How Universal Are Academic Emotions?

Control-value theory (CVT) posits that emotions show diversity – their situational triggers, objects, frequency, and intensity vary widely across persons and contexts. Due to this variation, patterns of emotions can be unique for each individual student and teacher. Nevertheless, basic functional relations of emotions with outcomes and origins are thought to be universal, across persons as well as contexts. CVT uses the term “relative universality” to denote this combination of uniqueness and universality. We first provide an overview of CVT, summarise the theory's propositions on relative universality, and outline general advantages of relative universalism in psychological and educational science. We then review existing evidence, which supports both the diversity of academic emotions and the generalisability of their links with control-value appraisals and achievement across genders, ethnic groups, academic domains, learning environments, and cultural contexts. In conclusion, we discuss implications for practice and directions for future inquiry, highlighting the need for context-sensitive within-person research and intervention studies.