The Relationships Between Life Satisfaction, Happiness, and Current Mood

The present research proposes and tests a conceptualization of happiness as a situation-dependent evaluation of hedonic experiences, specifically the valence and activation of current mood, as well as being related to cognitive judgments of life satisfaction. In Experiment 1 86 undergraduates rated their life satisfaction (five scales forming the Satisfaction With Life Scale), happiness on five rating scales, and valence and activation of current mood, each on three rating scales, before and after attending a lecture. The results showed that happiness was related to life satisfaction mediated by valence of current mood. The change in happiness from before to after attending the lecture was only influenced by the change in valence of the current mood. In Experiment 2 which used scenarios to induce valence and activation of current mood in four randomized groups with a total of 135 undergraduates, happiness was related to preference for current mood rated on three scales which in turn was directly affected by both the valence and activation induction. Valence was in the mood-induction scenarios related to the expected rate of goal pursuit and activation to incidental events. Experiment 3 demonstrated for another 59 undergraduates that happiness stayed related to preference for a positive mood despite that its relation to a positive mood was reversed in an incongruent situation.     

Does It Make You Happy Feeling This Way? A Core Affect Account of Preference for Current Mood

Two experiments were conducted to investigate whether and how preference for current mood is related to the valence and activation dimensions of core affect. In Study 1, 100 undergraduates rated valence and activation of their naturally occurring current mood and preference for this mood. In Study 2, another 90 undergraduates performed the same ratings for various induced moods. The results showed as expected that preference for current mood is related to both valence and activation. Whereas the relation to valence is direct, the relation to activation is invertedly U-shaped with a maximum that increases with valence.     

Frequency,characteristics, and perceived functions of emotional future thinking in daily life

While many thoughts and mental images that people form about their personal future refer to emotionally significant events, there is still little empirical data on the frequency and nature of emotional future-oriented thoughts (EmoFTs) that occur in natural settings. In the present study, participants recorded EmoFTs occurring in daily life and rated their characteristics, emotional properties, and perceived functions. The results showed that EmoFTs are frequent, occur in various contexts, and are perceived to fulfil important functions, mostly related to goal pursuit and emotion regulation. When distinguishing between anticipatory and anticipated emotions (i.e., emotions experienced in the present versus emotions expected to occur in the future), a positivity bias in the frequency of EmoFTs was found to be restricted to anticipated emotions. The representational format and perceived function of EmoFTs varied according to their affective valence, and the intensity of anticipatory and anticipated emotions were influenced by the personal importance and amount of visual imagery of EmoFTs. Mood states preceding EmoFTs influenced their emotional components, which, in turn, impacted ensuing mood states. Overall, these findings shed further light on the emotional properties of future-oriented thoughts that are experienced in daily life.     

Social learning modulates the lateralization of emotional valence

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), whereas recognition of complex social emotions is processed preferentially by the left PFC. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of healthy controls and patients with right and left PFC lesions to recognize basic and complex emotions. Experiment 2 modeled the patient’s data of Experiment 1 on healthy participants under lateralized displays of the emotional stimuli. Both experiments support the Type as well as the Valence Hypotheses. However, our findings indicate that the Valence Hypothesis holds for basic but less so for complex emotions. It is suggested that, since social learning overrules the basic preference of valence in the hemispheres, the processing of complex emotions in the hemispheres is less affected by valence.     

Misery loves company: mood-congruent emotional responding to music

We examined emotional responding to music after mood induction. On each trial, listeners heard a 30-s music excerpt and rated how much they liked it, whether it sounded happy or sad, and how familiar it was. When the excerpts sounded unambiguously happy or sad (Experiment 1), the typical preference for happy-sounding music was eliminated after inducing a sad mood. When the excerpts sounded ambiguous with respect to happiness and sadness (Experiment 2), listeners perceived more sadness after inducing a sad mood. Sad moods had no influence on familiarity ratings (Experiments 1 and 2). These findings imply that "misery loves company." Listeners in a sad mood fail to show the typical preference for happy-sounding music, and they perceive more sadness in music that is ambiguous with respect to mood.     

Simple lines and shapes are associated with,and communicate,distinct emotions

We investigated whether lines and shapes that present face-like features would be associated with emotions. In Experiment 1, participants associated concave, convex, or straight lines with the words happy or sad. Participants found it easiest to associate the concave line with happy and the convex line with sad. In Experiment 2, participants rated (valence, pleasantness, liking, and tension) and categorised (valence and emotion words) two convex and concave lines that were paired with six distinct pairs of eyes. The presence of eyes affected participants’ valence ratings and response latencies; more congruent eye–mouth matches produced more consistent ratings and faster reaction times. In Experiment 3, we examined whether dots that resembled eyes would be associated with emotional words. Participants found it easier to match certain sets of dots with specific emotions. These results suggest that facial gestures that are associated with specific emotions can be captured using relatively simple shapes and lines.     

