The document summarizes work presented at the 2011 International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO) on developing an Emotion Ontology. It discusses the need for an ontology to facilitate analysis and aggregation of disparate affective science data across research disciplines. It presents the ontological classification of emotions, occurrents, dispositions, personality traits and their relationships. Components of emotion like appraisal processes, physiological responses and behaviors are also defined.

1. ICBO, Buffalo, July 2011
Dispositions and Processes
in the Emotion Ontology
Janna Hastings 1,2
Werner Ceusters 3
Barry Smith 4
Kevin Mulligan 2
1 European Bioinformatics Institute, UK
2 Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland
3 Department of Psychiatry and Ontology Research Group,
University at Buffalo, NY, USA
4 Department of Philosophy and National Center for Ontological Research,
University at Buffalo, NY, USA

2. e·mo·tion
an intense mental state
a strong feeling
a (physical) moving, stirring, agitation
an affective state
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3. Affective science
The interdisciplinary study of:
 emotional functioning, regulation,
expression, and physiological markers
 affective disorders such as bipolar,
depression and schizoaffective disorder
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4. Ontologies facilitate analysis of
research results across disciplines
Complex statistical analyses depend on
principled aggregation of disparate data
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5. Clinical observations Physiological
monitoring
Questionnaires
Self-reports
Neuroimaging
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6. The Emotion Ontology
is a community-wide, shared
disambiguated
reference ontology
for the domain of affective science
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7. Communicating about emotions
Affect, feeling, emotion,
mood, passion, sentiment
Anger, astonishment, awe, bliss, despair, disgust,
embarrassment, fear, happiness, hate, joy, love,
pride, regret, resentment, satisfaction, scorn,
shame, sympathy, terror
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8. Ambiguity in emotion language
John is angry (right now)
John is angry with Mary
John is an angry person
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9. Emotion occurrent
An emotion occurrent is a processual emotion in
which a person participates over a specific time
period
A person undergoes or is the subject of the
emotion; he emotes
This terminology leaves open what the person
feels or is aware of
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10. Emotion disposition
An emotion disposition is a disposition
to undergo emotion occurrents
if the right circumstances obtain
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11. Emotional personality trait
An emotional personality trait is a stable
enduring characteristic of a person
which involves a predisposition (i.e. a
disposition which gives rise to an increased risk)
to undergo emotions of a particular sort, both
occurrents and dispositions.
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12. Basic Formal Ontology
and Mental Function Ontology
BFO:Entity
BFO
BFO:Continuant BFO:Occurrent MFO
BFO:Independent BFO:Dependent BFO:Process
Continuant Continuant
Bodily Process
Organism BFO:Disposition
Cognitive
Representation
BFO:Quality
Mental Functioning Mental Process
Related Anatomical
Structure Behaviour
inducing state Affective
Representation
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13. Emotions are componential processes
caused by appraisals
emotion =def
An episode of interrelated, synchronized changes
in the states of all or most of the five organismic
subsystems
in response to the evaluation of an external or
internal stimulus event as relevant to major
concerns of the organism
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14. Appraisal
(CNS) Mary’s I feel
behaviour ANGRY
hurt me
Subjective
feeling (CNS)
I want to
Action
tendencies PUNCH Behaviour (SNS)
(CNS) something
Physiological response
(CNS, NES, ANS)
An emotion occurrent is a mental process
that is a synchronized complex of constituent mental and physical
processes including an appraisal process as part, and which gives rise to
an action tendency. At least one appraisal precedes the other
components of the emotion, while it or others continue throughout the
emotion occurrent and guide the process.
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15. Processes
An appraisal process is a mental process that gives
rise to an appraisal
A physiological response to emotion process is a
bodily process which encompasses all the
neurophysiological changes caused by the emotion
An emotional behavioural process is the behaviour
of the organism in response to the emotion, which
includes the characteristic facial expressions for
particular emotion types
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16. Mental representations
An appraisal is a cognitive representation which
represents an evaluation of the relevance of
some triggering object or event to the organism
The subjective emotional feeling is an affective
representation, that is, a representation that
the organism has about its own affect
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17. Dispositions
Emotional action tendencies are dispositions to
behaviour which inhere in an organism
by virtue of the physical changes brought about
by an emotion process
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18. BFO:Entity BFO
MFO
BFO:Continuant BFO:Occurrent MFO-EM
BFO:Independent BFO:Dependent
Continuant Continuant BFO:Process
Organism BFO:Disposition Bodily Process
Physiological
Response to
Emotion Process
Mental Process
Cognitive
inheres_in
Representation
Appraisal
Process
Emotional Action
Tendencies Affective is_output_of
Representation Appraisal
Emotional
Behavioural Process
Subjective
Emotional Feeling
has_part
agent_of
Emotion Occurrent

19. Get involved!
emotion-ontology@googlegroups.com
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20. Acknowledgements
Thanks
Colin Batchelor (RSC), Damiano Costa (UNIGE)
Funding
Swiss National Science Foundation
(NCCR Affective Sciences)
US National Institutes of Health
(Roadmap Grant 1 U 54 HG004028)
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