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Explaining Emotions
Author(s) -
O'Rorke Paul,
Ortony Andrew
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog1802_3
Subject(s) - construct (python library) , cognition , feeling , psychology , action (physics) , causal reasoning , cognitive psychology , folk psychology , commonsense reasoning , cognitive science , psychology of reasoning , social psychology , computer science , verbal reasoning , artificial intelligence , programming language , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Emotions and cognition are inextricably intertwined. Feelings influence thoughts and actions, which in turn can give rise to new emotional reactions. We claim that people infer emotional states in others using commonsense psychological theories of the interactions among emotions, cognition, and action. We present a situation calculus theory of emotion elicitation representing knowledge underlying commonsense causal reasoning involving emotions, and show how the theory can be used to construct explanations for emotional states. The method for constructing explanations is based on the notion of abduction. This method has been implemented in a computer program called AbMaL. The results of computational experiments using AbMaL to construct explanations of examples based on cases taken from a diary study of emotions indicate that the abductive approach to explanatory reasoning about emotions offers significant advantages. We found that the majority of the diary study examples cannot be explained using deduction alone, but they can be explained by making abjuctive inferences. These inferences provide useful information relevant to emotional states.