Conceptualization Of Emotions Research Articles

Concurrent affective and linguistic prosody with the same emotional valence elicits a late positive ERP response.

Change in linguistic prosody generates a mismatch negativity response (MMN), indicating neural representation of linguistic prosody, while change in affective prosody generates a positive response (P3a), reflecting its motivational salience. However, the neural response to concurrent affective and linguistic prosody is unknown. The present paper investigates the integration of these two prosodic features in the brain by examining the neural response to separate and concurrent processing by electroencephalography (EEG). A spoken pair of Swedish words—[ˈfɑ́ːsɛn] phase and [ˈfɑ̀ːsɛn] damn—that differed in emotional semantics due to linguistic prosody was presented to 16 subjects in an angry and neutral affective prosody using a passive auditory oddball paradigm. Acoustically matched pseudowords—[ˈvɑ́ːsɛm] and [ˈvɑ̀ːsɛm]—were used as controls. Following the constructionist concept of emotions, accentuating the conceptualization of emotions based on language, it was hypothesized that concurrent affective and linguistic prosody with the same valence—angry [ˈfɑ̀ːsɛn] damn—would elicit a unique late EEG signature, reflecting the temporal integration of affective voice with emotional semantics of prosodic origin. In accordance, linguistic prosody elicited an MMN at 300–350 ms, and affective prosody evoked a P3a at 350–400 ms, irrespective of semantics. Beyond these responses, concurrent affective and linguistic prosody evoked a late positive component (LPC) at 820–870 ms in frontal areas, indicating the conceptualization of affective prosody based on linguistic prosody. This study provides evidence that the brain does not only distinguish between these two functions of prosody but also integrates them based on language and experience.

Parental conceptions about child emotional development

Abstract Mothers’ and fathers’ conceptualizations of joy, sadness, anger, fear, pride and shame were assessed. Their beliefs regarding the importance of children’s manifestation of those emotions and the connection with the profiles of autonomy, relatedness and related-autonomy were also assessed. Sixty mother- father dyads with children up to three years old participated in the study. Questionnaires of parents’ conceptualizations of emotions were used. Most participants considered joy an important emotion to be manifested by children of their kids’ age (with an individual character motivation). However, anger, pride and shame were associated with older children. Mothers’ and fathers’ conceptualizations and beliefs were not divergent. The autonomous-related self model correlated positively with the importance mothers and parents attributed to all studied emotions.

La expresión de emociones a través de la metáfora: análisis contrastivo español-italiano

Tras realizar una aproximación a la relación entre metáfora y fraseología, nos centramos en cómo se produce la conceptualización de determinadas emociones en español e italiano. Realizamos un análisis a través de un corpus de unidades fraseológicas, que contienen fundamentalmente metáforas que expresan emociones derivadas de experiencias protagonizadas por el propio cuerpo. La similitud de tales experiencias sirve para comprobar que en ambas culturas no existen diferencias significativas en cuanto a la expresión de las emociones analizadas. El objetivo perseguido es comparar el modo en que estas emociones se conceptualizan a través de estructuras metafóricas. Para tal propósito aplicamos los principios teóricos generales de la semántica cognitiva a los datos que resultan de la fraseología que conceptualiza estas emociones y organizamos unos modelos icónicos jerarquizados, formados por archimetáforas y metáforas particulares, procedimiento que podría resultar relevante también en otros campos nocionales.

Simulating Emotions: An Active Inference Model of Emotional State Inference and Emotion Concept Learning.

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.

Something old, something new: Leveraging what we know to optimize new directions in emotion development research.

The 3 papers by Hammond and Drummond (2019), LoBue and Adolph (2019), and Stern, Botdorf, Cassidy, and Riggins (2019) bring into focus some of the exciting and promising new directions emerging in the field of emotional development. This commentary urges researchers moving in these new directions to leverage what is already known about emotional development to inform future predictions and interpretations, as well as to remain mindful of the thorny but essential questions surrounding the conceptualization, measurement, and interpretation of emotions. These points are illustrated with a focus on 2 specific topics. The first concerns how we conceptualize positive and negative emotions and what we might predict about their respective psychological and behavioral effects. The second concerns what should (not) count as evidence of an emotion in infants and young children and highlights the importance of converging evidence across methods and measures as well as of validating measures. This extends to the study of emotional mechanisms such as empathy and sympathy. Considering these questions carefully at this juncture has the potential to make the future study of emotional development all the more fruitful and effective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Emotive Object in Medieval China

