This article demonstrates how researchers from both the sciences and the humanities can learn from Charles Darwin’s mixed methodology. We identify two basic challenges that face emotion research in the sciences, namely a mismatch between experiment design and the complexity of life that we aim to explain, and problematic efforts to bridge the gap, including invalid inferences from constrained study designs, and equivocal use of terms like “sympathy” and “empathy” that poorly reflect such methodological constraints. We argue that Darwin’s mixed methodology is a model for addressing these challenges even in laboratory work on emotion, because it shows how close observation of emotional phenomena makes sense only within broader historical contexts. The article concludes with 5 practical research recommendations.

本文展示了来自科学和人文学科的研究人员如何从查尔斯·达尔文的混合方法中学到东西。我们确定了科学中情感研究面临的两个基本挑战，即实验设计与我们要解释的生活复杂性之间的不匹配，以及弥合差距的有问题的努力，包括来自受约束的研究设计的无效推断以及模棱两可的使用。像“同情”和“同理心”这样的术语很难反映出这种方法论上的限制。我们认为，达尔文的混合方法论是即使在情感实验中也能应对这些挑战的模型，因为它表明，只有在更广阔的历史背景下，密切观察情感现象才有意义。本文总结了5条实用的研究建议。