Emotions in Everyday Life

Despite decades of research establishing the causes and consequences of emotions in the laboratory, we know surprisingly little about emotions in everyday life. We developed a smartphone application that monitored real-time emotions of an exceptionally large (N = 11,000+) and heterogeneous participants sample. People’s everyday life seems profoundly emotional: participants experienced at least one emotion 90% of the time. The most frequent emotion was joy, followed by love and anxiety. People experienced positive emotions 2.5 times more often than negative emotions, but also experienced positive and negative emotions simultaneously relatively frequently. We also characterized the interconnections between people’s emotions using network analysis. This novel approach to emotion research suggests that specific emotions can fall into the following categories 1) connector emotions (e.g., joy), which stimulate same valence emotions while inhibiting opposite valence emotions, 2) provincial emotions (e.g., gratitude), which stimulate same valence emotions only, or 3) distal emotions (e.g., embarrassment), which have little interaction with other emotions and are typically experienced in isolation. Providing both basic foundations and novel tools to the study of emotions in everyday life, these findings demonstrate that emotions are ubiquitous to life and can exist together and distinctly, which has important implications for both emotional interventions and theory.     

Joyful by nature: approaches to investigate the evolution and function of joy in non-human animals

The nature and evolution of positive emotion is a major question remaining unanswered in science and philosophy. The study of feelings and emotions in humans and animals is dominated by discussion of affective states that have negative valence. Given the clinical and social significance of negative affect, such as depression, it is unsurprising that these emotions have received more attention from scientists. Compared to negative emotions, such as fear that leads to fleeing or avoidance, positive emotions are less likely to result in specific, identifiable, behaviours being expressed by an animal. This makes it particularly challenging to quantify and study positive affect. However, bursts of intense positive emotion (joy) are more likely to be accompanied by externally visible markers, like vocalisations or movement patterns, which make it more amenable to scientific study and more resilient to concerns about anthropomorphism. We define joy as intense, brief, and event-driven (i.e. a response to something), which permits investigation into how animals react to a variety of situations that would provoke joy in humans. This means that behavioural correlates of joy are measurable, either through newly discovered ‘laughter’ vocalisations, increases in play behaviour, or reactions to cognitive bias tests that can be used across species. There are a range of potential situations that cause joy in humans that have not been studied in other animals, such as whether animals feel joy on sunny days, when they accomplish a difficult feat, or when they are reunited with a familiar companion after a prolonged absence. Observations of species-specific calls and play behaviour can be combined with biometric markers and reactions to ambiguous stimuli in order to enable comparisons of affect between phylogenetically distant taxonomic groups. Identifying positive affect is also important for animal welfare because knowledge of positive emotional states would allow us to monitor animal well-being better. Additionally, measuring if phylogenetically and ecologically distant animals play more, laugh more, or act more optimistically after certain kinds of experiences will also provide insight into the mechanisms underlying the evolution of joy and other positive emotions, and potentially even into the evolution of consciousness.     

More than fear: role of emotions in acceptability of lethal control of wolves

Wolf populations have increased in Western Europe and North America. Lethal control of problem wolves is controversial and support varies among stakeholder groups. Knowing why people support or oppose policies can assist managers in dealing with the public. We examined the influence of emotions toward wolves on the acceptability of lethal wolf control. Two perspectives were used to classify emotions. The discrete perspective distinguishes qualitatively different emotions (e.g., fear, joy). The dimensional perspective differentiates emotions on the basis of valence and arousal. We conducted a survey among Dutch (n?=?369) and Canadian (n?=?208) university students. The independent variables were discrete emotions toward wolves (joy, fear, surprise, anger, disgust, sadness, interest) as well as valence and arousal. The dependent variables were acceptability of lethal control of wolves in three situations that reflect different problem levels (wolves present, wolves kill sheep, wolves kill human). Emotional dispositions toward wolves predicted up to 20 % of the variance of acceptability of lethal control. Disgust in both samples and joy in the Dutch sample were the best predictors. The predictive potential of fear was smaller and confined to two scenarios in the Dutch sample. Discrete emotions predicted acceptability better than valence and arousal. Emotions beyond fear should be considered in wildlife decision-making.     

