How we change what others think, feel, believe and do

Frijda's Laws of Emotion

Explanations > Emotions > Frijda's Laws of Emotion

Situational Meaning | Apparent Reality | Hedonic Asymmetry | Closure | Care for Consequence | Lightest Load | Greatest Gain | So what

Nico Frijda has described a number of thoughtful laws of emotion.

The Law of Situational Meaning

Situations have no meaning by themselves -- we create our own meaning as we interpret the situation through our individual schema and other understanding. Things important to us are likely to gain more attention and elicit stronger emotions.

From this situational meaning, our emotions arise. In this way, one person may be shocked, another fearful and another amused by a stranger exposing themself in a public place.

As available information changes, so also may our interpretation and hence emotion. The exposing person may turn out to be a famous actor who is being filmed.

The Law of Apparent Reality

As each person creates their own meaning in each situation, they must consider it to be real for emotions to be elicited. It is, of course a construction, yet to them it is apparently real.

Events in front of our eyes therefore create more powerful emotions than stories and movies, although well-told tales will create a good apparent reality and therefore evoke emotions more effectively.

When reality is suppressed, such as in the early stages of grief, emotions may also be muted.

The Law of Hedonic Asymmetry

Sometimes the worst thing is not to feel anything, to be empty, bereft of emotion. Many emotions, including negative ones, may carry a certain pleasure, albeit potentially perverse. Even pain can can invert into masochism.

Pains often subside, as do pleasures. That which made us happy yesterday often makes us less happy today. Likewise we become immured to our troubles and we are remarkably adaptable.

There are still, however, miseries that cannot be made pleasant. Chronic pain. The death of a child. There are times when death is a blessed release.

The Law of Closure

Emotions tend to be closed to the possibility that they are unimportant. They impose themselves upon us and demand response, above everything else. To ignore them is to bring suffering of unfulfilment. To address them is to achieve a satisfying closure.

Each new love seems like the whole world. In grief, life becomes devoid of meaning. Craving for drugs drives people to crime. And how many murders have strong emotion at their heart.

We are driven by our urges, and urges are set in place by emotions. 

The Law of Care for Consequence

Emotions actually are not as straightforward as the previous laws may indicate. In particular an emotion often triggers a secondary impulse that considers the consequences of the emotion and so acts to modify the emotion or actions that flow from it.

Thus we bite our tongue and hold back when we feel like lashing out. In this way we moderate the impact of our emotions and avoid the more unwise actions.

The secondary effect may well come in the form of another emotion. We are angry, but then when we think about the consequences of unchecked anger we become fearful.

The Law of Lightest Load

We generally do not like negative emotions, perhaps by definition. In consequence, when we have the choice of actions we will tend to choose that path which has the minimum negative emotional consequence for us.

The actual consequence may be more severe, for example when we lend a friend money that we know we are unlikely to get back, but the thought of their disappointment is more painful.

A common approach to lightening load is denial. By closing our eyes, we do not have to deal with difficult emotions. Procrastination is a similar method, where we put off things that present short term negative load (but only because anticipated future negative emotions are not as strong).

The Law of Greatest Gain

The inverse of the Law of the Lightest Load is the Law of the Greatest Gain. Sometimes we focus on loss and pain, whilst other times we focus on gain and pleasure. When the latter is in our sights, we will look not for the most utilitarian solution but that which will make us feel best.

This also works when we are thinking about others in relation to ourselves and we will push others down in order to feel better about ourselves, particularly if we are sensitive in this area.

So what?

See also

Frijda, N.H. The Laws of Emotion, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates