Embodying Emotion And Temporal Perception

In our daily life, emotional experiences often seem to last longer than they really do. Recent empirical evidence supports the idea that the subjective temporal experience of at least some kinds of emotional events differs from that of neutral events. For example, one study found that participants overestimated the duration of emotion faces relative to neutral ones. Why did the subjective duration of these stimuli depend on the emotions that they represented? Researchers believe it could be the role of arousal. However, none of the studies has considered how perceived emotional stimuli instigate arousal. The theories of embodied cognition suggest that perceiving and thinking about emotion involve perceptual, somatovisceral, and motoric reexperiencing(collectively referred to as"embodiment")of the relevant emotion in one's self. According to this theory, we can speculate that the reason why perceived emotional stimuli instigate arousal is the embodiment of the relevant emotion in one′s self. So, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of embodiment in the perception of the duration of emotional stimuli with the temporal bisection task.In experiment 1, we used anger, happy and neutral faces pictures as experimental material. Participants were assigned to one of conditions in order to manipulate imitation. In the inhibited imitation condition, participants held a pen lightly in their mouth, between their lips and their teeth, in such a way that their lower facial musculature remained fixed in a neutral expression for the entire test phase of the experiment. In the spontaneous imitation control condition, participants were given the standard instructions for the bisection task without reference to the pen. Then , all participants accomplish the same experimental task. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional faces relative to the neutral faces only when imitation was possible. This result supports the idea that imitating emotional faces facilitates the effect of emotion on the subjective experience of time. Because no previous study about how emotional words affect our temporal perception, in order to further study the role of this embodiment in the perception of the duration of reading emotional words. First, we must research how reading emotional words affect our temporal perception. So, in experiment 2, participants were given the standard introduction of the temporal bisection task, but the experiment material replaced by emotional words and neutral words. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional words relative to the neutral words. The result suggesting that reading emotional words also instigate arousal, and the arousal may be caused by the embodiment of emotion that the emotional words represent. Experiment 3 added in the inhibited imitation condition of Experiment 1 on the basis of the experimental 1. Result also revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional words relative to the neutral words only when imitation was possible. The result indicate that the embodiment of the emotion that the emotional words represent may be the main reason of that participants overestimated the duration of emotional words relative to the neutral words,but physically inhibiting imitation seems to prevent or at least significantly reduce the overestimation of duration of emotional words that occurs when imitation is permitted to occur spontaneousIn summary, these results indicate that the embodiment of the emotion that the emotional Stimulus represent may be the main reason of that participants overestimated the duration of emotional Stimulus relative to the neutral Stimulus. Physically inhibiting the embodiment seems to prevent or at least significantly reduce the overestimation of duration of emotional Stimulus. And this finding thus add to the mounting evidence suggesting that embodiment plays an important, if not a central, role in Perceiving emotion.