The Case for Mixed Emotions
Emotion theorists have long debated whether valence is an elemental, irreducible aspect of the experience of emotion. As early as Socrates, scholars recognized that the existence of mixed emotions would settle the debate: If valence is irreducible, it follows that people cannot feel happy and sad at the same time. Conversely, if the positive and negative substrates underlying valence are separable in experience, it follows that people can experience such mixed emotions. I will describe a number of studies involving a range of emotion inductions and measures, each of which provide evidence that people can feel happy and sad at the same time and, by extension, that valence is not an elemental aspect of emotional experience.
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