The Experiential Themes of Various Emotions

Abstract

The experiential themes or invariant structures which emerge from the concrete properties of emotion experience were identified for twenty-two common emotions. Ninety-three subjects were randomly assigned four of the twenty-two emotion terms and asked to imagine herself or himself experiencing each emotion and to fully describe the experience. The experiential themes were extracted from these descriptions. For validation, a different sample of sixty-four subjects were asked to identify the emotions by giving an emotion term for each theme. Application of χ² showed that the frequency of correct theme identifications was statistically significant at the .01 level for all twenty-two emotions. Some of the characteristics common to many of the themes are discussed. Suggestions are made for practical applications as well as for research using the theme extraction method.