What is it about?

While most acknowledge that feeling good and bad about something is possible, it is hard to capture this concept in a scientific sense. By creating and evaluating emotion networks, we show how adults of all ages experience mixed emotions as a unique phenomenon, separate from positive or negative feelings on their own.

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Why is it important?

This work breaks new ground in the science of mixed emotions in two ways. First, we have pioneered the application of network science for estimating mixed emotions. Second, we show that adults of all ages can experience these unique emotional experiences. These contributions pave the way for future research to investigate the emergence and implications of mixed emotions in myriad contexts.

Perspectives

I hope that this article encourages people to dive more deeply into the area of mixed emotions. While a commonly expressed sentiment in daily life, emotion researchers are far from consensus on what mixed emotions are or what they do. If nothing else, I hope that these findings get people thinking about it means when we talk about feeling good and bad at the same time.

Lucas Hamilton
Augustana University

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This page is a summary of: Investigating mixed emotion elicitation across the life span via intensity and networks., Emotion, October 2022, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/emo0001177.
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