Bodily Influences on Emotional Feelings: Accumulating Evidence and Extensions of William James’s Theory of Emotion

Laird, James D.; Lacasse, Katherine

doi:10.1177/1754073913494899

Cited by 91 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 78 publications

(100 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Interoception is the perceptual process that gives us the sense of the physical body from within (Craig, ; Tsakiris, ). Bodily sensations arising from homeostatic processes in the body (e.g., heart rate changes, arousal, temperature, hunger, touch, itch, gut motility) are crucially related to the conscious experience of affect (Cameron, ; Damasio, ; Laird & Lacasse, ; Scherer, ) and to the creation of selfhood (Tsakiris, ). Thus, interoception has been suggested as a key perceptual system for consciousness and self‐awareness (Craig, ; Critchley, Wiens, Rotshtein, Ohman, & Dolan, ; Tajadura‐Jimenez & Tsakiris, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Interoception is the process of perceiving afferent signals arising from within the body including heart rate (HR), gastric signals, etc., and has been described as a mechanism crucially involved in the creation of self-awareness and selfhood. The heartbeat perception task is a tool to measure individuals' interoceptive accuracy (IAcc). IAcc correlates positively with measures of self-awareness and with attributes including emotional sensitivity, empathy, prosocial behavior, and efficient decision making. IAcc is only moderate in the general population, and attempts to identify groups of people who might have higher IAcc due to their specific training (e.g., yoga, meditation) have not been successful. However, a recent study with musicians suggests that those trained in the arts might exhibit high IAcc. Here, we tested IAcc in 20 professional dancers and 20 female control participants on a heartbeat perception task. Dancers had a higher IAcc, and this effect was independent of their lower heart rates (a proxy measure of physical fitness), counting ability, and knowledge about HR. An additional between-groups analysis after a median split in the dancer group (based on years of dance experience) showed that junior dancers' IAcc differed from controls, and senior dancers' IAcc was higher than both junior dancers and controls. General art experience correlated positively with IAcc. No correlations were found between IAcc and questionnaire measures of empathy, emotional experience, and alexithymia. These findings are discussed in the context of current theories of interoception and emotion-highlighting the features of arts training that might be related to IAcc.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…James (1894) famously contended that the conscious experience of feeling an emotion is a consequence of physiological arousal responses such as changes in heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension and galvanic skin responses. Although this view initially attracted criticism (Cannon, 1927), accumulating evidence lends support to James' view and many contemporary theories of emotion continue to ascribe a central role to arousal in the elicitation of emotional experiences (Damasio, 1999;Lang, Bradley & Cuthbert, 1999;Scherer, 2009a,b; see also Laird & Lacasse, 2014). A robust finding in this context is that subjectively reported feelings are associated with particular changes in heart-rate, skin conductance and other physiological parameters (e.g., Lang et al, 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dance expertise modulates behavioral and psychophysiological responses to affective body movement.

Christensen

Gomila

Gaigg

et al. 2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractThe present study shows how motor expertise increases sensitivity to affective body movement at the behavioural and physiological level. Nineteen affective movement experts (professional ballet dancers) and twenty-four controls watched 96 video clips of emotionally expressive body movements while they performed an affect rating task (subjective response)and their galvanic skin response was recorded (psychophysiological response). The movements in the clips were either sad or happy, and in half of the trials movements were played in the order in which they are learned (forward presentation), and in the other half, backwards (control condition). Results showed that motor expertise in affective body movement specifically modulated both behavioural and physiological sensitivity to others' affective body movement, and that this sensitivity is particularly strong when movements are shown in the way they are learnt (forward presentation). The evidence is discussed within current theories of proprioceptive arousal feedback and motor simulation accounts.

show abstract

“…If not, it would provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of peripheral emotional feedback. As hypothesized by James-Lange-type theories of emotion (10)(11)(12), participants might then come to believe that the emotional tone was their own and align their feelings with the manipulation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Covert digital manipulation of vocal emotion alter speakers’ emotional states in a congruent direction

Aucouturier

Johansson

Häll

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Research has shown that people often exert control over their emotions. By modulating expressions, reappraising feelings, and redirecting attention, they can regulate their emotional experience. These findings have contributed to a blurring of the traditional boundaries between cognitive and emotional processes, and it has been suggested that emotional signals are produced in a goaldirected way and monitored for errors like other intentional actions. However, this interesting possibility has never been experimentally tested. To this end, we created a digital audio platform to covertly modify the emotional tone of participants' voices while they talked in the direction of happiness, sadness, or fear. The result showed that the audio transformations were being perceived as natural examples of the intended emotions, but the great majority of the participants, nevertheless, remained unaware that their own voices were being manipulated. This finding indicates that people are not continuously monitoring their own voice to make sure that it meets a predetermined emotional target. Instead, as a consequence of listening to their altered voices, the emotional state of the participants changed in congruence with the emotion portrayed, which was measured by both self-report and skin conductance level. This change is the first evidence, to our knowledge, of peripheral feedback effects on emotional experience in the auditory domain. As such, our result reinforces the wider framework of self-perception theory: that we often use the same inferential strategies to understand ourselves as those that we use to understand others. emotion monitoring | vocal feedback | self-perception | digital audio effects | voice emotion

show abstract

Bodily Influences on Emotional Feelings: Accumulating Evidence and Extensions of William James’s Theory of Emotion

Cited by 91 publications

References 78 publications

I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy

I can feel my heartbeat: Dancers have increased interoceptive accuracy

Dance expertise modulates behavioral and psychophysiological responses to affective body movement.

Covert digital manipulation of vocal emotion alter speakers’ emotional states in a congruent direction

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About