Differentiation of emotions

Differentiation of emotions in laughter at the behavioral level.

Although laughter is important in human social interaction, its role as a communicative signal is poorly understood. Because laughter is expressed in various emotional contexts, the question arises as to whether different emotions are communicated. In the present study, participants had to appraise 4 types of laughter sounds (joy, tickling, taunting, schadenfreude) either by classifying them ac...

Boredom begs to differ: Differentiation from other negative emotions.

Boredom research is booming. Nonetheless, a comprehensive understanding of boredom in relation to other negative emotions is lacking. This ambiguity impedes accurate interpretation of boredom's causes and consequences. To gain more insights into boredom, we examined in detail how it differs from a range of other negative experiences, namely sadness, anger, frustration, fear, disgust, depression...

Basic Emotions, Complex Emotions, Machiavellian Emotions

Abstract The current state of knowledge in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioral ecology allows a fairly robust characterization of at least some, so-called ‘basic emotions’ short-lived emotional responses with homologues in other vertebrates. Philosophers, however are understandably more focused on the complex emotion episodes that figure in folk-psychological narratives about ment...

Functions of Emotions Emotions and Cognitive Processing

Relating Specific Emotions to Intrinsic Motivation: On the Moderating Role of Positive and Negative Emotion Differentiation

Despite the fact that studies on self-determination theory have traditionally disregarded the explicit role of emotions in the motivation eliciting process, research attention for the affective antecedents of motivation is growing. We add to this emerging research field by testing the moderating role of emotion differentiation -individual differences in the extent to which people can differenti...