Knowledge of Emotion: Expression and Social Cognition

了解我们周围人的情绪状态是很重要的。我们需要知道其他人的感受，以评估他们的诚意，并对他们采取正确的行动。情绪状态对他人的归因在我们的社会生活中起着至关重要的作用。因此，能够区分那些符合知识条件的情感归因和不符合条件的情感归因是至关重要的。我们通常根据他人的情绪表达来归因于他们的情绪。这个项目的主要目的是解释情感表达如何使我们能够了解他人的情感。这将需要理解情绪表达的本质和可以表达的各种情绪现象。因此，我们将确定各种不同的可表达的情绪现象(如感觉、情绪倾向、情绪和情绪性格特征)，以及它们可以表达的各种方式(例如，通过面部表情、发声和其他动作和身体动作)。然后，我们将确定基于表情的情感归因构成知识的合理依据。在此过程中，我们将区分基于对情绪表达的“亲身”感知的情绪归因和基于对情绪表达的静态和动态图像和音频记录的感知的情绪归因。我们将调查基于表情的情绪归因的理性基础是否以及如何在不同的代表性媒体和“肉体”感知中有所不同。该项目将汇集多个领域(社会认知、情感、表达)和跨学科(哲学、心理学、法学)的研究人员。这将有助于哲学领域的学术研究，尤其是在社会认知和认识论领域，这两个领域倾向于关注信仰归因的合理依据，阐明情绪归因的合理依据，从而拓宽我们对如何了解他人心理状态的理解。它对心理学中的实验设计也有潜在的影响。通过阐明基于对情绪表达的亲身感知的情绪归因的理性依据和基于对图像的感知的情绪归因的理性依据之间的差异，将阐明使用代表情绪表达的图像进行情绪归因的实验的更广泛的含义。除了学术界，该项目对法律实践也有重要影响。法律决定经常受到对他人情绪的判断的影响。例如，了解被告的情绪状态对于确定他们是否犯罪--如仇恨犯罪--以及确定他们对所犯罪行的责任程度--如激情犯罪--都是至关重要的。通过阐明了解他人情绪的要求，该项目有能力影响法律决定的做出方式。此外，通过澄清我们何时以及如何知道他人正在表达什么情感，该项目将有助于我们理解不同艺术媒体中情感的表达，因此对视觉艺术的从业者和消费者都有潜在的价值。

It is important to know the emotional state of those around us. We need to know how others are feeling to assess their sincerity and to act rightly with respect to them. Attributions of emotional states to others play a crucial role in our social lives. Consequently, it is crucial to be able to distinguish those emotion attributions that qualify as knowledge from those that do not. We usually attribute emotions to others on the basis of their expressions of emotion. The overarching aim of this project is to explain how emotional expression can enable us to know the emotions of others. This will require an understanding of the nature both of emotional expression and of the various emotional phenomena that can be expressed. Consequently, we will identify the variety of different expressible emotional phenomena (such as feelings, emotional dispositions, moods, and emotional character traits), and the variety of means by which they can be expressed (for example, through facial expressions, vocalisations and other actions and bodily movements). We will then determine the rational grounds in virtue of which expression-based attributions of emotion constitute knowledge. In doing so, we will distinguish emotion attributions based on 'in the flesh' perception of emotional expressions from emotion attributions based on the perception of both static and dynamic images and audio recordings of emotional expressions. We will investigate whether, and how, the rational grounds of expression-based emotion attributions vary across different representational media and 'in the flesh' perception. The project will bring together researchers in a number of fields (social cognition, the emotions, expression) and across disciplines (philosophy, psychology, law). It will benefit academic research in philosophy, most notably in the areas of social cognition and epistemology, which have tended to focus on the rational grounds of belief attributions, by elucidating the rational grounds of emotion attributions, thus broadening our understanding of how we can come to know the mental states of others. It also has potential implications for experimental design in psychology. By elucidating the differences between the rational grounds for emotion attributions based on 'in the flesh' perception of emotional expressions, and the rational grounds of emotion attributions based on the perception of images, it will illuminate the broader implications of experiments about emotion attribution conducted using images representing emotional expressions. Beyond academia, the project has important implications for legal practice. Legal decisions are frequently influenced by judgments about the emotions of others. For example, knowledge of defendants' emotional states can be crucial to determining both whether or not they have committed a crime - as with hate crimes - and to determining the extent of their responsibility for crimes they have committed - as with crimes of passion. By elucidating the requirements for knowledge of the emotions of others, the project has the capacity to affect how legal decisions are made. Furthermore, by clarifying when, and how, we know what emotion another is expressing, the project will assist our understanding of the expression of emotion in different artistic media, and is thus of potential value to both practitioners and consumers of the visual arts.