The prime source for cognitive theories of emotion is Aristotle, and, via Aquinas, his account has given rise to the best known contemporary cognitive theory of emotion, namely that of the psychologist Magda Arnold in her two-volume work Emotion and Personality and elsewhere.

Aristotle's account of emotion is not, as one might expect, to be found in the De Anima but in the Rhetoric, for Aristotle was interested in the emotions in so far as they could be manipulated and so be a means by which orators, politicians and others, might manipulate people. As Aristotle remarked, ‘the emotions are all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments’ (Aristotle, 1941, Bk II, 1378a, p. 1380); thus, to change their emotions will be, at the least, very often to change their views. (Quite useful knowledge indeed for orators and politicians!)

But Aristotle's account is a cognitive account, not because he believed emotions affected our judgment, but because he also believed that judgments or cognitions were central to emotion. In general, a cognitive theory of emotions is one that makes some aspect of thought, usually a belief, central to the concept of emotion and, at least in some cognitive theories, essential to distinguishing the different emotions from one another.