The Discreteness of Emotion Concepts: Categorical Structure in the Affective Circumplex
- 1 October 1995
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Vol. 21 (10) , 1012-1019
- https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672952110002
Abstract
Emotion concepts might be mentally represented as continuous dimensions or as discrete, bounded categories. One account that subscribes to the first possibility proposes that emotion concepts are distributed more or less continuously around the perimeter of a circumplex defined on bipolar dimensions of pleasure and arousal. Using an analogue of categorical perception methodology, this study demonstrated a number of category boundaries that mark out discrete segments of the circumplex. The discriminability of emotion concepts was relatively weak within segments and relatively strong across adjacent segments. Furthermore, empirically derived dimensions additional to pleasure and arousal discriminated the same segments.Keywords
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