The psychology of emotion has been studied primarily from an intrapsychic perspective. A social psychological perspective of emotion can supplement this intrapsychic approach by examining three areas: (1) controlling the emotions of others; (2) controlling the thoughts of others through emotional expression; and (3) emotional congruence, or the fit between anticipated emotional communications and actual communications. To control the emotions of others, one must have naive theories about the determinants of emotion. Research has shown that attributional principles form the heart of some naive conceptions of emotion. Two attribution-based naive theories of emotion play important roles in the social lives of children and adults: self-esteem of others is controlled by altering communications along a locus dimension and anger of others is manipulated by altering communications along a controllability dimension. Other studies on how one's emotional expressions can control others' thoughts and feeling suggest that emotions function as cues that others can use. The emotional cues influence a variety of thoughts, including self-attribution, and communicated emotions play an important role in self-esteem and in attitude formation and change. Still other studies have examined emotional congruence. It is possible that the effects of incongruent emotional fits might enter into the dynamics of depression. These findings suggest that the social psychological perspective can supplement the intrapsychic approach to the psychology of emotions. (NRB)