title: Cognitive approaches to emotions.
abstract: Cognitive approaches offer clear links between how emotions are thought about in everyday life and how they are investigated psychologically. Cognitive researchers have focused on how emotions are caused when events or other people affect concerns and on how emotions influence processes such as reasoning, memory, and attention. Three representative cognitive theories of emotion continue to develop productively: the action-readiness theory, the core-affect theory, and the communicative theory. Some principles are common to them and divergences can be resolved by future research. Recent explanations have included how emotions structure social relationships, how they function in psychological illnesses, and how they are central to music and fiction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Canada M5S 1V6. Electronic address: keith.oatley@utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Oatley
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Green Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
authors.forename: P N
authors.initials: PN
authors.lastname: Johnson-Laird
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008091:Literature; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009146:Music; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology
keywords: action readiness; affect; appraisal; communication; emotion; psychological illnesses