A Study on Emotional Granularity and Core Affect

Emotion granularity is the specificity of terms people use to describe their feelings: using broader terms is associated with psychopathology. Core affect is the combination of present-moment pleasantness and intensity of emotion. The current study focuses on the effect of core affect on emotion granularity as it could have implications on the advancement of clinical mental health work. We will induce certain core affect using stimuli from the International Affective Picture System, measure the effects using the Self-Assessment Manikin, and measure emotion granularity with methods adopted from Israelashvili, Oosterwijk, Sauter, & Fischer. Participants will be divided based on which type of affect is induced, including a neutral condition. We hypothesize that core affect will predict changes in emotion granularity: that is, emotion granularity measurement will not be stable across different emotional states. Data collection is underway.