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Emotion and Cognition

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The Human Person

Abstract

The Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) understanding of the cognitive and appetitive structure of the human has important consequences with respect to how we understand human (and non-human) emotions, as well as the relationship between emotion and cognition, both areas of difficulty for modern psychology. This chapter will consider the A-T perspective, which integrates cognition and emotion, as a metatheory capable of underpinning the major modern psychological approaches to emotion. We present the appetitive powers and relate them to the cognitive powers, discuss their interaction and how they give rise to emotions, and then present the classificatory scheme of emotions in the A-T approach. We then survey some modern emotion research on cognition and emotion, and how emotions are involved in human flourishing.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Thomas L. Spalding & Christina L. Gagné

  2. The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    James M. Stedman

  3. St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Matthew Kostelecky

Authors
  1. Thomas L. Spalding
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  2. James M. Stedman
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  3. Christina L. Gagné
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  4. Matthew Kostelecky
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Spalding, T.L., Stedman, J.M., Gagné, C.L., Kostelecky, M. (2019). Emotion and Cognition. In: The Human Person. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33912-8_5

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