Emotion Theories as Competing Ontologies

Emotion theory is often taught as a sequence of models, each offering a different account of what emotions are, how they arise, and what functions they serve. Students learn to compare basic emotion theories, appraisal models, dimensional approaches, and constructionist frameworks as if they were alternative explanations of the same underlying phenomenon. This comparative posture suggests that the disagreement is primarily empirical or methodological. With enough data, one model will prove more accurate, or the models will converge.

This essay takes a different position. It argues that many debates in emotion theory are not simply disputes about mechanism or measurement, but conflicts between competing ontologies. Emotion theories do not merely explain emotions differently. They presuppose different answers to the question of what emotions fundamentally are. These presuppositions shape what counts as evidence, what kinds of questions can be asked, and what it would even mean for a theory to be right.

When I first encountered these debates as a young psychologist in the 1980s, they were presented with a confidence that now feels slightly misplaced. We spoke about emotion as if it were a single kind of thing awaiting the correct explanation. Over time, it became clear to me that the field was not arguing about one object, but about several different ones that happened to share a name.

Basic emotion theories provide the clearest example of an ontological commitment. In this view, emotions are biologically given, discrete states with distinctive physiological signatures, expressions, and functions. Fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, and surprise are treated as natural kinds, evolved solutions to recurring adaptive problems. The appeal of this ontology is obvious. It promises universality, parsimony, and a firm grounding in biology.

The work of Paul Ekman is often cited as emblematic of this approach. His research on facial expressions suggested that certain emotional expressions are recognized across cultures, supporting the claim that basic emotions are innate and biologically anchored. Within this ontology, disagreement centers on how many basic emotions exist or how they are instantiated, not on whether emotions themselves are discrete natural entities.

Appraisal theories, by contrast, rest on a different ontological foundation. Emotions are not predefined states but emergent patterns arising from how individuals evaluate situations in relation to their goals, values, and beliefs. Fear is not a thing one has, but a process of appraising threat. Anger is not an entity, but a configuration of judgments about obstruction or injustice. The emphasis shifts from biology to meaning.

Within this framework, emotions are inherently relational and context-dependent. They cannot be fully understood without reference to the interpretive activity of the individual. Physiology matters, but it is not decisive. What defines an emotion is the structure of appraisal, not a fixed biological signature. Ontologically, emotions are processes, not objects.

Dimensional models introduce yet another ontology. Rather than treating emotions as discrete or meaning-laden episodes, they conceptualize affective experience as variation along continuous dimensions, typically valence and arousal. From this perspective, emotions are points or regions in affective space. The categories we use in everyday language are conveniences, not reflections of underlying structure.

This ontology dissolves many traditional debates by reframing them. Instead of asking whether fear and anger are distinct emotions, the question becomes whether they occupy distinguishable regions of affective space. Discreteness is replaced by gradation. Boundaries blur. Emotion categories become descriptive labels rather than ontological commitments.

Constructionist theories push this reconfiguration further. In these accounts, emotions are not pre-given biological states or even stable appraisal patterns. They are constructed experiences arising from the interaction of core affect, conceptual knowledge, language, and socialization. Emotions are made, not found.

The work of Lisa Feldman Barrett has been particularly influential in articulating this view. Emotions, on this account, are categories the brain uses to make sense of bodily sensations in context. They are culturally learned and historically situated. Ontologically, emotions are not natural kinds at all, but culturally scaffolded interpretations.

What is striking is that these theories are often debated as if they were making competing claims about the same object. Researchers argue over evidence for universality versus variability, discreteness versus continuity, biology versus construction. Yet each theory is operating with a different answer to the question of what emotions are in the first place. The disagreements are ontological before they are empirical.

This helps explain why the debates are so persistent. Evidence that supports one ontology often fails to persuade proponents of another, not because the data are weak, but because they are interpreted through incompatible assumptions. A finding that facial expressions vary culturally undermines a natural-kind ontology but fits comfortably within a constructionist one. Physiological commonalities support biological accounts but are treated as background constraints by appraisal theorists.

These theories also differ in what they treat as explanatorily primary. For basic emotion theorists, explanation runs from biology to experience. For appraisal theorists, it runs from meaning to feeling. For dimensional models, explanation focuses on affective properties. For constructionists, explanation runs from categorization to experience. Each direction reflects a different ontological commitment.

