Abstract

The history of psychological research on affect and emotion ¹ has multiple strands. In this chapter I seek to provide a history of ideas, focusing on theory and research that attempted to answer one of two fundamental questions. The first is “What are emotions?” The second is “What are emotions for?” Although some theoretical positions address both questions, for example by explaining what emotions are in terms of the functions they serve, I find that this distinction has heuristic value and it will be used as an organizing principle in this chapter.