EMOTIONS AND EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR: A CONSTRUCTIONAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING SOME SOCIAL BENEFITS OF AGGRESSION

Abstract

The distinction between emotion and emotional behavior is an important one that has largely not been made. There are many approaches to emotion and the approach taken here is based on a consequential contingency analysis. Emotion is treated not as a cause of behavior, nor as caused by behavior. Rather, both behavior and emotion (a strictly private event) are considered to be a function of contingencies of selection. The goal is not to change emotions, but to help sensitize the client to them and thereby to the contingencies of which they are a function. When one acts while displaying the behavioral and physiological characteristics typically associated with an emotion, this public display is treated as emotional behavior. An example drawing on a form of aggressive behavior is used to help make the distinction between emotions and emotional behavior and to provide an illustration of the  transition of emotion as a descriptor of a consequential contingency to emotional behavior that is maintained by consequences in its own right. Once emotion transitions to emotional behavior, the private emotion felt might no longer be indicative of the originating contingency of which it was a descriptor, but instead may be a necessary component to meet a contingency requirement.Key Words: emotions, emotional behavior, aggression, consequential contingency, evocative events, potentiate