Abstract
Ambivalent emotions, conflicting passions, bittersweet feelings: such experiences are commonplace, but more complex than suggested by ordinary language usage and currently available scientific models. Bittersweet, Ancient and Modern (BAM) is a multidisciplinary hub that brings together philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists to work on the phenomenon of mixed affect, that is emotional states that involve simultaneous or blended positive and negative valence. At the heart of BAM is the concept of affective valence, typically understood as the way an affective state feels, i.e. the quality of the (dis)pleasure we subjectively experience: fear usually feels unpleasant, while joy feels good. Yet sometimes affective experience feels ‘bittersweet’, i.e. good and bad at the same time, as when we enjoy being scared on the roller coaster or being sad when reading a heart-rending novel. BAM examines such experiences through five interconnected work packages (WPs): • WP1: Ancient Theories, Modern Problems investigates how ancient philosophical accounts of pleasure, pain, and emotional complexity can inform contemporary philosophical and neuroscientific models of affective experience. • WP2: Contemporary Theories critically evaluates current psychological and scientific models of affective valence and ambivalence, highlighting underlying assumptions and theoretical gaps. • WP3: Folk Psychology of Mixed Affect uses natural language processing to analyze spontaneous spoken descriptions from Italian native speakers, aiming to uncover the semantic structure of bittersweet and ambivalent emotions. • WP4: Neuroscientific Appraisal of Mixed Affect combines self-reports and fMRI data to identify neural correlates of mixed emotions, using emotionally complex film excerpts to elicit and track ambivalent affective states in real time. • WP5: Clinical Implications explores how an improved understanding of mixed affect can refine clinical theories and interventions, with a focus on conditions such as neurotic ambivalence and alexithymia.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Pia Campeggiani
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Filosofia
Coordinator:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Total Eu Contribution: Euro (EUR) 212.345,00
Total Unibo Contribution: Euro (EUR) 112.045,00
Project Duration in months: 28
Start Date:
05/10/2023
End Date:
28/02/2026
