Stories of Emotional Granularity
Project Objective:
The purpose of this project is to document some of the depth and diversity of human emotions from the subjective point of view of project participants. It will be conducted as humanistic research, accepting participants’ feelings and perceptions on their own terms, not as a scientific study that purports to establish a complete and objectively verifiable model of reality.
The conceptual framework of this research project is constructed upon the foundational idea that emotion is first and foremost an experience of human consciousness. From this perspective, emotion is understood to be subjective, and thus inaccessible to external observation or measurement. Of course, consciousness is enabled by the physiology of the brain and its integration with the larger physical body. However, consciousness itself, including emotion, is an emergent property, valid in its own context, that is misunderstood whenever it is reduced merely physiological manifestations.
Expressions of emotions are distinct from emotions themselves, which makes emotions inherently individual and mysterious, even to the people who experience them. A smile is not the same thing as an experience of delight. Measurable changes of heart rate, hormones, or neural activity are not the same thing as the experience of anger itself. Because emotions are complex, subjective and elusive even within the consciousness of the people who experience them, it is conceptually problematic to claim the ability to reliably measure emotion through objective, standardized physiological signals.
Even language is an inexact method for describing emotional experience. Our words are metaphors for what we feel, rather than the feelings in themselves. Words contain multiple meanings that leave them open to different interpretations. They are socially constructed units of meaning that are nonetheless often understood differently even within the cultures from which they arise, with even more ambiguity arising out of cross-cultural interactions. However, in-depth qualitative articulations gathered through human conversation are the closest medium we have to emotion itself.
The goal of this research project is not to be definitive, but to provide a descriptive sample of the range and richness of human emotional experience, as expressed by people who themselves have had these emotions. It will include contradictions and uncertainties. However, it is my intention that, by the time of its completion, this project will provide an apt articulation of the idea that emotion is something much more profound than anything that can be calculated by any machine learning system.
Emotion is not material. Nonetheless, emotion is what matters.
Participants in this project will be interviewed, either in person or through videoconferencing software such as Zoom or Skype. The format of the interview will be open-ended and loosely-structured, focused on participants’ perceptions and experiences, so that questions will follow the content of what participants have to say, rather than following a set of predetermined questions. Interviews should last between 30 and 60 minutes, and will be recorded in audio format so that participants’ words can be used to represent their thoughts and feelings.
Participants will choose two or three emotions from a list provided here, or add another emotion to the list. Interviews will focus on stories of moments that provoked these emotions in participants’ own lives. If participants would like to be interviewed about additional emotions, that’s fine, but more than one interview appointment will need to be made to accommodate the extra material.
Participants will be selected through an informal networking process. Because the research is exploratory and descriptive, rather than scientific, no claim will be made that the material is representative of human emotional experience as a whole. There will be people who disagree with the descriptions of certain emotions, and others who disagree with the entire understanding of emotion upon which this research is based. That’s okay.
Because emotion is subjective, there isn’t any single correct way to define it, or to study it. Disagreement and doubt about what our feelings mean, after all, is one of the most consistent aspects of emotional interactions between people. A study of emotions that didn’t include uncertainty and conflict in its results would be missing something essential about what it feels like to be human.
Outcome and Terms of Participation
The stories and ideas gathered through these interviews will be made publicly available in audio format in podcast episodes, edited for clarity and conceptual coherence, and as text in a book on the topic of emotional granularity. While podcast episodes should begin to be released sometime in 2023, the book will take much longer to complete, becoming available later in 2024 at the earliest.
This research aims to be open, honest, and relatively transparent. However, explorations of emotion are bound to provoke some hard feelings now and then. The basic approach to the terms of participation in this research are simple: Participants will speak about their experiences, and what they say will be shared with the world. If you, as a participant, have concerns about the terms described below, get in touch, and let me know. We probably can work out an alternative arrangement.
Participation in interviews will be considered to constitute permission to use materials from interviews, in both audio and written format, attributed to participants by name.
You will have the right to review and approve all recordings and text transcriptions of your interview, upon request.
A conversation about this project can begin with an email sent to me at jonathanresearcher@gmail.com, or by sending me a message by clicking the button below.