Abstract This article considers the emotional status of grave goods in medieval China. Its purpose is twofold. First, the author investigates the conceptual structures available for interpreting the emotional processes involved in medieval burials. He argues that it is possible, and indeed productive, to read grave goods as traces of emotional operations and, in so doing, to articulate a dimension of the embodied processes that structured and motivated wider developments in the social and cultural history of China. Second, the author demonstrates how sensory-based analyses of grave goods can elucidate intermediating processes among the conceptualization of emotion in philosophical texts, the representation of emotion in the literary and visual arts, and the actual experience of emotion in premodern China. Using the recently discovered cemetery of the Northern Song Lü family as a case study, he articulates the emotional function of the aesthetic appreciation that occurred when selecting objects for burial. In explaining the relationship between the sensorial affect of the grave goods and the family's commitment to the abstract ideal of sincerity, the author uses the concept of the emotive object to chart common ground for histories of thought and the arts in China.

The elephant in the newsroom: Current research on journalism and emotion

AbstractThe article seeks to review current work on the obvious but complex entanglement of journalism and emotion. The field has been under‐theorized and under‐researched; however, in recent years, the body of studies that attempt to grasp the relationship between journalism, journalists, media content, and emotion is growing. The paper roughly systematizes the literature on journalism and emotion based on the Goffmanian distinction between front region and back region; that is, I consider both research on emotionality of the public outcomes of journalists' work marked by journalists' professional ideology and less visible journalists' emotional labour that is behind media content. Based on the review of the body of research and on a sociological conceptualization of emotions, I identify several blind spots. Most importantly, what is still largely missing from the emergent work is research that complies with the social character of journalists' emotions: acknowledges emotions as a force central to the contemporary networked, dynamic and increasingly precarious journalism work, and conceptualizes emotions in journalism as a sociologically relevant phenomenon articulated by the context including newswork, technologies, and media organizations.

Global Profile: Going beyond liking to better understand product experience.

Over the last few years, interest in collecting an increasing variety of information in order to acquire a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the consumer experience with products has steadily grown. The present study was designed to develop a methodological approach to explore the Global Profile of products within a category. A product-specific questionnaire was developed using one-on-one online interviews conducted with a modified version of the Repertory Grid Method (RGM) combined with semiotic analysis, EmoSemio, extended to cover all the main dimensions of product experience of the category of processed tomato. A 96 item questionnaire - including liking, sensory properties, emotions, emotional and functional conceptualisations and contextual appropriateness measures - was developed and employed in a home use test with 196 consumers who evaluated 9 products (one per day). All the statements were found to discriminate between products with the exception of one. A Multiple Factor Analysis showed that emotions were highly correlated with functional/emotional conceptualisations, while sensory properties were mainly related to emotional conceptualisations (memories) and uses in the recipes. The information provided by the simultaneous collection of these different dimensions allows to go beyond liking and may be used in product development and innovation in order to better understand the consumer experience of a product.

Negative Self-Conscious Emotions: Appraisals, Action Tendencies, and Labels

Introduction: The present research focused on negative self-conscious emotions, examining the predictive utility of a set of appraisals and action tendencies as compared to emotion labels. Method: In two studies, participants were asked to recall multiple negative self-conscious emotional experiences, and rate each experience using the appraisals and action tendencies, as well as a set of emotion labels. Results: The data revealed that in each emotional experience, participants are likely to experience multiple appraisals, action tendencies, and negative self-conscious emotions simultaneously. Further, the use of appraisals and action tendencies (as opposed to emotion labels) demonstrated excellent utility in predicting a variety of outcomes indicative of psychopathology and psychological well-being (i.e., depression, social anxiety, meanness, relationship quality). Discussion: Implications for the conceptualization and assessment of negative self-conscious emotions are discussed.

