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Brain Imaging Investigation of the Memory-Enhancing Effect of Emotion
Published on: May 4, 2011
The relation between event processing and the duration of emotional experience
Philippe Verduyn1, Iven Van Mechelen, Francis Tuerlinckx
1Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium. philippe.verduyn@psy.kuleuven.be
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|March 16, 2011
Summary
Cognitions and social sharing significantly influence emotional episode duration. Focusing on emotions or sharing them prolongs experiences, while opposite-valence thoughts shorten them.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Affective Science
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Emotional experiences vary significantly in duration, from seconds to hours.
- The underlying mechanisms driving this temporal variability remain incompletely understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the roles of intrapersonal cognitions and interpersonal social sharing in modulating emotion duration.
- To differentiate the effects of stimulus-related versus stimulus-unrelated cognitions on emotional timelines.
Main Methods:
- Daily diary study over five days assessing emotion episodes (anger, sadness, joy, gratitude).
- Collected self-reported data on emotion duration, concurrent cognitions (valence and relation to stimulus), and social sharing behavior.
- Employed discrete-time survival analyses to model emotion episode duration.
Main Results:
- Stimulus-related cognitions with the same valence as the emotion prolonged episodes for most emotions studied.
- Cognitions with opposite valence (stimulus-related or unrelated) shortened emotion episodes.
- Social sharing consistently prolonged emotional episodes across all four emotions.
Conclusions:
- Intrapersonal cognitive processes and interpersonal social sharing are key determinants of emotional episode duration.
- Cognitive reappraisal and rumination differentially impact emotion timelines.
- Social sharing may serve to maintain or amplify emotional experiences.
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