感情とは何か―日本における定義をめぐる4つの困難と挑戦―

抄録

What is kanjo （感情）? Which of the following folk/scientific concepts is the same as the Japanese word kanjo: affect, emotion, or feeling? Despite discussions, Japanese psychologists have still have not reached consensus on these fundamental questions about the definition of the phenomenon. This research discusses four difficulties/challenges around the definition of kanjo: (a) polythetic qualities of kanjo, (b) comparability of kanjo between everyday life and science, (c) translation equivalence between kanjo and its related terms, and (d) English dependency of the conceptual definition in psychology. We are skeptical about the exclusive definitive translation of kanjo-related terms (e.g., affect/kanjo, emotion/jodo （情動）, feeling/kanjo); thus, we have coined the following three novel terms: A-kanjo, E-kanjo, and F-kanjo (corresponding generally to affect, emotion, and feeling, respectively). Further, to consider the definition of kanjo, we reviewed the similarities and differences between a few promising approaches in the working and scientific definitions of emotion, theory development, theory convergence, and unifying framework of emotion research. Finally, we suggest a future direction for defining kanjo and research on kanjo in Japan.