The author uses the subject of affects in dreams to explore the proposition that emotion is a universally shared capacity rooted in our evolutionary past rather than a "cultural construct." He asked people from the Tolai culture of New Britain in Melanesia, students attending a technical college, to draw their dreams and talk about them. From a total of ten dream drawings he selected five for detailed analysis. Epstein found that the Tolai frequently find their dreams to be disturbing, and discovered from associations to the dreams that loneliness was an affect that had been overlooked in his and others' previous understanding of that culture. He believes that dream drawing is a valid tool for anthropologists in the field. His study points in the direction of the universality of affects, but concludes that affects have to be understood in the cultural context of Tolai life.