Emoções

Emotions are dynamic processes that change over time.

Consequently, a full understanding of emotions can only be

reached when their temporal properties are examined

(Davidson 1998; Frijda 2007; Verduyn et al. 2009).

Moreover, research on emotion dynamics is important from

a clinical perspective, as disturbances in these dynamics

are symptomatic of mental disorders such as depression

(Siegle et al. 2002) and may lead to the development of

somatic diseases such as cardiovascular illness (Brosschot

et al. 2006).

One central temporal characteristic of emotions is the

duration of emotional experience, which has been defined

as the amount of time that elapses between the beginning

and end point of an emotional episode. The beginning of an

emotional episode can be identified rather easily because,

in contrast to moods, emotions start with the occurrence of

an external or internal event (Beedie et al. 2005). An

emotional episode ends when the intensity of the emotional

response returns to zero or to a baseline level, either for the

first time (i.e., uninterrupted activation, Verduyn et al.

2011), or permanently (i.e., full recovery spanning possible

interruptions, Frijda 2007).1

Irrespective of the duration conceptualization employed,

duration has been found to be highly variable, with emotions

lasting anywhere from a couple of seconds up to several

hours, or even longer (Frijda et al. 1991; Verduyn et al.

2009). Not all emotions are equal in this regard: some

emotions have been found to persist for a long time whereas

others tend to quickly fade away. In particular, whereas

sadness tends to last relatively long, shame, disgust, and fear

tend to be relatively short (Scherer and Wallbott 1994;

Verduyn et al. 2009a; Verduyn and Brans 2012).

However, previous studies on emotion duration have

only examined a limited number of emotions. A notable

exception is a study by Scherer and colleagues (Scherer