Les théories perceptives de l’émotion en psychologie
Abstract
From the very beginning, psychology has always oscillated between a physiological approach of emotion and an intellectualist one, neglecting therefore in the affective life what is really authentically affective. In daily life, the word emotion in the first place typifies experiential phenomena which are beyond ordinary ones. Because of the movements of the soul which characterize them, the philosophers have designated these phenomena by words underlining their kinetic dimension. Aristotle used the word kinesis. Latter, Descartes used emotion, which in his time meant riot or agitation. As a matter of fact, the emotional feelings are perceptions of the dynamic commitment of the body in the interaction process. However, the kinesthetic value of emotions has practically been left aside in most of the recent psychological theories which have privileged the axiological judgment which is as central in emotions.This paper presents arguments which speak in favor of the renewal of a perceptual model of emotion which allows better explaining the link between intentionality and phenomenology. This model suggests reconsidering the perception process by calling upon Gibson’s (1979) ecological theory. According to the latter, perception is an extraction by action and the affordance is the action possibility given by the environment to the living organism. In this perspective, the perceptual model which is described here conceives emotions as giving to the subject a value laden world in the form of objects calling for action. In other terms, perception is enactive. The signification of the object or of the event is not a cognitive appraisal considered as a process of intellectual evaluation, but rather a form of comprehension mediated by the own subject’s corporal mobilization. The latter approach based on relational action thus could reconcile the naturalistic and the intellectualist approaches of emotions. However, this approach calls for a real paradigmatic turning point.
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