Jinwoo Lee




Research

Awe is characterized as an ambivalent affect in the human behavior and cortex: integrated VR-EEG study

 
Summary Awe is a complex emotion that encompasses conflicting affective feelings inherent to its key appraisals, but it has been studied as either a positive or a negative emotion, which has made its ambivalent nature underexplored. To address whether and how awe's ambivalent affect is represented both behaviorally and neurologically, we conducted a study using virtual reality (VR) and electroencephalography (N = 43). Behaviorally, the subjective ratings of awe intensity for VR clips were accurately predicted by the duration and intensity of ambivalent feelings. In the electrophysiological analysis, we identified a latent neural-feeling space for each participant that shared valence representations across individuals and stimuli, using deep representational learning and decoding analyses. Within these spaces, ambivalent feelings were represented as spatially distinct from positive and negative ones with large individual differences in their separation. Notably, this variability significantly predicted subjective awe ratings. Lastly, hidden Markov modeling revealed that the multiple band powers, particularly in the frontoparietal channels were significantly associated with differentiation of valent states during awe-inducing VR watching. Our findings consistently highlight the salience of ambivalent affect in the subjective experience of awe at both behavioral and neural levels. This work provides a nuanced framework for understanding the complexity of human emotions with implications for affective neuroscience. 

Lee, J., Han, D. D., Oh, S. Y., & Cha, J. (2025). Awe is characterized as an ambivalent affect in the human behavior and cortex. Communications Psychology, 3(1), 123.


    Fig 1. Framework shift for studying ambivalent nature of awe 

Motivation

Awe is a multifaceted emotion that encompasses both positive and negative feelings. Although qualitative descriptions of awe often highlight its ambivalent nature, it has not been fully investigated. This gap exists because the dominant measurement of affective valence in contemporary affective science - the 1D biploar continuum scale - does not accommodate ambivalent responses. Consequently, empirical studies of awe typically divide it into two types based on dominant valence (positive or negative awe). However, this dichotomy fails to capture the mixed nature of awe. Therefore, we examined whether awe experiences are more accurately characterized by ambivalence than by simple positive or negative states, both behaviorally and neurologically. 



   Fig 2. Experimental paradigm and behavioral analyses 


Behavioral findings

A total of 43 participants watched three awe-inducing VR clips and one positively-valenced control clip while their EEG signals were recorded. During the viewing task, participants reported their valence states in real-time using keypresses (i.e., positive, negative, mixed and neutral). After each trial, they also reported their overall valence, arousal, awe intensity, and motion sickness (fig 2a). 

Our findings revealed that the awe-VR clips elicited more intense awe experiences than the control clip, as intended (fig 2b). Additionally, ambivalent feelings lasted longer and were more vivid during the awe conditions compared to the control clip (fig 2c & 2d). Univariate and multivariate modeling showed that only ambivalence-related metrics significantly predicted awe intensity scores, unlike other positivity/negativity metrics (fig 2e, 2f, 2g, & 2h).  



Electrophysiological findings


Using the key-pressed valence sequence, we examined how the four valence states are distinctively represented in cortical regions. We constructed latent valence-cortical spaces at the individual level using a contrastive learning approach, which aims to repel different valence categories and attract the same ones as much as possible (fig 3a). 

We found notable individual variability in how ambivalent states are distinctively represented from single-valence ones in the cortex. This variability in cortical distinctiveness specifically predicted awe intensity (fig 3b). 




Related materials preprint manuscriptOHBM2024 posterX blog post


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