Mood and Emotion: A Comparison of Five Contemporary Views (Book)

The vigor and vitality of the recently emergent interest in emotion on the part of biological, behavioral, and social scientists have been manifested in a number of excellent books that have attempted to bring some degree of order to the conceptual and definitional chaos that characterizes this area of research. The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the approaches of five of these recent books: The Emotions (Frijda, 1986), Biology and Emotion (McNaughton, 1989), Mood: The Frame of Mind (Morris, 1989), The Cognitive Structure of Emotions (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988), and The Biopsychology of Mood and Arousal (Thayer, 1989). The titles of these books suggest the diversity of the approaches used by their authors. This essay will not attempt to review extensively each of these books, for such a review would clearly go beyond the allotted space. Instead, I briefly summarize the approach used in each book, with emphasis on its unique features. The following question is asked of each book: How is emotion