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Sample records for strong emotion intensity

  1. Neural processing of emotional-intensity predicts emotion regulation choice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafir, Roni; Thiruchselvam, Ravi; Suri, Gaurav; Gross, James J; Sheppes, Gal

    2016-12-01

    Emotional-intensity is a core characteristic of affective events that strongly determines how individuals choose to regulate their emotions. Our conceptual framework suggests that in high emotional-intensity situations, individuals prefer to disengage attention using distraction, which can more effectively block highly potent emotional information, as compared with engagement reappraisal, which is preferred in low emotional-intensity. However, existing supporting evidence remains indirect because prior intensity categorization of emotional stimuli was based on subjective measures that are potentially biased and only represent the endpoint of emotional-intensity processing. Accordingly, this study provides the first direct evidence for the role of online emotional-intensity processing in predicting behavioral regulatory-choices. Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials, we evaluated online neural processing of stimuli's emotional-intensity (late positive potential, LPP) prior to regulatory-choices between distraction and reappraisal. Results showed that enhanced neural processing of intensity (enhanced LPP amplitudes) uniquely predicted (above subjective measures of intensity) increased tendency to subsequently choose distraction over reappraisal. Additionally, regulatory-choices led to adaptive consequences, demonstrated in finding that actual implementation of distraction relative to reappraisal-choice resulted in stronger attenuation of LPPs and self-reported arousal. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  2. Forgetting feelings: Opposite biases in reports of the intensity of past emotion and mood.

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    Kaplan, Robin L; Levine, Linda J; Lench, Heather C; Safer, Martin A

    2016-04-01

    Memory for feelings is subject to fading and bias over time. In 2 studies, the authors examined whether the magnitude and direction of bias depend on the type of feeling being recalled: emotion or mood. A few days after the U.S. Presidential elections in 2008 and 2012, participants reported how they felt about the election outcome (emotion) and how they felt in general (mood). A month after the elections, participants recalled their feelings. The intensity of past emotion was recalled more accurately than the intensity of past mood. Participants underestimated the intensity of emotion but overestimated the intensity of mood. Participants' appraisals of the importance of the election, which diminished over time, contributed to underestimating the intensity of emotion. In contrast, participants' strong emotional response to the election contributed to overestimating the intensity of mood. These opposing biases have important implications for decision making and clinical assessment. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Memories of social interactions: age differences in emotional intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Charles, Susan Turk; Piazza, Jennifer R

    2007-06-01

    The current study examined age differences in the intensity of emotions experienced during social interactions. Because emotions are felt most intensely in situations central to motivational goals, age differences in emotional intensity may exist in social situations that meet the goals for one age group more than the other. Guided by theories of emotional intensity and socioemotional selectivity, it was hypothesized that social partner type would elicit different affective responses by age. Younger (n = 71) and older (n = 71) adults recalled experiences of positive and negative emotions with new friends, established friends, and family members from the prior week. Compared with younger adults, older adults reported lower intensity positive emotions with new friends, similarly intense positive emotions with established friends, and higher intensity positive emotions with family members. Older adults reported lower intensity negative emotions for all social partners than did younger adults, but this difference was most pronounced for interactions with new friends. ((c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved).

  4. Immediacy Bias in Emotion Perception: Current Emotions Seem More Intense than Previous Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Boven, Leaf; White, Katherine; Huber, Michaela

    2009-01-01

    People tend to perceive immediate emotions as more intense than previous emotions. This "immediacy bias" in emotion perception occurred for exposure to emotional but not neutral stimuli (Study 1), when emotional stimuli were separated by both shorter (2 s; Studies 1 and 2) and longer (20 min; Studies 3, 4, and 5) delays, and for emotional…

  5. Emotional exhaustion and defense mechanisms in intensive therapy unit nurses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Regan, Anna; Howard, Ruth A; Oyebode, Jan R

    2009-05-01

    Contrary to its original conceptualization, research has found that emotional demands do not lead to burnout in nurses. According to psychoanalytic theory, unconscious defense mechanisms may protect nurses from conscious awareness of work-related anxiety. This prevents self-report and may explain research findings. The maturity of defense style influences how anxiety is managed. Immature defenses prevent the conscious processing necessary for resolution of anxiety. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the use of immature defenses will lead to emotional exhaustion. This cross-sectional study used questionnaires to explore the defense mechanisms of 87 Intensive Therapy Unit nurses. Although the sample endorsed a predominantly mature defense style, the use of immature defenses predicted emotional exhaustion. Also, lower levels of reported stress associated with emotional demands predicted emotional exhaustion. Although this strongly implies the mediating role of immature defense mechanisms, the results were not statistically significant.

  6. The accuracy of intensity ratings of emotions from facial expressions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kostić Aleksandra P.

    2003-01-01

    Full Text Available The results of a study on the accuracy of intensity ratings of emotion from facial expressions are reported. The so far research into the field has shown that spontaneous facial expressions of basic emotions are a reliable source of information about the category of emotion. The question is raised of whether this can be true for the intensity of emotion as well and whether the accuracy of intensity ratings is dependent on the observer’s sex and vocational orientation. A total of 228 observers of both sexes and of various vocational orientations rated the emotional intensity of presented facial expressions on a scale-range from 0 to 8. The results have supported the hypothesis that spontaneous facial expressions of basic emotions do provide sufficient information about emotional intensity. The hypothesis on the interdependence between the accuracy of intensity ratings of emotion and the observer’s sex and vocational orientation has not been confirmed. However, the accuracy of intensity rating has been proved to vary with the category of the emotion presented.

  7. Age and the experience of strong self-conscious emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Henry, Julie D; von Hippel, William; Nangle, Matthew R; Waters, Michele

    2018-04-01

    It remains unclear whether there are age-related changes in the experience of strong self-conscious emotion, such as shame, guilt, pride and embarrassment. Because shame and guilt figure prominently in the aetiology of depressive symptoms and other mental health problems, a better understanding of how age affects the strong experience of these two negative self-conscious emotions is of particular importance. Thirty younger, 30 middle-aged and 30 older adults were compared on standardised cognitive assessments, in addition to an interview-based measure that assessed whether there are age differences in the likelihood of strongly experiencing four different types of self-conscious emotion within the past five years (shame, guilt, embarrassment and pride). The three groups did not differ in their likelihood of reporting an event that strongly elicited the positive self-conscious emotion of pride. However, older adults were more likely to report sources of pride that were other (as opposed to self) focused. Older adults were also less likely to report experiencing events that elicited all three negative self-conscious emotions, in particular, shame. Strong negative self-conscious emotion, and in particular shame, appears to be experienced less by older than younger adults.

  8. Real-time Physiological Emotion Detection Mechanisms: Effects of Exercise and Affect Intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leon, E; Clarke, G; Sepulveda, F; Callaghan, V

    2005-01-01

    The development of systems capable of recognizing and categorising emotions is of interest to researchers in various scientific areas including artificial intelligence. The traditional notion that emotions and rationality are two separate realms has gradually been challenged. The work of neurologists has shown the strong relationship between emotional episodes and the way humans think and act. Furthermore, emotions not only regulate human decisions but could also contribute to a more satisfactory response to the environment, i.e., faster and more precise actions. In this paper an analysis of physiological signals employed in real-time emotion detection is presented in the context of Intelligent Inhabited Environments (IIE). Two studies were performed to investigate whether physical exertion has a significant effect on bodily signals stemming from emotional episodes with subjects having various degrees of affect intensity: 1) a statistical analysis using the Wilcoxon Test, and 2) a cluster analysis using the Davies-Bouldin Index. Preliminary results demonstrated that the heart rate and skin resistance consistently showed similar changes regardless of the physical stimuli while blood volume pressure did not show a significant change. It was also found that neither physical stress nor affect intensity played a role in the separation of neutral and non-neutral emotional states.

  9. Social anxiety and emotion regulation flexibility: considering emotion intensity and type as contextual factors.

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    O'Toole, Mia S; Zachariae, Robert; Mennin, Douglas S

    2017-11-01

    Individuals with social anxiety disorder have often been considered inflexible in their emotion regulation. The aim of this study was to investigate emotion regulation flexibility in socially anxious individuals in response to two contextual factors, namely different levels of emotion intensity and emotion type. A daily diary approach was employed, investigating emotion regulation (i.e., experiential avoidance, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal) in college students scoring high (N = 62; HSA) and low (N = 52; LSA) on social anxiety. Results revealed that HSAs were found to use more experiential avoidance than LSAs, especially at higher levels of negative intensity. The use of this emotion regulation strategy appeared to be driven by guilt, nervousness, and sadness. There were no between-group differences concerning the other strategies in response to varying levels of emotional intensity. Together, the results provide evidence for inflexible emotion regulation in HSAs, reflected in an unwillingness to experience negative emotions.

  10. Emotional Intensity Modulates the Integration of Bimodal Angry Expressions: ERP Evidence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhihui Pan

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Integration of information from face and voice plays a central role in social interactions. The present study investigated the modulation of emotional intensity on the integration of facial-vocal emotional cues by recording EEG for participants while they were performing emotion identification task on facial, vocal, and bimodal angry expressions varying in emotional intensity. Behavioral results showed the rates of anger and reaction speed increased as emotional intensity across modalities. Critically, the P2 amplitudes were larger for bimodal expressions than for the sum of facial and vocal expressions for low emotional intensity stimuli, but not for middle and high emotional intensity stimuli. These findings suggested that emotional intensity modulates the integration of facial-vocal angry expressions, following the principle of Inverse Effectiveness (IE in multimodal sensory integration.

  11. The determinants of subjective emotional intensity.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Frijda, N.H.; Sonnemans, J.

    1995-01-01

    Tested the hypothesis that emotional intensity is determined jointly by variables from the following 4 classes: concerns (strength and relevance), appraisal, regulation, and individual response propensities. For 6 wks, 37 college students reported an emotion every week and answered questions on a

  12. Strongly intensive quantities

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gorenstein, M. I.; Gazdzicki, M.

    2011-01-01

    Analysis of fluctuations of hadron production properties in collisions of relativistic particles profits from use of measurable intensive quantities which are independent of system size variations. The first family of such quantities was proposed in 1992; another is introduced in this paper. Furthermore we present a proof of independence of volume fluctuations for quantities from both families within the framework of the grand canonical ensemble. These quantities are referred to as strongly intensive ones. Influence of conservation laws and resonance decays is also discussed.

  13. How We Remember the Emotional Intensity of Past Musical Experiences

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    Thomas eSchäfer

    2014-08-01

    Full Text Available Listening to music usually elicits emotions that can vary considerably in their intensity over the course of listening. Yet, after listening to a piece of music, people are easily able to evaluate the music’s overall emotional intensity. There are two different hypotheses about how affective experiences are temporally processed and integrated: (1 all moments’ intensities are integrated, resulting in an averaged value; (2 the overall evaluation is built from specific single moments, such as the moments of highest emotional intensity (peaks, the end, or a combination of these. Here we investigated what listeners do when building an overall evaluation of a musical experience. Participants listened to unknown songs and provided moment-to-moment ratings of experienced intensity of emotions. Subsequently, they evaluated the overall emotional intensity of each song. Results indicate that participants’ evaluations were predominantly influenced by their average impression but that, in addition, the peaks and end emotional intensities contributed substantially. These results indicate that both types of processes play a role: All moments are integrated into an averaged value but single moments might be assigned a higher value in the calculation of this average.

  14. Emotional processing in patients with mild cognitive impairment: the influence of the valence and intensity of emotional stimuli: the valence and intensity of emotional stimuli influence emotional processing in patients with mild cognitive impairment.

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    Sarabia-Cobo, Carmen M; García-Rodríguez, Beatriz; Navas, M José; Ellgring, Heiner

    2015-10-15

    We studied the ability of individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to process emotional facial expressions (EFEs). To date, no systematic study has addressed how variation in intensity affects recognition of the different type of EFEs in such subjects. Two groups of 50 elderly subjects, 50 healthy individuals and 50 with MCI, completed a task that involved identifying 180 EFEs prepared using virtual models. Two features of the EFEs were contemplated, their valence (operationalized in six basic emotions) and five levels of intensity. At all levels of intensity, elderly individuals with MCI were significantly worse at identifying each EFE than healthy subjects. Some emotions were easier to identify than others, with happiness proving to be the easiest to identify and disgust the hardest, and intensity influenced the identification of the EFEs (the stronger the intensity, the greater the number of correct identifications). Overall, elderly individuals with MCI had a poorer capacity to process EFEs, suggesting that cognitive ability modulates the processing of emotions, where features of such stimuli also seem to play a prominent role (e.g., valence and intensity). Thus, the neurological substrates involved in emotional processing appear to be affected by MCI. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. The need to nurse the nurse: emotional labor in neonatal intensive care.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cricco-Lizza, Roberta

    2014-05-01

    In this 14-month ethnographic study, I examined the emotional labor and coping strategies of 114, level-4, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurses. Emotional labor was an underrecognized component in the care of vulnerable infants and families. The nature of this labor was contextualized within complex personal, professional, and organizational layers of demand on the emotions of NICU nurses. Coping strategies included talking with the sisterhood of nurses, being a super nurse, using social talk and humor, taking breaks, offering flexible aid, withdrawing from emotional pain, transferring out of the NICU, attending memorial services, and reframing loss to find meaning in work. The organization had strong staffing, but emotional labor was not recognized, supported, or rewarded. The findings can contribute to the development of interventions to nurse the nurse, and to ultimately facilitate NICU nurses' nurturance of stressed families. These have implications for staff retention, job satisfaction, and delivery of care.

  16. The dynamic functional capacity theory: A neuropsychological model of intense emotions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Philip C. Klineburger

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The music-evoked emotion literature implicates many brain regions involved in emotional processing but is currently lacking a model that specifically explains how they temporally and dynamically interact to produce intensely pleasurable emotions. A conceptual model, the dynamic functional capacity theory (DFCT, is proposed and provides a foundation for the further understanding of how brain regions interact to produce intensely pleasurable emotions. The DFCT claims that brain regions mediating emotion and arousal regulation have a limited functional capacity that can be exceeded by intense stimuli. The prefrontal cortex is hypothesized to abruptly deactivate when this happens, resulting in the inhibitory release of sensory cortices, the limbic system, the reward-circuit, and the brainstem reticular activating system, causing “unbridled” activation of these areas. This process is hypothesized to produce extremely intense emotions. This theory may provide—music-evoked emotion researchers and music therapy researchers—a theoretical foundation for continued research and complement current theories of emotion.

  17. The relation between rumination and temporal features of emotion intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Résibois, Maxime; Kalokerinos, Elise K; Verleysen, Gregory; Kuppens, Peter; Van Mechelen, Iven; Fossati, Philippe; Verduyn, Philippe

    2018-03-01

    Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time have been found to differ primarily in explosiveness (i.e. whether the profile has a steep vs. a gentle start) and accumulation (i.e. whether intensity increases over time vs. goes back to baseline). However, the determinants of these temporal features remain poorly understood. In two studies, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies are predictive of the degree of explosiveness and accumulation of negative emotional episodes. Participants were asked to draw profiles reflecting changes in the intensity of emotions elicited either by negative social feedback in the lab (Study 1) or by negative events in daily life (Study 2). In addition, trait (Study 1 & 2), and state (Study 2) usage of a set of emotion regulation strategies was assessed. Multilevel analyses revealed that trait rumination (especially the brooding component) was positively associated with emotion accumulation (Study 1 & 2). State rumination was also positively associated with emotion accumulation and, to a lesser extent, with emotion explosiveness (Study 2). These results provide support for emotion regulation theories, which hypothesise that rumination is a central mechanism underlying the maintenance of negative emotions.

  18. The Contribution of Sound Intensity in Vocal Emotion Perception: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

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    Chen, Xuhai; Yang, Jianfeng; Gan, Shuzhen; Yang, Yufang

    2012-01-01

    Although its role is frequently stressed in acoustic profile for vocal emotion, sound intensity is frequently regarded as a control parameter in neurocognitive studies of vocal emotion, leaving its role and neural underpinnings unclear. To investigate these issues, we asked participants to rate the angry level of neutral and angry prosodies before and after sound intensity modification in Experiment 1, and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) for mismatching emotional prosodies with and without sound intensity modification and for matching emotional prosodies while participants performed emotional feature or sound intensity congruity judgment in Experiment 2. It was found that sound intensity modification had significant effect on the rating of angry level for angry prosodies, but not for neutral ones. Moreover, mismatching emotional prosodies, relative to matching ones, induced enhanced N2/P3 complex and theta band synchronization irrespective of sound intensity modification and task demands. However, mismatching emotional prosodies with reduced sound intensity showed prolonged peak latency and decreased amplitude in N2/P3 complex and smaller theta band synchronization. These findings suggest that though it cannot categorically affect emotionality conveyed in emotional prosodies, sound intensity contributes to emotional significance quantitatively, implying that sound intensity should not simply be taken as a control parameter and its unique role needs to be specified in vocal emotion studies. PMID:22291928

  19. The contribution of sound intensity in vocal emotion perception: behavioral and electrophysiological evidence.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xuhai Chen

    Full Text Available Although its role is frequently stressed in acoustic profile for vocal emotion, sound intensity is frequently regarded as a control parameter in neurocognitive studies of vocal emotion, leaving its role and neural underpinnings unclear. To investigate these issues, we asked participants to rate the angry level of neutral and angry prosodies before and after sound intensity modification in Experiment 1, and recorded electroencephalogram (EEG for mismatching emotional prosodies with and without sound intensity modification and for matching emotional prosodies while participants performed emotional feature or sound intensity congruity judgment in Experiment 2. It was found that sound intensity modification had significant effect on the rating of angry level for angry prosodies, but not for neutral ones. Moreover, mismatching emotional prosodies, relative to matching ones, induced enhanced N2/P3 complex and theta band synchronization irrespective of sound intensity modification and task demands. However, mismatching emotional prosodies with reduced sound intensity showed prolonged peak latency and decreased amplitude in N2/P3 complex and smaller theta band synchronization. These findings suggest that though it cannot categorically affect emotionality conveyed in emotional prosodies, sound intensity contributes to emotional significance quantitatively, implying that sound intensity should not simply be taken as a control parameter and its unique role needs to be specified in vocal emotion studies.

  20. Physicians Experiencing Intense Emotions While Seeing Their Patients: What Happens?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Silva, Joana Vilela Da; Carvalho, Irene

    2016-01-01

    Physicians often deal with emotions arising from both patients and themselves; however, management of intense emotions when they arise in the presence of patients is overlooked in research. The aim of this study is to inspect physicians' intense emotions in this context, how these emotions are displayed, coping strategies used, adjustment behaviors, and the impact of the emotional reactions on the physician-patient relationship. A total of 127 physicians completed a self-report survey, built from a literature review. Participants were recruited in 3 different ways: through a snowball sampling procedure, via institutional e-mails, and in person during service meetings. Fifty-two physicians (43.0%) reported experiencing intense emotions frequently. Although most physicians (88.6%) tried to control their reactions, several reported not controlling themselves. Coping strategies to deal with the emotion at the moment included behavioral and cognitive approaches. Only the type of reaction (but not the emotion's valence, duration, relative control, or coping strategies used) seemed to affect the physician-patient relationship. Choking-up/crying, touching, smiling, and providing support were significantly associated with an immediate positive impact. Withdrawing from the situation, imposing, and defending oneself were associated with a negative impact. Some reactions also had an extended impact into future interactions. Experiencing intense emotions in the presence of patients was frequent among physicians, and the type of reaction affected the clinical relationship. Because many physicians reported experiencing long-lasting emotions, these may have important clinical implications for patients visiting physicians while these emotions last. Further studies are needed to clarify these results.

  1. Emotional Intensity and Emotion Regulation in Response to Autobiographical Memories During Dysphoria

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    del Palacio Gonzalez, Adriana; Berntsen, Dorthe; Watson, Lynn Ann

    2017-01-01

    Retrieving personal memories may provoke different emotions and a need for emotion regulation. Emotional responses have been studied scarcely in relation to autobiographical memory retrieval. We examined the emotional response to everyday involuntary (spontaneously arising) and voluntary...... (strategically retrieved) memories, and how this response may be different during dysphoria. Participants (20 dysphoric and 23 non-depressed) completed a structured diary where the intensity of basic emotions and regulation strategies employed upon retrieval of memories were rated. Brooding, memory suppression......, and emotional suppression were higher for all individuals’ involuntary memories than voluntary memories. Negative emotions and regulation strategies were greater for dysphoric individuals for both involuntary and voluntary memories after controlling for the valence of the remembered events. The results provide...

  2. Emotional Intelligence in Intensive Clinical Experiences for Nursing Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zoromski, Lorraine M.

    2017-01-01

    This study looked for associations between measures of emotional intelligence in an intensive clinical experience for nursing students in their final semester of an associate's degree program. The theory of emotional labor was used to make connections between nursing clinical experience and emotional intelligence. Twenty nursing students from a…

  3. Expression intensity, gender and facial emotion recognition: Women recognize only subtle facial emotions better than men.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoffmann, Holger; Kessler, Henrik; Eppel, Tobias; Rukavina, Stefanie; Traue, Harald C

    2010-11-01

    Two experiments were conducted in order to investigate the effect of expression intensity on gender differences in the recognition of facial emotions. The first experiment compared recognition accuracy between female and male participants when emotional faces were shown with full-blown (100% emotional content) or subtle expressiveness (50%). In a second experiment more finely grained analyses were applied in order to measure recognition accuracy as a function of expression intensity (40%-100%). The results show that although women were more accurate than men in recognizing subtle facial displays of emotion, there was no difference between male and female participants when recognizing highly expressive stimuli. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Intensity of primary emotions in patients after implantation of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Stoier, Louise; Pedersen, Preben Ulrich; Berg, Selina Kikkenborg

    2013-01-01

    Background: Experienced emotions can affect the outcome of, and adherence to a cardiac rehabilitation program, and patients coping with an illness. With more awareness of the expressed emotions, health professionals might be better able to understand the reactions of patients and to improve...... the support needed for coping. Living with an Implantable Cardi- overter Defibrillator can lead to anxiety and depression. Focus on the intensity of the primary emotions might be a potential to prevent development of these psychological states. Objectives: The aim of this paper are 1) to describe...... the intensity of primary emotions in patients after implantation of an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator and 2) to compare them with both the intensity of primary emotions in patients with a recent Myocardial Infarction and with a healthy population. Method: The intensity of primary emotions in patients...

  5. Alexithymia, affect intensity and emotional range in suicidal patients.

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    Iancu, I; Horesh, N; Offer, D; Dannon, P N; Lepkifker, E; Kotler, M

    1999-01-01

    Although negative affect in general has been widely associated with suicide, the role of specific emotions and affect features in depression and suicidality is unclear. This study examined the potential of three major components of the affect structure as predictors of suicidal behavior. Twenty suicidal depressed (SD) inpatients were compared with 20 nonsuicidal depressed (NSD) inpatients and 20 healthy controls for alexithymia, emotional range (ER; i.e. variety of emotions experienced by the subjects) and affect intensity (AI; i.e. the intensity of their emotional responsiveness). Both the SD and the NSD patients had a narrower range of emotions, a stronger AI and a higher degree of alexithymia than did the healthy controls. No differences were found between the scores of the two inpatients groups. The three affect components examined (alexithymia, AI and ER) did not prove to represent sensitive predictors of suicidal behavior. Hopelessness and depression severity were found to be more reliable in the prediction of suicidal risk. We discuss the implications of this study, particularly the possibility of early detection and intervention in patients at risk.

  6. Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence: A test of the emotion sensitivity hypothesis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fischer, Agneta H; Kret, Mariska E; Broekens, Joost

    2018-01-01

    Previous meta-analyses and reviews on gender differences in emotion recognition have shown a small to moderate female advantage. However, inconsistent evidence from recent studies has raised questions regarding the implications of different methodologies, stimuli, and samples. In the present research based on a community sample of more than 5000 participants, we tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis, stating that women are more sensitive to perceive subtle, i.e. low intense or ambiguous, emotion cues. In addition, we included a self-report emotional intelligence test in order to examine any discrepancy between self-perceptions and actual performance for both men and women. We used a wide range of stimuli and models, displaying six different emotions at two different intensity levels. In order to better tap sensitivity for subtle emotion cues, we did not use a forced choice format, but rather intensity measures of different emotions. We found no support for the emotional sensitivity account, as both genders rated the target emotions as similarly intense at both levels of stimulus intensity. Men, however, more strongly perceived non-target emotions to be present than women. In addition, we also found that the lower scores of men in self-reported EI was not related to their actual perception of target emotions, but it was to the perception of non-target emotions.

  7. Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence: A test of the emotion sensitivity hypothesis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kret, Mariska E.; Broekens, Joost

    2018-01-01

    Previous meta-analyses and reviews on gender differences in emotion recognition have shown a small to moderate female advantage. However, inconsistent evidence from recent studies has raised questions regarding the implications of different methodologies, stimuli, and samples. In the present research based on a community sample of more than 5000 participants, we tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis, stating that women are more sensitive to perceive subtle, i.e. low intense or ambiguous, emotion cues. In addition, we included a self-report emotional intelligence test in order to examine any discrepancy between self-perceptions and actual performance for both men and women. We used a wide range of stimuli and models, displaying six different emotions at two different intensity levels. In order to better tap sensitivity for subtle emotion cues, we did not use a forced choice format, but rather intensity measures of different emotions. We found no support for the emotional sensitivity account, as both genders rated the target emotions as similarly intense at both levels of stimulus intensity. Men, however, more strongly perceived non-target emotions to be present than women. In addition, we also found that the lower scores of men in self-reported EI was not related to their actual perception of target emotions, but it was to the perception of non-target emotions. PMID:29370198

  8. Sex differences in facial emotion recognition across varying expression intensity levels from videos.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wingenbach, Tanja S H; Ashwin, Chris; Brosnan, Mark

    2018-01-01

    There has been much research on sex differences in the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions, with results generally showing a female advantage in reading emotional expressions from the face. However, most of the research to date has used static images and/or 'extreme' examples of facial expressions. Therefore, little is known about how expression intensity and dynamic stimuli might affect the commonly reported female advantage in facial emotion recognition. The current study investigated sex differences in accuracy of response (Hu; unbiased hit rates) and response latencies for emotion recognition using short video stimuli (1sec) of 10 different facial emotion expressions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness, contempt, pride, embarrassment, neutral) across three variations in the intensity of the emotional expression (low, intermediate, high) in an adolescent and adult sample (N = 111; 51 male, 60 female) aged between 16 and 45 (M = 22.2, SD = 5.7). Overall, females showed more accurate facial emotion recognition compared to males and were faster in correctly recognising facial emotions. The female advantage in reading expressions from the faces of others was unaffected by expression intensity levels and emotion categories used in the study. The effects were specific to recognition of emotions, as males and females did not differ in the recognition of neutral faces. Together, the results showed a robust sex difference favouring females in facial emotion recognition using video stimuli of a wide range of emotions and expression intensity variations.

  9. Sex differences in facial emotion recognition across varying expression intensity levels from videos

    Science.gov (United States)

    2018-01-01

    There has been much research on sex differences in the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions, with results generally showing a female advantage in reading emotional expressions from the face. However, most of the research to date has used static images and/or ‘extreme’ examples of facial expressions. Therefore, little is known about how expression intensity and dynamic stimuli might affect the commonly reported female advantage in facial emotion recognition. The current study investigated sex differences in accuracy of response (Hu; unbiased hit rates) and response latencies for emotion recognition using short video stimuli (1sec) of 10 different facial emotion expressions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness, contempt, pride, embarrassment, neutral) across three variations in the intensity of the emotional expression (low, intermediate, high) in an adolescent and adult sample (N = 111; 51 male, 60 female) aged between 16 and 45 (M = 22.2, SD = 5.7). Overall, females showed more accurate facial emotion recognition compared to males and were faster in correctly recognising facial emotions. The female advantage in reading expressions from the faces of others was unaffected by expression intensity levels and emotion categories used in the study. The effects were specific to recognition of emotions, as males and females did not differ in the recognition of neutral faces. Together, the results showed a robust sex difference favouring females in facial emotion recognition using video stimuli of a wide range of emotions and expression intensity variations. PMID:29293674

  10. Sex differences in facial emotion recognition across varying expression intensity levels from videos.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tanja S H Wingenbach

    Full Text Available There has been much research on sex differences in the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotions, with results generally showing a female advantage in reading emotional expressions from the face. However, most of the research to date has used static images and/or 'extreme' examples of facial expressions. Therefore, little is known about how expression intensity and dynamic stimuli might affect the commonly reported female advantage in facial emotion recognition. The current study investigated sex differences in accuracy of response (Hu; unbiased hit rates and response latencies for emotion recognition using short video stimuli (1sec of 10 different facial emotion expressions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happiness, contempt, pride, embarrassment, neutral across three variations in the intensity of the emotional expression (low, intermediate, high in an adolescent and adult sample (N = 111; 51 male, 60 female aged between 16 and 45 (M = 22.2, SD = 5.7. Overall, females showed more accurate facial emotion recognition compared to males and were faster in correctly recognising facial emotions. The female advantage in reading expressions from the faces of others was unaffected by expression intensity levels and emotion categories used in the study. The effects were specific to recognition of emotions, as males and females did not differ in the recognition of neutral faces. Together, the results showed a robust sex difference favouring females in facial emotion recognition using video stimuli of a wide range of emotions and expression intensity variations.

  11. Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set--Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV: A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tanja S H Wingenbach

    Full Text Available Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV. A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu hit rates were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the

  12. Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set--Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV): A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions.

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    Wingenbach, Tanja S H; Ashwin, Chris; Brosnan, Mark

    2016-01-01

    Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex) expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV). A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female) completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride) that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu) hit rates) were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the corresponding author.

  13. Brain c-fos expression patterns induced by emotional stressors differing in nature and intensity.

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    Úbeda-Contreras, Jesús; Marín-Blasco, Ignacio; Nadal, Roser; Armario, Antonio

    2018-06-01

    Regardless of its particular nature, emotional stressors appear to elicit a widespread and roughly similar brain activation pattern as evaluated by c-fos expression. However, their behavioral and physiological consequences may strongly differ. Here we addressed in adult male rats the contribution of the intensity and the particular nature of stressors by comparing, in a set of brain areas, the number of c-fos expressing neurons in response to open-field, cat odor or immobilization on boards (IMO). These are qualitatively different stressors that are known to differ in terms of intensity, as evaluated by biological markers. In the present study, plasma levels of the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) demonstrated that intensity increases in the following order: open-field, cat odor and IMO. Four different c-fos activation patterns emerged among all areas studied: (i) positive relationship with intensity (posterior-dorsal medial amygdala, dorsomedial hypothalamus, lateral septum ventral and paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus), (ii) negative relationship with intensity (cingulate cortex 1, posterior insular cortex, dorsal striatum, nucleus accumbens and some subdivisions of the hippocampal formation); (iii) activation not dependent on the intensity of the stressor (prelimbic and infralimbic cortex and lateral and basolateral amygdala); and (iv) activation specifically associated with cat odor (ventromedial amygdala and ventromedial hypothalamus). Histone 3 phosphorylation at serine 10, another neuronal activation marker, corroborated c-fos results. Summarizing, deepest analysis of the brain activation pattern elicit by emotional stressor indicated that, in spite of activating similar areas, each stressor possess their own brain activation signature, mediated mainly by qualitative aspects but also by intensity.

  14. Validation of the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set – Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV): A Set of Videos Expressing Low, Intermediate, and High Intensity Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wingenbach, Tanja S. H.

    2016-01-01

    Most of the existing sets of facial expressions of emotion contain static photographs. While increasing demand for stimuli with enhanced ecological validity in facial emotion recognition research has led to the development of video stimuli, these typically involve full-blown (apex) expressions. However, variations of intensity in emotional facial expressions occur in real life social interactions, with low intensity expressions of emotions frequently occurring. The current study therefore developed and validated a set of video stimuli portraying three levels of intensity of emotional expressions, from low to high intensity. The videos were adapted from the Amsterdam Dynamic Facial Expression Set (ADFES) and termed the Bath Intensity Variations (ADFES-BIV). A healthy sample of 92 people recruited from the University of Bath community (41 male, 51 female) completed a facial emotion recognition task including expressions of 6 basic emotions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness) and 3 complex emotions (contempt, embarrassment, pride) that were expressed at three different intensities of expression and neutral. Accuracy scores (raw and unbiased (Hu) hit rates) were calculated, as well as response times. Accuracy rates above chance level of responding were found for all emotion categories, producing an overall raw hit rate of 69% for the ADFES-BIV. The three intensity levels were validated as distinct categories, with higher accuracies and faster responses to high intensity expressions than intermediate intensity expressions, which had higher accuracies and faster responses than low intensity expressions. To further validate the intensities, a second study with standardised display times was conducted replicating this pattern. The ADFES-BIV has greater ecological validity than many other emotion stimulus sets and allows for versatile applications in emotion research. It can be retrieved free of charge for research purposes from the corresponding author

  15. The neural basis of emotions varies over time: different regions go with onset- and offset-bound processes underlying emotion intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Résibois, Maxime; Verduyn, Philippe; Delaveau, Pauline; Rotgé, Jean-Yves; Kuppens, Peter; Van Mechelen, Iven; Fossati, Philippe

    2017-08-01

    According to theories of emotion dynamics, emotions unfold across two phases in which different types of processes come to the fore: emotion onset and emotion offset. Differences in onset-bound processes are reflected by the degree of explosiveness or steepness of the response at onset, and differences in offset-bound processes by the degree of accumulation or intensification of the subsequent response. Whether onset- and offset-bound processes have distinctive neural correlates and, hence, whether the neural basis of emotions varies over time, still remains unknown. In the present fMRI study, we address this question using a recently developed paradigm that allows to disentangle explosiveness and accumulation. Thirty-one participants were exposed to neutral and negative social feedback, and asked to reflect on its contents. Emotional intensity while reading and thinking about the feedback was measured with an intensity profile tracking approach. Using non-negative matrix factorization, the resulting profile data were decomposed in explosiveness and accumulation components, which were subsequently entered as continuous regressors of the BOLD response. It was found that the neural basis of emotion intensity shifts as emotions unfold over time with emotion explosiveness and accumulation having distinctive neural correlates. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

  16. Emotional intensity reduces later generalized anxiety disorder symptoms when fear of anxiety and negative problem-solving appraisal are low.

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    Sugiura, Yoshinori; Sugiura, Tomoko

    2015-08-01

    While research based on the emotion dysregulation model indicates a positive relationship between intense emotions and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms, emotion-focused intervention involves the use of techniques to enhance emotional experiences, based on the notion that GAD patients are engaging in avoidance strategies. To reveal the conditions under which intense emotions lead to reduced GAD symptoms, we designed a longitudinal study to monitor changes in GAD symptoms among students (N = 129) over 3 months. Our focus was on possible moderators of the effect of emotional intensity. Results indicated that when fear of emotions and negative appraisals about problem solving were low, negative emotional intensity reduced later GAD symptoms. Moreover, under the condition of high responsibility to continue thinking, emotional intensity tended to reduce later GAD symptoms. Results suggest that reduced fear of emotions and reduced negative appraisals about problem solving may enhance the use of emotional processing techniques (e.g., emotional exposure). The interaction between responsibility to continue thinking and emotional intensity requires further examination. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  17. Functional Neuroimaging of Emotionally Intense Autobiographical Memories in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

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    St. Jacques, Peggy L.; Botzung, Anne; Miles, Amanda; Rubin, David C.

    2010-01-01

    Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) affects regions that support autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval, such as the hippocampus, amygdala and ventral medial prefrontal cortex (PFC). However, it is not well understood how PTSD may impact the neural mechanisms of memory retrieval for the personal past. We used a generic cue method combined with parametric modulation analysis and functional MRI (fMRI) to investigate the neural mechanisms affected by PTSD symptoms during the retrieval of a large sample of emotionally intense AMs. There were three main results. First, the PTSD group showed greater recruitment of the amygdala/hippocampus during the construction of negative versus positive emotionally intense AMs, when compared to controls. Second, across both the construction and elaboration phases of retrieval the PTSD group showed greater recruitment of the ventral medial PFC for negatively intense memories, but less recruitment for positively intense memories. Third, the PTSD group showed greater functional coupling between the ventral medial PFC and the amygdala for negatively intense memories, but less coupling for positively intense memories. In sum, the fMRI data suggest that there was greater recruitment and coupling of emotional brain regions during the retrieval of negatively intense AMs in the PTSD group when compared to controls. PMID:21109253

  18. The temporal deployment of emotion regulation strategies during negative emotional episodes.

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    Kalokerinos, Elise K; Résibois, Maxime; Verduyn, Philippe; Kuppens, Peter

    2017-04-01

    Time is given a central place in theoretical models of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015), but key questions regarding the role of time remain unanswered. We investigated 2 such unanswered questions. First, we explored when different emotion regulation strategies were used within the course of an emotional episode in daily life. Second, we investigated the association between the temporal deployment of strategies and negative emotional experience. We conducted a daily diary study in which participants (N = 74) drew an intensity profile depicting the temporal unfolding of their negative emotional experience across daily events (N = 480), and mapped their usage of emotion regulation strategies onto this intensity profile. Strategies varied in their temporal deployment, with suppression and rumination occurring more at the beginning of the episode, and reappraisal and distraction occurring more toward the end of the episode. Strategies also varied in their association with negative emotion: rumination was positively associated with negative emotion, and reappraisal and distraction were negatively associated with negative emotion. Finally, both rumination and reappraisal interacted with time to predict negative emotional experience. Rumination was more strongly positively associated with negative emotions at the end of the episode than the beginning, but reappraisal was more strongly negatively associated with negative emotion at the beginning of the episode than the end. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for timing in the study of emotion regulation, as well as the necessity of studying these temporal processes in daily life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  19. Earthquake Intensity and Strong Motion Analysis Within SEISCOMP3

    Science.gov (United States)

    Becker, J.; Weber, B.; Ghasemi, H.; Cummins, P. R.; Murjaya, J.; Rudyanto, A.; Rößler, D.

    2017-12-01

    Measuring and predicting ground motion parameters including seismic intensities for earthquakes is crucial and subject to recent research in engineering seismology.gempa has developed the new SIGMA module for Seismic Intensity and Ground Motion Analysis. The module is based on the SeisComP3 framework extending it in the field of seismic hazard assessment and engineering seismology. SIGMA may work with or independently of SeisComP3 by supporting FDSN Web services for importing earthquake or station information and waveforms. It provides a user-friendly and modern graphical interface for semi-automatic and interactive strong motion data processing. SIGMA provides intensity and (P)SA maps based on GMPE's or recorded data. It calculates the most common strong motion parameters, e.g. PGA/PGV/PGD, Arias intensity and duration, Tp, Tm, CAV, SED and Fourier-, power- and response spectra. GMPE's are configurable. Supporting C++ and Python plug-ins, standard and customized GMPE's including the OpenQuake Hazard Library can be easily integrated and compared. Originally tailored to specifications by Geoscience Australia and BMKG (Indonesia) SIGMA has become a popular tool among SeisComP3 users concerned with seismic hazard and strong motion seismology.

  20. Emotion differentiation and intensity during acute tobacco abstinence: A comparison of heavy and light smokers.

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    Sheets, Erin S; Bujarski, Spencer; Leventhal, Adam M; Ray, Lara A

    2015-08-01

    The ability to recognize and label discrete emotions, termed emotion differentiation, is particularly pertinent to overall emotion regulation abilities. Patterns of deficient emotion differentiation have been associated with mood and anxiety disorders but have yet to be examined in relation to nicotine dependence. This study employed ecological momentary assessment to examine smokers' subjective experience of discrete emotions during 24-h of forced tobacco abstinence. Thirty daily smokers rated their emotions up to 23 times over the 24-hour period, and smoking abstinence was biologically verified. From these data, we computed individual difference measures of emotion differentiation, overall emotion intensity, and emotional variability. As hypothesized, heavy smokers reported poorer negative emotion differentiation than light smokers (d=0.55), along with more intense negative emotion (d=0.97) and greater negative emotion variability (d=0.97). No differences were observed in positive emotion differentiation. Across the sample, poorer negative emotion differentiation was associated with greater endorsement of psychological motives to smoke, including negative and positive reinforcement motives, while positive emotion differentiation was not. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. The impact of emotion intensity on recognition memory: Valence polarity matters.

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    Meng, Xianxin; Zhang, Ling; Liu, Wenwen; Ding, XinSheng; Li, Hong; Yang, Jiemin; Yuan, JiaJin

    2017-06-01

    Although the effects of emotion of different emotional intensity on memory have been investigated, it remain unclear whether the influence of emotional intensity on memory varies depending on the stimulus valence polarity (i.e., positive or negative). To address this, event-related potentials were recorded when subjects performed a continuous old/new discrimination task, for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral pictures in the negative session; and for highly positive (HP), mildly positive (MP) and neutral pictures in the positive session. The results showed that relative to neutral stimuli, both HN and MN stimuli showed increased memory discrimination scores, and enhanced old/new effect in early FN400 (Frontal Negativity), but not late positive component (LPC) amplitudes. By contrast, relative to MP stimuli, HP and neutral stimuli showed increased memory discrimination scores and enhanced old/new effect in LPC but not FN400 amplitudes. Additionally, we observed a significant positive correlation between the memory discrimination score and the old/new effect in the amplitudes of the FN400 and LPC, respectively. These results indicate that both HN and MN stimuli were remembered better than neutral stimuli; whereas the recognition was worse for MP stimuli than Neutral and HP stimuli. In conclusion, in the present study, we observed that the effect of emotion intensity on memory depends on the stimulus valence polarity. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  2. Recognition of facial expressions and prosodic cues with graded emotional intensities in adults with Asperger syndrome.

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    Doi, Hirokazu; Fujisawa, Takashi X; Kanai, Chieko; Ohta, Haruhisa; Yokoi, Hideki; Iwanami, Akira; Kato, Nobumasa; Shinohara, Kazuyuki

    2013-09-01

    This study investigated the ability of adults with Asperger syndrome to recognize emotional categories of facial expressions and emotional prosodies with graded emotional intensities. The individuals with Asperger syndrome showed poorer recognition performance for angry and sad expressions from both facial and vocal information. The group difference in facial expression recognition was prominent for stimuli with low or intermediate emotional intensities. In contrast to this, the individuals with Asperger syndrome exhibited lower recognition accuracy than typically-developed controls mainly for emotional prosody with high emotional intensity. In facial expression recognition, Asperger and control groups showed an inversion effect for all categories. The magnitude of this effect was less in the Asperger group for angry and sad expressions, presumably attributable to reduced recruitment of the configural mode of face processing. The individuals with Asperger syndrome outperformed the control participants in recognizing inverted sad expressions, indicating enhanced processing of local facial information representing sad emotion. These results suggest that the adults with Asperger syndrome rely on modality-specific strategies in emotion recognition from facial expression and prosodic information.

  3. Attentional bias to emotional stimuli is altered during moderate- but not high-intensity exercise.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tian, Qu; Smith, J Carson

    2011-12-01

    Little is known regarding how attention to emotional stimuli is affected during simultaneously performed exercise. Attentional biases to emotional face stimuli were assessed in 34 college students (17 women) using the dot-probe task during counterbalanced conditions of moderate- (heart rate at 45% peak oxygen consumption) and high-intensity exercise (heart rate at 80% peak oxygen consumption) compared with seated rest. The dot-probe task consisted of 1 emotional face (pleasant or unpleasant) paired with a neutral face for 1,000 ms; 256 trials (128 trials for each valence) were presented during each condition. Each condition lasted approximately 10 min. Participants were instructed to perform each trial of the dot-probe task as quickly and accurately as possible during the exercise and rest conditions. During moderate-intensity exercise, participants exhibited significantly greater attentional bias scores to pleasant compared with unpleasant faces (p bias scores to emotional faces did not differ at rest or during high-intensity exercise (p > .05). In addition, the attentional bias to unpleasant faces was significantly reduced during moderate-intensity exercise compared with that during rest (p emotional stimuli and away from unpleasant emotional stimuli. Future work is needed to determine whether acute exercise may be an effective treatment approach to reduce negative bias or enhance positive bias in individuals diagnosed with mood or anxiety disorders, or whether attentional bias during exercise predicts adherence to exercise. (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

  4. Humans rely on the same rules to assess emotional valence and intensity in conspecific and dog vocalizations.

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    Faragó, Tamás; Andics, Attila; Devecseri, Viktor; Kis, Anna; Gácsi, Márta; Miklósi, Adám

    2014-01-01

    Humans excel at assessing conspecific emotional valence and intensity, based solely on non-verbal vocal bursts that are also common in other mammals. It is not known, however, whether human listeners rely on similar acoustic cues to assess emotional content in conspecific and heterospecific vocalizations, and which acoustical parameters affect their performance. Here, for the first time, we directly compared the emotional valence and intensity perception of dog and human non-verbal vocalizations. We revealed similar relationships between acoustic features and emotional valence and intensity ratings of human and dog vocalizations: those with shorter call lengths were rated as more positive, whereas those with a higher pitch were rated as more intense. Our findings demonstrate that humans rate conspecific emotional vocalizations along basic acoustic rules, and that they apply similar rules when processing dog vocal expressions. This suggests that humans may utilize similar mental mechanisms for recognizing human and heterospecific vocal emotions.

