Read on Twitter
Friday afternoon seems a good time to do a twitter thread for my new paper (with Raul Berrios), published in Cognition and Emotion! ( https://bit.ly/3f3GE9l ; OA version: https://bit.ly/MixedEmotion ). Read on below to find out more...
A lot of emotion research is conducted in laboratories where we try to induce emotions into participants using music or videos, or recalling/writing about an emotional event. We wanted to collect data from a real life emotional situation, and what better than watching football?
We collected data during the FIFA world cup, asking participants to report how they felt before and after watching each England football match, and also to predict the score of the match.
To do this I used an experience sampling method and sent out questionnaires before/after each match using Whatsapp Broadcast. With England playing 7 games in the World Cup, this was 14 timepoints in total (480 observations)
We found that when people reported experiencing more mixed emotions before a match - a combination of excitement and anxiety for instance - they reported making more likely score predictions.
This was measured using bookies' odds for the score predictions, e.g. score outcomes that were more likely to occur based on bookies having lower odds and paying out less if it happened. In contrast, if people felt generally happy, they made more unrealistic score predictions.
This is consistent with evidence from lab studies that experiencing mixed emotions makes people better at making wise decisions and more accurate judgements (e.g. https://bit.ly/2UptvxU ). - Probably by subconsciously signalling the need to look at two sides of an event.
This was a fun study to run and it was enjoyable to collect "real world" data about something that everyone can agree on was an emotional ride (for England fans at least)
I would really like to do a larger cross-cultural follow up study at the next World Cup (2022) or European Championship (2021) and collect data from multiple countries - if you are interested in collaborating please DM me! (also if you want a copy of the article).
Tagging some accounts who might be interested - @sirileknes @affectivescilab @CERE_Emotion @affectScience @ISREorg @RosalindPicard @psywisdom @affectivebrain @SCAN_Lab
