Looking into meta-emotions

Christoph Jager

Eva Bänninger-Huber

pp. 787-811

in: Bjørn Jespersen, Marie Duží (eds), Hyperintensionality, Synthese 192 (3), 2015.

Abstract

There are many psychic mechanisms by which people engage with their selves. We argue that an important yet hitherto neglected one is self-appraisal via meta-emotions. We discuss the intentional structure of meta-emotions and explore the phenomenology of a variety of examples. We then present a pilot study providing preliminary evidence that some facial displays may indicate the presence of meta-emotions. We conclude by arguing that meta-emotions have an important role to play in higher-order theories of psychic harmony and that Frankfurt-style accounts, which explain a person’s “reflective self-endorsement” exclusively in terms of volitional hierarchies, are inchoate and need to be augmented by a theory of meta-emotions.