The Trap Of Positive Emotions-Physiological And Cognitive Differences Between Pride And Joy

In the past,positive emotion research only focused on the valence(positive or negative)of emotion,using the way of inducing "joy" emotion to induce positive emotion,leading to the research not to explore the influence of positive emotion on cognition,but the influence of "joy" on cognition.The field of positive emotions needs to be differentiated.However,in the field of differentiation,it is difficult to distinguish different positive emotions with a unified differentiation theory in the existing theoretical framework.Therefore,the physiological and cognitive differences of different positive emotions become the breakthrough of positive emotion differentiation.In different theories of positive emotion differentiation,pride and happiness show a greater separation.Through three experiments,the current study proves the separation of pride and joy in the intensity of approaching motivation,the activation of sympathetic nervous system and the influence on cognitive flexibility.By comparing the physiological and cognitive differences of different positive emotions,we can supplement and improve the research on the differentiation of positive emotions.Study 1 is about the physiological difference of different positive emotions.The withinsubject design(N = 60)was adopted.The independent variables were emotion,which were pride,happiness,awe as positive emotion reference group and neutral control group.The dependent variables were self-report of emotional state(including potency,arousal,dominance and motivation dimensions)and physiological indicators(including skin electricity,myoelectricity,heart rate and heart rate variability).The results of study 1 show that pride will experience higher approaching motivation than happiness and neutrality,and decrease heart rate variability(especially standard deviation during normal heartbeat,SDNN),while happiness will improve heart rate variability(SDNN and LF / HF).The second study is to explore the effect of different positive emotions to the cognitive flexibility by a 4 × 2 within-subject design(N = 43).The study used the classic cognitive flexibility experiment task proposed by predecessors,the task-switching paradigm of digital classification.The independent variable is emotion and task types(repetitive or conversion task),the dependent variable is task response time and task accuracy.In this experiment,we used those evaluated emotional video in study 1 to induce specific emotion.Study 2 did not get the ideal results.After that,we collectd the interview of participants one by one,summarized the reasons,and improved the paradigm and process in study 3 on the basis of study 2.Study 3 still used 4 × 2 within-subject design(N = 50)to measure the influence of different positive emotions on cognitive flexibility and its possible neural mechanism.The independent variables were still emotion and task types(repetitive or switching tasks),and the dependent variables were behavioral indicators(task response time and task accuracy)and neurological components(N2 and P3 b,etc.).Study 3 found that,for individuals with high attention control,pride may affect the cognitive flexibility by influencing the top-down cognitive inhibition of unrelated task sets(with a smaller N2 peak),rather than the cue extraction of related task sets(P3b).So that when individuals complete the switching task,there may be a larger task reaction time and a larger switch-cost.To sum up,this study draws the following conclusions: pride and joy have some differences in self-report,physiological and cognitive effects of emotional experience.Compared with joy experience,pride experience will lead to higher approaching motivation,which also will reduce heart rate variability.For individuals with high attention control,pride experience may also affect the cognitive flexibility of individuals by influencing the cognitive inhibition of unrelated task sets from top to bottom,rather than the extraction of clues of related task sets,so that individuals can complete the task more slowly with higher error rate when completing the switching task.