Chapter 2 :The dimensional, basic, and componential emotion approaches to meaning in psychological emotion research

Authors : J. R. J. Fontaine

Abstract : The three most important psychological approaches to the meaning of emotion terms are presented, namely the dimensional, basic emotion, and componential emotion approaches. According to the dimensional approaches the emotion domain can be represented by a small number of continuous dimensions. The basic emotion approach assumes that the emotion domain is organized into categorically different affect programs. This approach has inspired psycholinguistic research that represents the emotion domain by hierarchical structures. The componential emotion approach represents emotion terms by profiles of activity in each of the emotion components. Although these three approaches are in many respects incompatible when it comes to the presumed underlying emotion processes, they are compatible with respect to the meaning of emotion terms. The chapter ends by discussing how the GRID paradigm, which is based on the componential emotion approach, can also be fruitfully applied to study categorical and dimensional representations of the emotion domain.

Keywords : basic emotion approaches componential emotion approaches dimensional emotion approaches