Emotion Categories Reflect Affective Trajectories Through

Download or read book Emotion Categories Reflect Affective Trajectories Through written by Tabitha Time Kirkland and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: The words we use to describe emotions can provide insight into the basic processes that contribute to emotional experience. Based on a recent model of the cognitive and neural bases of affective processes, we propose that emotions arise partly from the interaction of the evaluation of one's current affective state, one's previous affective state, one's predictions for how these may change in the future, and the outcomes that one experiences following these predictions. These states can be represented and inferred from neural systems that encode shifts in outcomes and make predictions using associative information. In two studies, we demonstrate that emotion labels are reliably differentiated from one another using only simple cues about these affective trajectories through time. For example, when predicting something good will happen is followed by an outcome that is worse than expected, that situation is labeled as causing anger, while when predicting something bad will happen followed by a worse outcome, that situation is labeled as causing sadness. Interestingly, emotion categories are differentiated to a greater extent when participants are required to think categorically than when participants have the option to consider the possibility of multiple emotions and degrees of emotions. This work indicates that information about affective movement through time and changes in affective trajectory may be a fundamental aspect of emotion categories. Future studies of emotion must account for the dynamic way that we absorb and process information in our environments.