  5. Emotionally Intense Science Activities

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    King, Donna; Ritchie, Stephen; Sandhu, Maryam; Henderson, Senka

    2015-01-01

    Science activities that evoke positive emotional responses make a difference to students' emotional experience of science. In this study, we explored 8th Grade students' discrete emotions expressed during science activities in a unit on Energy. Multiple data sources including classroom videos, interviews and emotion diaries completed at the end of…

  6. Relationship between Traditional Games and the Intensity of Emotions Experienced by Participants

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lavega, Pere; Alonso, José I.; Etxebeste, Joseba; Lagardera, Francisco; March, Jaume

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The aims of this study were to analyze the intensity of emotions (positive, negative, or ambiguous) produced when players took part in traditional games with a different social structure and to examine the explanations given by those participants for these emotional experiences. Method: Participants (N = 556) were recruited from 4 Spanish…

  7. Alexithymia Is Related to the Need for More Emotional Intensity to Identify Static Fearful Facial Expressions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francesca Starita

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available Individuals with high levels of alexithymia, a personality trait marked by difficulties in identifying and describing feelings and an externally oriented style of thinking, appear to require more time to accurately recognize intense emotional facial expressions (EFEs. However, in everyday life, EFEs are displayed at different levels of intensity and individuals with high alexithymia may also need more emotional intensity to identify EFEs. Nevertheless, the impact of alexithymia on the identification of EFEs, which vary in emotional intensity, has largely been neglected. To address this, two experiments were conducted in which participants with low (LA and high (HA levels of alexithymia were assessed in their ability to identify static (Experiment 1 and dynamic (Experiment 2 morphed faces ranging from neutral to intense EFEs. Results showed that HA needed more emotional intensity than LA to identify static fearful – but not happy or disgusted – faces. On the contrary, no evidence was found that alexithymia affected the identification of dynamic EFEs. These results extend current literature suggesting that alexithymia is related to the need for more perceptual information to identify static fearful EFEs.

  8. Influences of sex, type and intensity of emotion in the ecognition of static and dynamic facial expressions*

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nelson Torro-Alves

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Ecological validity of static and intense facial expressions in emotional recognition has been questioned. Recent studies have recommended the use of facial stimuli more compatible to the natural conditions of social interaction, which involves motion and variations in emotional intensity. In this study, we compared the recognition of static and dynamic facial expressions of happiness, fear, anger and sadness, presented in four emotional intensities (25 %, 50 %, 75 % and 100 %. Twenty volunteers (9 women and 11 men, aged between 19 and 31 years, took part in the study. The experiment consisted of two sessions in which participants had to identify the emotion of static (photographs and dynamic (videos displays of facial expressions on the computer screen. The mean accuracy was submitted to an Anova for repeated measures of model: 2 sexes x [2 conditions x 4 expressions x 4 intensities]. We observed an advantage for the recognition of dynamic expressions of happiness and fear compared to the static stimuli (p < .05. Analysis of interactions showed that expressions with intensity of 25 % were better recognized in the dynamic condition (p < .05. The addition of motion contributes to improve recognition especially in male participants (p < .05. We concluded that the effect of the motion varies as a function of the type of emotion, intensity of the expression and sex of the participant. These results support the hypothesis that dynamic stimuli have more ecological validity and are more appropriate to the research with emotions.

  9. "Turn Up the Taste": Assessing the Role of Taste Intensity and Emotion in Mediating Crossmodal Correspondences between Basic Tastes and Pitch.

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    Wang, Qian Janice; Wang, Sheila; Spence, Charles

    2016-05-01

    People intuitively match basic tastes to sounds of different pitches, and the matches that they make tend to be consistent across individuals. It is, though, not altogether clear what governs such crossmodal mappings between taste and auditory pitch. Here, we assess whether variations in taste intensity influence the matching of taste to pitch as well as the role of emotion in mediating such crossmodal correspondences. Participants were presented with 5 basic tastants at 3 concentrations. In Experiment 1, the participants rated the tastants in terms of their emotional arousal and valence/pleasantness, and selected a musical note (from 19 possible pitches ranging from C2 to C8) and loudness that best matched each tastant. In Experiment 2, the participants made emotion ratings and note matches in separate blocks of trials, then made emotion ratings for all 19 notes. Overall, the results of the 2 experiments revealed that both taste quality and concentration exerted a significant effect on participants' loudness selection, taste intensity rating, and valence and arousal ratings. Taste quality, not concentration levels, had a significant effect on participants' choice of pitch, but a significant positive correlation was observed between individual perceived taste intensity and pitch choice. A significant and strong correlation was also demonstrated between participants' valence assessments of tastants and their valence assessments of the best-matching musical notes. These results therefore provide evidence that: 1) pitch-taste correspondences are primarily influenced by taste quality, and to a lesser extent, by perceived intensity; and 2) such correspondences may be mediated by valence/pleasantness. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

  10. Facial emotion recognition deficits following moderate-severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): re-examining the valence effect and the role of emotion intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosenberg, Hannah; McDonald, Skye; Dethier, Marie; Kessels, Roy P C; Westbrook, R Frederick

    2014-11-01

    Many individuals who sustain moderate-severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are poor at recognizing emotional expressions, with a greater impairment in recognizing negative (e.g., fear, disgust, sadness, and anger) than positive emotions (e.g., happiness and surprise). It has been questioned whether this "valence effect" might be an artifact of the wide use of static facial emotion stimuli (usually full-blown expressions) which differ in difficulty rather than a real consequence of brain impairment. This study aimed to investigate the valence effect in TBI, while examining emotion recognition across different intensities (low, medium, and high). Twenty-seven individuals with TBI and 28 matched control participants were tested on the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT). The TBI group was more impaired in overall emotion recognition, and less accurate recognizing negative emotions. However, examining the performance across the different intensities indicated that this difference was driven by some emotions (e.g., happiness) being much easier to recognize than others (e.g., fear and surprise). Our findings indicate that individuals with TBI have an overall deficit in facial emotion recognition, and that both people with TBI and control participants found some emotions more difficult than others. These results suggest that conventional measures of facial affect recognition that do not examine variance in the difficulty of emotions may produce erroneous conclusions about differential impairment. They also cast doubt on the notion that dissociable neural pathways underlie the recognition of positive and negative emotions, which are differentially affected by TBI and potentially other neurological or psychiatric disorders.

  11. Motivational intensity modulates the effects of positive emotions on set shifting after controlling physiological arousal.

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    Zhou, Ya; Siu, Angela F Y

    2015-12-01

    Recent research on the construct of emotion suggests the integration of a motivational dimension into the traditional two-dimension (subjective valence and physiological arousal) model. The motivational intensity of an emotional state should be taken into account while investigating the emotion-cognition relationship. This study examined how positive emotional states varying in motivational intensity influenced set shifting, after controlling the potential confounding impacts of physiological arousal. In Experiment 1, 155 volunteers performed a set-shifting task after being randomly assigned to five states: high- vs. low-motivating positive affect (interest vs. serenity), high- vs. low-motivating negative affect (disgust vs. anxiety), and neutral state. Eighty-five volunteers participated in Experiment 2, which further examined the effects of higher vs. lower degree of interest. Both experiments measured and compared participants' physiological arousal (blood pressure and pulse rate) under the normal and experimental conditions as the covariate. Results showed no difference in switching performance between the neutral and serenity groups. As compared with the neutral state, the high-motivating positive affect significantly increased set-switching reaction time costs, but reduced error rate costs; the higher the motivational intensity, the greater the time-costs impairment. This indicates a role of the high-motivating positive affect in regulating the balance between the flexible and stable cognitive control. Motivational intensity also modulated the effects of negative emotional states, i.e., disgust caused a larger increase in time costs than anxiety. Further exploration into neurobiological mechanisms that may mediate the emotional effects on set shifting is warranted. © 2015 Scandinavian Psychological Associations and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  12. Teaching Emotional Intelligence to Intensive Care Unit Nurses and their General Health: A Randomized Clinical Trial

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    F Sharif

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Background: Emotion and how people manage it is an important part of personality that would immensely affect their health. Investigations showed that emotional intelligence is significantly related to and can predict psychological health. Objective: To determine the effect of teaching emotional intelligence to intensive care unit nurses on their general health. Methods: This randomized clinical trial (registered as IRCT201208022812N9 was conducted on 52 of 200 in intensive care unit nurses affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. They were recruited through purposeful convenience sampling and then randomly categorized into two groups. The intervention group members were trained in emotional intelligence. Bar-on emotional intelligence and Goldberg's general health questionnaires were administered to each participant before, immediately after, and one month after the intervention. Results: While the mean score of general health for the intervention group decreased from 25.4 before the intervention, to 18.1 immediately after the intervention and to 14.6 one month later, for the control group, it increased from 22.0, to 24.2 and to 26.5, respectively (p<0.001. Conclusion: Teaching emotional intelligence improved the general health of intensive care unit nurses.

  13. Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects of Expression, Intensity, and Sex on Eye Gaze.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laura Jean Wells

    Full Text Available The identification of emotional expressions is vital for social interaction, and can be affected by various factors, including the expressed emotion, the intensity of the expression, the sex of the face, and the gender of the observer. This study investigates how these factors affect the speed and accuracy of expression recognition, as well as dwell time on the two most significant areas of the face: the eyes and the mouth. Participants were asked to identify expressions from female and male faces displaying six expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, each with three levels of intensity (low, moderate, and normal. Overall, responses were fastest and most accurate for happy expressions, but slowest and least accurate for fearful expressions. More intense expressions were also classified most accurately. Reaction time showed a different pattern, with slowest response times recorded for expressions of moderate intensity. Overall, responses were slowest, but also most accurate, for female faces. Relative to male observers, women showed greater accuracy and speed when recognizing female expressions. Dwell time analyses revealed that attention to the eyes was about three times greater than on the mouth, with fearful eyes in particular attracting longer dwell times. The mouth region was attended to the most for fearful, angry, and disgusted expressions and least for surprise. These results extend upon previous findings to show important effects of expression, emotion intensity, and sex on expression recognition and gaze behaviour, and may have implications for understanding the ways in which emotion recognition abilities break down.

  14. Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions: Effects of Expression, Intensity, and Sex on Eye Gaze.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wells, Laura Jean; Gillespie, Steven Mark; Rotshtein, Pia

    2016-01-01

    The identification of emotional expressions is vital for social interaction, and can be affected by various factors, including the expressed emotion, the intensity of the expression, the sex of the face, and the gender of the observer. This study investigates how these factors affect the speed and accuracy of expression recognition, as well as dwell time on the two most significant areas of the face: the eyes and the mouth. Participants were asked to identify expressions from female and male faces displaying six expressions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise), each with three levels of intensity (low, moderate, and normal). Overall, responses were fastest and most accurate for happy expressions, but slowest and least accurate for fearful expressions. More intense expressions were also classified most accurately. Reaction time showed a different pattern, with slowest response times recorded for expressions of moderate intensity. Overall, responses were slowest, but also most accurate, for female faces. Relative to male observers, women showed greater accuracy and speed when recognizing female expressions. Dwell time analyses revealed that attention to the eyes was about three times greater than on the mouth, with fearful eyes in particular attracting longer dwell times. The mouth region was attended to the most for fearful, angry, and disgusted expressions and least for surprise. These results extend upon previous findings to show important effects of expression, emotion intensity, and sex on expression recognition and gaze behaviour, and may have implications for understanding the ways in which emotion recognition abilities break down.

  15. The long-term effect of perspective change on the emotional intensity of autobiographical memories.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sekiguchi, Takahiro; Nonaka, Saori

    2014-01-01

    Autobiographical memories can be recalled from either a field (first-person) or an observer (third-person) perspective. Previous studies have reported that field-to-observer perspective change reduced the emotional intensity of recalled events. In the present study, we examined whether this effect has a long duration by employing follow-up measurements. The participants were asked to recall the same events repeatedly across three sessions (S1, S2, and S3): S2 was conducted about three days after S1, and S3 was conducted about four weeks after S2. The results showed a reduction in the emotional intensity of the recalled events when the perspective was changed from field to observer at S2. More importantly, this reduction in emotional intensity persisted until S3. These effects were not observed under observer-to-field perspective change at S2. These results suggest that observer perspective taking can cause plastic change in the autobiographical memory system.

  16. Recognition of Facial Expressions and Prosodic Cues with Graded Emotional Intensities in Adults with Asperger Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doi, Hirokazu; Fujisawa, Takashi X.; Kanai, Chieko; Ohta, Haruhisa; Yokoi, Hideki; Iwanami, Akira; Kato, Nobumasa; Shinohara, Kazuyuki

    2013-01-01

    This study investigated the ability of adults with Asperger syndrome to recognize emotional categories of facial expressions and emotional prosodies with graded emotional intensities. The individuals with Asperger syndrome showed poorer recognition performance for angry and sad expressions from both facial and vocal information. The group…

  17. The effects of a distracting N-back task on recognition memory are reduced by negative emotional intensity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luciano G Buratto

    Full Text Available Memory performance is usually impaired when participants have to encode information while performing a concurrent task. Recent studies using recall tasks have found that emotional items are more resistant to such cognitive depletion effects than non-emotional items. However, when recognition tasks are used, the same effect is more elusive as recent recognition studies have obtained contradictory results. In two experiments, we provide evidence that negative emotional content can reliably reduce the effects of cognitive depletion on recognition memory only if stimuli with high levels of emotional intensity are used. In particular, we found that recognition performance for realistic pictures was impaired by a secondary 3-back working memory task during encoding if stimuli were emotionally neutral or had moderate levels of negative emotionality. In contrast, when negative pictures with high levels of emotional intensity were used, the detrimental effects of the secondary task were significantly attenuated.

  18. The Effects of a Distracting N-Back Task on Recognition Memory Are Reduced by Negative Emotional Intensity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buratto, Luciano G.; Pottage, Claire L.; Brown, Charity; Morrison, Catriona M.; Schaefer, Alexandre

    2014-01-01

    Memory performance is usually impaired when participants have to encode information while performing a concurrent task. Recent studies using recall tasks have found that emotional items are more resistant to such cognitive depletion effects than non-emotional items. However, when recognition tasks are used, the same effect is more elusive as recent recognition studies have obtained contradictory results. In two experiments, we provide evidence that negative emotional content can reliably reduce the effects of cognitive depletion on recognition memory only if stimuli with high levels of emotional intensity are used. In particular, we found that recognition performance for realistic pictures was impaired by a secondary 3-back working memory task during encoding if stimuli were emotionally neutral or had moderate levels of negative emotionality. In contrast, when negative pictures with high levels of emotional intensity were used, the detrimental effects of the secondary task were significantly attenuated. PMID:25330251

  19. Emotional intelligence and affective intensity as life satisfaction and psychological well-being predictors on nursing professionals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Montes-Berges, Beatriz; Augusto-Landa, José-María

    2014-01-01

    The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between perceived emotional intelligence (PEI), affective intensity, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being in a sample of nursing professionals. Studies conducted in nursing have shown that emotional intelligence is a skill that minimizes the negative stress consequences. PEI was measured by the Trait Meta-Mood Scale, which includes the emotional attention, clarity and repair subscales. Affective intensity was measured by Larsen's Affective Intensity Scale. To analyze this relationship, we observed the impact of PEI and affective intensity on life satisfaction and psychological well-being, while controlling the sociodemographic variables. The correlation analyses showed significant relationships between the subscales of these variables. Clarity showed positive relationships with some psychological well-being dimensions. Affective intensity subscales presented relationships with life quality and different subscales of psychological well-being. Regression analyses indicated that repair is the only life satisfaction predictor. Moreover, clarity, some affective intensity dimensions, and sociodemographic variables are the main predictors of psychological well-being. The results confirmed the importance of repair on life quality and psychological well-being. Programs to improve nursing professionals' PEI are needed to increase their psychological well-being and life satisfaction. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  20. Promoting calls to a quitline: quantifying the influence of message theme, strong negative emotions and graphic images in television advertisements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Farrelly, Matthew C; Davis, Kevin C; Nonnemaker, James M; Kamyab, Kian; Jackson, Christine

    2011-07-01

    To understand the relative effectiveness of television advertisements that differ in their thematic focus and portrayals of negative emotions and/or graphic images in promoting calls to a smokers' quitline. Regression analysis is used to explain variation in quarterly media market-level per smoker calls to the New York State Smokers' Quitline from 2001 to 2009. The primary independent variable is quarterly market-level delivery of television advertisements measured by target audience rating points (TARPs). Advertisements were characterised by their overall objective--promoting cessation, highlighting the dangers of secondhand smoke (SHS) or other--and by their portrayals of strong negative emotions and graphic images. Per smoker call volume is positively correlated with total TARPs (padvertisements are more effective than SHS advertisements in promoting quitline call volume. Advertisements with graphic images only or neither strong negative emotions nor graphic images are associated with higher call volume with similar effect sizes. Call volume was not significantly associated with the number of TARPs for advertisements with strong negative emotions only (p=0.71) or with both graphic images and strong emotions (p=0.09). Exposure to television advertisements is strongly associated with quitline call volume, and both cessation and SHS advertisements can be effective. The use of strong negative emotions in advertisements may be effective in promoting smoking cessation in the population but does not appear to influence quitline call volume. Further research is needed to understand the role of negative emotions in promoting calls to quitlines and cessation more broadly among the majority of smokers who do not call quitlines.

  1. Humiliation as an intense emotional experience: Evidence from the electro-encephalogram

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Otten, M.; Jonas, K.J.

    2014-01-01

    Humiliation, the emotion associated with being lowered in status in the eyes of others, seems to be very intense. As such, humiliation has been implied to play an important role in the escalation of inter-individual and inter-group conflict. Here, we provide the first clear empirical evidence that

  2. Recognition of Facial Expressions of Different Emotional Intensities in Patients with Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roy P. C. Kessels

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Behavioural problems are a key feature of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD. Also, FTLD patients show impairments in emotion processing. Specifically, the perception of negative emotional facial expressions is affected. Generally, however, negative emotional expressions are regarded as more difficult to recognize than positive ones, which thus may have been a confounding factor in previous studies. Also, ceiling effects are often present on emotion recognition tasks using full-blown emotional facial expressions. In the present study with FTLD patients, we examined the perception of sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and disgust at different emotional intensities on morphed facial expressions to take task difficulty into account. Results showed that our FTLD patients were specifically impaired at the recognition of the emotion anger. Also, the patients performed worse than the controls on recognition of surprise, but performed at control levels on disgust, happiness, sadness and fear. These findings corroborate and extend previous results showing deficits in emotion perception in FTLD.

  3. Face-body integration of intense emotional expressions of victory and defeat.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lili Wang

    Full Text Available Human facial expressions can be recognized rapidly and effortlessly. However, for intense emotions from real life, positive and negative facial expressions are difficult to discriminate and the judgment of facial expressions is biased towards simultaneously perceived body expressions. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs to investigate the neural dynamics involved in the integration of emotional signals from facial and body expressions of victory and defeat. Emotional expressions of professional players were used to create pictures of face-body compounds, with either matched or mismatched emotional expressions in faces and bodies. Behavioral results showed that congruent emotional information of face and body facilitated the recognition of facial expressions. ERP data revealed larger P1 amplitudes for incongruent compared to congruent stimuli. Also, a main effect of body valence on the P1 was observed, with enhanced amplitudes for the stimuli with losing compared to winning bodies. The main effect of body expression was also observed in N170 and N2, with winning bodies producing larger N170/N2 amplitudes. In the later stage, a significant interaction of congruence by body valence was found on the P3 component. Winning bodies elicited lager P3 amplitudes than losing bodies did when face and body conveyed congruent emotional signals. Beyond the knowledge based on prototypical facial and body expressions, the results of this study facilitate us to understand the complexity of emotion evaluation and categorization out of laboratory.

  4. Personally committed to emotional labor: Surface acting, emotional exhaustion and performance among service employees with a strong need to belong.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yagil, Dana; Medler-Liraz, Hana

    2017-10-01

    Individual differences in emotional labor and subsequent vulnerability to burnout have been explored through the prism of Congruence Theory, which examines the congruence between personality traits and job requirements (Bono & Vey, 2007; Moskowitz & Coté, 1995). Drawing on theory and research dealing with the association between the need to belong and self-regulation (Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco & Twenge, 2005), this study examined the relationship between need to belong and service employees' surface acting and associated outcomes. In Study 1, participants (N = 54) were asked to write a response to an aggressive email from a hypothetical customer. The need to belong was positively related to display of positive emotions and negatively to display of negative emotions in the responses, but not related to felt anger, suggesting that it is associated with the inclination to engage in surface acting. In Study 2, a field study conducted with 170 service employee-customer dyads, surface acting mediated the positive relationship between fear of isolation and emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion mediated the relationship between surface acting and customer satisfaction. These results suggested that service employees with a strong need to belong might have a heightened risk of burnout because of their inclination to engage in emotional labor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  5. Intensities and strong interaction attenuation of kaonic x-rays

    CERN Document Server

    Backenstoss, Gerhard; Koch, H; Povel, H P; Schwitter, A; Tauscher, Ludwig

    1974-01-01

    Relative intensities of numerous kaonic X-ray transitions have been measured for the elements C, P, S, and Cl, from which level widths due to the strong K-nucleus absorption have been determined. From these and earlier published data, optical potential parameters have been derived and possible consequences on the nuclear matter distribution are discussed. (10 refs).

  6. Narrative perspective shift at retrieval: The psychological-distance-mediated-effect on emotional intensity of positive and negative autobiographical memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gu, Xuan; Tse, Chi-Shing

    2016-10-01

    The present study manipulated participants' narrative perspectives (1st-personal pronoun "I" and 3rd-personal pronoun "He/She") to vary their field and observer visual perspectives that they took to retrieve autobiographical events and examine how the shifts in narrative perspective could influence the self-rated emotional intensity of autobiographical memory. Results showed that when narrative perspectives effectively shifted participants' visual perspectives from field to observer, they felt attenuated emotional intensities of positive and negative autobiographical memories. However, this did not occur when narrative perspectives effectively shifted the visual perspectives from observer to field. Multiple mediator models further showed that the changes in psychological distance and imagery vividness (a distance-related construct) of autobiographical memory mediated the relationship between the narrative perspective shift from the 1st- to 3rd-person and the reduction in the intensities of negative and positive emotion. This provides support for the role of psychological distancing in reducing the emotional intensity of autobiographical memory. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Experimental reduction in interaction intensity strongly affects biotic selection.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sletvold, Nina; Ågren, Jon

    2016-11-01

    The link between biotic interaction intensity and strength of selection is of fundamental interest for understanding biotically driven diversification and predicting the consequences of environmental change. The strength of selection resulting from biotic interactions is determined by the strength of the interaction and by the covariance between fitness and the trait under selection. When the relationship between trait and absolute fitness is constant, selection strength should be a direct function of mean population interaction intensity. To test this prediction, we excluded pollinators for intervals of different length to induce five levels of pollination intensity within a single plant population. Pollen limitation (PL) increased from 0 to 0.77 across treatments, accompanied by a fivefold increase in the opportunity for selection. Trait-fitness covariance declined with PL for number of flowers, but varied little for other traits. Pollinator-mediated selection on plant height, corolla size, and spur length increased by 91%, 34%, and 330%, respectively, in the most severely pollen-limited treatment compared to open-pollinated plants. The results indicate that realized biotic selection can be predicted from mean population interaction intensity when variation in trait-fitness covariance is limited, and that declines in pollination intensity will strongly increase selection on traits involved in the interaction. © 2016 by the Ecological Society of America.

  8. Individual differences in the effects of emotion regulation strategies : The role of personality and trait affect intensity

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Karreman, A.; Laceulle, O.; Hanser, W.E.; Vingerhoets, A.J.J.M.

    This experimental study examined if (1) emotion experience can be manipulated by applying an emotion regulation strategy (suppression, giving in, neutral) when listening to a well-known rock music fragment, and if (2) personality and trait affect intensity can predict individual differences in

  9. [An fMRI Study of the Brain Activation Related to Intensive Positive Emotions During Viweing Erotic Pictures in 49-74 Old Men].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martynova, O; Portnova, G; Orlov, I

    2016-01-01

    According to psychological research erotic images are evaluated in the context of positive emotions as the most intense, most associated with emotional arousal, among the variety of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli. However it is difficult to separate areas of the brain that are related to the general emotional process from the activity of the brain areas involved in neuronal representations of reward system. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in the brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in male subjects in evaluating an intensity of pleasant images, including erotic, or unpleasant and neutral pictures. When comparing the condition with evaluation of the pleasant erotic images with conditions containing neutral or unpleasant stimuli, a significant activation was observed in the posterior cingulate cortex; the prefrontal cortex and the right globus pallidus. An increased activity of the right anterior central gyrus was observed in the conditions related to evaluation of pleasant and neutral stimuli. Thus, in the process of evaluating the intensity of emotional images of an erotic nature the active brain areas were related not only to neuronal representations of emotions, but also to motivations and control system of emotional arousal, which should be taken into account while using erotic pictures as intensive positive emotional stimuli.

  10. Cultural similarities and differences in the perception of emotional valence and intensity: a comparison of Americans and Hong Kong Chinese.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Zhuoying; Ho, Samuel M Y; Bonanno, George A

    2013-01-01

    Despite being challenged for their ecological validity, studies of emotion perception have often relied on static, posed expressions. One of the key reasons is that dynamic, spontaneous expressions are difficult to control because of the existence of display rules and frequent co-occurrence of non-emotion related facial movements. The present study investigated cross-cultural patterns in the perception of emotion using an expressive regulation paradigm for generating facial expressions. The paradigm largely balances out the competing concerns for ecological and internal validity. Americans and Hong Kong Chinese (expressors) were presented with positively and negatively valenced pictures and were asked to enhance, suppress, or naturally display their facial expressions according to their subjective emotions. Videos of naturalistic and dynamic expressions of emotions were rated by Americans and Hong Kong Chinese (judges) for valence and intensity. The 2 cultures agreed on the valence and relative intensity of emotion expressions, but cultural differences were observed in absolute intensity ratings. The differences varied between positive and negative expressions. With positive expressions, ratings were higher when there was a cultural match between the expressor and the judge and when the expression was enhanced by the expressor. With negative expressions, Chinese judges gave higher ratings than their American counterparts for Chinese expressions under all 3 expressive conditions, and the discrepancy increased with expression intensity; no cultural differences were observed when American expressions were judged. The results were discussed with respect to the "decoding rules" and "same-culture advantage" approaches of emotion perception and a negativity bias in the Chinese collective culture.

  11. Tailoring the delivery of cancer diagnosis to adolescent and young adult patients displaying strong emotions: An observational study of two cases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Live Korsvold

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Delivering the bad news of a cancer diagnosis to adolescent and young adult (AYA patients who display strong emotions is particularly challenging not the least because AYAs are at a vulnerable developmental stage. Due to the lack of research on how to personalize the delivery of bad news to AYA patients’ emotions we report a case study of the communicative behavior of oncologists in two such consultations to describe the complexity of the phenomena at study. We audio-recorded and transcribed consultations where oncologists delivered cancer diagnoses to nine AYAs aged 12–25 years. Two of these patients displayed particularly strong emotional behavior (anger, fear, and sadness and were chosen as cases. An interpretative analysis in three steps was applied to investigate the oncologists’ communicative behavior when delivering bad news. The focus was on how the oncologists responded to the strong but different emotional behaviors of the AYAs. We also related the oncologists’ communicative behavior to elements from a widely used protocol for delivering bad news. We found that the oncologists applied five communication strategies: elicit patient perspective, provide information, respond to patient's expression of emotion (acknowledging and containing emotions, encourage commitment to treatment, and provide hope. The findings illustrate how oncologists’ communicative behavior may be tailored to individual expressions of emotions in AYA cancer patients.

  12. The spatiotemporal dynamics of autobiographical memory: Neural correlates of recall, emotional intensity, and reliving

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Daselaar, S.M.; Rice, H.J; Greenberg, D.L.; Cabeza, R.; LaBar, K.S.; Rudin, D.C.

    2008-01-01

    We sought to map the time course of autobiographical memory retrieval, including brain regions that mediate phenomenological experiences of reliving and emotional intensity. Participants recalled personal memories to auditory word cues during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging

  13. Testing the effects of expression, intensity and age on emotional face processing in ASD.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Luyster, Rhiannon J; Bick, Johanna; Westerlund, Alissa; Nelson, Charles A

    2017-06-21

    Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly show global deficits in the processing of facial emotion, including impairments in emotion recognition and slowed processing of emotional faces. Growing evidence has suggested that these challenges may increase with age, perhaps due to minimal improvement with age in individuals with ASD. In the present study, we explored the role of age, emotion type and emotion intensity in face processing for individuals with and without ASD. Twelve- and 18-22- year-old children with and without ASD participated. No significant diagnostic group differences were observed on behavioral measures of emotion processing for younger versus older individuals with and without ASD. However, there were significant group differences in neural responses to emotional faces. Relative to TD, at 12 years of age and during adulthood, individuals with ASD showed slower N170 to emotional faces. While the TD groups' P1 latency was significantly shorter in adults when compared to 12 year olds, there was no significant age-related difference in P1 latency among individuals with ASD. Findings point to potential differences in the maturation of cortical networks that support visual processing (whether of faces or stimuli more broadly), among individuals with and without ASD between late childhood and adulthood. Finally, associations between ERP amplitudes and behavioral responses on emotion processing tasks suggest possible neural markers for emotional and behavioral deficits among individuals with ASD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Intensity of positive and negative emotions : Explaining the association between personality and depressive symptoms

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Karreman, A.; van Assen, M.A.L.M.; Bekker, M.H.J.

    2013-01-01

    The aim was to examine to what extent emotional intensity accounted for associations between the Big Five personality dimensions and depressive symptoms. Study 1 tested the model cross-sectionally, using survey data of 266 Dutch social science students. Study 2 experimentally examined how

  15. Interactive Contributions of Attribution Biases and Emotional Intensity to Child-Friend Interaction Quality During Preadolescence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Xi; McElwain, Nancy L; Lansford, Jennifer E

    2017-12-20

    Using data from a subsample of 913 study children and their friends who participated in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the interactive contributions of child-reported attribution biases and teacher-reported child emotional intensity (EI) at Grade 4 (M = 9.9 years) to observed child-friend interaction at Grade 6 (M = 11.9 years) were examined. Study children's hostile attribution bias, combined with high EI, predicted more negative child-friend interaction. In contrast, benign attribution bias, combined with high EI, predicted more positive child-friend interaction. The findings are discussed in light of the "fuel" interpretation of EI, in which high-intensity emotions may motivate children to act on their cognitive biases for better or for worse. © 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

  16. The intensity of emotional feelings: Product of peripheral emotional responses or cognitions?

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bermond, B.; Frijda, N.H.

    1987-01-01

    Reviews the function of peripheral feedback for emotions and theories describing emotions as information-processing systems. Cognitive processes are seen as a necessary condition for most human emotional experiences. Coping difficulties and degree of harmful or favorable appraisal have been

  17. Reclaiming Melancholy by Emotion Tracking? Datafication of Emotions in Health Care and at the Workplace

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Janasik-Honkela Nina

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Since the time between the world wars, the language of emotions has been dominated by the discourse of therapy, starting a style of emotional expression and practice. Somewhat paradoxically, at the same time as a new professional group emerged with authority to pronounce on all matters emotional as part of the unfolding of modern emotional capitalism, the categories of psychic suffering have witnessed a veritable emptying out of emotions. Currently, the emphasis is placed, rather, on various kinds of lack of behaviour. For instance, “melancholy” as an existential category for strong and energy-intense reactions to all kinds of loss, has been squeezed into the clinical category of “depression,” literally meaning “pressing down.” Negative emotional states have, however, recently appeared in many self-tracking activities, including in the “datafication” of emotions in the form of the Finnish application Emotion Tracker. In this article, I ask whether this introduction of self-tracking into the context of health care and the workplace has written any differences into the current practices of emotional capitalism. My findings suggest that by placing itself in the opaque middle ground between professional psychology and ordinary life, Emotion Tracker creates a new space where the rich tapestry of melancholy is again allowed to figure.

  18. Comparison of pain intensity, emotional status and disability level in patients with chronic neck and low back pain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Altuğ, Filiz; Kavlak, Erdoğan; Kurtca, Mine Pekesen; Ünal, Ayşe; Cavlak, Uğur

    2015-01-01

    This study was planned to compare of pain, emotional status and disability level in patients with chronic neck pain and low back pain. In this study, fifty patients with chronic low back pain (Group I) and fifty patients with chronic neck pain (Group II) at least 6 months were evaluated. A Visual Analog Scale was used to describe pain intensity. To determine emotional status of the subjects, the Beck Depression Scale was used The Oswestry Disability Index and the Neck Disability Index were used to evaluate disability level. The mean age of the patients with low back pain and neck pain were 39.70 ± 9.71 years, 45.44 ± 10.39 years, respectively. It was not found a significant difference between in low back pain (Group I) and neck pain (Group II) in results of pain intensity (p= 0.286) and pain duration (p= 0.382). It was found a significant difference between group I and group II in results of emotional status (p= 0.000) and disability level (p= 0.000). The emotional status and disability level scores were found highest in patient's with low back pain. Chronic low back pain is affect in patients than chronic neck pain as a emotional status and disability level.

  19. Children's moral judgments and moral emotions following exclusion of children with disabilities: relations with inclusive education, age, and contact intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gasser, Luciano; Malti, Tina; Buholzer, Alois

    2013-03-01

    We investigated relations between children's moral judgments and moral emotions following disability-based exclusion and inclusive education, age, and contact intensity. Nine- and 12-year-old Swiss children (N=351) from inclusive and noninclusive classrooms provided moral judgments and moral emotion attributions following six vignettes about social exclusion of children with disabilities. Children also reported on their level of sympathy towards children with disabilities and their contact intensity with children with disabilities. Overall, children condemned disability-based exclusion, attributed few positive emotions to excluder targets, and expressed high sympathy for children with disabilities, independent of age and educational setting. However, younger children from inclusive classrooms exhibited more moral judgments and moral emotions than younger children from noninclusive classrooms. Moreover, children who expressed high sympathy towards children with disabilities were more likely to report frequent contact with children with disabilities. The findings extend existing research on social exclusion by examining disability-based exclusion and are discussed with respect to developmental research on social and moral judgments and emotions following children's inclusion and exclusion decisions. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Cross-cultural differences in item and background memory: examining the influence of emotional intensity and scene congruency.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mickley Steinmetz, Katherine R; Sturkie, Charlee M; Rochester, Nina M; Liu, Xiaodong; Gutchess, Angela H

    2018-07-01

    After viewing a scene, individuals differ in what they prioritise and remember. Culture may be one factor that influences scene memory, as Westerners have been shown to be more item-focused than Easterners (see Masuda, T., & Nisbett, R. E. (2001). Attending holistically versus analytically: Comparing the context sensitivity of Japanese and Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 922-934). However, cultures may differ in their sensitivity to scene incongruences and emotion processing, which may account for cross-cultural differences in scene memory. The current study uses hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to examine scene memory while controlling for scene congruency and the perceived emotional intensity of the images. American and East Asian participants encoded pictures that included a positive, negative, or neutral item placed on a neutral background. After a 20-min delay, participants were shown the item and background separately along with similar and new items and backgrounds to assess memory specificity. Results indicated that even when congruency and emotional intensity were controlled, there was evidence that Americans had better item memory than East Asians. Incongruent scenes were better remembered than congruent scenes. However, this effect did not differ by culture. This suggests that Americans' item focus may result in memory changes that are robust despite variations in scene congruency and perceived emotion.

  1. The natural history of antismoking advertising recall: the influence of broadcasting parameters, emotional intensity and executional features.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dunlop, Sally M; Perez, Donna; Cotter, Trish

    2014-05-01

    The necessary first steps for televised media campaign effects are population exposure and recall. To maximise the impact of campaign funding, it is critical to identify modifiable factors that increase the efficiency of an advertisement reaching the target audience and of their recalling that advertisement. Data come from a serial cross-sectional telephone survey with weekly interviews of adult smokers and recent quitters from the state of New South Wales, Australia, collected between April 2005 and December 2010 (total n=13 301). Survey data were merged with commercial TV ratings data (Gross Rating Points (GRPs)) to estimate individuals' exposure to antismoking campaigns. Multivariable logistic regression analyses indicated that GRPs and broadcasting recency were positively associated with advertisement recall, such that advertisements broadcast more at higher levels or in more recent weeks were more likely to be recalled. Advertisements were more likely to be recalled in their launch phase than in following periods. Controlling for broadcasting parameters, advertisements higher in emotional intensity were more likely to be recalled than those low in emotion; and emotionally intense advertisements required fewer GRPs to achieve high levels of recall than lower emotion advertisements. There was some evidence for a diminishing effect of increased GRPs on recall. In order to achieve sufficient levels of population recall of antismoking campaigns, advertisements need to be broadcast at adequate levels in relatively frequent cycles. Advertisements with highly emotional content may offer the most efficient means by which to increase population recall.

  2. Perceived intimacy of expressed emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Howell, A; Conway, M

    1990-08-01

    Research on norms for emotional expression and self-disclosure provided the basis for two hypotheses concerning the perceived intimacy of emotional self-disclosure. The first hypothesis was that the perceived intimacy of negative emotional disclosure would be greater than that of positive emotional disclosure; the second was that disclosures of more intense emotional states would be perceived as more intimate than disclosures of less intense emotional states for both negative and positive disclosures. Both hypotheses received support when male students in Canada rated the perceived intimacy of self-disclosures that were equated for topic and that covered a comprehensive sample of emotions and a range of emotional intensities. The effects were observed across all the topics of disclosure examined.

  3. Children's Moral Judgments and Moral Emotions Following Exclusion of Children with Disabilities: Relations with Inclusive Education, Age, and Contact Intensity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gasser, Luciano; Malti, Tina; Buholzer, Alois

    2013-01-01

    We investigated relations between children's moral judgments and moral emotions following disability-based exclusion and inclusive education, age, and contact intensity. Nine- and 12-year-old Swiss children (N = 351) from inclusive and noninclusive classrooms provided moral judgments and moral emotion attributions following six vignettes about…

  4. A Technique for Estimating Intensity of Emotional Expressions and Speaking Styles in Speech Based on Multiple-Regression HSMM

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nose, Takashi; Kobayashi, Takao

    In this paper, we propose a technique for estimating the degree or intensity of emotional expressions and speaking styles appearing in speech. The key idea is based on a style control technique for speech synthesis using a multiple regression hidden semi-Markov model (MRHSMM), and the proposed technique can be viewed as the inverse of the style control. In the proposed technique, the acoustic features of spectrum, power, fundamental frequency, and duration are simultaneously modeled using the MRHSMM. We derive an algorithm for estimating explanatory variables of the MRHSMM, each of which represents the degree or intensity of emotional expressions and speaking styles appearing in acoustic features of speech, based on a maximum likelihood criterion. We show experimental results to demonstrate the ability of the proposed technique using two types of speech data, simulated emotional speech and spontaneous speech with different speaking styles. It is found that the estimated values have correlation with human perception.

  5. Strong scintillations during atmospheric occultations Theoretical intensity spectra. [radio scattering during spacecraft occultations by planetary atmospheres

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hinson, D. P.

    1986-01-01

    Each of the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977 has completed a reconnaissance of the Jovian and Saturnian systems. In connection with occultation experiments, strong scintillations were observed. Further theoretical work is required before these scintillations can be interpreted. The present study is, therefore, concerned with the derivation of a theory for strong scattering during atmospheric occultation experiments, taking into account as fundamental quantity of interest the spatial spectrum (or spectral density) of intensity fluctuations. Attention is given to a theory for intensity spectra, and numerical calculations. The new formula derived for Phi-i accounts for strong scattering of electromagnetic waves during atmospheric occultations.

  6. Context and wine quality effects on consumers' mood, emotions, liking and willingness to pay for Australian Shiraz wines.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Danner, Lukas; Ristic, Renata; Johnson, Trent E; Meiselman, Herbert L; Hoek, Annet C; Jeffery, David W; Bastian, Susan E P

    2016-11-01

    This study investigated the effect of different contexts on consumers' mood, product-evoked emotions, liking and willingness to pay for wine. Three consumer trials (n=114, 115, and 120) examined 3 different sample sets of 4 Australian commercial Shiraz wines. Each sample set was comprised of a high, medium-high, medium-low and low quality wine as designated by an expert panel. Wine consumers evaluated the same set of wines in the three different contexts, ranging from a highly-controlled laboratory setting to more realistic restaurant and at-home settings. Results showed that high quality wines were liked more and elicited more intense emotions of positive valence compared to wines of lower quality. Context effects were observed on emotions, but not on liking, indicating that although emotions and liking are correlated, the measurement of emotions can deliver additional information over liking. Tasting wine in the restaurant context evoked more intense positive emotions compared to the home and laboratory contexts. Participants' mood before tasting the wines had a strong influence on consecutive product-evoked emotion ratings, but only weak influence on liking ratings. Furthermore, a strong relationship between wine-evoked emotions and willingness to pay was observed, showing that if a wine-evoked more intense emotion of positive valence e.g., contented, enthusiastic, happy, optimistic and passionate participants were willing to pay significantly more for a bottle. Additionally, the absence of negative emotions, even if typically evoked to a very weak extent, is a requirement for an increased willingness to pay. This study indicates it is worthwhile to consider context and emotions in wine testing and marketing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Understanding the Impact of User Frustration Intensities on Task Performance Using the OCC Theory of Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Washington, Gloria

    2012-01-01

    Have you heard the saying "frustration is written all over your falce"? Well this saying is true, but that is not the only place. Frustration is written all over your face and your body. The human body has various means to communicate an emotion without the utterance of a single word. The Media Equation says that people interact with computers as if they are human: this includes experiencing frustration. This research measures frustration by monitoring human body-based measures such as heart rate, posture, skin temperature. and respiration. The OCC Theory of Emotions is used to separate frustration into different levels or intensities. The results of this study showed that individual intensities of frustration exist, so that task performance is not degraded. Results from this study can be used by usability testers to model how much frustration is needed before task performance measures start to decrease.

  8. Emotion Recognition in Children With Down Syndrome: Influence of Emotion Label and Expression Intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cebula, Katie R; Wishart, Jennifer G; Willis, Diane S; Pitcairn, Tom K

    2017-03-01

    Some children with Down syndrome may experience difficulties in recognizing facial emotions, particularly fear, but it is not clear why, nor how such skills can best be facilitated. Using a photo-matching task, emotion recognition was tested in children with Down syndrome, children with nonspecific intellectual disability and cognitively matched, typically developing children (all groups N = 21) under four conditions: veridical vs. exaggerated emotions and emotion-labelling vs. generic task instructions. In all groups, exaggerating emotions facilitated recognition accuracy and speed, with emotion labelling facilitating recognition accuracy. Overall accuracy and speed did not differ in the children with Down syndrome, although recognition of fear was poorer than in the typically developing children and unrelated to emotion label use. Implications for interventions are considered.

  9. Care and caring in the intensive care unit: Family members' distress and perceptions about staff skills, communication, and emotional support.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carlson, Eve B; Spain, David A; Muhtadie, Luma; McDade-Montez, Liz; Macia, Kathryn S

    2015-06-01

    Family members of intensive care unit (ICU) patients are sometimes highly distressed and report lower satisfaction with communication and emotional support from staff. Within a study of emotional responses to traumatic stress, associations between family distress and satisfaction with aspects of ICU care were investigated. In 29 family members of trauma patients who stayed in an ICU, we assessed symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during ICU care. Later, family members rated staff communication, support, and skills and their overall satisfaction with ICU care. Ratings of staff competence and skills were significantly higher than ratings of frequency of communication, information needs being met, and support. Frequency of communication and information needs being met were strongly related to ratings of support (rs = .75-.77) and staff skills (rs = .77-.85), and aspects of satisfaction and communication showed negative relationships with symptoms of depression (rs = -.31 to -.55) and PTSD (rs = -.17 to -.43). Although satisfaction was fairly high, family member distress was negatively associated with several satisfaction variables. Increased understanding of the effects of traumatic stress on family members may help staff improve communication and increase satisfaction of highly distressed family members. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  10. Unforgettable film music: the role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eschrich, Susann; Münte, Thomas F; Altenmüller, Eckart O

    2008-05-28

    Specific pieces of music can elicit strong emotions in listeners and, possibly in connection with these emotions, can be remembered even years later. However, episodic memory for emotional music compared with less emotional music has not yet been examined. We investigated whether emotional music is remembered better than less emotional music. Also, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory performance. Recognition of 40 musical excerpts was investigated as a function of arousal, valence, and emotional intensity ratings of the music. In the first session the participants judged valence and arousal of the musical pieces. One week later, participants listened to the 40 old and 40 new musical excerpts randomly interspersed and were asked to make an old/new decision as well as to indicate arousal and valence of the pieces. Musical pieces that were rated as very positive were recognized significantly better. Musical excerpts rated as very positive are remembered better. Valence seems to be an important modulator of episodic long-term memory for music. Evidently, strong emotions related to the musical experience facilitate memory formation and retrieval.

