Glossary // Glossary term Empirical
Autonomic nervous system
The part of the peripheral nervous system that regulates largely involuntary functions such as heart rate, breathing, sweating and digestion, through sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. Emotional episodes are accompanied by changes in autonomic activity, which is why measures such as heart rate variability and electrodermal activity appear in emotion research. Meta-analytic evidence indicates that autonomic patterns vary widely within emotion categories and do not form consistent, category-specific fingerprints. Allostasis and allostatic load, the cognitive control of emotion, the stress-buffering effects of social support and the use of music for mood regulation explain what a night of collective movement does for the body, and what it cannot change. Affective computing promises to infer emotion as if it were a system metric. The evidence on facial movements and autonomic signals, together with questions of consent, explains why every metric in this artifact is an artistic value. The works the definition rests on, with the level of evidence each was appraised at. (2010). Autonomic nervous system activity in emotion: A review. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.010 Reports considerable autonomic response specificity when emotion subtypes are considered. It is never cited as evidence against autonomic fingerprints; it is cited only as a partial counterpoint to Siegel et al. (2018), and claims citing both must say so. (2018). Emotion fingerprints or emotion populations? A meta-analytic investigation of autonomic features of emotion categories. doi:10.1037/bul0000128 Supports the claim that autonomic effect-size patterns did not clearly distinguish one emotion category from another and varied substantially within categories. Laboratory inductions; the interpretation favours one theory of emotion.Where the site uses it
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