Discrete emotion and motivation: Relative activation in appetitive and aversive motivational system as a function of anger, sadness, fear, and joy embedded in the content of televised information campaigns

The goal of this study was to examine whether predictable motivational activation in the appetitive and aversive systems underlies the production and experience of discrete emotions (anger, sadness, joy, and fear) experienced while viewing televised PSAs. The current study was conducted from the perspective of LC4MP which theorizes that conscious emotional experience is evoked by the activated motivational systems.; This study used self-reports and physiological measures in order to index motivational activation and emotional experience. In joy condition, physiological data provide moderate support for strong appetitive activation and no support for aversive inhibition while self-reported data provided good evidence for both. In fear condition, the self-reported data supported the predictions of strong aversive and inhibited appetitive activation during fear. The physiological data provide strong support for a highly activated aversive system but no support for an inhibited appetitive system. In sadness condition, the self-reported and physiological data support the prediction that sadness is a moderately activated aversive condition and that it may involve some low level appetitive activation. In anger condition, the self-report data show strong reciprocal activation that is people report feeling most negative and least positive. The physiological data strongly support the contention that anger is a coactive state with both aversive and appetitive activation. And the results suggest that individual differences influence the experience of discrete emotion.; This study suggests that research in the discrete emotion domain can benefit from using the findings of the dimensional approach to provide a systematic tool to reveal subjective and physiological patterns of discrete emotional experience.