The first section of this chapter will take up the main theme of the previous chapter – happiness – and asks the question, “How can we exploit bodily feedback to become happier?” before I discuss a central idea that underpins the importance of critical feeling. If it could be shown that every thought is accompanied by an evaluation, trying to suppress feelings in order to think critically would turn out to be futile – we simply could not do it. Instead, we would need to complement critical thinking with critical feeling.

Observations about how bodily feedback influences affect support the notion that feelings are always with us. I shall review evidence for the claim that each percept, each thought, each action is accompanied by feelings. This view has important consequences for cognitive theories of skill acquisition and execution, as exemplified by the modification of a cybernetic model of action execution and monitoring. Skill learning is plagued by the paradox that smooth learning does not necessarily mean good learning outcomes; moreover, the assessment of skill is notoriously difficult. A final section deals with the role of the body in synchronous movement, a topic that leads to social interaction, which will be the topic of the next chapter.

Bodily feedback and affect

Common sense assumes that people smile when they are happy. However, there is also a commonsense notion that we can reverse this process, that we can make ourselves happy by smiling. “The world always looks brighter from behind a smile,” as the saying goes, and this is indeed what can be shown by psychological research, for example on facial feedback and on feedback from postures (see Laird 2007). According to De Sousa (1987), people can use the expression of happiness as a bootstrap mechanism or shortcut to boost their own happiness. Indeed, facial affective feedback has been shown to be instrumental in judging humorousness (Strack et al. 1988) and in processing emotional language (Havas, Glenberg, Gutowski, Lucarelli, and Davidson 2010). Laird (2007) summarized other studies that provide compelling evidence that emotional expression through facial expressions, posture, breathing patterns, and vocal behavior influences emotional feeling. For example, speaking in a loud, harsh voice increases feelings of anger whereas speaking in a soft, low tone is more likely to result in sad feelings.

What is a feeling?

What is a feeling? A good way to arrive at a working definition of feeling is to proceed as psychologists of emotion have done (see Reisenzein 2007). They first compiled a list of what has been called emotion in everyday life, such as joy, sadness, anger, and disgust. From this list of emotions, they derived some characteristics common to emotions. Norbert Schwarz provided a list of subjective experiences that encompass feelings. “Human thinking is accompanied by a variety of subjective experiences, including moods and emotions, metacognitive feelings (like ease of recall or fluency of perception), and bodily sensations” (Schwarz 2012, p. 289). We may add to this list affective preferences that take the form of likes and dislikes. Affective preferences are neither emotions nor moods but are based on comparisons between two or more objects. Preferences will therefore be introduced here in their own section, after emotions and moods but before metacognitive feelings and bodily sensations. From this list we can derive characteristics common to all feelings. The most obvious common feature of all feelings is their subjectivity, as noted by Scherer (2005) and Schwarz (2012). Feelings are bound to the person who feels. Although I can infer what you feel or even empathize with you, I never can have your feeling.

Another characteristic of feelings is that their experience is conscious (Laird 2007). We must distinguish between two kinds of consciousness, which Block (1998) called access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. A feeling is access conscious when a person can both experience the feeling and is aware of it. In this case, we can label or at least circumscribe the feeling. Feelings are phenomenally conscious when a person experiences them without necessarily being able to reflect or even verbalize them. When a person is access conscious of the feeling, the experience is in the foreground, or the focus of attention. If the feeling is phenomenally conscious without being accessible, the experience is in the background, or at the fringes of consciousness (James 1890).

A definition of feelings would be too inclusive if it included sensations (see Overskeid 2000). Seeing red or hearing a musical instrument play a high C are sensations but lack a feeling component – I do not feel red or the high C.

Reasoning as a basis for judgment and decision making is a keystone of modern Western culture. Modern society aims to educate an intellectually mature citizenry that overcomes fallacies, biases, superstition, and adherence to unquestioned authority. One offshoot of this emphasis on reasoning is the critical thinking movement that emerged in the 1960s in the philosophy of education. This movement responded to the observation that even well-educated people possessed inadequate reasoning skills (Pritchard 2014). Philosophers argued that one objective of school and college education should be the training of critical thinking. Students should be able to form beliefs or to make decisions by proper reasoning. These proficiencies can be applied to the subjects taught at school and be transferred to everyday life (see Fisher 2011). Critical thinking goes beyond the reasoning abilities examined in cognitive psychology: It relies not on descriptions of how people actually think but on prescriptions for how they should think. Such prescriptions cannot be determined by empirical research because they derive from norms and values that are beyond scientific scrutiny; they are therefore often neglected in scientific discourse (see Wecker 2013 for an interesting discussion on prescriptive statements in education).

