Andrew Ortony

What's Basic About Basic Emotions?

A widespread assumption in theories of emotion is that there exists a small set of basic emotions. From a biological perspective, this idea is manifested in the belief that there might be neurophysiological and anatomical substrates corresponding to the basic emotions. From a psychological perspective, basic emotions are often held to be the primitive building blocks of other, nonbasic emotions. The content of such claims is examined, and the results suggest that there is no coherent nontrivial notion of basic emotions as the elementary psychological primitives in terms of which other emotions can be explained. Thus, the view that there exist basic emotions out of which all other emotions are built, and in terms of which they can be explained, is questioned, raising the possibility that this position is an article of faith rather than an empirically or theoretically defensible basis for the conduct of emotion research. This suggests that perhaps the notion of basic emotions will not lead to significant progress in the field. An alternative approach to explaining the phenomena that appear to motivate the postulation of basic emotions is presented.

Beyond literal similarity

Hitherto, theories of similarity have restricted themselves to judgments of what might be called literal similarity. A central thesis of this article is that a complete account of similarity needs also to be sensitive to nonliteralness, or metaphoricity, an aspect of similarity statements that is most evident in similes but that actually underlies metaphorical language in general. Theoretical arguments are advanced in support of the claim that metaphoricity can be represented in terms of the relative degrees of salience of matching (or matchable) attributes of the two terms in a comparison. A modification of Tverskys account of similarity is proposed. The implications of this proposal for similarity statements are discussed, along with implications for the psychological processes involved in their comprehension. It is argued that the general account of similarity proposed, including, as it does, nonliteral similarity, can form not only the basis of a theory of metaphor but can also give a credible account of the relationship between metaphor, analogy, and similarity.

Interpreting metaphors and idioms: Some effects of context on comprehension

Two experiments are described in which reaction times for understanding target sentences or phrases in terms of a preceding context were measured. In Experiment 1, the target sentences followed either short or long contexts which induced either literal interpretations or metaphorical ones. Results indicated that only in the short context condition did subjects take significantly longer to understand metaphorical than literal targets. This interaction is explained in terms of the availability of appropriate schemata for interpreting the target. In Experiment 2, targets were phrases that could be given either an idiomatic or a literal interpretation. It was found that the comprehension of phrases receiving an idiomatic interpretation took no longer than the comprehension of those same phrases when given a literal interpretation, and there was some evidence that idiomatic interpretations were consistently faster. It is argued that both experiments can be accounted for in terms of contextually generated expectations. The processes required for the comprehension of figurative and literal uses of language seem to be essentially similar.

The Psychological Foundations of the Affective Lexicon

Subjects rated their confidence that each word from a set of 585 words referred to an emotion. As a strategy for discriminating words that refer to genuine emotions from words that refer to other kinds of conditions, ratings were collected in two different linguistic contexts: first, in the context of feeling something and second, in the context of being something. We hypothesized that words that referred to genuine emotions would be judged as such when presented in the context of feeling or being (e.g., feeling angry and being angry should both be rated as emotions). Words not referring to genuine emotions, however, were expected to show one of several other patterns. For example, words such as abandoned, which refer to objective states of the world, were expected to be rated as emotions in the feeling context but not in the being context. A discriminant analysis showed that such patterns could be used to distinguish the categories of a taxonomy of psychological conditions that Ortony, Clore, and Foss (1987) have proposed. The most discriminable categories were the four classes of affective, cognitive, external, and bodily conditions.

On Putting Apples into Bottles-A Problem of Polysemy.

An experiment was designed in such a manner that a sentence could be recalled given a certain cue only if the subject’s encoding of the sentence included details and involved distinctions in the senses of words which could not have been part of the correct dictionary readings for these words. The most plausible interpretation of the results is that comprehension of a sentence entails constructing a particularized and elaborated mental representation, and that this process depends more heavily on knowledge of the world and analysis of context than is generally appreciated. It is claimed that existing associative or semantic network theories would be strained to accommodate the data. A gedanken experiment: a group of subjects is presented with the sentence The container held the apples; another group sees The container held the cola. Later each group is given two retrieval cues, bottle, and basket. There are two questions: which cue will best facilitate recall for each group, and why? This paper addresses these questions. Our thesis is that sentence comprehension and memory involve constructing particularized and elaborated mental representations, and that network models currently have no satisfactory way of accounting for this. That language comprehension is a constructive, elaborative process has been demonstrated already (cf. Bransford, Barclay & Franks, 1972; Bransford & McCarrell, in press). Previous investigators have stressed the importance of a person’s using context to get a holistic interpretation of the to-be-comprehended sentences. Our emphasis is on the resulting mental representation. Specifically we claim that the representation is generally more detailed than the words in the utterance might appear to entail; that the words only loosely constrain the representation; and that one’s store of knowledge about the world and analysis of context are

