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Machine learning methods provide powerful tools to map physical measurements to scientific categories. But are such methods suitable for discovering the ground truth about psychological categories? We use the science of emotion as a test case to explore this question. In studies of emotion, researchers use supervised classifiers, guided by emotion labels, to attempt to discover biomarkers in the brain or body for the corresponding emotion categories. This practice relies on the assumption that the labels refer to objective categories that can be discovered. Here, we critically examine this approach across three distinct datasets collected during emotional episodes-measuring the human brain, body, and subjective experience-and compare supervised classification solutions with those from unsupervised clustering in which no labels are assigned to the data. We conclude with a set of recommendations to guide researchers towards meaningful, data-driven discoveries in the science of emotion and beyond. ispartof: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS vol:10 issue:1 ispartof: location:England status: published

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Emotion research typically searches for consistency and specificity in physiological activity across instances of an emotion category, such as anger or fear, yet studies to date have observed more variation than expected. In the present study, we adopt an alternative approach, searching inductively for structure within variation, both within and across participants. Following a novel, physiologically-triggered experience sampling procedure, participants' self-reports and peripheral physiological activity were recorded when substantial changes in cardiac activity occurred in the absence of movement. Unsupervised clustering analyses revealed variability in the number and nature of patterns of physiological activity that recurred within individuals, as well as in the affect ratings and emotion labels associated with each pattern. There were also broad patterns that recurred across individuals. These findings support a constructionist account of emotion which, drawing on Darwin, proposes that emotion categories are populations of variable instances tied to situation-specific needs. ispartof: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS vol:10 issue:1 ispartof: location:England status: published

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.