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Lee KM, Lee S, Satpute AB. Sinful pleasures and pious woes? Using fMRI to examine evaluative and hedonic emotion knowledge. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2022; 17:986-994. [PMID: 35348768 PMCID: PMC9629474 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsac024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2021] [Revised: 02/24/2022] [Accepted: 03/22/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Traditionally, lust and pride have been considered pleasurable, yet sinful in the West. Conversely, guilt is often considered aversive, yet valuable. These emotions illustrate how evaluations about specific emotions and beliefs about their hedonic properties may often diverge. Evaluations about specific emotions may shape important aspects of emotional life (e.g. in emotion regulation, emotion experience and acquisition of emotion concepts). Yet these evaluations are often understudied in affective neuroscience. Prior work in emotion regulation, affective experience, evaluation/attitudes and decision-making point to anterior prefrontal areas as candidates for supporting evaluative emotion knowledge. Thus, we examined the brain areas associated with evaluative and hedonic emotion knowledge, with a focus on the anterior prefrontal cortex. Participants (N = 25) made evaluative and hedonic ratings about emotion knowledge during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that greater activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), ventromedial PFC (vmPFC) and precuneus was associated with an evaluative (vs hedonic) focus on emotion knowledge. Our results suggest that the mPFC and vmPFC, in particular, may play a role in evaluating discrete emotions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kent M Lee
- Correspondence should be addressed to Kent M. Lee, Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 Nightingale Hall, Boston, MA, USA. E-mail:
| | - SuhJin Lee
- Department of Neurobiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
| | - Ajay B Satpute
- Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA
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2
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Park EJ, Kikutani M, Suzuki N, Ikemoto M, Lee JH. Properties of Central and Peripheral Concepts of Emotion in Japanese and Korean: An Examination Using a Multi-Dimensional Model. Front Psychol 2022; 13:825404. [PMID: 35242086 PMCID: PMC8885600 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.825404] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2021] [Accepted: 01/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The concept of emotion can be organized within a hypothetical space comprising a limited number of dimensions representing essential properties of emotion. The present study examined cultural influences on such conceptual structure by comparing the performance of emotion word classification between Japanese and Korean individuals. Two types of emotional words were used; central concepts, highly typical examples of emotion, and less typical peripheral concepts. Participants classified 30 words into groups based on conceptual similarity. MDS analyses revealed a three-dimensional structure with valence, social engagement, and arousal dimensions for both cultures, with the valence dimension being the most salient one. The Japanese prioritized the social engagement over the arousal while the Koreans showed sensitivities to the arousal dimension. Although the conceptual structure was similar for the two countries, the weight of importance among the three dimensions seems to be different, reflecting each culture's values and communication styles.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eun-Joo Park
- Faculty of Psychology, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Mariko Kikutani
- Institute of Liberal Arts and Science, Kanazawa University, Ishikawa, Japan
| | - Naoto Suzuki
- Faculty of Psychology, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan
| | | | - Jang-Han Lee
- Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea
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3
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MacCormack JK, Henry TR, Davis BM, Oosterwijk S, Lindquist KA. Aging bodies, aging emotions: Interoceptive differences in emotion representations and self-reports across adulthood. Emotion 2021; 21:227-246. [PMID: 31750705 PMCID: PMC7239717 DOI: 10.1037/emo0000699] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Bodily sensations are closely linked to emotional experiences. However, most research assessing the body-emotion link focuses on young adult samples. Inspired by prior work showing age-related declines in autonomic reactivity and interoception, we present 2 studies investigating age-related differences in the extent to which adults (18-75 years) associate interoceptive or internal bodily sensations with emotions. Study 1 (N = 150) used a property association task to assess age effects on adults' tendencies to associate interoceptive sensations, relative to behaviors or situations, with negative emotion categories (e.g., anger, sadness). Study 2 (N = 200) used the Day Reconstruction experience sampling method to assess the effect of age on adults' tendencies to report interoceptive sensations and emotional experiences in