Mental models accurately predict emotion transitions

Mark A. Thornton & Diana I. Tamir (2017)

PNAS

Shushi Namba

Introduction

Social mind

• People are remarkably good at understanding each other, and people can also predict others’ emotion and behavior.

Why ?

Proposed mechanism

• Emotion transition have some regularity.• High probability: awe (畏敬) → gratitude (感謝)

• Low probability: awe (畏敬) → contempt (軽蔑)

• Then, people learned these rules based on own experiences, and might be able to gain accurate mental models of others’ emotion transition.

Studies in this article

• Study 1-3: the actual rates of transitions between emotions using existing experience-sampling datasets (own experienced and mental models for other people).

• Study 4: Markov modeling over a rich sampling over a rich sampling of 60 states + conceptual building blocks of mental models.

• Study 5: Tyranny of the majority (数の暴力: 200万) + emphasis on dynamics

Method

Cut it! (too complicatedPlease check the source article.

Simple Explanation 1

11:30, Happy 14:30, Relaxed

Look this transition!(Experience-sampled)

Simple Explanation 2

Look this transition!(Mental model)

Result

Study 1: N = 40, every 3h/d/2weeks

Study 1: Mental model

Study 1

Study 2: N = 40, every 3h/d/2weeks

Study 2: Mental model

Study 2

Study 3: N = 10,723, random timing

Study 3: Mental model

Study 3

There is the strong associations

NRMSE = normalized root mean square

error in simple regressions with ratings

Conceptual building: Study 4

• Each dimension evaluated in previous studies.

• These index explained highly similar transition in specific valence (e.g., negative: angry ⇒ sad)

High auto-correlation!

Particular valence is strong

Dynamic? Static?

• The above relationships for each dimensional evaluation is Static information and association.

⇒ controlling for the four conceptual dimensions.

⇒ unique knowledge about emotional dynamics: residual accuracy (mean partial ρ =0.10) + statistical significant [95% bootstrap CI = (0.09, 0.11)], with a large standardized effect size (d = 1.51).

Study 5

• Almost results were replicated using the 2 million data from the Experience Project (www.experience project.com).

Discussion

The current results

• The mental model seems to be common as own emotional transition.

• The correlation between own emotional transition and mental model remains meaningful with controlling static structure using some dimensional evaluations.

Limitation

• Participants in this study did not make predictions in a naturalistic context.

Conclusion

• We used mental model for other persons based on our emotional transitions.

That is, our emotion predicted others’ emotion!

End

End

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