Metonymies and metaphors of sadness in the Old English vocabulary

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to explore the predominant metonymic and metaphoric conceptualizations of sadness in the Old English period. To this end, the Old English expressions for emotional distress recorded inThe Old English Thesaurusand old English dictionaries have been analyzed. Taking as a starting point the experiential grounding of emotion conceptualization, we first present experimental evidence in support of the role of somato-behavioral reactions in emotion recognition, affective state induction and emotional information processing and interpretation, and review the most common metonymic and metaphoric expressions for sadness in Modern English. Next, we analyze the Old English vocabulary for sadness and the interplay between embodiment and culture in the conceptualization and linguistic description of emotional distress. Such analysis makes it clear that in ancient times, as in present day English, sadness and psychological distress were also conceptualized in terms of unpleasant physical conditions such as illness, cold, darkness or heaviness. Consequently, a long-term diachronic trend in the conceptualization of sadness can be traced even though its linguistic realization and motivation have varied through time.

Embodied emotions between constructivism and ontologism: A reflection from the sociology of Alberto Melucci

This article investigates the issue of embodied emotions in social sciences, in a context characterized by increasing theoretical attention to overcoming the nature/culture dualism, but also by a growing dualism between constructivist and ontological approaches to emotions. We take as pivot of the analysis the way in which this topic has been debated by the Italian sociologist Alberto Melucci. The first section of the article locates the work of Melucci in the current debate on the ‘affective’ and ‘ontological’ turns with their impacts on the conceptualization of body and emotions. The second section focuses on the specificity of Melucci’s constructivist approach in comparison with current combinations of radical constructivism and ontological references at the basis of the ‘affective turn’, and highlights the role that Melucci gives to social movements as collective emotional experiences; the third section historicizes his fieldwork and theoretical approach, while the fourth section analyses how the issue of embodied emotions relates to Melucci’s conceptualization of action and subjectivation. Overall, the aim of this article is not to conduct a thorough cartography of sociological debate on emotions, nor to be a general overview of the sociology of Melucci; rather, it intends to highlight how Melucci’s approach to investigating emotions from collective action can furnish a different perspective on the current affective turn in social sciences.

Treating anxiety disorders by emotion-focused psychodynamic psychotherapy (EFPP)-An integrative, transdiagnostic approach.

Anxiety disorders are characterized by high levels of anxiety and avoidance of anxiety-inducing situations and of negative emotions such as anger. Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) and psychodynamic psychotherapy (PP) have underscored the therapeutic significance of processing and transforming repressed or disowned conflicted or painful emotions. Although PP provides sophisticated means of processing intrapsychic and interpersonal conflict, EFT has empirically tested a set of techniques to access, deepen, symbolize, and transform emotions consistent with current conceptualizations of emotions and memory. Based on our clinical experience, we propose that an integrative emotion-focused and psychodynamic approach opens new avenues for treating anxiety disorders effectively, and we present a transdiagnostic manual for emotion-focused psychodynamic psychotherapy. The therapeutic approach takes into account both the activation, processing, and modification of emotion and the underlying intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. The short-term treatment is based on the three phases of initiating treatment, therapeutic work with anxiety, and termination. Emotional poignancy (or liveliness) is an important marker for emotional processing throughout treatment. Instead of exposure to avoided situations, we endorse enacting the internal process of generating anxiety in the session providing a sense of agency and access to warded-off emotions. Interpretation serves to tie together emotional experience and insight into the patterns and the nature of underlying intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict. Treatment modules are illustrated by brief vignettes from pilot treatments.

Exploring and integrating discrete and dimensional approaches while inducing negative emotional states

Selecting visual stimuli for inducing specific emotional states is very challenging, since the choice relies on specific conceptualization of emotions. In this work, we present a set of 55 stimuli, realized integrating discrete and dimensional theories of emotions, and specifically selected to investigate anger, fear, and disgust reactions in non-clinical and clinical contexts. Our set of stimuli presents several aspects of novelty since (1) a large and heterogeneous sample of subjects from the general population was involved in the labelling task, and (2) bivariate and multivariate statistical techniques were applied to integrate emotion models. The proposed set of stimuli could be useful for researchers and other professionals in the affective sciences to address negative emotion recognition issues within a broader perspective both in general population and in psychiatric samples. The obtained comprehensive characterization of the stimuli allowed us to confirm the sexual dimorphism in emotional processing.

