Stumpf 's Cognitive-Evaluative Theory of Emotion

Stumpf 's Cognitive-Evaluative Theory of Emotion
As a historical contribution to the current cognition-emotion
debate in psychology, this article seeks (a) to bring to
the readers' attention the largely ignored tradition of cognitive
emotion theory within introspective psychology by
reviewing what is probably the most clearly formulated
cognitive emotion theory of this period, that proposed by
Carl Stumpf, and (b) to point out the relevance of Stumpf's
contributions to the psychology of emotions for the contemporary
cognition-emotion discussion. It is suggested
that Stumpf's version of a cognitive-evaluative theory of
emotion deserves the serious attention of contemporary
investigators and that several of his objections to noncognitive
theories of emotion retain their force against modern
versions of these theories.
The relation between emotions and cognitions has become
a much-debated topic during recent years, and the
American Psychologist has been a major forum for that
discussion (e.g., Birnbaum, 1981; Holyoak & Gordon,
1984; Isen, 1984; Lazarus, 1981, 1982, 1984; Lazarus &
Smith, 1988; LeDoux, 1989; Leventhal & Scherer, 1987;
Oatley& Johnson-Laird, 1987; Russell &Woudzia, 1986;
Zajonc, 1980, 1981, 1984; Zajonc, Murphy, &Inglehart,
1989). The two main opposing positions in this debate
are those of cognitively oriented emotion theorists, who
hold that cognitions (cognitive appraisals) are necessary
for emotions (e.g., Lazarus, 1982, 1984), and those of
noncognitive or "independent systems" theorists, who
deny this claim and hold instead that cognitive appraisals
and emotions are independent in principle (e.g., Zajonc,
1980, 1984; Zajonc et al., 1989).
In the present article we contribute to the current
cognition-emotion debate with a historical study. Such
a study seemed to be indicated because, apparently, it is
not generally recognized that the cognition-emotion issue
has been with psychology since its very beginning as an
institutionalized science in the past century, and that the
contributions of cognitively oriented introspectionists to
the psychology of emotion remain of considerable relevance
today. According to the standard account of the
history of emotion research, the institutionalized science
of psychology began with noncognitive theories of emotion
(e.g., James, 1884; Wundt, 1896) and continued with
such theories until the cognitive revolution of the 1960s,
when a number of theorists—in particular, Magda B. Arnold,
Richard S. Lazarus, and Stanley Schachter—revived
the ancient tradition of cognitive emotion theory dating
back to Aristotle (see, e.g., Averill, 1983; Frijda, 1986;
Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Schure, 1989; Lyons, 1980; Mandler,
1984; Solomon, 1988). In this article we show that
34
Rainer Reisenzein and Wolfgang Schonpflug
Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
this historical view is biased, by bringing to the readers'
attention the cognitive line of emotion theorizing within
introspective psychology, which is largely ignored today
(e.g., Brentano, 1874/1971; Husserl, 1901/1975; Stumpf,
1899, 1907a). We concentrate on what we believe to be
the most clearly formulated cognitive theory of emotion
of this tradition, that proposed by Carl Stumpf (see, in
particular, Stumpf, 1899, 1907a).
Our main motive for drawing the readers' attention
to Stumpf's contributions to the psychology of emotion
is not, however, to correct a biased historical account of
the history of emotion research. Rather, it is with the
belief that, far from being of merely historical interest,
Stumpf's views still deserve the serious attention of contemporary
investigators. For one reason, Stumpf proposed
a highly interesting theory concerning the nature of emotions
and their relation to cognitive appraisals. For another
reason, the major alternative theories of emotion to which
Stumpf stood in opposition—namely, those of James
(1884, 1890/1950) and Wundt (1896)—are direct precursors
of contemporary noncognitive (or independent
systems) theories of emotion (e.g., Buck, 1985; Izard,
1977; LeDoux, 1989;Tomkins, 1980; Zajonc, 1980, 1984;
Zajonc et al., 1989), and several of the issues raised by
Stumpf in the intellectual exchange with these theorists
are of continued relevance to the current cognition-emotion
debate.
We present (a) a systematic review of Stumpf's cognitive-evaluative
theory of emotions, (b) a review of
Stumpf's main arguments against the major noncognitive
theories of his time, namely, sensualistic (e.g., James,
1890/1950) and mentalistic (e.g., Wundt, 1896) feeling
theories, and (c) a discussion of the relevance of Stumpf's
views on emotion for the contemporary cognition-emotion
debate.
Stumpf's Cognitive-Evaluative Theory
of Emotion
Carl Stumpf (1848-1936), a student of Franz Brentano
and Rudolf Hermann Lotze, spent the main part of his
Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr. served as action editor for this article.
Parts of this article are based on a paper presented at the 36th
Congress of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Psychologie in Berlin, October
1988. An extended discussion of Stumpf's theory is available in German
(Reisenzein, 1992).
We would like to thank Jochen Brandtstadter, Richard Lazarus,
and Bernard Weiner, as well as the participants of the symposium History
of Psychology in Berlin—in particular, Eckart Scheerer—for their useful
comments on an earlier version of the article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
Rainer Reisenzein, Department of Psychology (WE 7), Free University
Berlin, 1000 Berlin 33, Habelschwerdter AUee 45, Germany.
January 1992 • American Psychologist
Copyright 1992 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0OO3-O66X/92/S2.0O
Vol. 47, No. 1,34-45

academic career (1894-1921) as professor of philosophy
and director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology
at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University, Berlin. Reflecting
these positions, his publications cover a diversity of themes
in philosophy as well as in theoretical and empirical psychology
(cf. Stumpf, 1924, pp. 58-61). Concerning the
latter, he is best known for his fundamental contributions
to the psychology of music and tone (e.g., Stumpf, 1883,
1890), which continue to be given at least passing reference
in the contemporary literature (e.g., Krumhansl,
1991). In general, however, Stumpf has become a "nearly
forgotten psychologist" (Sprung, Sprung, & Kernchen,
1986, p. 509), even in German psychology. He is much
less well-known today than, for example, are his students
Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler, Kurt Lewin, and Max
Wertheimer, the founders of the Berlin school of Gestalt
psychology, and Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.
The cognitive-evaluative theory of emotions was first
presented by Stumpf in an article published in 1899. The
complementary theory of affective sensations was proposed
eight years later (Stumpf, 1907a); this theory was
defended against various criticisms by Stumpf (1916).
The three articles just mentioned were reprinted in 1928
as a separate volume, together with an introduction containing
further clarifying remarks (Stumpf, 1928). The
present review is mainly based on these writings, but additional
material (Stumpf, 1907b, 1907c, 1924) was also
considered when it helped to clarify pertinent issues. To
get a firm grasp of Stumpf's theory of emotion, it is essential
to know his general views on the nature and classification
of mental states.
