Degree of abstraction rather than ambiguity is crucial for driving mentalizing involvement commentary on “A-EM: a neurocognitive model for understanding mixed and ambiguous emotions and morality”

ABSTRACT

Willems (this issue) proposes a neurocognitive model with a central role allotted to ambiguity in perceived morality and emotion in driving involvement of reflective/mentalizing processes. We argue that abstractness of representation has more explanatory power in this respect. We illustrate this with examples from the verbal and non-verbal domain showing a) concrete-ambiguous emotions processed through reflexive systems and b) abstract-unambiguous emotions processed through the mentalizing system, counter to MA-EM model predictions. However, due to the natural correlation between ambiguity and abstractness, both accounts will typically make convergent predictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Mentalizing
• MA-EM
• abstraction
• construal level
• ambiguity

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