Some general laws of human emotion: Interrelationships between intensities of desire, expectation, and emotional feeling

Abstract

Two experiments were performed to determine how desires and expectations interact to influence the intensities of emotional feelings. The first experiment required participants to respond to their imagined intensities of desire and expectation in two hypothetical situations, (1) anticipating different probabilities of receiving money (2) anticipating the possibility of different durations of continuous rain combined with different probabilities of rain occurring. Participants responded by producing line lengths to desire and feeling, a form of cross-modality matching. Feeling intensity but not desire intensity increased as a negatively accelerating power function of expectation for the positive approach goal of receiving money (F = KE°'^) and both desire and feeling were negatively accelerating power functions of the hypothetical amount of money presented (F = K^*; D = K$*). Feeling intensity but not desire intensity increased as a positively accelerating function of expectation for the negative avoidance goal of anticipating different amounts of rain (F= KE^'^) and both desire and feeling were negatively accelerating functions of amount of rain (F = KR°'^; D = KR°").The second experiment required participants to make visual analogue scale responses to desire, expectation, and emotional feeling intensities in ordinary life situations. Similar to Ejcperiment 1, feeling intensity but not desire intensity increased as a negatively accelerating function of expectation for positive approach goals (F = KEP'^) and as a positively accelerating function of expectation for negative avoidance goals (F= KE?"). Functional interrelationships found in both experiments were fit to the general equations F = KiD + K2DE"^ for positive approach goals and F = KiD + KuDE^" for negative avoidance goals. Both equations have the same general form and indicate that desire and expectation have a multiplicative interaction with respect to their influence on emotional feeling intensity. Both functionsThe authors wish to thank Mr. James E. Barrell for helpful discussions and comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, and Ms. Rebecca

Placebo analgesia: Friend or foe?

“…This reanalysis suggested that both desire for pain relief and expected pain relief contribute to placebo analgesia, and a main factor is a multiplicative interaction between desire and expectation. This interaction is consistent with Price et al's desire-expectation model of emotions [33][34][35][36] and value-expectancy models in general (see references in [35]). It suggests a consideration of placebo analgesic effects as phenomena that occur within the context of emotions.…”

“…Desire and expectation are also dimensions that underlie common human emotions, such as sadness, anxiety, and relief [33,34,36]. Rainville et al [37••] recently showed that emotional states modulate pain and psychophysiologic activities associated with pain.…”

Consciousness and the brain

“…In 1984, the American investigators D. Price and J. Barrell reproduced these experiments in a purely psychological variant, proposing to subjects that they mark on special scales the strength of their desire, the presumed probability of achieving a goal, and the intensity of the emotional experience. The quantitative analysis of the data obtained confirmed the existence of the relationship which the authors called a "general law of human emotions" [21].…”

Pleasure in decision‐making situations: politics and gambling

“…hedonic-related processes, are the clues leading to efficacious decision making (Damasio 1994;Mellers 2000) and that emotional intelligence predicts success (Mayer and Salovey 1997;Salovey and Grewal 2005;DeMartino et al 2006). Price and Barrell (1984) have shown that desire and expectation, which influence decision making, are closely related to emotion. The question of how affect arises and what affect indicates has been examined from a feedback-based view of selfregulation; emotion regulates behavior through negative feedback (Carver and Scheier 1990).…”