The Nature and Classification of Mental States
According to Stumpf (1907b), the mind can be conceptualized
as "the totality of mental states and dispositions
. . . [which] are lawfully connected among one another,
their contents, and their non-conscious or non-psychological
determinants" (pp. 8-9; see also Stumpf, 1924, p.
48).' Nondispositional, or as we will say occurrent (e.g.,
Lyons, 1980), mental states were for Stumpf first and
foremost conscious mental events accessible to introspection,
but he accepted that it is legitimate to postulate
unconscious mental events as theoretical entities, if doing
so seems to be required for explanatory reasons (Stumpf,
1899, 1907b). Furthermore, following Brentano (1874/
1955), Stumpf held that a characteristic feature of mental
states is their intentionality (Husserl, 1901/1975) or object
directedness. As Brentano illustrated this feature of mental
states, if one, for example, perceives, believes, desires,
loves, or hates, one always perceives, believes, desires, loves
or hates something. This something (which may not actually
exist) is the intentional object of the respective
mental state. Intentional mental states can therefore be
construed as special types of relations between the person
and the object of the mental state (Brentano, 1874/1955);
different intentional states can differ with regard either
to their objects or to the kind of intentional relation, the
"mode of mental apperception," that links person and
object (Brentano, 1874/1971, p. 89; Stumpf, 1928; see
also Searle, 1983). For example, believing that it rains
and believing that it snows are intentional states of the
same psychological mode (namely, believing), but they
have different objects. In contrast, believing that it rains,
desiring that it rains, and being angry that it rains are
intentional mental states that have the same object, but
each of them represents that object in a different psychological
mode.
It may be seen as a late vindication of Brentano that
intentionality as a mark of (some) mental states has again
become a central issue in the contemporary philosophy
of mind (e.g., Chisholm, 1967; Mackie, 1975; Mohanty,
1986; Sayre, 1986; Searle, 1983). Contemporary philosophers
typically see the essential feature of intentional
mental states in their being representational states having
semantic properties; that is, they represent something by
virtue of their content and may thereby refer to items in
the world (e.g., Bieri, 1986; Fodor, 1981, 1987; Searle,
1983). However, in contrast to Stumpf, who followed
Brentano in assuming—albeit with certain reservations
(Stumpf, 1916)—that all mental states are intentional,
most contemporary philosophers of mind agree with
Husserl (1901/1975) that only a subset of mental states
are intentional. In particular, sensations and other "raw
feels" are usually not regarded as intentional mental states
today (Rorty, 1979; Searle, 1983).
Furthermore, Stumpf divided the totality of mental
states into two broad categories, labeled by the technical
terms intellectual and affective (Stumpf, 1928; see also
Stumpf, 1907b). Each category was thought to comprise
a number of subcategories. Concerning intellectual states,
the subcategory most important to the present review
comprises various types of beliefs (called judgments by
Stumpf). Concerning the affective category, it was further
subdivided by Stumpf into (a) active affective states or
desires, which comprise nonperformative or optative
(Green, 1986) desires (i.e., desires or wishes to the effect
that something should or should not be the case) as well
as motivational desires (desires to do something) and volitional
states (intentions, willings); and (b) passive affective
states, which comprise what could be called occurrent
pro-evaluations and con-evaluations, or approvals and
disapprovals of a (past, present, future, or merely possible)
state of affairs. Stumpf (1907a) characterized these evaluations
as "affective attitudes . . . which we call acceptance
or rejection" (p. 15); Brentano (1874/1971) spoke
of the appraisal of an object as "good pleasurable" versus
"bad unpleasurable" (pp. 88-89).
It must be emphasized that intellectual and affective
mental states were regarded by Stumpf, in accord with
Brentano, as fundamentally different psychological modes,
or kinds of intentional relations of individual to object,
which cannot be reduced to one another. In particular,
the affective states cannot be reduced to evaluative beliefs,
that is, beliefs having evaluative contents (the latter are
1 All translations from German are ours.
January 1992 • American Psychologist 35

simply a subspecies of belief; see also Brentano 1874/
1971). According to Stumpf, for example, wishing that
it should rain (a nonperformative desire) is a mental state
quite different from believing that it would be good if it
rained; desiring to take a walk (a performative desire) is
different from believing that it would be desirable to take
a walk; and most important, taking a pro-evaluative or
con-evaluative stance toward a state of affairs is to be
distinguished from thinking it good or bad that this state
of affairs obtains. Thus, Stumpf's pro-evaluations and
con-evaluations were conceptualized by him as unique
psychological modes of relating to objects that are fundamentally
different from the believing mode, even
though pro-evaluations and con-evaluations may be
caused by, or may cause, evaluative beliefs (and this may,
in fact, be a reason why these two kinds of mental states
tend to be confused). This does not mean, however, that
all types of intentional states were held to be irreducible
to more basic ones. On the contrary, according to Stumpf,
emotions can be reduced to beliefs and evaluations.
Stumpf's assumption that performative and nonperformative
desires and in particular pro-evaluations and
con-evaluations are fundamentally different from beliefs,
including evaluative beliefs, must be regarded as a fundamental
postulate of his theory of emotion; therefore,
its tenability can perhaps be judged only by the overall
success of the theory in explaining emotions. However,
it should at least be noted that this assumption is fairly
well in accord with current theorizing in the philosophy
of mind. Many contemporary philosophers think not only
"that belief and desire are somehow the basic intentional
states" (Searle, 1983, p. 29), but that desires, wishes, and
action tendencies are different from and not reducible to
(evaluative) beliefs (Marks, 1986; at least implicitly, this
assumption seems to be shared by many contemporary
psychologists in the areas of emotion and motivation; see,
e.g.,Frijda, 1986; Kuhl, 1983). In fact, this consideration
has recently given rise to a new class of cognitively oriented
emotion theories, which seek to analyze emotions
in terms of beliefs and (nonperformative) desires (e.g.,
Green, 1986; Marks, 1982; Searle, 1983). In contrast to
these recent belief-desire theories of emotion, however,
Stumpf (1899, 1928) thought that the central evaluative
elements of emotions, namely, occurrent pro-evaluations
and con-evaluations, are not reducible to desires or
wishes (desiring or wishing that something should or
should not be the case; for a recent discussion of this
issue that might have found Stumpf's approval, see
Baier, 1986). For although pro-evaluations and conevaluations
were regarded by Stumpf as being more
similar to desires and wishes than to beliefs, he thought
that desires, in contrast to pro-evaluations and con-evaluations,
involve a phenomenologically salient, if difficultto-define,
irreducible element of "things should be in a
certain way" (Stumpf, 1928, p. XV). Perhaps one could
add that pro-evaluations and con-evaluations are those
kinds of unique psychological modes of relating to objects
that arise if desires are believed to have been fulfilled
or frustrated.
