Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T08:51:15.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building a house of sentiment on sand: Epistemological issues with contempt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2017

Heather C. Lench ,
Shane W. Bench  and
Kenneth A. Perez
Heather C. Lench
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235. hlench@tamu.eduswbench@gmail.comkenneth.perez@tamu.eduwww.heatherlench.com
Shane W. Bench
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235. hlench@tamu.eduswbench@gmail.comkenneth.perez@tamu.eduwww.heatherlench.com
Kenneth A. Perez
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235. hlench@tamu.eduswbench@gmail.comkenneth.perez@tamu.eduwww.heatherlench.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Contempt shares its features with other emotions, indicating that there is no justification for creating “sentiment” as a new category of feelings. Scientific categories must be created or updated on the basis of evidence. Building a new category on the currently limited contempt literature would be akin to building a house on sand – likely to fall at any moment.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e242
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrews, P. W. & Thomson, J. A. (2009) The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems. Psychological Review 116:620–54. doi: 10.1037/a0016242.Google Scholar
Arnold, M. B. (1960) Emotion and personality. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Averill, J. R. (1968) Grief: Its nature and significance. Psychological Bulletin 70:721–48. doi: 10.1037/h0026824.Google Scholar
Becker, J. C., Tausch, N. & Wagner, U. (2011) Emotional consequences of collective action participation: Differentiating self-directed and outgroup-directed emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37(12):1587–98. doi: 10.1177/0146167211414145.Google Scholar
Beedie, C. J., Terry, P. C. & Lane, A. M. (2005) Distinctions between emotion and mood. Cognition and Emotion 19:847–78. doi: 10.1080/02699930541000057.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. (1991) Realism, anti-foundationalism, and the enthusiasm for natural kinds. Philosophical Studies 61:127–48.Google Scholar
Caprariello, P. A., Cuddy, A. J. C. & Fiske, S. T. (2009) Social structure shapes cultural stereotypes and emotions: A causal test of the stereotype content model. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 12(2):147–55.Google Scholar
Carnelley, K. B., Wortman, C. B., Bolger, N. & Burke, C. T. (2006) The time course of grief reactions to spousal loss: Evidence from a national probability sample. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91:476–92.Google Scholar
Carver, C. S. (2004) Negative affects deriving from the behavioral approach system. Emotion 4:3–22. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.4.1.3.Google Scholar
Carver, C. S. & Harmon-Jones, E. (2009) Anger is an approach-related affect: Evidence and implications. Psychological Bulletin 135:183–204. doi: 10.1037/a0013965.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Compton, R. J. (2003) The interface between emotion and attention: A review of evidence from psychology and neuroscience. Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews 2:115–29. doi: 10.1177/1534582303002002003.Google Scholar
Cunningham, M. R. (1988) What do you do when you're happy or blue? Mood, expectancies, and behavioral interest. Motivation and Emotion 12:309–31. doi: 10.1007/BF00992357.Google Scholar
Eich, E., Kihlstrom, J. F., Bower, G. H., Forgas, J. P. & Niedenthal, P. M. (2000) Cognition and emotion. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P. & Friesen, W. V. (1986) A new pan-cultural facial expression of emotion. Motivation and Emotion 10(2):159–68. doi: 10.1007/BF00992253.Google Scholar
Ellsworth, P. C. & Scherer, K. R. (2003) Appraisal processes in emotion. In: Handbook of affective sciences, ed. Davidson, R. J., Scherer, K. R. & Goldsmith, H. H., pp. 572–95. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frijda, N. H. (1987) Emotion, cognitive structure, and action tendency. Cognition and Emotion 1:115–43. doi: 10.1080/02699938708408043.Google Scholar
Kaplan, R. L., Levine, L. J., Lench, H. C. & Safer, M. A. (2016) Forgetting feelings: Opposite biases in reports of the intensity of past emotion and mood. Emotion 16:309–19. doi: 10.1037/emo0000127.Google Scholar
Kreibig, S. D. (2010) Autonomic nervous system activity in emotion: A review. Biological Psychology 84:394–421. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.010.Google Scholar
Laham, S. M., Chopra, S., Lalljee, M. & Parkinson, B. (2010) Emotional and behavioural reactions to moral transgressions: Cross-cultural and individual variations in India and Britain. International Journal of Psychology 45:64–71. doi: 10.1080/00207590902913434.Google Scholar
