Emotional experience is subject to social and technological change: extrapolating to the future

Abstract

While the emotion mechanism is generally considered to be evolutionarily continuous, suggesting a certain degree of universality of emotional responding, there is evidence that emotional experience may differ across cultures and historical periods. This article extrapolates potential changes in future emotional experiences that can be expected to be caused by rapid social and technological change. Specifically, four issues are discussed: (1) the effect of social change on emotions that are strongly tied to dominant values, norms, goals, and self-ideals, like shame, guilt, contempt, and anger; (2) the effects of the use of emotion by the mass media on emotional experience and emotion socialization; (3) the effects of information technology on emotion expression and regulation; and (4) the possibility of producing artificial emotions in autonomous agents (robots). Special emphasis is placed on the class of emotions, defined here as “commotions”, that are produced by observing affect in others.