In engineering, form follows function. It is therefore difficult to understand an engineered object if one does not examine it in light of its function. Just as understanding the structure of a lock requires understanding the desire to secure valuables, understanding structures engineered by natural selection, including emotion systems, requires hypotheses about adaptive function. Social emotions reliably solved adaptive problems of human sociality. A central function of these emotions appears to be the recalibration of social evaluations in the minds of self and others. For example, the anger system functions to incentivize another individual to value your welfare more highly when you deem the current valuation insufficient; gratitude functions to consolidate a cooperative relationship with another individual when there are indications that the other values your welfare; shame functions to minimize the spread of discrediting information about yourself and the threat of being devalued by others; and pride functions to capitalize on opportunities to become more highly valued by others. Using the lens of social valuation, researchers are now mapping these and other social emotions at a rapid pace, finding striking regularities across industrial and small-scale societies and throughout history.

在工程中，形式服从功能。因此，如果不根据功能进行检查，就很难理解工程对象。正如理解锁的结构需要理解保护贵重物品的愿望一样，理解自然选择设计的结构，包括情感系统，需要关于适应性功能的假设。社会情感可靠地解决了人类社会性的适应性问题。这些情绪的一个核心功能似乎是在自我和他人的头脑中重新校准社会评价。例如，当你认为当前的估值不足时，愤怒系统的作用是激励另一个人更加重视你的福利；当有迹象表明对方重视你的福利时，感恩的作用是巩固与另一个人的合作关系；羞耻的功能是尽量减少有关自己的不可信信息的传播以及被他人贬低的威胁；和骄傲的功能是利用机会变得更受他人重视。使用社会评价的视角，研究人员现在正在快速绘制这些和其他社会情绪的地图，在工业和小规模社会以及整个历史中发现惊人的规律。