Mixed Emotions Viewed from the Psychological Constructionist Perspective

Core Affect

Core affect (CA) is the neurophysiological state that gives rise to the most primitive affective feelings: feeling good, feeling bad, feeling energized, feeling enervated. These are hot feelings rather than cold judgments. A person has only one state of core affect at a time. Whereas the typical emotion is directed at something (angry with someone, afraid of something), core affect per se is not directed at anything. The word mood comes closer than either emotion or affective reaction to conveying the concept of core affect—except that core affect can be intense and can change rapidly and that a person always has core affect, although it is not always attended to. Core affect is part (but not the whole) of an emotional episode, giving it its felt hedonic and activation components.

Perception of Affective Quality (PAQ)

Perception of Affective Quality (PAQ) is a cold judgment as to how an event or object can influence core affect. It is part of evaluations, attitudes, liking, and disliking. PAQ and core affect often go hand in hand: the music perceived as pleasant makes you feel pleasure. Still, PAQ and core affect are separable. Schadenfreude is the pleasure felt upon judging an enemy’s situation to be unpleasant. Envy is feeling bad that another’s situation is so pleasant. Guilt can be feeling bad while doing something judged to bring pleasure. A person can have many PAQs simultaneously.

Emotional Meta-Experience (EME)

Emotional Meta-Experience is one’s perception of one’s own emotional state achieved by categorizing that state. Available categories are those labeled, in English, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and so on. To have an EME of fear is to perceive one’s current state as resembling the script for fear. Resemblance is a matter of degree, and the components of the script are neither necessary nor sufficient. Indeed, actual danger is not a necessary component for fear, as in the feeling during a horror film. A person can perceive his or her own emotional state as resembling more than one emotion script.

Mixed Emotions as Changes in Core Affect

Core affect is best described as including, besides a dimension of activation, a bipolar valence dimension ranging from feeling miserable through neutral to feeling ecstatic. It is core affect that is captured by the common sense notion that feeling good precludes feeling bad.

Like the weather, a person’s core affect changes over time, sometimes slowly (as in moods and certain psychiatric disorders), sometimes rapidly (as in sudden emotions). Feeling good now does not guarantee feeling good tomorrow, or even the next moment. Russell and Carroll (1999a) provided an analysis of time changes in core affect. Even if core affect is perfectly bipolar at each point in time, longitudinal studies of core affect cannot test bipolarity and can show apparent independence of positive core affect from negative core affect, simply because core affect at one time is independent of core affect at a different time.

The role of time can also be seen in the vacillation hypothesis. Kahneman (1992) proposed that ambivalence can seem to occur when we vacillate between two distinct states. As with the perception of the Necker cube, only one state occurs at a time, but quick vacillation can be misreported as the two percepts occurring simultaneously.

Mixed Emotions as Multiple PAQs

A person can have many PAQs simultaneously, even of opposite valence. We can judge an event or object or person as having different affective properties because each has different aspects. Much as a refrigerator can be cold in the freezer but hot in the motor, PAQ can be that the refrigerator is pleasant in its ability to freeze things but worrying in its cost. We can simultaneously judge that the cookie tastes good but is bad for health.

Liking, disliking, and other such attitudes include PAQs. Cacioppo and Berntson’s (1994) evaluative space model was proposed as a model of attitudes. One defining feature of an attitude is that it is directed at an attitude object. Thus “mixed emotions” occur when by “emotion” is meant attitude and when the attitude object has multiple aspects, as they all do.

Mixed Emotions as EME, a Resemblance to Multiple Scripts

An EME is a categorization of one’s current state based on its resemblance to the mental script for a specific emotion, in which core affect is neither necessary nor sufficient. Because resemblance is a matter of degree, one’s current state can resemble various scripts albeit typically to different degrees. Indeed, when people are given a list of emotions and asked to check all those they are experiencing, they check about half (Russell & Mehrabian, 1977). Because resemblance among emotion concepts is dominated by core affect, one’s current emotion will typically resemble scripts similar in valence and arousal. Cases of strong clear intense emotions will not show mixed valences (perceiving oneself as panicked precludes perceiving oneself as serene). Still, it’s possible for one’s current state to resemble scripts of opposite valence. A ride on a roller coaster can be both exciting and scary, meaning that it simultaneously resembles both the fear script and the excitement script. Equal resemblance is rare.

