Can Feelings "Feel" Wrong? Similarities Between Counter-Normative Emotion Reports and Perceptual Errors

Ella Givon, Gal Udelsman-Danieli, Ophir Almagor, Tomer Fekete, Oren Shriki, Nachshon Meiran

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

In popular belief, emotions are regarded as deeply subjective and thus as lacking truth value. Is this reflected at the behavioral or brain level? This work compared counter-normative emotion reports with perceptual-decision errors. Participants (university students; N = 29, 16, 40, and 60 in Experiments 1–4, respectively) were given trials comprising two tasks and were asked to (a) report their pleasant or unpleasant feelings in response to emotion-invoking pictures (emotion report) and (b) indicate the gender of faces (perceptual decision). Focusing on classical error markers, we found that the results of both tasks indicated (a) post-error slowing, (b) speed/accuracy trade-offs, (c) a heavier right tail of the reaction time distribution for errors or counter-normative responses relative to correct or normative responses, and (d) inconclusive evidence for error-related negativity in electroencephalograms. These results suggest that at both the behavioral and the brain levels, the experience of reporting counter-normative emotions is remarkably similar to that accompanying perceptual-decision errors.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)948-956
Number of pages9
JournalPsychological Science
Volume33
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 3 May 2022

Keywords

  • emotional feelings
  • error-related negativity
  • open materials
  • post-error slowing
  • preregistered
  • reaction time distribution
  • speed/accuracy trade-off

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Psychology

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