Abstract
Human movement is influenced by emotions, yet their effect on proprioceptive behavior remains unclear. This study examined how emotions impact ankle joint proprioception during ipsilateral and contralateral target-matching tasks. Twenty participants performed ankle matching tasks under four conditions: no music, happy, sad, and neutral. Emotional states were assessed using a visual analog scale, and angle errors were recorded. On the dominant side, absolute errors during ipsilateral tasks were significantly smaller under sad emotion compared to no music (p = 0.029, d = - 0.48) and neutral conditions (p = 0.029, d = - 0.48). Conversely, errors increased under happy emotion compared to no music (p = 0.006, d = 0.91) and neutral (p = 0.01, d = 0.77). For the non-dominant side, sadness reduced variable errors in contralateral tasks (sad < no music, p = 0.020, d = - 0.87; sad < neutral, p = 0.020, d = - 0.56; sad < happy, p < 0.001, d = - 1.36). Overall, sadness improved JPS performance, stabilizing errors, while happiness generally impaired it. These findings suggest that emotional states distinctly influence proprioceptive accuracy and stability, offering new insights into the interplay between emotion and movement.