Understanding emotions, your own included

Not at all, rather not, neither, rather, entirely: this format has dominated measurement since 1932. It carries three well-identified biases.

The judgement passed on an episode depends on its most intense moment and on its ending, hardly at all on its duration. That holds for holidays as much as for questionnaires.

Two instruments bearing the same name can rank the same people in an almost different order. The distinction that explains it dates from the early 2000s.

A well-built self-description informs. It predicts neither a career, nor a relationship, nor a future reaction, and claiming otherwise is a methodological fault.

Anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise: the list is taught everywhere. Yet it has changed several times, including at its author's own hand.

For some fifteen years, psychology has discovered that part of its most famous results does not reproduce. The field of emotions lost several classics to it.

Three brains stacked by evolution, the archaic, the emotional and the rational: the model is taught everywhere and was abandoned by neuroscience long ago.

A questionnaire observes nothing: it records a self-description. That bounds what can be concluded from it, and it does not make it useless.

Emotional intelligence would explain 80% of professional success, the intelligence quotient 20%. This split comes from no study.

The abbreviation has circulated since 1995 and suggests the existence of a measure comparable to the intelligence quotient. No serious instrument produces anything of the kind.