MA-EM: A neurocognitive model for understanding mixed and ambiguous emotions and morality

Figures & data

Box 1. A taxonomy for mixed and ambiguous emotions and morality. Note that the boundaries between these categories are more fuzzy than the description in Box 1 suggests. Still the taxonomy can be helpful to use as a starting point and to use a common nomenclature across scientific disciplines.

	Definition	Example
Emotions
-Mixed	A mixture of emotions. Separate emotions are clear	Being happy and sad at the same time
-Ambiguous	Emotion is present, but content is unclear	‘Being moved’
Morality
-Mixed	Mix or clash between moral principles and behavior	A ‘good’ character doing something morally repulsive
-Ambiguous	Morality drives behavior, but moral content is unclear	A character behaving morally unexpectedly, moral driver is unclear

Figure 1. A simplified scheme of the relation between implicit simulation of emotional or moral content, and explicit, reflective comprehension of emotions and morality. Emotions pair most with simulation, whereas morality understanding relies mostly on mentalizing. However, emotions can be reflected upon, activating the mentalizing route, and morality can be perceived implicitly, activating the simulation route.

Figure 2. The MA-EM model for the observation of emotions and morality. The model predicts that emotions and moral intentions (‘morality’) are processed neurally by mapping onto a simulation route (left) and onto a mentalizing route (right). Separate predictions are made for unidimensional, mixed, and ambiguous emotions and morality. For the taxonomy see Box 1, for specific hypotheses see the text. The ‘+’ signs signal the predicted strength of an effect: the more ‘+,’ the stronger the hypothesized effect is.