Infants and Emotions: How the Ancients' Theories Inform Modern Issues

Abstract

Although cognitively oriented theories of emotion are now dominant in the psychological study of emotion, there remain issues upon which these theories do not agree. Central among these are questions regarding the minimal cognitive processes necessary to have an emotion. A potentially productive approach to such questions is the study of the relation of cognitive development and the development of emotions in infants. Such an approach was featured in ancient philosophical and psychological treatises, some of which formed the very foundations of later cognitive theories. However, the recent literature has been nearly indifferent to just these foundations. Ancient commentators, especially Aristotle and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, understood emotions as fundamentally sociomoral constructs. Owing to a lack of socialisation and moral understanding, infants are not fully capable of experiencing emotions as they are typically understood. Contemporary work in the area of emotion, including that of Michael Lewis, as well as work in other emotion-related areas, is shown to address only inadequately the sociomoral components of emotion and thus to address only inadequately the emotion-cognition relationship.