The Wisdom of Eve: On Differentiating the Colours of Emotion that May Be Threats to Good Life

Emotion’s twin roles–‘unite and divide’ our daily life, thus motivating the good and the worst in human behaviour. The way one “feels” does influence the way one “acts” toward others. If this reasoning is correct, then behaviour can never be without motive or “motiveless.” Given the importance of emotions in human communication and decision making, the context of intergroup relations, with its themes of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination against culturally dissimilar was touched on selectively. Using the Differential Emotions Scale and building upon Boyle’s (Personality 56:747–750, 1984) work, with students, the present study reports a repeated-measure multiple discriminant function analysis for items across raters. The findings further indicate that most of the DES items are sensitive indicators. The correspondence of some of the results with prior research findings makes facial emotions less the holy grail of the social behaviour field. Likely consequences of emotions are considered, and research needs are discussed vis-a-vis uplifting individual happiness, collective identity and sense of connection to others. Perhaps its implications can be extended to the literature, thus revealing how the different lenses through which human emotions are usually viewed are connected by the incipient/concept attitude and self-identification/labelling that run through each of them.