  11. Emotion experience and regulation in China and the United States: how do culture and gender shape emotion responding?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davis, Elizabeth; Greenberger, Ellen; Charles, Susan; Chen, Chuansheng; Zhao, Libo; Dong, Qi

    2012-01-01

    Culture and gender shape emotion experience and regulation, in part because the value placed on emotions and the manner of their expression is thought to vary across these groups. This study tested the hypothesis that culture and gender would interact to predict people's emotion responding (emotion intensity and regulatory strategies). Chinese (n=220; 52% female) and American undergraduates (n=241; 62% female) viewed photos intended to elicit negative emotions after receiving instructions to either "just feel" any emotions that arose (Just Feel), or to "do something" so that they would not experience any emotion while viewing the photos (Regulate). All participants then rated the intensity of their experienced emotions and described any emotion-regulation strategies that they used while viewing the photos. Consistent with predictions, culture and gender interacted with experimental condition to predict intensity: Chinese men reported relatively low levels of emotion, whereas American women reported relatively high levels of emotion. Disengagement strategies (especially distancing) were related to lower emotional intensity and were reported most often by Chinese men. Taken together, findings suggest that emotion-regulation strategies may contribute to differences in emotional experience across Western and East Asian cultures.

  12. Regression analysis utilizing subjective evaluation of emotional experience in PET studies on emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aalto, Sargo; Wallius, Esa; Näätänen, Petri; Hiltunen, Jaana; Metsähonkala, Liisa; Sipilä, Hannu; Karlsson, Hasse

    2005-09-01

    A methodological study on subject-specific regression analysis (SSRA) exploring the correlation between the neural response and the subjective evaluation of emotional experience in eleven healthy females is presented. The target emotions, i.e., amusement and sadness, were induced using validated film clips, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured using positron emission tomography (PET), and the subjective intensity of the emotional experience during the PET scanning was measured using a category ratio (CR-10) scale. Reliability analysis of the rating data indicated that the subjects rated the intensity of their emotional experience fairly consistently on the CR-10 scale (Cronbach alphas 0.70-0.97). A two-phase random-effects analysis was performed to ensure the generalizability and inter-study comparability of the SSRA results. Random-effects SSRAs using Statistical non-Parametric Mapping 99 (SnPM99) showed that rCBF correlated with the self-rated intensity of the emotional experience mainly in the brain regions that were identified in the random-effects subtraction analyses using the same imaging data. Our results give preliminary evidence of a linear association between the neural responses related to amusement and sadness and the self-evaluated intensity of the emotional experience in several regions involved in the emotional response. SSRA utilizing subjective evaluation of emotional experience turned out a feasible and promising method of analysis. It allows versatile exploration of the neurobiology of emotions and the neural correlates of actual and individual emotional experience. Thus, SSRA might be able to catch the idiosyncratic aspects of the emotional response better than traditional subtraction analysis.

  13. Negative emotions in cancer care: do oncologists' responses depend on severity and type of emotion?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kennifer, Sarah L; Alexander, Stewart C; Pollak, Kathryn I; Jeffreys, Amy S; Olsen, Maren K; Rodriguez, Keri L; Arnold, Robert M; Tulsky, James A

    2009-07-01

    To examine how type and severity of patients' negative emotions influence oncologists' responses and subsequent conversations. We analyzed 264 audio-recorded conversations between advanced cancer patients and their oncologists. Conversations were coded for patients' expressions of negative emotion, which were categorized by type of emotion and severity. Oncologists' responses were coded as using either empathic language or blocking and distancing approaches. Patients presented fear more often than anger or sadness; severity of disclosures was most often moderate. Oncologists responded to 35% of these negative emotional disclosures with empathic language. They were most empathic when patients presented intense emotions. Responding empathically to patients' emotional disclosures lengthened discussions by an average of only 21s. Greater response rates to severe emotions suggest oncologists may recognize negative emotions better when patients express them more intensely. Oncologists were least responsive to patient fear and responded with greatest empathy to sadness. Oncologists may benefit from additional training to recognize negative emotions, even when displayed without intensity. Teaching cancer patients to better articulate their emotional concerns may also enhance patient-oncologist communication.

  14. KDEF-PT: Valence, Emotional Intensity, Familiarity and Attractiveness Ratings of Angry, Neutral, and Happy Faces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garrido, Margarida V; Prada, Marília

    2017-01-01

    The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) is one of the most widely used human facial expressions database. Almost a decade after the original validation study (Goeleven et al., 2008), we present subjective rating norms for a sub-set of 210 pictures which depict 70 models (half female) each displaying an angry, happy and neutral facial expressions. Our main goals were to provide an additional and updated validation to this database, using a sample from a different nationality ( N = 155 Portuguese students, M = 23.73 years old, SD = 7.24) and to extend the number of subjective dimensions used to evaluate each image. Specifically, participants reported emotional labeling (forced-choice task) and evaluated the emotional intensity and valence of the expression, as well as the attractiveness and familiarity of the model (7-points rating scales). Overall, results show that happy faces obtained the highest ratings across evaluative dimensions and emotion labeling accuracy. Female (vs. male) models were perceived as more attractive, familiar and positive. The sex of the model also moderated the accuracy of emotional labeling and ratings of different facial expressions. Each picture of the set was categorized as low, moderate, or high for each dimension. Normative data for each stimulus (hits proportion, means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals per evaluative dimension) is available as supplementary material (available at https://osf.io/fvc4m/).

  15. KDEF-PT: Valence, Emotional Intensity, Familiarity and Attractiveness Ratings of Angry, Neutral, and Happy Faces

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Margarida V. Garrido

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available The Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF is one of the most widely used human facial expressions database. Almost a decade after the original validation study (Goeleven et al., 2008, we present subjective rating norms for a sub-set of 210 pictures which depict 70 models (half female each displaying an angry, happy and neutral facial expressions. Our main goals were to provide an additional and updated validation to this database, using a sample from a different nationality (N = 155 Portuguese students, M = 23.73 years old, SD = 7.24 and to extend the number of subjective dimensions used to evaluate each image. Specifically, participants reported emotional labeling (forced-choice task and evaluated the emotional intensity and valence of the expression, as well as the attractiveness and familiarity of the model (7-points rating scales. Overall, results show that happy faces obtained the highest ratings across evaluative dimensions and emotion labeling accuracy. Female (vs. male models were perceived as more attractive, familiar and positive. The sex of the model also moderated the accuracy of emotional labeling and ratings of different facial expressions. Each picture of the set was categorized as low, moderate, or high for each dimension. Normative data for each stimulus (hits proportion, means, standard deviations, and confidence intervals per evaluative dimension is available as supplementary material (available at https://osf.io/fvc4m/.

  16. Selecting pure-emotion materials from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS by Chinese university students: A study based on intensity-ratings only

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhicha Xu

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available There is a need to use selected pictures with pure emotion as stimulation or treatment media for basic and clinical research. Pictures from the widely-used International Affective Picture System (IAPS contain rich emotions, but no study has clearly stated that an emotion is exclusively expressed in its putative IAPS picture to date. We hypothesize that the IAPS images contain at least pure vectors of disgust, erotism (or erotica, fear, happiness, sadness and neutral emotions. Accordingly, we have selected 108 IAPS images, each with a specific emotion, and invited 219 male and 274 female university students to rate only the intensity of the emotion conveyed in each picture. Their answers were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Four first-order factors manifested as disgust-fear, happiness-sadness, erotism, and neutral. Later, ten second-order sub-factors manifested as mutilation-disgust, vomit-disgust, food-disgust, violence-fear, happiness, sadness, couple- erotism, female-erotism, male- erotism, and neutral. Fifty-nine pictures for the ten sub-factors, which had established good model-fit indices, satisfactory sub-factor internal reliabilities, and prominent gender-differences in the picture intensity ratings were ultimately retained. We thus have selected a series of pure-emotion IAPS pictures, which together displayed both satisfactorily convergent and discriminant structure-validities. We did not intend to evaluate all IAPS items, but instead selected some pictures conveying pure emotions, which might help both basic and clinical researches in the future.

  17. Dissociation in Rating Negative Facial Emotions between Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Major Depressive Disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiu, Isabelle; Piguet, Olivier; Diehl-Schmid, Janine; Riedl, Lina; Beck, Johannes; Leyhe, Thomas; Holsboer-Trachsler, Edith; Berres, Manfred; Monsch, Andreas U; Sollberger, Marc

    2016-11-01

    Features of behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) such as executive dysfunction, apathy, and impaired empathic abilities are also observed in major depressive disorder (MDD). This may contribute to the reason why early stage bvFTD is often misdiagnosed as MDD. New assessment tools are thus needed to improve early diagnosis of bvFTD. Although emotion processing is affected in bvFTD and MDD, growing evidence indicates that the pattern of emotion processing deficits varies between the two disorders. As such, emotion processing paradigms have substantial potentials to distinguish bvFTD from MDD. The current study compared 25 patients with bvFTD, 21 patients with MDD, 21 patients with Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia, and 31 healthy participants on a novel facial emotion intensity rating task. Stimuli comprised morphed faces from the Ekman and Friesen stimulus set containing faces of each sex with two different degrees of emotion intensity for each of the six basic emotions. Analyses of covariance uncovered a significant dissociation between bvFTD and MDD patients in rating the intensity of negative emotions overall (i.e., bvFTD patients underrated negative emotions overall, whereas MDD patients overrated negative emotions overall compared with healthy participants). In contrast, AD dementia patients rated negative emotions similarly to healthy participants, suggesting no impact of cognitive deficits on rating facial emotions. By strongly differentiating bvFTD and MDDpatients through negative facial emotions, this sensitive and short rating task might help improve the early diagnosis of bvFTD. Copyright © 2016 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. All rights reserved.

  18. Looking into the crystal ball of our emotional lives: emotion regulation and the overestimation of future guilt and shame.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Dijk, Wilco W; van Dillen, Lotte F; Rotteveel, Mark; Seip, Elise C

    2017-04-01

    In the present study, we examined the impact of emotion regulation on the intensity bias in guilt and shame. Fifty-two undergraduates either forecasted their emotions and emotion regulation following a guilt- and shame-eliciting situation or reported their actual experienced emotions and employed emotion regulation. Results showed a clear intensity bias, that is, forecasters predicted to experience more guilt and shame than experiencers actually experienced. Furthermore, results showed that forecasters predicted to employ less down-regulating emotion regulation (i.e. less acceptance) and more up-regulating emotion regulation (i.e. more rumination) than experiencers actually employed. Moreover, results showed that the intensity differences between forecasted and experienced guilt and shame could be explained (i.e. were mediated) by the differences between forecasted and actually employed emotion regulation (i.e. acceptance and rumination). These findings provide support for the hypothesis that the intensity bias can-at least in part-be explained by the misprediction of future emotion regulation.

  19. Ability-versus skill-based assessment of emotional intelligence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bradberry, Travis R; Su, Lac D

    2006-01-01

    Emotional intelligence has received an intense amount of attention in leadership circles during the last decade and continuing debate exists concerning the best method for measuring this construct. This study analyzed leader emotional intelligence scores, measured via skill and ability methodologies, against leader job performance. Two hundred twelve employees from three organizations participated in this study. Scores on the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal, a skill-based assessment, were positively, though not significantly, correlated with scores on the MSCEIT, an ability-based assessment of emotional intelligence. Scores on the MSCEIT did not have a significant relationship with job performance in this study, whereas, scores on the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal had a strong link to leader job performance. The four subcomponents of the Emotional Intelligence Appraisal were examined against job performance. Relationship management was a stronger predictor of leader job performance than the other three subcomponents. Social awareness was the single emotional intelligence skill that did not have a significant link to leader job performance. Factor analyses yielded a two-component model of emotional intelligence encompassing personal and social competence, rather than confirmation of a four-part taxonomy.

  20. Rapid improvements in emotion regulation predict intensive treatment outcome for patients with bulimia nervosa and purging disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    MacDonald, Danielle E; Trottier, Kathryn; Olmsted, Marion P

    2017-10-01

    Rapid and substantial behavior change (RSBC) early in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for eating disorders is the strongest known predictor of treatment outcome. Rapid change in other clinically relevant variables may also be important. This study examined whether rapid change in emotion regulation predicted treatment outcomes, beyond the effects of RSBC. Participants were diagnosed with bulimia nervosa or purging disorder (N = 104) and completed ≥6 weeks of CBT-based intensive treatment. Hierarchical regression models were used to test whether rapid change in emotion regulation variables predicted posttreatment outcomes, defined in three ways: (a) binge/purge abstinence; (b) cognitive eating disorder psychopathology; and (c) depression symptoms. Baseline psychopathology and emotion regulation difficulties and RSBC were controlled for. After controlling for baseline variables and RSBC, rapid improvement in access to emotion regulation strategies made significant unique contributions to the prediction of posttreatment binge/purge abstinence, cognitive psychopathology of eating disorders, and depression symptoms. Individuals with eating disorders who rapidly improve their belief that they can effectively modulate negative emotions are more likely to achieve a variety of good treatment outcomes. This supports the formal inclusion of emotion regulation skills early in CBT, and encouraging patient beliefs that these strategies are helpful. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  1. Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eschrich, Susann; Münte, Thomas F; Altenmüller, Eckart O

    2008-01-01

    Background Specific pieces of music can elicit strong emotions in listeners and, possibly in connection with these emotions, can be remembered even years later. However, episodic memory for emotional music compared with less emotional music has not yet been examined. We investigated whether emotional music is remembered better than less emotional music. Also, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory performance. Results Recognition of 40 musical excerpts was investigated as a function of arousal, valence, and emotional intensity ratings of the music. In the first session the participants judged valence and arousal of the musical pieces. One week later, participants listened to the 40 old and 40 new musical excerpts randomly interspersed and were asked to make an old/new decision as well as to indicate arousal and valence of the pieces. Musical pieces that were rated as very positive were recognized significantly better. Conclusion Musical excerpts rated as very positive are remembered better. Valence seems to be an important modulator of episodic long-term memory for music. Evidently, strong emotions related to the musical experience facilitate memory formation and retrieval. PMID:18505596

  2. Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Altenmüller Eckart O

    2008-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Specific pieces of music can elicit strong emotions in listeners and, possibly in connection with these emotions, can be remembered even years later. However, episodic memory for emotional music compared with less emotional music has not yet been examined. We investigated whether emotional music is remembered better than less emotional music. Also, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory performance. Results Recognition of 40 musical excerpts was investigated as a function of arousal, valence, and emotional intensity ratings of the music. In the first session the participants judged valence and arousal of the musical pieces. One week later, participants listened to the 40 old and 40 new musical excerpts randomly interspersed and were asked to make an old/new decision as well as to indicate arousal and valence of the pieces. Musical pieces that were rated as very positive were recognized significantly better. Conclusion Musical excerpts rated as very positive are remembered better. Valence seems to be an important modulator of episodic long-term memory for music. Evidently, strong emotions related to the musical experience facilitate memory formation and retrieval.

  3. Cultural modes of expressing emotions influence how emotions are experienced.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen; Yang, Xiao-Fei; Damasio, Hanna

    2016-10-01

    The brain's mapping of bodily responses during emotion contributes to emotional experiences, or feelings. Culture influences emotional expressiveness, that is, the magnitude of individuals' bodily responses during emotion. So, are cultural influences on behavioral expressiveness associated with differences in how individuals experience emotion? Chinese and American young adults reported how strongly admiration- and compassion-inducing stories made them feel, first in a private interview and then during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As expected, Americans were more expressive in the interview. Although expressiveness did not predict stronger reported feelings or neural responses during fMRI, in both cultural groups more-expressive people showed tighter trial-by-trial correlations between their experienced strength of emotion and activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex, even after controlling for individuals' overall strength of reactions (neural and felt). Moreover, expressiveness mediated a previously described cultural effect in which activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex correlated with feeling strength among Americans but not among Chinese. Post hoc supplementary analyses revealed that more-expressive individuals reached peak activation of visceral-somatosensory cortex later in the emotion process and took longer to decide how strongly they felt. The results together suggest that differences in expressiveness correspond to differences in how somatosensory mechanisms contribute to constructing conscious feelings. By influencing expressiveness, culture may therefore influence how individuals know how strongly they feel, what conscious feelings are based on, or possibly what strong versus weak emotions "feel like." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  4. Cultural Modes of Expressing Emotions Influence How Emotions Are Experienced

    Science.gov (United States)

    Immordino-Yang, Mary Helen; Yang, Xiao-Fei; Damasio, Hanna

    2016-01-01

    The brain’s mapping of bodily responses during emotion contributes to emotional experiences, or feelings. Culture influences emotional expressiveness, i.e. the magnitude of individuals’ bodily responses during emotion. So, are cultural influences on behavioral expressiveness associated with differences in how individuals experience emotion? Chinese and American young adults reported how strongly admiration and compassion-inducing stories made them feel, first in a private interview and then during fMRI. As expected, Americans were more expressive in the interview. While expressiveness did not predict stronger reported feelings or neural responses during fMRI, in both cultural groups more expressive people showed tighter trial-by-trial correlations between their experienced strength of emotion and activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex, even after controlling for individuals’ overall strength of reactions (neural and felt). Moreover, expressiveness mediated a previously described cultural effect in which activations in visceral-somatosensory cortex correlated with feeling strength among Americans but not among Chinese. Post-hoc supplementary analyses revealed that more expressive individuals reached peak activation of visceral-somatosensory cortex later in the emotion process and took longer to decide how strongly they felt. The results together suggest that differences in expressiveness correspond to differences in how somatosensory mechanisms contribute to constructing conscious feelings. By influencing expressiveness, culture may therefore influence how individuals know how strongly they feel, what conscious feelings are based on, or possibly what strong versus weak emotions “feel like.” PMID:27270077

  5. Emotion expression in body action and posture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dael, Nele; Mortillaro, Marcello; Scherer, Klaus R

    2012-10-01

    Emotion communication research strongly focuses on the face and voice as expressive modalities, leaving the rest of the body relatively understudied. Contrary to the early assumption that body movement only indicates emotional intensity, recent studies have shown that body movement and posture also conveys emotion specific information. However, a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms is hampered by a lack of production studies informed by a theoretical framework. In this research we adopted the Body Action and Posture (BAP) coding system to examine the types and patterns of body movement that are employed by 10 professional actors to portray a set of 12 emotions. We investigated to what extent these expression patterns support explicit or implicit predictions from basic emotion theory, bidimensional theory, and componential appraisal theory. The overall results showed partial support for the different theoretical approaches. They revealed that several patterns of body movement systematically occur in portrayals of specific emotions, allowing emotion differentiation. Although a few emotions were prototypically expressed by one particular pattern, most emotions were variably expressed by multiple patterns, many of which can be explained as reflecting functional components of emotion such as modes of appraisal and action readiness. It is concluded that further work in this largely underdeveloped area should be guided by an appropriate theoretical framework to allow a more systematic design of experiments and clear hypothesis testing.

  6. Indirect Self-Destructiveness and Emotional Intelligence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tsirigotis, Konstantinos

    2016-06-01

    While emotional intelligence may have a favourable influence on the life and psychological and social functioning of the individual, indirect self-destructiveness exerts a rather negative influence. The aim of this study has been to explore possible relations between indirect self-destructiveness and emotional intelligence. A population of 260 individuals (130 females and 130 males) aged 20-30 (mean age of 24.5) was studied by using the Polish version of the chronic self-destructiveness scale and INTE, i.e., the Polish version of the assessing emotions scale. Indirect self-destructiveness has significant correlations with all variables of INTE (overall score, factor I, factor II), and these correlations are negative. The intensity of indirect self-destructiveness differentiates significantly the height of the emotional intelligence and vice versa: the height of the emotional intelligence differentiates significantly the intensity of indirect self-destructiveness. Indirect self-destructiveness has negative correlations with emotional intelligence as well as its components: the ability to recognize emotions and the ability to utilize emotions. The height of emotional intelligence differentiates the intensity of indirect self-destructiveness, and vice versa: the intensity of indirect self-destructiveness differentiates the height of emotional intelligence. It seems advisable to use emotional intelligence in the prophylactic and therapeutic work with persons with various types of disorders, especially with the syndrome of indirect self-destructiveness.

  7. Hoarding and emotional reactivity: The link between negative emotional reactions and hoarding symptomatology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shaw, A.M.; Timpano, K.R.; Steketee, G.; Tolin, D. F.; Frost, R.O.

    2015-01-01

    Hoarding disorder (HD) is characterized by difficulty discarding, clutter, and frequently excessive acquiring. Theories have pointed to intense negative emotional reactions (e.g., sadness) as one factor that may play a critical role in HD’s etiology. Preliminary work with an analogue sample indicated that more intense negative emotions following emotional films were linked with greater hoarding symptoms. Symptom provocation imaging studies with HD patients have also found evidence for excessive activation in brain regions implicated in processing emotions. The current study utilized a sample with self-reported serious hoarding difficulties to examine how hoarding symptoms related to both general and hoarding-related emotional reactivity, taking into account the specificity of these relationships. We also examined how two cognitive factors, fear of decision-making and confidence in memory, modified this relationship. 628 participants with self-identified hoarding difficulties completed questionnaires about general emotional reactivity, depression, anxiety, decision-making, and confidence in memory. To assess hoarding-related emotional reactivity, participants reported their emotional reactions when imagining discarding various items. Heightened general emotional reactivity and more intense emotional reactions to imagined discarding were associated with both difficulty discarding and acquisition, but not clutter, controlling for age, gender, and co-occurring mood and anxiety symptoms. Fear of decision-making and confidence in memory interacted with general emotional reactivity to predict hoarding symptoms. These findings provide support for cognitive-behavioral models of hoarding. Experimental research should be conducted to discover whether emotional reactivity increases vulnerability for HD. Future work should also examine whether emotional reactivity should be targeted in interventions for hoarding. PMID:25732668

  8. Intensity dependent waiting time for strong electron trapping events in speckle stimulated raman scatter

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rose, Harvey [Los Alamos National Laboratory; Daughton, W [Los Alamos National Laboratory; Yin, L [Los Alamos National Laboratory

    2009-01-01

    The onset of Stimulated Raman scatter from an intense laser speckle is the simplest experimentally realizable laser-plasma-interaction environment. Despite this data and recent 3D particle simulations, the controlling mechanism at the onset of backscatter in the kinetic regime when strong electron trapping in the daughter Langmuir wave is a dominant nonlinearity is not understood. This paper explores the consequences of assuming that onset is controlled by large thermal fluctuations. A super exponential dependence of mean reflectivity on speckle intensity in the onset regime is predicted.

  9. Differential effects of cognitive load on emotion: Emotion maintenance versus passive experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    DeFraine, William C

    2016-06-01

    Two separate lines of research have examined the effects of cognitive load on emotional processing with similar tasks but seemingly contradictory results. Some research has shown that the emotions elicited by passive viewing of emotional images are reduced by subsequent cognitive load. Other research has shown that such emotions are not reduced by cognitive load if the emotions are actively maintained. The present study sought to compare and resolve these 2 lines of research. Participants either passively viewed negative emotional images or maintained the emotions elicited by the images, and after a delay rated the intensity of the emotion they were feeling. Half of trials included a math task during the delay to induce cognitive load, and the other half did not. Results showed that cognitive load reduced the intensity of negative emotions during passive-viewing of emotional images but not during emotion maintenance. The present study replicates the findings of both lines of research, and shows that the key factor is whether or not emotions are actively maintained. Also, in the context of previous emotion maintenance research, the present results support the theoretical idea of a separable emotion maintenance process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  10. The Voice of Emotion: Acoustic Properties of Six Emotional Expressions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baldwin, Carol May

    Studies in the perceptual identification of emotional states suggested that listeners seemed to depend on a limited set of vocal cues to distinguish among emotions. Linguistics and speech science literatures have indicated that this small set of cues included intensity, fundamental frequency, and temporal properties such as speech rate and duration. Little research has been done, however, to validate these cues in the production of emotional speech, or to determine if specific dimensions of each cue are associated with the production of a particular emotion for a variety of speakers. This study addressed deficiencies in understanding of the acoustical properties of duration and intensity as components of emotional speech by means of speech science instrumentation. Acoustic data were conveyed in a brief sentence spoken by twelve English speaking adult male and female subjects, half with dramatic training, and half without such training. Simulated expressions included: happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. The study demonstrated that the acoustic property of mean intensity served as an important cue for a vocal taxonomy. Overall duration was rejected as an element for a general taxonomy due to interactions involving gender and role. Findings suggested a gender-related taxonomy, however, based on differences in the ways in which men and women use the duration cue in their emotional expressions. Results also indicated that speaker training may influence greater use of the duration cue in expressions of emotion, particularly for male actors. Discussion of these results provided linkages to (1) practical management of emotional interactions in clinical and interpersonal environments, (2) implications for differences in the ways in which males and females may be socialized to express emotions, and (3) guidelines for future perceptual studies of emotional sensitivity.

  11. Parental coping with children's negative emotions: relations with children's emotional and social responding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fabes, R A; Leonard, S A; Kupanoff, K; Martin, C L

    2001-01-01

    This study examined the relation between parents' reactions to children's negative emotions and social competence. Additionally, the role of parental emotional distress in children's emotional socialization was examined. The emotional reactions of 57 preschoolers (33 girls, 24 boys; M age = 59.2 months) were observed during their free-play interactions. Parents (mostly mothers) completed questionnaires about their reactions to children's negative emotions. An index of children's social competence was obtained from teachers. Results indicated that the relation between harsh parental coping strategies and children's emotional responding was moderated by parental distress. In addition, the relation of the interaction of parental coping and distress to children's social competence was mediated by children's level of emotional intensity. It was concluded that distressed parents who use harsh coping strategies in response to children's negative emotions have children who express emotion in relatively intense ways. In turn, these children find it relatively difficult to behave in a socially competent manner.

  12. Immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons.

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, Katherine; Van Boven, Leaf

    2012-08-01

    In seven studies of naturally occurring, "real-world" emotional events, people demonstrated an immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons, perceiving their own current or recent emotional reactions as more intense compared with others' emotional reactions to the same events. The events examined include crossing a scary bridge (study 1a), a national tragedy (study 1b), terrorist attacks (studies 2a and 3b), a natural disaster (study 2b), and a presidential election (study 3b). These perceived differences between one's own and others' emotions declined over time, as relatively immediate and recent emotions subsided, a pattern that people were not intuitively aware of (study 2c). This immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons emerged for both explicit comparisons (studies 1a, 1b, and 3b), and for absolute judgments of emotional intensity (studies 2a, 2b, and 3a). Finally, the immediacy bias in social-emotional comparisons was reduced when people were reminded that emotional display norms might lead others' appearances to understate emotional intensity (studies 3a and 3b). Implications of these findings for social-emotional phenomena are discussed.

  13. Event-related potentials elicited by pre-attentive emotional changes in temporal context.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tomomi Fujimura

    Full Text Available The ability to detect emotional change in the environment is essential for adaptive behavior. The current study investigated whether event-related potentials (ERPs can reflect emotional change in a visual sequence. To assess pre-attentive processing, we examined visual mismatch negativity (vMMN: the negative potentials elicited by a deviant (infrequent stimulus embedded in a sequence of standard (frequent stimuli. Participants in two experiments pre-attentively viewed visual sequences of Japanese kanji with different emotional connotations while ERPs were recorded. The visual sequence in Experiment 1 consisted of neutral standards and two types of emotional deviants with a strong and weak intensity. Although the results indicated that strongly emotional deviants elicited more occipital negativity than neutral standards, it was unclear whether these negativities were derived from emotional deviation in the sequence or from the emotional significance of the deviants themselves. In Experiment 2, the two identical emotional deviants were presented against different emotional standards. One type of deviants was emotionally incongruent with the standard and the other type of deviants was emotionally congruent with the standard. The results indicated that occipital negativities elicited by deviants resulted from perceptual changes in a visual sequence at a latency of 100-200 ms and from emotional changes at latencies of 200-260 ms. Contrary to the results of the ERP experiment, reaction times to deviants showed no effect of emotional context; negative stimuli were consistently detected more rapidly than were positive stimuli. Taken together, the results suggest that brain signals can reflect emotional change in a temporal context.

  14. Spatializing Emotion: No Evidence for a Domain-General Magnitude System.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pitt, Benjamin; Casasanto, Daniel

    2017-11-22

    People implicitly associate different emotions with different locations in left-right space. Which aspects of emotion do they spatialize, and why? Across many studies people spatialize emotional valence, mapping positive emotions onto their dominant side of space and negative emotions onto their non-dominant side, consistent with theories of metaphorical mental representation. Yet other results suggest a conflicting mapping of emotional intensity (a.k.a., emotional magnitude), according to which people associate more intense emotions with the right and less intense emotions with the left - regardless of their valence; this pattern has been interpreted as support for a domain-general system for representing magnitudes. To resolve the apparent contradiction between these mappings, we first tested whether people implicitly map either valence or intensity onto left-right space, depending on which dimension of emotion they attend to (Experiments 1a, b). When asked to judge emotional valence, participants showed the predicted valence mapping. However, when asked to judge emotional intensity, participants showed no systematic intensity mapping. We then tested an alternative explanation of findings previously interpreted as evidence for an intensity mapping (Experiments 2a, b). These results suggest that previous findings may reflect a left-right mapping of spatial magnitude (i.e., the size of a salient feature of the stimuli) rather than emotion. People implicitly spatialize emotional valence, but, at present, there is no clear evidence for an implicit lateral mapping of emotional intensity. These findings support metaphor theory and challenge the proposal that mental magnitudes are represented by a domain-general metric that extends to the domain of emotion. Copyright © 2017 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

  15. Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aron, Arthur; Fisher, Helen; Mashek, Debra J; Strong, Greg; Li, Haifang; Brown, Lucy L

    2005-07-01

    Early-stage romantic love can induce euphoria, is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and is possibly a developed form of a mammalian drive to pursue preferred mates. It has an important influence on social behaviors that have reproductive and genetic consequences. To determine which reward and motivation systems may be involved, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and studied 10 women and 7 men who were intensely "in love" from 1 to 17 mo. Participants alternately viewed a photograph of their beloved and a photograph of a familiar individual, interspersed with a distraction-attention task. Group activation specific to the beloved under the two control conditions occurred in dopamine-rich areas associated with mammalian reward and motivation, namely the right ventral tegmental area and the right postero-dorsal body and medial caudate nucleus. Activation in the left ventral tegmental area was correlated with facial attractiveness scores. Activation in the right anteromedial caudate was correlated with questionnaire scores that quantified intensity of romantic passion. In the left insula-putamen-globus pallidus, activation correlated with trait affect intensity. The results suggest that romantic love uses subcortical reward and motivation systems to focus on a specific individual, that limbic cortical regions process individual emotion factors, and that there is localization heterogeneity for reward functions in the human brain.

  16. Facial expression recognition and emotional regulation in narcolepsy with cataplexy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bayard, Sophie; Croisier Langenier, Muriel; Dauvilliers, Yves

    2013-04-01

    Cataplexy is pathognomonic of narcolepsy with cataplexy, and defined by a transient loss of muscle tone triggered by strong emotions. Recent researches suggest abnormal amygdala function in narcolepsy with cataplexy. Emotion treatment and emotional regulation strategies are complex functions involving cortical and limbic structures, like the amygdala. As the amygdala has been shown to play a role in facial emotion recognition, we tested the hypothesis that patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy would have impaired recognition of facial emotional expressions compared with patients affected with central hypersomnia without cataplexy and healthy controls. We also aimed to determine whether cataplexy modulates emotional regulation strategies. Emotional intensity, arousal and valence ratings on Ekman faces displaying happiness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness and neutral expressions of 21 drug-free patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy were compared with 23 drug-free sex-, age- and intellectual level-matched adult patients with hypersomnia without cataplexy and 21 healthy controls. All participants underwent polysomnography recording and multiple sleep latency tests, and completed depression, anxiety and emotional regulation questionnaires. Performance of patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy did not differ from patients with hypersomnia without cataplexy or healthy controls on both intensity rating of each emotion on its prototypical label and mean ratings for valence and arousal. Moreover, patients with narcolepsy with cataplexy did not use different emotional regulation strategies. The level of depressive and anxious symptoms in narcolepsy with cataplexy did not differ from the other groups. Our results demonstrate that narcolepsy with cataplexy accurately perceives and discriminates facial emotions, and regulates emotions normally. The absence of alteration of perceived affective valence remains a major clinical interest in narcolepsy with cataplexy

  17. EMOTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

    OpenAIRE

    Popa Mirela; Salanta Irina Iulia

    2013-01-01

    At the heart of any workplace behavior (and not only), there are always one or more emotions (pleasant/unpleasant, partially controllable/uncontrollable, aware/ unconscious, useful/useless/harmful, intense/less intense, predictable/unpredictable, expressed/ repressed, observable/ unobservable, explained/ unexplained, rational/ irrational, and so on). Emotions are the foundation of a complex and mysterious mechanism of action and behavior. Emotions are triggered by certain things, people, even...

  18. The match-mismatch model of emotion processing styles and emotion regulation strategies in fibromyalgia.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Geenen, R.; Ooijen-van der Linden, L. van; Lumley, M.A.; Bijlsma, J.W.J.; Middendorp, H. van

    2012-01-01

    OBJECTIVE: Individuals differ in their style of processing emotions (e.g., experiencing affects intensely or being alexithymic) and their strategy of regulating emotions (e.g., expressing or reappraising). A match-mismatch model of emotion processing styles and emotion regulation strategies is

  19. Assessing client self-narrative change in emotion-focused therapy of depression: an intensive single case analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Angus, Lynne E; Kagan, Fern

    2013-12-01

    Personality researchers use the term self-narrative to refer to the development of an overall life story that places life events in a temporal sequence and organizes them in accordance to overarching themes. In turn, it is often the case that clients seek out psychotherapy when they can no longer make sense of their life experiences, as a coherent story. Angus and Greenberg (L. Angus and L. Greenberg, 2011, Working with narrative in emotion-focused therapy: Changing stories, healing lives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Press) view the articulation and consolidation of an emotionally integrated self-narrative account as an important part of the therapeutic change process that is essential for sustained change in emotion-focused therapy of depression. The purpose of the present study was to investigate client experiences of change, and self-narrative reconstruction, in the context of one good outcome emotion-focused therapy dyad drawn from the York II Depression Study. Using the Narrative Assessment Interview (NAI) method, client view of self and experiences of change were assessed at three points in time--after session one, at therapy termination, and at 6 months follow-up. Findings emerging from an intensive narrative theme analyses of the NAI transcripts--and 1 key therapy session identified by the client--are reported and evidence for the contributions of narrative and emotion processes to self-narrative change in emotion-focused therapy of depression are discussed. Finally, the implications of assessing clients' experiences of self-narrative change for psychotherapy research and practice are addressed.

  20. Affect intensity and processing fluency of deterrents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holman, Andrei

    2013-01-01

    The theory of emotional intensity (Brehm, 1999) suggests that the intensity of affective states depends on the magnitude of their current deterrents. Our study investigated the role that fluency--the subjective experience of ease of information processing--plays in the emotional intensity modulations as reactions to deterrents. Following an induction phase of good mood, we manipulated both the magnitude of deterrents (using sets of photographs with pre-tested potential to instigate an emotion incompatible with the pre-existent affective state--pity) and their processing fluency (normal vs. enhanced through subliminal priming). Current affective state and perception of deterrents were then measured. In the normal processing conditions, the results revealed the cubic effect predicted by the emotional intensity theory, with the initial affective state being replaced by the one appropriate to the deterrent only in participants exposed to the high magnitude deterrence. In the enhanced fluency conditions the emotional intensity pattern was drastically altered; also, the replacement of the initial affective state occurred at a lower level of deterrence magnitude (moderate instead of high), suggesting the strengthening of deterrence emotional impact by enhanced fluency.

  1. Interoceptive sensitivity as a proxy for emotional intensity and its relationship with perseverative cognition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lugo RG

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Ricardo G Lugo,1 Kirsi Helkala,2 Benjamin J Knox,2 Øyvind Jøsok,2 Natalie M Lande,1 Stefan Sütterlin3,4 1Department of Psychology, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Norway; 2Norwegian Defence Cyber Academy, Lillehammer, Norway; 3Faculty for Health and Welfare Sciences, Østfold University College, Oslo, Norway; 4CHDT Research Group, Oslo University Hospital, Halden, Norway Background: Technical advancement in military cyber defense poses increased cognitive demands on cyber officers. In the cyber domain, the influence of emotion on decision-making is rarely investigated. The purpose of this study was to assess psychophysiological correlation with perseverative cognitions during emotionally intensive/stressful situations in cyber military personnel. In line with parallel research on clinical samples high on perseverative cognition, we expected a decreased interoceptive sensitivity in officers with high levels of perseverative cognition.Method: We investigated this association in a sample of 27 cyber officer cadets.Results: Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no relationship between the factors.Discussion: Cyber officers might display characteristics not otherwise found in general populations. The cyber domain may lead to a selection process that attracts different profiles of cognitive and emotional processing. Keywords: cyber, perseverative cognitions, interoception, decision-making

  2. Band Gap Distortion in Semiconductors Strongly Driven by Intense Mid-Infrared Laser Fields

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kono, J.; Chin, A. H.

    2000-03-01

    Crystalline solids non-resonantly driven by intense time-periodic electric fields are predicted to exhibit unusual band-gap distortion.(e.g., Y. Yacoby, Phys. Rev. 169, 610 (1968); L.C.M. Miranda, Solid State Commun. 45, 783 (1983); J.Z. Kaminski, Acta Physica Polonica A 83, 495(1993).) Such non-perturbative effects have not been observed to date because of the unavoidable sample damage due to the very high intensity required using conventional lasers ( 1 eV photon energy). Here, we report the first clear evidence of laser-induced bandgap shrinkage in semiconductors under intense mid-infrared (MIR) laser fields. The use of long-wavelength light reduces the required intensity and prohibits strong interband absorption, thereby avoiding the damage problem. The significant sub-bandgap absorption persists only during the existence of the MIR laser pulse, indicating the virtual nature of the effect. We show that this particular example of non-perturbative behavior, known as the dynamical Franz-Keldysh effect, occurs when the effective ponderomotive potential energy is comparable to the photon energy of the applied field. This work was supported by ONR, NSF, JST and NEDO.

  3. The Effects of Emotional Intelligence (EI Items Education on Job Related Stress in Physicians and Nurses who Work in Intensive Care Units

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kh Nooryan

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Background & Aim: Intensive care units (ICUs are recognized as stressful environments. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of emotional intelligence education items on job related stress on physicians and nurses who work in intensive care units at hospitals of Yerevan, Armenia. Methods: A interventional study design was implemented with 106 registered hospital physicians and nurses, who were widely distributed all the way through. Case group was taught about 15 E.I items. For data collection, the 20-question Berger situational (overt anxiety questionnaire, the 20-item personality (covert anxiety questionnaire, and the Bar-on emotional intelligence questionnaire with 133 questions were used. Statistical descriptive methods, chi-square (X2 and t-tests were used to analyze data. Results: The research achievements revealed that the average score of the case group`s situational anxiety was 46.59 before intervention, which decreased to 39.95 after the training of the items of emotional intelligence. The average score of situational anxiety of control group was 44.32 before intervention which increased to 44.76 after examination. There was a meaningful statistical difference between case and control group after education of emotional intelligence`s items (p=0.001. Conclusion: Results of the current study showed that physicians and nurses experience high level of stress. The ability to effectively deal with emotion intelligence and emotional information in the workplace assists employees in coping with occupational stress and should be developed in stress managing trainings.

  4. Aging and emotional expressions: is there a positivity bias during dynamic emotion recognition?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alberto eDi Domenico

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in emotion regulation priorities influence online dynamic emotional facial discrimination. A group of 40 younger and a group of 40 older adults were invited to recognize a positive or negative expression as soon as the expression slowly emerged and subsequently rate it in terms of intensity. Our findings show that older adults recognized happy expressions faster than angry ones, while the direction of emotional expression does not seem to affect younger adults’ performance. Furthermore, older adults rated both negative and positive emotional faces as more intense compared to younger controls. This study detects age-related differences with a dynamic online paradigm and suggests that different regulation strategies may shape emotional face recognition.

  5. Body Weight Can Change How Your Emotions Are Perceived.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yujung Oh

    Full Text Available Accurately interpreting other's emotions through facial expressions has important adaptive values for social interactions. However, due to the stereotypical social perception of overweight individuals as carefree, humorous, and light-hearted, the body weight of those with whom we interact may have a systematic influence on our emotion judgment even though it has no relevance to the expressed emotion itself. In this experimental study, we examined the role of body weight in faces on the affective perception of facial expressions. We hypothesized that the weight perceived in a face would bias the assessment of an emotional expression, with overweight faces generally more likely to be perceived as having more positive and less negative expressions than healthy weight faces. Using two-alternative forced-choice perceptual decision tasks, participants were asked to sort the emotional expressions of overweight and healthy weight facial stimuli that had been gradually morphed across six emotional intensity levels into one of two categories-"neutral vs. happy" (Experiment 1 and "neutral vs. sad" (Experiment 2. As predicted, our results demonstrated that overweight faces were more likely to be categorized as happy (i.e., lower happy decision threshold and less likely to be categorized as sad (i.e., higher sad decision threshold compared to healthy weight faces that had the same levels of emotional intensity. The neutral-sad decision threshold shift was negatively correlated with participant's own fear of becoming fat, that is, those without a fear of becoming fat more strongly perceived overweight faces as sad relative to those with a higher fear. These findings demonstrate that the weight of the face systematically influences how its emotional expression is interpreted, suggesting that being overweight may make emotional expressions appear more happy and less sad than they really are.

  6. Changes in symptom intensity and emotion valence during the process of assimilation of a problematic experience: A quantitative study of a good outcome case of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Basto, Isabel; Pinheiro, Patrícia; Stiles, William B; Rijo, Daniel; Salgado, João

    2017-07-01

    The assimilation model describes the change process in psychotherapy. In this study we analyzed the relation of assimilation with changes in symptom intensity, measured session by session, and changes in emotional valence, measured for each emotional episode, in the case of a 33-year-old woman treated for depression with cognitive-behavioral therapy. Results showed the theoretically expected negative relation between assimilation of the client's main concerns and symptom intensity, and the relation between assimilation levels and emotional valence corresponded closely to the assimilation model's theoretical feelings curve. The results show how emotions work as markers of the client's current assimilation level, which could help the therapist adjust the intervention, moment by moment, to the client's needs.

  7. "I'm Strong within Myself": Gender, Class and Emotional Capital in Childcare

    Science.gov (United States)

    Andrew, Yarrow

    2015-01-01

    Emotions have received increasing attention in educational circles in the last decade. Drawing on Bourdieu, feminist scholars use emotional capital to illustrate the ways gendered inequalities can compound the disadvantages of social class. This paper examines relationships within childcare services in Australia, showing how emotional capital…

  8. Judgments of subtle facial expressions of emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsumoto, David; Hwang, Hyisung C

    2014-04-01

    Most studies on judgments of facial expressions of emotion have primarily utilized prototypical, high-intensity expressions. This paper examines judgments of subtle facial expressions of emotion, including not only low-intensity versions of full-face prototypes but also variants of those prototypes. A dynamic paradigm was used in which observers were shown a neutral expression followed by the target expression to judge, and then the neutral expression again, allowing for a simulation of the emergence of the expression from and then return to a baseline. We also examined how signal and intensity clarities of the expressions (explained more fully in the Introduction) were associated with judgment agreement levels. Low-intensity, full-face prototypical expressions of emotion were judged as the intended emotion at rates significantly greater than chance. A number of the proposed variants were also judged as the intended emotions. Both signal and intensity clarities were individually associated with agreement rates; when their interrelationships were taken into account, signal clarity independently predicted agreement rates but intensity clarity did not. The presence or absence of specific muscles appeared to be more important to agreement rates than their intensity levels, with the exception of the intensity of zygomatic major, which was positively correlated with agreement rates for judgments of joy.

  9. Recognition of Emotion from Facial Expressions with Direct or Averted Eye Gaze and Varying Expression Intensities in Children with Autism Disorder and Typically Developing Children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dina Tell

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Eye gaze direction and expression intensity effects on emotion recognition in children with autism disorder and typically developing children were investigated. Children with autism disorder and typically developing children identified happy and angry expressions equally well. Children with autism disorder, however, were less accurate in identifying fear expressions across intensities and eye gaze directions. Children with autism disorder rated expressions with direct eyes, and 50% expressions, as more intense than typically developing children. A trend was also found for sad expressions, as children with autism disorder were less accurate in recognizing sadness at 100% intensity with direct eyes than typically developing children. Although the present research showed that children with autism disorder are sensitive to eye gaze direction, impairments in the recognition of fear, and possibly sadness, exist. Furthermore, children with autism disorder and typically developing children perceive the intensity of emotional expressions differently.

  10. Do people essentialize emotions? Individual differences in emotion essentialism and emotional experience

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lindquist, K.A.; Gendron, M.; Oosterwijk, S.; Barrett, L.F.

    2013-01-01

    Many scientific models of emotion assume that emotion categories are natural kinds that carve nature at its joints. These beliefs remain strong, despite the fact that the empirical record on the issue has remained equivocal for over a century. In this research, the authors examined one reason for

  11. Cultural regulation of emotion: Individual, relational, and structural sources

    OpenAIRE

    De Leersnyder, Jozefien; Boiger, Michael; Mesquita, Batja

    2013-01-01

    The most prevalent and intense emotional experiences differ across cultures. These differences in emotional experience can be understood as the outcomes of emotion regulation, because emotions that fit the valued relationships within a culture tend to be most common and intense. We review evidence suggesting that emotion regulation underlying cultural differences in emotional experience often takes place at the point of emotion elicitation through the promotion of situations and appraisals th...

