The Future of Emotion Research in the Study of Psychopathology

Research on emotion and psychopathology has blossomed due in part to the translation of affective science theory and methods to the study of diverse disorders. This translational approach has helped the field to hone in more precisely on the nature of emotion deficits to identify antecedent causes and maintaining processes, and to develop promising new interventions. The future of emotion research in psychopathology will benefit from three inter-related areas, including an emphasis on emotion difficulties that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries (i.e., a transdiagnostic approach), the explicit linking of emotion and cognition in behavioral and neuroimaging studies in psychopathology, and continued translation of the latest conceptualizations of emotion to the study of psychopathology.