title: Predicting the duration of emotional experience: two experience sampling studies.
abstract: The authors present 2 studies to explain the variability in the duration of emotional experience. Participants were asked to report the duration of their fear, anger, joy, gratitude, and sadness episodes on a daily basis. Information was further collected with regard to potential predictor variables at 3 levels: trait predictors, episode predictors, and moment predictors. Discrete-time survival analyses revealed that, for all 5 emotions under study, the higher the importance of the emotion-eliciting situation and the higher the intensity of the emotion at onset, the longer the emotional experience lasts. Moreover, a reappearance, either physically or merely mentally, of the eliciting stimulus during the emotional episode extended the duration of the emotional experience as well. These findings display interesting links with predictions within N. H. Frijda's theory of emotion, with the phenomenon of reinstatement (as studied within the domain of learning psychology), and with the literature on rumination.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. philippe.verduyn@psy.kuleuven.be
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Verduyn
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Delvaux
authors.forename: Hermina
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Van Coillie
authors.forename: Francis
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tuerlinckx
authors.forename: Iven
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Van Mechelen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013997:Time Factors