Functional accounts of emotion

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A functional account of emotions posits that emotions facilitate adaptive responses to environmental challenges.^[1] In other words, emotions are systems that respond to environmental input, such as a social or physical challenge, and produce adaptive output, such as a particular behavior.^[2] Under such accounts, emotions can manifest in maladaptive feelings and behaviors, but they are largely beneficial insofar as they inform and prepare individuals to respond to environmental challenges, and play a crucial role in structuring social interactions and relationships.^[1][3]

Researchers who subscribe to a functional perspective of emotions disagree as to whether to define emotions and their respective functions in terms of evolutionary adaptation^[4] or in terms of socially constructed concepts.^[5] However, the goal of a functional account of emotions is to describe why humans have specific emotions, rather than to explain what exactly constitutes an emotion. Thus, functionalists generally agree that in order to infer the functions of specific emotions, researchers should examine the causes, or input, and consequences, or output, of those emotions.^[1]

The events that elicit specific emotions and the behavioral manifestations of those emotions can vary significantly based on individual and cultural context. Thus, researchers claim that a functional account of emotions should not be understood as a rigid input and output system, but rather as a flexible and dynamic system that interacts with an individual's goals, experiences, and environment to adaptively shape individuals’ emotional processing and responding.^[6]