Properemo expanded description

Emotion has fascinated thinkers and scientists over the last two millennia. It is a prime example of the complexity of human mind and behavior that still defies scientific understanding although significant inroads have been made in the last few decades. While there has been an overemphasis on rationality and distrust of the "uncontrollable passions" over the centuries, emotions are currently "in". This is true in sciences like economics and neurosciences where the role of "gut feelings" in decision making is now viewed rather positively and in real life, where emotions have become valuable states to be sought out (as shown by the ubiquity of promising emotional satisfaction in advertising).

There is now widespread acceptance of a componential approach to emotion which views the appraisal of events and consequent changes in motivation, autonomic responses, motor expression, and subjective feeling as dynamically interrelated and integrated components. The ERC PROPEREMO project adopts this approach as a research-guiding theoretical framework in the form of a Component Process Model (CPM). We distinguish two major research directions: a) the production and unfolding of emotions in the individual (PRO-), and b) the perception and inference (-PER) of such emotions (-EMO) by observers. In the first part of the project, significant progress has been made, and documented in publications, with respect to the following major issues:

What is an emotion? In collaboration with philosophers we have developed a set of minimal conditions for using the term emotion: it must be an affective episode that is directed at an event or object following an appraisal of evaluation of the significance of the event for the person's well-being. The episode is accompanied by bodily changes (arousal, expression) as well as thoughts and feelings that are driven by the appraisal results in a recursive fashion.

What is the nature of the appraisal process that triggers and shapes an emotion episode? We have now produced empirical evidence demonstrating that the theoretically predicted appraisal criteria all contribute and interact in shaping the emotion process. Specifically, we have shown with measures of brain activity, physiological responses, and facial expressions that the results of specific appraisals occur in a sequence: novelty < intrinsic pleasantness < goal conduciveness < coping potential < moral appropriateness. We have also developed a theoretical framework that assigns a specific micro-valence (good/bad) to each of these results suggesting that these are integrated into a macro valence (overall good/bad) when clear decisions or choices between different alternatives are required.

What are the precise mechanisms underlying emotion expression production and perception? On the production side, we used behavioral micro-coding of facial expressions and gestures/body movements and digital acoustic analysis of vocal expressions to confirm the prediction that there are appraisal/action-tendency driven expression patterns that may vary greatly for different members of particular emotion families (e.g., the difference between irritation and rage, or being pleased and elated, or anxious and panicky) rather than prototypical patterns for basic emotions such as anger, joy, or fear. In particular, we were able to demonstrate, for the first time, subtle differences between different types of positive emotions. In addition we generated additional evidence for the predicted sequence of appraisal checks. We also showed a difference between very reliable cues in the face (.i.e., cues that tend to signal a specific emotion in a very systematic fashion, and cues that seem to be more versatile and mostly occur in specific configurations. We also confirmed the link between emotion categories and emotion dimensions and basic acoustic dimensions (such as pitch, loudness, perturbation, spectral composition. In addition, we were able, using sophisticated signal analysis procedures, to link these acoustic parameters to phonatory production mechanisms. On the perception side, we produced a state-of-the-art review and synthesis of past research in this area, with a special emphasis on the issue of universality vs. cultural relativity. We examined the type of information that observers can infer from expressions showing that these encompass appraisals, action tendencies and social signals, in addition to overall emotion quality. Using the morphing of facial expressions for different emotions, we confirmed that the underlying perception process seems to follow, at least in part, nonlinear dynamic systems principles (hysteresis). Finally, we addressed the issue of the emotion recognition ability of individuals, as part of emotional intelligence or emotional sensitivity, constructing a new, validated test of this ability.

How are emotions expressed in words? And what is the role of language and culture? In a massive interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study we examined the semantic profiles (based on the different emotion components) for major emotion words in over 30 different languages. The results, soon to be published in book form, show that the underlying emotional space consists of four dimensions (valence, power/coping, arousal, and unpredictability) rather than the classic two-dimensional valence x arousal model. While these universal dimensions explain a substantial amount of the variance, in addition there are language- and culture-specific differences in the profiles suggesting some degree of linguistic or cultural relativity in the naming of emotional feeling.