Within psychology and other disciplines, discussions of emotion have traditionally drawn upon a series of dualisms. Theorists and researchers debate the extent to which emotions are best understood as universal or context-dependent, innate or acquired, dependent or independent of cognition, and so on. Current systems approaches in the social and physical sciences provide innovative frameworks that may enable theorists to break out of such polarizing dichotomies (Barton, 1994; Fischer and Bidell, 1998; Fogel, Lyra, and Valsiner, 1997; Fogel and Thelen, 1987; M. D. Lewis, 1996; Thelen and Smith, 1994; van Geert, 1994). In what follows, we outline a component systems approach to emotional development (Mascolo and Harkins, 1998; Mascolo, Pollack, and Fischer, 1997). At its most basic level, a component systems view holds that although individuals are composed of multiple distinct subsystems (e.g., affective, cognitive, overt action), component systems necessarily modulate each other in the production of emotional action and experience. An analysis of how component systems coregulate each other within social contexts can reveal both striking order and emergent variability in the production of emotional states.

Contemporary Approaches to Emotion

In recent decades, models that depict basic emotions as discrete and innate neuromuscular responses have been highly influential (Ekman, 1984; Izard, 1977, 1991; Tomkins, 1962). In their differential emotions theory, Izard and Malatesta (1987) define emotions as “a particular set of neural processes that lead to a specific expression and a corresponding specific feeling” (p. 496).