  12. Affect Intensity: An Individual Difference Response to Advertising Appeals.

    OpenAIRE

    Moore, David J; Harris, William D; Chen, Hong C

    1995-01-01

    The Affect Intensity Measurement (AIM) scale assesses the strength of the emotions with which individuals respond to an affect-laden stimulus. This study investigated the extent to which individual differences in affect intensity influence the message recipient's responses to emotional advertising appeals. In two experiments high affect intensity individuals, compared with those who scored low on the AIM scale, (1) manifested significantly stronger emotional responses to the emotional adverti...

  13. Cross-cultural patterns in dynamic ratings of positive and negative natural emotional behaviour.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sneddon, Ian; McKeown, Gary; McRorie, Margaret; Vukicevic, Tijana

    2011-02-18

    Studies of cross-cultural variations in the perception of emotion have typically compared rates of recognition of static posed stimulus photographs. That research has provided evidence for universality in the recognition of a range of emotions but also for some systematic cross-cultural variation in the interpretation of emotional expression. However, questions remain about how widely such findings can be generalised to real life emotional situations. The present study provides the first evidence that the previously reported interplay between universal and cultural influences extends to ratings of natural, dynamic emotional stimuli. Participants from Northern Ireland, Serbia, Guatemala and Peru used a computer based tool to continuously rate the strength of positive and negative emotion being displayed in twelve short video sequences by people from the United Kingdom engaged in emotional conversations. Generalized additive mixed models were developed to assess the differences in perception of emotion between countries and sexes. Our results indicate that the temporal pattern of ratings is similar across cultures for a range of emotions and social contexts. However, there are systematic differences in intensity ratings between the countries, with participants from Northern Ireland making the most extreme ratings in the majority of the clips. The results indicate that there is strong agreement across cultures in the valence and patterns of ratings of natural emotional situations but that participants from different cultures show systematic variation in the intensity with which they rate emotion. Results are discussed in terms of both 'in-group advantage' and 'display rules' approaches. This study indicates that examples of natural spontaneous emotional behaviour can be used to study cross-cultural variations in the perception of emotion.

  14. Cross-cultural patterns in dynamic ratings of positive and negative natural emotional behaviour.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ian Sneddon

    2011-02-01

    Full Text Available Studies of cross-cultural variations in the perception of emotion have typically compared rates of recognition of static posed stimulus photographs. That research has provided evidence for universality in the recognition of a range of emotions but also for some systematic cross-cultural variation in the interpretation of emotional expression. However, questions remain about how widely such findings can be generalised to real life emotional situations. The present study provides the first evidence that the previously reported interplay between universal and cultural influences extends to ratings of natural, dynamic emotional stimuli.Participants from Northern Ireland, Serbia, Guatemala and Peru used a computer based tool to continuously rate the strength of positive and negative emotion being displayed in twelve short video sequences by people from the United Kingdom engaged in emotional conversations. Generalized additive mixed models were developed to assess the differences in perception of emotion between countries and sexes. Our results indicate that the temporal pattern of ratings is similar across cultures for a range of emotions and social contexts. However, there are systematic differences in intensity ratings between the countries, with participants from Northern Ireland making the most extreme ratings in the majority of the clips.The results indicate that there is strong agreement across cultures in the valence and patterns of ratings of natural emotional situations but that participants from different cultures show systematic variation in the intensity with which they rate emotion. Results are discussed in terms of both 'in-group advantage' and 'display rules' approaches. This study indicates that examples of natural spontaneous emotional behaviour can be used to study cross-cultural variations in the perception of emotion.

  15. The downside of strong emotional memories: how human memory-related genes influence the risk for posttraumatic stress disorder--a selective review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wilker, Sarah; Elbert, Thomas; Kolassa, Iris-Tatjana

    2014-07-01

    A good memory for emotionally arousing experiences may be intrinsically adaptive, as it helps the organisms to predict safety and danger and to choose appropriate responses to prevent potential harm. However, under conditions of repeated exposure to traumatic stressors, strong emotional memories of these experiences can lead to the development of trauma-related disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This syndrome is characterized by distressing intrusive memories that can be so intense that the survivor is unable to discriminate past from present experiences. This selective review on the role of memory-related genes in PTSD etiology is divided in three sections. First, we summarize studies indicating that the likelihood to develop PTSD depends on the cumulative exposure to traumatic stressors and on individual predisposing risk factors, including a substantial genetic contribution to PTSD risk. Second, we focus on memory processes supposed to be involved in PTSD etiology and present evidence for PTSD-associated alterations in both implicit (fear conditioning, fear extinction) and explicit memory for emotional material. This is supplemented by a brief description of structural and functional alterations in memory-relevant brain regions in PTSD. Finally, we summarize a selection of studies indicating that genetic variations found to be associated with enhanced fear conditioning, reduced fear extinction or better episodic memory in human experimental studies can have clinical implications in the case of trauma exposure and influence the risk of PTSD development. Here, we focus on genes involved in noradrenergic (ADRA2B), serotonergic (SLC6A4), and dopaminergic signaling (COMT) as well as in the molecular cascades of memory formation (PRKCA and WWC1). This is supplemented by initial evidence that such memory-related genes might also influence the response rates of exposure-based psychotherapy or pharmacological treatment of PTSD, which underscores the

  16. Emotion Recognition in Children with Down Syndrome: Influence of Emotion Label and Expression Intensity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cebula, Katie R.; Wishart, Jennifer G.; Willis, Diane S.; Pitcairn, Tom K.

    2017-01-01

    Some children with Down syndrome may experience difficulties in recognizing facial emotions, particularly fear, but it is not clear why, nor how such skills can best be facilitated. Using a photo-matching task, emotion recognition was tested in children with Down syndrome, children with nonspecific intellectual disability and cognitively matched,…

  17. Positively Biased Processing of Mother's Emotions Predicts Children's Social and Emotional Functioning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Donohue, Meghan Rose; Goodman, Sherryl H; Tully, Erin C

    Risk for internalizing problems and social skills deficits likely emerges in early childhood when emotion processing and social competencies are developing. Positively biased processing of social information is typical during early childhood and may be protective against poorer psychosocial outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that young children with relatively less positively biased attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother's emotions would exhibit poorer prosocial skills and more internalizing problems. A sample of 4- to 6-year-old children ( N =82) observed their mothers express happiness, sadness and anger during a simulated emotional phone conversation. Children's attention to their mother when she expressed each emotion was rated from video. Immediately following the phone conversation, children were asked questions about the conversation to assess their interpretations of the intensity of mother's emotions and misattributions of personal responsibility for her emotions. Children's prosocial skills and internalizing problems were assessed using mother-report rating scales. Interpretations of mother's positive emotions as relatively less intense than her negative emotions, misattributions of personal responsibility for her negative emotions, and lack of misattributions of personal responsibility for her positive emotions were associated with poorer prosocial skills. Children who attended relatively less to mother's positive than her negative emotions had higher levels of internalizing problems. These findings suggest that children's attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother's emotions may be important targets of early interventions for preventing prosocial skills deficits and internalizing problems.

  18. Emotion understanding in clinically anxious children

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bender, Patrick Karl; Pons, Francisco; Harris, Paul L.

    2015-01-01

    Children’s understanding of the nature, origins and consequences of emotions has been intensively investigated over the last 30-40 years. However, few empirical studies have looked at the relation between emotion understanding and anxiety in children and their results are mixed. The aim of the pr....... Finally, there were interrelations among emotion understanding, attachment security, and emotion dysregulation. The present results provide the first comprehensive evidence for a socio-emotional framework and its relevance to childhood anxiety.......Children’s understanding of the nature, origins and consequences of emotions has been intensively investigated over the last 30-40 years. However, few empirical studies have looked at the relation between emotion understanding and anxiety in children and their results are mixed. The aim...... of the present study was to perform a preliminary investigation of the relationships between emotion understanding, anxiety, emotion dysregulation, and attachment security in clinically anxious children. A sample of 16 clinically anxious children (age 8-12, 8 girls/boys) was assessed for emotion understanding...

  19. The production and perception of emotionally expressive walking sounds: similarities between musical performance and everyday motor activity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bruno L Giordano

    Full Text Available Several studies have investigated the encoding and perception of emotional expressivity in music performance. A relevant question concerns how the ability to communicate emotions in music performance is acquired. In accordance with recent theories on the embodiment of emotion, we suggest here that both the expression and recognition of emotion in music might at least in part rely on knowledge about the sounds of expressive body movements. We test this hypothesis by drawing parallels between musical expression of emotions and expression of emotions in sounds associated with a non-musical motor activity: walking. In a combined production-perception design, two experiments were conducted, and expressive acoustical features were compared across modalities. An initial performance experiment tested for similar feature use in walking sounds and music performance, and revealed that strong similarities exist. Features related to sound intensity, tempo and tempo regularity were identified as been used similarly in both domains. Participants in a subsequent perception experiment were able to recognize both non-emotional and emotional properties of the sound-generating walkers. An analysis of the acoustical correlates of behavioral data revealed that variations in sound intensity, tempo, and tempo regularity were likely used to recognize expressed emotions. Taken together, these results lend support the motor origin hypothesis for the musical expression of emotions.

  20. What do YOUth feel? Understanding adolescents' momentary emotions and emotion regulation

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Lennarz, H.K.

    2018-01-01

    Adolescents experience many different emotions and have to learn to regulate them effectively to prevent the development of mood disorders. This dissertation showed that experience of emotions differed between persons and situations. Jealousy was most intensely experienced when with peers and in

  1. Emotional intelligence and emotions associated with optimal and dysfunctional athletic performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lane, Andrew M; Devonport, Tracey J; Soos, Istvan; Karsai, Istvan; Leibinger, Eva; Hamar, Pal

    2010-01-01

    This study investigated relationships between self-report measures of emotional intelligence and memories of pre-competitive emotions before optimal and dysfunctional athletic performance. Participant-athletes (n = 284) completed a self-report measure of emotional intelligence and two measures of pre-competitive emotions; a) emotions experienced before an optimal performance, and b) emotions experienced before a dysfunctional performance. Consistent with theoretical predictions, repeated MANOVA results demonstrated pleasant emotions associated with optimal performance and unpleasant emotions associated with dysfunctional performance. Emotional intelligence correlated with pleasant emotions in both performances with individuals reporting low scores on the self-report emotional intelligence scale appearing to experience intense unpleasant emotions before dysfunctional performance. We suggest that future research should investigate relationships between emotional intelligence and emotion-regulation strategies used by athletes. Key pointsAthletes reporting high scores of self-report emotional intelligence tend to experience pleasant emotions.Optimal performance is associated with pleasant emotions and dysfunctional performance is associated with unpleasant emotions.Emotional intelligence might help athletes recognize which emotional states help performance.

  2. Intensity of diffracted X-rays from biomolecules with radiation damage caused by strong X-ray pulses

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kai, Takeshi; Tokuhisa, Atsushi; Moribayashi, Kengo; Fukuda, Yuji; Kono, Hidetoshi; Go, Nobuhiro

    2014-01-01

    In order to realize the coherent X-ray diffractive imaging of single biomolecules, the diffraction intensities, per effective pixel of a single biomolecule with radiation damage, caused by irradiation using a strong coherent X-ray pulse, were examined. A parameter survey was carried out for various experimental conditions, using a developed simulation program that considers the effect of electric field ionization, which was slightly reported on in previous studies. The two simple relationships among the parameters were identified as follows: (1) the diffraction intensity of a biomolecule slightly increases with the incident X-ray energy; and that (2) the diffraction intensity is approximately proportional to the target radius, when the radius is longer than 400 Å, since the upper limit of the incident intensity for damage to the biomolecules marginally changes with respect to the target radius. (author)

  3. Social anxiety and emotion regulation flexibility

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    O'Toole, Mia S.; Zachariae, Robert; Mennin, Douglas S.

    2017-01-01

    Abstract BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Individuals with social anxiety disorder have often been considered inflexible in their emotion regulation. The aim of this study was to investigate emotion regulation flexibility in socially anxious individuals in response to two contextual factors, namely...... different levels of emotion intensity and emotion type. METHODS: A daily diary approach was employed, investigating emotion regulation (i.e., experiential avoidance, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal) in college students scoring high (N = 62; HSA) and low (N = 52; LSA) on social anxiety....... RESULTS: Results revealed that HSAs were found to use more experiential avoidance than LSAs, especially at higher levels of negative intensity. The use of this emotion regulation strategy appeared to be driven by guilt, nervousness, and sadness. There were no between-group differences concerning the other...

  4. Regulating deviance with emotions: Emotional expressions as signals of acceptance and rejection

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Heerdink, M.W.

    2015-01-01

    An individual group member’s deviant behavior can provoke strong emotional reactions from other group members. I have investigated the role of such emotional reactions in regulating deviance by investigating how the deviant is influenced by these emotional reactions. The idea that angry reactions

  5. Do people essentialize emotions? Individual differences in emotion essentialism and emotional experience.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindquist, Kristen A; Gendron, Maria; Oosterwijk, Suzanne; Barrett, Lisa Feldman

    2013-08-01

    Many scientific models of emotion assume that emotion categories are natural kinds that carve nature at its joints. These beliefs remain strong, despite the fact that the empirical record on the issue has remained equivocal for over a century. In this research, the authors examined one reason for this situation: People essentialize emotion categories by assuming that members of the same category (e.g., fear) have a shared metaphysical essence (i.e., a common causal mechanism). In Study 1, the authors found that lay people essentialize emotions by assuming that instances of the same emotion category have a shared essence that defines them, even when their surface features differ. Study 2 extended these findings, demonstrating that lay people tend to essentialize categories the more a category is of the body (vs. the mind). In Study 3, we examined the links between emotion essentialism and the complexity of actual emotional experiences. In particular, we predicted and found that individuals who hold essentialist beliefs about emotions describe themselves as experiencing highly differentiated emotional experiences but do not show evidence of stronger emotional differentiation in their momentary ratings of experience in everyday life. Implications for the science of emotion are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

  6. Emotion-Bracelet: A Web Service for Expressing Emotions through an Electronic Interface.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martinez, Alicia; Estrada, Hugo; Molina, Alejandra; Mejia, Manuel; Perez, Joaquin

    2016-11-24

    The mechanisms to communicate emotions have dramatically changed in the last 10 years with social networks, where users massively communicate their emotional states by using the Internet. However, people with socialization problems have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally or interpreting the environment and providing an appropriate emotional response. In this paper, a novel solution called the Emotion-Bracelet is presented that combines a hardware device and a software system. The proposed approach identifies the polarity and emotional intensity of texts published on a social network site by performing real-time processing using a web service. It also shows emotions with a LED matrix using five emoticons that represent positive, very positive, negative, very negative, and neutral states. The Emotion-Bracelet is designed to help people express their emotions in a non-intrusive way, thereby expanding the social aspect of human emotions.

  7. The underlying emotion and the dream relating dream imagery to the dreamer's underlying emotion can help elucidate the nature of dreaming.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartmann, Ernest

    2010-01-01

    There is a widespread consensus that emotion is important in dreams, deriving from both biological and psychological studies. However, the emphasis on examining emotions explicitly mentioned in dreams is misplaced. The dream is basically made of imagery. The focus of our group has been on relating the dream imagery to the dreamer's underlying emotion. What is most important is the underlying emotion--the emotion of the dreamer, not the emotion in the dream. This chapter discusses many studies relating the dream-especially the central image of the dream--to the dreamer's underlying emotion. Focusing on the underlying emotion leads to a coherent and testable view of the nature of dreaming. It also helps to clarify some important puzzling features of the literature on dreams, such as why the clinical literature is different in so many ways from the experimental literature, especially the laboratory-based experimental literature. Based on central image intensity and the associated underlying emotion, we can identify a hierarchy of dreams, from the highest-intensity, "big dreams," to the lowest-intensity dreams from laboratory awakenings. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Inside-out: comparing internally generated and externally generated basic emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salas, Christian E; Radovic, Darinka; Turnbull, Oliver H

    2012-06-01

    A considerable number of mood induction (MI) procedures have been developed to elicit emotion in normal and clinical populations. Although external procedures (e.g., film clips, pictures) are widely used, a number of experiments elicit emotion by using self-generated procedures (e.g., recalling an emotional personal episode). However, no study has directly compared the effectiveness of two types of internal versus external MI across multiple discrete emotions. In the present experiment, 40 undergraduate students watched film clips (external procedure) and recalled personal events (internal procedure) inducing 4 basic emotions (fear, anger, joy, sadness) and later completed a self-report questionnaire. Remarkably, both internal and external procedures elicited target emotions selectively, compared with nontarget emotions. When contrasting the intensity of target emotions, both techniques showed no significant differences, with the exception of Joy, which was more intensely elicited by the internal procedure. Importantly, when considering the overall level of intensity, it was always greater in the internal procedure, for each stimulus. A more detailed investigation of the data suggest that recalling personal events (a type of internal procedure) generates more negative and mixed blends of emotions, which might account for the overall higher intensity of the internal mood induction.

  9. Frozen style and strong emotions of panic and separation

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Grodal, Torben Kragh

    2012-01-01

    The article analyses the aesthetics of two Trier prologues using cognitive psychology. It focuses on how the films evoke anxiety and panic, and how the panic is contained by means of providing visual and musical aesthetic order to the dynamic emotional forces; by providing ambiguous reality...

  10. A preliminary study of the neural correlates of the intensities of self-reported gambling urges and emotions in men with pathological gambling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balodis, Iris M; Lacadie, Cheryl M; Potenza, Marc N

    2012-09-01

    Although self-reported gambling urge intensities have clinical utility in the treatment of pathological gambling (PG), prior studies have not investigated their neural correlates. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was conducted while 10 men with PG and 11 control comparison (CON) men viewed videotaped scenarios of gambling, happy or sad content. Participants rated the intensity of their emotions and motivations and reported the qualities of their responses. Relative to the CON group, the PG group reported similar responses to sad and happy scenarios, but stronger emotional responses and gambling urges when viewing the gambling scenarios. Correlations between self-reported responses and brain activations were typically strongest during the period of reported onset of emotional/motivational response and more robust in PG than in CON subjects for all conditions. During this epoch, corresponding with conscious awareness of an emotional/motivational response, subjective ratings of gambling urges in the PG group were negatively correlated with medial prefrontal cortex activation and positively correlated with middle temporal gyrus and temporal pole activations. Sadness ratings in the PG group correlated positively with activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, middle temporal gyrus, and retrosplenial cortex, while self-reported happiness during the happy videos demonstrated largely inverse correlations with activations in the temporal poles. Brain areas identified in the PG subjects have been implicated in explicit, self-referential processing and episodic memory. The findings demonstrate different patterns of correlations between subjective measures of emotions and motivations in PG and CON subjects when viewing material of corresponding content, suggesting in PG alterations in the neural correlates underlying experiential aspects of affective processing.

  11. Facets of emotional awareness and associations with emotion regulation and depression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boden, Matthew Tyler; Thompson, Renee J

    2015-06-01

    Emotion theories posit that effective emotion regulation depends upon the nuanced information provided by emotional awareness; attending to and understanding one's own emotions. Additionally, the strong associations between facets of emotional awareness and various forms of psychopathology may be partially attributable to associations with emotion regulation. These logically compelling hypotheses are largely uninvestigated, including which facets compose emotional awareness and how they relate to emotion regulation strategies and psychopathology. We used exploratory structural equation modeling of individual difference measures among a large adult sample (n = 919) recruited online. Results distinguished 4 facets of emotional awareness (type clarity, source clarity, involuntary attention to emotion, and voluntary attention to emotion) that were differentially associated with expressive suppression, acceptance of emotions, and cognitive reappraisal. Facets were associated with depression both directly and indirectly via associations with emotion regulation strategies. We discuss implications for theory and research on emotional awareness, emotion regulation, and psychopathology. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  12. Emotion perception across cultures: the role of cognitive mechanisms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Engelmann, Jan B; Pogosyan, Marianna

    2013-01-01

    Despite consistently documented cultural differences in the perception of facial expressions of emotion, the role of culture in shaping cognitive mechanisms that are central to emotion perception has received relatively little attention in past research. We review recent developments in cross-cultural psychology that provide particular insights into the modulatory role of culture on cognitive mechanisms involved in interpretations of facial expressions of emotion through two distinct routes: display rules and cognitive styles. Investigations of emotion intensity perception have demonstrated that facial expressions with varying levels of intensity of positive affect are perceived and categorized differently across cultures. Specifically, recent findings indicating significant levels of differentiation between intensity levels of facial expressions among American participants, as well as deviations from clear categorization of high and low intensity expressions among Japanese and Russian participants, suggest that display rules shape mental representations of emotions, such as intensity levels of emotion prototypes. Furthermore, a series of recent studies using eye tracking as a proxy for overt attention during face perception have identified culture-specific cognitive styles, such as the propensity to attend to very specific features of the face. Together, these results suggest a cascade of cultural influences on cognitive mechanisms involved in interpretations of facial expressions of emotion, whereby cultures impart specific behavioral practices that shape the way individuals process information from the environment. These cultural influences lead to differences in cognitive styles due to culture-specific attentional biases and emotion prototypes, which partially account for the gradient of cultural agreements and disagreements obtained in past investigations of emotion perception.

  13. Emotion-Bracelet: A Web Service for Expressing Emotions through an Electronic Interface

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alicia Martinez

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available The mechanisms to communicate emotions have dramatically changed in the last 10 years with social networks, where users massively communicate their emotional states by using the Internet. However, people with socialization problems have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally or interpreting the environment and providing an appropriate emotional response. In this paper, a novel solution called the Emotion-Bracelet is presented that combines a hardware device and a software system. The proposed approach identifies the polarity and emotional intensity of texts published on a social network site by performing real-time processing using a web service. It also shows emotions with a LED matrix using five emoticons that represent positive, very positive, negative, very negative, and neutral states. The Emotion-Bracelet is designed to help people express their emotions in a non-intrusive way, thereby expanding the social aspect of human emotions.

  14. Reconsidering Emotion Dysregulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Agostino, Alessandra; Covanti, Serena; Rossi Monti, Mario; Starcevic, Vladan

    2017-12-01

    This article aims to review the concept of emotion dysregulation, focusing on issues related to its definition, meanings and role in psychiatric disorders. Articles on emotion dysregulation published until May 2016 were identified through electronic database searches. Although there is no agreement about the definition of emotion dysregulation, the following five overlapping, not mutually exclusive dimensions of emotion dysregulation were identified: decreased emotional awareness, inadequate emotional reactivity, intense experience and expression of emotions, emotional rigidity and cognitive reappraisal difficulty. These dimensions characterise a number of psychiatric disorders in various proportions, with borderline personality disorder and eating disorders seemingly more affected than other conditions. The present review contributes to the literature by identifying the key components of emotion dysregulation and by showing how these permeate various forms of psychopathology. It also makes suggestions for improving research endeavours. Better understanding of the various dimensions of emotion dysregulation will have implications for clinical practice. Future research needs to address emotion dysregulation in all its multifaceted complexity so that it becomes clearer what the concept encompasses.

  15. Music, memory and emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jäncke, Lutz

    2008-08-08

    Because emotions enhance memory processes and music evokes strong emotions, music could be involved in forming memories, either about pieces of music or about episodes and information associated with particular music. A recent study in BMC Neuroscience has given new insights into the role of emotion in musical memory.

  16. Positively Biased Processing of Mother’s Emotions Predicts Children’s Social and Emotional Functioning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Donohue, Meghan Rose; Goodman, Sherryl H.; Tully, Erin C.

    2016-01-01

    Risk for internalizing problems and social skills deficits likely emerges in early childhood when emotion processing and social competencies are developing. Positively biased processing of social information is typical during early childhood and may be protective against poorer psychosocial outcomes. We tested the hypothesis that young children with relatively less positively biased attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother’s emotions would exhibit poorer prosocial skills and more internalizing problems. A sample of 4- to 6-year-old children (N=82) observed their mothers express happiness, sadness and anger during a simulated emotional phone conversation. Children’s attention to their mother when she expressed each emotion was rated from video. Immediately following the phone conversation, children were asked questions about the conversation to assess their interpretations of the intensity of mother’s emotions and misattributions of personal responsibility for her emotions. Children’s prosocial skills and internalizing problems were assessed using mother-report rating scales. Interpretations of mother’s positive emotions as relatively less intense than her negative emotions, misattributions of personal responsibility for her negative emotions, and lack of misattributions of personal responsibility for her positive emotions were associated with poorer prosocial skills. Children who attended relatively less to mother’s positive than her negative emotions had higher levels of internalizing problems. These findings suggest that children’s attention to, interpretations of, and attributions for their mother’s emotions may be important targets of early interventions for preventing prosocial skills deficits and internalizing problems. PMID:28348456

  17. The Nonverbal Communication of Positive Emotions: An Emotion Family Approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sauter, Disa A

    2017-07-01

    This review provides an overview of the research on nonverbal expressions of positive emotions, organised into emotion families, that is, clusters sharing common characteristics. Epistemological positive emotions (amusement, relief, awe, and interest) are found to have distinct, recognisable displays via vocal or facial cues, while the agency-approach positive emotions (elation and pride) appear to be associated with recognisable visual, but not auditory, cues. Evidence is less strong for the prosocial emotions (love, compassion, gratitude, and admiration) in any modality other than touch, and there is little support for distinct recognisable signals of the savouring positive emotions (contentment, sensory pleasure, and desire). In closing, some limitations of extant work are noted and some proposals for future research are outlined.

  18. Music, memory and emotion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jäncke, Lutz

    2008-01-01

    Because emotions enhance memory processes and music evokes strong emotions, music could be involved in forming memories, either about pieces of music or about episodes and information associated with particular music. A recent study in BMC Neuroscience has given new insights into the role of emotion in musical memory. PMID:18710596

  19. Emotions and trait emotional intelligence among ultra-endurance runners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lane, Andrew M; Wilson, Mathew

    2011-07-01

    The aim of this study was to investigate relationships between trait emotional intelligence and emotional state changes over the course of an ultra-endurance foot race covering a route of approximately 175 miles (282 km) and held in set stages over six days. A repeated measures field design that sought to maintain ecological validity was used. Trait emotional intelligence was defined as a relatively stable concept that should predict adaptive emotional states experienced over the duration of the race and therefore associate with pleasant emotions during a 6-stage endurance event. Thirty-four runners completed a self-report measure of trait emotional intelligence before the event started. Participants reported emotional states before and after each of the six races. Repeated measures ANOVA results showed significant variations in emotions over time and a main effect for trait emotional intelligence. Runners high in self-report trait emotional intelligence also reported higher pleasant and lower unpleasant emotions than runners low in trait emotional intelligence. Findings lend support to the notion that trait emotional intelligence associates with adaptive psychological states, suggesting that it may be a key individual difference that explains why some athletes respond to repeated bouts of hard exercise better than others. Future research should test the effectiveness of interventions designed to enhance trait emotional intelligence and examine the attendant impact on emotional responses to intense exercise during multi-stage events. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  20. The contribution of emotional empathy to approachability judgements assigned to emotional faces is context specific

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Megan L Willis

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Previous research on approachability judgements has indicated that facial expressions modulate how these judgements are made, but the relationship between emotional empathy and context in this decision-making process has not yet been examined. This study examined the contribution of emotional empathy to approachability judgements assigned to emotional faces in different contexts. One hundred and twenty female participants completed the Questionnaire Measure of Emotional Empathy. Participants provided approachability judgements to faces displaying angry, disgusted, fearful, happy, neutral and sad expressions, in three different contexts – when evaluating whether they would approach another individual to: 1 receive help; 2 give help; or 3 when no contextual information was provided. In addition, participants were also required to provide ratings of perceived threat, emotional intensity and label facial expressions. Emotional empathy significantly predicted approachability ratings for specific emotions in each context, over and above the contribution of perceived threat and intensity, which were associated with emotional empathy. Higher emotional empathy predicted less willingness to approach people with angry and disgusted faces to receive help, and a greater willingness to approach people with happy faces to receive help. Higher emotional empathy also predicted a greater willingness to approach people with sad faces to offer help, and more willingness to approach people with happy faces when no contextual information was provided. These results highlight the important contribution of individual differences in emotional empathy in predicting how approachability judgements are assigned to facial expressions in context.

  1. Anxiety, Depression and Emotion Regulation Among Regular Online Poker Players.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barrault, Servane; Bonnaire, Céline; Herrmann, Florian

    2017-12-01

    Poker is a type of gambling that has specific features, including the need to regulate one's emotion to be successful. The aim of the present study is to assess emotion regulation, anxiety and depression in a sample of regular poker players, and to compare the results of problem and non-problem gamblers. 416 regular online poker players completed online questionnaires including sociodemographic data, measures of problem gambling (CPGI), anxiety and depression (HAD scale), and emotion regulation (ERQ). The CPGI was used to divide participants into four groups according to the intensity of their gambling practice (non-problem, low risk, moderate risk and problem gamblers). Anxiety and depression were significantly higher among severe-problem gamblers than among the other groups. Both significantly predicted problem gambling. On the other hand, there was no difference between groups in emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), which was linked neither to problem gambling nor to anxiety and depression (except for cognitive reappraisal, which was significantly correlated to anxiety). Our results underline the links between anxiety, depression and problem gambling among poker players. If emotion regulation is involved in problem gambling among poker players, as strongly suggested by data from the literature, the emotion regulation strategies we assessed (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) may not be those involved. Further studies are thus needed to investigate the involvement of other emotion regulation strategies.

  2. On the Job With Emotional Intelligence

    Science.gov (United States)

    2013-04-01

    stimulates the amygdala , referred to as an “ amygdala hijack ,” a term coined by Daniel Coleman in his 1996 book Emotional Intelligence, the emotion is...because they stimulate the amygdala , an area of the brain responsible for intense emotional reac- tions. The amygdala is responsible for the “fight or

  3. Burnout syndrome indices in Greek intensive care nursing personnel.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Karanikola, Maria N K; Papathanassoglou, Elizabeth D E; Mpouzika, Meropi; Lemonidou, Chrysoula

    2012-01-01

    Burnout symptoms in Greek intensive care unit (ICU) nurses have not been explored adequately. The aim of this descriptive, correlational study was to investigate the prevalence and intensity of burnout symptoms in Greek ICU nursing personnel and any potential associations with professional satisfaction, as well as with demographic, educational, and vocational characteristics. Findings showed that the overall burnout level reported by Greek ICU nursing personnel was at a moderate to high degree. The most pronounced symptom of burnout was depersonalization, whereas emotional exhaustion was found to be a strong predictor of job satisfaction. This is a factor connected with the nurses' intention to quit the job. It appears that work factors have a more powerful influence over the development of burnout in comparison to personality traits.

  4. Personality, basic emotions, and satisfaction: primary emotions in the mountaineering experience

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Faullant, Rita; Matzler, Kurt; Mooradian, Todd A.

    2011-01-01

    Consumption-related emotions – usually operationalized as broad, summary dimensions such as positive and negative emotions or, alternatively, pleasure and arousal – have been shown to be influenced by enduring personality traits and, in turn, to influence customer satisfaction. Experiential tourism...... activities such as mountaineering evoke powerful emotions that strongly influence tourist satisfaction. Although Zajonc (1980) proposed and more recent neurophysiological evidence confirms that emotions, especially fear, can be primary (can precede cognitions), consumption-related emotions have heretofore...... been modeled as occurring concurrently with or consequent to cognitive appraisals. Our results show that two basic consumption-related emotions, fear and joy, are influenced by neuroticism and extraversion, respectively, and in turn and in conjunction with cognitive appraisals influence tourist...

  5. Cultural regulation of emotion: individual, relational, and structural sources.

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Leersnyder, Jozefien; Boiger, Michael; Mesquita, Batja

    2013-01-01

    The most prevalent and intense emotional experiences differ across cultures. These differences in emotional experience can be understood as the outcomes of emotion regulation, because emotions that fit the valued relationships within a culture tend to be most common and intense. We review evidence suggesting that emotion regulation underlying cultural differences in emotional experience often takes place at the point of emotion elicitation through the promotion of situations and appraisals that are consistent with culturally valued relationships. These regulatory processes depend on individual tendencies, but are also co-regulated within relationships-close others shape people's environment and help them appraise events in culturally valued ways-and are afforded by structural conditions-people's daily lives "limit" the opportunities for emotion, and afford certain appraisals. The combined evidence suggests that cultural differences in emotion regulation go well beyond the effortful regulation based on display rules.

  6. Dealing with emotions when the ability to cry is hampered: emotion processing and regulation in patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Leeuwen, Ninke; Bossema, Ercolie R; van Middendorp, Henriët; Kruize, Aike A; Bootsma, Hendrika; Bijlsma, Johannes W J; Geenen, Rinie

    2012-01-01

    The hampered ability to cry in patients with Sjögren's syndrome may affect their ways of dealing with emotions. The aim of this study was to examine differences in emotion processing and regulation between people with and without Sjögren's syndrome and correlations of emotion processing and regulation with mental well-being. In 300 patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome and 100 demographically matched control participants (mean age 56.8 years, 93% female), emotion processing (affect intensity and alexithymia, i.e. difficulty identifying and describing feelings), emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal, suppression and expression of emotions), and mental well-being were assessed. Criteria for clinical alexithymia applied to 22% of the patients and 12% of the control participants; patients had significantly more difficulty identifying feelings than control participants. No other significant differences in emotion processing and emotion regulation were found. In patients, the emotion processing styles affect intensity and alexithymia (0.32emotion regulation strategy suppression of emotions (r=0.13) significantly correlated with worse mental well-being, which is about similar to control participants. Processing and regulating emotions in patients with Sjögren's syndrome does not deviate from normal with one exception: a relatively large number of patients is alexithymic. As in the general population, in patients with Sjögren's syndrome the more intense and deficient processing and regulation of emotions is associated with worse mental well-being. This study indicates that, except for selected patients, processing and regulation of emotions is not a key therapeutic issue for the majority of patients with Sjögren's syndrome.

  7. Negative affect varying in motivational intensity influences scope of memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Threadgill, A Hunter; Gable, Philip A

    2018-04-06

    Emotions influence cognitive processes involved in memory. While some research has suggested that cognitive scope is determined by affective valence, recent models of emotion-cognition interactions suggest that motivational intensity, rather than valence, influences these processes. The present research was designed to clarify how negative affects differing in motivational intensity impact memory for centrally or peripherally presented information. Experiments 1 & 2 found that, relative to a neutral condition, high intensity negative affect (anger) enhances memory for centrally presented information. Experiment 3 replicated this effect using another high intensity negative affect (threat). Experiment 4 extended this by finding that, relative to a neutral condition, low intensity negative affect (sadness) enhanced memory for peripherally presented information. Finally, in Experiment 5, the effects of sadness and threat on scope of memory were directly compared, finding that threat narrowed scope of memory, while sadness broadened scope of memory. Together, these results provide additional support for the motivational dimensional model of cognitive scope, in that high intensity emotions narrow cognitive scope, while low intensity emotions broaden cognitive scope.

  8. Individual Differences in the Speed of Facial Emotion Recognition Show Little Specificity but Are Strongly Related with General Mental Speed: Psychometric, Neural and Genetic Evidence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xinyang Liu

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available Facial identity and facial expression processing are crucial socio-emotional abilities but seem to show only limited psychometric uniqueness when the processing speed is considered in easy tasks. We applied a comprehensive measurement of processing speed and contrasted performance specificity in socio-emotional, social and non-social stimuli from an individual differences perspective. Performance in a multivariate task battery could be best modeled by a general speed factor and a first-order factor capturing some specific variance due to processing emotional facial expressions. We further tested equivalence of the relationships between speed factors and polymorphisms of dopamine and serotonin transporter genes. Results show that the speed factors are not only psychometrically equivalent but invariant in their relation with the Catechol-O-Methyl-Transferase (COMT Val158Met polymorphism. However, the 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 serotonin polymorphism was related with the first-order factor of emotion perception speed, suggesting a specific genetic correlate of processing emotions. We further investigated the relationship between several components of event-related brain potentials with psychometric abilities, and tested emotion specific individual differences at the neurophysiological level. Results revealed swifter emotion perception abilities to go along with larger amplitudes of the P100 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN, when emotion processing was modeled on its own. However, after partialling out the shared variance of emotion perception speed with general processing speed-related abilities, brain-behavior relationships did not remain specific for emotion. Together, the present results suggest that speed abilities are strongly interrelated but show some specificity for emotion processing speed at the psychometric level. At both genetic and neurophysiological levels, emotion specificity depended on whether general cognition is taken into account

  9. Individual Differences in the Speed of Facial Emotion Recognition Show Little Specificity but Are Strongly Related with General Mental Speed: Psychometric, Neural and Genetic Evidence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Xinyang; Hildebrandt, Andrea; Recio, Guillermo; Sommer, Werner; Cai, Xinxia; Wilhelm, Oliver

    2017-01-01

    Facial identity and facial expression processing are crucial socio-emotional abilities but seem to show only limited psychometric uniqueness when the processing speed is considered in easy tasks. We applied a comprehensive measurement of processing speed and contrasted performance specificity in socio-emotional, social and non-social stimuli from an individual differences perspective. Performance in a multivariate task battery could be best modeled by a general speed factor and a first-order factor capturing some specific variance due to processing emotional facial expressions. We further tested equivalence of the relationships between speed factors and polymorphisms of dopamine and serotonin transporter genes. Results show that the speed factors are not only psychometrically equivalent but invariant in their relation with the Catechol-O-Methyl-Transferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism. However, the 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 serotonin polymorphism was related with the first-order factor of emotion perception speed, suggesting a specific genetic correlate of processing emotions. We further investigated the relationship between several components of event-related brain potentials with psychometric abilities, and tested emotion specific individual differences at the neurophysiological level. Results revealed swifter emotion perception abilities to go along with larger amplitudes of the P100 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN), when emotion processing was modeled on its own. However, after partialling out the shared variance of emotion perception speed with general processing speed-related abilities, brain-behavior relationships did not remain specific for emotion. Together, the present results suggest that speed abilities are strongly interrelated but show some specificity for emotion processing speed at the psychometric level. At both genetic and neurophysiological levels, emotion specificity depended on whether general cognition is taken into account or not. These

  10. How Color Properties Can Be Used to Elicit Emotions in Video Games

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Erik Geslin

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Classifying the many types of video games is difficult, as their genres and supports are different, but they all have in common that they seek the commitment of the player through exciting emotions and challenges. Since the income of the video game industry exceeds that of the film industry, the field of inducting emotions through video games and virtual environments is attracting more attention. Our theory, widely supported by substantial literature, is that the chromatic stimuli intensity, brightness, and saturation of a video game environment produce an emotional effect on players. We have observed a correlation between the RGB additives color spaces, HSV, HSL, and HSI components of video game images, presented to n=85 participants, and the emotional statements expressed in terms of arousal and valence, recovered in a subjective semantic questionnaire. Our results show a significant correlation between luminance, saturation, lightness, and the emotions of joy, sadness, fear, and serenity experienced by participants viewing 24 video game images. We also show strong correlations between the colorimetric diversity, saliency volume, and stimuli conspicuity and the emotions expressed by the players. These results allow us to propose video game environment development methods in the form of a circumplex model. It is aimed at game designers for developing emotional color scripting.

  11. Aging and emotional expressions: is there a positivity bias during dynamic emotion recognition?

    OpenAIRE

    Di Domenico, Alberto; Palumbo, Rocco; Mammarella, Nicola; Fairfield, Beth

    2015-01-01

    In this study, we investigated whether age-related differences in emotion regulation priorities influence online dynamic emotional facial discrimination. A group of 40 younger and a group of 40 older adults were invited to recognize a positive or negative expression as soon as the expression slowly emerged and subsequently rate it in terms of intensity. Our findings show that older adults recognized happy expressions faster than angry ones, while the direction of emotional expression does not...

  12. Cultural regulation of emotion: Individual, relational, and structural sources

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jozefien eDe Leersnyder

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available The most prevalent and intense emotional experiences differ across cultures. These differences in emotional experience can be understood as the outcomes of emotion regulation, because emotions that fit the valued relationships within a culture tend to be most common and intense. We review evidence suggesting that emotion regulation underlying cultural differences in emotional experience often takes place at the point of emotion elicitation through the promotion of situations and appraisals that are consistent with culturally valued relationships. These regulatory processes depend on individual tendencies, but are also co-regulated within relationships—close others shape people’s environment and help them appraise events in culturally valued ways—and are afforded by structural conditions—people’s daily lives limit the opportunities for emotion, and afford certain appraisals. The combined evidence suggests that cultural differences in emotion regulation go well beyond the effortful regulation based on display rules.

  13. Gender differences in emotion perception and self-reported emotional intelligence: A test of the emotion sensitivity hypothesis

    OpenAIRE

    Fischer, Agneta H.; Kret, Mariska E.; Broekens, Joost

    2018-01-01

    Previous meta-analyses and reviews on gender differences in emotion recognition have shown a small to moderate female advantage. However, inconsistent evidence from recent studies has raised questions regarding the implications of different methodologies, stimuli, and samples. In the present research based on a community sample of more than 5000 participants, we tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis, stating that women are more sensitive to perceive subtle, i.e. low intense or ambiguous...

  14. A Comparison of Dimensional Models of Emotion: Evidence from Emotions, Prototypical Events, Autobiographical Memories, and Words

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rubin, David C.; Talarico, Jennifer M.

    2009-01-01

    The intensity and valence of 30 emotion terms, 30 events typical of those emotions, and 30 autobiographical memories cued by those emotions were each rated by different groups of 40 undergraduates. A vector model gave a consistently better account of the data than a circumplex model, both overall and in the absence of high intensity, neutral valence stimuli. The Positive Activation - Negative Activation (PANA) model could be tested at high levels of activation, where it is identical to the vector model. The results replicated when ratings of arousal were used instead of ratings of intensity for the events and autobiographical memories. A reanalysis of word norms gave further support for the vector and PANA models by demonstrating that neutral valence, high arousal ratings resulted from the averaging of individual positive and negative valence ratings. Thus, compared to a circumplex model, vector and PANA models provided overall better fits. PMID:19691001

  15. Emotion experience and regulation in China and the United States: How do culture and gender shape emotion responding?

    OpenAIRE

    Davis, E; Greenberger, E; Charles, S; Chen, C; Zhao, L; Dong, Q

    2012-01-01

    Culture and gender shape emotion experience and regulation, in part because the value placed on emotions and the manner of their expression is thought to vary across these groups. This study tested the hypothesis that culture and gender would interact to predict people's emotion responding (emotion intensity and regulatory strategies). Chinese (n = 220; 52% female) and American undergraduates (n = 241; 62% female) viewed photos intended to elicit negative emotions after receiving instructions...

  16. Psychosocial resiliency is associated with lower emotional distress among dyads of patients and their informal caregivers in the neuroscience intensive care unit.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shaffer, Kelly M; Riklin, Eric; Jacobs, Jamie M; Rosand, Jonathan; Vranceanu, Ana-Maria

    2016-12-01

    The purpose of the study is to examine the associations of patients' and their informal caregivers' psychosocial resiliency factors with their own and their partners' emotion domains (distress, anxiety, depression, and anger) after admission to the neuroscience intensive care unit (Neuro-ICU). Eighty-three dyads of patients (total n = 87) and their informal caregivers (total n = 99) participated in this observational, cross-sectional study by self-reporting demographics and measures of resiliency factors (mindfulness [Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale Revised], coping [Measure of Coping Status-A], intimate bond [Intimate Bond Measure], self-efficacy [patients: General Self-Efficacy Scale; caregivers: Revised Caregiver Self-Efficacy Scale]) and emotion domains (Emotion Thermometers) within 2 weeks of Neuro-ICU admission. There were no differences between patients' and caregivers' levels of psychosocial resiliency, distress, or anxiety. Patients reported greater depression and anger relative to their caregivers. Overall, roughly half of patients (50.6%) and caregivers (42.4%) reported clinically significant emotional distress. Patients' and caregivers' own psychosocial resiliency factors were associated with their own, but not their partner's, emotion domains. Findings of high distress among both patients and caregivers at admission emphasize the importance of attending to the mental health of both patients and caregivers in the Neuro-ICU. As modifiable psychosocial resiliency factors were associated with emotion domains for both patients and caregivers, interventions to enhance these factors may ameliorate emotional distress among these vulnerable populations. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Emotion Regulation in Children with Down Syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Maureen C.; Walden, Tedra A.

    This study presents a preliminary exploration of emotion regulation in a sample of 20 children (ages 3-18 years) with Down Syndrome. Three aspects of emotion regulation (modulation, organization, flexibility) were predicted from emotion variables (affect intensity, affective expression, and autonomy-curiosity and motivation) in backward regression…

  18. Emotional labour and stress within mental health nursing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mann, S; Cowburn, J

    2005-04-01

    For many within the nursing profession, the work role involves a great deal of emotional work or 'emotional labour'. Such emotional work can be performed through 'surface acting' in which the individual simply feigns an appropriate emotion, or through 'deep acting' in which they actually try to feel the required emotion. The current study aims to aid understanding of the complex relationship between components of emotional labour and stress within the mental health nursing sector. Thirty-five mental health nurses completed questionnaires relating to a total of 122 nurse-patient interactions. Data were collected in relation to: (1) the duration and intensity of the interaction; (2) the variety of emotions expressed; (3) the degree of surface or deep acting the nurse performed; and (4) the perceived level of stress the interaction involved. Nurses also completed Daily Stress Indicators. Results suggest that: (1) emotional labour is positively correlated with both 'interaction stress' and daily stress levels; (2) the deeper the intensity of interactions and the more variety of emotions experienced, the more emotional labour was reported; and (3) surface acting was a more important predictor of emotional labour than deep acting. Implications for mental health nurses are outlined.

