Skip to main content
Log in

The mental ingredients of bitterness

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In view of multimodal interfaces capable of a detailed representation of the User’s possible emotions, the paper analyses bitterness in terms of its mental ingredients, the beliefs and goals represented in the mind of a person when feeling an emotion. Bitterness is a negative emotion in between anger and sadness: like anger, it is caused by a sense of injustice, but also entails a sense of impotence which makes it similar to sadness. Often caused by betrayal, it comes from the disappointment of an expectation from oneself or anothers with whom one is affectively involved, or from a disproportion between commitment and actual results. The ingredients found in a pilot study were tested through qualitative analysis of a further questionnaire, which confirmed the ingredients hypothesized, further revealing the different nature of bitterness across ages and across types of work.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bolasco S, della Ratta-Rinaldi F (2004) Experiments on semantic categorisation of texts: analysis of positive and negative dimension. In: Purnelle G, Fairon C, Dister A (eds) Le poids des mots, Actes des 7es journées Internationales d’Analyse Statistique des Données Textuelles, UCL, Presses Universitaires de Louvain, pp 1–9

  2. Bolasco S, Morrone A, Baiocchi F (1999) A paradigmatic path for statistical content analysis using an integrated package of textual data treatment. In: Vichi M, Opitz O (eds) Classification and data analysis. Theory and application. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 237–246

    Google Scholar 

  3. Campbell S (1994) Being dismissed: the politics of emotional expression. Hypatia 9(3):46–65

    Google Scholar 

  4. Castelfranchi C (2000) Affective appraisal versus cognitive evaluation in social emotions and interactions. In: Paiva A (ed) Affective interactions. Springer, Berlin, pp 76–106.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. Castelfranchi C, Poggi I (1990) Blushing as a discourse: was Darwin wrong? In: Crozier R (ed) Shyness and embarrassment. Perspectives from social psychology. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 230–251

    Google Scholar 

  6. Conte R, Castelfranchi C (1995) Cognitive and social action. University College, London

    Google Scholar 

  7. Frijda NH (1986) The emotions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  8. Lebart L, Salem A (1988) Analyse statistique des données textuelles. Dunod, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  9. Lorini E, Castelfranchi C (2007) The cognitive structure of surprise: looking for basic principles. Topoi: Int Rev Philos 26:133–149

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. McFall L (1991) What’s wrong with bitterness? In: Card C (ed) Feminist ethics. University of Kansas Press, Lawrence

    Google Scholar 

  11. Miceli M, Castelfranchi C (2002) The mind and the future: the (negative) power of expectations. Theory Psychol 12:335–366

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Miceli M, Castelfranchi C (2007) The envious mind. Cognit Emot 21(3):449–479

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Paiva A, Aylett R, Marsella S (eds) (2004) Empathic agents. In: AAMAS workshop, New York

  14. Rizzi R (ed) (2007) Itinerari del rancore. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino

    Google Scholar 

  15. Scherer KR (1984) On the nature and function of emotion: a component approach. In: Scherer KR, Ekman P (eds) Approaches to emotion. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, pp 293–317

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Francesca D’Errico.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Poggi, I., D’Errico, F. The mental ingredients of bitterness. J Multimodal User Interfaces 3, 79–86 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-009-0021-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12193-009-0021-9

Navigation