Conceptualization of negative emotions in modern linguistic consciousness (on the material of Russian, English and Slovak linguistic cultures: a contrastive analysis)

Abstract The article aims to provide cross-cultural insight into the examination of emotion “envy” through comparative description of the emotional worldviews in Slavic (Russian and Slovak) and non-Slavic (English) linguistic cultures represented in the form of the concept. The obtained results have allowed us to clarify some common and different features of Slavic and non-Slavic nations in the realm of display the emotion “envy” to explore cultural peculiarities of nations and to contribute to the professional training and practices of professional dealing with international communication. The article also seeks to enhance public awareness on the following important issues: how cognate are perceptions of Slavic and non-Slavic nations; what universal features and cross-cultural differences are in regulation, somatization, the degree of prototypically of a seemingly equivalent concept, and how cultural rules influence the shaping of meaning and the expression of the investigated emotion in discourse.

Consumers’ perceptions of GM‐free labelled foods: A sensory experiment

AbstractAs of today, the views of European consumers and policy makers on GM foods are still divided. While only few GM labelled foods (‘does contain’) have entered the market, GM‐free labelling (‘does not contain’) is increasingly introduced in many EU member states. This study aims to examine whether GM‐free labelling affects consumers’ sensory profiling, emotional conceptualizations and overall liking. Based on a within‐subjects experimental design, 126 Belgian subjects evaluated GM‐free and nonlabelled samples of three food products: yogurt, traditional biscuit (‘speculoos’) and crisps. The results show that overall liking did not differ significantly according to label (no vs. GM‐free), regardless of participants’ knowledge of, or attitude towards GMOs. Furthermore, regarding the impact of GM‐free labelling on consumers’ subjective taste perceptions and emotional profiling, few significant differences were reported for crisps and traditional biscuit. Regarding the latter, less positive and more negative emotional terms have been assigned to the GM‐free labelled sample. The findings of this study should be viewed in the context of the stringent EU mandatory GM food labelling policy, which led to an increase of GM‐free rather than GM labels. Future research is needed to further underpin these findings and examine differently framed labels in various settings.

THE OBJECT OF LOVE IS FOOD Conceptual Metaphor in Selected Dholuo Benga Music of 1970s and 2000s

One of the ways in which people express their emotions creatively in a society is through music. Benga music is a genre of Kenyan popular music that has been in existence from 1960s to date. Over the years, Dholuo benga music has seen artistes of 1970s like Ochieng Kabaselleh, Kasongo, Owino Misiani, and many others, giving way to more recent Dholuo benga artistes of the year 2000s like Atomi Sifa, Madanji Perimeter and Otieno Aloka. Dholuo is a Nilotic language spoken along the shores of Lake Victoria, Kenya. Aspects of language, like metaphorical expressions, usually vary over time due to external and internal influences on a speech community. Variations may also occur depending on different individuals' conceptualizations of emotions. Dholuo benga love songs are characterized by metaphorical expressions of love which are evidence of conceptual metaphors of love as perceived by Dholuo benga artistes over the decades. The aim of this comparative study was to establish similarities and variations in conceptualization of OBJECT OF LOVE AS FOOD by two male Dholuo benga artistes in Kenya, in two different time frames (1970s and 2000s). The study therefore hoped to explain language use in Dholuo benga love songs over time. The study was guided by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The study population comprised a total of ten Dholuo benga love songs. Thirteen metaphoric expressions of love were extracted from lyrics of the ten love songs by Ochieng Kabaselleh and Atomi Sifa. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the love songs with required metaphorical expressions and saturated sampling technique was employed to get the requisite linguistic metaphors of love. The study findings are that there exist similarities and variations in the conceptualization of OBJECT OF LOVE IS FOOD between the 1970s and 2000s male Dholuo benga artistes.

Metaphorical Competence in Multilingual Context of Language Acquisition and Learning