  19. [Emotional display rules of Japanese and Koreans].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Ye-jin; Matsumoto, Yoshiyuki

    2011-12-01

    Hypothetical stories designed to arouse feelings of happiness, sadness, or anger were presented to Japanese (n = 310) and Koreans (n = 286) university students. They were asked to rate the intensity of the emotion experienced, and to select the corresponding facial expression to display in an individual situation and in a social situation. Analyses of covariance were conducted on the rating scores of facial expression using the intensities of emotion as the covariance, except for happiness where the within-class regression coefficients were not homogeneous. The results showed that Japanese and Koreans shared the emotional display rules about the expressions of emotions in individual situations more than in social situations. Japanese thought that they should suppress emotions more than Koreans did. Moreover, the differences in facial expressions between Japanese and Koreans were greater in the individual situations than in the social situations.

  20. The structural model of pain, cognitive strategies, and negative emotions in functional gastrointestinal disorders

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mina Mazaheri

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Background: Patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs may use specific coping strategies. We intend to provide a mediating role of the relationship between pain (intensity and acceptance, cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and negative emotions in patients with FGIDs. Materials and Methods: Participants were 176 inpatients, all experiencing significant FGIDs symptomatology as confirmed by gastroenterologists. Patients completed data on cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire, short form of depression, anxiety, stress scale, chronic pain acceptance questionnaire-revised, and pain intensity scale. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling method. Results: The pain intensity had significantly direct effect on cognitive emotion regulation strategies and indirect effect on negative emotions. Besides, the mediating role of negative emotions in the relationship between the strategies and pain acceptance were supported, whereas indirect relationships between pain intensity and acceptance through cognitive strategies were not confirmed. Conclusion: The results of the study emphasize the role of pain intensity in the development of negative emotions through cognitive strategies and the role of the strategies in pain acceptance through negative emotions. In fact, cognitive strategies to be related to pain and emotions.

  1. Choosing how to feel: emotion regulation choice in bipolar disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hay, Aleena C; Sheppes, Gal; Gross, James J; Gruber, June

    2015-04-01

    Individuals with bipolar disorder experience emotion regulation difficulties, even during remission, but are able to effectively employ emotion regulation strategies when instructed. We hypothesized that this puzzling discrepancy might be due to their maladaptive emotion regulation choices. To test this hypothesis, we used a previously validated paradigm (Sheppes, Scheibe, Suri, & Gross, 2011; Sheppes et al., 2014), and asked remitted individuals with bipolar I disorder (n = 25) and healthy individuals (n = 26) to view standardized positive and negative images of high and low intensity, and choose reappraisal or distraction to decrease their emotion intensity. Replicating and extending prior results, participants across both groups showed a pattern of choosing distraction more for high versus low intensity positive and negative images, but no between-groups differences were evident. These results suggest that emotion regulation choice patterns may be robust across samples, and add to growing evidence that several basic emotion regulation elements may remain intact in bipolar disorder. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  2. HbA1c levels as a function of emotional regulation and emotional intelligence in patients with type 2 diabetes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coccaro, Emil F; Drossos, Tina; Phillipson, Louis

    2016-10-01

    Understanding the role of emotion in glycemic control may be critical for the long-term treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). In this study we investigated the relationship between measures of emotional regulation and emotional intelligence and HbA1c levels in adult patients with T2 diabetes. 100 adult patients with T2 diabetes completed assessments of emotional regulation (i.e., affect intensity/lability) and emotional intelligence and were then correlated with HbA1c levels with several relevant covariates. HbA1c levels were significantly associated with affect intensity (AI: r=.24, p=.018) and with emotional intelligence (EI: r=-.29, p=.004), but not affect lability. These results were the same even after adding income, state depression scores, insulin-dependent status, serum cholesterol, diabetes literacy and self-care as covariates (AI: β=.33, p=.001; EI: β=-.31, p=.002). Diabetes self-care, but not diabetes literacy, was also associated with HbA1c levels (β=-.29, p=.003). These data suggest that aspects of emotional regulation and emotional intelligence play a role in glycemic control in adult patients with T2 diabetes and do so even in the context of several variables relevant to diabetes. If so, interventions that can reduce affect intensity and/or increase emotional intelligence may represent a new strategy in the glycemic control of adult patients with T2 diabetes. Copyright © 2016 Primary Care Diabetes Europe. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Crossmodal and incremental perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barkhuysen, Pashiera; Krahmer, Emiel; Swerts, Marc

    2010-01-01

    In this article we report on two experiments about the perception of audiovisual cues to emotional speech. The article addresses two questions: 1) how do visual cues from a speaker's face to emotion relate to auditory cues, and (2) what is the recognition speed for various facial cues to emotion? Both experiments reported below are based on tests with video clips of emotional utterances collected via a variant of the well-known Velten method. More specifically, we recorded speakers who displayed positive or negative emotions, which were congruent or incongruent with the (emotional) lexical content of the uttered sentence. In order to test this, we conducted two experiments. The first experiment is a perception experiment in which Czech participants, who do not speak Dutch, rate the perceived emotional state of Dutch speakers in a bimodal (audiovisual) or a unimodal (audio- or vision-only) condition. It was found that incongruent emotional speech leads to significantly more extreme perceived emotion scores than congruent emotional speech, where the difference between congruent and incongruent emotional speech is larger for the negative than for the positive conditions. Interestingly, the largest overall differences between congruent and incongruent emotions were found for the audio-only condition, which suggests that posing an incongruent emotion has a particularly strong effect on the spoken realization of emotions. The second experiment uses a gating paradigm to test the recognition speed for various emotional expressions from a speaker's face. In this experiment participants were presented with the same clips as experiment I, but this time presented vision-only. The clips were shown in successive segments (gates) of increasing duration. Results show that participants are surprisingly accurate in their recognition of the various emotions, as they already reach high recognition scores in the first gate (after only 160 ms). Interestingly, the recognition scores

  4. A discrete emotions approach to positive emotion disturbance in depression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gruber, June; Oveis, Christopher; Keltner, Dacher; Johnson, Sheri L

    2011-01-01

    Converging findings suggest that depressed individuals exhibit disturbances in positive emotion. No study, however, has ascertained which specific positive emotions are implicated in depression. We report two studies that compare how depressive symptoms relate to distinct positive emotions at both trait and state levels of assessment. In Study 1 (N=185), we examined associations between depressive symptoms and three trait positive emotions (pride, happy, amusement). Study 2 compared experiential and autonomic reactivity to pride, happy, and amusement film stimuli between depressive (n=24; DS) and non-depressive (n=31; NDS) symptom groups. Results indicate that symptoms of depression were most strongly associated with decreased trait pride and decreased positive emotion experience to pride-eliciting films. Discussion focuses on the implications these findings have for understanding emotion deficits in depression as well as for the general study of positive emotion. © 2010 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

  5. On the dynamics of implicit emotion regulation: counter-regulation after remembering events of high but not of low emotional intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwager, Susanne; Rothermund, Klaus

    2014-01-01

    Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.

  6. How should I regulate my emotions if I want to run faster?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lane, Andrew M; Devonport, Tracey J; Friesen, Andrew P; Beedie, Christopher J; Fullerton, Christopher L; Stanley, Damian M

    2016-01-01

    The present study investigated the effects of emotion regulation strategies on self-reported emotions and 1600 m track running performance. In stage 1 of a three-stage study, participants (N = 15) reported emotional states associated with best, worst and ideal performance. Results indicated that a best and ideal emotional state for performance composed of feeling happy, calm, energetic and moderately anxious whereas the worst emotional state for performance composed of feeling downhearted, sluggish and highly anxious. In stage 2, emotion regulation interventions were developed using online material and supported by electronic feedback. One intervention motivated participants to increase the intensity of unpleasant emotions (e.g. feel more angry and anxious). A second intervention motivated participants to reduce the intensity of unpleasant emotions (e.g. feel less angry and anxious). In stage 3, using a repeated measures design, participants used each intervention before running a 1600 m time trial. Data were compared with a no treatment control condition. The intervention designed to increase the intensity of unpleasant emotions resulted in higher anxiety and lower calmness scores but no significant effects on 1600 m running time. The intervention designed to reduce the intensity of unpleasant emotions was associated with significantly slower times for the first 400 m. We suggest future research should investigate emotion regulation, emotion and performance using quasi-experimental methods with performance measures that are meaningful to participants.

  7. (How) do medical students regulate their emotions?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doulougeri, Karolina; Panagopoulou, Efharis; Montgomery, Anthony

    2016-12-12

    Medical training can be a challenging and emotionally intense period for medical students. However the emotions experienced by medical students in the face of challenging situations and the emotion regulation strategies they use remains relatively unexplored. The aim of the present study was to explore the emotions elicited by memorable incidents reported by medical students and the associated emotion regulation strategies. Peer interviewing was used to collect medical students' memorable incidents. Medical students at both preclinical and clinical stage of medical school were eligible to participate. In total 104 medical students provided memorable incidents. Only 54 narratives included references to emotions and emotion regulation and thus were further analyzed. The narratives of 47 clinical and 7 preclinical students were further analyzed for their references to emotions and emotion regulation strategies. Forty seven out of 54 incidents described a negative incident associated with negative emotions. The most frequently mentioned emotion was shock and surprise followed by feelings of embarrassment, sadness, anger and tension or anxiety. The most frequent reaction was inaction often associated with emotion regulation strategies such as distraction, focusing on a task, suppression of emotions and reappraisal. When students witnessed mistreatment or disrespect exhibited towards patients, the regulation strategy used involved focusing and comforting the patient. The present study sheds light on the strategies medical students use to deal with intense negative emotions. The vast majority reported inaction in the face of a challenging situation and the use of more subtle strategies to deal with the emotional impact of the incident.

  8. Preserved re-experience of discrete emotions: Amnesia and executive function.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stanciu, Marian Andrei; Rafal, Robert D; Turnbull, Oliver H

    2018-02-07

    Amnesic patients can re-experience emotions elicited by forgotten events, suggesting that brain systems for episodic and emotional memory are independent. However, the range of such emotional memories remains under-investigated (most studies employing just positive-negative emotion dyads), and executive function may also play a role in the re-experience of emotions. This is the first investigation of the intensity of the emotional re-experience of a range of discrete emotions (anger, fear, sadness, and happiness) for a group of amnesic patients. Twenty Korsakoff syndrome (KS) patients and 20 neurologically normal controls listened to four novel emotional vignettes selectively eliciting the four basic emotions. Emotional experience was measured using pen-and-paper Visual Analogue Mood Scales and episodic memory using verbal recollections. After 30 min, the recollection of stories was severely impaired for the patient group, but the emotional re-experience was no different from that of controls. Notably, there was no relationship between episodic recall and the intensity of the four emotions, such that even profoundly amnesic patients reported moderate levels of the target emotion. Exploratory analyses revealed negative correlations between the intensity of basic emotions and executive functions (e.g., cognitive flexibility and response inhibition) for controls but not patients. The results suggest that discrete emotions can be re-experienced independently of episodic memory, and that the re-experience of certain discrete emotions appears to be dampened by executive control. KS patients with absent or mild cognitive symptoms should benefit from emotion-regulation interventions aimed at reducing the recognized affective burden associated with their episodic memory deficit. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

  9. The Positivity Effect on the Intensity of Experienced Emotion and Memory Performance in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lina Gorenc-Mahmutaj

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Aims: We examined the ‘positivity effect' on memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI and dementia patients. Methods: In 109 subjects (28 controls, 32 with MCI, 27 with mild and 32 with moderate dementia, we investigated free recalls (immediate and delayed and recognition of 12 pictures. Moreover, the emotional valence of the pictures perceived and the emotions evoked in the subjects were evaluated. Results: Patients with mild and moderate dementia recalled fewer pictures than those with MCI or the healthy controls. Across the groups, the positive pictures were better memorized and induced a higher arousal than the negative or neutral ones. Conclusions: Our findings indicate a positivity effect on memory performance and intensity of experience not only in healthy elderly patients but also in those with MCI or mild and moderate dementia. This effect does not refer to the compliance of the patients investigated since they perceived and experienced the pictures in the expected way.

  10. Caffeine alters emotion and emotional responses in low habitual caffeine consumers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Giles, Grace E; Spring, Alexander M; Urry, Heather L; Moran, Joseph M; Mahoney, Caroline R; Kanarek, Robin B

    2018-02-01

    Caffeine reliably increases emotional arousal, but it is unclear whether and how it influences other dimensions of emotion such as emotional valence. These experiments documented whether caffeine influences emotion and emotion regulation choice and success. Low to abstinent caffeine consumers (maximum 100 mg/day) completed measures of state anxiety, positive and negative emotion, and salivary cortisol before, 45 min after, and 75 min after consuming 400 mg caffeine or placebo. Participants also completed an emotion regulation choice task, in which they chose to employ cognitive reappraisal or distraction in response to high and low intensity negative pictures (Experiment 1), or a cognitive reappraisal task, in which they employed cognitive reappraisal or no emotion regulation strategy in response to negative and neutral pictures (Experiment 2). State anxiety, negative emotion, and salivary cortisol were heightened both 45 and 75 min after caffeine intake relative to placebo. In Experiment 1, caffeine did not influence the frequency with which participants chose reappraisal or distraction, but reduced negativity of the picture ratings. In Experiment 2, caffeine did not influence cognitive reappraisal success. Thus, caffeine mitigated emotional responses to negative situations, but not how participants chose to regulate such responses or the success with which they did so.

  11. Physiological signals distinguish between reading emotional and non-emotional sections in a novel

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brouwer, A.M.; Hogervorst, M.A.; Reuderink, B.; Werf, Y. van der; Erp, J.B.F. van der

    2015-01-01

    We are interested in monitoring an individual’s emotions during the reading of a novel. While physiological responses to experimentally induced emotions are often small and inconsistent, being engaged in a novel may elicit relatively strong responses. We analyzed EEG, ECG, skin conductance and

  12. Physiological signals distinguish between reading emotional and non-emotional sections in a novel.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Brouwer, Anne-Marie; Hogervorst, Maarten; Reuderink, B.; van der Werf, Ysbrand; van Erp, Johannes Bernardus Fransiscus

    2015-01-01

    We are interested in monitoring an individual’s emotions during the reading of a novel. While physiological responses to experimentally induced emotions are often small and inconsistent, being engaged in a novel may elicit relatively strong responses. We analyzed EEG, ECG, skin conductance and

  13. When ideology meets conflict-related content: Influences on emotion generation and regulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pliskin, Ruthie; Halperin, Eran; Bar-Tal, Daniel; Sheppes, Gal

    2018-03-01

    Do rightists and leftists experience information about suffering and harm with differing emotional intensities, depending on the identity of target depicted? Do they consequently choose differently how to regulate or cope with these emotions? Research has identified ideological differences in emotional processes, but it has yet to identify what types of content lead to ideological differences in emotional intensity or whether these content-dependent differences relate to differing preferences for engaging versus disengaging emotion-regulation strategies. We posited that right-left differences in experienced emotional intensity would be context-dependent, emerging mostly in response to depictions of harm to the outgroup, in accordance with the centrality of intergroup attitudes to ideological self-placement in conflict. Study 1 (N = 83) supported this hypothesis, with leftists (vs. rightists) experiencing outgroup harm (but not ingroup harm or conflict-irrelevant harm) with greater emotional intensity. Study 2 (N = 101), which replicated this finding, additionally examined whether behavioral differences in regulatory choice consequently emerge mostly regarding outgroup harm. We tested 2 competing hypotheses as to the nature of these differences: (a) the intensity hypothesis, positing that leftists (more than rightists) would regulate their intensified reactions to outgroup harm through disengagement-distraction (vs. engagement-reappraisal) due to a documented greater preference for disengaging coping strategies as intensity increases, and (b) the motivation hypothesis, positing that leftists (more than rightists) would prefer engagement-reappraisal (vs. disengagement-distraction), consistent with leftists' documented greater preference for intergroup empathy. Results exclusively supported the intensity hypothesis, and the significance of both studies is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  14. Processing of Facial Emotion in Bipolar Depression and Euthymia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Robinson, Lucy J; Gray, John M; Burt, Mike; Ferrier, I Nicol; Gallagher, Peter

    2015-10-01

    Previous studies of facial emotion processing in bipolar disorder (BD) have reported conflicting findings. In independently conducted studies, we investigate facial emotion labeling in euthymic and depressed BD patients using tasks with static and dynamically morphed images of different emotions displayed at different intensities. Study 1 included 38 euthymic BD patients and 28 controls. Participants completed two tasks: labeling of static images of basic facial emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, sad) shown at different expression intensities; the Eyes Test (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001), which involves recognition of complex emotions using only the eye region of the face. Study 2 included 53 depressed BD patients and 47 controls. Participants completed two tasks: labeling of "dynamic" facial expressions of the same five basic emotions; the Emotional Hexagon test (Young, Perret, Calder, Sprengelmeyer, & Ekman, 2002). There were no significant group differences on any measures of emotion perception/labeling, compared to controls. A significant group by intensity interaction was observed in both emotion labeling tasks (euthymia and depression), although this effect did not survive the addition of measures of executive function/psychomotor speed as covariates. Only 2.6-15.8% of euthymic patients and 7.8-13.7% of depressed patients scored below the 10th percentile of the controls for total emotion recognition accuracy. There was no evidence of specific deficits in facial emotion labeling in euthymic or depressed BD patients. Methodological variations-including mood state, sample size, and the cognitive demands of the tasks-may contribute significantly to the variability in findings between studies.

  15. Burnout Among Anesthetists and Intensive Care Physicians.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mikalauskas, Audrius; Benetis, Rimantas; Širvinskas, Edmundas; Andrejaitienė, Judita; Kinduris, Šarūnas; Macas, Andrius; Padaiga, Žilvinas

    2018-01-01

    Burnout is a syndrome of depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and low personal accomplishment. Little is known about burnout in physicians. Our objective was to determine the prevalence of burnout among anesthetists and intensive care physicians, and associations between burnout and personal, as well as professional, characteristics. In total, 220 anesthetists and intensive care physicians were contacted by email, asking them to participate in the study. For depression screening the PHQ-2 questionnaire, for problem drinking, CAGE items were used. Burnout was measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Overall, 34% anesthetists and intensive care physicians indicated high levels of emotional exhaustion, 25% indicated high levels of depersonalization, and 38% showed low personal accomplishment. Burnout was found more frequent among subjects with problem drinking (OR 3.2, 95% CI 1.5-6.8), depressiveness (OR 10.2, 95% CI 4.6-22.6), cardiovascular disorders (OR 3.4, 95% CI 1.7-7.1), and digestive disorders (OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.2-4.0). Some favorite after-work activities positively correlated with burnout, such as sedative medications abuse (OR 4.8, 95% CI 1.8-12.5), alcohol abuse (OR 2.4, 95% CI 1.3-4.5), eating more than usual (OR 1.9, 95% CI 1.1-3.5), and transferring the accumulated stress to relatives (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.4-5.5). In contrast, reading of non-medical literature seemed to have a protective effect (OR 0.5, 95% CI 0.2-0.9). Burnout was highly prevalent among anesthetists and intensive care physicians with two fifths of them meeting diagnostic criteria. It was strongly correlated with problem drinking, depressiveness, cardiovascular and digestive disorders, use of sedatives and overeating.

  16. Emotional display rules and emotional labor: the moderating role of commitment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gosserand, Robin H; Diefendorff, James M

    2005-11-01

    The authors examined whether commitment to emotional display rules is a necessary condition for emotional display rules to affect behavior at work. Results using structural equation modeling revealed that display rule commitment moderated the relationships of emotional display rule perceptions with surface acting, deep acting, and positive affective delivery at work, such that the relationships were strong and positive when commitment to display rules was high and weak when commitment to display rules was low. These findings suggest that motivation plays a role in the emotional labor process in that individuals must be committed to display rules for these rules to affect behavior. ((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).

  17. Approach and withdrawal tendencies during written word processing: effects of task, emotional valence and emotional arousal

    OpenAIRE

    Citron, Francesca Maria Marina; Abugaber, David; Herbert, Cornelia

    2016-01-01

    The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behaviour (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implic...

  18. Why Seemingly Trivial Events Sometimes Evoke Strong Emotional Reactions: The Role of Social Exchange Rule Violations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leary, Mark R; Diebels, Kate J; Jongman-Sereno, Katrina P; Fernandez, Xuan Duong

    2015-01-01

    People sometimes display strong emotional reactions to events that appear disproportionate to the tangible magnitude of the event. Although previous work has addressed the role that perceived disrespect and unfairness have on such reactions, this study examined the role of perceived social exchange rule violations more broadly. Participants (N = 179) rated the effects of another person's behavior on important personal outcomes, the degree to which the other person had violated fundamental rules of social exchange, and their reactions to the event. Results showed that perceptions of social exchange rule violations accounted for more variance in participants' reactions than the tangible consequences of the event. The findings support the hypothesis that responses that appear disproportionate to the seriousness of the eliciting event are often fueled by perceived rule violations that may not be obvious to others.

  19. Emotion and goal-directed behavior: ERP evidence on cognitive and emotional conflict

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kanske, Philipp; Obermeier, Christian; Schröger, Erich; Kotz, Sonja A.

    2015-01-01

    Cognitive control supports goal-directed behavior by resolving conflict among opposing action tendencies. Emotion can trigger cognitive control processes, thus speeding up conflict processing when the target dimension of stimuli is emotional. However, it is unclear what role emotionality of the target dimension plays in the processing of emotional conflict (e.g. in irony). In two EEG experiments, we compared the influence of emotional valence of the target (emotional, neutral) in cognitive and emotional conflict processing. To maximally approximate real-life communication, we used audiovisual stimuli. Participants either categorized spoken vowels (cognitive conflict) or their emotional valence (emotional conflict), while visual information was congruent or incongruent. Emotional target dimension facilitated both cognitive and emotional conflict processing, as shown in a reduced reaction time conflict effect. In contrast, the N100 in the event-related potentials showed a conflict-specific reversal: the conflict effect was larger for emotional compared with neutral trials in cognitive conflict and smaller in emotional conflict. Additionally, domain-general conflict effects were observed in the P200 and N200 responses. The current findings confirm that emotions have a strong influence on cognitive and emotional conflict processing. They also highlight the complexity and heterogeneity of the interaction of emotion with different types of conflict. PMID:25925271

  20. Psychophysical measures of sensitivity to facial expression of emotion.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Michelle eMarneweck

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available We report the development of two simple, objective, psychophysical measures of the ability to discriminate facial expressions of emotion that vary in intensity from a neutral facial expression and to discriminate between varying intensities of emotional facial expression. The stimuli were created by morphing photographs of models expressing four basic emotions, anger, disgust, happiness and sadness with neutral expressions. Psychometric functions were obtained for 15 healthy young adults using the Method of Constant Stimuli with a two-interval forced-choice procedure. Individual data points were fitted by Quick functions for each task and each emotion, allowing estimates of absolute thresholds and slopes. The tasks give objective and sensitive measures of the basic perceptual abilities required for perceiving and interpreting emotional facial expressions.

  1. The Role of Emotion Reactivity in Health Anxiety.

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Bryan, Emily M; McLeish, Alison C; Johnson, Adrienne L

    2017-11-01

    Emotion reactivity, defined as heightened sensitivity, intensity, and persistence of emotional states, has been shown to contribute to the exacerbation of anxiety. However, the association between emotion reactivity and health anxiety has yet to be examined. The aim of the present investigation was to examine the unique predictive ability of emotion reactivity in terms of health anxiety in a sample of medically healthy undergraduates ( n = 194; 59.3% female, M age = 19.42, SD = 1.51, range = 18-26 years; 84.0% Caucasian). Findings indicated that, after controlling for the effects of gender, age, and anxiety sensitivity, greater emotion reactivity significantly predicted greater overall health anxiety (3.1% variance), as well as higher levels of affective (4.1% unique variance) and behavioral (4.8% unique variance) components. Findings suggest that experiencing emotions more frequently, intensely, and for longer durations of time prior to returning to baseline are associated with greater health preoccupations.

  2. Developmental differences in the neural mechanisms of facial emotion labeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adleman, Nancy E.; Kim, Pilyoung; Oakes, Allison H.; Hsu, Derek; Reynolds, Richard C.; Chen, Gang; Pine, Daniel S.; Brotman, Melissa A.; Leibenluft, Ellen

    2016-01-01

    Adolescence is a time of increased risk for the onset of psychological disorders associated with deficits in face emotion labeling. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine age-related differences in brain activation while adolescents and adults labeled the emotion on fearful, happy and angry faces of varying intensities [0% (i.e. neutral), 50%, 75%, 100%]. Adolescents and adults did not differ on accuracy to label emotions. In the superior temporal sulcus, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus, adults show an inverted-U-shaped response to increasing intensities of fearful faces and a U-shaped response to increasing intensities of happy faces, whereas adolescents show the opposite patterns. In addition, adults, but not adolescents, show greater inferior occipital gyrus activation to negative (angry, fearful) vs positive (happy) emotions. In sum, when subjects classify subtly varying facial emotions, developmental differences manifest in several ‘ventral stream’ brain regions. Charting the typical developmental course of the brain mechanisms of socioemotional processes, such as facial emotion labeling, is an important focus for developmental psychopathology research. PMID:26245836

  3. Children's emotional experience two years after an earthquake: An exploration of knowledge of earthquakes and associated emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Raccanello, Daniela; Burro, Roberto; Hall, Rob

    2017-01-01

    We explored whether and how the exposure to a natural disaster such as the 2012 Emilia Romagna earthquake affected the development of children's emotional competence in terms of understanding, regulating, and expressing emotions, after two years, when compared with a control group not exposed to the earthquake. We also examined the role of class level and gender. The sample included two groups of children (n = 127) attending primary school: The experimental group (n = 65) experienced the 2012 Emilia Romagna earthquake, while the control group (n = 62) did not. The data collection took place two years after the earthquake, when children were seven or ten-year-olds. Beyond assessing the children's understanding of emotions and regulating abilities with standardized instruments, we employed semi-structured interviews to explore their knowledge of earthquakes and associated emotions, and a structured task on the intensity of some target emotions. We applied Generalized Linear Mixed Models. Exposure to the earthquake did not influence the understanding and regulation of emotions. The understanding of emotions varied according to class level and gender. Knowledge of earthquakes, emotional language, and emotions associated with earthquakes were, respectively, more complex, frequent, and intense for children who had experienced the earthquake, and at increasing ages. Our data extend the generalizability of theoretical models on children's psychological functioning following disasters, such as the dose-response model and the organizational-developmental model for child resilience, and provide further knowledge on children's emotional resources related to natural disasters, as a basis for planning educational prevention programs.

  4. The effect of strategies, goals and stimulus material on the neural mechanisms of emotion regulation: A meta-analysis of fMRI studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morawetz, Carmen; Bode, Stefan; Derntl, Birgit; Heekeren, Hauke R

    2017-01-01

    Emotion regulation comprises all extrinsic and intrinsic control processes whereby people monitor, evaluate and modify the occurrence, intensity and duration of emotional reactions. Here we sought to quantitatively summarize the existing neuroimaging literature to investigate a) whether different emotion regulation strategies are based on different or the same neural networks; b) which brain regions in particular support the up- and down-regulation of emotions, respectively; and c) to which degree the neural networks realising emotion regulation depend on the stimulus material used to elicit emotions. The left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), the anterior insula and the supplementary motor area were consistently activated independent of the regulation strategy. VLPFC and posterior cingulate cortex were the main regions consistently found to be recruited during the up-regulation as well as the down-regulation of emotion. The down-regulation compared to the up-regulation of emotions was associated with more right-lateralized activity while up-regulating emotions more strongly modulated activity in the ventral striatum. Finally, the process of emotion regulation appeared to be unaffected by stimulus material. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Joint effects of emotion and color on memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuhbandner, Christof; Pekrun, Reinhard

    2013-06-01

    Numerous studies have shown that memory is enhanced for emotionally negative and positive information relative to neutral information. We examined whether emotion-induced memory enhancement is influenced by low-level perceptual attributes such as color. Because in everyday life red is often used as a warning signal, whereas green signals security, we hypothesized that red might enhance memory for negative information and green memory for positive information. To capture the signaling function of colors, we measured memory for words standing out from the context by color, and manipulated the color and emotional significance of the outstanding words. Making words outstanding by color strongly enhanced memory, replicating the well-known von Restorff effect. Furthermore, memory for colored words was further increased by emotional significance, replicating the memory-enhancing effect of emotion. Most intriguingly, the effects of emotion on memory additionally depended on color type. Red strongly increased memory for negative words, whereas green strongly increased memory for positive words. These findings provide the first evidence that emotion-induced memory enhancement is influenced by color and demonstrate that different colors can have different functions in human memory.

  6. The Influence of Affective States Varying in Motivational Intensity on Cognitive Scope

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eddie eHarmon-Jones

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available We review a program of research that has suggested that affective states high in motivationally intensity (e.g., enthusiasm, disgust narrow cognitive scope, whereas affective states low in motivationally intensity (e.g., joy, sadness broaden cognitive scope. Further supporting this interpretation, indices of brain activations, derived from human electroencephalography, suggest that the motivational intensity of the affective state predicts the narrowing of cognitive scope. Finally, research suggests that the relationship between emotive intensity and cognitive scope is bi-directional, such that manipulated changes in cognitive scope influence early brain activations associated with emotive intensity. In the end, the review highlights how emotion can impair and improve certain cognitive processes.

  7. The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale: a cognitive-developmental measure of emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lane, R D; Quinlan, D M; Schwartz, G E; Walker, P A; Zeitlin, S B

    1990-01-01

    The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) is based on a new cognitive-developmental model of emotional experience. The scale poses evocative interpersonal situations and elicits descriptions of the emotional responses of self and others which are scored using specific structural criteria. Forty undergraduates (20 of each sex) were tested. Interrater reliability and intratest homogeneity of the LEAS were strong. The LEAS was significantly correlated with two measures of maturity: the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (SCT) of Ego Development, and the Parental Descriptions Scale-a cognitive-developmental measure of object representation. In addition, the LEAS correlated positively with openness to experience and emotional range but not with measures of specific emotions, repression or the number of words used in the LEAS responses. These findings suggest that it is the level of emotion, not the specific quality of emotion, that is tapped by the LEAS.

  8. Influence of moderate alcohol consumption on emotional and physical well-being

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schrieks, I.C.

    2015-01-01

    <strong>Abstract>

    <strong>Background and aim:strong> Moderate alcohol consumption has been suggested to contribute to emotional well-being. However, the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on emotional well-being in common drinking situations and the influence of alcohol on

  9. Emotion and goal-directed behavior: ERP evidence on cognitive and emotional conflict.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zinchenko, Artyom; Kanske, Philipp; Obermeier, Christian; Schröger, Erich; Kotz, Sonja A

    2015-11-01

    Cognitive control supports goal-directed behavior by resolving conflict among opposing action tendencies. Emotion can trigger cognitive control processes, thus speeding up conflict processing when the target dimension of stimuli is emotional. However, it is unclear what role emotionality of the target dimension plays in the processing of emotional conflict (e.g. in irony). In two EEG experiments, we compared the influence of emotional valence of the target (emotional, neutral) in cognitive and emotional conflict processing. To maximally approximate real-life communication, we used audiovisual stimuli. Participants either categorized spoken vowels (cognitive conflict) or their emotional valence (emotional conflict), while visual information was congruent or incongruent. Emotional target dimension facilitated both cognitive and emotional conflict processing, as shown in a reduced reaction time conflict effect. In contrast, the N100 in the event-related potentials showed a conflict-specific reversal: the conflict effect was larger for emotional compared with neutral trials in cognitive conflict and smaller in emotional conflict. Additionally, domain-general conflict effects were observed in the P200 and N200 responses. The current findings confirm that emotions have a strong influence on cognitive and emotional conflict processing. They also highlight the complexity and heterogeneity of the interaction of emotion with different types of conflict. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  10. Situation selection is a particularly effective emotion regulation strategy for people who need help regulating their emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webb, Thomas L; Lindquist, Kristen A; Jones, Katelyn; Avishai, Aya; Sheeran, Paschal

    2018-03-01

    Situation selection involves choosing situations based on their likely emotional impact and may be less cognitively taxing or challenging to implement compared to other strategies for regulating emotion, which require people to regulate their emotions "in the moment"; we thus predicted that individuals who chronically experience intense emotions or who are not particularly competent at employing other emotion regulation strategies would be especially likely to benefit from situation selection. Consistent with this idea, we found that the use of situation selection interacted with individual differences in emotional reactivity and competence at emotion regulation to predict emotional outcomes in both a correlational (Study 1; N = 301) and an experimental field study (Study 2; N = 125). Taken together, the findings suggest that situation selection is an effective strategy for regulating emotions, especially for individuals who otherwise struggle to do so.

  11. Maternal Coping with Baby Hospitalization at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fabiana Pinheiro Ramos

    Full Text Available Abstract: Coping is defined by actions of self-regulation of emotions, cognitions, behaviors, and motivational orientation under stress. This study analyzed the maternal coping with hospitalization of premature and low birth weight infants at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU, using the Motivational Theory of Coping. A questionnaire, a scale and an interview were applied to 25 mothers three times between birth and hospital discharge. The results showed that the mothers’ first visit to the NICU had strong emotional impact; longer hospitalization periods were linked to the decrease in Delegation coping strategies. There was more Support Seeking after the hospital discharge. Multiparous mothers and those who had a job appeared to be more vulnerable to stress. Predominantly adaptive coping responses were identified, even among two mothers whose babies had died, including Self-Reliance strategies, which were mediated by religious beliefs.

  12. Expressing emotions in blogs

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rodriguez-Hidalgo, Carmina Rodriguez-Hidalgo; Tan, Ed S.; Verlegh, Peeter

    2017-01-01

    Textual paralanguage cues (TPC) have been signaled as effective emotion transmitters online. Though several studies have investigated their properties and occurrence, there remains a gap concerning their communicative impact within specific psychological processes, such as the social sharing...... of emotion (SSE, Rimé, 2009). This study content-analyzed Live Journal blogposts for the occurrence of TPC in three phases of online SSE: initiation, feedback and repost. We compared these to TPC on a second type of emotional expression, emotional venting. Based on Social Information processing theory (SIP......, Walther, 1992), and on the Emotional Mimicry in Context (EMC, Hess & Fischer, 2013) framework, we study predictive relationships in TPC usage in our phased model of online SSE. Results showed that TPC prevailed in SSE blogposts and strongly dominated in emotional venting posts. TPC was more common...

  13. Emotional labor in nursing praxis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    José Manuel da Silva Vilelas

    Full Text Available Healthcare work is, by nature, an activity full of intense emotions and therefore, is opportune ground for exploring emotions in the workplace in different contexts of nursing care. It is a very fertile terrain if care is focused on the emotions of the client, nurses, healthcare teams, and on the interaction of all actors involved. This article presents a theoretical reflection exploring the concept of emotional labor in the context of nursing care. Theoretical references from several fields of knowledge, namely sociology and nursing, have been adopted to conceptualize the theme. Studies on emotional labor have contributed toward the understanding of the key issue of emotional management in healthcare institutions and both its positive and negative impact on clients and professionals. The development of the theme of emotional labor in nursing has given rise to numerous theoretical approaches and perspectives explaining this concept.

  14. Music, memory and emotion

    OpenAIRE

    J?ncke, Lutz

    2008-01-01

    Because emotions enhance memory processes and music evokes strong emotions, music could be involved in forming memories, either about pieces of music or about episodes and information associated with particular music. A recent study in BMC Neuroscience has given new insights into the role of emotion in musical memory. Music has a prominent role in the everyday life of many people. Whether it is for recreation, distraction or mood enhancement, a lot of people listen to music from early in t...

  15. How broadcast volume and emotional content affect youth recall of anti-tobacco advertising.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Biener, Lois; Wakefield, Melanie; Shiner, Cecilia M; Siegel, Michael

    2008-07-01

    Televised anti-tobacco advertising has been shown to be effective for discouraging smoking initiation; however, purchasing broadcasting time is very costly. This study investigated the relative impact of the broadcast volume (media weight) and the emotional content of an ad as predictors of advertising recall. The data come from a random-digit-dialed survey conducted in 2001 and 2002 of 3863 youth aged 12-17. Media weight was based on commercial TV ratings data. The emotional intensity of advertisements was derived from the ratings made by independent youth judges. Data analyses were conducted between 2005 and 2007. Results indicated that media weight was a significant predictor of recall, but the emotional content of the ad was an even stronger predictor. Also, ads low in emotional intensity required more media weight than those high in emotional intensity to achieve the same amount of increase in recall. This study extends prior research that highlights the importance of emotional intensity for effective anti-tobacco advertising. It also indicates that, relative to unemotional advertisements, emotionally arousing advertisements require fewer broadcasts to achieve the same level of recall, and hence are likely to be less costly to a public health campaign.

  16. Regulation of emotions in psychogenic nonepileptic seizures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Urbanek, Monika; Harvey, Martin; McGowan, John; Agrawal, Niruj

    2014-08-01

    Despite the long history of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), relatively little is known about the mechanisms that cause and maintain this condition. Emerging research evidence suggests that patients with PNES might have difficulties in regulating their emotions. However, much remains to be learned about the nature of these difficulties and the emotional responses of individuals with PNES. This study aimed to gain a detailed understanding of emotion regulation processes in patients with PNES by examining differences between patients with PNES and a healthy control group with regard to intensity of emotional reactions, understanding of one's emotional experience, beliefs about emotions, and managing emotions by controlling emotional expression. A cross-sectional design was used to compare the group with PNES (n=56) and the healthy control group (n=88) on a range of self-report measures. Participants with a diagnosis of PNES reported significantly poorer understanding of their emotions, more negative beliefs about emotions, and a greater tendency to control emotional expression compared to the control group. While intensity of emotions did not discriminate between the groups, poor understanding and negative beliefs about emotions were found to be significant predictors of PNES, even after controlling for age, education level, and emotional distress. Furthermore, the presence of some emotion regulation difficulties was associated with self-reported seizure severity. The results of this study are largely consistent with previous literature and provide evidence for difficulties in emotion regulation in patients with PNES. However, this research goes further in bringing together different aspects of emotion regulation, including beliefs about emotions, which have not been examined before. As far as it is known, this is the first study to suggest that levels of alexithymia in a population with PNES are positively associated with self-reported seizure severity. The

  17. Emotional congruence between clients and therapists and its effect on treatment outcome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atzil-Slonim, Dana; Bar-Kalifa, Eran; Fisher, Hadar; Peri, Tuvia; Lutz, Wolfgang; Rubel, Julian; Rafaeli, Eshkol

    2018-01-01

    The present study aimed to (a) explore 2 indices of emotional congruence-temporal similarity and directional discrepancy-between clients' and therapists' ratings of their emotions as they cofluctuate session-by-session; and (b) examine whether client/therapist emotional congruence predicts clients' symptom relief and improved functioning. The sample comprised 109 clients treated by 62 therapists in a university setting. Clients and therapists self-reported their negative (NE) and positive emotions (PE) after each session. Symptom severity and functioning level were assessed at the beginning of each session using the clients' self-reports. To assess emotional congruence, an adaptation of West and Kenny's (2011) Truth and Bias model was applied. To examine the consequences of emotional congruence, polynomial regression, and response surface analyses were conducted (Edwards & Parry, 1993). Clients and therapists were temporally similar in both PE and NE. Therapists experienced less intense PE on average, but did not experience more or less intense NE than their clients. Those therapists who experienced more intense NE than their clients were more temporally similar in their emotions to their clients. Therapist/client incongruence in both PE and NE predicted poorer next-session symptomatology; incongruence in PE was also associated with lower client next-session functioning. Session-level symptoms were better when therapists experienced more intense emotions (both PE and NE) than their clients. The findings highlight the importance of recognizing the dynamic nature of emotions in client-therapist interactions and the contribution of session-by-session emotional dynamics to outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  18. Decreased pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irene Peláez

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Pain perception arises from a complex interaction between a nociceptive stimulus and different emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by both automatic and controlled systems. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, emotional influences on pain under unaware conditions are much less known. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulation of pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures through an emotional masking paradigm. Two kinds of both somatosensory (painful and non-painful and emotional stimulation (negative and neutral pictures were employed. Fifty pain-free participants were asked to rate the perception of pain they were feeling in response to laser-induced somatosensory stimuli as faster as they can. Data from pain intensity and reaction times were measured. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect for the interaction between pain and emotional stimulation, but surprisingly this relationship was opposite to expected. In particular, lower pain intensity scores and longer reaction times were found in response to negative images being strengthened this effect for painful stimulation. Present findings suggest a clear pain perception modulation by unconscious emotional contexts. Attentional capture mechanisms triggered by unaware negative stimulation could explain this phenomenon leading to a withdrawal of processing resources from pain.

  19. Emotion, gender, and gender typical identity in autobiographical memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grysman, Azriel; Merrill, Natalie; Fivush, Robyn

    2017-03-01

    Gender differences in the emotional intensity and content of autobiographical memory (AM) are inconsistent across studies, and may be influenced as much by gender identity as by categorical gender. To explore this question, data were collected from 196 participants (age 18-40), split evenly between men and women. Participants narrated four memories, a neutral event, high point event, low point event, and self-defining memory, completed ratings of emotional intensity for each event, and completed four measures of gender typical identity. For self-reported emotional intensity, gender differences in AM were mediated by identification with stereotypical feminine gender norms. For narrative use of affect terms, both gender and gender typical identity predicted affective expression. The results confirm contextual models of gender identity (e.g., Diamond, 2012 . The desire disorder in research on sexual orientation in women: Contributions of dynamical systems theory. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41, 73-83) and underscore the dynamic interplay between gender and gender identity in the emotional expression of autobiographical memories.

  20. Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vahid Rafieyan

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Language learners’ awareness of target language pragmatic features is influenced by individual difference variables, the least explored one being emotional intelligence. To investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and pragmatic awareness, the current study was conducted over 120 Iranian senior undergraduates of English as a Foreign Language at a university in Iran. Pragmatic awareness was measured through a 12-scenario contextualized pragmatic judgment task. Emotional intelligence was also measured through the EQ-i. The results of the Pearson correlation revealed a strong positive relationship between emotional intelligence and pragmatic awareness. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested incorporation of emotion-driven authentic materials in English language classes to invoke emotional intelligence in language learners.

  1. On the validity of the autobiographical emotional memory task for emotion induction.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caitlin Mills

    Full Text Available The Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT, which involves recalling and writing about intense emotional experiences, is a widely used method to experimentally induce emotions. The validity of this method depends upon the extent to which it can induce specific desired emotions (intended emotions, while not inducing any other (incidental emotions at different levels across one (or more conditions. A review of recent studies that used this method indicated that most studies exclusively monitor post-writing ratings of the intended emotions, without assessing the possibility that the method may have differentially induced other incidental emotions as well. We investigated the extent of this issue by collecting both pre- and post-writing ratings of incidental emotions in addition to the intended emotions. Using methods largely adapted from previous studies, participants were assigned to write about a profound experience of anger or fear (Experiment 1 or happiness or sadness (Experiment 2. In line with previous research, results indicated that intended emotions (anger and fear were successfully induced in the respective conditions in Experiment 1. However, disgust and sadness were also induced while writing about an angry experience compared to a fearful experience. Similarly, although happiness and sadness were induced in the appropriate conditions, Experiment 2 indicated that writing about a sad experience also induced disgust, fear, and anger, compared to writing about a happy experience. Possible resolutions to avoid the limitations of the AEMT to induce specific discrete emotions are discussed.

