The Affective Individual: The Influence of Self-Structure on The Experience of Discrete and Mixed Emotions

Coherence of self-concept refers to the ability to stabilize on a clear set of views
about oneself. This aspect of self-structure is closely linked self-esteem, and similar
evidence in emotion research suggests an intricate connection between the self-system
and emotion. Evidence suggests that emotions of seemingly opposing valence such as
happy and sad can co-occur (i.e., mixed emotion). This study validated a new set of
emotional stimuli particularly to elicit mixed emotion and used these stimuli with a
mouse task that allowed participants to report positive and negative emotions
simultaneously. The study examined possible individual differences in discrete emotional
response associated with self-esteem as well as a possible connection between selfconcept
coherence and a differential ability to harbor mixed emotions; specifically that
individuals with high coherence in self-concept would tend to disambiguate their emotional response, but those with low coherence would be more susceptible to cooccurring
positive and negative emotion.