Categorical and dimensional perceptions in decoding emotional facial expressions

We investigated whether categorical perception and dimensional perception can co-occur while decoding emotional facial expressions. In Experiment 1, facial continua with endpoints consisting of four basic emotions (i.e., happiness-fear and anger-disgust) were created by a morphing technique. Participants rated each facial stimulus using a categorical strategy and a dimensional strategy. The results show that the happiness-fear continuum was divided into two clusters based on valence, even when using the dimensional strategy. Moreover, the faces were arrayed in order of the physical changes within each cluster. In Experiment 2, we found a category boundary within other continua (i.e., surprise-sadness and excitement-disgust) with regard to the arousal and valence dimensions. These findings indicate that categorical perception and dimensional perception co-occurred when emotional facial expressions were rated using a dimensional strategy, suggesting a hybrid theory of categorical and dimensional accounts.     

Categorical and dimensional perceptions in decoding emotional facial expressions

We investigated whether categorical perception and dimensional perception can co-occur while decoding emotional facial expressions. In Experiment 1, facial continua with endpoints consisting of four basic emotions (i.e., happiness–fear and anger–disgust) were created by a morphing technique. Participants rated each facial stimulus using a categorical strategy and a dimensional strategy. The results show that the happiness–fear continuum was divided into two clusters based on valence, even when using the dimensional strategy. Moreover, the faces were arrayed in order of the physical changes within each cluster. In Experiment 2, we found a category boundary within other continua (i.e., surprise–sadness and excitement–disgust) with regard to the arousal and valence dimensions. These findings indicate that categorical perception and dimensional perception co-occurred when emotional facial expressions were rated using a dimensional strategy, suggesting a hybrid theory of categorical and dimensional accounts.     

Happy,sad, scary and peaceful musical excerpts for research on emotions

Three experiments were conducted in order to validate 56 musical excerpts that conveyed four intended emotions (happiness, sadness, threat and peacefulness). In Experiment 1, the musical clips were rated in terms of how clearly the intended emotion was portrayed, and for valence and arousal. In Experiment 2, a gating paradigm was used to evaluate the course for emotion recognition. In Experiment 3, a dissimilarity judgement task and multidimensional scaling analysis were used to probe emotional content with no emotional labels. The results showed that emotions are easily recognised and discriminated on the basis of valence and arousal and with relative immediacy. Happy and sad excerpts were identified after the presentation of fewer than three musical events. With no labelling, emotion discrimination remained highly accurate and could be mapped on energetic and tense dimensions. The present study provides suitable musical material for research on emotions.Keywords.     

Affective forecasting and the Big Five

Recent studies on affective forecasting clarify that the emotional reactions people anticipate often differ markedly from those they actually experience in response to affective stimuli and events. However, core personality differences in affective forecasting have received limited attention, despite their potential relevance to choice behavior. In the present study, 226 college undergraduates rated their anticipated and experienced reactions to the emotionally-evocative event of Valentine's Day and completed a measure of the Big Five personality traits - neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness - and their facet scales. Neuroticism and extraversion were associated with baseline mood, experienced emotional reactions, and anticipated emotional reactions. The present findings hold implications for the study of individual differences in affective forecasting, personality theory, and interventions research.     

Rumination,emotional intensity and emotional clarity

It has been suggested that a high tendency to ruminate presents a deficient emotion regulation. Past research found that people with high tendency to ruminate show sustained attention for negative stimuli and increased negative thinking, which may result in intensified experiences of negative emotions. Moreover, high level of rumination was associated with low emotional understanding. Accordingly, we hypothesized (1) high ruminators (HR) experience more intense emotional reactions than low ruminators (LR) for negative but not positive emotions, (2) LR have higher emotional clarity than HR, and (3) there would be the same pattern of results for brooding but not for reflective pondering. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, a rumination response style questionnaire, and the Beck Depression Inventory-II. They also rated emotional intensity and identified emotion type for scene pictures from the CAP-D (Categorized Affective Pictures Database). The highest (HR) and lowest (LR) quarters of ruminators were compared on levels of emotional intensity and emotional clarity. We found HR experienced negative emotions more intensely than LR, with no difference for positive emotions. In contrast to our hypothesis, the two groups did not differ in their emotion understanding. This pattern of results was found for brooding but not for reflective pondering. Our research sheds light on the mechanism underlying rumination and emotion regulation.     

A comparison of dimensional models of emotion: Evidence from emotions,prototypical events,autobiographical memories,and words

The intensity and valence of 30 emotion terms, 30 events typical of those emotions, and 30 autobiographical memories cued by those emotions were each rated by different groups of 40 undergraduates. A vector model gave a consistently better account of the data than a circumplex model, both overall and in the absence of high-intensity, neutral valence stimuli. The Positive Activation – Negative Activation (PANA) model could be tested at high levels of activation, where it is identical to the vector model. The results replicated when ratings of arousal were used instead of ratings of intensity for the events and autobiographical memories. A reanalysis of word norms gave further support for the vector and PANA models by demonstrating that neutral valence, high-arousal ratings resulted from the averaging of individual positive and negative valence ratings. Thus, compared to a circumplex model, vector and PANA models provided overall better fits.     

On the dynamics of implicit emotion regulation: Counter-regulation after remembering events of high but not of low emotional intensity

Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.     

