Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- Creators: Glenberg, Arthur
Description
ABSTRACT
What does it mean to feel an emotion? The nature of emotional
experience has often been described in terms overall conscious experience, termed affect. However, even within affective research there are multiple contradicting theories about the nature and structure of affect. I propose that these contradictions are due to methodological issues in the empirical research examining these underlying dimensions. Furthermore, I propose that subjective emotional experience should be examined separately from overall affect. The current study attempts to address past methodological issues by focusing solely on emotional experiences, developing a comprehensive list of emotion items, and including a broad range of emotional experiences. In Study 1, participants were asked to recall an emotional experience and then report their experience of 76 different emotions during that experience. A factor analysis of the emotion ratings revealed a 5-factor categorical structure with categories of Joy, Anger, Sadness, Fear, and Shame/Jealousy. In Study 2, the 76 emotion words from Study 1 were compared in a semantic space derived from a large collection of text samples in an attempt to compare to the results of Study 1. A semantic space derived from a broad range of texts would reflect relationships of emotional concepts. Study 2 revealed a 1-factor structure, drastically different from the structure in Study 1. The implications from Study 2, however, are limited because of the limited range of literature that was used to create the semantic space in which the words were compared. Overall, the results from these studies suggest that subjective emotional experience should be treated as categorical.
What does it mean to feel an emotion? The nature of emotional
experience has often been described in terms overall conscious experience, termed affect. However, even within affective research there are multiple contradicting theories about the nature and structure of affect. I propose that these contradictions are due to methodological issues in the empirical research examining these underlying dimensions. Furthermore, I propose that subjective emotional experience should be examined separately from overall affect. The current study attempts to address past methodological issues by focusing solely on emotional experiences, developing a comprehensive list of emotion items, and including a broad range of emotional experiences. In Study 1, participants were asked to recall an emotional experience and then report their experience of 76 different emotions during that experience. A factor analysis of the emotion ratings revealed a 5-factor categorical structure with categories of Joy, Anger, Sadness, Fear, and Shame/Jealousy. In Study 2, the 76 emotion words from Study 1 were compared in a semantic space derived from a large collection of text samples in an attempt to compare to the results of Study 1. A semantic space derived from a broad range of texts would reflect relationships of emotional concepts. Study 2 revealed a 1-factor structure, drastically different from the structure in Study 1. The implications from Study 2, however, are limited because of the limited range of literature that was used to create the semantic space in which the words were compared. Overall, the results from these studies suggest that subjective emotional experience should be treated as categorical.
ContributorsOsborne, Elizabeth (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Becker, David V. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Childhood trauma has been linked to an increased risk of chronic pain in adulthood. One potential mechanism is via childhood trauma's impact on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) response to stress, reflected in changes in salivary cortisol levels (Nicolson et al., 2010). This study sought to determine the relations between childhood trauma, increases in cortisol levels following induced pain, and pain perceptions in adults with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. It drew on data collected from participants enrolled in an investigation comparing the effectiveness of behavioral treatments for chronic pain. Before receiving treatment, participants attended a laboratory session during which they first rested, and then were exposed to heat stimuli to assess pain threshold and tolerance. Saliva samples were collected from each participant immediately following the rest, and twice during pain induction. Fibromyalgia participants with a history of childhood trauma were expected: 1) to report lower pain threshold and tolerance levels (i.e., have higher pain sensitivity), 2) to exhibit a higher resting cortisol level, and 3) to have greater increases in cortisol in response to acute pain induction than fibromyalgia participants without a history of childhood trauma. Findings showed that childhood trauma scores were: 1) related to lower pain tolerance (but not pain threshold), 2) unrelated to resting cortisol levels, and 3) unrelated to changes in cortisol in response to pain induction and pain tolerance, contrary to prediction. However, a subtype of childhood trauma, i.e., emotional maltreatment: 1) predicted lower pain tolerance, and 2) moderated the cortisol changes over time in response to pain induction during the laboratory session in the expected direction. That is, individuals who reported higher levels of childhood emotional maltreatment showed greater cortisol responses to the pain induction than individuals who reported lower levels of exposure to emotional maltreatment. Cortisol responses did not relate to pain perception. Thus, childhood emotional trauma predicted greater pain sensitivity and cortisol reactivity, but cortisol did not relate to pain perception. The findings suggest that early childhood trauma predicts cortisol reactivity and pain sensitivity, but that cortisol reactivity is not a mediator in the trauma-pain relation.
ContributorsCiaramitaro, Marissa Catherine (Author) / Davis, Mary (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Yeung, Wan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-12