Emotional Change

Neural Mechanisms Based on Semantic Pointers

Thagard, Paul
Larocque, Laurette
Kajić, Ivana

Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo

The section of the article on moods is adapted from Thagard’s Psychology Today blog, Hot Thought.

Paul Thagard, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada [email protected]

Received June 17, 2020

revised January 28, 2021

Accepted February 3, 2021

Emotion 23(1):p 182-193, February 2023. | DOI: 10.1037/emo0000981

Emotional change includes generation of new emotions, switching from one emotion to another, and alteration of the frequency and intensity of emotions. Psychotherapists help clients to reduce negative emotions such as sadness and anxiety and increase positive emotions such as happiness and hope. We explain such emotional shifts by the semantic pointer theory of emotions, which views them as brain processes that integrate neural representations of situations, appraisals of the goal-relevance of those situations, and physiological reactions to the situations. This theory can explain many kinds of emotional change, including the generation and shifting of mixed, nested, and dispositional emotions.