The Study Of The Effect Of Objective Affect Labeling On Positive And Negative Emotions

Affect labeling refers to the simple act of using words to characterize feelings or the emotional aspects of stimuli and events.This dissertation consists of three studies, a total of eight experiments. The purpose of the first study was to explore the role of affect labeling on positive and negative emotions form the the aspect of subjective responses of subjects and the anticipation of subjects about effect of affect labeling on emotions. The result showed that the negative emotion of subjects were lower in the watching condition but they expected the emotion of themselves would be higher in the affect labeling condition.The purpose of the second study was to explore the role of affect labeling and non-emotion labeling on positive and negative emotions form the aspect of autonomic nervous responses of subjects. This study consists of four experiments. To test the effect of objective affect-labeling and non-emotion labeling on emotions, negative faces pictures were used in the4experiment. The result showed that in the first experiment, the finger pulse rates were lower in the affect labeling condition than in the affect-matching condition, but there were no differences in finger pulse rate between the gender-labeling and the picture-matching condition. In the5experiment28female university students participated. The pictures of negative scenes were used as materials. The result showed the finger temperatures were lower in the affect-matching condition than in the affect-labeling condition, and they were also lower in the artificial vs. natural labeling condition than in the affect-labeling condition. In the experiment of6and7, we tested the effect on positive emotions used the similar design with experiment of4and5, the results showed there were no differences between all the conditons.The third study only one experiment. In this experiment we using the ERPs technology to explore the effect of objective affect label on the positive and negative emotions. A2(label type:affect labeling, gender labeling)×2(type of emotions: positive, negative), repeated measurements were performed. The resuls showed that the waves of early LPP were higher in the affect labeling codition in the positive emotion condition but no differences in the negative condition; but the waves of late LPP in the affect labeling condition were lower whether in the positive condition or the negative condition after they compelted the tasks.Based on the results of three studies, the following conclusions can be drawn:(1) Objective affect labeling help the subjects reduce the feeling of negative emotions, but they did not think so.(2) Objective affect labeling but not the non-emotion labeling help the subjects reduce the physiological reaction intensity of negative emotions. But whether the objective affect labeling or the non-emotion labeling can not help the subjects reduce the physiological reaction intensity of positive emotions.(3) The inhibition of the objective affect labeling on emotions occurs arising after the subjects labeled the emotional stimulus.(4) In the processing of affect labeling the positive emotion was enhanced and then was weakened.