The Role of Interoceptive Sensibility and Emotional Conceptualization for the Experience of Emotions

Abstract

The theory of constructed emotions suggests that different psychological components, including core affect (mental and neural representations of bodily changes), and conceptualization (meaning-making based on prior experiences and semantic knowledge), are involved in the formation of emotions. However, little is known about their role in experiencing emotions. In the current study, we investigated how individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization (as potential correlates of these components) interact to moderate three important aspects of emotional experiences: emotional intensity (strength of emotion felt), arousal (degree of activation), and granularity (ability to differentiate emotions with precision). To this end, participants completed a series of questionnaires assessing interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization and underwent two emotion experience tasks, which included standardized material (emotion differentiation task; ED task) and self-experienced episodes (day reconstruction method; DRM). Correlational analysis showed that individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization were related to each other. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed two independent factors that were referred to as sensibility and monitoring. The Sensibility factor, interpreted as beliefs about the accuracy of an individual in detecting internal physiological and emotional states, predicted higher granularity for negative words. The Monitoring factor, interpreted as the tendency to focus on the internal states of an individual, was negatively related to emotional granularity and intensity. Additionally, Sensibility scores were more strongly associated with greater well-being and adaptability measures than Monitoring scores. Our results indicate that independent processes underlying individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization contribute to emotion experiencing.

Antisocial and impulsive personality traits are linked to individual differences in somatosensory maps of emotion

“…Indeed, previous studies have used classification accuracy as a proxy for emotion differentiation, showing that emotions are less differentiated in schizophrenia 17 . Likewise, in our data classification confidence was related to several personality factors previously associated with emotional granularity, including negative affect 68 , interoception 22 , and prosocial tendencies such as empathy 21 . Thus, the BSM paradigm allows for a conceptually different, complementary assessment of emotional granularity, focusing on the similarities and differences between the experience of different emotions, in contrast with traditional methods that instead assess the temporal coherence between the occurrence of different emotions.…”

“…Given that disease states often reflect extreme versions of traits that exist in the general population 19,20 , it could be expected that variability in emotional somatosensation may also be present in healthy individuals, and related to personality factors.Particularly relevant candidate traits are those that have been shown to modulate emotional sensations. For instance, individuals high in empathy tend to experience emotions as more differentiated 21 , as do individuals high in interoceptive sensitivity 22 . This ability to experience fine-grained distinctions between emotional experiences is referred to as emotional granularity 23 and is predictive of resilience to psychiatric disease, as well as serving as a protective factor against aggressive tendencies and alcohol abuse 24 .…”

Interoceptive pathways to understand and treat mental health conditions

“…Alexithymia is also associated with the somatisation of emotions, where emotional states are more likely to be attributed to a physical rather than an emotional origin. In addition to altered attribution, poor interoceptive precision could reduce the capacity for emotional granularity [122] and thus increase the probability of somatic rather than emotional interpretations of bodily sensations.…”

Bridging the Gap between Interoception and Mental Health: The German Validation of the Interoceptive Accuracy Scale (IAS) and its Relation to Psychopathological Symptom Burden

“…Part of the participants recruited in Vienna and Potsdam were used for validation of other interoception-related questionnaires (Tünte, et al, 2022) or to investigate their relation to emotional experience (Ventura-Bort et al, 2021).…”