Evolutionary Perspectives on Emotion: Making Sense of What We Feel

Cognitive therapy typically has focused on cognitive regulators of affects, such as expectations, attributions, beliefs, and schemas (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979). There has been far less focus on the role of affects in the process of the creation of meaning itself. However, the last ten years have witnessed an explosion of research on emotions, including their neuroarchitecture, their physiological regulators, their evolved functions, and the various unconscious algorithms that elicit them (Panksepp, 1998). There is increasing evidence, from different fields of research, for multiple and complex domains of cognition-emotion interaction, both slow and conscious, and fast and unconscious. This article explores some of these themes and indicates why an evolution-based approach to emotions, in hand with an understanding of developmental processes, can enrich our therapies and point to new ways of working directly with emotions.