Development and Validation of a Formal Theory of Co-occurring Emotions

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Many situations elicit a mix of emotions. For instance, receiving a birthday present may elicit joy and gratitude, failing an exam may elicit anger and disappointment, or eating chocolate may elicit satisfaction and regret. Indeed, abundant evidence indicates that, in their daily life, adults and adolescents often experience multiple emotions simultaneously. Therefore, emotion theories should explain when and how emotions co-occur. However, existing emotion theories cannot explain the complex patterns of results from research on co-occurring emotions. The goal of the project is to develop and validate an integrative formal theory of co-occurring emotions. Preliminary evidence supports a conceptualization of co-occurring emotions as overlapping networks. According to this conceptualization, emotions are causal networks of their emotion components. Moreover, networks representing different emotions share components and/or have components that relate (positively or negatively) to each other. Emotions co-occur, when a situation activates the networks representing different emotions and/or when activity spreads from one network to the other. To develop and validate a formal theory of co-occurring emotions based on these findings, I will follow the Theory Construction Methodology. First, I will further test the robustness of the preliminary evidence (Study 1). Second, I will program and test an agent-based model implementing the principles of the network theory and share the model with other researchers in multiple ways. Third, I will use simulations to investigate whether the agent-based model accounts for the complex findings in research on co-occurring emotions, while an experience sampling study will help tuning parameters of the model (Study 2). Finally, I will evaluate the theory by using the approach of inference to the best explanation and by experimentally testing an additional implication of a preliminary version of the model (Study 3). Collectively, the project promises to advance research on co-occurring emotions by proposing an integrative formal theory.