Valence, Mixed Feelings, and Appraisal Processes

Affective episodes, including emotions, moods, urges, pleasures, and pains, mobilize organisms to deal with events that may be important to them (Dukes et al. 2021 ). These episodes are typically associated with either pleasant or unpleasant feelings. However, the richness of human experience cannot be reduced so easily. Indeed, a growing body of evidence shows that individuals report experiencing pleasant and unpleasant feelings simultaneously (for a meta-analysis of 63 studies, see Berrios et al. 2015 ). These experiences, commonly referred to as mixed feelings , have been relatively understudied and pose several challenges to emotion theories (Cacioppo and Berntson 1994 ; Larsen et al. 2001 ; Larsen and McGraw 2011 ; Massin 2014 ; Vaccaro 2024 ; Vaccaro et al. 2024 ).