A Constructivist Approach to Defining Human Emotion: From George Kelly to Rue Cromwell

In Being Human: Human Being, Rue Cromwell proposed that scientific knowledge does not need to converge in order to progress and that embracing diversity of knowledge domains benefits researchers more than the quest for unification. Principles from Kelly's personal construct theory and Cromwell's book are used to suggest a more meta-theoretical approach to emotion research, as well as defining emotion, by explaining how (a) various theories of emotion are not necessarily in competition with one another, as one can view various theories of emotion as simply being different (and perhaps not similar enough to one another to be compared in a clear-cut fashion); and (b) one cannot definitively claim that one theory of emotion is the correct or best account of all of emotional life, without simultaneously ignoring the difficulties that arise when considering multiple theories (or alternative constructions) that rely on different fundamental assumptions. This second point draws on Cromwell's discussion of how “unity of knowledge” is an oxymoronic concept.