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.

Loneliness – the feeling that manifests when one perceives one’s social needs are
not being met by the quantity or especially the quality of one’s social relationships – is a
common but typically short-lived and fairly harmless experience. However, recent
research continues to uncover a variety of alarming health effects associated with longterm
loneliness. The present study examines the psychological mechanisms underlying
how persons scoring high in trait loneliness perceive their social environments.
Evaluations of transient facial expression morphs are analyzed in R using dynamical
systems methods. We hypothesize that, consistent with Cacioppo and Hawkley’s sociocognitive
model, subjects scoring high in loneliness will exhibit hypervigilance in their
evaluations of cold and neutral emotions and hypovigilance in their evaluations of warm
emotions. Results partially support the socio-cognitive model but point to a relationship
between loneliness and a global dampening in evaluations of emotions.
Keywords: loneliness, perceived social isolation, social dynamics, emotion recognition.