Paradoxical Relationship: New Study Shows Link Between Intensity of Emotions and How Others Perceive It

An international research group consisting of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, New York City, and the Max Planck NYU Center for Language, Music and Emotion or CLaME recently discovered a paradoxical relationship between emotions and how they are perceived.

A ScienceDaily report said, a facial expression or a voice's sound can say so much about the emotional state of a person, as well as the manner they are revealing is dependent on the intensity of the feeling.

The issue being raised now is, if it is actually true, that the stronger an emotion, the more comprehensible it is.

Essentially, emotions differ in their intensity. An individual being attacked by a house cat may well feel afraid although certainly, his fear would be even stronger if a tiger or lion were attacking him.

Science Times - Paradoxical Relationship: New Study Shows Link Between Emotions and How They Are Perceived

(Photo: Emi Lija on Pixabay)
Researchers gathered a multitude of nonverbal vocalizations which include screams, sighs, groans and laughter, among others.

Emotions' Levels of Strength

Consequently, people's emotions vary in terms of levels of strength. But how is it affecting one's ability to conclude meaning from how a certain feeling is expressed?

This study on emotion has thus far assumed that expressions of emotions turn out to be more unique as their intensity rises. Nonetheless, there is a little empirical evidence to back this intuitive-sounding idea.

In connection to this, a team of researchers from Frankfurt am Main and New York have now, for the first time, methodically examined the emotional intensity's role.

In a similar report, Times Now reported, the study authors gathered a multitude of nonverbal vocalizations which include screams, sighs, groans and laughter, among others.

Such sounds all express different positive and negative feelings that range from minimal to maximal emotional intensity.

The researchers then investigated how listeners perceived these sounds differently according to the emotional intensity they expressed.

The Paradoxical Relationship

The research team came to an astonishing conclusion. Initially, as the emotions' intensity increased, the ability of the participants to judge them improved, as well, achieving a sort of "sweet spot" in perceiving moderate to strong feelings.

Then the emotions turned out maximally strong, though, their legibility lessened quite considerably. Natalie Holz, the study's lead author from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics said, counterintuitively, they found that extremely intense emotions are not the simplest to conclude meaning from. They are in fact, the vaguest of all.

And the paradox here is that, for tremendously intense emotions, neither their distinct categories like a surprise and victory nor valences, like pleasantness and unpleasantness, could be reliably distinguished; nor could they be categorized as being either more positive or negative.

Paradoxical Role of Emotional Intensity

However, both the intensity itself and the state of arousal were consistently and clearly perceived. In relation to this, Holz proposed a reason for this.

Specifically, he said, at the strongest intensity, the most essential job might be to identify big events to analyze relevance. A more fine-grained assessment of affective meaning, Holz elaborated, "may be secondary."

The team's study, The paradoxical role of emotional intensity in the perception of vocal affect, published in the Scientific Reports journal, makes clear that emotional the emotional intensity is a domineering factor in people's perception of emotion, although in a far more multifaceted way compare to what was previously thought.

This postures a challenge to dominant theories of emotion. The research of emotional intensity, as well as the peak of emotions, specifically, can enrich the understanding of affective experience, and the manner emotion is communicated.

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