Mixed emotions evoked when incongruent outward appearance and motion are combined

Understanding mixed emotions is crucial for capturing the ambivalence of human information processing. However, how specific visual factors, such as outward appearance and motion, interact to evoke these conflicting feelings remains unclear. Here, we present three-dimensional (3D) characters as visual stimuli that evoke mixed feelings, providing empirical insights into emotional phenomena such as "kimo-kawaii" by focusing on their outward appearances and motions. Congruent stimuli (e.g., pleasant appearance with pleasant motion) and incongruent stimuli (e.g., pleasant appearance with unpleasant motion) were evaluated. Characters with congruent features evoked a single feeling: pleasant or unpleasant. In contrast, the combination of pleasant outward appearance and unpleasant motion evoked both pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Moreover, the combination of unpleasant outward appearance and pleasant motion strongly evoked unpleasant feelings rather than pleasant feelings. These findings suggest that, within the present stimulus set, outward appearance may exert a stronger influence on affective evaluation than motion. The observed co-activation of positive and negative affect may be relevant to mixed affective experiences such as "kimo-kawaii," although further research using construct-specific measures is needed to establish this relationship.