Exploring the strength of association between the components of emotion syndromes: The case of surprise

A new experimental paradigm involving a computerised quiz was used to exami ne, on an intra-individual level, the strength of association between four components of the surprise syndrome: cognitive (degree of prospectively est imated unexpectedness), experiential (the feeling of surprise), behavioural (degree of response delay on a parallel task), and expressive (the facial expression of surprise). It is argued that this paradigm, together with ass ociated methods of data analysis, effectively controls for most method fact ors that could in previous studies have lowered the correlations among the components of emotion syndromes. It was found that (a) the components of th e surprise syndrome were all positively correlated; (b) strong association existed only between the cognitive and the experiential component of surpri se; (c) the coherence between syndrome components did not increase with inc reasing intensity of surprise; and (d) there was also only moderate coheren ce between the components of the facial expression of surprise (eyebrow rai sing, eye widening, mouth opening), although in this case, coherence tended to increase with intensity. Taken together, the findings support only a we akly probabilistic version of a behavioural syndrome view of surprise. Howe ver, the component correlations seem strong enough to support the existence of strong associations among a subset of the mental or central neurophysio logical processes engaged in surprise.