Metaphor: Theoretical and Empirical Research

Metaphor plays a major role in our understanding of language and of the world we use language to talk about. Consequently, theories of language comprehension and of language itself are incomplete if they do not handle the phenomenon of metaphor, and they are inadequate if they cannot. Traditional definitions and theories of metaphor are reviewed. It is suggested that they err in equating metaphors with comparisons rather than merely implicating comparisons. Empirical research is reviewed that reveals, for the most part, serious problems, particularly in the developmental research. These problems often relate to inadequate underlying theories about the nature of metaphor. Other difficulties include inadequate controls over preexisting knowledge and overly hasty conclusions that children cannot understand metaphors. Related research on the comprehension of proverbs and analogies is discussed. Some recommendations for future research are made. These depend on a redefinition of metaphor and on the employment of aa investigative approach that will permit adequate controls of preexisting knowledge, surface structure, and meaning. The approach recommended emphasizes and takes advantage of the contextdependent nature of metaphors. Finally, the role of comparisons is reexamined. It is of no avail to argue that metaphors are really implicit comparisons if, in so doing, one hopes to account for or explain their nonliteral nature. For even if metaphors can be transformed into comparisons, these comparisons are themselves nonliteral and consequently still need to be explained.

Salience, similes, and the asymmetry of similarity

Abstract Models of similarity have traditionally assumed that the similarity relation is symmetrical. However, when reversed, similarity statements frequently have different properties from those of the original. Previous attempts to account for the asymmetry of similarity have focused only on literal comparisons, resulting in a tendency to underestimate the degree of asymmetry in nonliteral comparisons (i.e., similes). A model of similarity is proposed to account for the varying degrees of asymmetry found in all kinds of natural language comparisons. In this model, asymmetry is attributed to an imbalance in the salience of the shared attributes. Studies are reported which test key aspects of the model. The results appear to provide converging evidence for the claim that asymmetry of similarity is due at least in part to salience imbalance.

Affect and machine design: Lessons for the development of autonomous machines

Human beings have evolved a rich and sophisticated set of processes for engaging with the world in which cognition and affect play two different but equally crucial roles. Cognition interprets and makes sense of the world. Affect evaluates and judges, modulating the operating parameters of cognition and giving a warning about possible dangers. The study of how these two systems work together provides guidance for the design of complex autonomous systems that must deal with a variety of tasks in a dynamic, often unpredictable, and sometimes hazardous environment.

A context-sensitive representation of word meanings

This study provides a numerical representation of contextual effects on the meanings of words, constructed from the order judgments of 19 subjects concerning the word “red” in 19 sentences. Subjects judged whether or not the red object mentioned in a sentence was redder than, less red than, or could be equally as red as the red object mentioned in each of the other sentences. These judgments were well described as an interval order. This means that the red ascribed in a sentence can be represented by a real interval with judgments of equally red corresponding to overlapping intervals. Semiorder axioms were not met, indicating that the width of the interval varied from sentence to sentence. Possible ways of incorporating the result into theories of semantic memory were discussed, as well as ways of accounting for the pronounced individual differences which were observed. The research described herein was supported by the National Institute of Education under Contract HEW NIE-G-74-0007.

Psychological Construction in the OCC Model of Emotion

This article presents six ideas about the construction of emotion: (a) Emotions are more readily distinguished by the situations they signify than by patterns of bodily responses; (b) emotions emerge from, rather than cause, emotional thoughts, feelings, and expressions; (c) the impact of emotions is constrained by the nature of the situations they represent; (d) in the OCC account (the model proposed by Ortony, Clore, and Collins in 1988), appraisals are psychological aspects of situations that distinguish one emotion from another, rather than triggers that elicit emotions; (e) analyses of the affective lexicon indicate that emotion words refer to internal mental states focused on affect; (f) the modularity of emotion, long sought in biology and behavior, exists as mental schemas for interpreting human experience in story, song, drama, and conversation.