  2. On the Validity of the Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task for Emotion Induction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mills, Caitlin; D'Mello, Sidney

    2014-01-01

    The Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT), which involves recalling and writing about intense emotional experiences, is a widely used method to experimentally induce emotions. The validity of this method depends upon the extent to which it can induce specific desired emotions (intended emotions), while not inducing any other (incidental) emotions at different levels across one (or more) conditions. A review of recent studies that used this method indicated that most studies exclusively monitor post-writing ratings of the intended emotions, without assessing the possibility that the method may have differentially induced other incidental emotions as well. We investigated the extent of this issue by collecting both pre- and post-writing ratings of incidental emotions in addition to the intended emotions. Using methods largely adapted from previous studies, participants were assigned to write about a profound experience of anger or fear (Experiment 1) or happiness or sadness (Experiment 2). In line with previous research, results indicated that intended emotions (anger and fear) were successfully induced in the respective conditions in Experiment 1. However, disgust and sadness were also induced while writing about an angry experience compared to a fearful experience. Similarly, although happiness and sadness were induced in the appropriate conditions, Experiment 2 indicated that writing about a sad experience also induced disgust, fear, and anger, compared to writing about a happy experience. Possible resolutions to avoid the limitations of the AEMT to induce specific discrete emotions are discussed. PMID:24776697

  3. Do emotions drive psychosis?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    João G. Ribeiro

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: How important is the emotional life of persons who manifest psychotic symptoms? Aims: The aim of this paper is to review evidence on a causal role for emotions in psychotic processes. Methods: Selective review of literature on affective symptoms in psychoses, on emotions in the production of psychotic symptoms and on dopaminergic models of psychosis. Results: Affective symptoms are relevant across psychoses. Persons with schizophrenia have high levels of emotional reactivity and the intensification of negative affects not only is associated with but also precedes the intensification of psychotic symptoms, which is evidence that negative emotions drive the course of psychotic symptoms. Negative self‑representations are central in psychotic processes and can be the link between negative emotions and psychosis. Evidence favours the notion that persecutory delusions are consistent with negative affects and self‑representations, while grandiose delusions are consistent with a defensive amplification of positive affects and self‑representations. Shame has been proposed as the core emotional experience of psychosis, one in which the self becomes vulnerable to the external world, which is consistent with persecutory experiences. Assaults on the self, under the form of hostility in the family environment and society, are strong predictors of relapse and development of schizophrenia. Assaults on the self which induce social defeat are also strong stimulants of mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways, whose hyperactivity is associated with acute psychotic episodes and the experience of “aberrant salience”, put forward as a dopaminergic model of psychosis. Conclusions: The “defeat of the self” emerges as a central link that binds the experience of negative emotions to the expression of psychotic symptoms and its psychological and neurobiological correlates. The hypothesis gains support that the emotions related to that defeat control

  4. Psychometric properties of Akinboye's emotional intelligence tests ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Various studies have been carried out on emotional intelligence. But few of these studies have been able to link emotional intelligence to creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Importantly, the fact that creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship are strongly driven by positive emotions cannot be ignored. This study ...

  5. Developmental differences in the neural mechanisms of facial emotion labeling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wiggins, Jillian Lee; Adleman, Nancy E; Kim, Pilyoung; Oakes, Allison H; Hsu, Derek; Reynolds, Richard C; Chen, Gang; Pine, Daniel S; Brotman, Melissa A; Leibenluft, Ellen

    2016-01-01

    Adolescence is a time of increased risk for the onset of psychological disorders associated with deficits in face emotion labeling. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine age-related differences in brain activation while adolescents and adults labeled the emotion on fearful, happy and angry faces of varying intensities [0% (i.e. neutral), 50%, 75%, 100%]. Adolescents and adults did not differ on accuracy to label emotions. In the superior temporal sulcus, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus, adults show an inverted-U-shaped response to increasing intensities of fearful faces and a U-shaped response to increasing intensities of happy faces, whereas adolescents show the opposite patterns. In addition, adults, but not adolescents, show greater inferior occipital gyrus activation to negative (angry, fearful) vs positive (happy) emotions. In sum, when subjects classify subtly varying facial emotions, developmental differences manifest in several 'ventral stream' brain regions. Charting the typical developmental course of the brain mechanisms of socioemotional processes, such as facial emotion labeling, is an important focus for developmental psychopathology research. Published by Oxford University Press 2015. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the US.

  6. The physiological correlates of children's emotions in contexts of moral transgression.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Malti, Tina; Colasante, Tyler; Zuffianò, Antonio; de Bruine, Marieke

    2016-02-01

    Heightened attention to sociomoral conflicts and arousal at the prospect of committing moral transgressions are thought to increase the likelihood of negatively valenced moral emotions (NVMEs; e.g., guilt) in children. Here, we tested this biphasic model of moral emotions with a psychophysiological framework. For a series of vignettes depicting moral transgressions, 5- and 8-year-olds (N=138) were asked to anticipate their emotions as hypothetical victimizers. Their responses were coded for the presence and intensity of NVMEs. In addition, their heart rate (HR) was calculated for three intervals of interest: a baseline period, the presentation of vignettes, and the anticipation of emotions following vignettes. We used multilevel modeling to examine how change in children's HR across these intervals related to the intensity of their NVMEs. Those who experienced greater HR deceleration from baseline to vignettes and greater acceleration from vignettes to anticipated emotions reported more intense NVMEs. We discuss the potential attention- and arousal-related processes behind children's physiological reactivity and anticipated emotions in contexts of moral transgression. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. Assessing Mongolian gerbil emotional behavior: effects of two shock intensities and response-independent shocks during an extended inhibitory-avoidance task

    OpenAIRE

    Camilo Hurtado-Parrado; Camilo González-León; Mónica A. Arias-Higuera; Angelo Cardona; Lucia G. Medina; Laura García-Muñoz; Christian Sánchez; Julián Cifuentes; Juan Carlos Forigua; Andrea Ortiz; Cesar A. Acevedo-Triana; Javier L. Rico

    2017-01-01

    Despite step-down inhibitory avoidance procedures that have been widely implemented in rats and mice to study learning and emotion phenomena, performance of other species in these tasks has received less attention. The case of the Mongolian gerbil is of relevance considering the discrepancies in the parameters of the step-down protocols implemented, especially the wide range of foot-shock intensities (i.e., 0.4–4.0 mA), and the lack of information on long-term performance, extinction effects,...

  8. Positive emotion, appraisal, and the role of appraisal overlap in positive emotion co-occurrence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tong, Eddie M W; Jia, Lile

    2017-02-01

    Appraisal research has traditionally focused on negative emotions but has not addressed issues concerning the relationships between several positive emotions and appraisals in daily life and the extent to which co-occurrence of positive emotions can be explained by overlap in appraisals. Driven by a priori hypotheses on appraisal-emotion relationships, this study investigated 12 positive emotions and 13 appraisal dimensions using Ecological Momentary Assessment. The results provide strong evidence that positive emotions and appraisals correlate significantly in daily life. Importantly, we found that the positive emotions' overlap on theoretically relevant, as compared to irrelevant, appraisals was stronger and more predictive of their co-occurrence. Furthermore, appraisal overlap on theoretically relevant appraisals predicted the co-occurrence of positive emotions even when the appraisal of pleasantness was excluded, indicating that positive emotions do not co-occur just by virtue of their shared valence. Our findings affirmed and refined the appraisal profiles of positive emotions and underscore the importance of appraisals in accounting for the commonality and differences among positive emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  9. Depersonalization disorder: disconnection of cognitive evaluation from autonomic responses to emotional stimuli.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthias Michal

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Patients with depersonalization disorder (DPD typically complain about emotional detachment. Previous studies found reduced autonomic responsiveness to emotional stimuli for DPD patients as compared to patients with anxiety disorders. We aimed to investigate autonomic responsiveness to emotional auditory stimuli of DPD patients as compared to patient controls. Furthermore, we examined the modulatory effect of mindful breathing on these responses as well as on depersonalization intensity. METHODS: 22 DPD patients and 15 patient controls balanced for severity of depression and anxiety, age, sex and education, were compared regarding 1 electrodermal and heart rate data during a resting period, and 2 autonomic responses and cognitive appraisal of standardized acoustic affective stimuli in two conditions (normal listening and mindful breathing. RESULTS: DPD patients rated the emotional sounds as significantly more neutral as compared to patient controls and standardized norm ratings. At the same time, however, they responded more strongly to acoustic emotional stimuli and their electrodermal response pattern was more modulated by valence and arousal as compared to patient controls. Mindful breathing reduced severity of depersonalization in DPD patients and increased the arousal modulation of electrodermal responses in the whole sample. Finally, DPD patients showed an increased electrodermal lability in the rest period as compared to patient controls. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrated that the cognitive evaluation of emotional sounds in DPD patients is disconnected from their autonomic responses to those emotional stimuli. The increased electrodermal lability in DPD may reflect increased introversion and cognitive control of emotional impulses. The findings have important psychotherapeutic implications.

  10. Have I Ever Done Anything Like This Before? Older Adults Solving Ill-Defined Problems in Intensive Volunteering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cheek, Cheryl; Piercy, Kathleen W; Kohlenberg, Meranda

    2015-01-01

    This study examined the ways in which individuals over 50 years old solved problems while volunteering in intensive humanitarian and disaster relief service. Thirty-seven men and women in the sample were sponsored by three religious organizations well known for providing humanitarian and disaster relief service. Semistructured interviews yielded data that were analyzed qualitatively, using McCracken's five-step process for analysis. We found that volunteers used three different abilities to solve problems: drawing upon experience to create strategies, maintaining emotional stability in the midst of trying circumstances, and applying strategies in a context-sensitive manner. These findings illustrate that these factors, which are comparable to those used in solving everyday problems, are unique in the way they are applied to intensive volunteering. The volunteers' sharing of knowledge, experience, and support with each other were also noticeable in their accounts of their service. This sharing contributed strongly to their sense of emotional stability and effectiveness in solving problems. © The Author(s) 2015.

  11. A flavour of emotions

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Silva, Ana Patrícia

    2017-01-01

    <strong>Background>

    Wine and beer are the most consumed alcoholic beverages worldwide and are known by the sensory pleasure and short terms effects such as relaxation and mood enhancement. However, it remains unclear what are the specific emotions evoked by wine or beer

  12. Mapping aesthetic musical emotions in the brain

    OpenAIRE

    Trost, Johanna Wiebke; Ethofer, Thomas Stefan; Zentner, Marcel Robert; Vuilleumier, Patrik

    2012-01-01

    Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investigated in neuroscience. Here, we used functional neuroimaging with parametric analyses based on the intensity of felt emotions to explore a wider spectrum of affective responses reported during music listening. Positive emotions correlated with activation of left striatum and insula when high-arousing (Wonder, Joy) but right striatum and orbitofrontal cortex when low-arousing (Nostalgia, Tenderness...

  13. Classification of emotions by multivariate analysis and individual differences of nuclear power plant operators` emotion

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hasegawa, Naoko; Yoshimura, Seiichi [Central Research Inst. of Electric Power Industry, Tokyo (Japan)

    1999-03-01

    The purpose of this study is the development of a simulation model which expresses operators` emotion under plant emergency. This report shows the classification of emotions by multivariate analysis and investigation results conducted to clarify individual differences of activated emotion influenced by personal traits. Although a former investigation was conducted to classify emotions into five basic emotions proposed by Johnson-Laird, the basic emotions was not based on real data. For the development of more realistic and accurate simulation model, it is necessary to recognize basic emotion and to classify emotions into them. As a result of analysis by qualification method 3 and cluster analysis, four basic clusters were clarified, i.e., Emotion expressed towards objects, Emotion affected by objects, Pleasant emotion, and Surprise. Moreover, 51 emotions were ranked in the order according to their similarities in each cluster. An investigation was conducted to clarify individual differences in emotion process using 87 plant operators. The results showed the differences of emotion depending on the existence of operators` foresight, cognitive style, experience in operation, and consciousness of attribution to an operating team. For example, operators with low self-efficacy, short experience or low consciousness of attribution to a team, feel more intensive emotion under plant emergency and more affected by severe plant conditions. The model which can express individual differences will be developed utilizing and converting these data hereafter. (author)

  14. Classification of emotions by multivariate analysis and individual differences of nuclear power plant operators' emotion

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hasegawa, Naoko; Yoshimura, Seiichi

    1999-01-01

    The purpose of this study is the development of a simulation model which expresses operators' emotion under plant emergency. This report shows the classification of emotions by multivariate analysis and investigation results conducted to clarify individual differences of activated emotion influenced by personal traits. Although a former investigation was conducted to classify emotions into five basic emotions proposed by Johnson-Laird, the basic emotions was not based on real data. For the development of more realistic and accurate simulation model, it is necessary to recognize basic emotion and to classify emotions into them. As a result of analysis by qualification method 3 and cluster analysis, four basic clusters were clarified, i.e., Emotion expressed towards objects, Emotion affected by objects, Pleasant emotion, and Surprise. Moreover, 51 emotions were ranked in the order according to their similarities in each cluster. An investigation was conducted to clarify individual differences in emotion process using 87 plant operators. The results showed the differences of emotion depending on the existence of operators' foresight, cognitive style, experience in operation, and consciousness of attribution to an operating team. For example, operators with low self-efficacy, short experience or low consciousness of attribution to a team, feel more intensive emotion under plant emergency and more affected by severe plant conditions. The model which can express individual differences will be developed utilizing and converting these data hereafter. (author)

  15. Gaze Dynamics in the Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barabanschikov, Vladimir A

    2015-01-01

    We studied preferably fixated parts and features of human face in the process of recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Photographs of facial expressions were used. Participants were to categorize these as basic emotions; during this process, eye movements were registered. It was found that variation in the intensity of an expression is mirrored in accuracy of emotion recognition; it was also reflected by several indices of oculomotor function: duration of inspection of certain areas of the face, its upper and bottom or right parts, right and left sides; location, number and duration of fixations, viewing trajectory. In particular, for low-intensity expressions, right side of the face was found to be attended predominantly (right-side dominance); the right-side dominance effect, was, however, absent for expressions of high intensity. For both low- and high-intensity expressions, upper face part was predominantly fixated, though with greater fixation of high-intensity expressions. The majority of trials (70%), in line with findings in previous studies, revealed a V-shaped pattern of inspection trajectory. No relationship, between accuracy of recognition of emotional expressions, was found, though, with either location and duration of fixations or pattern of gaze directedness in the face. © The Author(s) 2015.

  16. Understanding Mixed Emotions: Paradigms and Measures

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kreibig, Sylvia D.; Gross, James J.

    2017-01-01

    In this review, we examine the paradigms and measures available for experimentally studying mixed emotions in the laboratory. For eliciting mixed emotions, we describe a mixed emotions film library that allows for the repeated elicitation of a specific homogeneous mixed emotional state and appropriately matched pure positive, pure negative, and neutral emotional states. For assessing mixed emotions, we consider subjective and objective measures that fall into univariate, bivariate, and multivariate measurement categories. As paradigms and measures for objectively studying mixed emotions are still in their early stages, we conclude by outlining future directions that focus on the reliability, temporal dynamics, and response coherence of mixed emotions paradigms and measures. This research will build a strong foundation for future studies and significantly advance our understanding of mixed emotions. PMID:28804752

  17. Cultural affordances and emotional experience: socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United States.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kitayama, Shinobu; Mesquita, Batja; Karasawa, Mayumi

    2006-11-01

    The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time.

  18. Emotion as the amplifier and the primary motive: Some theories of emotion with relevance to language learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rebecca L. Oxford

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Emotion is crucial to living and learning. The powerful intertwining of emotion and cognition ignites learning within a complex dynamic system, which, as several sections of this paper show, also includes societal and cultural influences. As “the primary human motive” (MacIntyre, 2002a, p. 61, emotion operates as an amplifier, which provides energetic intensity to all human behavior, including language learning. This chapter explains major theories of emotion drawn from positive psychology, social psychology, social constructivism, social constructionism, and existential psychotherapy. It also offers implications for language learning related to understanding and managing emotions; expressing emotions appropriately despite cultural and linguistic differences; viewing emotions as transitory social roles; enhancing positive emotions and developing resilience; and recognizing, perhaps paradoxically, both the negative and the positive aspects of anxiety. The chapter concludes with the statement that language learners can become more agentic in dealing with their emotions. This form of self-regulation can lead to greater success in language learning.

  19. Tears Falling on Goosebumps: Co-occurrence of Emotional Lacrimation and Emotional Piloerection Indicates a Psychophysiological Climax in Emotional Arousal

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Jacobsen, Thomas; Heinrich, Jan; Schneiderbauer, Manuel; Menninghaus, Winfried

    2017-01-01

    This psychophysiological study is the first to examine the relationship between emotional tears and emotional piloerection (i.e., goosebumps). Although both phenomena have been related to peak states of being moved, details about their temporal occurrence and the associated levels of physiological arousal have remained unknown. In our study, we used emotionally powerful film scenes that were self-selected by participants. Our findings show that even within peak moments of emotional arousal, a gradation of intensity is possible. The overlap of tears and goosebumps signifies a maximal climax within peak moments. On the side of the stimulus, we found that displays of prosocial behavior play a crucial role in the elicitation of tears and goosebumps. Finally, based on the results of a formal film analysis of the tears-eliciting clips provided by our participants, as compared to randomly extracted, equally long control clips from the same films, we show how the technical and artistic making of the clips was optimized for the display of social interaction and emotional expressions. PMID:28223946

  20. Facial Emotion Recognition Performance Differentiates Between Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Major Depressive Disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiu, Isabelle; Piguet, Olivier; Diehl-Schmid, Janine; Riedl, Lina; Beck, Johannes; Leyhe, Thomas; Holsboer-Trachsler, Edith; Kressig, Reto W; Berres, Manfred; Monsch, Andreas U; Sollberger, Marc

    Misdiagnosis of early behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) with major depressive disorder (MDD) is not uncommon due to overlapping symptoms. The aim of this study was to improve the discrimination between these disorders using a novel facial emotion perception task. In this prospective cohort study (July 2013-March 2016), we compared 25 patients meeting Rascovsky diagnostic criteria for bvFTD, 20 patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for MDD, 21 patients meeting McKhann diagnostic criteria for Alzheimer's disease dementia, and 31 healthy participants on a novel emotion intensity rating task comprising morphed low-intensity facial stimuli. Participants were asked to rate the intensity of morphed faces on the congruent basic emotion (eg, rating on sadness when sad face is shown) and on the 5 incongruent basic emotions (eg, rating on each of the other basic emotions when sad face is shown). While bvFTD patients underrated congruent emotions (P dementia patients perceived emotions similarly to healthy participants, indicating no impact of cognitive impairment on rating scores. Our congruent and incongruent facial emotion intensity rating task allows a detailed assessment of facial emotion perception in patient populations. By using this simple task, we achieved an almost complete discrimination between bvFTD and MDD, potentially helping improve the diagnostic certainty in early bvFTD. © Copyright 2018 Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.

  1. Measuring Emotional Intelligence Enhances the Psychological Evaluation of Chronic Pain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doherty, Eva M; Walsh, Rosemary; Andrews, Leanne; McPherson, Susan

    2017-12-01

    The assessment of emotional factors, in addition to other psychosocial factors, has been recommended as a means of identifying individuals with chronic pain who may not respond to certain pain treatments. Systematic reviews of the evidence regarding the prediction of responsiveness to a treatment called the spinal cord stimulator (SCS) have yielded inconclusive results. Emotional intelligence is a term which refers to the ability to identify and manage emotions in oneself and others and has been shown to be inversely associated with emotional distress and acute pain. This study aims to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence, chronic pain, and the more established psychosocial factors usually used for SCS evaluations by clinical psychologists in medical settings. A sample of 112 patients with chronic pain on an acute hospital waiting list for SCS procedures in a pain medicine service were recruited. Psychological measures were completed including: a novel measure of emotional intelligence; usual measures of emotional distress and catastrophizing; and a numerical rating scale designed to assess pain intensity, pain-related distress, and interference. As predicted, findings revealed significant associations between most of the measures analyzed and current pain intensity. When entered into a simultaneous regression analysis, emotional intelligence scores remained the only significant predictor of current pain intensity. There are potential clinical, ethical, and organizational implications of emotional intelligence processes partially predicting pain in patients on a waiting list for a medical procedure. These results may offer new insight, understanding, and evaluation targets for clinical psychologists in the field of pain management.

  2. Teachers’ Emotional Expression in Interaction with Students of Different Ages

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Simona Prosen

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Emotions are an integral part of “classroom life” and are experienced in teacher-student interactions quite often (Hosotani & Imai-Matsumura, 2011. The present study focuses on teachers’ emotions in classrooms. Its purpose is to establish which emotions are expressed by teachers in their interactions with students, the triggering situations of the two most frequent emotions, and their level of intensity and suitability. Teachers’ emotions were observed by students of primary education during their practical experience work, in grades one to five. They used a scheme constructed for observing different aspects of emotions. The observations of 108 teachers in 93 primary schools from various Slovenian regions were gathered. The results show that primary school teachers express various pleasant and unpleasant emotions, with unpleasant emotions prevailing. The average frequency of teachers’ emotion expression decreased from grade one to five. Anger was the most frequently expressed emotion (N = 261, followed by joy (N = 151. Teachers’ anger and joy were triggered in different situations: anger predominantly when students lacked discipline and joy predominantly in situations of students’ academic achievement. The intensity of expressed anger and joy was moderate in all five grades, while the assessed suitability of these two emotions was high.

  3. Conscious and Unconscious Emotions in Alexithymics and Repressors

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tsvetelina Slavchova Hadzhieva

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available In this article, the nature, evolution and characteristics of conscious and unconscious emotions which determine the internal regulation of behavior are traced. Definitions of the nature of emotions and feelings of other authors are presented, and studies which reflect the cognitive relationship of emotional processes are cited. A classification of two different personality types has been considered (alexithymic and repressor, who differently express their emotions, because of their cognitive peculiarities. The main idea of ​​the article is based on tracing the specifics of emotional expression and intensity.

  4. Alexithymia and Affect Intensity of Fine Artists

    Science.gov (United States)

    Botella, Marion; Zenasni, Franck; Lubart, Todd

    2015-01-01

    Research on creative artists has examined mainly their personality traits or cognitive abilities. However, it seems important to explore also their emotional traits to complete the profile. This study examines two emotional characteristics: alexithymia and affect intensity. Even if most research suggests that artists are less alexithymic and…

  5. Analgesia, sedation, and memory of intensive care.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Capuzzo, M; Pinamonti, A; Cingolani, E; Grassi, L; Bianconi, M; Contu, P; Gritti, G; Alvisi, R

    2001-09-01

    The purpose of this article was to investigate the relationship between analgesia, sedation, and memory of intensive care. One hundred fifty-two adult, cooperative intensive care unit (ICU) patients were interviewed 6 months after hospital discharge about their memory of intensive care. The patient was considered to be cooperative when he/she was aware of self and environment at the interview. The patients were grouped as follows: A (45 patients) substantially no sedation, B (85) morphine, and C (22) morphine and other sedatives. The patients having no memory of intensive care were 38%, 34%, and 23% respectively, in the three groups. They were less ill, according to SAPS II (P memories was not different among the three groups. Females reported at least one emotional memory more frequently than males (odds ratio 4.17; 95% CI 10.97-1.59). The patients receiving sedatives in the ICU are not comparable with those receiving only opiates or nothing, due to the different clinical condition. The lack of memory of intensive care is present in one third of patients and is influenced more by length of stay in ICU than by the sedation received. Sedation does not influence the incidence of factual, sensation, and emotional memories of ICU admitted patients. Females have higher incidences of emotional memories than males. Copyright 2001 by W.B. Saunders Company

  6. Self-reported emotional dysregulation but no impairment of emotional intelligence in borderline personality disorder: an explorative study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beblo, Thomas; Pastuszak, Anna; Griepenstroh, Julia; Fernando, Silvia; Driessen, Martin; Schütz, Astrid; Rentzsch, Katrin; Schlosser, Nicole

    2010-05-01

    Emotional dysfunction is a key feature of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) but emotional intelligence (EI) has rarely been investigated in this sample. This study aimed at an investigation of ability EI, general intelligence, and self-reported emotion regulation in BPD. We included 19 patients with BPD and 20 healthy control subjects in the study. EI was assessed by means of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso emotional intelligence test and the test of emotional intelligence. For the assessment of general intelligence, we administered the multidimensional "Leistungsprüfsystem-Kurzversion." The emotion regulation questionnaire and the difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale were used to assess emotion regulation. The patients with BPD did not exhibit impairments of ability EI and general intelligence but reported severe impairments in emotion regulation. Ability EI was related both to general intelligence (patients and controls) and to self-reported emotion regulation (patients). In conclusion, emotional dysfunction in BPD might primarily affect self-perceived behavior rather than abilities. Intense negative emotions in everyday life may trigger dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies in BPD although patients possess sufficient theoretical knowledge about optimal regulation strategies.

  7. Changing the tune: listeners like music that expresses a contrasting emotion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    E Glenn eSchellenberg

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available Theories of aesthetic appreciation propose that (1 a stimulus is liked because it is expected or familiar, (2 a stimulus is liked most when it is neither too familiar nor too novel, or (3 a novel stimulus is liked because it elicits an intensified emotional response. We tested the third hypothesis by examining liking for music as a function of whether the emotion it expressed contrasted with the emotion expressed by music heard previously. Stimuli were 30-s happy- or sad-sounding excerpts from recordings of classical piano music. On each trial, listeners heard a different excerpt and made liking and emotion-intensity ratings. The emotional character of consecutive excerpts was repeated with varying frequencies, followed by an excerpt that expressed a contrasting emotion. As the number of presentations of the background emotion increased, liking and intensity ratings became lower compared to those for the contrasting emotion. Consequently, when the emotional character of the music was relatively novel, listeners’ responses intensified and their appreciation increased.

  8. Is this happiness I see? Biases in the identification of emotional facial expressions in depression and social phobia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joormann, Jutta; Gotlib, Ian H

    2006-11-01

    The present study was designed to examine the operation of depression-specific biases in the identification or labeling of facial expression of emotions. Participants diagnosed with major depression and social phobia and control participants were presented with faces that expressed increasing degrees of emotional intensity, slowly changing from a neutral to a full-intensity happy, sad, or angry expression. The authors assessed individual differences in the intensity of facial expression of emotion that was required for the participants to accurately identify the emotion being expressed. The depressed participants required significantly greater intensity of emotion than did the social phobic and the control participants to correctly identify happy expressions and less intensity to identify sad than angry expressions. In contrast, social phobic participants needed less intensity to correctly identify the angry expressions than did the depressed and control participants and less intensity to identify angry than sad expressions. Implications of these results for interpersonal functioning in depression and social phobia are discussed. (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.

  9. Individual differences in emotion lateralisation and the processing of emotional information arising from social interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bourne, Victoria J; Watling, Dawn

    2015-01-01

    Previous research examining the possible association between emotion lateralisation and social anxiety has found conflicting results. In this paper two studies are presented to assess two aspects related to different features of social anxiety: fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and emotion regulation. Lateralisation for the processing of facial emotion was measured using the chimeric faces test. Individuals with greater FNE were more strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere for the processing of anger, happiness and sadness; and, for the processing of fearful faces the relationship was found for females only. Emotion regulation strategies were reduced to two factors: positive strategies and negative strategies. For males, but not females, greater reported use of negative emotion strategies is associated with stronger right hemisphere lateralisation for processing negative emotions. The implications for further understanding the neuropsychological processing of emotion in individuals with social anxiety are discussed.

  10. Impaired emotion recognition in music in Parkinson's disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Tricht, Mirjam J.; Smeding, Harriet M. M.; Speelman, Johannes D.; Schmand, Ben A.

    2010-01-01

    Music has the potential to evoke strong emotions and plays a significant role in the lives of many people. Music might therefore be an ideal medium to assess emotion recognition. We investigated emotion recognition in music in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and 20 matched

  11. [Minimal emotional dysfunction and first impression formation in personality disorders].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Linden, M; Vilain, M

    2011-01-01

    "Minimal cerebral dysfunctions" are isolated impairments of basic mental functions, which are elements of complex functions like speech. The best described are cognitive dysfunctions such as reading and writing problems, dyscalculia, attention deficits, but also motor dysfunctions such as problems with articulation, hyperactivity or impulsivity. Personality disorders can be characterized by isolated emotional dysfunctions in relation to emotional adequacy, intensity and responsivity. For example, paranoid personality disorders can be characterized by continuous and inadequate distrust, as a disorder of emotional adequacy. Schizoid personality disorders can be characterized by low expressive emotionality, as a disorder of effect intensity, or dissocial personality disorders can be characterized by emotional non-responsivity. Minimal emotional dysfunctions cause interactional misunderstandings because of the psychology of "first impression formation". Studies have shown that in 100 ms persons build up complex and lasting emotional judgements about other persons. Therefore, minimal emotional dysfunctions result in interactional problems and adjustment disorders and in corresponding cognitive schemata.From the concept of minimal emotional dysfunctions specific psychotherapeutic interventions in respect to the patient-therapist relationship, the diagnostic process, the clarification of emotions and reality testing, and especially an understanding of personality disorders as impairment and "selection, optimization, and compensation" as a way of coping can be derived.

  12. Finding Emotional-Laden Resources on the World Wide Web

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diane Rasmussen Neal

    2011-03-01

    Full Text Available Some content in multimedia resources can depict or evoke certain emotions in users. The aim of Emotional Information Retrieval (EmIR and of our research is to identify knowledge about emotional-laden documents and to use these findings in a new kind of World Wide Web information service that allows users to search and browse by emotion. Our prototype, called Media EMOtion SEarch (MEMOSE, is largely based on the results of research regarding emotive music pieces, images and videos. In order to index both evoked and depicted emotions in these three media types and to make them searchable, we work with a controlled vocabulary, slide controls to adjust the emotions’ intensities, and broad folksonomies to identify and separate the correct resource-specific emotions. This separation of so-called power tags is based on a tag distribution which follows either an inverse power law (only one emotion was recognized or an inverse-logistical shape (two or three emotions were recognized. Both distributions are well known in information science. MEMOSE consists of a tool for tagging basic emotions with the help of slide controls, a processing device to separate power tags, a retrieval component consisting of a search interface (for any topic in combination with one or more emotions and a results screen. The latter shows two separately ranked lists of items for each media type (depicted and felt emotions, displaying thumbnails of resources, ranked by the mean values of intensity. In the evaluation of the MEMOSE prototype, study participants described our EmIR system as an enjoyable Web 2.0 service.

  13. Associations between feeling and judging the emotions of happiness and fear: findings from a large-scale field experiment.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tony W Buchanan

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available How do we recognize emotions from other people? One possibility is that our own emotional experiences guide us in the online recognition of emotion in others. A distinct but related possibility is that emotion experience helps us to learn how to recognize emotions in childhood.We explored these ideas in a large sample of people (N = 4,608 ranging from 5 to over 50 years old. Participants were asked to rate the intensity of emotional experience in their own lives, as well as to perform a task of facial emotion recognition. Those who reported more intense experience of fear and happiness were significantly more accurate (closer to prototypical in recognizing facial expressions of fear and happiness, respectively, and intense experience of fear was associated also with more accurate recognition of surprised and happy facial expressions. The associations held across all age groups.These results suggest that the intensity of one's own emotional experience of fear and happiness correlates with the ability to recognize these emotions in others, and demonstrate such an association as early as age 5.

  14. Ethnic and Gender Differences in Emotional Ideology, Experience, and Expression

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elaine Hatfield

    2009-06-01

    Full Text Available How universal are men and women’s attitudes toward the expression of emotion? How similar are the emotions that men and women from various ethnic groups experience and express in their close love relationships? In this study, 144 men and 307 women of European, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, and Japanese ancestry were asked about their ideologies as to how people ought to deal with strong emotions in close relationships, how often they themselves felt a variety of emotions, and how they dealt with such feelings in close relationships. Finally, they were asked how satisfied they were with their close relationships. Men and women appeared to possess different emotional ideologies. Women tended to favor direct expression of emotion; men to favor emotional management. People of Chinese, European, Filipino, Hawaiian, and Japanese ancestry also possessed different ideologies as to how people ought to deal with strong emotions in intimate relationships.

  15. EMOTIONS IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Popa Mirela

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available At the heart of any workplace behavior (and not only, there are always one or more emotions (pleasant/unpleasant, partially controllable/uncontrollable, aware/ unconscious, useful/useless/harmful, intense/less intense, predictable/unpredictable, expressed/ repressed, observable/ unobservable, explained/ unexplained, rational/ irrational, and so on. Emotions are the foundation of a complex and mysterious mechanism of action and behavior. Emotions are triggered by certain things, people, events, situations, processes, results, interactions and so on, and are informed by a variety of endogenous (biological and exogenous factors, and also by the intellectual potential of each individual. Emotions lie at the intersection of rationality, body (physical and soul (spirit, thought, reason, logic, compassion, autonomy and action/behavior, individual and environment. This article undertakes to define emotions and identify their impact on the organizational environment, with emphasis on emotional climate and managing emotions. Moreover, we will focus on human behavior/action, rather than on the evolution of the nervous system or the cortex in particular. Work itself should not be a source of suffering. It is obvious that certain emotions cause bad moods, unnecessary and even harmful ones, conditions that should be considered, even if they have a situational and subjective character. Some managers think that the decision-maker fulfills his/her duties by strictly conforming to the law and to the agreement clauses and by meeting his/her obligations in a timely and exacting manner. Others believe that a good leader, in addition to observing the applicable rules and regulation, must be honest also to his colleagues and collaborators and sympathetic to the needs, ideas and emotions of those who are interested in the optimal operation of the company. Managers must remain alert to events, people and behaviors that can trigger harmful emotions within the

  16. [Emotional experience and regulation across the adult lifespan: comparative analysis in three age groups].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Márquez-González, María; Izal Fernández de Trocóniz, María; Montorio Cerrato, Ignacio; Losada Baltar, Andrés

    2008-11-01

    The studies focused on age-related differences in emotional experience are still scarce, and most of them have been conducted with North-American samples. This study explores the presence of age-related differences in some facets of emotional experience (subjective well-being and emotional intensity), as well as in variables related to emotion regulation (subjective emotional control and three emotion-regulation mechanisms: situation selection, emotion suppression, rumination) in the Spanish population. One hundred and sixty people from three age groups (younger, middle-aged and older adults) participated in the study. Older participants reported lower levels of life satisfaction and positive emotional intensity than younger ones, as well as higher levels of perceived emotional control, emotional maturity and leveling of positive affect, and more use of emotion suppression. The results partially support the emotional maturity hypothesis of emotional functioning in old age, but also suggest that older adults' emotional regulation may present important peculiarities which have not yet been addressed in the extant literature, such as the moderation or limitation of emotional experience, especially positive emotions.

  17. Impaired emotion recognition in music in Parkinson's disease

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Tricht, M.J.; Smeding, H.M.M.; Speelman, J.D.; Schmand, B.A.

    2010-01-01

    Music has the potential to evoke strong emotions and plays a significant role in the lives of many people. Music might therefore be an ideal medium to assess emotion recognition. We investigated emotion recognition in music in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) and 20 matched

  18. Employee emotional competence: Construct conceptualization and validation of a customer-based measure

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Delcourt, C.C.; Gremler, D.D.; Riel, A.C.R. van; Birgelen, M.J.H. van

    2016-01-01

    Customers often experience intense emotions during service encounters. Their perceptions of how well contact employees demonstrate emotional competence in emotionally charged service encounters can affect their service evaluations and loyalty intentions. Previous studies examining employees’

  19. Cheating, Emotions, and Rationality: An Experiment on Tax Evasion

    OpenAIRE

    Giorgio Coricelli; Mateus Joffily; Claude Montmarquette; Marie Claire Villeval

    2010-01-01

    International audience; The economics-of-crime approach usually ignores the emotional cost and benefit of cheating. In this paper, we investigate the relationships between emotions, deception, and rational decision-making by means of an experiment on tax evasion. Emotions are measured by skin conductance responses and self-reports. We show that the intensity of anticipated and anticipatory emotions before reporting positively correlates with both the decision to cheat and the proportion of ev...

  20. Associations between facial emotion recognition and young adolescents' behaviors in bullying.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tiziana Pozzoli

    Full Text Available This study investigated whether different behaviors young adolescents can act during bullying episodes were associated with their ability to recognize morphed facial expressions of the six basic emotions, expressed at high and low intensity. The sample included 117 middle-school students (45.3% girls; mean age = 12.4 years who filled in a peer nomination questionnaire and individually performed a computerized emotion recognition task. Bayesian generalized mixed-effects models showed a complex picture, in which type and intensity of emotions, students' behavior and gender interacted in explaining recognition accuracy. Results were discussed with a particular focus on negative emotions and suggesting a "neutral" nature of emotion recognition ability, which does not necessarily lead to moral behavior but can also be used for pursuing immoral goals.

  1. Associations between facial emotion recognition and young adolescents’ behaviors in bullying

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gini, Gianluca; Altoè, Gianmarco

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated whether different behaviors young adolescents can act during bullying episodes were associated with their ability to recognize morphed facial expressions of the six basic emotions, expressed at high and low intensity. The sample included 117 middle-school students (45.3% girls; mean age = 12.4 years) who filled in a peer nomination questionnaire and individually performed a computerized emotion recognition task. Bayesian generalized mixed-effects models showed a complex picture, in which type and intensity of emotions, students’ behavior and gender interacted in explaining recognition accuracy. Results were discussed with a particular focus on negative emotions and suggesting a “neutral” nature of emotion recognition ability, which does not necessarily lead to moral behavior but can also be used for pursuing immoral goals. PMID:29131871

  2. Brain correlates of music-evoked emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koelsch, Stefan

    2014-03-01

    Music is a universal feature of human societies, partly owing to its power to evoke strong emotions and influence moods. During the past decade, the investigation of the neural correlates of music-evoked emotions has been invaluable for the understanding of human emotion. Functional neuroimaging studies on music and emotion show that music can modulate activity in brain structures that are known to be crucially involved in emotion, such as the amygdala, nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, hippocampus, insula, cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex. The potential of music to modulate activity in these structures has important implications for the use of music in the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders.

  3. Models and methods of emotional concordance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hollenstein, Tom; Lanteigne, Dianna

    2014-04-01

    Theories of emotion generally posit the synchronized, coordinated, and/or emergent combination of psychophysiological, cognitive, and behavioral components of the emotion system--emotional concordance--as a functional definition of emotion. However, the empirical support for this claim has been weak or inconsistent. As an introduction to this special issue on emotional concordance, we consider three domains of explanations as to why this theory-data gap might exist. First, theory may need to be revised to more accurately reflect past research. Second, there may be moderating factors such as emotion regulation, context, or individual differences that have obscured concordance. Finally, the methods typically used to test theory may be inadequate. In particular, we review a variety of potential issues: intensity of emotions elicited in the laboratory, nonlinearity, between- versus within-subject associations, the relative timing of components, bivariate versus multivariate approaches, and diversity of physiological processes. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Computational strong-field quantum dynamics. Intense light-matter interactions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bauer, Dieter

    2017-01-01

    This graduate textbook introduces the computational techniques to study ultra-fast quantum dynamics of matter exposed to strong laser fields. Coverage includes methods to propagate wavefunctions according to the time dependent Schroedinger, Klein-Gordon or Dirac equation, the calculation of typical observables, time-dependent density functional theory, multi configurational time-dependent Hartree-Fock, time-dependent configuration interaction singles, the strong-field approximation, and the microscopic particle-in-cell approach.

  5. Computational strong-field quantum dynamics. Intense light-matter interactions

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bauer, Dieter (ed.) [Rostock Univ. (Germany). Inst. fuer Physik

    2017-09-01

    This graduate textbook introduces the computational techniques to study ultra-fast quantum dynamics of matter exposed to strong laser fields. Coverage includes methods to propagate wavefunctions according to the time dependent Schroedinger, Klein-Gordon or Dirac equation, the calculation of typical observables, time-dependent density functional theory, multi configurational time-dependent Hartree-Fock, time-dependent configuration interaction singles, the strong-field approximation, and the microscopic particle-in-cell approach.

  6. Computational strong-field quantum dynamics intense light-matter interactions

    CERN Document Server

    2017-01-01

    This graduate textbook introduces the computational techniques to study ultra-fast quantum dynamics of matter exposed to strong laser fields. Coverage includes methods to propagate wavefunctions according to the time-dependent Schrödinger, Klein-Gordon or Dirac equation, the calculation of typical observables, time-dependent density functional theory, multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree-Fock, time-dependent configuration interaction singles, the strong-field approximation, and the microscopic particle-in-cell approach.

  7. The Glass Half Empty: How Emotional Exhaustion Affects the State-Trait Discrepancy in Self-Reports of Teaching Emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goetz, Thomas; Becker, Eva S; Bieg, Madeleine; Keller, Melanie M; Frenzel, Anne C; Hall, Nathan C

    2015-01-01

    Following from previous research on intensity bias and the accessibility model of emotional self-report, the present study examined the role of emotional exhaustion in explaining the discrepancy in teachers' reports of their trait (habitual) versus state (momentary, "real") emotions. Trait reports (habitual emotions, exhaustion) were assessed via trait questionnaires, and state reports (momentary emotions) were assessed in real time via the experience sampling method by using personal digital assistants (N = 69 high school teachers; 1,089 measures within teachers). In line with our assumptions, multi-level analyses showed that, as compared to the state assessment, teachers reported higher levels of habitual teaching-related emotions of anger, anxiety, shame, boredom, enjoyment, and pride. Additionally, the state-trait discrepancy in self-reports of negative emotions was accounted for by teachers' emotional exhaustion, with high exhaustion levels corresponding with a greater state-trait discrepancy. Exhaustion levels did not moderate the state-trait discrepancy in positive emotions indicating that perceived emotional exhaustion may reflect identity-related cognitions specific to the negative belief system. Implications for research and educational practice are discussed.

  8. The Glass Half Empty: How Emotional Exhaustion Affects the State-Trait Discrepancy in Self-Reports of Teaching Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goetz, Thomas; Becker, Eva S.; Bieg, Madeleine; Keller, Melanie M.; Frenzel, Anne C.; Hall, Nathan C.

    2015-01-01

    Following from previous research on intensity bias and the accessibility model of emotional self-report, the present study examined the role of emotional exhaustion in explaining the discrepancy in teachers’ reports of their trait (habitual) versus state (momentary, “real”) emotions. Trait reports (habitual emotions, exhaustion) were assessed via trait questionnaires, and state reports (momentary emotions) were assessed in real time via the experience sampling method by using personal digital assistants (N = 69 high school teachers; 1,089 measures within teachers). In line with our assumptions, multi-level analyses showed that, as compared to the state assessment, teachers reported higher levels of habitual teaching-related emotions of anger, anxiety, shame, boredom, enjoyment, and pride. Additionally, the state-trait discrepancy in self-reports of negative emotions was accounted for by teachers’ emotional exhaustion, with high exhaustion levels corresponding with a greater state-trait discrepancy. Exhaustion levels did not moderate the state-trait discrepancy in positive emotions indicating that perceived emotional exhaustion may reflect identity-related cognitions specific to the negative belief system. Implications for research and educational practice are discussed. PMID:26368911

  9. Recognizing emotional speech in Persian: a validated database of Persian emotional speech (Persian ESD).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keshtiari, Niloofar; Kuhlmann, Michael; Eslami, Moharram; Klann-Delius, Gisela

    2015-03-01

    Research on emotional speech often requires valid stimuli for assessing perceived emotion through prosody and lexical content. To date, no comprehensive emotional speech database for Persian is officially available. The present article reports the process of designing, compiling, and evaluating a comprehensive emotional speech database for colloquial Persian. The database contains a set of 90 validated novel Persian sentences classified in five basic emotional categories (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness), as well as a neutral category. These sentences were validated in two experiments by a group of 1,126 native Persian speakers. The sentences were articulated by two native Persian speakers (one male, one female) in three conditions: (1) congruent (emotional lexical content articulated in a congruent emotional voice), (2) incongruent (neutral sentences articulated in an emotional voice), and (3) baseline (all emotional and neutral sentences articulated in neutral voice). The speech materials comprise about 470 sentences. The validity of the database was evaluated by a group of 34 native speakers in a perception test. Utterances recognized better than five times chance performance (71.4 %) were regarded as valid portrayals of the target emotions. Acoustic analysis of the valid emotional utterances revealed differences in pitch, intensity, and duration, attributes that may help listeners to correctly classify the intended emotion. The database is designed to be used as a reliable material source (for both text and speech) in future cross-cultural or cross-linguistic studies of emotional speech, and it is available for academic research purposes free of charge. To access the database, please contact the first author.

  10. Social Functions of Emotions in Social Dilemmas

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    M.J.J. Wubben (Maarten)

    2010-01-01

    textabstractSocial dilemmas, or situations in which individual and collective interests collide, elicit strong emotions. But are these emotions socially functional in that they help establish cooperation? Generally, they are, as four empirical chapters showed. In dyadic relations, refusal to return

  11. The role of emotion in moral agency: some meta-ethical issues in the moral psychology of emotion

    OpenAIRE

    Rietti, Sophie

    2003-01-01

    This thesis aims to elucidate an apparent paradox about the role of emotion in moral agency. A number of lines of concern suggest emotion may have serious negative impact on moral agency. On the other hand, there are considerations that suggest emotion also plays a crucial role in motivating, informing and even constituting moral agency. Significantly, there is a strong connection between participant reactive attitudes and ascription of moral status as agent or subject. Nonemot...

  12. End of Life: Dealing with Grief and Confronting Painful Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    ... who aren't prepared for the avalanche of emotions that sweep over them when the final moment ... know how challenging and devastating the raw, intense emotions of grief can be, because it's happened to ...

  13. Emocomp! A Customer Based Scale for Measuring Emotional Competences in Service Employees

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Delcourt, C.C.; Riel, A.C.R. van; Birgelen, M.J.H. van; Gremler, D.D.

    2010-01-01

    Customers experience intense negative emotions during various types of service encounters. In such cases, the ability of contact employees to perceive, understand, and regulate these emotions, - i.e. to display emotionally competent behaviors - is considered crucial for subsequent service

  14. Impaired Emotion Recognition in Music in Parkinson's Disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Tricht, Mirjam J.; Smeding, Harriet M. M.; Speelman, Johannes D.; Schmand, Ben A.