Other Mixed Emotions

Emotional reactions have multiple components, and different components can have different valences. Emotional reactions are typically a mix of core affect, PAQs, an EME, and other components (cognitive, somatosensory, and behavioral), although in varying proportions, including some lacking one or more. A “mixed emotion” can thus appear because core affect, PAQ, and EME are separate processes. As an emotional episode unfolds over time, sometimes rapidly, each of these can change at a different pace. Although in our mental scripts for most emotions all the components fit a stereotypical pattern with the same valence, in reality, components are but weakly correlated. Core affect and behavior might be simultaneous but of different valences: Ordinarily, pleasure is a cue to behavioral approach, displeasure to avoidance. Yet, in certain circumstances, we seek displeasure or avoid pleasure (Tamir, 2011).

One example of mixed emotions is the joy of listening to sad music. Hunter, Schellenberg, and Schimmack (2008) found that the emotion felt while listening to a piece of music could be distinguished from the emotion conveyed by that piece. Liking for the piece is yet another part of the reaction, significantly correlated with the former, but not the latter. Each particular experience of a piece of music is likely unique, but will generally be a composite of a change in core affect, a series of PAQs of various aspects of the piece, liking or disliking of the piece, appreciation of the composer and the performers, and so on. These different parts of an “affective reaction” can all be of the same valence, but they need not be. So, one can have a core affect of sadness, but tremendously like the piece and admire the composer.

Virtual reality allows a mixed emotion in which the simultaneous core affect, PAQ, and behavioral approach–avoidance are of different valences. Violations of the principle of hedonism (that we always seek pleasure) seem common when reality is virtual. Poems, films, television, novels, imagery, music, daydreaming, and other forms of virtual reality are powerful forces on core affect. Some examples of virtual reality create experiences of great displeasure, from sadness to dread. Yet, we approach them, purchase them, and repeat the experience, and we can evaluate the poem, film, and so on as excellent. Much of virtual reality conveys information; novels tell stories, and music conveys emotion. We can like the story of someone’s joy but also of the bad guy’s defeat. Key is knowing that the reality is virtual; a horror film presents no real danger; the imagined fire does not burn anyone. Even very young children distinguish fantasy from reality. A typical reaction to virtual reality is thus a complex event not well characterized as having but one valence.

Rarity of Co-Occurrence

Results in the control conditions were as expected. As Table 1 shows, the typical response was either positive or negative but not both, most of the time. There were some co-occurrences, but authors of these studies consistently interpreted the rare occurrence of both as likely due to measurement error. This repeated finding is consistent with the correlational results supporting bipolarity.

Surprisingly, even in experimental conditions designed to create co-occurrence of positive and negative affect, a substantial number of participants failed to report co-occurrence. J. T. Larsen et al. (2001) found that 56%, 46%, and 50% of participants in experimental conditions in their three studies, respectively, failed to report such co-occurrence. In a later series of six studies, J. T. Larsen and McGraw (2011, p. 13) pointed to similar data:

At first glance, the results of all six studies indicate that the incidence of mixed emotions is low. In Studies 1b and 3, for instance, the majority of subjects never reported mixed emotions for so much as a second over the course of a nearly 20-min film clip. In Studies 4–6, 84% did not report experiencing simultaneously mixed emotions after the clips. Thus, our data may provide the strongest evidence to date that people cannot feel happy and sad at the same time. A closer look at the data, however, provides even stronger evidence for a more nuanced conclusion.

That more nuanced conclusion was that significantly more participants showed co-occurrence in the experimental than control conditions.

