Emotions, according to Johnson-Laird and Oatley (Stein and Oatley, 1992), are in response to fundamental life tasks, or "fundamental human predicaments." The emotions are distinguished by having distinctive universal signals, physiology, and antecedent events (and emotions are separate from other affective phenomena like moods or attitudes). The five "basic" or most fundamental emotions found by these researchers in 1989, based on analysis of emotion words, are: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. These categories correlate with many of the categories mentioned in previous posts about categorical analysis of the IAPS, IADS, and ANEW stimuli.
The strongest universal signals distinguishing between emotions are in facial expressions (Johnson-Laird et al 1992). I can consider it a variable to have or not have facial expressions in my dance. I would like to see the differences between showing expressions related to particular basic emotions, other kinds of facial use, and no expression. Tomkins (1962) also sought unique vocals for each emotion, and I may be able to look into that for use of vocalization in my dance.
The physiology of specific emotions is interesting, in that we seem to have common action plans for the different emotions. Though our actual behavioral responses may vary, it is common for blood to go to the hands in anger (in order to attack), or in fear, for us to freeze for concealment and also have blood sent to the large skeletal muscles as we become ready to flee. These specific Autonomic Nervous System patterns distinghs anger, fear, disgust, and maybe sadness (Ekman, Levenson, and Friesen, 1983; Levenson, Ekman, and Friesen, 1990 and 1991). I can consider this flow of energy to different body parts when creating movement; I imagine if I wanted to illustrate anger using hand movements, and freezing of large whole-body flight to help illustrate this aspect of the experience of fear.
Universality of antecedent events is found on a more abstract level (for example, loss of a significant other can trigger sadness, but who is considered significant varies across cultures and people). I may look into Ekman and Frieen (1975) to find out more about their prototypic interpersonal events that supposedly can universally cue certain emotions. It should be noted that different emotions can come of the same antecedent event (Stein and Trabasso, 1992). I hope to demonstrate the social nature of the emotions by the relationships of multiple dancers within each piece, and this will tie in with antecedent events as well as other emotional components.
There is a problem of distinguishing positive emotions in defining basic emotions; in this study, happiness is the only category outside the negative realm, making it a very broad category. As I have regularly found in my sources, the positive emotions tend to have less distinction (which may tie in with the Alarm Hypothesis, by which it is only necessary to survival to have distinction among the negative emotions). There are no distinctive signals between emotions of enjoyment, but collectively they do all demonstrate the genuine "Duchenne" smile. It is possible that they differ in vocal signals.
Other possible basic emotions (having significant distinction from other emotions in the earlier-listed ways) include embarrassment, awe, and excitement- each featuring its own research difficulties.
Resource:
Stein and Oatley (1992).
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotions. Show all posts
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Common categories across studies
In the research I've been looking at in categorizing the IAPS, IADS, and ANEW stimuli, I've found certain amounts of consistency in categories.
Fear and Sadness are discussed for IAPS, IADS, and ANEW (Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, and Lindberg, 2005; Stevenson and James, 2008; Stevenson Mikels, and James, 2007). This makes it easy to create a collection of multimedia stimuli to explore with potential dances of these themes.
Disgust, Anger, and Happy are included for the IADS and ANEW only (Stevenson et al, 2008; Stevenson et al, 2007). I might want to look into a categorization of IAPS for these three important emotions.
Amusement and Contentment are only in Mikels' (2005) discussion of the IAPS. These show a division of the "Happy" category that other studies do not regularly distinguish, but might be helpful for orientation within the theme in choreographic exploration.
As stated, some problems arise- besides not having all categories available from research so far for each type of media, there is also the vagueness of some categories such as "Negative" (not included), and "Happy" which give large and diverse examples. I'll update as more of these studies are found, hopefully.
Resources:
Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, & Lindberg,(2005).
Stevenson & James, (2008).
Stevenson, Mikels, & James, (2007).
Fear and Sadness are discussed for IAPS, IADS, and ANEW (Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, and Lindberg, 2005; Stevenson and James, 2008; Stevenson Mikels, and James, 2007). This makes it easy to create a collection of multimedia stimuli to explore with potential dances of these themes.