    2010-01-01

    Music has the potential to evoke strong emotions and plays a significant role in the lives of many people. Music might therefore be an ideal medium to assess emotion recognition. We investigated emotion recognition in music in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and 20 matched healthy volunteers. The role of cognitive dysfunction…

  15. Emotional Inertia is Associated with Lower Well-Being Controlling for Differences in Emotional Context

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter eKoval

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Previous studies have linked higher emotional inertia (i.e., a stronger autoregressive slope of emotions with lower well-being. We aimed to replicate these findings, while extending upon previous research by addressing a number of unresolved issues and controlling for potential confounds. Specifically, we report results from two studies (Ns = 100 & 202 examining how emotional inertia, assessed in response to a standardized sequence of emotional stimuli in the lab, correlates with several measures of well-being. The current studies build on previous research by examining how inertia of both positive emotions (PE and negative emotions (NE are related to both positive (e.g., life satisfaction and negative (e.g., depressive symptoms indicators of well-being, while controlling for between-person differences in the mean level and variability of emotions. Our findings replicated previous research and further revealed that a NE inertia was more strongly associated with lower well-being than PE inertia; b emotional inertia correlated more consistently with negative indicators (e.g., depressive symptoms than positive indicators (e.g., life satisfaction of well-being; and c these relationships were independent of individual differences in mean level and variability of emotions. We conclude, in line with recent findings, that higher emotional inertia, particularly of NE, may indicate increased vulnerability to depression.

  16. Strong-field dissociation dynamics

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    DiMauro, L.F.; Yang, Baorui.

    1993-01-01

    The strong-field dissociation behavior of diatomic molecules is examined under two distinctive physical scenarios. In the first scenario, the dissociation of the isolated hydrogen and deuterium molecular ions is discussed. The dynamics of above-threshold dissociation (ATD) are investigated over a wide range of green and infrared intensities and compared to a dressed-state model. The second situation arises when strong-field neutral dissociation is followed by ionization of the atomic fragments. The study results in a direct measure of the atomic fragment's ac-Stark shift by observing the intensity-dependent shifts in the electron or nuclear fragment kinetic energy. 8 figs., 14 refs

  17. Emotional response to musical repetition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Livingstone, Steven R; Palmer, Caroline; Schubert, Emery

    2012-06-01

    Two experiments examined the effects of repetition on listeners' emotional response to music. Listeners heard recordings of orchestral music that contained a large section repeated twice. The music had a symmetric phrase structure (same-length phrases) in Experiment 1 and an asymmetric phrase structure (different-length phrases) in Experiment 2, hypothesized to alter the predictability of sensitivity to musical repetition. Continuous measures of arousal and valence were compared across music that contained identical repetition, variation (related), or contrasting (unrelated) structure. Listeners' emotional arousal ratings differed most for contrasting music, moderately for variations, and least for repeating musical segments. A computational model for the detection of repeated musical segments was applied to the listeners' emotional responses. The model detected the locations of phrase boundaries from the emotional responses better than from performed tempo or physical intensity in both experiments. These findings indicate the importance of repetition in listeners' emotional response to music and in the perceptual segmentation of musical structure.

  18. Emotion perception after moderate-severe traumatic brain injury: The valence effect and the role of working memory, processing speed, and nonverbal reasoning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosenberg, Hannah; Dethier, Marie; Kessels, Roy P C; Westbrook, R Frederick; McDonald, Skye

    2015-07-01

    Traumatic brain injury (TBI) impairs emotion perception. Perception of negative emotions (sadness, disgust, fear, and anger) is reportedly affected more than positive (happiness and surprise) ones. It has been argued that this reflects a specialized neural network underpinning negative emotions that is vulnerable to brain injury. However, studies typically do not equate for differential difficulty between emotions. We aimed to examine whether emotion recognition deficits in people with TBI were specific to negative emotions, while equating task difficulty, and to determine whether perception deficits might be accounted for by other cognitive processes. Twenty-seven people with TBI and 28 matched control participants identified 6 basic emotions at 2 levels of intensity (a) the conventional 100% intensity and (b) "equated intensity"-that is, an intensity that yielded comparable accuracy rates across emotions in controls. (a) At 100% intensity, the TBI group was impaired in recognizing anger, fear, and disgust but not happiness, surprise, or sadness and performed worse on negative than positive emotions. (b) At equated intensity, the TBI group was poorer than controls overall but not differentially poorer in recognizing negative emotions. Although processing speed and nonverbal reasoning were associated with emotion accuracy, injury severity by itself was a unique predictor. When task difficulty is taken into account, individuals with TBI show impairment in recognizing all facial emotions. There was no evidence for a specific impairment for negative emotions or any particular emotion. Impairment was accounted for by injury severity rather than being a secondary effect of reduced neuropsychological functioning. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  19. [Action tendencies of respect-related emotions: Focus on emotion episodes in Japanese university students].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Muto, Sera

    2016-06-01

    This study examined the action tendencies of respect-related emotions in Japanese university students. Participants (n = 405) randomly received a questionnaire about one of six respect-related emotions: (a) keiai (respect mingled with mild love); (b) shinsui (idolatry worship, and adoration); (c) ifu (awe mingled with fear); (d) kanshin (admiration); (e) kyotan (wonder); and (f) sonkei (respect proper) and were asked to recall a situation they felt the emotion. Next, they rated how much they felt like doing the respect-related (intrapersonal or interpersonal) actions in the situation. Statistical analysis revealed several action tendencies of respect-related emotions, however, the degree of each differed between the prototypical episodes of the emotions (a)-(e). The action tendency pattern of sonkei was most similar to that of keiai, therefore keiai could be considered as the prototypical feeling of sonkei in university students. Furthermore, almost all the respect-related emotions tended to strongly motivate willingness for self-correction and improvement. These findings suggest that respect-related emotions play an important role in self-improvement and building good relationships with superiors, at least in late adolescence.

  20. The human amygdala parametrically encodes the intensity of specific facial emotions and their categorical ambiguity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Shuo; Yu, Rongjun; Tyszka, J. Michael; Zhen, Shanshan; Kovach, Christopher; Sun, Sai; Huang, Yi; Hurlemann, Rene; Ross, Ian B.; Chung, Jeffrey M.; Mamelak, Adam N.; Adolphs, Ralph; Rutishauser, Ueli

    2017-01-01

    The human amygdala is a key structure for processing emotional facial expressions, but it remains unclear what aspects of emotion are processed. We investigated this question with three different approaches: behavioural analysis of 3 amygdala lesion patients, neuroimaging of 19 healthy adults, and single-neuron recordings in 9 neurosurgical patients. The lesion patients showed a shift in behavioural sensitivity to fear, and amygdala BOLD responses were modulated by both fear and emotion ambiguity (the uncertainty that a facial expression is categorized as fearful or happy). We found two populations of neurons, one whose response correlated with increasing degree of fear, or happiness, and a second whose response primarily decreased as a linear function of emotion ambiguity. Together, our results indicate that the human amygdala processes both the degree of emotion in facial expressions and the categorical ambiguity of the emotion shown and that these two aspects of amygdala processing can be most clearly distinguished at the level of single neurons. PMID:28429707

  1. The Influence of Agreeableness and Ego Depletion on Emotional Responding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Finley, Anna J; Crowell, Adrienne L; Harmon-Jones, Eddie; Schmeichel, Brandon J

    2017-10-01

    Agreeable individuals report more intense withdrawal-oriented negative emotions across aversive situations. Two studies tested the hypothesis that self-regulatory depletion (i.e., ego depletion) moderates the relationship between trait Agreeableness and negative emotional responding. Ego depletion was manipulated using a writing task. Emotional responding was measured with startle eye-blink responses (Study 1, N = 71) and self-reported valence, arousal, and empathic concern (Study 2, N = 256) during emotional picture viewing. Trait Agreeableness was measured using a questionnaire. In Study 1, Agreeableness predicted especially large startle responses during aversive images and especially small startles during appetitive images. After exercising self-control, the relationship between startle magnitudes and Agreeableness decreased. In Study 2, Agreeableness predicted more empathic concern for aversive images, which in turn predicted heightened self-reported negative emotions. After exercising self-control, the relationship between Agreeableness and empathic concern decreased. Agreeable individuals exhibit heightened negative emotional responding. Ego depletion reduced the link between Agreeableness and negative emotional responding in Study 1 and moderated the indirect effect of Agreeableness on negative emotional responding via empathic concern in Study 2. Empathic concern appears to be a resource-intensive process underlying heightened responding to aversive stimuli among agreeable persons. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  2. Empathizing with Emotional Robot Based on Cognition Reappraisal

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Xin Liu; Lun Xie; Zhiliang Wang

    2017-01-01

    This paper proposes a continuous cognitive emotional regulation model for robot in the case of external emotional stimulus from interactive person's expressions. It integrates a guiding cognitive reappraisal strategy into the HMM (Hidden Markov Model) emotional interactive model for empathizing between ro-bot and person. The emotion is considered as a source in the 3D space (Arousal, Valence, and Stance). State transition and emotion intensity can be quantitatively analyzed in the continu-ous space. This cognition-emotion interactive model have been verified by the expression and behavior robot. Empathizing is the main distinguishing feature of our work, and it is realized by the emotional regulation which operated in a continuous 3D emotional space enabling a wide range of intermediate emo-tions. The experiment results provide evidence with acceptability, accuracy, richness, fluency, interestingness, friendliness and exaggeration that the robot with cognition and emotional control ability could be better accepted in the human-robot interaction (HRI).

  3. Emotion Recognition of Weblog Sentences Based on an Ensemble Algorithm of Multi-label Classification and Word Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Ji; Ren, Fuji

    Weblogs have greatly changed the communication ways of mankind. Affective analysis of blog posts is found valuable for many applications such as text-to-speech synthesis or computer-assisted recommendation. Traditional emotion recognition in text based on single-label classification can not satisfy higher requirements of affective computing. In this paper, the automatic identification of sentence emotion in weblogs is modeled as a multi-label text categorization task. Experiments are carried out on 12273 blog sentences from the Chinese emotion corpus Ren_CECps with 8-dimension emotion annotation. An ensemble algorithm RAKEL is used to recognize dominant emotions from the writer's perspective. Our emotion feature using detailed intensity representation for word emotions outperforms the other main features such as the word frequency feature and the traditional lexicon-based feature. In order to deal with relatively complex sentences, we integrate grammatical characteristics of punctuations, disjunctive connectives, modification relations and negation into features. It achieves 13.51% and 12.49% increases for Micro-averaged F1 and Macro-averaged F1 respectively compared to the traditional lexicon-based feature. Result shows that multiple-dimension emotion representation with grammatical features can efficiently classify sentence emotion in a multi-label problem.

  4. How Language Learners Can Improve Their Emotional Functioning: Important Psychological and Psychospiritual Theories

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oxford, Rebecca L.

    2015-01-01

    Emotion is "the primary human motive" (MacIntyre, 2002, p. 61). The human brain is an emotional brain, creating relationships among thought, emotion, and motivation in a complex dynamic system (Dörnyei, 2009). Emotion "functions as an amplifier, providing the intensity, urgency, and energy to propel our behavior" in…

  5. Dimorphous expressions of positive emotion: displays of both care and aggression in response to cute stimuli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aragón, Oriana R; Clark, Margaret S; Dyer, Rebecca L; Bargh, John A

    2015-03-01

    Extremely positive experiences, and positive appraisals thereof, produce intense positive emotions that often generate both positive expressions (e.g., smiles) and expressions normatively reserved for negative emotions (e.g., tears). We developed a definition of these dimorphous expressions and tested the proposal that their function is to regulate emotions. We showed that individuals who express emotions in this dimorphous manner do so as a general response across a variety of emotionally provoking situations, which suggests that these expressions are responses to intense positive emotion rather than unique to one particular situation. We used cute stimuli (an elicitor of positive emotion) to demonstrate both the existence of these dimorphous expressions and to provide preliminary evidence of their function as regulators of emotion. © The Author(s) 2015.

  6. Further evidence of emotional allodynia in unmedicated young adults with major depressive disorder.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alexander Ushinsky

    Full Text Available Recent evidence suggests that sensitivity to the emotional sequela of experimental thermal pain(measured by emotional unpleasantness is heightened in individuals with major depressive disorder(MDD, a phenomenon we termed "emotional allodynia". The aim of this study was to examine whether acute happy and sad mood induction alters emotional allodynia in MDD. We hypothesized that emotional allodynia will be a robust characteristic of individuals with MDD compared to healthy controls. Thus, it would remain following acute mood induction, independent of valence.Twenty-one subjects with current MDD and 21 well-matched healthy subjects(HC received graded brief temperature stimuli following happy and sad mood inductions procedures(MIP. All subjects rated the intensity and affect(pleasantness/unpleasantness of each stimulus. Sensory(pain intensity and affective(pain unpleasantness thresholds were determined by methods of constant stimuli.The MIPs reliably induced happy and sad mood and the resulting induced mood and subjective arousal were not different between the groups at the time of temperature stimulation. Compared to HC, MDD individuals demonstrated emotional allodynia. We found significantly decreased affective pain thresholds whereby significantly lower temperatures became unpleasant in the MDD compared to the HC group. This was not observed for the sensory pain thresholds. Within the MDD, the affective pain thresholds were significantly lower than the corresponding pain intensity thresholds, whereby non-painful temperatures were already unpleasant for the MDD irrespective of the induced mood. This was not observed for the HC groups where the affective and pain intensity thresholds were comparable.These findings suggest that emotional allodynia may be a chronic characteristic of current MDD. Future studies should determine if emotional allodynia persists after psychological or pharmacological interventions. Finally, longitudinal work should

  7. Emotion in Schizophrenia: Where Feeling Meets Thinking

    OpenAIRE

    Kring, Ann M.; Caponigro, Janelle M.

    2010-01-01

    Our understanding of the nature of emotional difficulties in schizophrenia has been greatly enhanced by translational research over the past two decades. By incorporating methods and theories from affective science, researchers have been able to discover that people with schizophrenia exhibit very few outward displays of emotion but report experiencing strong feelings in the presence of emotionally evocative stimuli or events. Recent behavioral, psychophysiological, and brain imaging research...

  8. Unaltered emotional experience in Parkinson's disease: Pupillometry and behavioral evidence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schwartz, Rachel; Rothermich, Kathrin; Kotz, Sonja A; Pell, Marc D

    2018-04-01

    Recognizing emotions in others is a pivotal part of socioemotional functioning and plays a central role in social interactions. It has been shown that individuals suffering from Parkinson's disease (PD) are less accurate at identifying basic emotions such as fear, sadness, and happiness; however, previous studies have predominantly assessed emotion processing using unimodal stimuli (e.g., pictures) that do not reflect the complexity of real-world processing demands. Dynamic, naturalistic stimuli (e.g., movies) have been shown to elicit stronger subjective emotional experiences than unimodal stimuli and can facilitate emotion recognition. In this experiment, pupil measurements of PD patients and matched healthy controls (HC) were recorded while they watched short film clips. Participants' task was to identify the emotion elicited by each clip and rate the intensity of their emotional response. We explored (a) how PD affects subjective emotional experience in response to dynamic, ecologically valid film stimuli, and (b) whether there are PD-related changes in pupillary response, which may contribute to the differences in emotion processing reported in the literature. Behavioral results showed that identification of the felt emotion as well as perceived intensity varies by emotion, but no significant group effect was found. Pupil measurements revealed differences in dilation depending on the emotion evoked by the film clips (happy, tender, sadness, fear, and neutral) for both groups. Our results suggest that differences in emotional response may be negligible when PD patients and healthy controls are presented with dynamic, ecologically valid emotional stimuli. Given the limited data available on pupil response in PD, this study provides new evidence to suggest that the PD-related deficits in emotion processing reported in the literature may not translate to real-world differences in physiological or subjective emotion processing in early-stage PD patients.

  9. Affective responses to emotional words are boosted in communicative situations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rohr, Lana; Abdel Rahman, Rasha

    2015-04-01

    Emotional verbal messages are typically encountered in meaningful contexts, for instance, during face-to-face communication in social situations. Yet, they are often investigated by confronting single participants with isolated words on a computer screen, thus potentially lacking ecological validity. In the present study we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during emotional word processing in communicative situations provided by videos of a speaker, assuming that emotion effects should be augmented by the presence of a speaker addressing the listener. Indeed, compared to non-communicative situations or isolated word processing, emotion effects were more pronounced, started earlier and lasted longer in communicative situations. Furthermore, while the brain responded most strongly to negative words when presented in isolation, a positivity bias with more pronounced emotion effects for positive words was observed in communicative situations. These findings demonstrate that communicative situations--in which verbal emotions are typically encountered--strongly enhance emotion effects, underlining the importance of social and meaningful contexts in processing emotional and verbal messages. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. How Large Is the Role of Emotion in Judgments of Moral Dilemmas?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Horne, Zachary; Powell, Derek

    2016-01-01

    Moral dilemmas often pose dramatic and gut-wrenching emotional choices. It is now widely accepted that emotions are not simply experienced alongside people's judgments about moral dilemmas, but that our affective processes play a central role in determining those judgments. However, much of the evidence purporting to demonstrate the connection between people's emotional responses and their judgments about moral dilemmas has recently been called into question. In the present studies, we reexamined the role of emotion in people's judgments about moral dilemmas using a validated self-report measure of emotion. We measured participants' specific emotional responses to moral dilemmas and, although we found that moral dilemmas evoked strong emotional responses, we found that these responses were only weakly correlated with participants' moral judgments. We argue that the purportedly strong connection between emotion and judgments of moral dilemmas may have been overestimated.

  11. Coronary Heart Disease and Emotional Intelligence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vlachaki, Chrisanthy; Maridaki Kassotaki, Katerina

    2013-09-23

    Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is associated with emotions, especially negative ones, namely anxiety and depression. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a psychological model that consists of a variety of emotional skills. The aim of the present study was to examine the relation between different dimensions of Emotional Intelligence and coronary heart disease. A total of 300 participants were studied during a 3-year period in an attempt to partially replicate and further expand a previous study conducted in Greece among CHD patients, which indicated a strong association between certain dimensions of Emotional Intelligence and the incidence of CHD. All participants completed a self-report questionnaire, assessing several aspects of Emotional Intelligence. The results showed that there is a link between the regulation of emotions and the occurrence of CHD. The evidence reported in the present study makes stronger the claim that EI plays a significant role in the occurrence of CHD.

  12. Contemplative/emotion training reduces negative emotional behavior and promotes prosocial responses.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kemeny, Margaret E; Foltz, Carol; Cavanagh, James F; Cullen, Margaret; Giese-Davis, Janine; Jennings, Patricia; Rosenberg, Erika L; Gillath, Omri; Shaver, Phillip R; Wallace, B Alan; Ekman, Paul

    2012-04-01

    Contemplative practices are believed to alleviate psychological problems, cultivate prosocial behavior and promote self-awareness. In addition, psychological science has developed tools and models for understanding the mind and promoting well-being. Additional effort is needed to combine frameworks and techniques from these traditions to improve emotional experience and socioemotional behavior. An 8-week intensive (42 hr) meditation/emotion regulation training intervention was designed by experts in contemplative traditions and emotion science to reduce "destructive enactment of emotions" and enhance prosocial responses. Participants were 82 healthy female schoolteachers who were randomly assigned to a training group or a wait-list control group, and assessed preassessment, postassessment, and 5 months after training completion. Assessments included self-reports and experimental tasks to capture changes in emotional behavior. The training group reported reduced trait negative affect, rumination, depression, and anxiety, and increased trait positive affect and mindfulness compared to the control group. On a series of behavioral tasks, the training increased recognition of emotions in others (Micro-Expression Training Tool), protected trainees from some of the psychophysiological effects of an experimental threat to self (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST), appeared to activate cognitive networks associated with compassion (lexical decision procedure), and affected hostile behavior in the Marital Interaction Task. Most effects at postassessment that were examined at follow-up were maintained (excluding positive affect, TSST rumination, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia recovery). Findings suggest that increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior, and they support the benefit of integrating contemplative theories/practices with psychological models and methods of emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

  13. Adult Perceptions of Positive and Negative Infant Emotional Expressions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bolzani Dinehart, Laura H.; Messinger, Daniel S.; Acosta, Susan I.; Cassel, Tricia; Ambadar, Zara; Cohn, Jeffrey

    2005-01-01

    Adults' perceptions provide information about the emotional meaning of infant facial expressions. This study asks whether similar facial movements influence adult perceptions of emotional intensity in both infant positive (smile) and negative (cry face) facial expressions. Ninety-five college students rated a series of naturally occurring and…

  14. Emotion displays in media: a comparison between American, Romanian, and Turkish children's storybooks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wege, Briana Vander; Sánchez González, Mayra L; Friedlmeier, Wolfgang; Mihalca, Linda M; Goodrich, Erica; Corapci, Feyza

    2014-01-01

    Children's books may provide an important resource of culturally appropriate emotions. This study investigates emotion displays in children's storybooks for preschoolers from Romania, Turkey, and the US in order to analyze cultural norms of emotions. We derived some hypotheses by referring to cross-cultural studies about emotion and emotion socialization. For such media analyses, the frequency rate of certain emotion displays can be seen as an indicator for the salience of the specific emotion. We expected that all children's storybooks would highlight dominantly positive emotions and that US children's storybooks would display negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger) more often and negative powerless emotions (e.g., sadness) less often than Turkish and Romanian storybooks. We also predicted that the positive and negative powerful emotion expressions would be more intense in the US storybooks compared to the other storybooks. Finally, we expected that social context (ingroup/outgroup) may affect the intensity emotion displays more in Turkish and Romanian storybooks compared to US storybooks. Illustrations in 30 popular children's storybooks (10 for each cultural group) were coded. Results mostly confirmed the hypotheses but also pointed to differences between Romanian and Turkish storybooks. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that culture-specific emotion norms are reflected in media to which young children are exposed.

  15. Emotion displays in media: a comparison between American, Romanian, and Turkish children's storybooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wege, Briana Vander; Sánchez González, Mayra L.; Friedlmeier, Wolfgang; Mihalca, Linda M.; Goodrich, Erica; Corapci, Feyza

    2014-01-01

    Children's books may provide an important resource of culturally appropriate emotions. This study investigates emotion displays in children's storybooks for preschoolers from Romania, Turkey, and the US in order to analyze cultural norms of emotions. We derived some hypotheses by referring to cross-cultural studies about emotion and emotion socialization. For such media analyses, the frequency rate of certain emotion displays can be seen as an indicator for the salience of the specific emotion. We expected that all children's storybooks would highlight dominantly positive emotions and that US children's storybooks would display negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger) more often and negative powerless emotions (e.g., sadness) less often than Turkish and Romanian storybooks. We also predicted that the positive and negative powerful emotion expressions would be more intense in the US storybooks compared to the other storybooks. Finally, we expected that social context (ingroup/outgroup) may affect the intensity emotion displays more in Turkish and Romanian storybooks compared to US storybooks. Illustrations in 30 popular children's storybooks (10 for each cultural group) were coded. Results mostly confirmed the hypotheses but also pointed to differences between Romanian and Turkish storybooks. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that culture-specific emotion norms are reflected in media to which young children are exposed. PMID:24987384

  16. Emotional reactions and needs of family members of ICU patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Płaszewska-Żywko, Lucyna; Gazda, Dorota

    2012-01-01

    The aim of the study was to determine emotional reactions and needs of families of ICU patients. The study group included 60 relatives of ICU patients, aged 18-80 years. The diagnostic questionnaire-based survey was conducted. The questionnaire contained questions regarding demographic data, emotions and needs as well as the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale (CECS). The major emotions of patients' families on ICU admission were anxiety, uncertainty, fear, depression, and nervousness (particularly among parents and adult offsprings). On second-third day of hospitalisation, the emotions became less severe (P emotional reactions were better controlled by men (P emotions (P emotions of ICU patients' relatives were highly intense, especially amongst parents and adult children. Women were characterised by higher levels of emotions and needs compared to men.

  17. Mapping aesthetic musical emotions in the brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trost, Wiebke; Ethofer, Thomas; Zentner, Marcel; Vuilleumier, Patrik

    2012-12-01

    Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investigated in neuroscience. Here, we used functional neuroimaging with parametric analyses based on the intensity of felt emotions to explore a wider spectrum of affective responses reported during music listening. Positive emotions correlated with activation of left striatum and insula when high-arousing (Wonder, Joy) but right striatum and orbitofrontal cortex when low-arousing (Nostalgia, Tenderness). Irrespective of their positive/negative valence, high-arousal emotions (Tension, Power, and Joy) also correlated with activations in sensory and motor areas, whereas low-arousal categories (Peacefulness, Nostalgia, and Sadness) selectively engaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The right parahippocampal cortex activated in all but positive high-arousal conditions. Results also suggested some blends between activation patterns associated with different classes of emotions, particularly for feelings of Wonder or Transcendence. These data reveal a differentiated recruitment across emotions of networks involved in reward, memory, self-reflective, and sensorimotor processes, which may account for the unique richness of musical emotions.

  18. Improving Understanding of Emotional Speech Acoustic Content

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tinnemore, Anna

    Children with cochlear implants show deficits in identifying emotional intent of utterances without facial or body language cues. A known limitation to cochlear implants is the inability to accurately portray the fundamental frequency contour of speech which carries the majority of information needed to identify emotional intent. Without reliable access to the fundamental frequency, other methods of identifying vocal emotion, if identifiable, could be used to guide therapies for training children with cochlear implants to better identify vocal emotion. The current study analyzed recordings of adults speaking neutral sentences with a set array of emotions in a child-directed and adult-directed manner. The goal was to identify acoustic cues that contribute to emotion identification that may be enhanced in child-directed speech, but are also present in adult-directed speech. Results of this study showed that there were significant differences in the variation of the fundamental frequency, the variation of intensity, and the rate of speech among emotions and between intended audiences.

  19. Emotional Inertia is Associated with Lower Well-Being when Controlling for Differences in Emotional Context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koval, Peter; Sütterlin, Stefan; Kuppens, Peter

    2015-01-01

    Previous studies have linked higher emotional inertia (i.e., a stronger autoregressive slope of emotions) with lower well-being. We aimed to replicate these findings, while extending upon previous research by addressing a number of unresolved issues and controlling for potential confounds. Specifically, we report results from two studies (Ns = 100 and 202) examining how emotional inertia, assessed in response to a standardized sequence of emotional stimuli in the lab, correlates with several measures of well-being. The current studies build on previous research by examining how inertia of both positive emotions (PE) and negative emotions (NE) relates to positive (e.g., life satisfaction) and negative (e.g., depressive symptoms) indicators of well-being, while controlling for between-person differences in the mean level and variability of emotions. Our findings replicated previous research and further revealed that (a) NE inertia was more strongly associated with lower well-being than PE inertia; (b) emotional inertia correlated more consistently with negative indicators (e.g., depressive symptoms) than positive indicators (e.g., life satisfaction) of well-being; and (c) these relationships were independent of individual differences in mean level and variability of emotions. We conclude, in line with recent findings, that higher emotional inertia, particularly of NE, may be an indicator of increased vulnerability to depression.

  20. Development of the Korean Facial Emotion Stimuli: Korea University Facial Expression Collection 2nd Edition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sun-Min Kim

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Background: Developing valid emotional facial stimuli for specific ethnicities creates ample opportunities to investigate both the nature of emotional facial information processing in general and clinical populations as well as the underlying mechanisms of facial emotion processing within and across cultures. Given that most entries in emotional facial stimuli databases were developed with western samples, and given that very few of the eastern emotional facial stimuli sets were based strictly on the Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System, developing valid emotional facial stimuli of eastern samples remains a high priority.Aims: To develop and examine the psychometric properties of six basic emotional facial stimuli recruiting professional Korean actors and actresses based on the Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System for the Korea University Facial Expression Collection-Second Edition (KUFEC-II.Materials And Methods: Stimulus selection was done in two phases. First, researchers evaluated the clarity and intensity of each stimulus developed based on the Facial Action Coding System. Second, researchers selected a total of 399 stimuli from a total of 57 actors and actresses, which were then rated on accuracy, intensity, valence, and arousal by 75 independent raters.Conclusion: The hit rates between the targeted and rated expressions of the KUFEC-II were all above 80%, except for fear (50% and disgust (63%. The KUFEC-II appears to be a valid emotional facial stimuli database, providing the largest set of emotional facial stimuli. The mean intensity score was 5.63 (out of 7, suggesting that the stimuli delivered the targeted emotions with great intensity. All positive expressions were rated as having a high positive valence, whereas all negative expressions were rated as having a high negative valence. The KUFEC II is expected to be widely used in various psychological studies on emotional facial expression. KUFEC-II stimuli can be obtained through

  1. Positive emotions in early life and longevity: findings from the nun study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Danner, D D; Snowdon, D A; Friesen, W V

    2001-05-01

    Handwritten autobiographies from 180 Catholic nuns, composed when participants were a mean age of 22 years, were scored for emotional content and related to survival during ages 75 to 95. A strong inverse association was found between positive emotional content in these writings and risk of mortality in late life (p < .001). As the quartile ranking of positive emotion in early life increased, there was a stepwise decrease in risk of mortality resulting in a 2.5-fold difference between the lowest and highest quartiles. Positive emotional content in early-life autobiographies was strongly associated with longevity 6 decades later. Underlying mechanisms of balanced emotional states are discussed.

  2. Practice nurses mental health provide space to patients to discuss unpleasant emotions.

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Griep, E.C.M.; Noordman, J.; Dulmen, A.M. van

    2016-01-01

    <strong>WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?strong> A core skill of practice nurses' mental health is to recognize and explore patients' unpleasant emotions. Patients rarely express their unpleasant emotions directly and spontaneously, but instead give indirect signs that something is worrying them.

  3. Predifining Emotion Through Product Design

    OpenAIRE

    Reni, Theresia; Hudrasyah, Herry

    2010-01-01

    In the recent decades the business environment has changed tremendously due to the advance of globalization and competition, changing the essentials for success. To overcome competitive pressure, marketer and designer have to focus on customer's sensory needs and desires to create a deep rooted relationship through emotional dialogue. In this context, innovativeness appears to be a key ingredient to create and control consumer's emotion. Perceived of innovativeness is strongly infl...

  4. Does comorbid anxiety counteract emotion recognition deficits in conduct disorder?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Short, Roxanna M L; Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J S; Adams, Wendy J; Fairchild, Graeme

    2016-08-01

    Previous research has reported altered emotion recognition in both conduct disorder (CD) and anxiety disorders (ADs) - but these effects appear to be of different kinds. Adolescents with CD often show a generalised pattern of deficits, while those with ADs show hypersensitivity to specific negative emotions. Although these conditions often cooccur, little is known regarding emotion recognition performance in comorbid CD+ADs. Here, we test the hypothesis that in the comorbid case, anxiety-related emotion hypersensitivity counteracts the emotion recognition deficits typically observed in CD. We compared facial emotion recognition across four groups of adolescents aged 12-18 years: those with CD alone (n = 28), ADs alone (n = 23), cooccurring CD+ADs (n = 20) and typically developing controls (n = 28). The emotion recognition task we used systematically manipulated the emotional intensity of facial expressions as well as fixation location (eye, nose or mouth region). Conduct disorder was associated with a generalised impairment in emotion recognition; however, this may have been modulated by group differences in IQ. AD was associated with increased sensitivity to low-intensity happiness, disgust and sadness. In general, the comorbid CD+ADs group performed similarly to typically developing controls. Although CD alone was associated with emotion recognition impairments, ADs and comorbid CD+ADs were associated with normal or enhanced emotion recognition performance. The presence of comorbid ADs appeared to counteract the effects of CD, suggesting a potentially protective role, although future research should examine the contribution of IQ and gender to these effects. © 2016 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

  5. The level of emotional intelligence for patients with bronchial asthma and a group psychotherapy plan in 7 steps.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ropoteanu, Andreea-Corina

    2011-01-01

    Strong emotions, either positive or negative, as well as vulnerability to stress are often major factors in triggering, maintaining and emphasizing the symptoms of bronchial asthma. On a group of 99 patients suffering from moderately and severely persistent allergic bronchial asthma for more than 2 years, I applied a situational test of emotional intelligence, the NEO PI-R personality test provided by D&D Consultants and I also elaborated a psychosocial test form of asthma by which I evaluated the frequency of physical symptoms, the intensity of negative emotional symptoms arisen during or subsequent to the crisis and the level of the patients' quality of life. I have presumed first that if the level of the emotional intelligence grew, this fact would have a significant positive influence on controlling the negative emotional symptoms arisen during or subsequent to the crisis and on patients' quality of life. This was invalidated, the correlations between the mentioned variables being insignificant. Secondly, I have presumed the existence of positive significant correlations between the emotional intelligence coefficient and the personality dimensions: extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and a negative significant correlation between the emotional intelligence coefficient and the dimension neuroticism. This presumption was totally confirmed. Finally, we proposed a group psychotherapy plan in 7 steps for asthmatic patients that has as main objectives to improve symptoms and therefore the patients' quality of life.

  6. Emotional Labour and Wellbeing: What Protects Nurses?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kinman, Gail; Leggetter, Sandra

    2016-01-01

    Although compassionate care has wide-ranging benefits for patients, it can be emotionally demanding for healthcare staff. This may be a particular problem for those with little experience in a caring role. This study utilises the job demands-resources model to examine links between “emotional labour” and emotional exhaustion in student nurses. In line with the triple-match principle—whereby interactive effects are more likely when job demands, resources, and outcomes are within the same qualitative domain—the protective role of emotional support and emotion-focused coping (i.e., emotional venting) in the relationship between emotional labour and exhaustion is also explored. An online questionnaire was completed by 351 student nurses with experience working in healthcare settings. A strong positive relationship was found between emotional labour and emotional exhaustion, and some support was found for the moderating effects of emotional support and emotion-focused coping. Ways to help student and qualified nurses develop the emotional resilience required to protect their wellbeing, while providing high-quality compassionate care to patients are considered. PMID:27916880

  7. Emotional Labour and Wellbeing: What Protects Nurses?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gail Kinman

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Although compassionate care has wide-ranging benefits for patients, it can be emotionally demanding for healthcare staff. This may be a particular problem for those with little experience in a caring role. This study utilises the job demands-resources model to examine links between “emotional labour” and emotional exhaustion in student nurses. In line with the triple-match principle—whereby interactive effects are more likely when job demands, resources, and outcomes are within the same qualitative domain—the protective role of emotional support and emotion-focused coping (i.e., emotional venting in the relationship between emotional labour and exhaustion is also explored. An online questionnaire was completed by 351 student nurses with experience working in healthcare settings. A strong positive relationship was found between emotional labour and emotional exhaustion, and some support was found for the moderating effects of emotional support and emotion-focused coping. Ways to help student and qualified nurses develop the emotional resilience required to protect their wellbeing, while providing high-quality compassionate care to patients are considered.

  8. Reducing attentional capture of emotion by broadening attention: increased global attention reduces early electrophysiological responses to negative stimuli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gable, Philip A; Harmon-Jones, Eddie

    2012-05-01

    Decades of research has shown the influence of emotion on attentional capture, and more recently, the influence of emotion on neurophysiological processes related to attentional capture. The current research tested whether some of the earliest neurophysiological underpinnings of emotive attentional processes can be influenced by attentional manipulations of broadening versus narrowing. Previous research has shown that negative affects high in motivational intensity (e.g., disgust, fear) cause a relative narrowing of attentional scope (Gable and Harmon-Jones, 2010a; Easterbrook, 1959). Because of the strong link between motivation and attention, attentional scope should also influence the attentional capture of negative stimuli. The current study manipulated a local attentional scope or global attentional scope, then measured attentional capture towards disgust and neutral pictures using the N1 event-related potential component. Results revealed that a manipulated global attentional scope reduced N1 amplitude towards disgust pictures compared to a manipulated local attentional scope. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. Personality Traits, Motivations, and Emotional Consequences of Social Media Usage.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Jhih-Syuan; Lee, Yen-I; Jin, Yan; Gilbreath, Bob

    2017-10-01

    This study explores social media users' personality traits and motivations for the usage of two different social media platforms, Facebook and Pinterest, as well as how the varied uses impact users' negative emotional experiences. The findings suggest that the intensity of social media usage is positively related to negative emotions. For Facebook users, socialization, entertainment, and information seeking motivations significantly influence their platform use intensity and, subsequently, lead to negative emotions. Self-status seeking also has a direct effect on Facebook users' negative emotions. For Pinterest users, socialization is not a significant motivation for usage of that platform. However, entertainment, information seeking, and self-status seeking significantly predict their platform use intensity, which subsequently lead to negative emotions. Similarly, all four motivations for Facebook and Pinterest uses are influenced by users' personality traits: extraversion and openness. Yet, openness has a greater impact on using Pinterest than Facebook in terms of fulfilling socialization needs. Neuroticism has a positive impact on socialization and information seeking motives for use of both platforms, while conscientiousness and agreeableness have a negative influence on fulfilling self-status seeking needs. In addition, agreeable social networking site users are less likely to use Facebook than Pinterest for fulfilling self-status related gratifications, while they are likely to use Pinterest instead of Facebook for entertainment and information needs. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

  10. Liberating reason from the passions: overriding intuitionist moral judgments through emotion reappraisal.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feinberg, Matthew; Willer, Robb; Antonenko, Olga; John, Oliver P

    2012-07-01

    A classic problem in moral psychology concerns whether and when moral judgments are driven by intuition versus deliberate reasoning. In this investigation, we explored the role of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that involves construing an emotion-eliciting situation in a way that diminishes the intensity of the emotional experience. We hypothesized that although emotional reactions evoke initial moral intuitions, reappraisal weakens the influence of these intuitions, leading to more deliberative moral judgments. Three studies of moral judgments in emotionally evocative, disgust-eliciting moral dilemmas supported our hypothesis. A greater tendency to reappraise was related to fewer intuition-based judgments (Study 1). Content analysis of open-ended descriptions of moral-reasoning processes revealed that reappraisal was associated with longer time spent in deliberation and with fewer intuitionist moral judgments (Study 2). Finally, in comparison with participants who simply watched an emotion-inducing film, participants who had been instructed to reappraise their reactions while watching the film subsequently reported less intense emotional reactions to moral dilemmas, and these dampened reactions led, in turn, to fewer intuitionist moral judgments (Study 3).

  11. Scale of Academic Emotion in Science Education: Development and Validation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiang, Wen-Wei; Liu, Chia-Ju

    2014-04-01

    Contemporary research into science education has generally been conducted from the perspective of 'conceptual change' in learning. This study sought to extend previous work by recognizing that human rationality can be influenced by the emotions generated by the learning environment and specific actions related to learning. Methods used in educational psychology were adopted to investigate the emotional experience of science students as affected by gender, teaching methods, feedback, and learning tasks. A multidisciplinary research approach combining brain activation measurement with multivariate psychological data theory was employed in the development of a questionnaire intended to reveal the academic emotions of university students in three situations: attending science class, learning scientific subjects, and problem solving. The reliability and validity of the scale was evaluated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Results revealed differences between the genders in positive-activating and positive-deactivating academic emotions in all three situations; however, these differences manifested primarily during preparation for Science tests. In addition, the emotions experienced by male students were more intense than those of female students. Finally, the negative-deactivating emotions associated with participation in Science tests were more intense than those experienced by simply studying science. This study provides a valuable tool with which to evaluate the emotional response of students to a range of educational situations.

  12. Seismic Intensity Map Triggered by Observed Strong Motion Records Considering Site Amplification and its service based on Geo-spatial International Standard

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Matsuoka, Masashi

    2014-01-01

    Instrumental seismic intensity measurement is carried out at approximately 4,200 points in Japan, but the correct values at points without seismometers cannot always be provided because seismic motion depends on geologic and geomorphologic features. Quick provision of accurate information on seismic intensity distribution over wide areas is required for disaster mitigation. To estimate seismic intensity at specific points, it is important to prepare ground amplification characteristics for local areas beforehand and use an interpolation algorithm. The QuiQuake system (quick estimation system for earthquake maps triggered by using observation records from K-NET and KiK-net that have been released by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention), which uses these, was developed; it can be started up automatically using seismograms and can immediately display a seismic intensity distribution map. The calculation results are sent to IAEA and JNES in the form of strong motion evaluation maps with a mesh size of 250 x 250 m. These maps are also sent to the general public via social networking web sites. (author)

  13. How Large Is the Role of Emotion in Judgments of Moral Dilemmas?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zachary Horne

    Full Text Available Moral dilemmas often pose dramatic and gut-wrenching emotional choices. It is now widely accepted that emotions are not simply experienced alongside people's judgments about moral dilemmas, but that our affective processes play a central role in determining those judgments. However, much of the evidence purporting to demonstrate the connection between people's emotional responses and their judgments about moral dilemmas has recently been called into question. In the present studies, we reexamined the role of emotion in people's judgments about moral dilemmas using a validated self-report measure of emotion. We measured participants' specific emotional responses to moral dilemmas and, although we found that moral dilemmas evoked strong emotional responses, we found that these responses were only weakly correlated with participants' moral judgments. We argue that the purportedly strong connection between emotion and judgments of moral dilemmas may have been overestimated.

  14. Agency and facial emotion judgment in context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ito, Kenichi; Masuda, Takahiko; Li, Liman Man Wai

    2013-06-01

    Past research showed that East Asians' belief in holism was expressed as their tendencies to include background facial emotions into the evaluation of target faces more than North Americans. However, this pattern can be interpreted as North Americans' tendency to downplay background facial emotions due to their conceptualization of facial emotion as volitional expression of internal states. Examining this alternative explanation, we investigated whether different types of contextual information produce varying degrees of effect on one's face evaluation across cultures. In three studies, European Canadians and East Asians rated the intensity of target facial emotions surrounded with either affectively salient landscape sceneries or background facial emotions. The results showed that, although affectively salient landscapes influenced the judgment of both cultural groups, only European Canadians downplayed the background facial emotions. The role of agency as differently conceptualized across cultures and multilayered systems of cultural meanings are discussed.

  15. Assessing Consumer Emotional Responses in the Presence and Absence of Critical Quality Attributes: A Case Study with Chicken Eggs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wardy, Wisdom; Sae-Eaw, Amporn; Sriwattana, Sujinda; No, Hong Kyoon; Prinyawiwatkul, Witoon

    2015-07-01

    Effects of attribute presence and absence on the emotional profile and consumer acceptability of products with varying qualities were assessed using eggs as an example. An online survey (n = 320) was used to evaluate emotional responses and acceptability to 5 types of egg quality attributes: intrinsic, aesthetic, extrinsic, expediency, and wholesome/safety, for both present and absent conditions. Attribute absence rather than presence evoked greater consumer discriminating emotions associated with eggs. Mean emotion intensity elicited by the presence of all quality attributes ranged from 1.67 (intrinsic; guilty) to 4.05 (wholesome; good) versus 2.01 (wholesome; satisfied) to 3.29 (wholesome; disgusted) when absent. Key positive emotions elicited by presence of attributes were active, calm, good, interested, happy, safe, and satisfied; while dominant negative emotions elicited by absence of attributes included disgusted and worried. Wholesome quality (constituted by egg freshness, "packing/best-before-date" and absence of visible cracks) exhibited the highest liking (7.65) and emotion intensities, while the emotional responses to both the presence and absence of intrinsic quality (constituted by nutrient-fortified egg, organic egg, and USDA-certified farm egg) were similar, reflecting their dynamic effects on emotions. Emotions and acceptability were more correlated for attribute absence than presence; and good, happy, and satisfied emotions were strongly related to egg acceptability (r ≥ 0.6). Egg product/packaging design can be oriented toward emphasizing wholesome and expedient attributes, since they enhance good, safe, and satisfied emotions, while minimizing disgust, worry, and boredom. The use of emotional responses and hedonic testing regarding attribute presence and absence would allow for improved selection of attributes critical to consumer acceptance of products. Assessing effects of attribute presence compared with absence on food-evoked emotions may

  16. Implicit and explicit attention to pictures and words: An fMRI-study of concurrent emotional stimulus processing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tobias eFlaisch

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available The present study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI to examine the neural processing of concurrently presented emotional stimuli under varying explicit and implicit attention demands. Specifically, in separate trials, participants indicated the category of either pictures or words. The words were placed over the center of the pictures and the picture-word compound-stimuli were presented for 1500 ms in a rapid event-related design. The results reveal pronounced main effects of task and emotion: the picture categorization task prompted strong activations in visual, parietal, temporal, frontal, and subcortical regions; the word categorization task evoked increased activation only in left extrastriate cortex. Furthermore, beyond replicating key findings regarding emotional picture and word processing, the results point to a dissociation of semantic-affective and sensory-perceptual processes for words: while emotional words engaged semantic-affective networks of the left hemisphere regardless of task, the increased activity in left extrastriate cortex associated with explicitly attending to words was diminished when the word was overlaid over an erotic image. Finally, we observed a significant interaction between Picture Category and Task within dorsal visual-associative regions, inferior parietal, and dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortices: during the word categorization task, activation was increased in these regions when the words were overlaid over erotic as compared to romantic pictures. During the picture categorization task, activity in these areas was relatively decreased when categorizing erotic as compared to romantic pictures. Thus, the emotional intensity of the pictures strongly affected brain regions devoted to the control of task-related word or picture processing. These findings are discussed with respect to the interplay of obligatory stimulus processing with task-related attentional control mechanisms.

