Emotions are often experienced as bodily sensations. Studies have found that the way we respond to emotions help us adapt to our ever changing environment. Several models have stated that we experience subjective emotional feelings because of our bodily sensations. This helps us to over think our behaviour and adjust it to the situation. However, it is still debated whether the bodily sensations are specific enough to elicit different emotions.

The experiments

This article presents a study of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a computer program that showed participants two silhouettes with emotional words, stories, movies or facial expressions. Participants were then asked to colour the regions of the silhouette in which they thought their activity would change (both increase or decrease). It was found that different emotions were associated with clearly separated bodily sensations. Five experiments were conducted with 36-302 participants each. During first the experiment, the participants had to name bodily sensations associated with the six basic emotions, seven more complex emotions and a neutral state. To control for the possibility that the participants would report stereotypical bodily sensations with a specific emotion, emotions were induced by guided mental imagery based on stories (experiment 2) of viewing movies (experiment 3). The fourth experiment presented the participants with pictures of six basic facial expressions (without naming the emotion) and asked to colour bodily sensations on a presented silhouette. In the final experiment, participants were given the coloured silhouettes by others and were asked to name the emotion that would come with these bodily changes.

Outcomes

The results reveal distinct bodily sensations for both basic and complex emotions. This seems to be consistent between different cultures.