In this chapter, the main focus will be on the prescriptive part of critical thinking because critical feeling serves similar objectives to critical thinking. It is necessary to unveil the objectives of critical thinking and why it is insufficient to serve these purposes. Together with the next chapter (on the psychology of feelings), this discussion will set the stage to introduce critical feeling. In this chapter, I first consider critical thinking as a skill and examine its strengths before looking at how critical thinking may serve values. At the end of the chapter, I discuss the neglect of feelings in critical thinking and why critical thinking is not enough.

Critical thinking as a skill

Critical thinking has been defined as “correct assessing of statements” (Ennis 1962, p. 83) and as “reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Fisher 2011, p. 4). Critical thinking is thinking because it utilizes reasoning capacities and abilities to decide what to believe and what to do.

What is critical feeling?

In Chapter 1, critical thinking was defined as “reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Fisher 2011, p. 4). Combining the concise definition of critical thinking with what we know about the rationality of feelings, we can now define critical feeling as the reflective use of feelings that is focused on guiding attention, evaluating information, and guiding action according to the values we like to implement. Feelings we use in critical feeling can be either ends or means. For example, when we want to alleviate fear, we use means to achieve a feeling as an end. When we use feelings as information to evaluate a job applicant or to assess what we know, we use them as means. Sometimes, feelings are used as both ends and means, for example when therapists use feelings connected to relaxation in order to alleviate fear.

According to Ennis (1962), critical thinkers ideally exhibit certain proficiencies such as observing; inferring; generalizing; conceiving and stating assumptions and alternatives; offering a well-organized or well-formulated line of reasoning; evaluating statements and chains of reasoning; and detecting standard problems. Could we find a similar list of proficiencies for critical feeling that supplements the short definition given above? Although there are no rules of feeling like there are rules of logic and rules of inference from empirical evidence, there are some capacities and abilities related to feelings that seem to be advantageous. They are summarized in Table 3.1, with strategies that pertain to the individual proficiencies.

The first proficiency is interrupting feelings. It is certainly adaptive to interrupt feelings that are inappropriate to a situation. Beyond simply suppressing feelings, this includes timeouts, distraction, and stop-and-think rules to calm down affective responses and prevent impulsive action. Another method of interrupting inappropriate feelings is meta-awareness in that people become aware of the fact that, for example, anger is their personal feeling and not an objective feature of the situation. Finally, people may reappraise a situation to not only interrupt but also revise the inappropriate feeling.

The previous chapter emphasized the role of feelings when children learn at school, among them the role of beauty in judging a solution as true and the aesthetic quality of an aha-experience. When we think of aesthetics, we think of art. It amounts to common sense that aesthetic experiences may go beyond art and pertain to such different topics as beauty in nature, the attractiveness of a face, the melody of a foreign language, the arrangement of food on a plate, the elegance of a mathematical proof, or the sound of an engine. By contrast, art is often equated with aesthetics. This is a mistake made by many scholars and laypeople alike (see Carroll 1999; Danto 2003) and has been called the artistic–aesthetic confound (Bullot and Reber 2013b). The whole field of neuroaesthetics discusses its findings as if they could be applied to art in general. In a famous article, Ramachandran and Hirstein (1999) listed eight laws of artistic experience. The title of the article is “The Science of Art: A Neurological Theory of Aesthetic Experience” – as if aesthetics and art were interchangeable. This led to a narrow view of art as yielding aesthetic pleasure. In order to examine art appreciation, researchers in empirical aesthetics used the artwork as a stimulus and mainly used liking or aesthetic pleasure as dependent variables (see Bullot and Reber 2013a for a critique). We shall see that art appreciation consists of both understanding and evaluation, and that understanding depends on knowledge about the context in which the artwork has been created. Even an aesthetic theory of art (see Carroll 1999 for an overview) would have to consider understanding based on the art-historical context.

This chapter outlines critical feeling in art appreciation. Art encompasses the visual arts, literature, drama, poetry, music, dance, and architecture. This chapter begins with a review of how people interested in music develop certain tastes and continues with two ways of learning artistic styles. I next summarize the psycho-historical framework of art appreciation, which helps us to deal with the alienation effect, and connect ideas by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht to the most recent findings from cognitive psychology.

