While philosophers have discussed the emotion of contempt from antiquity to the present day, contempt has received less attention in psychological research. We review the defining features of contempt, both as a short-term emotion and as a more long-lasting sentiment. Contempt is similar to anger in that it may occur after (repeated) social or moral transgressions, but it differs from anger in its appraisals, actions, and emotivational goals. Unlike anger, contempt arises when a person’s or group’s character is appraised as (...) bad and unresponsive to change, leading to attempts to socially exclude the target. We discuss associative, self-regulatory, and social distancing functions of contempt and present a dynamic social model of contempt versus anger. (shrink)

Models of cognitive vulnerability claim that depressive symptoms arise as a result of an interaction between negative affect and cognitive reactions, in the form of dysfunctional attitudes and negative inferential style. We present a model that complements this approach by focusing on the appraisal processes that elicit and differentiate everyday episodes of emotional experience, arguing that individual differences in appraisal patterns can foster negative emotional experiences related to depression (e.g., sadness and despair). In particular, dispositional appraisal biases facilitating the elicitation (...) of these emotions more frequently and more intensely. This, in turn, is likely to have a negative influence on cognitive processing and emotion regulation in general. (shrink)

A full understanding of emotions and emotion characteristics can only be reached when their dynamic nature is taken into account. As such, a primary objective of the present study is to describe and account for variability in temporal profiles of experienced emotional intensity. Participants were asked to make detailed drawings of intensity profiles of recently experienced episodes of anger, sadness, joy and affection. Functional data analysis revealed three features that together accounted for 84% of the total variability: (i) steepness at (...) onset; (ii) skewness; and (iii) the number of peaks. Emotions differed with regard to the first two features, with the rise at onset being steeper for sadness and joy and affection being the most negatively skewed emotion under study. Individual differences regarding each of the three features were found, however, they did not strongly generalise across emotions. (shrink)

Bob Solomon claimed that we are not passion’s slaves. I examine whether or not we are, considering universal determinism. I argue that we indeed are free, or at least that we can be, and try to understand this. Free will resides in the presence of alternative action options, in our ability to freely search for, detect, or create them, in our ability to use them, and in our ability to, in some measure, free ourselves from the automatic impact of external (...) and internal determinants. (shrink)

Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time have been found to differ primarily in explosiveness and accumulation. However, the determinants of these temporal features remain poorly understood. In two studies, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies are predictive of the degree of explosiveness and accumulation of negative emotional episodes. Participants were asked to draw profiles reflecting changes in the intensity of emotions elicited either by negative social feedback in the lab or by negative events in daily life. In addition, trait, (...) and state usage of a set of emotion regulation strategies was assessed. Multilevel analyses revealed that trait rumination was positively associated with emotion accumulation. State rumination was also positively associated with emotion accumulation and, to a lesser extent, with emotion explosiveness. These results provide support for emotion regulation theories, which hypothesise that rumination is a central mechanism underlying the maintenance of negative emotions. (shrink)

Bob Solomon used to inveigh against William James’ theory of emotions, but he eventually arrived at a rapprochement with James and James’s recent successors. In particular, James suggested that emotions are initiated by the “automatic, instinctive” appraisals that register important information in the body and are recorded by body-mapping brain areas. In recent work Solomon describes the judgments he thinks constitute emotions as felt bodily appraisals in similar fashion.

The study of emotional changes after brain injury has contributed enormously to the understanding of the neural basis of emotion. However, little attention has been placed on the methods used to elicit emotional responses in people with brain damage. Of particular interest are subjects with right hemisphere [RH] cortical lesions, who have been described as presenting impairment in emotional processing. In this article, an internal and external mood induction procedure [MIP] was used to trigger positive and negative emotions, in a (...) sample of 10 participants with RH damage, and 15 healthy controls. Emotional experience was registered by using a self-report questionnaire. As observed in previous studies, internal and external MIPs were equally effective in eliciting the target emotion, but the internal procedure generated higher levels of intensity. Remarkably, participants with RH lesions were equally able to experience both positive and negative affect. The results are discussed in relation to the role of the RH in the capacity to experience negative emotions. (shrink)

Emotional facial expression are an important communication channel between artificial characters and their users. Humans are trained to perceive emotions. Robots and virtual agents can use them to make their inner states transparent. Literature reported that some emotional types, such as anger, are perceived as being more intense than others. Other studies indicated that gender influences the perception. Our study shows that once the individual differences amongst participants are included in the statistical analysis, then the emotion type has no further (...) explanatory power. Artificial characters therefore should adapt to their specific users. (shrink)