APPETITE, an emotion of distinctive conscious quality, ac companying the anticipation, acquisition and assimilation of food or other objects of desire. Physiologists have shown that the conscious experience of appetite is quite different from hunger, both with respect to the sensations involved and also with respect to the mechanisms involved in the genesis of the sensations (see HUNGER). A psychological view of appetite maintains that it is one of the two basic, compound emotions, the other being love. Appetite emotion is said to have two parts, or aspects: desire, or active appetite emotion; and satisfaction, or passive appetite emotion (see EMOTIONS, ANALYSIS OF). Desire consists of com pliance with hunger pangs, and dominant drive for food. Satis faction consists of successful dominance over hunger pangs, made possible by simultaneous compliance with the food eaten. Hunger pangs are regarded as the inherent stimulus mechanism which com pels the brain and body to act in a certain way, and so build up the psychoneural pattern of appetite emotion in the brain centres. Once appetite emotion is learned, it is felt toward money, clothes and material possessions of all sorts.
See A. J. Carlson, The Control of Hunger in Health and Disease; W. M. Marston, Emotions of Normal People.