Individual Experiences in Emotion (2016)

Undergraduates: Pratistha Pradhan, Pratistha Pradhan Kent Lee

Faculty Advisor: Keith Payne
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

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The same stimulus can elicit distinct emotions across various circumstances and individuals. Someone who discovers a snake while gardening may startle with fear whereas someone who observes the same snake at the zoo may cheer in excitement. According to the psychological constructionist model of emotion which proposes that emotions are built through the process of conceptualization, affective differences occur due to differences in emotion concept knowledge. Although emotions are a vital component of our day-to-day lives, relatively little is understood about the process of conceptualization. The present study examines how differences in three primary components of emotion concept knowledge (e.g., emotion accessibility, complexity, and granularity) influence individuals¿¿¿ ability to distinguish between disgust and fear when stimuli are presented at different time intervals (e.g., 3ms, 17ms, 30ms, and 43ms) and whether such differences predict performance on the Affect Misattribution Procedure. We predict that greater accessibility and complexity in concept knowledge and greater emotion granularity predict more accuracy in distinguishing between disgust and fear. 87 undergraduate students at UNC-Chapel Hill were recruited for the study. Overall, we found that our hypothesis was not supported such that participants did not significantly differ in their judgements of disgust vs. fear as a function of time. Further results and future direction are discussed.