Cognition and emotion: on paradigms and metaphors

The field of cognition and emotion is characterised as the cognitive psychology of evaluative and affective processes. The most important development in this field is the fruitful adoption of cognitive psychology paradigms to study automatic evaluation processes, for example. This has led to a plethora of findings and theories. Two points are emphasised: First, the (often metaphorical) theoretical way of thinking has changed over the decades. Theorising with symbolic models (e.g. semantic networks), which was prevalent in earlier years, has been replaced more recently by subsymbolic models (i.e. PDP models). It is argued that - despite their still metaphorical character - the latter are better suited to capturing characteristics of emotional processes. Second, the field has adopted the methods of experimental cognitive psychology to develop and refine paradigms as windows to the mind.