daily life. Consistent with prior literature suggesting that older adults have more muted physiological responses and interoceptive abilities than younger adults, we found that older adults' mental representations (Study 1) and self-reported experiences (Study 2) of emotion are less associated with interoceptive sensations than are those of younger adults. Across both studies, age effects were most prominent for high arousal emotions (e.g., anger, fear) and sensations (e.g., racing heart) that are often associated with peripheral psychophysiological concomitants in young adults. These findings are consistent with psychological constructionist models and a "maturational dualism" account of emotional aging, suggesting additional pathways by which emotions may differ across adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
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Loderer K, Gentsch K, Duffy MC, Zhu M, Xie X, Chavarría JA, Vogl E, Soriano C, Scherer KR, Pekrun R. Are concepts of achievement-related emotions universal across cultures? A semantic profiling approach. Cogn Emot 2020; 34:1480-1488. [PMID: 32252590 DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2020.1748577] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
Abstract
Verifying that conceptualisations of emotions are consistent across languages and cultures is a critical precondition for meaningful cross-cultural research on emotional experience. For achievement-related emotions tied to successes or failures, such evidence is virtually non-existent. To address this gap, we compared Canadian, German, Colombian, and Chinese university students' (N Total = 126) perceptions of affective, cognitive, motivational, physiological, and expressive characteristics of 16 achievement-related emotions using a psycholinguistic tool for profiling emotion concepts (Achievement Emotions CoreGRID). Cross-cultural similarity of emotion concepts quantified through double-entry intraclass correlations was generally high, and highest for their affective, cognitive, and motivational components. However, results also point to cultural variation, particularly for physiological and expressive components. Variation in perceived physiological characteristics was most pronounced for boredom, and for comparisons of Canada, Germany, and Colombia with China. Implications for theoretical propositions of universality of emotion concepts and future research on achievement-related emotions are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristina Loderer
- Department of Psychology, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.,Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Kornelia Gentsch
- Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Melissa C Duffy
- Department of Educational Studies, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA
| | - Mingjing Zhu
- Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Xiyao Xie
- Behavior Change & Patient Engagement, Philips Research, People's Republic of China
| | - Jason A Chavarría
- Department of Psychology, University of Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
| | - Elisabeth Vogl
- Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Cristina Soriano
- Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Klaus R Scherer
- Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Munich, Germany.,Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA), University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Reinhard Pekrun
- Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.,Institute for Positive Psychology, Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia
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Hoemann K, Wu R, LoBue V, Oakes LM, Xu F, Barrett LF. Developing an Understanding of Emotion Categories: Lessons from Objects. Trends Cogn Sci 2020; 24:39-51. [PMID: 31787499 PMCID: PMC6943182 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2019.10.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2019] [Revised: 10/04/2019] [Accepted: 10/30/2019] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
How and when infants and young children begin to develop emotion categories is not yet well understood. Research has largely treated the learning problem as one of identifying perceptual similarities among exemplars (typically posed, stereotyped facial configurations). However, recent meta-analyses and reviews converge to suggest that emotion categories are abstract, involving high-dimensional and situationally variable instances. In this paper we consult research on the development of abstract object categorization to guide hypotheses about how infants might learn abstract emotion categories because the two domains present infants with similar learning challenges. In particular, we consider how a developmental cascades framework offers opportunities to understand how and when young children develop emotion categories.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katie Hoemann
- Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Rachel Wu
- Department of Psychology, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA.
| | - Vanessa LoBue
- Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, USA
| | - Lisa M Oakes
- Department of Psychology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, USA
| | - Fei Xu
- Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, USA.