Disgust, Anger, and Happy are included for the IADS and ANEW only (Stevenson et al, 2008; Stevenson et al, 2007). I might want to look into a categorization of IAPS for these three important emotions.
Amusement and Contentment are only in Mikels' (2005) discussion of the IAPS. These show a division of the "Happy" category that other studies do not regularly distinguish, but might be helpful for orientation within the theme in choreographic exploration.
As stated, some problems arise- besides not having all categories available from research so far for each type of media, there is also the vagueness of some categories such as "Negative" (not included), and "Happy" which give large and diverse examples. I'll update as more of these studies are found, hopefully.
Resources:
Mikels, Fredrickson, Larkin, & Lindberg,(2005).
Stevenson & James, (2008).
Stevenson, Mikels, & James, (2007).
Categories and stimuli descriptions
The IADS (sounds) categories include happiness (n=29), fear (n=14), anger (n=1; apparently car horns are the only sound to trigger this...), disgust (n=6), and sadness (n=4; Stevenson and James, 2008).
Examples of categorized IADS sounds include...
-Happy: carousel, giggling, colonial music, etc.
-Sad: baby cry, (and with less distinction in the data:) puppy cry, funeral, and bagpipes
-Disgust: nose blow, toilet flush, belch, etc.
-Fear: female screams (1 and 2), prowler, howling rain, and many others with less distinction
-Anger: only car horns
The ANEW (English words) categories are anger (n=8), fear (n=5), sadness (n=7), disgust (n=14), and happiness (n=323; with so many of the words under this broad category, I'll want to make distinctions within later; Stevenson, Mikels, and James, 2007).
Examples for ANEW stimuli under categories...
-Happiness: abundance, bless, dazzle, food, improve, mail, pancakes, sky, wink, etc.
-Anger: disturb, mad, noisy, etc.
-Fear: afraid, fear, fearful, horror, terrified
-Sadness: burial, dreary, gloom, misery, etc.
-Disgust: filth, grime, maggot, mucus, rancid, etc.
(Those last few are pretty bad-- I'm not sure I can stomach a "disgust" dance!)
I also need to note that some of the words are redundant to the category. For example, under Anger, are the words "anger" and "angry;" above you can see this is a problem for Fear as well. That narrows down the number of useful words for those categories, so I may rely more on other kinds of stimuli for those categories. I wonder if it is in the nature of the medium to have more triggers for some emotions than others.
It's interesting to note that some stimuli which may have the same dimensions can actually trigger different kinds of brain activation; these happen to be in different categories. This supports the need to consider multiple ways of describing emotions, dimensionally, and categorically (Stevenson et al, 2008)- and soon, I'll be writing about a text that defines emotions with a structural model.
Resources:
Stevenson & James, (2008).
Stevenson, Mikels, & James, (2007).
Examples of categorized IADS sounds include...
-Happy: carousel, giggling, colonial music, etc.
-Sad: baby cry, (and with less distinction in the data:) puppy cry, funeral, and bagpipes
-Disgust: nose blow, toilet flush, belch, etc.
-Fear: female screams (1 and 2), prowler, howling rain, and many others with less distinction
-Anger: only car horns
The ANEW (English words) categories are anger (n=8), fear (n=5), sadness (n=7), disgust (n=14), and happiness (n=323; with so many of the words under this broad category, I'll want to make distinctions within later; Stevenson, Mikels, and James, 2007).
Examples for ANEW stimuli under categories...
-Happiness: abundance, bless, dazzle, food, improve, mail, pancakes, sky, wink, etc.
-Anger: disturb, mad, noisy, etc.
-Fear: afraid, fear, fearful, horror, terrified
-Sadness: burial, dreary, gloom, misery, etc.
-Disgust: filth, grime, maggot, mucus, rancid, etc.
(Those last few are pretty bad-- I'm not sure I can stomach a "disgust" dance!)
I also need to note that some of the words are redundant to the category. For example, under Anger, are the words "anger" and "angry;" above you can see this is a problem for Fear as well. That narrows down the number of useful words for those categories, so I may rely more on other kinds of stimuli for those categories. I wonder if it is in the nature of the medium to have more triggers for some emotions than others.