The neurobiology of love

Romantic and maternal love are highly rewarding experiences. Both are linked to the perpetuation of the species and therefore have a closely linked biological function of crucial evolutionary importance. The newly developed ability to study the neural correlates of subjective mental states with brain imaging techniques has allowed neurobiologists to learn something about the neural bases of both romantic and maternal love. Both types of attachment activate regions specific to each, as well as overlapping regions in the brain's reward system that coincide with areas rich in oxytocin and vasopressin receptors. Both deactivate a common set of regions associated with negative emotions, social judgment and 'mentalizing' that is, the assessment of other people's intentions and emotions. Human attachment seems therefore to employ a push-pull mechanism that overcomes social distance by deactivating networks used for critical social assessment and negative emotions, while it bonds individuals through the involvement of the reward circuitry, explaining the power of love to motivate and exhilarate. Yet the biological study of love, and especially romantic love, must go beyond and look for biological insights that can be derived from studying the world literature of love, and thus bring the output of the humanities into its orbit.     

Romantic love modulates women's identification of men's body odors

Romantic love is one of our most potent and powerful emotions, but very little is known with respect to the hormonal and psychological mechanisms in play. Romantic love is thought to help intimate partners stay committed to each other and two mechanisms have been proposed to mediate this commitment: increased attention towards one's partner or deflected attention away from other potential partners. Both mechanisms find support in the literature. We explored the potential influence of each of these mechanisms by assessing women's ability to identify (ID) body odors originating from their boyfriend, a same-sex friend, and an opposite-sex friend and the relationship between this ability and the degree of romantic love expressed towards their boyfriend. We hypothesized that an increase in attention towards one's partner would render a positive correlation between ID of a boyfriend's body odor and degree of romantic love; conversely, we hypothesized that attention deflected away from other potential partners would render a negative correlation between ID of an opposite-sex friend's body odor and degree of romantic love for the boyfriend. Our results supported the deflection theory as we found a negative correlation between the degree of romantic love for the subjects' boyfriends and their ability to ID the body odor of an opposite-sex friend but not of their boyfriend or same-sex friend. Our results indicate that romantic love deflects attention away from potential new partners rather than towards the present partner. These changes are likely mediated by circulating neuropeptides and a testable model is suggested.     

Personality in the context of social networks

There is great interest in environmental effects on the development and evolution of animal personality traits. An important component of an individual's environment is its social environment. However, few studies look beyond dyadic relationships and try to place the personality of individuals in the context of a social network. Social network analysis provides us with many new metrics to characterize the social fine-structure of populations and, therefore, with an opportunity to gain an understanding of the role that different personalities play in groups, communities and populations regarding information or disease transmission or in terms of cooperation and policing of social conflicts. The network position of an individual is largely a consequence of its interactive strategies. However, the network position can also shape an individual's experiences (especially in the case of juveniles) and therefore can influence the way in which it interacts with others in future. Finally, over evolutionary time, the social fine-structure of animal populations (as quantified by social network analysis) can have important consequences for the evolution of personalities-an approach that goes beyond the conventional game-theoretic analyses that assumed random mixing of individuals in populations.     

Neurophysiological correlates of induced discrete emotions in humans: an individual analysis

The present study addressed EEG pattering during experimentally manipulated emotion. Film clips previously shown to induce happiness,joy, anger, disgust, fear/anxiety, sadness, as well as neutral control films, were presented to 30 university students while a 62-channel EEG was recorded, and a self-reported effect was described. Analyses revealed both emotion-specific and emotion-unspecific EEG pattering for the emotions under study. Induced positive and negative emotions were accompanied by hemispheric activation asymmetries in theta-2, alpha-2, and beta-1 EEG frequency bands. Emotions of joy and disgust induced lateralized a theta-2 power increase in anterior-temporal and frontal regions of the left hemisphere reflecting involvement of cognitive mechanisms in the emotional processing. Negative emotions of disgust and fear/anxiety were characterized by alpha-2 and beta-1 desynchronization of the right temporal-parietal cortex, suggesting its involvement in modulation of the emotion-related arousal.     

The Romantic Travel Movie,Italian-Style

Movies and travel often evoke similar emotions: each can transport us to times past and faraway places. Nowhere in the film genre is this more evident than in the “romantic travel movie” (RTM), where the exotic setting can play a fickle cupid to those who cross cultures and times zones in quest of true and lasting love. Romantic travel movies can be set in a variety of locales, but perhaps no place seems to have advanced the style of conjoining falling in love with a country as well as with a lover as does Italy.     