36
The Nature of Emotions
According to Stumpf (1899), an emotion is "a passive
affective state which is directed at a judged state of affairs"
(p. 56). As mentioned earlier, the term passive affective
state designates an occurrent intentional pro- or conevaluation,
or approval or disapproval, of an object or a
state of affairs. That this evaluation is "directed at a judged
state of affairs" means that the evaluation is "based on a
judgment" (Stumpf, 1899, p. 49), that is, an occurrent
belief, opinion, conviction, or supposition. Closer examination
reveals that Stumpf regarded the relation between
beliefs and evaluations, more precisely, as being
twofold: First, there is a causal connection between these
mental states; that is, the beliefs (or, more precisely, a
person's coming to hold the beliefs) cause the evaluations;
they "belong to the conditions which produce [evaluations]"
(Stumpf, 1899, p. 58). Second, there is a semantic
relation between the contents of the beliefs and evaluations:
Evaluations are directed at the same state of affairs
that is also the object of the beliefs. Hence, whereas causal
connections link beliefs and evaluations at the physical
level (i.e., at the level of their biological realization or
instantiation), identical—or at least partly overlapping—
contents are the glue whereby these mental states are held
together at the semantic level (see also Rey, 1983).
As described so far, Stumpf's theory of emotion
permits the interpretation that emotions are just evaluations
and, hence, that emotions could occur or could be
produced, at least in principle (e.g., in experiments using
direct brain stimulation), in noncognitive ways (cf. Zajonc,
1980, 1984). Stumpf (1899), however, did not think
so. Rather, he noted,
I would not admit, however, that the intellectual states are only
[emphasis added] causes of emotions. . . . Envy comprises the
presentation (Vorstellung) and judgment of the good concerned
as one belonging to the fellow human, and it exists only as long
as these intellectual elements do exist; they belong to its substance.
If the presentation disappears or the judgment changes,
the affect disappears or changes as well, even though in many
cases aftereffects and sensory repercussions may remain, (p. 58)
It is evident from this quotation that beliefs were
regarded by Stumpf not just as the typical causes of emotions
(i.e., evaluations), but as derinitionally necessary
causal conditions: "The presence of an emotion-relevant
judgment is essential to the definition [of emotions]"
(Stumpf, 1907b, p. 27). That is, even though there may
be evaluations that are produced in other ways than
through beliefs (as Stumpf, in fact, assumed in 1899),
Stumpf thought that such noncognitively caused evaluations
are not proper emotions: An evaluation is a proper
emotion only if the appropriate beliefs are also present
and causally effective in the right way. One reason Stumpf
adopted this view was that he believed that the discriminating
features of affects consist primarily of "differences
of the presentations and judgments underlying the [evaluations]"
(Stumpf, 1899, p. 95). This assumption entails
that cognitions (beliefs) are necessary for the definition
of different types of emotion.
January 1992 • American Psychologist

Note that Stumpf did not propose, as do some contemporary
theorists (e.g., Frijda et al., 1989; Johnson-
Laird & Oatley, 1989; Lazarus, Kanner, & Folkman,
1980; Ortony & Clore, 1989), that emotions are complexes
of mental states consisting of several elements (in
Stumpf's case, beliefs and evaluations) and, hence, that
beliefs are related to emotions as part to whole. Not only
does Stumpf (1899, 1907b) caution against this possible
misunderstanding of his position, but his assumption that
beliefs are causes of emotions implies that he could not
have accepted this view without rejecting what is generally
regarded—at least since Hume (cf. Mackie, 1974)—as
an indispensable ingredient of an acceptable scientific
concept of causality (and is, in fact, also well in accord
with our everyday concept of causality), namely, that
cause and effect must be distinct singular events. According
to this principle—which one must accept, among
other reasons, if one wants to rule out self-causation—
an event cannot be a cause of another event of which it
is a part; in this case the effect would subsume the cause,
implying that the cause partly causes itself. Rather, emotions
are belief-caused evaluations, that is, that subclass
of evaluations that have the appropriate causal history,
that is, they have been caused by appropriate beliefs regarding
the object of the emotion. In modern terminology,
emotions are in part functionally specified evaluations,
that is, evaluations that are partly defined by reference
to their causes, analogous to, for example, the definition
of "sunburn" as an "inflammation of the skin caused by
over-exposure to sunlight" (Gordon, 1978, p. 125). Note
that such a functional definition of emotions is in accord
both with the functionalist view of mental states (see
Block, 1980; Fodor, 1975)—which is regarded by many
as the metaphysical backbone of contemporary cognitivism—and
with the views of several earlier and later emotion
theorists. Already Aristotle (1980) defined fear as a
kind of displeasure or perturbation arising from the idea
of impending evil; Descartes (1649/1984) defined several
of his nonbasic emotions as subtypes of basic feelings
whose discriminating features consist in their being
caused by particular types of appraisals; and Arnold
(1970) defined emotion in general as "a felt tendency
toward anything appraised as good, and away from anything
appraised as bad" (p. 176; for further examples, see
Davidson, 1976; Gordon, 1974; Lyons, 1980; Searle,
1983; Wilson, 1972).
We can therefore render Stumpf's proposal concerning
the nature of emotions in the following final form:
An emotion is an occurrent pro- or con-evaluation of a
state of affairs, which is (a) caused by beliefs and (b) semantically
linked to their contents. To use Stumpf's example,
envy may be (roughly) defined as an occurrent
con-evaluation (a disapproval) of another person's possessing
a desired good that one lacks, which is caused, in
part at least, by the belief that the other person possesses
that good, whereas one lacks it oneself. Similarly, pride
may be (roughly) defined as an occurrent pro-evaluation
(an approval) of a state of affairs or an object, caused in
part by the beliefs that this state of affairs or object exists
and that it is relevantly "connected" to oneself (Searle,
1983). In many cases, this latter belief takes the more
specific form of believing that one has been causally responsible
for bringing about this state of affairs (Weiner,
1986). The writings of Descartes and Spinoza, to which
Stumpf referred, as well as recent research on cognitive
appraisals in emotion, suggests to us that this kind of
belief-evaluation analysis of emotions may in principle
be possible for a wide range of affects (see, e.g., Frijda et
al., 1989; Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Reisenzein &
Hofmann, 1990; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1984; Searle,
1983; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985; Solomon, 1976; Weiner,
1986; Wierzbicka, 1972).
