Meta-emotions and the complexity of human emotional experience

We suggest that meta-emotions - defined as emotions about one's own emotions - contribute to the complexity of people's psychic life by modifying the intensity and quality of their first-order emotions, and influencing their decisions and behaviour. After addressing similarities and differences between first-order and second-order emotions, and the role played on the latter by emotion goals and evaluations about emotions, we try to show how, by revealing the consequences of emotions, meta-emotions orient people towards, and turn them away from, certain first-order emotions. We also suggest a number of favouring conditions for the elicitation of meta-emotions: the importance of the first-order emotion; its perceived unexpectedness; the presence of other people; and the impact of the first-order emotion on the self-image. We finally consider the possible functions of meta-emotions, by pointing to their crucial role in emotion regulation and in fostering coherence with one's own values.