When Co-Occurrence Was Observed

In every study of Table 1, co-occurrence of positive and negative affect was reported significantly more frequently under bittersweet circumstances. The first question is what is co-occurring with what. My interpretation is that what co-occur are likely PAQs or PAQs with CA. This interpretation is given in Table 1 for specific experiments. The common central feature of all the experimental conditions in Table 1 was that a stimulus event was highly salient. Participants were leaving a movie theatre just having seen a powerful film, were moving out of their college dormitory, were graduating from college, had just won or lost a gamble, were listening to musical excerpts, or were watching intense film clips. J. T. Larsen et al. (2004) instructed participants to rate how they felt “about the outcome.” The salience of the stimulus and the instructions in some of the studies made it likely that at least some participants in the experimental conditions included in their report their perception of the affective quality of the stimulus (a PAQ). At least some participants perceived the win, loss, film, or music to have both positive and negative aspects, as they were indeed designed to do.

J. T. Larsen and McGraw (2011) themselves raised the question whether the affect assessed in their research might sometimes include a PAQ. They rejected that interpretation by citing Andrade and Cohen (2007):

It is especially unlikely that subjects in a recent study of mixed emotions by Andrade and Cohen (2007) reported their perceptions of affective quality. In that study, continuous [Evaluative Space Grid] ratings indicated that fans of horror films experienced mixed emotions of happiness and fear while they watched horror clips. The horror clips were terrifying and contained no happy material, so it is doubtful that subjects merely reported their appraisals of the clips’ emotional content. A more plausible explanation is that subjects genuinely experienced happiness and, by extension, mixed emotions of happiness and fear. Thus, the most parsimonious interpretation for our studies is that subjects who watched the bittersweet Life Is Beautiful clip reported mixed emotions of happiness and sadness because they genuinely experienced mixed emotions of happiness and sadness. (2011, p. 1108)

There is an alternative interpretation of Andrade and Cohen’s (2007) results. In their Study 1, the measure of those feelings was the PANAS (Watson & Tellegen, 1985). PANAS does not assess the bipolar valence dimension. Watson and Tellegen (1999) acknowledged this point and therefore renamed the PA scale as “positive activation” and the NA scale as “negative activation” to emphasize that each contains a component of activation. That shared component accounts for the typically weak correlation between the two scales and precludes their use in tests of bipolarity.

Andrade and Cohen’s (2007) Study 2 used a different affect measure. Participants watched 4.5 minutes of a horror film followed by a short neutral scene. The affect measure was a grid with two dimensions, with one labeled happy, joyful, and glad and the other labeled afraid, scared, and alarmed. Participants who disliked horror films (fear-avoiders) reported considerable fear during the clip but negligible happiness. Their ratings were consistent with a bipolar account. However, participants who like horror films (fear-approachers) yielded results not consistent with bipolarity. They reported considerable fear and, simultaneously, more happiness than the fear-avoiders. The question is just what the affect measures measured. Terms such as happy and afraid tap EMEs, and so some fear-approachers might have reported that their emotional state did, to a small degree, resemble scripts for happy/joy/glad in that they were watching the kind of film that they were glad to watch. The word glad might have suggested a reaction to the experiment and the film, feeling glad that the experiment involves watching the kind of film that they like to watch.

It might be argued that the measures used in the studies of Table 1 tapped core affect exclusively. Even so, these studies do not necessarily speak against bipolarity because the results might reflect vacillation (Kahneman, 1992). The measures included might have been insufficiently sensitive to the time period to rule out a vacillation between positive and negative core affect. That is, each vacillation could produce a short period in which the measure would appear to show co-occurrence. J. T. Larsen and McGraw (2011, Study 1a) sought to examine this vacillation hypothesis. They used their button press measure and assessed how much time both buttons were pressed for more than 1 sec. More time was spent holding down both buttons during the experimental clip than during the control clip. The experimental clip allowed a large number of occasions for vacillation. The control condition did not. The control clip consisted largely of two sections, a happy one followed by a sad one, with perhaps only one opportunity to vacillate from the one to the other. It is reasonable to assume that the more vacillations, the more opportunities there are for holding down both buttons and hence more time spent doing so. Roughly, the number of vacillations would be proportional to the amount of time spent holding down both buttons. If so, this control condition did not provide an adequate comparison for how much time is spent holding down both buttons when the person vacillates frequently.

The vacillation hypothesis was explored in two studies by Carrera and Oceja (2007) with a new measure more sensitive to time. More reports of simultaneous opposite values of core affect were found with longer periods of time and may disappear when the time periods are sufficiently short.