Emotion Review Vol. 6, No. 4 (October 2014) 1–2 © The Author(s) 2014 ISSN 1754-0739 DOI: 10.1177/1754073914534496 er.sagepub.com Abstract In this commentary I focus on similarities, discrepancies, and problems in the four large theoretical perspectives on emotions presented in this issue. Focusing on the approaches’ ideas about the functionality of emotions, I will discuss limitations that call for (additional) smaller and more focused theories. Keyword functionality The four theoretical perspectives by Barrett (2014), Mesquita and Boiger (2014), Moors (2014), and Tracy (2014) outlined in this issue disagree in several points. They disagree about what emotions are—fixed reaction patterns in terms of emotion cat- egories or constructed impressions. They disagree about the necessary and sufficient conditions that elicit emotions. However, despite these discrepancies, all four perspectives agree about one essential point: emotions are functional—they help to adapt on the behavioral or cognitive level. Four Perspectives on Emotions’ Function The functions the four perspectives ascribe to emotions range from motivators of adaptive action (evolutionary and appraisal approaches) to cognitive tools used to interpret internal or social events (conceptual act and sociodynamic approaches). The evo- lutionary perspective gives emotions the same function as instincts, while conceptual act theory sees them as cognitive constructs people use to make sense of themselves and the world. The appraisal and sociodynamic perspectives fall in between these two poles. The appraisal and evolution viewpoints regard emotions as beneficial for adaptive behavior. A traditional weakness of the appraisal approach is that it is unclear if emotions, the appraisal outcomes, or the appraisals themselves influence behavior. If the latter is right, it is questionable if emotions are useful concepts— emotions are not needed in a direct appraisal–behavior link. The evolutionary perspective is clearer by positing one adaptive function for each emotion. However, it is prone to the same cri- tiques that were addressed to instinct theory. The sociodynamic perspective defines functionality in dependence on culture— emotions help to define roles and facilitate interpretations of social behavior. In this sense it is close to conceptual act theory, though emotions there rather serve to make meaning of (what happens to) oneself rather than society. But How Does It Work? Besides their agreement that emotions are functional, the four perspectives share another characteristic: they are not very clear in explaining how exactly that works. Conditions, mechanisms, and processes that mediate between emotions and behavior are not clearly spelled out. This is surprising, because there is ample research on the factors influencing both manifest action and cognitive activity. Concerning emotions as epistemic tools, motivation research has shown that the strength of the need to explain an event dif- fers between persons and in dependence on situational factors (e.g., Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Applied to the conceptual act and sociodynamic approaches this suggests that emotions should only be experienced under conditions that motivate the cognitive activity of meaning making—a limitation that already applied to the attributional theory of emotions (Weiner, 1985). The evolutionary and appraisal perspectives face other prob- lems. To give an example, it seems obvious that fear motivates avoidance of the object one is afraid of (either due to activation of an evolutionary evolved neural fear module or due to specific appraisals). But this only specifies “input” (fear) and “output” (avoidance). How an organism avoids under which conditions remains unclear. Thus, if we want to fully understand emotions and how they function, we additionally need smaller, more specific theories Emotions Are Functional – So… ? Guido H. E. Gendolla Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Switzerland Author note: I would like to thank Michael Richter for remarks on a previous version of the manuscript. Corresponding author: Guido H. E. Gendolla, Department of Psychology, Geneva Motivation Lab, University of Geneva, FPSE, 40, Bd. du Pont d’Arve, CH-1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland. Email: guido.gendolla@unige.ch 534496EMR 0 0 10.1177/1754073914534496Emotion Review Vol. 6 No. 4Gendolla Emotions Are Functional – So… ? research-article 2014 Comment