The implications of these differences extend beyond theory into method. What you believe emotions are determines how you study them. If emotions are natural kinds, you look for biomarkers, universal expressions, and distinct neural circuits. If they are appraisals, you study cognitive evaluations and situational meaning. If they are constructed, you study language, culture, and conceptual development. Methodological disagreements often mask deeper ontological divergence.

These ontologies also carry normative implications. Basic emotion theories often imply that emotions are given and therefore must be managed or regulated. Appraisal theories suggest that changing interpretation can change emotion. Constructionist accounts emphasize the role of culture and learning, implying that emotional life is more malleable than traditionally assumed. Each framework carries a different vision of emotional agency.

In applied settings, these differences matter enormously. Interventions grounded in one ontology may be incoherent within another. Teaching emotion regulation as cognitive control presupposes an appraisal or rationalist ontology. Teaching emotional literacy as category expansion presupposes a constructionist one. Framing emotions as hardwired responses presupposes a biological ontology. Confusion arises when these assumptions are mixed without acknowledgment.

Over the decades, I have watched students struggle with these inconsistencies without being given language to name them. They sense that the theories do not merely disagree on details, but they are rarely told that they are operating within different ontological frames. Instead, they are encouraged to reconcile them prematurely or to treat integration as the obvious solution.

Integration, however, is not straightforward when the underlying ontologies differ. You cannot easily integrate a view that treats emotions as natural kinds with one that treats them as constructed categories without deciding which ontological commitments you are willing to relax. Attempts at synthesis often end up preserving the vocabulary of multiple theories while resolving none of their foundational tensions.

This does not mean that one ontology must be chosen and the others rejected. It does mean that clarity requires recognizing what each theory is claiming to exist. Some ontologies may be more useful for certain questions than others. A biological ontology may illuminate evolutionary function. A constructionist ontology may better capture cultural variability. An appraisal ontology may explain moment-to-moment experience. The mistake is treating these as interchangeable descriptions of the same thing.

Emotion theories thus function less like competing maps of a single terrain and more like maps of different terrains that overlap imperfectly. Each highlights certain features and obscures others. Problems arise when a map is treated as the terrain itself.

For psychology as a discipline, the persistence of these ontological conflicts reflects a deeper ambivalence about its subject matter. Emotion sits at the intersection of body, mind, culture, and meaning. Any attempt to reduce it to a single domain risks distortion. The field’s difficulty in resolving emotion debates may be less a failure of science than a signal of irreducible complexity.

For advanced students, this realization can be unsettling. It disrupts the expectation that theory will converge. Yet it can also be liberating. Recognizing emotion theories as competing ontologies allows one to engage them more precisely. Instead of asking which theory is right, one can ask what kind of emotion each theory makes visible, and at what cost.

Looking back across decades of teaching and scholarship, I have come to see emotion theory as a mirror of psychology itself. The debates endure because they track the discipline’s unresolved questions about nature and meaning, biology and culture, stability and change. Emotion refuses to sit still because the field itself is still negotiating what it is trying to explain.

Psychology does not need a final theory of emotion to move forward. It needs greater ontological honesty. Naming what our theories assume about the nature of emotion is a step toward more productive dialogue, more coherent application, and more respectful disagreement.

Letter to the Reader

When I first began teaching emotion theory, I tried, like many instructors, to make the landscape feel orderly. I wanted students to see progress, coherence, and resolution. With time, I realized that what felt like disorder was often something more interesting: theories speaking past one another because they were answering different questions about what emotions are.

If you find emotion theory confusing, that confusion is not a failure of comprehension. It is an accurate response to a field that has not always been clear about its own assumptions. You are not missing the synthesis. The synthesis may not exist in the way we are taught to expect.

One of the quieter gifts of staying in psychology for a long time is learning to be at ease with this kind of tension. You can appreciate what a biological account reveals without expecting it to capture meaning. You can value constructionist insights without denying embodiment. You can move among frameworks without forcing them into premature agreement.

My encouragement, offered from the long view, is to let emotion theory teach you something about psychology itself. When theories disagree at this depth, it is often because the phenomenon is rich enough to resist a single story. That resistance is not an obstacle. It is an invitation to think more carefully about what we are claiming exists, and why.