HELPING CHRISTIANS RECLAIM SOME ABANDONED EMOTIONS - THE ACE MODEL OFEMOTION

The arousal-cognition-expression (ACE) model of emotion suggests that all emotions have the capacity to be pleasing to God, displeasing to G od, and/or morally neutral. Therefore, all emotions are potentially ap propriate for the Christian. According to the ACE model, what determin es the moral direction of an emotion, and thus the appropriateness of an emotion for a Christian, is factors in the cognitive and expressive domains. The ACE model originally evolved out of research with anger and this paper reports an experimental study with anger that confirms some of the earlier descriptive findings that provided a foundation fo r the model. In a second study, testing the generality of the model, t he ACE model is applied to the emotion of love. In conclusion, it is a lso suggested that the ACE model may provide a general framework for u nderstanding several other Christian perspectives on emotion.