It's interesting to note that some stimuli which may have the same dimensions can actually trigger different kinds of brain activation; these happen to be in different categories. This supports the need to consider multiple ways of describing emotions, dimensionally, and categorically (Stevenson et al, 2008)- and soon, I'll be writing about a text that defines emotions with a structural model.
Resources:
Stevenson & James, (2008).
Stevenson, Mikels, & James, (2007).
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
The problem of inducing negative emotions
My goal with this project will be to inspire feelings related to several contrasting emotions in separate pieces. This means that some of these studies will deliberately evoke emotions that will have negative valence and naturally will be unpleasant.
Considering this, though, I may want even the negative emotions to bring some sort of satisfaction, and not just be torturous to the audience. In spite of negatively-valenced intended responses, I know from seeing others' dances that this sort of art can lead to a kind of appreciation, respect, fulfillment - as if we are relieved to have such a deep buried feeling met onstage in another's body. In fact, personally, I feel that this relates most to dance for me, above the other arts. Like mirroring in therapy, seeing an emotion we recognize, maybe even particularly for negative ones, though immediately unpleasant, validates some part of our human emotional experience (probably some part that we would not normally allow to see the light of day, or even admit to ourselves). This video has a great introduction that illustrates this relief...
The catch to this whole string of thought is that this may not be the most honest reproduction of the experience of perceiving the original stimuli. Maybe I'll go to the source and ask the experimenters more about that though- it may not be a pure recreation if I make the relief described above my goal. Having sat through the IAPS myself as an undergrad participant, I know that some of the negative images truly are horrendous and sickening, with no sense of personal relief as if anything had been mirrored. In fact, they're such strong images (most likely from the extremes of the catalog) that it is unlikely that it could mirror anything an average person could relate to. I'm not sure yet how liberal I'm willing to be in re-interpreting the participant/audience experience regarding this and other factors. It'll definitely be a challenge if I choose to delve into the areas such as those referred to as "mutilation" images (with some of the strongest positive ones being fairly sexually explicit)... they'd certainly be a well-defined reaction, but I'll have to gear up to actually processing and re-presenting that with my dancers and audience.
The pleasanter dances may also prove difficult to portray meaningfully without looking silly or shallow... it will be the nuances and subtle colorings between the emotions and the blends of their effects on us that will enrich the dances to bring them beyond "well, clearly this dance is meant to be pleasant/beautiful" to "this dance makes me feel joy/love/anticipation..."
Considering this, though, I may want even the negative emotions to bring some sort of satisfaction, and not just be torturous to the audience. In spite of negatively-valenced intended responses, I know from seeing others' dances that this sort of art can lead to a kind of appreciation, respect, fulfillment - as if we are relieved to have such a deep buried feeling met onstage in another's body. In fact, personally, I feel that this relates most to dance for me, above the other arts. Like mirroring in therapy, seeing an emotion we recognize, maybe even particularly for negative ones, though immediately unpleasant, validates some part of our human emotional experience (probably some part that we would not normally allow to see the light of day, or even admit to ourselves). This video has a great introduction that illustrates this relief...
The catch to this whole string of thought is that this may not be the most honest reproduction of the experience of perceiving the original stimuli. Maybe I'll go to the source and ask the experimenters more about that though- it may not be a pure recreation if I make the relief described above my goal. Having sat through the IAPS myself as an undergrad participant, I know that some of the negative images truly are horrendous and sickening, with no sense of personal relief as if anything had been mirrored. In fact, they're such strong images (most likely from the extremes of the catalog) that it is unlikely that it could mirror anything an average person could relate to. I'm not sure yet how liberal I'm willing to be in re-interpreting the participant/audience experience regarding this and other factors. It'll definitely be a challenge if I choose to delve into the areas such as those referred to as "mutilation" images (with some of the strongest positive ones being fairly sexually explicit)... they'd certainly be a well-defined reaction, but I'll have to gear up to actually processing and re-presenting that with my dancers and audience.
The pleasanter dances may also prove difficult to portray meaningfully without looking silly or shallow... it will be the nuances and subtle colorings between the emotions and the blends of their effects on us that will enrich the dances to bring them beyond "well, clearly this dance is meant to be pleasant/beautiful" to "this dance makes me feel joy/love/anticipation..."
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