Interest in social construction has coincided with a widespread movement to situate the composing process in a social-cognitive paradigm. Because social and emotional themes overlap, writing specialists assume that the emotional components of writing have been taken care of. However, by being absorbed into social themes, the emotional experience in writing remains neglected. From the standpoint of systematic psychology, the present position on the emotions can be traced to the outgrowth of social psychology and its core construct, attitude, from mainstream psychology and the influence of social construction on composition studies, particularly with respect to emotion. While social cognitive psychology has begun to examine interpersonal emotion, this interest has yet to filter down into the prevailing psychology of writing. (Two footnotes are included; 59 references are attached. (RS)