Emotion experience is a mental representation of pleasure or displeasure referred to as core affect. Several theories have been posed to explain the basis of emotion, two of which belong to the evolutionary and cognitive perspectives.

In the former, Darwin proposed that our emotions towards the wildlife are inherited from our ancestors. Our ancestors were not at the top of the food chain and were constantly preyed on by large carnivorous animals such as tigers. Vulnerable, they learnt to develop a sense of fear toward these predators, which enabled them to react appropriately in the face of imminent danger of being preyed on. The cognitive perspective on the other hand, placed much emphasis on the role of appraisal in driving our emotions today. Cognitive appraisal is defined as the way in which a person perceives a situation, as opposed to the actuality of the situation. In essence, it isnt the stimulus that determines emotions, but what implications it has on the individual’s internal concepts- personal goals, values, beliefs, expectations, abilities.

Put this way, it is easy to see how emotion drives the human actions of Sumatran individuals in the human-tiger conflict. Today, Sumatran individuals experience a lesser extent of the same issue that was faced by ancestors: attack by Sumatran tigers. According to the evolutionary theory, these individuals also have similar fear emotional responses to the tigers. Perhaps it is this instinctive fear that today drives Sumatran individuals to react in violence (by hunting and setting traps) towards tigers in close proximities to their places of livelihoods. Further, through several cases of killing and destroying livestock over time, tigers have come to be regarded as threats to the survival and livelihoods (personal goals) of Sumatrans islandwide, this providing appraisal that generally fuels the negative, hostile emotions that Sumatrans hold toward Sumatran tigers.