Emotion cognition interaction in personality development: a discrete emotions, functionalist analysis

In this paper we take a discrete emotions approach to personality development. We suggest that individual differences in affective organization, acquired during the course of development, result in affect-specific biases in expressive patterns and idiosyncratic perceptual organizations. These affective biases, which have a pervasive influence on a wide domain of individual and interpersonal behaviours, contribute to psychological continuities that we identify as emotional traits. An array of data in support of this proposition is detailed. We propose a developmental model of how such affective organizations may be established initially, and the mechanisms by which they become consolidated over time. A final section discusses broader implications for developmental theory.