Emotions in farm animals: a new approach to animal welfare in applied ethology

One of the major topics of applied ethology is the welfare of animals reared by humans. Welfare can be defined as a state of harmony between an individual and its environment. Any marked deviation from this state, if perceived by the individual, results in a welfare deficit due to negative emotional experiences. In humans, verbal language helps to assess emotional experiences. In animals, only behavioural and physiological measurements help to detect emotions. However, how to interpret these responses in terms of emotional experiences remains an open question. The information on the cognitive abilities of farm animals, which are available but scattered, could help the understanding of their emotions. We propose a behavioural approach based on cognitive psychology: emotions can be investigated in farm animals in terms of the individual's appraisal of the situation. This evaluative process depends on: (a) the intrinsic characteristics of the eliciting event (suddenness, novelty, pleasantness); (b) the degree of conflict of that event with the individual's needs or expectations; and (c) the individual's coping possibilities offered by the environment. The result of such an evaluation determines the negative versus positive emotions. We propose an analysis of the emotional repertoire of farm animals in terms of the relationship between the evaluative process of the event on the one hand and the behavioural and physiological responses on the other hand.     

The Glass Half Empty: How Emotional Exhaustion Affects the State-Trait Discrepancy in Self-Reports of Teaching Emotions

Following from previous research on intensity bias and the accessibility model of emotional self-report, the present study examined the role of emotional exhaustion in explaining the discrepancy in teachers’ reports of their trait (habitual) versus state (momentary, “real”) emotions. Trait reports (habitual emotions, exhaustion) were assessed via trait questionnaires, and state reports (momentary emotions) were assessed in real time via the experience sampling method by using personal digital assistants (N = 69 high school teachers; 1,089 measures within teachers). In line with our assumptions, multi-level analyses showed that, as compared to the state assessment, teachers reported higher levels of habitual teaching-related emotions of anger, anxiety, shame, boredom, enjoyment, and pride. Additionally, the state-trait discrepancy in self-reports of negative emotions was accounted for by teachers’ emotional exhaustion, with high exhaustion levels corresponding with a greater state-trait discrepancy. Exhaustion levels did not moderate the state-trait discrepancy in positive emotions indicating that perceived emotional exhaustion may reflect identity-related cognitions specific to the negative belief system. Implications for research and educational practice are discussed.     

The Emotional Lives of Companion Animals: Attachment and Subjective Claims by Owners of Cats and Dogs

There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting the existence of emotions in nonhuman animals. Companion-animal owners show a strong connection and attachment to their animals and readily assign emotions to them. In this paper we present information on how the attachment level of companion-animal owners correlates with their attribution of emotions to their companion cat or dog and their attribution of mirrored emotions. The results of an online questionnaire, completed by 1,023 Dutch-speaking cat and/or dog owners (mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium), suggest that owners attribute several emotions to their pets. Respondents attributed all posited basic (anger, joy [happiness], fear, surprise, disgust, and sadness) and complex (shame, jealousy, disappointment, and compassion) emotions to their companion animals, with a general trend toward basic emotions (with the exception of sadness) being more commonly attributed than complex emotions. All pet owners showed strong attachment to their companion animal(s), with the degree of attachment (of both cat and dog owners) varying significantly with education level and gender. Owners who ascribed human characteristics to their dog or cat also scored higher on the Pet Bonding Scale (PBS). Finally, owners who found it pleasant to pet their dog or cat had a higher average PBS score than those who did not like to do so. The relationship between owners’ attributions of mirrored emotions and the degree of attachment to dogs was significant for all emotions, whilst for cats this relationship was significant only for joy, sadness, surprise, shame, disappointment, and compassion.     

Calcium-dependent inactivation terminates calcium release in skeletal muscle of amphibians

In skeletal muscle of amphibians, the cell-wide cytosolic release of calcium that enables contraction in response to an action potential appears to be built of Ca2+ sparks. The mechanism that rapidly terminates this release was investigated by studying the termination of Ca2+ release underlying sparks. In groups of thousands of sparks occurring spontaneously in membrane-permeabilized frog muscle cells a complex relationship was found between amplitude a and rise time T, which in sparks corresponds to the active time of the underlying Ca2+ release. This relationship included a range of T where a paradoxically decreased with increasing T. Three different methods were used to estimate Ca2+ release flux in groups of sparks of different T. Using every method, it was found that T and flux were inversely correlated, roughly inversely proportional. A simple model in which release sources were inactivated by cytosolic Ca2+ was able to explain the relationship. The predictive value of the model, evaluated by analyzing the variance of spark amplitude, was found to be high when allowance was made for the out-of-focus error contribution to the total variance. This contribution was estimated using a theory of confocal scanning (Ríos, E., N. Shirokova, W.G. Kirsch, G. Pizarro, M.D. Stern, H. Cheng, and A. González. Biophys. J. 2001. 80:169-183), which was confirmed in the present work by simulated line scanning of simulated sparks. Considering these results and other available evidence it is concluded that Ca2+-dependent inactivation, or CDI, provides the crucial mechanism for termination of sparks and cell-wide Ca2+ release in amphibians. Given the similarities in kinetics of release termination observed in cell-averaged records of amphibian and mammalian muscle, and in spite of differences in activation mechanisms, CDI is likely to play a central role in mammals as well. Trivially, an inverse proportionality between release flux and duration, in sparks or in global release of skeletal muscle, maintains constancy of the amount of released Ca2+.     

