Studying the dynamics of autonomic activity during emotional experience

Abstract

Recent theories emphasize the dynamic aspects of emotions. However, the physiological measures and the methodological approaches that can capture the dynamics of emotions are underdeveloped. In the current study, we investigated whether moment-to-moment changes in autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity are reliably associated with the unfolding of emotional experience. We obtained cardiovascular and electrodermal signals from participants while they viewed emotional movies. We found that the ANS signals were temporally aligned across individuals, indicating a reliable stimulus-driven response. The degree of response reliability was associated with the emotional time line of the movie. Finally, individual differences in ANS response reliability were strongly correlated with the subjective emotional responses. The current research offers a methodological approach for studying physiological responses during dynamic emotional situations.

Strangers, Friends, and Lovers Show Different Physiological Synchrony in Different Emotional States

“…Cross-correlation was the chosen metric to quantify the presence of common patterns in the IBI series of the two members of the dyad [9,29,30]. Cross-correlation measures the extent to which the two physiological signals co-vary [30][31][32], while also allows a non-perfect alignment between the two time series through a lag parameter to account for anticipations or delays of the physiological response of one member with respect to the other.…”

“…We refer to this measure as the maximal cross-correlation within a time shift of ±10 s. However, it is critical to assess whether the measured synchrony is actually due to the effect of copresence, to the stimulus, or to other random contributions. To discriminate between these factors, we adopted the framework proposed by Golland and colleagues [9,29] and computed three sets of physiological synchrony measures (see Figure 1B):…”

Social spread of positive facial signals: affiliative zygomatic synchrony in co-present individuals

“…After the baseline, participants took part in a co-viewing experiment which is not reported here and then viewed a positive and a negative movie. Two movie excerpts, used in previous studies 3,23,47 , were taken from the horror film "Paranormal Activity" (394s) and the popular entertainment TV show "Britain's Got Talent" (364s) to elicit negative and positive emotions, respectively. Each emotional movie was preceded by a ten second countdown screen and the order of the movies was counterbalanced across participants.…”

“…To assess synchrony we computed a cross-correlation between two individual z-normalized physiological response time-courses within ±3 seconds temporal lag 3,47 .…”

“…Zygomatic and cardiovascular synchrony were quantified both in co-viewing dyad members (hereafter, real dyads) and in randomly shuffled control dyads (members of different dyads who viewed the same movies but not together; hereafter, random dyads). Synchrony in random dyads represents the movie-driven effects, which manifest similarity in the affective dynamics, elicited by the movies 47,48 . Synchrony in real dyads incorporates dyad-specific interpersonal processes unfolding at a dyad-unique timeline.…”