Do momentary phenomena evoke mixed emotions?

Previous studies have revealed that meaningful endings cause people to experience mixed emotions. Endings are ubiquitous in various facets of our lives and can be categorised into personally meaningful (e.g., a graduation ceremony) and less personally meaningful experiences (e.g., falling flowers). However, it is unclear whether less personally meaningful endings evoke mixed emotions similar to meaningful endings. We hypothesised that awareness of endings is necessary to evoke mixed emotions irrespective of whether the endings are personally meaningful. As a less personally meaningful ending, we focused on momentary phenomena that occur in an instant. Such momentary phenomena are assumed to heighten the awareness of the ending because of their short duration, thereby intensifying mixed emotions. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis. The results of the studies indicated that momentary phenomena evoked mixed emotions, and momentary phenomena with high fragility heightened the awareness of the ending and elicited stronger mixed emotions than those with low levels of fragility. These findings suggest that both personally meaningful and less personally meaningful endings, such as ephemeral phenomena, evoke mixed emotions. This background is related to the possibility that the fragility inherent in momentary phenomena enhances the awareness of an ending.