Emotion (or Life,the Universe,Everything)

Emotions are fundamental to human life; they define its quality and motivate action. In the past, social scientists who have studied emotions have treated them as biological, cultural or social phenomena. These approaches have tended to fall on either side of the culturally recognised division between nature and culture, and so have failed to recognise that emotions bridge this division, that they are thought of as both biological and cultural, as consisting of both physical feeling and cultural meaning. In this article, an alternative approach is presented in which emotions are treated as ecological mechanisms that operate in the relationship between an individual human being and their environment. In this approach, which draws on models of emotion proposed by William James and Antonio Damasio, emotions connect individual human beings to their surroundings and play an important role in learning. A focus on the individual as the centre of analytical attention—often referred to as ‘methodological individualism’—is a logical consequence of the ecological approach to emotion, which also has significant implications for the relationships between ecological anthropology and other branches of the discipline, and between anthropology and other disciplines. In the face of an ecological understanding of emotion, all relations, including social relations, become ecological and social anthropology melts into and is subsumed by ecological anthropology. At the same time, anthropology tends to lose its distinctiveness from biology, psychology and other disciplines by focusing on a phenomenon that is of common interest to all the human sciences.     

Cultural theory and management of common property resources

Cultural theory utilizes concepts drawn from social anthropology, sociology, and organization theory to explain the social and cultural biases of policy actors and interest groups. Certain ideas of nature are associated with each cultural bias; these ideas of nature are in turn associated with types of resource management institutions. By identifying an actor or group's culture bias, analysts can explain the success or failure of different management activities. This paper explains the evolution of cultural theory from its anthropological roots to its applications in ecological management. It then applies cultural theory to a typology of common property resources and illustrates its usefulness by examining grazing subsidies in the American southwest.     

Experimental mood manipulation does not induce change in preference for natural landscapes

According to evolutionary theory, emotions are psychological mechanisms that have evolved to enhance fitness in specific situations by motivating appropriate (adaptive) behavior. Taking this perspective, a previous study examined the relationship between mood and preference for natural environments. It reported that participants’ anxiety level was associated with a preference for landscapes offering what Appleton called "refuge," while participants’ anger and cheerfulness were both associated with a preference for landscapes offering what Appleton called "prospect." We attempted to replicate these results and to improve on the study by experimentally manipulating mood. Using a between-subjects design, 80 participants were instructed to self-induce one of four moods: anger, sadness, anxiety, or joy. After the mood induction, they viewed fourteen landscape photographs and recorded the seven most preferred. It was hypothesized that subjects experiencing anger or joy would prefer landscapes rich in "prospect" features, whereas participants experiencing sadness or anxiety would prefer landscapes rich in "refuge" features. In contrast to the previous study, the predictions were not supported: artificially induced moods may not provide ecological validity as a test of the "mood as motivator" model; alternatively, the first study may have reported an alpha error. To see whether the model has practical value, we recommend a study of landscape preference using participants with clinically significant levels of mood dysphoria. Bernadette Klopp received her B.A. (Honours) in Psychology from the University of Queensland. Her areas of research interest focus on environment and aesthetics, environmental psychology, and the evolution of art as a form of social communication. Bernadette is currently employed by the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Service of Queensland, but she hopes to pursue further graduate study. Linda Mealey, Ph.D., is just finishing a three-year stint as Senior Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Queensland, before returning to her Associate Professor position at the College of St. Benedict in central Minnesota. She is Vice-President/President-Elect of the International Society for Human Ethology, a Councilor of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, and a member of the editorial board of Politics and the Life Sciences.     

