Authors:

Sauter, D.A., CALDER, A.J. & Scott, S.K.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2004

CBU number:

5891

Abstract:

Historically, research into basic emotions has mainly focused on negative affect, and data from patients as well as functional neuroimaging supports the existence of negative basic emotions. However, positive basic emotions have been neglected. For example, the category joy is the most problematic of the basic emotions to recognise from vocal expressions (Scherer, Banse, & Wallbott, 2001), suggesting that there may be multiple "joyful" emotions. It has indeed been claimed that happiness should be broken down into Achievement, Amusement, Contentment, Please and Relief (Ekman, 1992). This study tested British, English and Swedish subjects identifying the proposed positive basic emotions and the ratings pattern of these emotions, including the dimensions of Arousal, Valence and Approach-Avoidance. The findings of the current study lend support to Ekman's proposed basic positive emotions (Ekman, 1992). Not only were subjects able to identify emotional sounds at a level that far exceed chance, but they also rated each class of basic positive emotion highest when rated for itself, with the exception of Contentment sounds. Furthermore, these patterns were consistent across the two language groups tested. However, Arousal, Valence and Approach-Avoidance correlated at above 0.9 and seem not to constitute orthogonal dimensions in emotional space, as has been suggested (Russell, 1980). The results from the Principal Component Analysis show two factors accounting for around 80% of the variance. It is speculated that Component 2 may be characterised by social contagion, whereas Component 1 is more difficult to characterise and may not represent a unitary dimension.