What is it about?
The aim of this work was to provide supporting evidence for the perceptual theory of emotions that claims that how we experience emotions resembles how we experience perception and that emotions are in a sense, a sixth sense. To test this theory, we examined whether emotions follow Weber’s law which is one of the most basic psychophysical laws that most sensations follow. According to this law, as the size of a stimulus increases, we become increasingly less sure regarding the exact size of that stimulus. We conducted two experiments and analyzed their results using a cognitive mathematical model. In both experiments, we found that pleasant emotions follow Weber’s law, while unpleasant emotions do not.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because it provides us with one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the perceptual theory of emotions and helps us to understand the nature of emotional experience.
Perspectives
This work was one of the most interesting, exciting, and hard things that I have ever done. Eventually this hard work paid off since we have provided one of the strongest supports for the perceptual theory of emotions and with this we have opened the door for looking at and investigating emotions with a different perspective.
Rotem Berkovich
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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This page is a summary of: Pleasant emotional feelings follow one of the most basic psychophysical laws (weber’s law) as most sensations do., Emotion, September 2022, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001161.
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