Additional Clarifications and Elaborations
Stumpf further clarified the core tenet of his theory the
following significant respects:
1. Concerning the belief component of emotional
appraisals (judgments), Stumpf emphasized—much in
line with Lazarus (1982)—that the term judgment must
be understood in a broad sense. Emotion-relevant judgments
must not be restricted to consciously made evaluative
judgments or to hypothetical or categorical judgments
in the logical sense. Rather, "already the very first
beginnings of nondeliberate apperception and interpretation
of sense-impressions" (Stumpf, 1899, p. 51) are to
be regarded as judgments. Elementary judgments are already
involved in spatial orientation, in the distinction
of one's own body from other objects, in the recognition
of objects, the apperception of similarities and differences,
and the expectation of similar future cases on the basis
of earlier ones. "Psychology," Stumpf (1899) wrote, "will
hardly be able to make do without this generalization [of
the concept of judgment], even though one may disagree
about the best label" (p. 51). Furthermore, judgments
can appear in consciousness in very indeterminate and
weak forms, and an occurrent evaluative reaction can
continue even after the judgment is no longer at the focus
of consciousness, as presumably is often the case with
moods. However, the affective state in the latter case is
then no longer of exactly the same kind as proper emotions.
Finally, to account for some apparently problematic
cases, one may potentially make use of the "auxiliary
concept of unconscious presentations and judgments"
(Stumpf, 1899, p. 50).
2. The assumption that both emotions themselves
and their building blocks (beliefs and evaluations) are
representational mental states presupposes that there exists
an internal system of representation (Fodor, 1975).
Apparently, for Stumpf the most important emotion-relevant
representational system was language: Usually the
state of affairs at which emotions are directed are mentally
represented as affirmative sentences. However,
Neither linguistic formulations, nor universal concepts are absolutely
necessary for [emotion-relevant] judgments. Thus, a
cognized or believed state of affairs, which we would linguistically
express by means of an affirmative sentence, and which we would
think with the help of concepts, can also be represented in consciousness
unformulated. (Stumpf, 1928, p. XIII)
January 1992 • American Psychologist 37

That is at least without being formulated in a natural
language. Whereas Stumpf (1928) was referring to a sensory
or imaginal system of representation, contemporary
emotion theorists generally prefer to assume a languageindependent,
but nevertheless importantly languagelike,
propositional medium of representation (e.g., Mandler,
1984; Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987; see also Fodor,
1975, 1981). Because emotionally relevant cognitions are,
in principle, language independent, it is possible that prelinguistic
infants as well as animals have emotions. That
they do in fact have at least simple emotions is, according
to Stumpf (1928), evident to everybody who is not prejudiced
in favor of behavioristic notions.
3. As has already been mentioned, it is primarily
the judgments (beliefs) on which the differentiation between
affects is based. Although evaluations make up the
core of emotion, the differentiation that they provide is
relatively crude (essentially, positive vs. negative); hence,
the remaining differentiations between emotions must be
due to beliefs:
A present, past, or future state of affairs [must] be cognized or
represented as such if an emotion is to arise, and... the quality
of the emotion depends primarily on how this state of affairs is
represented in our thinking. (Stumpf, 1899, p. 54)
Because cognitions are the primary discriminating features
of the emotions, they are also (together with evaluations)
the natural principle of classification of emotions
into larger groups. In fact, we already distinguish in common
sense, for example, between affects that are directed
at present, past, and future states of affairs; affects that
concern beneficial and those that concern harmful events;
and affects that are about our own versus others' welfare
(Stumpf, 1899).
4. Finally, Stumpf (1899) noted that his theory has
an obvious ontogenetic implication: Any particular emotion
can only arise once its cognitive basis is present. For
example, a child can only experience envy once he or she
is capable of forming a belief to the effect that a desired
good belongs to a fellow human. Because Stumpf (1899)
believed that newborns lack the cognitive prerequisites
of emotions ("the occurrence of a proper emotion presupposes
a certain amount of cognitive development," p.
51), he held against Wundt that genuine emotions cannot
be attributed to them. This proposal seems to be supported
by more recent developmental evidence (e.g.,
Averill, 1982; Frijda, 1986; Rozin & Fallon, 1987).
Stumpf s Arguments Against Noncognitive
Theories of Emotion and His Theory
of Affective Sensations
Stumpf (1899) attempted to support his cognitive-evaluative
theory of emotions both directly, by trying to show
that it was consistent with the available evidence and that
it explained the most important facts about emotions,
and indirectly, by trying to demonstrate that the major
existing alternative theories of emotion were inadequate.
Concerning the evidence for his theory, Stumpf emphasized
that it explained a variety of salient aspects of emo-
38
tions. In particular, it explained the intentionality of
emotions, and it gave a plausible account of their differentiation
and discrimination; it explained the dependence
of emotions on desires and beliefs and their modifiability
by a change of these mental states; and it explained the
links of emotion to motivation. In addition, Stumpf
(1899) took it to be a strength of his theory that—in
contrast to the theories of Wundt and James—it was in
fundamental agreement with both common sense and
with what he and Brentano (1874/1971) regarded as the
dominant traditional line of emotion theorizing: the cognitive
tradition exemplified by Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas,
Descartes, and Spinoza. Although the "surprisal
value" of the theory is therefore moderate, Stumpf (1899)
held that "absolute originality ... in matters which were
open to introspection at all times would be a recommendation
of the inventiveness of the author, but not of his
case" (p. 67).
Stumpf's main concern, however, was with refuting
the major competing emotion theories of his time. Similar
to those of today, these theories were variants of a special
class of noncognitive theories of emotion that can collectively
be called emotional feeling theories (Alston, 1972).
The basic tenet of these theories is that emotions are certain
kinds of conscious qualities that are, in many respects,
similar to sensory qualities such as sensations of
color, odor, and taste. How close this similarity to sensations
is perceived to be depends on the specific version
of feeling theory. According to the first, sensualistic
(Titchener, 1908) variant, the emotional qualities at stake
are in fact nothing but a special class of sensations or
perceptions (or patterns, complexes, etc., of these),
namely, sensations or perceptions that originate from peripheral
bodily events (e.g., James, 1884, 1890/1950).
According to the second version of feeling theory, which
may be termed centralist or mentalist and which found
its most prominent proponent in Stumpf's contemporary,
Wundt (1896), the emotional qualities are not reducible
to peripherally caused sensations. Their physiological
source was later located, for example, in the thalamus
(Cannon, 1927) or the limbic system (Papez, 1937).
