The study of emotions in scholarly discourse in various disciplines is scarce. This is striking given the influential status of emotions in human life. This obvious discrepancy between relevance for humanity and its irrelevance/neglect in scientific investigations leads to the question as to why this was (or, in some research areas, still is) the case (Schwarz-Friesel, 2007).

One of the main reasons for the neglect of emotions in scientific discourse in the Western world was the influence of René Descartes' dualistic model of thinking about mind and body that dates back to the 18th century. As a consequence, numerous dichotomies affected the predominant way of thinking and what followed were strict juxtapositions, such as culture–nature, masculine–feminine, public–private, reason–emotion as well as feeling–thought, to name but a few. This division of the world into binary opposites dominated for a long time, with emotion and feeling regarded as the exact opposite of thought and reason. Hence, the attribution of emotions and feelings to the body and thought to the mind fitted in perfectly (Wilce, 2009). Potential non-conformities within this strict division were not even considered and as emotion was held for the exact opposite of reason and regarded as irrational, research on emotions was considered unscientific as well and remained rare for a long time due to this Enlightenment bias (Sludds, 2009; see also Schwarz-Friesel, 2007).

Generally speaking, it took quite a while until emotions and feelings no longer appeared in a bad light and until science put this research area into perspective.