Cognitive Theory of Emotion
Emotions arise from judgments about events, not from the events themselves; changing judgments changes emotional responses.
Stoics were the first systematic cognitive theorists of emotion. Fear, for example, is not caused by a threatening object but by the judgment 'this is terrible and I cannot cope.' Change the judgment and the emotion changes. This was revolutionary and directly prefigures modern cognitive behavioral therapy.
It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
Aaron Beck, founder of cognitive therapy, credited Stoic philosophy as a precursor to his view that beliefs, not events, drive emotion.
Enchiridion
Written about in
- What Stoicism says about anger
The Stoic claim is that an event does not produce an emotion on its own — a judgement about the event does. That is why they thought anger was something you could argue with.
- What Stoicism says about being wronged
Stoics were the first systematic cognitive theorists of emotion, holding that the judgment 'this is terrible' does the work rather than the event itself. This is the claim that prefigures modern cognitive behavioural therapy, and also the claim most likely to feel insulting while the wound is fresh.