Stumpf s Objections to Sensualistic Feeling Theories
Stumpf's (1899) main objections to sensualistic feeling
theories of emotion were as follows: (a) There is no correspondence
between the multitude of emotions, on the
one hand, and patterns of peripheral bodily changes, on
the other hand, with regard to quality, intensity, and temporal
course (cf. Cannon, 1927; see also Averill, 1982,
concerning temporal course); (b) even if differentiated
patterns of bodily changes corresponding to the different
emotions existed, they are probably not represented in
consciousness (cf. Zillmann, 1978); (c) it is unclear what
adaptational value would accrue from a brain that is "like
a tube through which every [emotional] stimulus drop
immediately drains to the periphery" (p. 82). On the
contrary, we must count ourselves "lucky that we do not
react so sensitively" (p. 83); and (d) "a definition must
be convertible" (p. 84); thus, if emotions are identified
January 1992 • American Psychologist

with organic sensations without any qualification, then
all organic sensations are, conversely, emotions, and one
would have to "subsume under the concept of emotion
. . . heart-burn, feelings of hunger and of satiation, of
heat and chill" (p. 84; see also, Pitcher 1965). Unless the
sensualistic theorists are prepared to accept this consequence
(and few are), they can identify emotions with
only a subclass of (complexes of) organic sensations. But
this suggestion founders on the fact that the clear phenomenal
difference between the mental states ordinarily
regarded as emotions (e.g., anger) and nonemotional organic
sensations (e.g., heartbeat) is not paralleled by a
similarly compelling difference in felt quality between two
classes of organic sensations (emotional and nonemotional
ones). For the sensualistic feeling theory of emotions
requires that such a difference exists.
It seems to us that none of the proponents of contemporary
variants of sensualistic emotion theories (e.g.,
Izard, 1977; Leventhal, 1984; Tomkins, 1962, 1980) has
provided a fully convincing answer to these objections.
Consider, for example, how contemporary sensualistic
theories (that focus mostly on facial feedback) try to distinguish
emotional from nonemotional bodily sensations.
Typically, relational criteria are being used. It is suggested,
for instance, that only facial feedback (or its activated
mental representation) that is self-produced, spontaneous,
or congruent with feed-forward feedback (e.g., Laird,
1974; Leventhal, 1984) leads to an emotional feeling. It
remains quite unclear, however, what makes a spontaneous
or self-produced organic sensation emotional, and
clearly there are facial expressions that meet these criteria
but are not emotional at all.
Stumpfs Critique of Mentalistic Feeling Theories
and His Theory of Affective Sensations
The problem of sense-feelings. The affective phenomena
that Stumpf (1899) primarily had in mind when he developed
his theory of emotion, which that theory was first
and foremost intended to explain, were paradigmatic
emotions, that is, they were the referents of ordinary language
emotion terms—such as joy, sorrow, anger, hope,
and fear—"concerning which there can be no dispute
that they belong to the concept of emotion" (p. 50). He
also thought that the theory was applicable, with some
reservations, to mood states. There remained, however,
at least one class of prima facie affective phenomena that
could not be well accounted for by the theory, the socalled
Sinnesgefuhle (sense-feelings; Titchener, 1908). The
term was used by Stumpf (1907a) as a "theory-neutral"
expression to denote the various sensory pleasures and
displeasures, including purely bodily pains and the pleasurable
sensations of bodily well-being in its more general
and more special forms (the latter include the pleasure
component in tickling, the feeling associated with itching,
and sexual pleasure feelings), as well as the pleasure and
displeasure that may be connected with elementary sensations
of the "special senses," such as temperature, odors,
tastes, tones, and colors (Stumpf, 1907a) as well as with
organic sensations (Stumpf, 1899).
The problem of the nature of sensory pleasures and
displeasures and their relation to paradigmatic emotions
acquired its particular significance from the fact that it
was precisely these affective phenomena with which
Wundt and his followers were primarily concerned; on
the analysis of these affective phenomena they founded
their alternative view of emotions (see also Lehmann,
1914; Titchener, 1908). Despite the fact that comparatively
little systematic effort was devoted by these researchers
to the study of paradigmatic emotions such as
anger, fear, and joy, Wundt (1896) held that not only are
feelings of pleasure and displeasure—together with the
feelings of arousal, depression, tension, and relaxation—
the simplest affective elements of consciousness, but that
paradigmatic emotions are complex combinations or fusions
of these elementary feelings (Wundt, 1896; see also
Titchener, 1908).
Stumpf's original view of sense-feelings. In 1899,
Stumpf had not only distinguished organic sensations
from emotions, but had resisted the "general scientific
desire for utmost reduction" (p. 58) and had also kept
emotions distinct from sensory pleasures and displeasures.
Although at that time he still classified these latter
feelings among the class of intentional evaluative states—
following Brentano (1874/1971)—Stumpf believed that
sensory feelings of pleasure and displeasure are, in contrast
to paradigmatic emotions, directly caused by sensations,
that is, without mediating cognitions (beliefs).
Therefore, he held that they do not count as proper emotions
(for more on this issue, see the next section).
Stumpf's revised view of sense-feelings: The theory
of affective sensations. Yet, according to the position
held by Stumpf in 1899, sense-feelings still belonged to
the class of intentional evaluative phenomena (i.e., the
passive affective states) and, hence, were similar to proand
con-evaluations, desires, and wishes. They were not
"true" emotions only because, other than the latter kinds
of mental states, they were not caused by beliefs. This
view must have appeared increasingly problematic to
Stumpf during the following years, and in 1907a, he proposed
a more radical difference between emotions and
sense-feelings (see also Titchener, 1908, for an English
review). Now he posited that sense-feelings are not evaluative
states at all, but rather sensations of a special kind,
like sensations of color, odor, and tones (although, in contrast
to the latter, they may well be centrally generated;
see also Stumpf, 1916). To support his view, Stumpf
(1907a) carefully compared the various sense-feelings on
several phenomenological dimensions and concluded that
there are, at best, gradual differences between sensory
pleasures and displeasures and ordinary sensations on
these dimensions, whereas there are fundamental differences
between sense-feelings and emotions, even though
feelings of pleasure and displeasure may occasionally
cause, be caused by, or accompany emotions, and although
they may be related to emotions both phylogenetically
and ontogenetically (for more detail, see Titchener,
1908). Therefore, Stumpf (1907a) concluded, the
view that sense-feelings are but a special class of sensations
January 1992 • American Psychologist 39

is the most tenable or, at any rate, the most parsimonious
one to take.