John Dewey's (1956/1899) take-home message was that there exists a gap between school and home that makes school a bleak place without life. The take-home message of this chapter is that critical feeling can improve this state by employing strategies aimed at enhancing the experience of learning, by making learning interesting, and by fostering intuition and insight. The chapter has four sections. First, I review evidence that metacognitive feelings enhance the learning process, in line with the claim in Chapter 5 that each act of perception and thought – and therefore of learning – is accompanied by a feeling. Second, I discuss emotions in the classroom. The third section will address the closing of the gap between school and the life of the child. Knowledge about how to catch the attention of students enables teachers to make instruction lively and content interesting. The final section of this chapter reveals how school can be filled with life by fostering intuition and by eliciting aha-experiences.

Thus far I have addressed questions concerning education at the end of each chapter in Part II. I have looked at how parents and instructors may teach critical feeling in various domains, such as well-being, skill learning, living together, and marketing. This chapter looks at critical feeling within school education. Proponents of a liberal society may be skeptical about the role of schools in critical feeling; they may argue that parents educate their children while schools are institutions that impart the knowledge necessary for the future economic success of both the students and the nation; they may encounter the notion of an education to happiness with skepticism, …

When I moved into my new office, there were three books from my predecessor left on my desk, two about statistics and one titled Behavior in Organizations (Greenberg and Baron 2008). When I browsed the book, I found a section on the role of emotions in organizations that was partitioned into subsections. The first two subsections were titled “Are happier people more successful on their jobs?” and “Why are happier workers more successful?” Workers’ happiness in these two sections is not seen as a value in itself but as a means to increase performance and success. Even when the authors later discuss the adverse effects of stress, they first discuss stress and task performance before they address physical health, desk rage, and burnout. The business literature too often presents issues from the viewpoint of employers or managers who have to keep their company up and running. When you browse marketing and consumer research journals it becomes obvious that many articles describe implications from the side of the marketer. Moreover, a new wave of psychologists and behavioral economists are helping governments “nudge” citizens into behaviors desired by the state authorities (Thaler and Sunstein 2008; see Burgess 2012 for a critique). There is a growing number of exceptions to the rule that marketing takes the side of industry or the state. An early example is an article by Kotler and Zaltman (1971), who examined how marketing techniques could be used for social causes. To nudge citizens to smoke less or to pay their taxes may be seen as a laudable enterprise. However, there may be examples of influencing people to show behavior desired by the state or the economy that amount to abuse rather than use. Does a scientist have the license to do research that helps a car dealer trick his customers into buying a more expensive car than they can afford? How could any responsible behavioral economist examine credit schemes that maximize consumption but increase consumer debt in unison?

Building on critical thinking, I have developed the concept of critical feeling and reviewed some potential applications. This work lies at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and education. I focused on psychology, which provides the empirical basis for interventions that make use of feelings in order to improve outcomes. As we have seen, there is already psychological research that informs critical feeling, but much more could be done.

In order to implement critical feeling, psychological research needs to be embedded in philosophical thought and implemented in educational practice. Insights from the philosophy of education, moral philosophy, theory of science, epistemology, and the philosophy of art provide us with the right questions for empirical research. Philosophy of education introduced the concept of critical thinking. Moral philosophy helped to anchor critical thinking in personal and communal values. This connection paved the way to establish a similar link between critical feeling and values. This conceptual work is important because research questions in psychology often derive from tacit assumptions and hidden values that must be made explicit. We have seen that clarifying the role of values behind a research question does not prevent scientists from doing value-free research. Beyond the distinction between value-free science and value-laden practice, theory of science needs to clarify the role of empirical psychology within the social sciences. Psychologists often like to see themselves as natural scientists, as the term psychological science testifies. That may be correct as long as they study basic processes. However, psychology as it is needed for critical feeling may be more akin to anthropology or sociology. There are anthropologies and sociologies of different cultures and classes. Likewise, we may develop psychologies of different groups by combining universal processes of perception, thought, and affect with various ecologies and historical contexts. The existing conceptual framework required for such integration is fragmentary at best. Epistemology asks questions to do with, for example, understanding the justification of feelings in certain situations. This perspective goes beyond existing psychological research about the interpretation of emotions and therefore opens new research questions. Answering these questions is crucial because critical feeling needs to be rooted in the understanding of one's own affective and metacognitive experiences. The philosophy of art teaches psychologists to go beyond measuring aesthetic preferences. A full picture of art appreciation requires that research examines the understanding of artworks as a prerequisite to their evaluation.

