AGNES MOORS

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What are your views on the future of communication and how technology is changing the way we communicate, read, interact with the world and our imaginations?

AGNES MOORS

Theoretical insights and ideas are never final. I am not married to them. They mark a phase in a continuous process. I suppose these temporary ideas naturally ooze in the daily conversations I have with people outside my field (friends, family, colleagues from other fields). These conversa- tions are a good test bed, they help me sharpen and develop my ideas further. As people outside my field do not share the same background, however, there is often a gap that is hard to bridge. I am often torn be- tween spending most of my time on going further down my path, and spending more time in translating these ideas and reaching out to people outside the field. The temporary nature of my ideas makes me shy away from public debates on the internet, because no matter how fleeting the medium, it feels as if once you put something out there, it is cut in stone.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What are your views on the importance of creativity and the humanities?

MOORS

Creativity on all levels of life is driven by the hope of a new outcome, one that you cannot foreshadow today. At the same time, it is rooted in studying and experimenting with the things that are present. The subject matter of the humanities is an octopus with its tentacles reaching from the interactions between world leaders to the caverns of our private minds. I believe there are regularities to be discovered, and not just to be constructed, in how this all happens. Joint effort and a lot of patience to deal with the immense complexities are good places to start.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

When did you realize you wanted to specialize in social psychology and emotion theory?

MOORS

It all started when I chose a topic for my master thesis on the influence of music on emotions. As I worked myself through the emotion literature, I realized there was still much to discover about emotions in daily life, before we were ready to explain the special case of music. Music and other forms of art as well as fiction hijack the mechanisms that can be invoked to explain daily-life emotions.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What drew you to those subjects? As your knowledge of these subjects deepens, is there anything you are surprised to discover?

MOORS

The first book on emotions that I read was Nico Frijda’s (1986) “The emotions”. He beautifully worked out the ideas (a) that emotions occur when things happen that matter to our concerns (goals, needs, values), and often when these things mismatch with our concerns, and (b) that the core of an emotion is a readiness to act or action tendency, aimed at repairing the mismatch. This idea is captured in my favorite quote from the Dutch translation of his book: “Woede ontwikkelt zich tot de behoefte om raak te slaan, en hard ook, en morgen weer.” An action tendency is understood as an (unconscious) intention to act, that may or may not translate in an overt action or behavior. By equating emotions with action tendencies, Frijda took a first step in demystifying emotions.

A second demystifying move came from Jim Russell, who argued that emotions are folk concepts that may never correspond to a fruitful scientific category of things. I try to raise in my students, (many of whom will not pursue an academic career but will be counselors), an interest in theory. We all have at least an implicit idea of how things work (within and between individuals) and this has an influence on the advice we give to ourselves and others. Making these ideas explicit allows contrasting and replacing them with new and better ones.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What works do you recommend to your students? What do you hope your students take away from your classes?

MOORS

I try to raise their interest in theory by drawing connections between theory and real-life problems, media debates, quotes etc. Outside of this narrow context, I do not feel the need to give advice to students about the goals they should pursue in life. And even if they would ask for advice about a strategy to pursue their goals, I am reluctant, since there are so many paths.

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