Lench, H. C., Bench, S. W., Darbor, K. E. & Moore, M. (2015) A functionalist manifesto: Goal-related emotions from an evolutionary perspective. Emotion Review 7:90–98. doi: 10.1177/1754073914553001.Google Scholar
Lench, H. C., Flores, S. A. & Bench, S. W. (2011a) Discrete emotions predict changes in cognition, judgment, experience, behavior, and physiology: A meta-analysis of experimental emotion elicitations. Psychological Bulletin 137:834–55. doi: 10.1037/a0024244.Google Scholar
Lench, H. C. & Levine, L. J. (2005) Effects of fear on risk and control judgements and memory: Implications for health promotion messages. Cognition and Emotion 19:1049–69. doi: 10.1080/02699930500203112.Google Scholar
Lench, H. C. & Levine, L. J. (2010) Motivational biases in memory for emotions. Cognition and Emotion 24:401–18. doi: 10.1080/02699930802650788.Google Scholar
Lench, H. C., Safer, M. A. & Levine, L. J. (2011b) Focalism and the underestimation of future emotion: When it's worse than imagined. Emotion 11:278–85. doi: 10.1037/a0022792.Google Scholar
Lench, H. C., Tibbett, T. P. & Bench, S. W. (2016) Exploring the toolkit of emotion: What do sadness and anger do for us? Social and Personality Psychology Compass 10:11–25. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12229.Google Scholar
Lerner, J. S. & Keltner, D. (2001) Fear, anger, and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81:146–59. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.81.1.146.Google Scholar
Levine, L. J. (1996) The anatomy of disappointment: A naturalistic test of appraisal models of sadness, anger, and hope. Cognition and Emotion 10:337–59. doi: 10.1080/026999396380178.Google Scholar
Levine, L. J., Lench, H. C., Kaplan, R. L. & Safer, M. A. (2012) Accuracy and artifact: Reexamining the intensity bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103:584–605. doi: 10.1037/a0029544.Google Scholar
Mackie, D. M., Devos, T. & Smith, E. R. (2000) Intergroup emotions: Explaining offensive action tendencies in an intergroup context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(4):602–16. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.79.4.602.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, D. & Ekman, P. (2004) The relationship among expressions, labels, and descriptions of contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87(4):529–40. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.87.4.529.Google Scholar
Mauss, I. B., Levenson, R. W., McCarter, L., Wilhelm, F. H. & Gross, J. J. (2005) The tie that binds? Coherence among emotion experience, behavior, and physiology. Emotion 5:175–90. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.5.2.175.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melwani, S. & Barsade, S. G. (2011) Held in contempt: The psychological, interpersonal, and performance consequences of contempt in a work context. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101:503–20. doi: 10.1037/a0023492.Google Scholar
Neu, J. (2000) A tear is an intellectual thing: The meaning of emotions. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R. & Hietanen, J. K. (2014) Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111(2):646–51. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1321664111.Google Scholar
Romani, S., Grappi, S. & Bagozzi, R. P. (2013) My anger is your gain, my contempt your loss: Explaining consumer responses to corporate wrongdoing. Psychology & Marketing 30:1029–42. doi: 10.1002/mar.20664.Google Scholar
Roseman, I. J., Antoniou, A. A. & Jose, P. E. (1996) Appraisal determinants of emotions: Constructing a more accurate and comprehensive theory. Cognition and Emotion 10:241–77. doi: 10.1080/026999396380240.Google Scholar
Russell, J. A. (2003) Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. Psychological Review 110(1):145–72. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.110.1.145.Google Scholar
Solomon, R. C. (2008) The philosophy of emotions. In: Handbook of emotions, 3rd edition, ed. Lewis, M., Haviland-Jones, J. M., & Barrett, L. F., pp. 3–16. Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Ufkes, E. G., Otten, S., Vander Zee, K. I., Giebels, E. & Dovidio, J. F. (2012) Urban district identity as a common ingroup identity: The different role of ingroup prototypicality for minority and majority groups. European Journal of Social Psychology 42:706–16. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.1888.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verduyn, P., Delvaux, E., Van Coillie, H., Tuerlinckx, F. & Van Mechelen, I. (2009) Predicting the duration of emotional experience: Two experience sampling studies. Emotion 9:83–91. doi: 10.1037/a0014610.Google Scholar
Verduyn, P., Van Mechelen, I. & Tuerlinckx, F. (2011) The relation between event processing and the duration of emotional experience. Emotion 11:20–28. doi: 10.1037/a0021239.Google Scholar