Although Stumpf' s thesis was accepted by some of
his contemporaries, it was rejected by others (cf. Stumpf,
1916), including his teacher Brentano (1907/1979).
(Brentano proposed that sensory pleasures and displeasures
should be regarded as intentional evaluations that,
however, have as their objects mental states, namely, the
experiencing of certain sensations [see also Chisholm,
1979, and for a related contemporary view, Hall, 1989].)
When considered from the perspective of Stumpf's cognitive-evaluative
theory of emotion, however, Stumpf's
position is not an unreasonable one to take. For whatever
else Stumpf's (1907a) analyses do or do not show, they
certainly do support his conclusion that, phenomenologically,
sense-feelings resemble ordinary sensations much
more than they resemble intentional evaluations and
wishes—the kinds of mental states with which emotions
were associated (Stumpf, 1899). And, Stumpf (1907a)
argued, the idea that emotions (i.e., belief-caused evaluations)
are somehow built up from primitive, sensationlike
feelings is just as implausible as the theory that complex
perceptions, judgments, and thoughts are somehow built
up from elementary sensations. "Time will come,"
Stumpf (1907a) wrote, "when the difference in principle
between emotions and sensations, including affective
sensations, will be regarded as being just as evident as is,
already today, the difference between sensations and
thoughts" (pp. 7-8).
Sensory pleasures and displeasures as nonrepresentational
mental states. The quotation at the end of the
last paragraph points to a different and perhaps more
compelling argument to defend Stumpf's thesis that
emotions are fundamentally different from sensations,
including sensory pleasures and displeasures. This argument
had already been presented by Husserl (1901/
1975), a student of both Brentano and Stumpf, several
years before Stumpf's (1907a) article and has been reiterated
by several more recent philosophers of mind (e.g.,
Kenny, 1963; Pitcher, 1965; Solomon, 1976). As has been
mentioned, in contrast to Stumpf and Brentano, contemporary
philosophers of mind widely agree with Husserl
that sensations of tastes, tones, and so forth, including
pain, are not at all intentionally directed at an object (see,
e.g., Rorty, 1979; Searle, 1983). For it does not seem possible
for these states to be intentionally directed at objects
beyond themselves, as are beliefs and evaluations, and
according to Stumpf, emotions. To illustrate, if one experiences
bodily pain, one does not feel pain of or about
something in the same sense as when one is afraid of or
angry about something (see also Searle, 1983). (One must
not confuse the phenomenal localization of pain—e.g.,
"my foot hurts"—with intentionality.) If this holds true
of feelings of sensory pleasure and displeasure in general,
as Husserl (1901/1975) proposed, then the difference between
these feelings and paradigmatic emotions is just as
fundamental as that between nonrepresentational and
representational states of mind.
Inasmuch as these considerations reinforce Stumpf's
40
(1907a) conclusion that sense-feelings cannot be assimilated
to evaluations, his suggestion to classify them as a
special class of sensations seems certainly worth considering.
It has in fact been revived by contemporary emotion
theorists (e.g., Lazarus & Smith, 1988). Taking into
account the distinction between representational and
nonrepresentational mental states (Husserl, 1901/1975),
we would then arrive at a modified, fourfold classification
of mental states into cognitive versus affective intentional
states (Stumpf, 1928) and nonintentional, nonaffective
and affective raw feels (Stumpf, 1907a).
Significance of Stumpf s Views on Emotions
for the Contemporary Cognition-
Emotion Discussion
Today, more than 90 years after Stumpf's (1899) article
was published, cognitive theories of emotion have become
a central paradigm of emotion research, and in their wake
the issue of the relation between cognitions and emotions
has become a central topic of research and theoretical
discussion. Yet, Stumpf's contributions to the psychology
of emotion have not been outdated by these recent developments.
Rather than merely anticipating the major
tenets of contemporary cognitive emotion theories,
Stumpf goes beyond these theories in several respects.
Not only is his cognitive-evaluative theory of emotions
more lucidly formulated than many a contemporary theory
(with regard, in particular, to the central issues of the
nature of cognitive appraisals and of emotions and the
relation between these mental states), it constitutes a
thoroughly interesting alternative to existing cognitive
theories. At any rate, however, Stumpf's views on emotion
raise a number of issues that, although of central significance
to the cognition-emotion problem, have only been
given marginal attention in the recent discussions. To
document this claim, we will examine three such issues
in more detail: the intentionality of emotions, the nature
of evaluations in cognitive appraisals, and the nature of
the relation between cognitions and emotions, with special
consideration of the precise sense in which cognitions
may be necessary for emotions.
The Intentionality of Emotions
Stumpf assumed—in line with his teacher Brentano, with
Husserl, and with a number of contemporary philosophers
(e.g., Green, 1986; Searle, 1983; Solomon, 1976)—that
emotions are intrinsically intentional or representational
mental states just as are beliefs and desires. If this assumption
is correct, it would have far-reaching consequences
for the question of the nature of emotional states.
Not only would it be—as discussed earlier in this article—
a very serious, if not fatal, objection against all those noncognitive
theories of emotion that identify emotions with
bodily sensations (e.g., James, 1890/1950), facial feedback
(e.g., Tomkins, 1962; Izard, 1977), centrally generated
"feelings" (e.g., Buck, 1985; Zajonc, 1980; Zajonc et al.,
1989; see also Leventhal, 1984), or other nonrepresentational
raw feels, it would also pose a serious challenge
January 1992 • American Psychologist

to several popular cognitive theories of emotion. These
include all those that, although taking cognitive appraisals
to be causally or even definitionally necessary for emotions
(see below), regard the emotions themselves as either
nonrepresentational mental states (e.g., as feelings of
arousal [e.g., Lyons, 1980; see also Schachter, 1964] or
mental qualities [e.g., Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987;
Pekrun, 1988]), or as action tendencies (e.g., Arnold,
1970; Frijda, 1986). As concerns the latter theories, although
action tendencies certainly do qualify as intentional
mental states, they do not have the "right" objects,
that is, their objects are different from those of the emotions
with which they are identified in these theories. For
example, the intentional objects of the desire to flee in
the case of fear or to attack in the case of anger (namely,
the actions of fleeing or attacking, respectively) are different
from what are most naturally construed as the intentional
objects of the corresponding emotions (e.g., that
one may be harmed in the case of fear or that one has
been offended in the case of anger). Therefore, although
fear and anger may give rise to such action tendencies, it
is hard to see how the action tendencies could be identified
with the emotions.
