Previous thinking has often categorized emotions as either pleasant or unpleasant or examined to what extent they are functional or dysfunctional. We suggest that researchers should consider the positivity or negativity of discrete emotions on both dimensions: subjective feelings and constructiveness of outcomes. We discuss how, across contexts, a specific emotion can potentially be categorized differently within the framework. We further suggest that this approach is particularly useful in unique, complex contexts that involve clashes among goals, interests, or values, such as violent intergroup conflicts. Using this context, we demonstrate how emotions that feel good to people can lead to behaviors and attitudes that sustain violence and thwart conflict resolution, whereas emotions that promote conflict resolution are often unpleasant. Such clashes may depend on the presence of embedded contextual factors, such as group membership and relative power. Thus, this framework will be useful for examining specific emotions while taking contextual factors into consideration. Finally, we examine several important questions stemming from our framework and suggest directions for future research.

中文翻译：

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感觉好还是做得好？理解情感的价函数框架

先前的思维经常将情绪归类为愉悦或不愉快，或考察了情绪在何种程度上起作用或功能失调。我们建议研究人员应在两个维度上考虑离散情绪的积极性或消极性：主观感觉和结果的建设性。我们讨论了如何在上下文中将特定情感在框架内进行不同的分类。我们进一步建议，这种方法在涉及目标，利益或价值观之间冲突（例如暴力的群体间冲突）的独特，复杂的环境中特别有用。在此背景下，我们证明了让人感觉良好的情绪如何导致维持暴力并阻碍解决冲突的行为和态度，而促进解决冲突的情绪却常常令人不快。这种冲突可能取决于嵌入的上下文因素的存在，例如组成员身份和相对权力。因此，该框架对于在考虑上下文因素的情况下检查特定情绪将是有用的。最后，我们研究了源于我们框架的几个重要问题，并提出了未来研究的方向。