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Smith R, Parr T, Friston KJ. Simulating Emotions: An Active Inference Model of Emotional State Inference and Emotion Concept Learning. Front Psychol 2019; 10:2844. [PMID: 31920873 PMCID: PMC6931387 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02844] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2019] [Accepted: 12/02/2019] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability to conceptualize and understand one's own affective states and responses - or "Emotional awareness" (EA) - is reduced in multiple psychiatric populations; it is also positively correlated with a range of adaptive cognitive and emotional traits. While a growing body of work has investigated the neurocognitive basis of EA, the neurocomputational processes underlying this ability have received limited attention. Here, we present a formal Active Inference (AI) model of emotion conceptualization that can simulate the neurocomputational (Bayesian) processes associated with learning about emotion concepts and inferring the emotions one is feeling in a given moment. We validate the model and inherent constructs by showing (i) it can successfully acquire a repertoire of emotion concepts in its "childhood", as well as (ii) acquire new emotion concepts in synthetic "adulthood," and (iii) that these learning processes depend on early experiences, environmental stability, and habitual patterns of selective attention. These results offer a proof of principle that cognitive-emotional processes can be modeled formally, and highlight the potential for both theoretical and empirical extensions of this line of research on emotion and emotional disorders.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ryan Smith
- Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, OK, United States
| | - Thomas Parr
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Karl J. Friston
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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Abstract
The ability to identify and communicate emotions is essential to psychological well-being. Yet research focusing exclusively on emotion concepts has been limited. This study examined nouns that represent emotions (e.g., pleasure, guilt) in comparison to nouns that represent abstract (e.g., wisdom, failure) and concrete entities (e.g., flower, coffin). Twenty-five healthy participants completed a lexical decision task. Event-related potential (ERP) data showed that emotion nouns elicited less pronounced N400 than both abstract and concrete nouns. Further, N400 amplitude differences between emotion and concrete nouns were evident in both hemispheres, whereas the differences between emotion and abstract nouns had a left-lateralized distribution. These findings suggest representational distinctions, possibly in both verbal and imagery systems, between emotion concepts versus other concepts, implications of which for theories of affect representations and for research on affect disorders merit further investigation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xu Xu
- 1 School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, Penn State University at Harrisburg, Middletown, PA, USA
| | - Chunyan Kang
- 2 State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China
| | - Kaia Sword
- 1 School of Behavioral Sciences and Education, Penn State University at Harrisburg, Middletown, PA, USA
| | - Taomei Guo
- 2 State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, PR China
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Nook EC, Sasse SF, Lambert HK, McLaughlin KA, Somerville LH. Increasing verbal knowledge mediates development of multidimensional emotion representations. Nat Hum Behav 2017; 1:881-889. [PMID: 29399639 PMCID: PMC5790154 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0238-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 58] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2017] [Accepted: 10/06/2017] [Indexed: 01/09/2023]
Abstract
How do people represent their own and others' emotional experiences? Contemporary emotion theories and growing evidence suggest that the conceptual representation of emotion plays a central role in how people understand the emotions both they and other people feel.1-6 Although decades of research indicate that adults typically represent emotion concepts as multidimensional, with valence (positive-negative) and arousal (activating-deactivating) as two primary dimensions,7-10 little is known about how this bidimensional (or circumplex) representation arises.11 Here we show that emotion representations develop from a monodimensional focus on valence to a bidimensional focus on both valence and arousal from age 6 to age 25. We investigated potential mechanisms underlying this effect and found that increasing verbal knowledge mediated emotion representation development over and above three other potential mediators: (i) fluid reasoning, (ii) the general ability to represent non-emotional stimuli bidimensionally, and (iii) task-related behaviors (e.g., using extreme ends of rating scales). These results suggest that verbal development facilitates the expansion of emotion concept representations (and potentially emotional experiences) from a "positive or negative" dichotomy in childhood to a multidimensional organization in adulthood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erik C Nook
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
| | | | - Hilary K Lambert
- Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
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Bonivento C, Tomasino B, Garzitto M, Piccin S, Fabbro F, Brambilla P. Age-Dependent Changes of Thinking about Verbs. Front Behav Neurosci 2017; 11:40. [PMID: 28352219 PMCID: PMC5348498 DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00040] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2016] [Accepted: 02/24/2017] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