Given the significance of the issue of the intentionality
of emotions, it is surprising that it has received only
the most cursory attention by contemporary emotion
psychologists and has played practically no role in the
recent cognition-emotion debate. The reason may be that
most contemporary psychologists, even cognitively oriented
ones, assume at least implicitly that intentionality
is not an intrinsic but only a derived feature of emotions,
that is, a feature that accrues to many or most emotion
instances only because they are associated with cognitive
appraisals (e.g., Frijda, 1986; Johnson-Laird & Oatley,
1989). Principled expositions and defenses of this nonrepresentational
view of emotions are hard to come by,
however, and the standard argument advanced in its support—that
emotions cannot be intrinsically intentional
because there are cases of objectless emotions, such as
objectless anxiety and some mood states (e.g., Johnson-
Laird & Oatley, 1989; Storring, 1922)—is by no means
convincing. So-called objectless fears may not completely
lack objects; rather, their objects may only be ill defined,
vague, or difficult to verbalize (e.g., a "feeling of dread
that something awful is going to happen" [italics added;
Oatley, 1988, p. 357]). As to moods, it can be plausibly
argued that they constitute cases in which the person appraises,
simultaneously or in rapid sequence, many different
states of affairs, making it difficult or impossible
to single out any particular one as the object of the mood
state (e.g., Isen, 1984; see also Ortony & Clore, 1989, for
further considerations). Finally, even if some emotion
types truly had objectless instances, it would hardly prove
that all or even the majority of emotion types are intrinsically
nonintentional. In short, the issue of the intentionality
of emotions raised by Stumpf is far from settled,
and given its significance to the cognition-emotion problem,
certainly deserves more attention than it has received.
The Nature of Evaluations in Cognitive Appraisals
Although contemporary cognitive emotion theorists
would agree with Stumpf that cognitive appraisals, whatever
they are more precisely, are intentional mental states
that comprise both nonevaluative or "descriptive" components
(e.g., the belief that an event is more or less likely,
that it is caused by certain factors, that it is controllable),
and evaluative components (e.g., the evaluation of an
event as good or bad), one must agree with Lazarus and
Smith (1988) that beyond these assumptions there is today
a good deal of "confusion about what is meant by appraisal"
(p. 282). One particularly important aspect of
this confusion or disagreement that becomes salient when
contemporary cognitive formulations are compared with
Stumpf's theory concerns the nature of the evaluative
appraisal components. Are all of these components just
special types of belief (i.e., beliefs having evaluative contents),
or is there at least one evaluative appraisal component
essential to an emotion that is a mental state entirely
different from belief, as Stumpf assumed? Explicit
proponents of both views exist: See, for example, Arnold
(1960a, 1960b, 1970), Green (1986), Marks (1982), or
Searle (1983) for the second position and Solomon (1976,
1988) for the first one. (It should be recalled, however,
that for Green, Marks, and Searle—in contrast to
Stumpf—this evaluative component of emotions is a
nonperformative desire.) But more frequently—particularly
in the psychological literature—the issue remains
unclear. Possibly, many psychologists have simply not
recognized that a significant question might be at stake
here.
In truth, however, this issue is of central importance
to the cognition-emotion problem. First, the lack of clarity
about the nature of cognitive appraisals in emotion
has undoubtedly fostered the recent criticisms of cognitive
theories (e.g., Zajonc, 1980, 1984), for this criticism is
implicitly based on the assumption that cognitive appraisals
are exclusively beliefs. In fact, Zajonc (1984) apparently
even assumes that cognitive appraisals comprise
only nonevaluative beliefs and, as a consequence, sees his
original (Zajonc, 1980) contention that evaluations do
not presuppose certain kinds of belief (specifically, recognitions
of objects as old vs. new) as synonymous with
the claim that emotions do not presuppose appraisals
(Zajonc, 1984). This is clearly a misinterpretation of cognitive
emotion theories! In fact, it is precisely the affective
judgments that Zajonc (1980) takes to be in part independent
of cognitions—for example, "safe-dangerous,
good-bad, or nice-nasty" (p. 171)—that are mentioned
by cognitive emotion theorists as typical examples of (the
evaluative components of) cognitive appraisals (e.g., Arnold,
1960a, 1960b; Lazarus et al., 1980; Schachter,
1964). Second, the failure to consider seriously the necessity
of distinguishing clearly between evaluations (in
Stumpf's sense) and (evaluative) beliefs may also have
been a major reason why many cognitively oriented emotion
theorists found it necessary to postulate a nonappraisal
component, such as perceived physiological
January 1992 • American Psychologist 41

arousal (e.g., Mandler, 1984; Schachter, 1964), a felt action
tendency (e.g., Arnold, 1970; Frijda, 1986), or centrally
generated feelings of a Wundtian (1896) or Cannonian
(1927) variety (e.g., Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987; Pekrun,
1988) as at least an additional, indispensable component
of emotion, resulting in "hybrid" theories of
questionable validity.
The reasoning of these emotion theorists has apparently
been that there must be something else to emotion
other than just cognitive appraisals, something that
imbues "cold cognition" with "emotional warmth." This
reasoning is in fact plausible if cognitive appraisals are
restricted to beliefs (including evaluative beliefs) because,
as Stumpf (1899, 1907b) observed, it seems indeed counterintuitive
to think that emotions are just special types
of beliefs (see also Frijda, 1986;Leighton, 1985). However,
if it is assumed with Stumpf that, although evaluative
beliefs may be important to emotions, the central evaluative
component of emotions is a mental state that is
fundamentally different from beliefs, then the need to
postulate an additional, nonappraisal component of
emotions evaporates, for then the evaluative component
can provide the necessary emotional warmth. As noted
earlier in this article, according to Stumpf it is in fact
quite unclear how, for example, perceptions of physiological
arousal could be capable of imbuing cognitions
with emotional warmth. On the contrary, Stumpf thought
that we must resort to evaluations to explain how emotional
and nonemotional arousal differ.
The Relation Between Cognitive Appraisals
and Emotions
The central issue in the recent cognition-emotion debate
has been phrased as the question of whether or not cognitions
(cognitive appraisals) are necessary for emotions.
Viewed from the perspective of Stumpf's theory, it becomes
immediately apparent that this question is doubly
ambiguous, first, because of the lack of consensus concerning
the nature of cognitive appraisals, and second,
because the type of necessity under discussion could either
be that of (purely) causal (or nomological) necessity, or
that of definitional necessity.
