The emotions: A relational perspective

In daily life, the term emotion primarily designates experiential phenomena that are out of the ordinary. Because of the “movements of the soul” that characterize them, Descartes called these phenomena émotion, a word which at that time meant riot or agitation. Aristotle recognized the same phenomenon when using the word kinèsis. Indeed, emotional feelings are perceptions of the body’s dynamic involvement in interaction. And yet most psychological theories have neglected the kinesthetic quality of emotions. This article presents arguments in favor of a perceptual model of emotions. This perceptual model claims that emotions are bodily stances expressing one’s relationship toward the emotional object. These arguments are based on recent advances in cognitive sciences, in particular in relation to embodied cognition. This perceptual model describes a functional sequence of the emotional process which falls within the scope of current multicomponential theories of emotions.