We investigated the knowledge of emotional and motor verbs in children and adolescents from three age ranges (8–11, 12–15, 16–19 years). Participants estimated the verbs familiarity, age of acquisition, valence, arousal, imageability, and motor- and emotion-relatedness. Participants were familiar with the verbs in our dataset. The younger (8–11) attributed an emotional character to the verbs less frequently than the middle (12–15) and the older (16–19) groups. In the 8–11 group males rated the verbs as emotion-related less frequently than females. Results indicate that processing verbal concepts as emotion-related develops gradually, and after 12–15 is rather stable. The age of acquisition (AoA) develops late: the older (16–19) had a higher awareness in reporting that they learnt the verbs earlier as compared to the estimations made by the younger (8–11 and 12–15). AoA positively correlated with attribution of emotion relatedness meaning that emotion-related verbs were learned later. Arousal was comparable across ages. Also it increased when attributing motor relatedness to verbs and decreased when attributing emotion relatedness. Reporting the verbs' affective valence (happy vs. unhappy) changes with age: younger (8–11) judged the verbs generally more “happy” than both the older groups. Instead the middle and the older group did not show differences. Happiness increased when processing the verbs as motor related and decreased when processing the verbs as emotion related. Age affected imageability: the younger (8–11) considered the verbs easier to be imagined than the two older groups, suggesting that at this age vividness estimation is still rough, while after 12–15 is stable as the 12–15 and 15–19 group did not differ. Imageability predicted arousal, AoA, emotion- and motor-relatedness indicating that this index influences the way verbs are processed. Imageability was positively correlated to emotion relatedness, indicating that such verbs were harder to be imagined, and negatively to motor relatedness. Imageablity positively correlated with valence meaning that verbs receiving positive valence were also those that were hard to be imagined, and negatively correlated with arousal, meaning that verbs that were harder to be imagined elicited low physiological activation. Our results give an insight in the development of emotional and motor-related verbs representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carolina Bonivento
- Department of Experimental Clinical Medicine, University of Udine Udine, Italy
| | - Barbara Tomasino
- IRCCS "E. Medea" Scientific Institute, Polo del Friuli Venezia Giulia Udine, Italy
| | - Marco Garzitto
- IRCCS "E. Medea" Scientific Institute, Polo del Friuli Venezia Giulia Udine, Italy
| | - Sara Piccin
- IRCCS "E. Medea" Scientific Institute, Polo del Friuli Venezia Giulia Udine, Italy
| | - Franco Fabbro
- IRCCS "E. Medea" Scientific Institute, Polo del Friuli Venezia GiuliaUdine, Italy; Department of Human Sciences, University of UdineUdine, Italy
| | - Paolo Brambilla
- Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, University of MilanMilan, Italy; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at HoustonHouston, TX, USA
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Kuehnast M, Wagner V, Wassiliwizky E, Jacobsen T, Menninghaus W. Being moved: linguistic representation and conceptual structure. Front Psychol 2014; 5:1242. [PMID: 25404924 PMCID: PMC4217337 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01242] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2014] [Accepted: 10/13/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
This study explored the organization of the semantic field and the conceptual structure of moving experiences by investigating German-language expressions referring to the emotional state of being moved. We used present and past participles of eight psychological verbs as primes in a free word-association task, as these grammatical forms place their conceptual focus on the eliciting situation and on the felt emotional state, respectively. By applying a taxonomy of basic knowledge types and computing the Cognitive Salience Index, we identified joy and sadness as key emotional ingredients of being moved, and significant life events and art experiences as main elicitors of this emotional state. Metric multidimensional scaling analyses of the semantic field revealed that the core terms designate a cluster of emotional states characterized by low degrees of arousal and slightly positive valence, the latter due to a nearly balanced representation of positive and negative elements in the conceptual structure of being moved.
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Affiliation(s)
- Milena Kuehnast
- Centre for General Linguistics (ZAS)Berlin, Germany
- Cluster of Excellence ‘Languages of Emotion’, Freie UniversitätBerlin, Germany
| | - Valentin Wagner
- Cluster of Excellence ‘Languages of Emotion’, Freie UniversitätBerlin, Germany
- Department of Language and Literature, Max Planck Institute for Empirical AestheticsFrankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Eugen Wassiliwizky
- Cluster of Excellence ‘Languages of Emotion’, Freie UniversitätBerlin, Germany
- Department of Language and Literature, Max Planck Institute for Empirical AestheticsFrankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Thomas Jacobsen
- Cluster of Excellence ‘Languages of Emotion’, Freie UniversitätBerlin, Germany
- Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces, Experimental Psychology UnitHamburg, Germany
| | - Winfried Menninghaus
- Cluster of Excellence ‘Languages of Emotion’, Freie UniversitätBerlin, Germany
- Department of Language and Literature, Max Planck Institute for Empirical AestheticsFrankfurt am Main, Germany
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