In Pixar’s latest film, Inside Out 2 , complex feelings like envy and embarrassment join the cast of characters. Nostalgia, however, is hurried out the door to cries of “too early!” when she appears.
If animators wish to give nostalgia more consideration in a future film, new data from researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences could guide them in determining how to animate this sort of “mixed emotion.”
What’s new: In a recent study , the USC Dornsife neuroscientists found that brains display distinct neural activity when experiencing emotions such as bittersweetness.
Why it matters: Mixed emotions are a common experience, but they’ve been understudied scientifically for several reasons.
In his words: “It’s hard to evoke these complex emotions in a realistic way inside the lab,” says Jonas Kaplan, associate professor (research) of psychology and co-author of the study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex in April.
Key findings:
What else? The researchers could predict when someone was going to shift emotions.
“Not only did we find brain activity that was correlated with mixed emotions, but we found that it held steady over time,” says Anthony Vaccaro , lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Neuroendocrinology of Social Ties Lab at USC Dornsife . Vaccaro recently completed his PhD in psychology at USC Dornsife. “You’re not ping-ponging between negative and positive. It’s a very unique, mixed emotion over a long period.”
Graphs show consistent brain activity during positive, negative and mixed emotions, demonstrating that mixed emotions are distinct from other feelings. (Image: Jonas Kaplan.)
How they did it : As study subjects watched a poignant animated short film, researchers monitored their brain activity using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.· The researchers chose One Small Step by TAIKO Studios for its ability to evoke simultaneous happy and sad feelings. · After the first viewing, participants rewatched the video without MRI and indicated when they experienced positive, negative or mixed emotions. The researchers then compared these reports with the MRI imaging results.
Opportunity: The study lays out practical groundwork for future scientific research into this understudied phenomenon, research that Kaplan says would also be beneficial for understanding human psychology.
What’s next: Kaplan and Vaccaro will next look at how emotional reactions fluctuate in group settings, such as watching a movie together in a cinema.
Cerebral Cortex
Observational study
People
Neural patterns associated with mixed valence feelings differ in consistency and predictability throughout the brain
2-Apr-2024