Abstract
We have recently demonstrated that motor execution, observation, and imagery of movements expressing certain emotions can enhance corresponding affective states and therefore could be used for emotion regulation. But which specific movement(s) should one use in order to enhance each emotion? This study aimed to identify, using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), the Laban motor elements (motor characteristics) that characterize movements whose execution enhances each of the basic emotions: anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. LMA provides a system of symbols describing its motor elements, which gives a written instruction (motif) for the execution of a movement or movement-sequence over time. Six senior LMA experts analyzed a validated set of video clips showing whole body dynamic expressions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness, and identified the motor elements that were common to (appeared in) all clips expressing the same emotion. For each emotion, we created motifs of different combinations of the motor elements common to all clips of the same emotion. Eighty subjects from around the world read and moved those motifs, to identify the emotion evoked when moving each motif and to rate the intensity of the evoked emotion. All subjects together moved and rated 1241 motifs, which were produced from 29 different motor elements. Using logistic regression, we found a set of motor elements associated with each emotion which, when moved, predicted the feeling of that emotion. Each emotion was predicted by a unique set of motor elements and each motor element predicted only one emotion. Knowledge of which specific motor elements enhance specific emotions can enable emotional self-regulation through adding some desired motor qualities to one's personal everyday movements (rather than mimicking others' specific movements) and through decreasing motor behaviors which include elements that enhance negative emotions.
Highlights
Following the ideas of Darwin (1872) and James (1884) that it is the afferent signals from the body which elicit emotions and feelings, several theorists in the field of emotion have postulated that sensory feedback from facial and postural movements contribute significantly to emotional experience (Tomkins, 1962; Laird, 1974; Izard, 1993)
This variety of motor choices available for elicitation or enhancement of each specific emotion raises two questions: (1) When it comes to the use of movement for emotion regulation— how do we know which specific bodily movements are associated with each emotion? (2) How can we determine and personalize the most effective and efficient movements for each individual to carry out in order to enhance or decrease each emotion? A possible solution to these questions would be to identify the motor characteristics common to movements that enhance a certain emotion, and to adopt these motor characteristics in our everyday movements when we aim to enhance the corresponding emotion, or to consciously avoid those motor qualities, when we aim to reduce the associated feeling
As can be seen from the table, each emotion was predicted by a unique set of motor elements, and each motor element was a significant predictor for only one emotion: none of the motor elements significantly predicted more than one emotion
Summary
Following the ideas of Darwin (1872) and James (1884) that it is the afferent signals from the body which elicit emotions and feelings, several theorists in the field of emotion have postulated that sensory feedback from facial and postural movements contribute significantly to emotional experience (Tomkins, 1962; Laird, 1974; Izard, 1993). While the effect of facial expression on feeling is already regularly used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), the therapeutic effects of motor execution of whole body expressions have been more difficult to implement: In facial expressions all people activate the same muscles to produce a certain facial expression (e.g., frowning, associated with anger, always involves the contraction of the corrugator muscle, and Duchenne smiling, associated with positive affect, is always achieved by contraction of the zygomatic major and the orbicularis oculi muscles) When it comes to whole body expressions, different people, or even the same person on different occasions and under different circumstances, may express the same emotion in a variety of movements and actions, using a variety of body parts. The movements and postures that were used to elicit each emotion in the studies mentioned above were not always the exact same movements in each study
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