Chapter 2 examines social science approaches to understanding emotions and their educational implications. It explores fields that study human personal and social life empirically, drawing out patterns and relationships that can inform policy and practice, in education and other fields. Its main task is to introduce, and juxtapose with the mainstream, alternative perspectives on educating emotional virtues which have thus far been left off the table, to highlight the insights of the politics of emotions for emotional virtues education. The first section examines psychological views of emotions as applied in education. The methodology and orientation toward emotions in these approaches are explored at length. The second section of this chapter introduces approaches and views related to the politics of educating emotions, which include insights about emotions developed in social psychology, sociology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and related areas.