Emotions for Design with Social Context

Abstract

This article presents an exploratory study of emotions as human constructs that, studied from a social perspective, guide and motivate human behavior and interactions and offer the possibility of producing pro-social effects. In a parallel fashion, it explores the potential of design, when developed from an emotional perspective with a social emphasis, as a medium with the capacity to guide and motivate changes in human behavior. This exploration lays out the theoretical basis for the importance and utility of emotions to social life, identifying specific emotions that can have pro-social effects and proposing some preliminary models of design development from an emotional perspective with a social emphasis with the goal of promoting interactions and behaviors that benefit society.