A probabilistic map of emotional experiences during competitive social interactions

Theories of emotion and decision-making argue that negative, high arousing emotions—such as anger—motivate competitive social choice (e.g., punishing and defecting). However, given the long-standing challenge of quantifying emotion and the narrow framework in which emotion is traditionally examined, it remains unclear which emotions are actually associated with motivating these types of choices. To address this gap, we combine machine learning algorithms with a measure of affect that is agnostic to any specific emotion label. The result is a probabilistic map of emotion that is used to classify the specific emotions experienced by participants in a variety of social interactions (Ultimatum Game, Prisoner’s Dilemma, and Public Goods Game). Our results reveal that punitive and uncooperative choices are linked to a diverse array of negative, neutrally arousing emotions, such as sadness and disappointment, while only weakly linked to anger. These findings stand in contrast to the commonly held assumption that anger drives decisions to punish, defect, and freeride—thus, offering new insight into the role of emotion in motiving social choice.