Emotion State Coordinate Model

Definition

The emotion state coordinate model is a source-scoped way to describe a present state along three dimensions: alertness versus calmness, pleasant versus unpleasant valence, and attention directed inward toward bodily sensation versus outward toward the environment.

Current Synthesis

The model is useful because it decomposes a vague emotion label into observable questions. A person can ask how activated the body is, whether the state feels pleasant or unpleasant, and whether attention is dominated by internal sensation or external events. The first two dimensions overlap with the Mood Meter Emotional Check-In; the third adds the trainable distinction between interoception and exteroception.

The coordinates describe a state but do not settle its cause, meaning, or best response. Similar arousal and valence can arise from different emotions, circuits, bodily conditions, relationships, or tasks, and attention cannot always be shifted voluntarily. The model therefore functions as a check-in and regulation prompt rather than a diagnostic taxonomy.

Key Claims

• Arousal distinguishes more alert or activated states from calmer states without identifying a single underlying circuit.
• Valence distinguishes pleasant from unpleasant experience without treating pleasant as always useful or unpleasant as always harmful.
• Interoceptive versus exteroceptive attention describes where awareness is weighted, not an absolute switch that removes all awareness of the other domain.
• Deliberately noticing body contact, gut sensation, heartbeat, breathing, or an external object can reveal and practice attentional direction.
• Coordinates can improve emotional observation while remaining insufficient to determine cause, diagnosis, or intervention.

Evidence

• Three-axis framework - The Science of Emotions & Relationships organizes emotion through arousal, valence, and inward-versus-outward attention.
• Attention exercise - The Science of Emotions & Relationships guides attention across bodily sensations and a small external object while noting that inward awareness may persist during outward focus.
• Practical use - The Science of Emotions & Relationships presents the framework as a way to understand and regulate states rather than locate emotion in one brain area.

Counterevidence & Qualifications

The supplied episode summary does not provide validation, reliability, outcome data, or comparison with competing dimensional models. The axes may interact, and a three-coordinate description can omit context, language, learning history, culture, action tendency, clinical symptoms, and circuit specificity. Intense interoceptive focus can worsen distress for some people, so the exercise is not a universal treatment protocol.

What Changed

• Created a bounded three-axis framework that distinguishes state description from emotional cause, diagnosis, and treatment.

Related Concepts

• Mood Meter Emotional Check-In - two-axis pleasantness-and-energy tool nested within the broader coordinate model.
• Brain-Body Emotion Mapping - embodied measurement problem that prevents coordinates from becoming one-to-one physiological signatures.
• Arousal Circuit Specificity - qualification that similar activation can arise through different circuits.
• Emotion Regulation Toolkit / 情绪调节工具箱 - practical context in which observing state coordinates may support response choice.
• Interoceptive Brain-Body Communication - internal-sensing system represented by the inward-attention dimension.