The recent cognition-emotion discussion has focused
on the question of whether cognitions are causally
necessary for emotions. That is, the central question has
been whether the only causal pathway to the elicitation
of emotions in the intact organism is through cognitive
appraisals, or whether there are additional natural noncognitive
pathways of emotion elicitation (Lazarus, 1982;
Zajonc, 1980; Zajonc et al., 1989). Stumpf (1899), however,
did not just claim that emotions are typically caused
by cognitions (beliefs) or even that they are always caused
by cognitions in the intact organism, but that cognitions
belong to the defining features of emotions (i.e., emotions
are functionally defined with regard to their cognitive
causes). As a consequence, he held that, even if evaluations
could be noncognitively caused, such evaluations would
not count as proper emotions. As was mentioned earlier,
a similar functional-definition view of emotions is held
42
by several contemporary cognitive emotion theorists (e.g.,
Arnold, 1970; Davidson, 1976; Gordon, 1974; Lyons,
1980; Searle, 1983; Wilson, 1972). Other contemporary
cognitivists contend even that appraisals are component
parts of (e.g., Lazarus et al., 1980; Oatley & Johnson-
Laird, 1987; Schachter, 1964) or are identical with (e.g.,
Solomon, 1976) emotions. If these latter views are correct,
cognitions are not just definitionally necessary for emotions;
one cannot even meaningfully say that cognitions
cause emotions at all.
It is clear that if a convincing case for the definitional
necessity of cognitions for emotions could be made, then
a very strong case would exist for the indispensability of
cognitions for emotions. Probably the most important
consideration regarding this issue concerns the question
of how the many (prima facie) emotional states of humans
are distinguished from one another. For if different emotion
types cannot be reliably distinguished from one another
other than by reference to appraisals—if, for example,
envy simply cannot be discriminated reliably from
other emotions unless one takes into account the belief
that a desired good that one lacks belongs to another person
(Stumpf, 1899)—then cognitions are necessary for
the definition of different emotion types. In evaluating
this issue, it should be recalled that the attempt to provide
a plausible solution to the discrimination of emotion
problem was one of the major reasons for the turn toward
cognitive theories in the 1960s (e.g., Arnold, 1960a,
1960b; Hunt, Cole, & Reis, 1958; Schachter, 1964). To
these theorists, cognitive appraisals seemed to be the only
features of emotion that are differentiated enough to account
for the multitude of emotional states. Today, firm
evidence for the existence of a multitude of nonappraisal
mental states that correspond in a one-to-one fashion with
the multitude of emotions is scarcely more abundant than
it was 25 years ago (see also, Zajonc et al., 1989), whereas
there is now good evidence for the appraisal discrimination
of emotions (e.g., Frijda, 1987; Frijda et al., 1989;
Reisenzein & Hofmann, 1990; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985,
1987; Weiner, 1986).
Finally, it must be reemphasized that the assumption
that cognitions are definitionally necessary for emotions
does not necessarily imply the denial of the existence of
affective phenomena—in a wide sense of this term—for
which cognitions are not necessary even in the purely
causal sense. As we have seen in the previous section, in
contrast to Lazarus (1982; but see Lazarus & Smith, 1988,
for a different opinion), Stumpf (1899) did not feel obliged
by his advocacy of a cognitive theory of emotions to
maintain that all affective states necessarily presuppose
cognitions. He would have readily agreed with Zajonc
(1980) that there are at least some simple affective reactions
(e.g., sensory pleasure and displeasure feelings) that
are directly caused by sensations, that is, are unmediated
by cognitive appraisals (or, more precisely, beliefs). However,
in contrast to Zajonc (1984), who argued that paradigmatic
emotions therefore most likely do not presuppose
cognitive appraisals as well (but see Zajonc et al.,
1989, for a more moderate opinion), Stumpf (1899) con-
January 1992 • American Psychologist

eluded that such cognitively unmediated pleasure-displeasure
feelings are not emotions proper. This move is
emphatically not an immunization strategy that seeks to
settle the cognition-emotion issue by definitional fiat
(Zajonc, 1984). Rather, it is an application of the scientific
strategy to let a theory (in this case, a theory of the structure
of emotions) that seems to work well with paradigmatic
cases, autodetermine its own range of application
in problematic cases (Stegmiiller, 1986). This strategy is
both legitimate and reasonable. For what kind of mental
state an emotion is, is ultimately determined by a theory
that successfully accounts for paradigmatic emotional
states. If it turns out that other prima facie affective phenomena
do not conform to this theory, then this is the
best possible reason one can have for believing that these
latter phenomena and the paradigm cases constitute different
natural kinds.
Conclusion
Rather than being of recent origin, the cognition-emotion
problem has been with psychology since its very beginnings
as an institutionalized science, and the central issues
seem to have remained much the same. Had Stumpf had
the opportunity to comment on the recent debate, he
would have agreed with the criticisms of contemporary
cognitive emotion theories to the extent that these theories
constitute attempts to either reduce emotions to beliefs
(e.g., Solomon, 1976) or to subsume all affective phenomena
under emotions (e.g., Lazarus, 1982). But he
would certainly have opposed the return to noncognitive,
"feeling" theories of emotion (e.g., Buck, 1985; Izard,
1984; Zajonc, 1984; Zajonc et al., 1989), as well as to
"hybrid" cognition-feeling theories such as those proposed
by Lyons (1980), Mandler (1984), Oatley and
Johnson-Laird (1987), or Schachter (1964). To some degree,
this return to feeling theories may simply have happened
because more plausible noncognitive theories of
emotions were not in sight. But it may also have been
fostered by the fact that there seems to be, at least since
James and Wundt, but probably since the introduction
of the threefold division of mental states into cognitive,
affective, and motivational ones around 1750 (see, e.g.,
Brentano, 1874/1971; Hilgard, 1980; Scheerer, 1992), a
deeply entrenched a priori belief among many psychologists
that emotions are intrinsically nonrepresentational
states similar to sensations. These psychologists may wish
to seriously reconsider Stumpf's suggestions that (a) the
mind does not just consist of intellectual representations
(beliefs) and action tendencies, on the one hand, and raw
feels, on the other hand, but that there are further types
of intentional states such as desires and wishes of various
kinds, as well as approvals and disapprovals (see also Baier,
1986; Kuhl, 1983), and (b) that not all affective phenomena
may turn out to be emotions on closer examination.
Although read and quoted by his contemporaries,
Stumpf's writings on emotion did not exert much influence
on the psychological literature later in this century.
A probable major reason was that neither Stumpf nor his
students actively propagated his ideas and developed them
further. As for Stumpf himself, emotion was not his central
area of interest and he did not regard his pertinent
work as particularly novel or surprising. Also, he took on
administrative duties (e.g., he became rector of his university)
that demanded much of his time. As for his students,
they were engaged in articulating and propagating
their own school of Gestalt psychology, which gave little
attention to emotion. We hope that this article will help
to give Stumpf the place in the history of emotion research
that, in our view, he deserves.
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