Mapping the emotional landscape: The role of specific emotions in conceptual categorization.

Although researchers generally subscribe to the opinion that emotions play a critical role in cognition, very few (see Niedenthal, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 1999) have examined the specific interaction between the emotional state of the perceiver and the emotional meaning of stimuli in conceptual categorization - an important aspect of "higher-level" cognition. Niedenthal et al. (1999) advanced a fine-grained theory of emotional response categorization, arguing that emotional states increase the tendency to categorize concepts into a predictable set of emotional response categories characterized by the common, distinct emotional responses elicited by the concepts.