Abstract It has been defended since Gibbs (1994) that in proper contexts people mostly use the metaphorical asset of a message rather than its literal meaning, which means that we tend to express ourselves metaphorically and that conceptual metaphors and metonymies are features of communicative interaction. In the present paper we discuss the notion of metaphorical competence (Aleshtar & Dowlatabadi, 2014: 1895) in the process of language acquisition and learning of a (multilingual) speaker in a multilingual context. Based on previous studies by Sinha and Jansen (2004), Kövecses (2005), Palmer & Sharifian (2007), Gibbs & Colston (2012) and Sharifian (2015), among others, we postulate that research in the area should be centred not exclusively on Language but on interaction in a triangle Cognition - Language - Culture, We defend the way one conceptualises the world is based on bodily experience, and is mediated by culture (cf. Yu, 2003, 2009; Batoréo, 2017a). In this study we present research from different language backgrounds both occidental (European Portuguese, English and Polish) and oriental ones (Mandarin Chinese). It focuses on conceptualization of emotions (e.g., emotional expression of feeling hungry) and moral values (e.g. courage). The analysis shows that it implies culture anchorage and/or physiological and cultural embodiment. We defend that conceptual appropriateness and metaphor awareness play a fundamental role in the acquisition of figurative language (cf. Doiz & Elizari, 2013), which is at least partially motivated, and thus can be object of insightful learning (cf. Boers et al., 2004).

Greater cortical thickness within the limbic visceromotor network predicts higher levels of trait emotional awareness.

Previous studies of trait emotional awareness (EA) have not yet examined whether differences in cortical structure might account for differences in EA. Based on previous research on the relationship between EA and both emotion conceptualization and visceromotor control processes, we tested two hypotheses in a sample of 26 healthy participants: that higher EA would be predicted by greater cortical thickness within (1) regions of the default mode network (DMN; linked with conceptualization processes), and/or (2) regions of the limbic network (linked with affect generation and visceromotor control processes). A non-significant correlation was found between EA and cortical thickness in the DMN. In contrast, a significant positive correlation was observed between EA and cortical thickness within the limbic network. These findings suggest that the structural integrity of cortical regions involved in the generation of affective bodily reactions may play a more important role in explaining differences in EA than previously thought.

Emotion metaphors in new Englishes

AbstractResearch into emotion concepts has become an established part of the cognitive-linguistic research agenda and has often revolved around the competing notions of universality (from the perspective of embodied cognition) and (cross- and within-cultural) variation (seeKövecses 2005). At the same time, a relatively recent approach to socio-variational aspects of language in the form of Cognitive Sociolinguistics has created an ideal platform for the study of variation in institutionalized second-language varieties of English, often referred to as new Englishes (seeKristiansen & Dirven 2008;Wolf & Polzenhagen 2009). This paper aims at bringing together these two research strands in a study devoted to variation on the level of metaphor in new Englishes, specifically involved in the conceptualization of emotion. While metaphor is theoretically understood within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), this study will make use of a corpus-based method of metaphor retrieval and identification informed by Stefanowitsch’s (2004,2006) Metaphorical Pattern Analysis (MPA) andSteen et al.’s (2010)method for linguistic metaphor identification (MIPVU).angermetaphors will be examined for four second-language varieties of English, namely those spoken in Nigeria, Kenya, India, and Singapore, which are represented in theGlobal Web-based Englishcorpus (GloWbE;Davies 2013).With the assumption that metaphor variation emerges in a variety’s preference for certain source domains in emotion-based mappings vis-à-vis other varieties, the main questions at the core of the analysis are: (1) Which source domains are employed in a respective variety to conceptualizeanger? and (2) To what extent are the source domain preferences of new Englishes similar to a norm-providing variety, namely British English? Although initial results reveal much similarity, some differences in the data are highlighted at a deeper level of analysis. Thus, a discussion of the results provides a basis for inter-variety comparison ofangermetaphors and, thus, contribute to the universality / variation debate.

A comparison of two low-calorie sweeteners and sugar in dark chocolate on sensory attributes and emotional conceptualisations

Reducing sugar consumption is an important aspect in the prevention of and fight against obesity. A broader understanding of consumers’ perceptions of low-calorie sweeteners is needed. This study examined two low-calorie sweeteners, tagatose and stevia, in comparison to sugar in dark chocolate. A total of 219 consumers participated in this study and rated overall liking and sensory attributes. Participants also listed their emotional conceptualisations upon consumption and were assessed on emotional eating behaviour and health and taste attitudes. The chocolate with tagatose was perceived as more similar to the chocolate with sugar than with stevia on overall liking, texture, bitterness, duration of aftertaste and intensity of aftertaste. Furthermore, chocolate with sugar and chocolate with tagatose both elicited positive emotional conceptualisations whereas chocolate with stevia elicited negative emotional conceptualisations. In conclusion, dark chocolate with tagatose did not significantly differ from sugar in overall liking, most sensory attributes and emotional conceptualisation.