Lay theories of emotional causes of 5 emotion-constellations.

The study - a part of a large research on "lay theories" of emotion, i.e., people's emotional knowledge (e.g., Zammuner & Gorjup, 2005;Zammuner & Galli, 2007) -focused on emotional causes, and on their degree of salience in triggering the emotional experience. Data were collected in 6 european countries (Italy, Spain,Hungary, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany). Subjects were 832 University students who answered a set of closed-questions that described in a vignette format 5 events, each prototypical of one of 5 "emotion constellations",namely Jealousy, Envy, Sadness, Pride, and Joy. Subjects attributed to same-sex or to opposite sex event protagonists P aspects of the emotional experience, including why an event is supposed to elicit an emotional experience.Subjects judged events that were defined either as "very salient" on the basis of results obtained in previous studies, or as "less salient" ones. The results showed that expectedness, hedonic tone, extent to which the event touches concerns that are important for P, and desirability of the event are among the most prominent causes for most emotional experiences. Moreover, on the one hand subjects believe that several causes might be salient at the same time, on the other hand it is the specific nature of the event, and thus the Emotion Type, that defines what causes are judged as most important in triggering the experience, e.g., unexpectedness is most salient for Sadness and Jealousy events. The results moreover indicate that there are cultural differences worthwhile examining.