Let me introduce a controversial speculation, one that I believe but that many of my colleagues do not accept. I believe that moods are what Stephen Jay Gould called a “spandrel,” something that is not itself adaptive or useful to our species, but that arises as a by-product of something else that is. My claim is that moods are not useful to us; they filter what we see in the world, and they make us respond on the basis of a narrow if not distorted view of reality. Although I do not think we could live without emotions, I suggest that we could lead better lives if we had no moods at all, and were therefore more responsive to what is actually happening in the world rather than what little we can see through the narrow filter of one or another mood.
Paul Ekman
