recently Fonagy & Leyten’s (2009) mentalization
therapy, based on attachment and theory-of-mind
Cuijpers, P., van Stratton, A., Andersson, G., & van Oppen, P. (2008).
Psychotherapy for depression in adults: A meta-analytic review of
comparative outcome studies. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 76, 909-922.
Greenberg, L. S. (2008). The clinical application of emotion in psychotherapy.
In M. Lewis, J. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman-Barratt (Eds.), Handbook of
emotions, third edition (pp. 88-101). New York: Guilford.
Fonagy, P., & Luyten, P. (2009). A developmental, mentalization-based
approach to the understanding and treatment of borderline personality
disorder. Development and Psychopathology, 21, 1355-1381.
 The importance of narrative
Bruner (1986) has explained that narrative is an account of
human intentions and their vicissitudes. It therefore has
the same basis as that of the causation of emotions in
relation to goals and events that affect them.

When one sees a patient, or client, the person gives a

narrative of his or her life and troubles, typically of
emotional states (e.g. depression, anxiety, anger) that
are not willed and cannot be controlled. Freud’s take on
this (see Oatley, 1990) was that the narrative lacked an
essential ingredient: the intentions (goals) of the person
telling the narrative had gone missing from the story.

Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.
Oatley, K. (1990). Freud's psychology of intention: The case of Dora. Mind and
Language, 5, 69-86.
 Cognitive analytic therapy
A time-limited therapy developed by Tony Ryle in the early
nineties, is based on the idea of enabling the patient
(client), to understand how a particular emotional problem
is set up and then maintained, and on how each problem of
this kind plays out in relationships. An early part of the
therapy involves diaries, and at the end of the first phase
the therapist writes the patient (client) a narrative-based
letter to reformulate the patient’s (client’s) life story, with the
aim that the letter will be mutually agreed, and serve as the
basis for therapeutic change.

We might now see the setting up of an emotional problem,

and its reformulation, as based on appraisal.

Ryle, A & Kerr, I (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy: Principles and
Practice. Chichester: Wiley.
 Approaches to therapy

Most therapy, then, has a basis in narrative, and most

involves clients coming better to be in charge of their
own intentions (goals).

Therapy is therefore related to reading narrative fiction.

The Communicative Theory of Emotions has therapeutic

implications: people can come better to understand
transitions to intense emotional states, and to reflect on
emotions as communications to themselves of important
goals (related to ancient Stoic analyses, e.g. Epictetus.)
 Two therapeutic effects of reading fiction,
both based in emotion
One kind of effect (found by Raymond Mar and me with other
colleagues) is that reading fiction gives rise to improved empathy and
theory-of-mind. By means of it, we can come to understand others,
via empathetic emotions, from the inside (cf. Fonagy’s mentalization
therapy).

The second kind of effect (found by Maja Djikic and me with other
colleagues) is that through fiction that is artistic we can change our
personalities by small amounts, not by means of persuasion, but in
our own way. This effect is mediated by readers’ emotions. It’s
dependent on the literary works being art rather than being designed
to produce some particular emotional effect, as occurs, for instance,
with thrillers, or being designed to persuade.

Oatley, K. (2011). In the minds of others. Scientific American Mind, 22(6), 62-67.
 Art as enabling emotion-based change of
personality

First: Fiction. Maja Djikic and I (with other colleagues) assigned people
to read either Anton Chekhov’s short story “The lady with the little dog”
or a control text. Before and after this, we measured Big Five
personality traits and intensity of ten emotions.

The story is about a man who, while staying at a seaside resort, meets a
woman whom he has seen walking with her dog. They begin an affair
and at the end of their holiday they part. But their feelings for each other
become stronger, and more important than anything else in their lives.

The control text in non-fictional format was written by Maja Djikic as a

report from a divorce court, with the same characters, events and
information as Chekhov’s story. It was the same length and level of
reading difficulty. Readers found it just as interesting, but not as artistic,
as Chekhov’s story.

Djikic, M., Oatley, K., Zoeterman, S., & Peterson, J. (2009). On being moved by art: How
reading fiction transforms the self. Creativity Research Journal, 21, 24-29.
Effects of reading Chekhov’s “The lady with the little dog” (art) compared
with a courtroom account of the same events (control):
Means of composite traits and emotions after reading, controlled for composite
traits and emotions before reading.

Maja Djikic, Keith Oatley, Sara Zoeterman, & Jordan Peterson (2008). On being moved by art:
How reading fiction transforms the self. Creativity Research Journal, 20.