Emotion concepts and emotional states in social judgment and categorization

An objection to conclusions of research investigating effects of emotions on cognitive processes is that the effects are due to the activation of semantic concepts rather than to emotional feelings. A sentence unscrambling task was developed to prime concepts of happiness, sadness, or neutral ideas. Pilot studies demonstrated that unscrambling emotional sentences did not affect emotional state but did prime semantically related words. Experiment 1 showed that the induction of emotional state but not the sentence unscrambling task produced emotion-congruent judgments. Results of Experiment 2 showed that individuals in emotional states categorized according to emotional equivalence more often than participants in a neutral state. Sentence unscrambling had no effect on emotional response categorization. The influences of emotions and emotion knowledge in cognition and emotion are discussed.     

Emotion regulation through execution,observation, and imagery of emotional movements

According to Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, emotions are generated by conveying the current state of the body to the brain through interoceptive and proprioceptive afferent input. The resulting brain activation patterns represent unconscious emotions and correlate with subjective feelings. This proposition implies a corollary that the deliberate control of motor behavior could regulate feelings. We tested this possibility, hypothesizing that engaging in movements associated with a certain emotion would enhance that emotion and/or the corresponding valence. Furthermore, because motor imagery and observation are thought to activate the same mirror-neuron network engaged during motor execution, they might also activate the same emotional processing circuits, leading to similar emotional effects. Therefore, we measured the effects of motor execution, motor imagery and observation of whole-body dynamic expressions of emotions (happiness, sadness, fear) on affective state. All three tasks enhanced the corresponding affective state, indicating their potential to regulate emotions.     

The influence of mood on the intensity of emotional responses: Disentangling feeling and knowing

The results of three experiments suggest that pre-existing mood increases the intensity of affectively congruent emotions while dampening the intensity of incongruent emotions independent of attributional knowledge. This result was obtained using a new method for inducing mood states unobtrusively and with minimal or no cognitive concomitants. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that for participants who were exposed to positive feedback a pre-existing positive mood led to stronger feelings of pride in comparison to negative mood. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 suggest that pre-existing mood directly influences the experience of subsequently elicited emotions independent of what one knows about the causes of this feeling. When participants were required to differentiate between the funniness of a cartoon and their subjective humour response, mood influenced only the latter judgement (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, reminding participants of the mood induction resulted in a contrast effect in judging the funniness of a cartoon. However, the pre-existing mood continued to exert an assimilation effect on the overt mirth response. In conclusion, these results suggest that the feeling and knowledge component are partly independent bases of emotional responses.     

How emotional auditory stimuli modulate time perception

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. Meck, 1984), this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events.     

Validation of a Swedish short self-report measure of core affect

This research aimed at validating two self-report composite rating scales of core affect that are useful when quick assessments are required, for instance, of current mood or recalled, anticipated, and experienced emotional reactions. The ratings were derived from the Swedish Core Affect Scales (SCAS) comprising six self-report rating scales of the two orthogonal dimensions of core affect, valence (unpleasantness-pleasantness) and activation (quietness-excitement). In three samples of university students who were requested to rate current moods, affect-inducing sounds, or affect-inducing pictures, the composite ratings were compared to SCAS, two widely used graphical rating scales of valence and activation, and skin conductance responses and the acceleratory peak of heart rate. Three different rating formats were also compared. The results showed that the composite ratings were reliable and yielded the expected correlations with the other ratings and with the physiological affect indicators. No effects of rating format were detected. It is concluded that the composite ratings of valence and activation may be used if quick assessments are called for. Choices can be made of any of three rating formats depending on purpose with the assessments.     

Adults' memories of childhood: Affect,knowing, and remembering

Adult questionnaire respondents reported, for each of a number of events, if they had experienced that event during childhood and, if so, if they remembered the experience or merely knew it had happened. Respondents also rated the emotion of each event and judged whether they would remember more about each reportedly experienced event if they spent more time trying to do so. Study 1 respondents were 96 undergraduates, whereas Study 2 tested 93 community members ranging widely in age. Respondents often reported no recollections of reportedly experienced events. Reportedly experienced events rated as emotional were more often recollected than those rated as neutral, and those rated as positive were more often recollected than those rated as negative. Predicted ability to remember more was related to current memory. Claims of remembering reportedly experienced events increased with age, but predicted ability to remember more about them declined with age.     

Adults' memories of childhood: affect, knowing, and remembering

Adult questionnaire respondents reported, for each of a number of events, if they had experienced that event during childhood and, if so, if they remembered the experience or merely knew it had happened. Respondents also rated the emotion of each event and judged whether they would remember more about each reportedly experienced event if they spent more time trying to do so. Study 1 respondents were 96 undergraduates, whereas Study 2 tested 93 community members ranging widely in age. Respondents often reported no recollections of reportedly experienced events. Reportedly experienced events rated as emotional were more often recollected than those rated as neutral, and those rated as positive were more often recollected than those rated as negative. Predicted ability to remember more was related to current memory. Claims of remembering reportedly experienced events increased with age, but predicted ability to remember more about them declined with age.