Emotions as High-Impact Decisions: A Goal-Directed Theory

I defend the adequacy of the goal-directed theory (GDT) of emotion. After outlining the properties of emotions (mental and bodily aspects, valence, intensity, urgency, automaticity, and irrationality) and common emotion types that emotion theories seek to explain, I contrast the GDT with traditional emotion theories, portraying the former as proactive and the latter as reactive. The GDT proposes that most behavior and feelings, emotional or otherwise, arise from multiple competing, hierarchical goal-directed cycles, each involving discrepancy detection and strategy/behavior selection. I systematically assess the GDT's ability to account for these properties and emotion types. Finally, I discuss implications for (a) the scientific status of emotions, (b) their influence on other entities, (c) emotion regulation, and (d) agency and moral responsibility.