The lay distinction between primary and secondary emotions: A spontaneous categorization?

Abstract

In line with the psychological essentialism perspective, Leyens et al. (2000) have hypothesized that people attribute different essences to groups and that they attribute more uniquely human characteristics to their own group than to out‐groups. Leyens et al. have focused on two types of emotions, which in Roman languages have specific labels, such as sentimientos and emociones in Spanish. A cross‐cultural study showed that sentimientos (or secondary emotions) are considered uniquely human emotions whereas emociones (or primary emotions) are perceived as nonuniquely human emotions. The present study focuses on whether this categorization into primary and secondary emotions is a spontaneous distinction that people use in their everyday lives, or whether, on the contrary, it is the result of experimental demands. The paradigm “Who says what to whom” was used to test this question. Geometrical shapes of different colours were systematically associated with different stimuli that varied in meaningfulness. In a first condition, shapes were associated with small or large items of furniture (meaningful categories) and with primary and secondary emotions. In a second condition, the items of furniture were replaced by words ending with a vowel or a consonant (meaningless categories). Subsequently, participants had to recognize which shape was associated with each stimulus. Intra‐category errors were significantly more numerous than inter‐category errors, except for the words ending with a vowel or a consonant. Stated otherwise, types of emotions were recognized like the meaningful difference between items of furniture. These results show that the distinction between primary and secondary emotions is an implicit one that people use spontaneously, and not as a result of task demands. The findings are discussed from the perspective of psychological essentialism and inter‐group relations.

Counter-stereotypes reduce emotional intergroup bias by eliciting surprise in the face of unexpected category combinations

“…Two coders blind to the hypotheses of the experiment were instructed to code the emotional attributes generated by participants in terms of humanizing or secondary (i.e., embarrassment, remorse, melancholy, shame, compassion, pride) and dehumanizing or primary (i.e., pleasure, happiness, desire, fear, pain, and rage). They were provided with a list of primary and secondary emotions which was composed drawing from the literature on infrahumanization (Demoulin et al, 2004;Leyens et al, 2000;Rodríguez-Torres et al, 2005). For example, a Romanian manager was described as proud, suspicious and frustrated, whereas a Romanian window-cleaner was described as hopeless, sad and scared (see Appendix).…”

Adversarial Infrahumanization in the Abortion Debate

“…Infrahumanization researchers (Demoulin et al, 2004;Rodriguez-Torres et al, 2005) have broadly confirmed that lay conceptions of primary and secondary emotions correspond to the guidelines set forth by emotion researchers (e.g., JohnsonLaird & Oatley, 1989). For example, Demoulin et al (2004) and Rodriguez-Torres et al (2005) set out explicitly to test whether laypeople drew a distinction between primary and secondary emotions similar to that which emotion researchers make.…”

“…For example, Demoulin et al (2004) and Rodriguez-Torres et al (2005) set out explicitly to test whether laypeople drew a distinction between primary and secondary emotions similar to that which emotion researchers make. They used words categorized in the emotion literature as primary or secondary emotions, and found that people across cultures make distinctions between primary and secondary emotions corresponding with those used by emotion researchers (Demoulin et al, 2004).…”

“…Primary emotions such as fear, happiness, and sadness are presumed to constitute the core of affective experience that human awareness builds upon to generate more complex secondary emotions like indignation, shame, or pride. Research has shown that the separation of primary and secondary emotions occurs naturally, with participants demonstrating the categorical association of primary and secondary emotions while sorting emotion words (Rodriguez-Torres et al, 2005). Demoulin et al (2004) showed the implicit association between secondary emotions and humans in a response latency paradigm.…”

Less than human: infrahumanization and forgiveness when an outgroup harms the ingroup

“…The distinction between primary (non-uniquely human) and secondary (uniquely human) is implicit and is spontaneously used in an intergroup context (Rodriguez-Torres, et al, 2005). This distinction is also used as a basis for intergroup discrimination.…”