Beyond a Single Pattern of Mixed Emotional Experience
Sequential, Prevalence, Inverse, and Simultaneous
Abstract
The Analogical Emotional Scale (AES) permits respondents to represent the changes that occur in the course of two different emotions over the time in which they are experienced (Carrera & Oceja, 2007). We tested whether the use of the AES allows us to go beyond the distinction between sequential and simultaneous emotional experiences. Specifically, the AES permits us to detect and discriminate at least four different patterns of mixed emotional experience: sequential, prevalence, inverse, and highly simultaneous. We carried out four studies in which different stimuli were used for inducing emotion: personal memories, verbal accounts, videos, and photographs. The results supported our expectation that these four patterns are associated with different levels of emotional ambivalence and tension along a continuum from lesser to greater: sequential, prevalence, inverse, and highly simultaneous.
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