Family resemblance-category structure of joy and shame

• Published in: Journal of clinical psychology Vol. 40; no. 5; pp. 1136 - 1143
• Main Authors: Burch, Jonathan W., Pishkin, Vladimir
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brandon Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company 01.09.1984; Wiley
• Subjects: Affectivity. Emotion; Biological and medical sciences; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Personality. Affectivity; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Human; Family environment; Similitude; Affect affectivity; Categorization; Shame
• ISSN: 0021-9762; 1097-4679
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-4679(198409)40:5<1136::AID-JCLP2270400503>3.0.CO;2-7

Examined the category structure of “joy” and “shame” emotions. In this study the organization of emotions into categories with a prototype structure based on family resemblances was proposed. Forty male introductory psychology students judged 56 slides of human faces (posed by other such students) as expressing either joy or shame and rated the degree of typicality of each face. Faces rated as more typical were recognized signicantly more quickly and accurately. Correlations between typicality and latency were also significant. More intense expressions of both emotion categories were rated as more typical of the category. A reliable instrument for future study of recognition of the two emotions was developed. The family resemblance‐prototype structure for emotion categories was supported.