Electrophysiology and brain imaging of biological motion

The movements of the faces and bodies of other conspecifics provide stimuli of considerable interest to the social primate. Studies of single cells, field potential recordings and functional neuroimaging data indicate that specialized visual mechanisms exist in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) of both human and non-human primates that produce selective neural responses to moving natural images of faces and bodies. STS mechanisms also process simplified displays of biological motion involving point lights marking the limb articulations of animate bodies and geometrical shapes whose motion simulates purposeful behaviour. Facial movements such as deviations in eye gaze, important for gauging an individual's social attention, and mouth movements, indicative of potential utterances, generate particularly robust neural responses that differentiate between movement types. Collectively such visual processing can enable the decoding of complex social signals and through its outputs to limbic, frontal and parietal systems the STS may play a part in enabling appropriate affective responses and social behaviour.     

Changing time and emotions

In this paper, we consider that our experience of time (to come) depends on the emotions we feel when we imagine future pleasant or unpleasant events. A positive emotion such as relief or joy associated with a pleasant event that will happen in the future induces impatience. Impatience, in our context, implies that the experience of time up to the forthcoming event expands. A negative emotion such as grief or frustration associated with an unpleasant event that will happen in the future triggers anxiety. This will give the experience of time contraction. Time, therefore, is not exogeneously given to the individual and emotions, which link together events or situations, are a constitutive ingredient of the experience of time. Our theory can explain experimental evidence that people tend to prefer to perform painful actions earlier than pleasurable ones, contrary to the predictions yielded by the standard exponential discounting framework.     

From affiliative behaviors to romantic feelings: a role of nanopeptides

Love is one of the most desired experiences. The quest for understanding human bonds, especially love, was traditionally a domain of the humanities. Recent developments in biological sciences yield new insights into the mechanisms underlying the formation and maintenance of human relationships. Animal models of reproductive behaviors, mother-infant attachment and pair bonding complemented by human studies reveal neuroendocrine foundations of prosocial behaviors and emotions. Amongst various identified neurotransmitters and modulators, which control affiliative behaviors, the particular role of nanopeptides has been indicated. New studies suggest that these chemicals are not only involved in regulating bonding processes in animals but also contribute to generating positive social attitudes and feelings in humans.     

Emotions as infectious diseases in a large social network: the SISa model

Human populations are arranged in social networks that determine interactions and influence the spread of diseases, behaviours and ideas. We evaluate the spread of long-term emotional states across a social network. We introduce a novel form of the classical susceptible–infected–susceptible disease model which includes the possibility for ‘spontaneous’ (or ‘automatic’) infection, in addition to disease transmission (the SISa model). Using this framework and data from the Framingham Heart Study, we provide formal evidence that positive and negative emotional states behave like infectious diseases spreading across social networks over long periods of time. The probability of becoming content is increased by 0.02 per year for each content contact, and the probability of becoming discontent is increased by 0.04 per year per discontent contact. Our mathematical formalism allows us to derive various quantities from the data, such as the average lifetime of a contentment ‘infection’ (10 years) or discontentment ‘infection’ (5 years). Our results give insight into the transmissive nature of positive and negative emotional states. Determining to what extent particular emotions or behaviours are infectious is a promising direction for further research with important implications for social science, epidemiology and health policy. Our model provides a theoretical framework for studying the interpersonal spread of any state that may also arise spontaneously, such as emotions, behaviours, health states, ideas or diseases with reservoirs.     

Momentary maximizing and optimal foraging theories of performance on concurrent VR schedules

Optimal foraging theory proposes that animals obtain the highest rate of reinforcers for the least effort and momentary maximizing theory proposes that animals make the response that at that instant is most likely to be reinforced. While each theory may account for matching on concurrent schedules, the data supporting each theory are weak. Two experiments assessed these theories by considering concurrent choice as consisting of two pairs of stay and switch schedules. Symmetrical arrangements, which are equivalent to standard concurrent schedules, maintained behavior described by the generalized matching law. Weighted arrangements, in which the programmed rate of earning reinforcers was always greater at one alternative, maintained behavior that was biased towards the weighted alternative, yet the bias was less than that predicted by optimal foraging theory. Asymmetrical arrangements, in which the stay and switch schedules operating at an alternative are the same, maintained behavior that favored one alternative, even though momentary maximizing predicted indifference. The generalized matching law poorly described each rat's pooled data from all conditions but these data were described by an equation based on the stay and switch reinforcers earned per-visit and included elements of optimal foraging and momentary maximizing theories of choice.