Basic emotion profiles in healthy, chronic pain, depressed and PTSD individuals.
OBJECTIVE
To compare self-reports of five basic emotions across four samples: healthy, chronic pain, depressed and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and to investigate the extent to which basic emotion reports discriminate between individuals in healthy or clinical groups.


METHODS
In total, 439 participants took part in this study: healthy (n = 131), chronic pain (n = 220), depressed (n = 24) and PTSD (n = 64). The participants completed the trait version of the Basic Emotion Scale. Basic emotion profiles were compared both within each group and between the healthy group and each of the three other groups. Discriminant analysis was used to assess the extent to which basic emotions can be used to classify the participants as belonging to the healthy group or one of the clinical groups.


RESULTS
In the healthy group, happiness was experienced more than any other basic emotion. This was not found in the clinical groups. In comparison to the healthy participants, the chronic pain group experienced more fear, anger and sadness, the depressed group reported more sadness and the PTSD group experienced all of the negative emotions more frequently. Discriminant analysis revealed that happiness was the most important variable in determining whether an individual belonged to the healthy group or one of the clinical groups. Anger was found to further discriminate between depressed and chronic pain individuals.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings demonstrate that basic emotion profile analysis can provide a useful foundation for the exploration of emotional experience both within and between healthy and clinical groups.
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. anne_finucane@yahoo.ie
Anne M
AM
Finucane
Alexandra
A
Dima
Nuno
N
Ferreira
Marianne
M
Halvorsen
D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D059350:Chronic Pain; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D004644:Emotions; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult