Effects of joy and sorrow on pulse-graph parameters in healthy female college students based on emotion-evoked experiments

•Joy can cause an increase in heart rate, while sorrow can lead to a decrease in heart rate.•Joy contributes to the extension of the rapid ejection phase of the left ventricle, and a shortening of the left ventricular diastole and the cardiac cycle.•Sorrow contributes to the extension of the left ventricular diastole.•Joy and sorrow influence pulse conditions through influencing qi flow in the human body.