Emotion-related variations in motor tremor: Magnitude, time course, and links to emotional temperament

Following biological and comparative perspectives, it was posited that acute stressors would activate more primitive modes of action control favoring gross motor actions (e.g., fight or flight) over behavioral precision. Influences of this type should result in more rapid changes in movement velocity subsequent to emotionally upsetting stimulation. In investigating processes of this type, participants in three experiments (total N = 457) were asked to track a moving visual target as smoothly as possible. The introduction of brief, aversive noise blasts was found to destabilize such efforts. In particular, time-locked analyses revealed the presence of an emotion-related increase in tremor that began quickly and persisted for nearly 2 s. In addition, the persistence component was elevated in the context of higher levels of neuroticism (Experiment 2) and emotional reactivity (Experiment 3). The results speak to questions about the emotion-action interface using a method suited to affective chronometry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).