 A central challenge for motivational theories of emotions of both phenomenological and non-phenomenological varieties is to account for the states of action readiness distinctive of different emotions. First, many emotions do not appear to motivate action at all. Grief and depression, for example, seem to involve a general depotentiation of the readiness to act. Second, it is unclear which action tendencies “backward-looking” emotions like regret could elicit, because they focus on what happened in the past, which cannot be changed. Third, emotions like joy involve the selective potentiation of a fairly open range of behavioral options, so it is unclear what action tendency may be associated with them. Fourth, it seems to be possible for the same action tendency to be associated with different emotions, and for different emotions to be associated with the same action tendency, provided that these tendencies are described at a sufficiently abstract level of analysis (for critiques of motivational approaches, see, e.g., Reisenzein 1996; Prinz 2004; Tappolet 2010, 2016; Eder &amp; Rothermund 2013).