1
Traits Em otions
0.9
Indices of Change

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4
Control Art
Condition

Note. N = 166.
 Transformation of the self

We found that reading Chekhov’s story, as compared

with the control text, enabled people to change
themselves (their personality). Each person changed in
his or her own way.

The changes were mediated by the amount of emotion

readers experienced while reading.

So far we have only found short-term effects, but we

think that over time, such effects might cumulate.
 Indirect communication

Søren Kierkegaard called this indirect communication:

The indirect mode of communication makes communication an art
in quite a different sense than when it is conceived in the usual
manner ... To stop a man on the street and stand still while talking
to him, is not so difficult as to say something to a passer-by in
passing, without standing still and without delaying the other,
without attempting to persuade him to go the same way, but giving
him instead an impulse to go precisely his own way (pp. 246-247).

Søren Kierkegaard, S. (1846). Concluding unscientific postscript (D. F. Swenson & W. Lowrie, Trans.).
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (This publication 1968).
Art and the projection of our own meanings

Art enables us to change, not in a way desired by an author

but in our own way. By contrast, persuasion results in
feeling, thinking, or acquiring dispositions, according to
the goals of the writer.

So artistic fiction is comparable to two kinds of relationship

that enable change in an indirect way: a love relationship
and the relationship of a certain kind of psychotherapy.

In reading artistic fiction one is both oneself and a literary

character, and this can prompt a perturbation in the
autonomous system of personality. In psychotherapy, one
can be both one’s usual self and another person in the
transference, and this can enable a comparable effect.

Djikic, M., & Oatley, K. (under revision). The art in fiction: From indirect communication
to self-development. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.
 Computational issues

There have been several approaches to the computational

modelling of emotions.

Frijda, N. H., & Swagerman, J. (1987). Can computers feel? Theory and design of
an emotional system. Cognition and Emotion, 1, 235-257.
Wright, I. Beaudoin, L. Sloman, A. (1996). Towards a design-based analysis of
emotional episodes. Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 3, 101-126.
Mateas, M., & Stern, A. (2007). Writing Facade: A case study in procedural
authorship. In P. Harrigan & N. Wardrip-Fruin (Eds.), Second person: Role-
playing and story in games and playable media (pp. 183-208). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Aubé, M. (2009). Unfolding commitments management: A systemic view of
emotions. In J. Valverdu & D. Casacuberta (Eds.), Handbook of research on
synthetic emotions and sociable robotics: New applications in affective
computing and artificial intelligence (pp. 198-227). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
 Nico Frijda’s types of action readiness

• 1. Acceptance Accepting presence or interaction

• 2. Nonacceptance Not accepting presence or interaction
• 3. Attending Acquiring information
• 4. Disinterest Not acquiring information
• 5. Affiliate Achieving or accepting close interpersonal interaction
• 6. Avoid Decreasing interaction
• 7. Reject Refusing interaction
• 8. Antagonism Modifying unwanted target action
• 9. Desire Achieving positive hedonic outcome
• 10. Caring for Improving target’s well-being
• 11. Exuberance Promoting gratuitous interactions
• 12. Domination Controlling others’ actions
• 13. Submission Following someone else’s wishes
• 14. Helplessness Desiring to act but not knowing how
• 15. Hyperactivation Increase of relational activity
• 16. Hypoactivation Decrease of relational activity
• 17. Tenseness Simultaneous opposing action tendencies
• 18. Inhibition Inhibition of activated action readiness
 Types of action readiness for sadness (in blue)

• 1. Acceptance Accepting presence or interaction

• 2. Nonacceptance Not accepting presence or interaction
• 3. Attending Acquiring information
• 4. Disinterest Not acquiring information
• 5. Affiliate Achieving or accepting close interpersonal interaction
• 6. Avoid Decreasing interaction
• 7. Reject Refusing interaction
• 8. Antagonism Modifying unwanted target action
• 9. Desire Achieving positive hedonic outcome
• 10. Caring for Improving target’s well-being
• 11. Exuberance Promoting gratuitous interactions
• 12. Domination Controlling others’ actions
• 13. Submission Following someone else’s wishes
• 14. Helplessness Desiring to act but not knowing how
• 15. Hyperactivation Increase of relational activity
• 16. Hypoactivation Decrease of relational activity
• 17. Tenseness Simultaneous opposing action tendencies
• 18. Inhibition Inhibition of activated action readiness
 Computational issues

The approach that Phil Johnson-Laird and I are taking to model our theory
is to use our 1989 semantic analysis of emotion terms, and to input
episodes of emotion. These will be in narrative form collected from
people, including people with current disorders. These episodes will be
analyzed for events, goals and emotion terms, and also for emotional
mood using Pennebaker et al’s (2001) Linguistic Inquiry and Word
Count. We will then infer what emotion is being experienced. The output
of the program will be predictions of kinds of action that are likely, and of
changes could take place in the formulation. The program will be
designed have a conversational interface, in which the emotional
episodes can be discussed.