The previous chapter reviewed evidence that coordinated action increases social rapport. Even infants imitate the facial expression of their mothers (Meltzoff and Moore 1977). Mothers and infants synchronize their behavior (Trevarthen 1979) and coordinate their facial movements with each other's (Stern 1977, 1985). Children and adults may act in synchrony with others in order to increase social cohesion. The social functions of emotion are so pervasive (see Campos, Mumme, Kermoian, and Campos 1994) that Saarni (1999) claimed that emotions cannot be understood but in connection to social interaction. We learn emotions through social interaction, we employ them in social interaction, and we understand the emotions of others through social interaction. Moreover, using emotions strategically can be done not only for the sake of individual well-being and skill acquisition but also for the sake of collective concerns (see Wikan 1990 for an example from anthropology).

How much can we extend to feelings in general the idea that emotions are interwoven within their social context? Social interaction can determine feelings beyond emotions in several ways. First, from early childhood on, our preferences are shaped through instrumental conditioning. At the beginning parents, later peers, tell children what to like and what to dislike (see Bourdieu 1984/1979 for a sociological analysis). Although we may retain some autonomy in determining our tastes, preferences are embedded in our social ecology. Second, other people expose us to objects and experiences. As repeated exposure influences feelings in a positive direction – at least as long as we are not overexposed – parents have an opportunity to guide tastes by showing their son what they want him to like, …

Well-being as a goal in itself has been propagated at least since Epicurus (341–270 bce). He stated that a good life is a life of happiness, tranquility, and peace; a life that is free of worry, fear, and pain (Epicurus 2012). Pleasure and pain are the direct measures of such a life: The more pleasure and the less pain, the better. Epicurean philosophy does not go beyond pleasure and pain – that is, expected utility for oneself – to measure well-being. Such an egocentric notion of well-being is seen as deficient by most authors (see, for example, Spranger 1928/1914). Modern philosophical approaches therefore extended the notion of happiness for oneself to the earlier mentioned notion of the greatest happiness for the greatest number (Bentham 1988/1776). Yet this approach would not claim that we have to suffer pain and give up happiness beyond the needs of the well-being of society. Even most religious communities do not require their believers to voluntarily suffer. Ascetic life and self-castigation are accepted only, if at all, as exercises that harden body and spirit in order to be better able to serve society, while suffering for suffering's sake is commonly seen as meaningless in the West (e.g., Noddings 2003). In order to be capable members of society, we have a duty to look for our well-being, which includes both good health and happiness. Toward the end of this chapter, I review research on the positive effects of happiness. Regular experience of positive emotions makes people more broadly attentive, resourceful, and social (see Fredrickson 2013); individuals become better suited to cope with loss (see Bonanno 2004; Kaltman and Bonanno 2003) and to meet the challenges of pursuing social and societal values (Fredrickson 2013).

After walking my younger kids to school, I mounted the Vancouver SkyTrain at Sapperton Station on the morning of Monday December 14, 2009. As always, I took my current reading out of my backpack – on that day the book Effortless Action by Edward Slingerland (2003a), which analyzes the metaphorical nature of Confucian thought. I began thinking about what I read; my mind was wandering when all of a sudden an insight struck me: What Confucius wrote some 2500 years ago is critical feeling. Much has been written about critical thinking, but to my knowledge not one scholar has ever written a comprehensive work about how feelings can be used to improve personal or societal outcomes. The deficiencies of critical thinking have also been extensively covered, and recent decades have seen an increasing number of works on the rationality of emotions. Despite these insights, we lack an overview of strategies that realize the potential of feelings to improve outcomes. Feelings go beyond emotions and encompass moods, preferences, metacognitive experiences, and bodily states, as will be defined in due course. This book introduces the concept of critical feeling and provides an overview of applications in various areas, from personal well-being and skill learning to the acquisition of artistic tastes and religious creeds.

Writing such a book is often a solitary affair but at the same time impossible without a host of colleagues and friends who take time to collaborate, discuss, criticize, and encourage. Within the five years since my decisive aha-experience, I have had the privilege of working with and discussing ideas with many people, some of whom I would like to mention by name. At the University of Bergen and later at the University of Oslo, I met wonderful colleagues and students who gave input from various perspectives relevant to the project; among these people were Michael Stausberg (who provided input on parts of Chapter 10), Morten Brun, Kevin Cahill, Per Olav Folgerø, Marina Hirnstein, Lasse Hodne, Sigve Høgheim, Kenneth Hugdahl, Christoph Kirfel, Geir Overskeid, Francisco Pons, Ole Martin Skilleås, Karsten Specht, and Matthias Stadler. Some of my research relevant to critical feeling has been made possible by grants from the Research Council of Norway (#166252 and #212299) as well as by a fellowship from the Leiv Eirikssons mobility program.