Current emotion research emphasizes the existence of a specific family of emotions whose objects are knowledge or the process of knowledge generation/acquisition: these emotions are called “epistemic emotions” or “knowledge emotions” (Brun et al., Reference Brun, Doguoglu and Kuenzle2008; Morton, Reference Morton and Goldie2010). Unlike achievement emotions, they are not related to the success or failure at a certain task but to the epistemic content or process itself (Pekrun & Stephens, Reference Pekrun, Stephens, Harris, Graham, Urdan, Graham, Royer and Zeidner2012). Examples of currently studied epistemic (or “knowledge”) emotions are surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration, and boredom (see Pekrun, Vogl, Muis, & Sinatra, Reference Pekrun, Vogl, Muis and Sinatra2017, for the Epistemically-Related Emotions Scale). Epistemic curiosity (i.e., epistemic interest), probably the most widely studied epistemic emotion yet, activates reward-related regions in the brain (Gruber, Gelman, & Ranganath, Reference Gruber, Gelman and Ranganath2014; Kang et al., Reference Kang, Hsu, Krajbich, Loewenstein, McClure, Wang and Camerer2009). It enhances memory for the content the individual was curious about (Kang et al., Reference Kang, Hsu, Krajbich, Loewenstein, McClure, Wang and Camerer2009) but also of incidental information presented during high states of epistemic curiosity (Gruber et al., Reference Gruber, Gelman and Ranganath2014). Epistemic curiosity creates additional knowledge exploration and better knowledge acquisition (Ainley, Reference Ainley2017; Wade & Kidd, Reference Wade and Kidd2019). Some studies focused on the antecedents of curiosity (Connelly, Reference Connelly2011; Silvia, Reference Silvia2005) to find out what creates curiosity for knowledge in humans. Others have even shown that healthy adults would risk electrical shocks to learn about curiosity-inducing knowledge (Lau, Ozono, Kuratomi, Komiya, & Murayama, Reference Lau, Ozono, Kuratomi, Komiya and Murayama2020).

Although epistemic emotions are personal affective experiences elicited by knowledge, we are not aware of any study that specifically focused on how learners feel epistemic emotions about knowledge they attribute to others. For achievement emotions, there is a category of emotions called “social achievement emotions” (e.g., admiration, envy, contempt, and empathy), which is about the success and failure of others (see Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, Reference Pekrun, Linnenbrink-Garcia, Reinhard and Linnenbrink-Garcia2014). By analogy, we propose the existence of “social epistemic emotions” which refer to the epistemic emotions whose objects are knowledge represented in others. Such emotions, although felt at the first person, would be about third-person knowledge, and be a driving force supporting what Philips et al. consider as the primary function of knowledge representation, namely learning from others. A non-exhaustive list of social epistemic emotions could be: surprise (e.g., the learner is surprised by the representation of the knowledge attributed to the other), curiosity (e.g., the learner feels intrinsically motivated to learn more about the represented knowledge), confusion (e.g., the learner attributes to the social source a knowledge representation contrary to their own prior knowledge, and is experiencing cognitive conflict as a result), and admiration (e.g., the learner is impressed by the quality and/or quantity of knowledge they represent the social source to have). The study of social epistemic emotions should include a broad variety of social sources (e.g., teachers, caregivers, and peers) that play a considerable role in knowledge acquisition (see Harris, Bartz, & Rowe, Reference Harris, Bartz and Rowe2017, for a review on how children turn to their social environment to learn about the world). Social epistemic emotions should help the learner select relevant social sources of knowledge (e.g., through trust-related mechanisms), energize behaviors of knowledge-seeking (e.g., through social interactions) which would eventually lead to actual learning from others. For instance, teacher competence enhances student interest and achievement (Fauth et al., Reference Fauth, Decristan, Decker, Büttner, Hardy, Klieme and Kunter2019). Research could investigate whether this effect is mediated by the student's representation of the teacher's knowledge. Examples of frameworks in which social epistemic emotions could play a particularly important role are peer-to-peer learning, tutor-student learning, group assignments, debates, and so on.

In contrast to the growing literature concerning the nature and functions of epistemic emotions and the role these emotions play in knowledge acquisition, to the best of our knowledge, there is no category of emotion suggested to have belief – rather than knowledge – as their objects. In particular, we are not aware of any study that aimed at comparing emotions elicited by “knowledge in others” to emotions elicited by “belief in others.” We speculate that, because beliefs can be false, if a learner comes across a social source who explicitly expresses their representation as a belief (e.g., by saying “I believe that p”), they will feel less curious and motivated to explore further that representation than if they express it as a knowledge (e.g., “ I know that p”).

In addition to what has been said on the role of knowledge and belief representations in learning, links may be considered with respect to the robust and growing body of literature on learning from the emotions of others. Affective social learning (Clément & Dukes, Reference Clément and Dukes2017), of which “social appraisal” (Fischer, Reference Fischer, Dukes and Clément2019; Manstead & Fischer, Reference Manstead, Fischer, Scherer, Schorr and Johnstone2001, Reference Manstead and Fischer2017) and “social referencing” (Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, Reference Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, Svejda, Putchik and Kellerman1983) are components, posits that others' emotional communication toward an object informs the observer and guides their perception and behavior (Fischer, Reference Fischer, Dukes and Clément2019; Walle, Reschke, & Knothe, Reference Walle, Reschke and Knothe2017). In such phenomenon, emotion is a key component which helps the learner appraise and reappraise their environment (Fischer, Reference Fischer, Dukes and Clément2019; Walle et al., Reference Walle, Reschke and Knothe2017). However, social appraisal is not merely a case of affective priming (Mumenthaler & Sander, Reference Mumenthaler and Sander2012) and with respect to interest for instance, it is likely that the emotional communication of others needs to be referencing the object of interest for social appraisal to occur. Most importantly, affective social learning is about transmission of values and not of knowledge about the world (Fischer, Reference Fischer, Dukes and Clément2019). Moreover, social appraisal learning is an active process in which the learner is actively seeking and processing the affective information from the environment (Walle et al., Reference Walle, Reschke and Knothe2017). Social appraisal can operate automatically: Even if contextual social affective information is sub-optimally perceived, it can still influence emotion recognition of healthy adults (Mumenthaler & Sander, Reference Mumenthaler and Sander2015).

In short, the target article insists that we use knowledge representation to learn from others about the external world. We agree and would like to add that we also learn from what others feel. Emotional processes such as social epistemic emotions and affective social learning may play a key role in facilitating the way we learn from the knowledge of others and from the emotions of others. A fascinating research question would be to explore whether processes that rely on affective mechanisms to learn from others are primarily knowledge and/or belief-based.