Johnson-Laird, P. N., & Oatley, K. (1989). The language of emotions: An analysis of a

semantic field. Cognition and Emotion, 3, 81-123.
Pennebaker, J. W., Francis, M. E., & Booth, R. J. (2001). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count
(LIWC). LIWC 2001. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
 Fin

Thank you
From Indian poetics: everyday and literary emotions

Bhava Rasa
sexual delight the amorous or erotic
laughter the comic
sorrow the pitiable or tragic
anger the furious
perseverence the heroic
fear the terrible
disgust or disillusion the odious or loathsome
wonder the marvelous
serenity the peaceful
 Effects of reading fiction and non-fiction
on social abilities
If fiction is a simulation of the social world, a prediction follows. People who read a
lot of fiction may possess enhanced theory-of-mind (empathetic) abilities, and
social skills.

This prediction was tested by examining lifetime exposure to fiction and non-
fictional texts as measured by Keith Stanovich & Richard West’s Author
Recognition Checklist, and investigating whether such exposure could predict
performance on:

• A test of empathetic theory of mind: The Mind in the Eyes Test

• A test of social perception: The Interpersonal Perception Test

Raymond Mar, Keith Oatley, Jacob Hirsh, Jennifer dela Paz, & Jordan Peterson (2006). Bookworms
versus nerds: The social abilities of fiction and non-fiction readers. Journal of Research in Personality,
40, 694-712.
Simon Baron-Cohen et al. (2001). The “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” Test Revised version: A
(Baron-Cohen
study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger's syndrome or high-functioning et al.,Journal
autism. 2001)
of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42, 241-251.
Partial correlations between exposure to fiction or non-fiction (ART) and
two measures of social ability: Mind in the Eyes (MIE) and Interpersonal
Perception Task (IPT-15). (Raymond Mar, Keith Oatley, Jacob Hirsh, Jennifer dela Paz,
& Jordan Peterson (2006). Bookworms versus nerds: The social abilities of fiction and non-
fiction readers. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 694-712.)

Results – Partial Correlations

0.4
*
0.3
Partial Correlation

0.2 ^
0.1
Nonfiction MIE
0
IPT-15
-0.1
Fiction
-0.2

-0.3 * ^ p = .08
-0.4 * * p < .01
(Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, dela Paz, & Peterson, 2006)
 Conclusions

Emotions configure the individual cognitive system to deal with recurring

kinds of events, especially events in the social world.

Emotions configure relationships, and hence allow people to coordinate

with each other.

Coordination involves mindreading: being able to understand other

people ’ s emotions. This typically involves a process based on
empathetic simulation and projection. We are good at this, but not that
good.

Fiction is simulation of the social world. We can enter into this world, by
taking on the goals and plans of characters. Although we know the
characters’ emotions, the emotions we experience are our own.

Practice in the simulated social worlds of fiction improves empathetic

skills (emotional intelligence), and can change personality.
 Nico Frijda’s list of types of action readiness

• 1. Acceptance Accepting presence or interaction

• 2. Nonacceptance Not accepting presence or interaction
• 3. Attending Acquiring information
• 4. Disinterest Not acquiring information
• 5. Affiliate Achieving or accepting close interpersonal interaction
• 6. Avoid Decreasing interaction
• 7. Reject Refusing interaction
• 8. Antagonism Modifying unwanted target action
• 9. Desire Achieving positive hedonic outcome
• 10. Caring for Improving target’s well-being
• 11. Exuberance Promoting gratuitous interactions
• 12. Domination Controlling others’ actions
• 13. Submission Following someone else’s wishes
• 14. Helplessness Desiring to act but not knowing how
• 15. Hyperactivation Increase of relational activity
• 16. Hypoactivation Decrease of relational activity
• 17. Tenseness Simultaneous opposing action tendencies
• 18. Inhibition Inhibition of activated action readiness