Emotions Induced by Recalling Memories About Interpersonal Stress.

Sachiyo Ozawa

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.618676

Abstract

The emotions that people experience in day-to-day social situations are often mixed emotions. Although autobiographical recall is useful as an emotion induction procedure, it often involves recalling memories associated with a specific discrete emotion (e.g., sadness). However, real-life emotions occur freely and spontaneously, without such constraints. To understand real-life emotions, the present study examined characteristics of emotions that were elicited by recalling “stressful interpersonal events in daily life” without the targeted evocation of a specific discrete emotion. Assuming generation of mixed and complex emotions, emotional groups with relatively strong correlation of multiple emotions according to surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and happiness were expected. Seventy-two university students (35 males, mean age: 19.69 ± 1.91 years; 37 females, 20.03 ± 2.42) participated in the study. In the emotion induction procedure, participants freely recalled memories as per the instructions on a monitor, and then responded silently to a series of questions concerning any one recalled incident. Assessments of emotional states using emotion scales and another item indicated that validated emotional changes had occurred during the task. Inter-correlations between six emotions demonstrated an emotional group consisting of disgust and anger, which frequently occur as negative interpersonal feelings, and that of fear and sadness. This indicated generation of mixed and complex emotions as experienced in social life. Future studies concerning relationships between these emotions and other factors, including neurophysiological responses, may facilitate further understanding about relationships between mental and physiological processes occurring in daily life.

Highlights

People experience various emotions in real-life, including mixed and complex ones
When an unpleasant interpersonal event happens in real-life, people may ruminate about it and languish in an unpleasant mood consisting of emotions, such as anger, sadness, and disgust
Emotions induced by autobiographical recall can become more complex and intertangled than emotions triggered by external emotional stimuli such as emotional images

Summary

INTRODUCTION

People experience various emotions in real-life, including mixed and complex ones. When an unpleasant interpersonal event happens in real-life, people may ruminate about it and languish in an unpleasant mood consisting of emotions, such as anger, sadness, and disgust. Autobiographical recall is frequently used as an emotion induction procedure in laboratory settings (e.g., Suardi et al, 2016; Siedlecka and Denson, 2019) This method typically instructs participants to vividly recall episodic memories associated with certain emotions, such as happiness, anger, and sadness, or any other pleasant or unpleasant emotions (e.g., Strack et al, 1985; Damasio et al, 2000; Krauth-Gruber and Ric, 2000; Marci et al, 2007; Gadeikis et al, 2017; Monnier et al, 2018; Jahanitabesh et al, 2019; Nawa and Ando, 2019). We examined changes in emotions and pupil sizes while recalling “stressful interpersonal events in daily life” to analyze psychophysiological aspects of emotions similar to real-life experiences (Ozawa et al, 2020). Because we specified the type of situation to be recalled and not a specific discrete emotion in the emotion induction procedure, induced emotions were expected to be mixed and complex as experienced in real-life in social contexts. The relationships between changes in these scores and the six emotion scores were examined to investigate characteristics of these tools

Participants

Experimental Procedure

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

Limitations and Future

ETHICS STATEMENT