In Pixar’s latest film, Inside Out 2, new complex emotions like envy and embarrassment are introduced, while nostalgia is quickly dismissed as being “too early” for the storyline. However, if animators wish to explore nostalgia further in future films, new data from researchers at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences could provide valuable insights on how to animate this type of “mixed emotion.” In a recent study, neuroscientists from USC Dornsife found distinct neural activity in the brain when experiencing emotions like bittersweetness, shedding light on the debate of whether mixed emotions arise from unique brain activity or simply flip-flopping between positive and negative feelings.
Mixed emotions have been understudied scientifically, as they are often thought to exist on a spectrum from negative to positive, making it easier to study one feeling at a time. The researchers found that mixed emotions elicit unique neural activity in areas of the brain like the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, different from brain activity seen during purely positive or negative emotions. Additionally, they were able to predict emotional shifts in participants and identified specific brain regions that underwent significant changes during these transitions, such as the insular cortex.
The study involved monitoring participants’ brain activity with an MRI machine as they watched a poignant short film that evoked happy and sad feelings simultaneously. Participants reported their emotional experiences of positive, negative, or mixed emotions during the viewing, and the researchers compared these reports with the MRI imaging results. Graphs illustrating consistent brain activity during positive, negative, and mixed emotions demonstrate the distinct nature of mixed emotions from other feelings. Lead author Anthony Vaccaro notes the stability of brain activity associated with mixed emotions over time, highlighting the uniqueness of this emotional experience.
The findings of this study provide a foundation for future research into mixed emotions, a phenomenon that has not been extensively explored in scientific literature. Understanding mixed emotions could offer valuable insights into human psychology and the ability to sit with and accept both positive and negative feelings simultaneously. The researchers believe that further exploration of the benefits of experiencing mixed emotions could provide valuable knowledge and potentially enhance our understanding of emotional complexity.
Moving forward, Kaplan and Vaccaro plan to investigate how emotional reactions fluctuate in group settings, such as watching a movie in a cinema. This research could offer further insights into how individuals experience and process mixed emotions in social contexts, shedding light on how emotional responses differ when shared with others. Overall, the study on mixed emotions opens up new avenues for research that could deepen our understanding of the complexity of human emotions and the brain mechanisms underlying these experiences.