Chapter 9 Affective Coherence : Affect as Embodied

In this chapter, we review behavioral research connecting affective embodiment and evaluative cognition. We argue that affect and belief exist in a dynamic relationship. Evaluative beliefs elicit affective experience, and affective experience provides data for evaluative conception. We propose that such reciprocal relationships exist because emotions are, in part, embodiments of evaluation. That is, emotions exist when the same goodness or badness is represented simultaneously in multiple systems. Indeed, emotion is arguably nothing but the cooccurrence of evaluation in thought, feeling, physiology, expression, and so on. The embodied nature of some of these representations makes evaluative beliefs especially compelling. Thus, in contrast to a mere idea that something may be good or bad in some way, an emotion is an embodied commitment to such a reality.