Context-aware experience sampling reveals the scale of variation in affective experience

Abstract

Emotion research typically searches for consistency and specificity in physiological activity across instances of an emotion category, such as anger or fear, yet studies to date have observed more variation than expected. In the present study, we adopt an alternative approach, searching inductively for structure within variation, both within and across participants. Following a novel, physiologically-triggered experience sampling procedure, participants’ self-reports and peripheral physiological activity were recorded when substantial changes in cardiac activity occurred in the absence of movement. Unsupervised clustering analyses revealed variability in the number and nature of patterns of physiological activity that recurred within individuals, as well as in the affect ratings and emotion labels associated with each pattern. There were also broad patterns that recurred across individuals. These findings support a constructionist account of emotion which, drawing on Darwin, proposes that emotion categories are populations of variable instances tied to situation-specific needs.

Emotion context insensitivity in depression: Toward an integrated and contextualized approach

“…It is apparent that many contextual factors likely impact emotional processes, yet, these remain to be systematically described and are difficult to assess in a laboratory context. In line with emergent or constructionist views of emotion, examining self‐reported emotional experience in combination with psychophysiology in daily life can help elucidate context‐dependent patterns of physiological activity at both the between and within‐person level (Hoemann et al., 2020). Further, combining laboratory and daily life assessments provides greater ecological validity and informs clinical significance of commonly used laboratory indices of emotional functioning.…”

“…BYLSMA According to these views, there may be a number of fundamental neural processes, or other component phenomena (e.g., arousal), that may be combined or coordinated in various ways to construct emotions contingent upon context (e.g., Wilson-Mendenhall et al, 2011). Along these lines, emotion categories are conceptualized as populations of highly variable instances of emotional features (i.e., components) that are tied to context-specific needs (Hoemann et al, 2020;Siegel et al, 2018).…”

Adrenergic Tone as an Intermediary in the Temperament Syndrome Associated With Flight Speed in Beef Cattle

“…Thus, physiological functions occupy a two-dimensional "autonomic space" (Berntson et al, 1991) ( Figure 2D). The autonomic space model is well-supported by studies of heart function in farm animals (von Borell et al, 2007) and physiological responses to affective experience in humans (Quigley and Stifter, 2006;Hoemann et al, 2020). Activity of PNS in FS warrants investigation as does the relative contribution of SNS and AHS activities at rest and in response to environmental challenges.…”

“…Affective responses cannot be repeatably titrated by incremental doses of stimulation. Rather, the affective response to any quantum of stimulus varies in accord with concurrent functional states associated with internal and external conditions of the animal, such as environmental context, anxiety, hunger or thirst (Kleckner and Quigley, 2015;Berridge, 2019;Hoemann et al, 2020).…”

“…Heart rate variability and pre-ejection period of the heart contraction cycle are reduced by arousal (Cacioppo et al, 1994;von Borell et al, 2007). Parasympathetic and sympathetic activities exert mixed influences on heart function and on most other physiological activities (Berntson et al, 1991); however pre-ejection period has some utility as a "pure" measure of sympathetic influence and respiratory sinus arrhythmia as a pure measure of parasympathetic influence on heart function in humans (Cacioppo et al, 1994;Quigley and Stifter, 2006;Hoemann et al, 2020). Release of epinephrine from the adrenal medulla provides an additional level of stimulation of heart function and provides feedback to the central nervous system via stimulation of the vagus to further modify affective state (Miyashita and Williams, 2006).…”