Nature of Emotion Categories: Comment on Cowen and Keltner

Abstract

Cowen and Keltner (2017) published the latest installment in a longstanding debate about whether measures of emotion organize themselves into categories or array themselves more continuously along affective dimensions. We discuss several notable features of the study and suggest future studies should consider asking questions more directly about physical and psychological variation within emotion categories as well as similarities between categories.

What music makes us feel: At least 13 dimensions organize subjective experiences associated with music across different cultures

“…Correlations for 16 categories of subjective experiences were also better preserved across the 2 cultures than that for arousal (r = 0.81), although the differences were not statistically significant for individual categories. The finding that experiences of many categories of subjective experience are better preserved across the 2 cultures than that of valence-sometimes considered a "basic building block of emotional life" (38)-contrasts with the claim that experiences of specific feelings derive from broader affective features (13,14,38).…”

“…A second group of participants rated each music sample on 11 scales measuring broad affective features. The scales were culled from dimensional and componential theoretical accounts of appraisal processes proposed to underlie emotional experience and expression (13,37), including arousal, attention, certainty, commitment, dominance, enjoyment, familiarity, identity, obstruction, safety, and valence. (Note that these labels are shorthand for the questions to which raters responded.…”

“…If feelings such as "amusement" are constructed in part from more basic ingredients of valence and arousal, one would expect greater convergence across cultures in how these broad affective features are associated with music than in how the feelings putatively constructed from these affective features are associated with music (13,14,38). Inspection of cross-cultural correlations for judgments of each affective feature and category of subjective experience reveals otherwise (Fig.…”

“…When people hear a moving or ebullient piece of music, do particular feelings-e.g., "sad," "fearful," "dreamy"-constitute the foundation of their experience? Or are such feelings constructed from more general affective features such as valence (pleasant vs. unpleasant) and arousal (9,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)? The answers to these questions not only illuminate the nature of how music elicits subjective experiences, but also can inform claims about how the brain represents our feelings (8,15), how infants learn to recognize feelings in themselves and others (16), the extent to which representations of subjective experience are universal across cultures (4)(5)(6)(7), and the etiology of affective disorders (17,18).…”

Clarifying the Conceptualization, Dimensionality, and Structure of Emotion: Response to Barrett and Colleagues

“…Our study recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1] and commented on by Barrett and colleagues [2] in Trends in Cognitive Sciences applies a mathematically based framework to the study of reported emotional experience. Barrett and colleagues’ commentary frames our work as the ‘latest installment’ in a longstanding debate between discrete/categorical and dimensional/constructionist theories of emotion.…”