  17. Implicit and Explicit Attention to Pictures and Words: An fMRI-Study of Concurrent Emotional Stimulus Processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flaisch, Tobias; Imhof, Martin; Schmälzle, Ralf; Wentz, Klaus-Ulrich; Ibach, Bernd; Schupp, Harald T

    2015-01-01

    The present study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural processing of concurrently presented emotional stimuli under varying explicit and implicit attention demands. Specifically, in separate trials, participants indicated the category of either pictures or words. The words were placed over the center of the pictures and the picture-word compound-stimuli were presented for 1500 ms in a rapid event-related design. The results reveal pronounced main effects of task and emotion: the picture categorization task prompted strong activations in visual, parietal, temporal, frontal, and subcortical regions; the word categorization task evoked increased activation only in left extrastriate cortex. Furthermore, beyond replicating key findings regarding emotional picture and word processing, the results point to a dissociation of semantic-affective and sensory-perceptual processes for words: while emotional words engaged semantic-affective networks of the left hemisphere regardless of task, the increased activity in left extrastriate cortex associated with explicitly attending to words was diminished when the word was overlaid over an erotic image. Finally, we observed a significant interaction between Picture Category and Task within dorsal visual-associative regions, inferior parietal, and dorsolateral, and medial prefrontal cortices: during the word categorization task, activation was increased in these regions when the words were overlaid over erotic as compared to romantic pictures. During the picture categorization task, activity in these areas was relatively decreased when categorizing erotic as compared to romantic pictures. Thus, the emotional intensity of the pictures strongly affected brain regions devoted to the control of task-related word or picture processing. These findings are discussed with respect to the interplay of obligatory stimulus processing with task-related attentional control mechanisms.

  18. Implicit and Explicit Attention to Pictures and Words: An fMRI-Study of Concurrent Emotional Stimulus Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flaisch, Tobias; Imhof, Martin; Schmälzle, Ralf; Wentz, Klaus-Ulrich; Ibach, Bernd; Schupp, Harald T.

    2015-01-01

    The present study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural processing of concurrently presented emotional stimuli under varying explicit and implicit attention demands. Specifically, in separate trials, participants indicated the category of either pictures or words. The words were placed over the center of the pictures and the picture-word compound-stimuli were presented for 1500 ms in a rapid event-related design. The results reveal pronounced main effects of task and emotion: the picture categorization task prompted strong activations in visual, parietal, temporal, frontal, and subcortical regions; the word categorization task evoked increased activation only in left extrastriate cortex. Furthermore, beyond replicating key findings regarding emotional picture and word processing, the results point to a dissociation of semantic-affective and sensory-perceptual processes for words: while emotional words engaged semantic-affective networks of the left hemisphere regardless of task, the increased activity in left extrastriate cortex associated with explicitly attending to words was diminished when the word was overlaid over an erotic image. Finally, we observed a significant interaction between Picture Category and Task within dorsal visual-associative regions, inferior parietal, and dorsolateral, and medial prefrontal cortices: during the word categorization task, activation was increased in these regions when the words were overlaid over erotic as compared to romantic pictures. During the picture categorization task, activity in these areas was relatively decreased when categorizing erotic as compared to romantic pictures. Thus, the emotional intensity of the pictures strongly affected brain regions devoted to the control of task-related word or picture processing. These findings are discussed with respect to the interplay of obligatory stimulus processing with task-related attentional control mechanisms. PMID:26733895

  19. Mental hoop diaries: emotional memories of a college basketball game in rival fans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Botzung, Anne; Rubin, David C; Miles, Amanda; Cabeza, Roberto; Labar, Kevin S

    2010-02-10

    The rivalry between the men's basketball teams of Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) is one of the most storied traditions in college sports. A subculture of students at each university form social bonds with fellow fans, develop expertise in college basketball rules, team statistics, and individual players, and self-identify as a member of a fan group. The present study capitalized on the high personal investment of these fans and the strong affective tenor of a Duke-UNC basketball game to examine the neural correlates of emotional memory retrieval for a complex sporting event. Male fans watched a competitive, archived game in a social setting. During a subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging session, participants viewed video clips depicting individual plays of the game that ended with the ball being released toward the basket. For each play, participants recalled whether or not the shot went into the basket. Hemodynamic signal changes time locked to correct memory decisions were analyzed as a function of emotional intensity and valence, according to the fan's perspective. Results showed intensity-modulated retrieval activity in midline cortical structures, sensorimotor cortex, the striatum, and the medial temporal lobe, including the amygdala. Positively valent memories specifically recruited processing in dorsal frontoparietal regions, and additional activity in the insula and medial temporal lobe for positively valent shots recalled with high confidence. This novel paradigm reveals how brain regions implicated in emotion, memory retrieval, visuomotor imagery, and social cognition contribute to the recollection of specific plays in the mind of a sports fan.

  20. A Randomized Controlled Trial of 7-Day Intensive and Standard Weekly Cognitive Therapy for PTSD and Emotion-Focused Supportive Therapy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ehlers, Anke; Hackmann, Ann; Grey, Nick; Wild, Jennifer; Liness, Sheena; Albert, Idit; Deale, Alicia; Stott, Richard; Clark, David M.

    2014-01-01

    Objective Psychological treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are usually delivered once or twice weekly over several months. It is unclear whether they can be successfully delivered over a shorter period of time. This clinical trial had two goals, (1) to investigate the acceptability and efficacy of a 7-day intensive version of cognitive therapy for PTSD, and (2) to investigate whether cognitive therapy has specific treatment effects by comparing intensive and standard weekly cognitive therapy with an equally credible alternative treatment. Method Patients with chronic PTSD (N=121) were randomly allocated to 7-day intensive or standard 3-month weekly cognitive therapy for PTSD, 3-month weekly emotion-focused supportive therapy, or a 14-week waitlist condition. Primary outcomes were PTSD symptoms and diagnosis as assessed by independent assessors and self-report. Secondary outcomes were disability, anxiety, depression, and quality of life. Measures were taken at initial assessment, 6 weeks and 14 weeks (post-treatment/wait). For groups receiving treatment, measures were also taken at 3 weeks, and follow-ups at 27 and 40 weeks after randomization. All analyses were intent-to-treat. Results At post-treatment/wait assessment, 73%, 77%, 43%, 7% of the intensive cognitive therapy, standard cognitive therapy, supportive therapy, and waitlist groups, respectively, had recovered from PTSD. All treatments were well tolerated and were superior to waitlist on all outcome measures, with the exception of no difference between supportive therapy and waitlist on quality of life. For primary outcomes, disability and general anxiety, intensive and standard cognitive therapy were superior to supportive therapy. Intensive cognitive therapy achieved faster symptom reduction and comparable overall outcomes to standard cognitive therapy. Conclusions Cognitive therapy for PTSD delivered intensively over little more than a week is as effective as cognitive therapy delivered

  1. Aboriginal Perspectives on Social-Emotional Competence in Early Childhood

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Melissa Tremblay

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available Gaining an understanding of how best to support the development of Aboriginal children is important in promoting positive social, emotional, educational, and health outcomes. The purpose of the current study was to identify the most important elements of healthy development for Aboriginal children, with a particular focus on social-emotional development. Focus groups were conducted with 37 Aboriginal Canadians, including parents, service providers, adolescents, and young adults. Five inter-connected themes emerged: cultural wellness, emotional wellness, mental wellness, social wellness, and strong identity, with strong identity described as central and foundational to the other themes. This study strengthens the assertion that Aboriginal children require an additional set of social-emotional skills to successfully navigate different cultural contexts during development. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

  2. Facial Emotion Recognition Deficits following Moderate-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): Re-examining the Valence Effect and the Role of Emotion Intensity

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rosenberg, H.; McDonald, S.; Dethier, M.; Kessels, R.P.C.; Westbrook, R.F.

    2014-01-01

    Many individuals who sustain moderate-severe traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are poor at recognizing emotional expressions, with a greater impairment in recognizing negative (e.g., fear, disgust, sadness, and anger) than positive emotions (e.g., happiness and surprise). It has been questioned whether

  3. [The role of emotional intelligence in addiction disorders].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kun, Bernadette; Demetrovics, Zsolt

    2010-01-01

    Role of emotions in the background of addictions is a long-studied question. Clinical observations and comorbidity studies unambiguously indicate that psychoactive substance use and dependence are related to emotional problems as well. Emotional intelligence is a relatively new concept of the study of managing emotions. On the revelation of this construct's relationship with psychoactive substance use and dependence only a few studies have been carried out so far. Present study systematically reviews articles born between 1990 and October 1, 2010 dealing with the relationship of these two factors. Out of the identified altogether 54 studies, 37 fitted the criteria of analysis. Studies overall indicate that lower levels of emotional intelligence are associated with more intensive drinking, smoking and illicit substance use and also more likely correlate with internet addiction, bulimia, gambling and impulsive buying. According to their results, especially the components called "recognizing emotions" and "regulation of emotions" of emotional intelligence play important roles regarding substance use.

  4. The Emotional Response to Everyday Involuntary and Voluntary Memories in Dysphoria and Non-Dysphoria

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    del Palacio Gonzalez, Adriana; Watson, Lynn; Berntsen, Dorthe

    Retrieving personal memories may cause emotional reactions and thus a need for emotion regulation. Past research indicates that involuntary memories have a greater effect on mood that the voluntary counterparts. However, different dimensions of the emotional response (i.e., intensity and regulation...... regulation strategies in response to both involuntary and voluntary memories. The between-group differences were not accounted for by the individuals’ mood preceding memory retrieval or the valence of the remembered events. The results suggest an important effect of retrieval mode in the emotion regulation......) upon retrieval of both involuntary and voluntary personal memories have not been thoroughly examined. We examined individuals’ emotional intensity and regulation of everyday involuntary and voluntary memories during dysphoria and non-depression. Twenty dysphoric individuals and 23 non...

  5. Affect intensity and individual differences in informational style.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Larsen, R J; Billings, D W; Cutler, S E

    1996-03-01

    Although individuals differ widely in the typical intensity of their affective experience, the mechanisms that create or maintain these differences are unclear. Larsen, Diener, and Cropanzano (1987) examined the hypothesis that individual differences in affect intensity (AI) are related to how people interpret emotional stimuli. They found that high AI individuals engaged in more personalizing and generalizing cognitions while construing emotional stimuli than low AI individuals. The present study extends these findings by examining cognitive activity during a different task-the generation of information to communicate about life events. Participants provided free-response descriptions of 16 life events. These descriptions were content coded for five informational style variables. It was found that the descriptive information generated by high AI participants contained significantly more references to emotional arousal, more focus on feelings, and more generalization compared to participants low in AI. These results are consistent with the notion that specific cognitive activity may lead to, or at least be associated with, dispositional affect intensity. In addition, the informational style variables identified in this study were stable over time and consistent across situations. Although men and women differ in AI, this difference becomes insignificant after controlling for informational style variation. Overall results are discussed in terms of a model of various psychological mechanisms that may potentially create or maintain individual differences in affect intensity.

  6. Effects of positive emotion, extraversion, and dopamine on cognitive stability-flexibility and frontal EEG asymmetry.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wacker, Jan

    2018-01-01

    The influence of positive emotions on the balance between cognitive stability and flexibility has been suggested to (a) differ among various positive emotional/motivational states (e.g., of varying approach motivation intensity), and (b) be mediated by brain dopamine (DA). Frontal EEG alpha asymmetry (ASY) is considered an indicator of approach motivational states and may be modulated by DA. The personality trait of extraversion is strongly linked to positive emotions and is now thought to reflect DA-based individual differences in incentive/approach motivation. The present study independently manipulated positive emotion (high approach wanting-expectancy [WE] vs. low approach warmth-liking [WL]) and dopamine (placebo vs. DA D2 blocker sulpiride) to examine their effects on both cognitive stability-flexibility and emotion-related ASY changes. The results showed numerically lower stability-flexibility in WE versus WL under placebo and a complete reversal of this effect under the D2 blocker, no differentiation between WE and WL groups in terms of emotion-related ASY change, but an association between self-reported WE and WL and ASY changes toward left and right frontal cortical activity, respectively. Finally, extraversion was positively associated with both stability-flexibility and ASY changes toward left frontal cortical activity under placebo, and these associations were completely reversed under the D2 blocker. The results (a) support a dopaminergic basis for frontal EEG asymmetry, extraversion, and the modulating effect of positive emotions on stability-flexibility, and (b) extend previous reports of cognitive differences between introverts and extraverts. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

  7. Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choice

    OpenAIRE

    Dalenberg, Jelle R.; Gutjar, Swetlana; ter Horst, Gert J.; de Graaf, Kees; Renken, Remco J.; Jager, Gerry

    2014-01-01

    In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well ...

  8. Measuring Emotion Regulation with Single Dry Electrode Brain Computer Interface

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Wal, C.N.; Irrmischer, M.; Guo, Y.; Friston, K.; Faisal, A.; Hill, S.; Peng, H.

    2015-01-01

    Wireless brain computer interfaces (BCI’s) are promising for new intelligent applications in which emotions are detected by measuring brain activity. Applications, such as serious games and video game therapy, are measuring and using the user’s emotional state in order to determine the intensity

  9. Emotion Regulation through Movement: Unique Sets of Movement Characteristics are Associated with and Enhance Basic Emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shafir, Tal; Tsachor, Rachelle P; Welch, Kathleen B

    2015-01-01

    We have recently demonstrated that motor execution, observation, and imagery of movements expressing certain emotions can enhance corresponding affective states and therefore could be used for emotion regulation. But which specific movement(s) should one use in order to enhance each emotion? This study aimed to identify, using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), the Laban motor elements (motor characteristics) that characterize movements whose execution enhances each of the basic emotions: anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. LMA provides a system of symbols describing its motor elements, which gives a written instruction (motif) for the execution of a movement or movement-sequence over time. Six senior LMA experts analyzed a validated set of video clips showing whole body dynamic expressions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness, and identified the motor elements that were common to (appeared in) all clips expressing the same emotion. For each emotion, we created motifs of different combinations of the motor elements common to all clips of the same emotion. Eighty subjects from around the world read and moved those motifs, to identify the emotion evoked when moving each motif and to rate the intensity of the evoked emotion. All subjects together moved and rated 1241 motifs, which were produced from 29 different motor elements. Using logistic regression, we found a set of motor elements associated with each emotion which, when moved, predicted the feeling of that emotion. Each emotion was predicted by a unique set of motor elements and each motor element predicted only one emotion. Knowledge of which specific motor elements enhance specific emotions can enable emotional self-regulation through adding some desired motor qualities to one's personal everyday movements (rather than mimicking others' specific movements) and through decreasing motor behaviors which include elements that enhance negative emotions.

  10. Emotion regulation through movement: Unique sets of movement characteristics are associated with and enhance basic emotions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tal eShafir

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available We have recently demonstrated that motor execution, observation and imagery of movements expressing certain emotions can enhance corresponding affective states and therefore could be used for emotion regulation. But which specific movement(s should one use in order to enhance each emotion? This study aimed to identify, using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA, the Laban motor elements (motor characteristics that characterize movements whose execution enhances each of the basic emotions: anger, fear happiness, and sadness. LMA provides a system of symbols describing its motor elements, which gives a written instruction (motif for the execution of a movement or movement-sequence over time. Six senior LMA experts analyzed a validated set of video clips showing whole body dynamic expressions of anger, fear, happiness and sadness, and identified the motor elements that were common to (appeared in all clips expressing the same emotion. For each emotion, we created motifs of different combinations of the motor elements common to all clips of the same emotion. Eighty subjects from around the world read and moved those motifs, to identify the emotion evoked when moving each motif and to rate the intensity of the evoked emotion. All subjects together moved and rated 1241 motifs, which were produced from 29 different motor elements. Using logistic regression, we found a set of motor elements associated with each emotion which, when moved, predicted the feeling of that emotion. Each emotion was predicted by a unique set of motor elements and each motor element predicted only one emotion. Knowledge of which specific motor elements enhance specific emotions can enable emotional self-regulation through adding some desired motor qualities to one’s personal everyday movements (rather than mimicking others’ specific movements and through decreasing motor behaviors which include elements that enhance negative emotions.

  11. Emotions in political discourse. Kirchnerism's"Phatogram"

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicolás Bermúdez

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available This article relies on a broader research on the kirchnerista discourse operations. Nowadays, Argentinean political language is full of terms that designate emotions and full of thrill seeking resources. This indicates the intensity of the emotional dimension of political discourse. Therefore, it seems important to analyze what are the emotions that kirchnerista discourse really develops. Concretely, the objective of this paper is to present an analysis about discursive procedures developed by the presidential speaker in order to produce certain emotion in the audience. Although the main thesis of the research is that there are determinable emotional cycles in the history of kirchnerista presidential discourse, in this article the analysis is limited to a corpus of commemoration messages pronounced between 2003 and 2007. This election demonstrates the importance to be given to genre between restrictions affecting the formation of the sense. This analysis was made according to the theoretical and methodological foundations of the social discourses theory. However, the descriptive phase calls for the contributions of rhetoric and philosophy, disciplines that long ago think about the emotions.

  12. Involuntary memories of emotional scenes: The effects of cue discriminability and emotion over time

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Staugaard, Søren Risløv; Berntsen, Dorthe

    2014-01-01

    a range of clinical disorders, there is no broadly agreed upon explanation of their underlying mechanisms and no successful experimental simulations of their retrieval. In a series of experiments, we experimentally manipulated the activation of involuntary episodic memories for emotional and neutral...... scenes and predicted their activation on the basis of manipulations carried out at encoding and retrieval. Our findings suggest that the interplay between cue discriminability at the time of retrieval and emotional arousal at the time of encoding are crucial for explaining intrusive memories following...... negative events. While cue distinctiveness is important directly following encoding of the scenes, emotional intensity influences retrieval after delays of 24 hr and 1 week. Voluntary remembering follows the same pattern as involuntary remembering. Our results suggest an explanatory model of intrusive...

  13. Consumer segmentation as a means to investigate emotional associations to meals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Piqueras-Fiszman, Betina; Jaeger, Sara R

    2016-10-01

    Consumers naturally associate emotions to meal occasions and understanding these can advance knowledge of food-related behaviours and attitudes. The present study used an online survey to investigate the emotional associations that people have with recalled meals: 'memorable' (MM) and 'routine' evening (RM). Heterogeneity in the studied consumer population (UK adults, n = 576 and 571, respectively) was accounted for using a data-driven approach to establish emotion-based segments. Two groups of people were identified with very different emotional response patterns to recalled meals. For 'memorable' and 'routine' meals the majority of people (Cluster 1) held strong positive and weak negative emotional associations. In Cluster 2, positive emotions remained more strongly associated than negative emotions, but much less so. In accordance with findings based on other response variables (e.g., preference, attitudes), psychographic variables accounted better for the heterogeneity found in the emotion associations than socio-demographic variables. Participants' level of meal engagement and difficulty in describing feelings (DDF scale) were the two most important predictors of cluster membership. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Disentangling brain activity related to the processing of emotional visual information and emotional arousal.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuniecki, Michał; Wołoszyn, Kinga; Domagalik, Aleksandra; Pilarczyk, Joanna

    2018-05-01

    Processing of emotional visual information engages cognitive functions and induces arousal. We aimed to examine the modulatory role of emotional valence on brain activations linked to the processing of visual information and those linked to arousal. Participants were scanned and their pupil size was measured while viewing negative and neutral images. The visual noise was added to the images in various proportions to parametrically manipulate the amount of visual information. Pupil size was used as an index of physiological arousal. We show that arousal induced by the negative images, as compared to the neutral ones, is primarily related to greater amygdala activity while increasing visibility of negative content to enhanced activity in the lateral occipital complex (LOC). We argue that more intense visual processing of negative scenes can occur irrespective of the level of arousal. It may suggest that higher areas of the visual stream are fine-tuned to process emotionally relevant objects. Both arousal and processing of emotional visual information modulated activity within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Overlapping activations within the vmPFC may reflect the integration of these aspects of emotional processing. Additionally, we show that emotionally-evoked pupil dilations are related to activations in the amygdala, vmPFC, and LOC.

  15. Positive and negative emotions underlie motivation for L2 learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter D. MacIntyre

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available The role of basic emotions in SLA has been underestimated in both research and pedagogy. The present article examines 10 positive emotions (joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love and 9 negative emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, guilt, hate, sadness, feeling scared, and being stressed. The emotions are correlated with core variables chosen from three well-known models of L2 motivation: Gardner’s integrative motive, Clément’s social-contextual model, and Dörnyei’s L2 self system. Respondents came from Italian secondary schools, and most participants were from monolingual Italian speaking homes. They described their motivation and emotion with respect to learning German in a region of Italy (South Tyrol that features high levels of contact between Italians and Germans. Results show that positive emotions are consistently and strongly correlated with motivation-related variables. Correlations involving negative emotions are weaker and less consistently implicated in motivation. The positivity ratio, that is, the relative prevalence of positive over negative emotion, showed strong correlations with all of the motivation constructs. Regression analysis supports the conclusion that a variety of emotions, not just one or two key ones, are implicated in L2 motivation processes in this high-contact context.

  16. Person perception from changing emotional expressions: primacy, recency, or averaging effect?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fang, Xia; van Kleef, Gerben A; Sauter, Disa A

    2018-02-01

    Dynamic changes in emotional expressions are a valuable source of information in social interactions. As the expressive behaviour of a person changes, the inferences drawn from the behaviour may also change. Here, we test the possibility that dynamic changes in emotional expressions affect person perception in terms of stable trait attributions. Across three experiments, we examined perceivers' inferences about others' personality traits from changing emotional expressions. Expressions changed from one emotion ("start emotion") to another emotion ("end emotion"), allowing us to disentangle potential primacy, recency, and averaging effects. Drawing on three influential models of person perception, we examined perceptions of dominance and affiliation (Experiment 1a), competence and warmth (Experiment 1b), and dominance and trustworthiness (Experiment 2). A strong recency effect was consistently found across all trait judgments, that is, the end emotion of dynamic expressions had a strong impact on trait ratings. Evidence for a primacy effect was also observed (i.e. the information of start emotions was integrated), but less pronounced, and only for trait ratings relating to affiliation, warmth, and trustworthiness. Taken together, these findings suggest that, when making trait judgements about others, observers weigh the most recently displayed emotion in dynamic expressions more heavily than the preceding emotion.

  17. Targeting emotion dysregulation in the treatment of self-injury.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gratz, Kim L

    2007-11-01

    Clinically useful definitions of emotion regulation with respect to deliberate self-harm (referred to here as self-injury) focus on adaptive ways of responding to emotional distress rather than on the control of emotions or dampening of emotional arousal. According to one such definition, emotion regulation is a multifaceted construct involving a) the awareness, understanding, and acceptance of emotions; b) ability to engage in goal-directed behaviors, and inhibit impulsive behaviors, when experiencing negative emotions; c) the flexible use of situationally appropriate strategies to modulate the intensity and/or duration of emotional responses rather than to eliminate emotions entirely; and d) willingness to experience negative emotions as part of pursuing meaningful activities in life (Gratz & Roemer, 2004). This article addresses the role of emotion dysregulation in self-injury and discusses two treatments for self-injury that explicitly focus on increasing emotion regulation. These treatments are based on the premise that the reduction of emotion dysregulation will decrease the need for maladaptive behaviors that function to regulate emotions, such as self-injury. A case illustration describing how one of these treatments (an acceptance-based, emotion regulation group therapy) is used to treat self-injury is provided.

  18. Predicting athletes' functional and dysfunctional emotions: The role of the motivational climate and motivation regulations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruiz, Montse C; Haapanen, Saara; Tolvanen, Asko; Robazza, Claudio; Duda, Joan L

    2017-08-01

    This study examined the relationships between perceptions of the motivational climate, motivation regulations, and the intensity and functionality levels of athletes' pleasant and unpleasant emotional states. Specifically, we examined the hypothesised mediational role of motivation regulations in the climate-emotion relationship. We also tested a sequence in which emotions were assumed to be predicted by the motivational climate dimensions and then served as antecedents to variability in motivation regulations. Participants (N = 494) completed a multi-section questionnaire assessing targeted variables. Structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that a perceived task-involving climate was a positive predictor of autonomous motivation and of the impact of functional anger, and a negative predictor of the intensity of anxiety and dysfunctional anger. Autonomous motivation was a partial mediator of perceptions of a task-involving climate and the impact of functional anger. An ego-involving climate was a positive predictor of controlled motivation, and of the intensity and impact of functional anger and the intensity of dysfunctional anger. Controlled motivation partially mediated the relationship between an ego-involving climate and the intensity of dysfunctional anger. Good fit to the data also emerged for the motivational climate, emotional states, and motivation regulations sequence. Findings provide support for the consideration of hedonic tone and functionality distinctions in the assessment of athletes' emotional states.

  19. It's the recipient that counts: spending money on strong social ties leads to greater happiness than spending on weak social ties.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aknin, Lara B; Sandstrom, Gillian M; Dunn, Elizabeth W; Norton, Michael I

    2011-02-10

    Previous research has shown that spending money on others (prosocial spending) increases happiness. But, do the happiness gains depend on who the money is spent on? Sociologists have distinguished between strong ties with close friends and family and weak ties--relationships characterized by less frequent contact, lower emotional intensity, and limited intimacy. We randomly assigned participants to reflect on a time when they spent money on either a strong social tie or a weak social tie. Participants reported higher levels of positive affect after recalling a time they spent on a strong tie versus a weak tie. The level of intimacy in the relationship was more important than the type of relationship; there was no significant difference in positive affect after recalling spending money on a family member instead of a friend. These results add to the growing literature examining the factors that moderate the link between prosocial behaviour and happiness.

  20. Selective attention to emotional cues and emotion recognition in healthy subjects: the role of mineralocorticoid receptor stimulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schultebraucks, Katharina; Deuter, Christian E; Duesenberg, Moritz; Schulze, Lars; Hellmann-Regen, Julian; Domke, Antonia; Lockenvitz, Lisa; Kuehl, Linn K; Otte, Christian; Wingenfeld, Katja

    2016-09-01

    Selective attention toward emotional cues and emotion recognition of facial expressions are important aspects of social cognition. Stress modulates social cognition through cortisol, which acts on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) in the brain. We examined the role of MR activation on attentional bias toward emotional cues and on emotion recognition. We included 40 healthy young women and 40 healthy young men (mean age 23.9 ± 3.3), who either received 0.4 mg of the MR agonist fludrocortisone or placebo. A dot-probe paradigm was used to test for attentional biases toward emotional cues (happy and sad faces). Moreover, we used a facial emotion recognition task to investigate the ability to recognize emotional valence (anger and sadness) from facial expression in four graded categories of emotional intensity (20, 30, 40, and 80 %). In the emotional dot-probe task, we found a main effect of treatment and a treatment × valence interaction. Post hoc analyses revealed an attentional bias away from sad faces after placebo intake and a shift in selective attention toward sad faces compared to placebo. We found no attentional bias toward happy faces after fludrocortisone or placebo intake. In the facial emotion recognition task, there was no main effect of treatment. MR stimulation seems to be important in modulating quick, automatic emotional processing, i.e., a shift in selective attention toward negative emotional cues. Our results confirm and extend previous findings of MR function. However, we did not find an effect of MR stimulation on emotion recognition.

  1. Emotional effects of sertraline: novel findings revealed by meditation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walsh, Roger; Victor, Bruce; Bitner, Robin

    2006-01-01

    Use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors continues to increase, as does concern about previously unrecognized, subtle side effects and questions about whether these drugs produce effects on healthy subjects. The authors report novel emotional effects identified by an experienced, psychologically healthy meditator who is a psychiatrist and researcher. On a meditation retreat, the subject identified a specific profile of emotional changes related to sertraline use. In particular, cognitive abilities and the emotions of fear and anger seemed unaffected. However, the emotions of sadness, happiness, rapture, and love were dramatically reduced in intensity and duration. 2006 APA, all rights reserved

  2. Resilience and Emotional Intelligence: which role in achievement motivation

    OpenAIRE

    Paola Magnano; Giuseppe Craparo; Anna Paolillo

    2016-01-01

    In the framework of Positive Organizational Behavior, the construct of Psychological Capital identifies four psychological capacities that affect motivation and performance in the workplace: self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Emotional Intelligence, then, addresses self-regulatory processes of emotions and motivation that enable people to make adjustments to achieve individual, group, and organizational goals; Emotional Intelligence is strongly correlated with individual advancemen...

  3. Resilience and emotional intelligence: which role in achievement motivation

    OpenAIRE

    Magnano, Paola; Facoltà di Scienze dell'Uomo e della Società, Università degli studi Kore, Enna, Italia.; Craparo, Giuseppe; Facoltà di Scienze dell'Uomo e della Società, Università degli studi Kore, Enna, Italia.; Paolillo, Anna; Dipartimento Filosofia, Pedagogia e Psicologia, Università degli Studi di Verona, Verona, Italia.

    2016-01-01

    In the framework of Positive Organizational Behavior, the construct of Psychological Capital identifies four psychological capacities that affect motivation and performance in the workplace: self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Emotional Intelligence, then, addresses self-regulatory processes of emotions and motivation that enable people to make adjustments to achieve individual, group, and organizational goals; Emotional Intelligence is strongly correlated with individual advancemen...

  4. Mapping Aesthetic Musical Emotions in the Brain

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ethofer, Thomas; Zentner, Marcel; Vuilleumier, Patrik

    2012-01-01

    Music evokes complex emotions beyond pleasant/unpleasant or happy/sad dichotomies usually investigated in neuroscience. Here, we used functional neuroimaging with parametric analyses based on the intensity of felt emotions to explore a wider spectrum of affective responses reported during music listening. Positive emotions correlated with activation of left striatum and insula when high-arousing (Wonder, Joy) but right striatum and orbitofrontal cortex when low-arousing (Nostalgia, Tenderness). Irrespective of their positive/negative valence, high-arousal emotions (Tension, Power, and Joy) also correlated with activations in sensory and motor areas, whereas low-arousal categories (Peacefulness, Nostalgia, and Sadness) selectively engaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The right parahippocampal cortex activated in all but positive high-arousal conditions. Results also suggested some blends between activation patterns associated with different classes of emotions, particularly for feelings of Wonder or Transcendence. These data reveal a differentiated recruitment across emotions of networks involved in reward, memory, self-reflective, and sensorimotor processes, which may account for the unique richness of musical emotions. PMID:22178712

  5. Neural correlates of experienced moral emotion: an fMRI investigation of emotion in response to prejudice feedback.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fourie, Melike M; Thomas, Kevin G F; Amodio, David M; Warton, Christopher M R; Meintjes, Ernesta M

    2014-01-01

    Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are quintessential moral emotions with important regulatory functions for the individual and society. Moral emotions are, however, difficult to study with neuroimaging methods because their elicitation is more intricate than that of basic emotions. Here, using functional MRI (fMRI), we employed a novel social prejudice paradigm to examine specific brain regions associated with real-time moral emotion, focusing on guilt and related moral-negative emotions. The paradigm induced intense moral-negative emotion (primarily guilt) in 22 low-prejudice individuals through preprogrammed feedback indicating implicit prejudice against Black and disabled people. fMRI data indicated that this experience of moral-negative emotion was associated with increased activity in anterior paralimbic structures, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and anterior insula, in addition to areas associated with mentalizing, including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and precuneus. Of significance was prominent conflict-related activity in the supragenual ACC, which is consistent with theories proposing an association between acute guilt and behavioral inhibition. Finally, a significant negative association between self-reported guilt and neural activity in the pregenual ACC suggested a role of self-regulatory processes in response to moral-negative affect. These findings are consistent with the multifaceted self-regulatory functions of moral-negative emotions in social behavior.

  6. Emotional Intelligence Is a Protective Factor for Suicidal Behavior

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cha, Christine B.; Nock, Matthew K.

    2009-01-01

    Emotional intelligence is found to be a protective factor for suicidal behavior after examining the relations between childhood sexual abuse and suicidal ideation and attempts to emotional intelligence. Childhood sexual abuse is found to be a strong predictive of the results.

  7. Semi-analytical fluid study of the laser wake field excitation in the strong intensity regime

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Jovanović, D., E-mail: djovanov@ipb.ac.rs [Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Belgrade (Serbia); Fedele, R., E-mail: renato.fedele@na.infn.it [Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Napoli Federico II, Napoli (Italy); INFN Sezione di Napoli, Napoli (Italy); Belić, M., E-mail: milivoj.belic@qatar.tamu.edu [Texas A & M University at Qatar, Doha (Qatar); De Nicola, S., E-mail: sergio.denicola@spin.cnr.it [Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Napoli Federico II, Napoli (Italy); INFN Sezione di Napoli, Napoli (Italy); CNR-SPIN, Complesso Universitario di Monte S' Angelo, Napoli (Italy)

    2016-09-01

    We present an analytical and numerical study of the interaction of a multi-petawatt, pancake-shaped laser pulse with an unmagnetized plasma. The study has been performed in the ultrarelativistic regime of electron jitter velocities, in which the plasma electrons are almost completely expelled from the pulse region. The calculations are applied to a laser wake field acceleration scheme with specifications that may be available in the next generation of Ti:Sa lasers and with the use of recently developed pulse compression techniques. A set of novel nonlinear equations is derived using a three-timescale description, with an intermediate timescale associated with the nonlinear phase of the electromagnetic wave and with the spatial bending of its wave front. They describe, on an equal footing, both the strong and the moderate laser intensity regimes, pertinent to the core and to the edges of the pulse.

  8. Measuring emotional and cognitive empathy using dynamic, naturalistic, and spontaneous emotion displays.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Buck, Ross; Powers, Stacie R; Hull, Kyle S

    2017-10-01

    Most measures of nonverbal receiving ability use posed expressions as stimuli. As empathy measures, such stimuli lack ecological validity, as the participant is not actually experiencing emotion. An alternative approach uses natural and dynamic displays of spontaneous expressions. The Communication of Affect Receiving Ability Test (CARAT) uses as stimuli spontaneous facial expressions and gestures filmed by an unobtrusive camera of solitary participants responding to emotional images. This article reports the development and initial validation of the CARAT-Spontaneous, Posed, Regulated (CARAT-SPR), which measures both abilities to detect emotion from spontaneous displays (emotion communication accuracy) and to differentiate spontaneous, posed, and regulated displays (expression categorization ability). Although spontaneous displays are natural responses to emotional images, posed displays involve asking the sender to display "as if" responding to a particular sort of image when no image is in fact present (simulation), while Regulated displays involve asking the sender to display "as if" responding to a particular sort of image when an image of opposite valence is in fact present (masking). Expression categorization ability involves judging deception-simulation and masking-and conceptually involves a kind of perspective-taking or cognitive empathy. Emotion communication using spontaneous clips achieved a high level of accuracy and was strongly correlated with ratings of sender expressivity. Expression categorization ability was not significantly correlated with expressivity ratings and was modestly negatively correlated with emotion communication accuracy. In a brief version of the CARAT-SPR, women showed evidence of greater emotion signal detection, whereas men reported greater confidence in expression categorization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  9. On the role of attention and emotion in morality: attentional control modulates unrelated disgust in moral judgments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Dillen, Lotte F; van der Wal, Reine C; van den Bos, Kees

    2012-09-01

    The emotion of disgust can influence people's moral judgments, even if this emotion objectively is unrelated to the moral judgment in question. The present work demonstrates that attentional control regulates this effect. In three studies, disgust was induced. In an unrelated part of the studies, participants then judged a moral transgression. Disgust resulted in more severe moral judgments when attentional control (either measured by means of individual predisposition or manipulated with experimental control) was weak as opposed to strong (Studies 1-3). Findings further showed that attentional control mediated the positive relation between the intensity of participants' disgust responses and the severity of their moral judgments (Study 2). Moreover, attentional control has its effects through the regulation of affective processing (Study 3). Taken together, the findings suggest that unrelated influences of disgust on moral judgments are contingent on the attention system.

  10. Jealousy and emotion: how partners react to infidelity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jesús M. Canto Ortiz

    2009-05-01

    Full Text Available This present study explores the differences between women's and men's responses to (hypothetical infidelity,  and how these responses are influenced by the  characteristics of the couple's relationship. 372 subjects completed questionnaires (a itemising their jealous reaction to a partner´s hypothetical infidelity (emotional or sexual; and (b the state of their relationship. A survey of 250 women and 122 men revealed that the women reported higher intensity of emotional distress than the men. in regard to both emotional and sexual infidelity. There were no significant differences between men and women in their reports of which infidelity troubled them more: both genders are troubled more by emotional infidelity. We also report the influence that the type of relationship has on the emotions provoked by the infidelity.

  11. Emotion Displays in Media: A Comparison Between American, Romanian, and Turkish Children’s Storybooks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wolfgang eFriedlmeier

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Children’s books may provide an important resource of culturally appropriate emotions. This study investigates emotion displays in children’s storybooks for preschoolers from Romania, Turkey, and the US in order to analyze cultural norms of emotions. We derived some hypotheses by referring to cross-cultural studies about emotion and emotion socialization. For such media analyses, the frequency rate of certain emotion displays can be seen as an indicator for the salience of the specific emotion. Therefore, we expected that all children’s storybooks would highlight dominantly positive emotions and that American children’s storybooks would display negative powerful emotions (e.g., anger more often and negative powerless emotions (e.g., sadness less often than Turkish and Romanian storybooks. We also predicted that the positive and negative powerful emotion expressions would be more intense in the American storybooks compared to the other storybooks. Finally, we expected that social context (ingroup/outgroup may affect the intensity emotion displays more in Turkish and Romanian storybooks compared to American storybooks. Illustrations in 30 popular children’s storybooks (10 for each cultural group were coded. Results mostly confirmed the hypotheses but also pointed to differences between Romanian and Turkish storybooks. Overall, the study supports the conclusion that culture-specific emotion norms are reflected in media to which young children are exposed.

  12. Towards a neural basis of music-evoked emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koelsch, Stefan

    2010-03-01

    Music is capable of evoking exceptionally strong emotions and of reliably affecting the mood of individuals. Functional neuroimaging and lesion studies show that music-evoked emotions can modulate activity in virtually all limbic and paralimbic brain structures. These structures are crucially involved in the initiation, generation, detection, maintenance, regulation and termination of emotions that have survival value for the individual and the species. Therefore, at least some music-evoked emotions involve the very core of evolutionarily adaptive neuroaffective mechanisms. Because dysfunctions in these structures are related to emotional disorders, a better understanding of music-evoked emotions and their neural correlates can lead to a more systematic and effective use of music in therapy. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Identity modulates short-term memory for facial emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galster, Murray; Kahana, Michael J; Wilson, Hugh R; Sekuler, Robert

    2009-12-01

    For some time, the relationship between processing of facial expression and facial identity has been in dispute. Using realistic synthetic faces, we reexamined this relationship for both perception and short-term memory. In Experiment 1, subjects tried to identify whether the emotional expression on a probe stimulus face matched the emotional expression on either of two remembered faces that they had just seen. The results showed that identity strongly influenced recognition short-term memory for emotional expression. In Experiment 2, subjects' similarity/dissimilarity judgments were transformed by multidimensional scaling (MDS) into a 2-D description of the faces' perceptual representations. Distances among stimuli in the MDS representation, which showed a strong linkage of emotional expression and facial identity, were good predictors of correct and false recognitions obtained previously in Experiment 1. The convergence of the results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that the overall structure and configuration of faces' perceptual representations may parallel their representation in short-term memory and that facial identity modulates the representation of facial emotion, both in perception and in memory. The stimuli from this study may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

  14. Emotional responses to behavioral economic incentives for health behavior change.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van der Swaluw, Koen; Lambooij, Mattijs S; Mathijssen, Jolanda J P; Zeelenberg, Marcel; Polder, Johan J; Prast, Henriëtte M

    2018-03-05

    Many people aim to change their lifestyle, but have trouble acting on their intentions. Behavioral economic incentives and related emotions can support commitment to personal health goals, but the related emotions remain unexplored. In a regret lottery, winners who do not attain their health goals do not get their prize but receive feedback on what their forgone earnings would have been. This counterfactual feedback should provoke anticipated regret and increase commitment to health goals. We explored which emotions were actually expected upon missing out on a prize due to unsuccessful weight loss and which incentive-characteristics influence their likelihood and intensity. Participants reported their expected emotional response after missing out on a prize in one of 12 randomly presented incentive-scenarios, which varied in incentive type, incentive size and deadline distance. Participants primarily reported feeling disappointment, followed by regret. Regret was expected most when losing a lottery prize (vs. a fixed incentive) and intensified with prize size. Multiple features of the participant and the lottery incentive increase the occurrence and intensity of regret. As such, our findings can be helpful in designing behavioral economic incentives that leverage emotions to support health behavior change.

  15. Enhanced subliminal emotional responses to dynamic facial expressions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wataru eSato

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Emotional processing without conscious awareness plays an important role in human social interaction. Several behavioral studies reported that subliminal presentation of photographs of emotional facial expressions induces unconscious emotional processing. However, it was difficult to elicit strong and robust effects using this method. We hypothesized that dynamic presentations of facial expressions would enhance subliminal emotional effects and tested this hypothesis with two experiments. Fearful or happy facial expressions were presented dynamically or statically in either the left or the right visual field for 20 (Experiment 1 and 30 (Experiment 2 ms. Nonsense target ideographs were then presented, and participants reported their preference for them. The results consistently showed that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induced more evident emotional biases toward subsequent targets than did static ones. These results indicate that dynamic presentations of emotional facial expressions induce more evident unconscious emotional processing.

  16. Motives for secondary social sharing of emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Christophe, Véronique; Delelis, Gérald; Antoine, Pascal; Nandrino, Jean-Louis

    2008-08-01

    This study provides new evidence of motives of secondary social sharing of emotions. In a retrospective study, 140 female (Mage = 29.4 yr., SD=12.8) and 116 male (M = 29.5 yr., SD = 13.1) participants were asked to recall a recent situation in which they had talked to a third person about a positive or negative, low or high intensity emotional narrative they had heard. 70% of the respondents reported having secondarily shared the reported event rapidly after the narration with several persons and at several times. Moreover, they not only described the event, the speaker's reaction and their own reactions, but also revealed the identity of their first confidant. Participants reported having spread the emotional narrative more widely in the high negative condition in order to seek emotional support and social comparison.

  17. Emotional event-related potentials are larger to figures than scenes but are similarly reduced by inattention

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nordström Henrik

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background In research on event-related potentials (ERP to emotional pictures, greater attention to emotional than neutral stimuli (i.e., motivated attention is commonly indexed by two difference waves between emotional and neutral stimuli: the early posterior negativity (EPN and the late positive potential (LPP. Evidence suggests that if attention is directed away from the pictures, then the emotional effects on EPN and LPP are eliminated. However, a few studies have found residual, emotional effects on EPN and LPP. In these studies, pictures were shown at fixation, and picture composition was that of simple figures rather than that of complex scenes. Because figures elicit larger LPP than do scenes, figures might capture and hold attention more strongly than do scenes. Here, we showed negative and neutral pictures of figures and scenes and tested first, whether emotional effects are larger to figures than scenes for both EPN and LPP, and second, whether emotional effects on EPN and LPP are reduced less for unattended figures than scenes. Results Emotional effects on EPN and LPP were larger for figures than scenes. When pictures were unattended, emotional effects on EPN increased for scenes but tended to decrease for figures, whereas emotional effects on LPP decreased similarly for figures and scenes. Conclusions Emotional effects on EPN and LPP were larger for figures than scenes, but these effects did not resist manipulations of attention more strongly for figures than scenes. These findings imply that the emotional content captures attention more strongly for figures than scenes, but that the emotional content does not hold attention more strongly for figures than scenes.

  18. Emotional event-related potentials are larger to figures than scenes but are similarly reduced by inattention

    Science.gov (United States)

    2012-01-01

    Background In research on event-related potentials (ERP) to emotional pictures, greater attention to emotional than neutral stimuli (i.e., motivated attention) is commonly indexed by two difference waves between emotional and neutral stimuli: the early posterior negativity (EPN) and the late positive potential (LPP). Evidence suggests that if attention is directed away from the pictures, then the emotional effects on EPN and LPP are eliminated. However, a few studies have found residual, emotional effects on EPN and LPP. In these studies, pictures were shown at fixation, and picture composition was that of simple figures rather than that of complex scenes. Because figures elicit larger LPP than do scenes, figures might capture and hold attention more strongly than do scenes. Here, we showed negative and neutral pictures of figures and scenes and tested first, whether emotional effects are larger to figures than scenes for both EPN and LPP, and second, whether emotional effects on EPN and LPP are reduced less for unattended figures than scenes. Results Emotional effects on EPN and LPP were larger for figures than scenes. When pictures were unattended, emotional effects on EPN increased for scenes but tended to decrease for figures, whereas emotional effects on LPP decreased similarly for figures and scenes. Conclusions Emotional effects on EPN and LPP were larger for figures than scenes, but these effects did not resist manipulations of attention more strongly for figures than scenes. These findings imply that the emotional content captures attention more strongly for figures than scenes, but that the emotional content does not hold attention more strongly for figures than scenes. PMID:22607397

  19. Using Physical Activity for Emotional Recovery after a Natural Disaster

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wahl-Alexander, Zachary; Sinelnikov, Oleg A.

    2013-01-01

    After traumatic events, such as a natural disaster, children who are directly or indirectly affected by the event often have a number of intense emotional reactions. It is important for educators to understand common emotional and psychological responses to disastrous events and to try to help. This article describes a physical activity program…

  20. A Feeling for Books: Using Literature to Promote Social-Emotional Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tunks, Karen W.; Gilles, Rebecca M.

    2013-01-01

    Social-emotional development is a fundamental part of a child's overall well-being. Healthy development forms a critical foundation for building positive relationships and a strong self-esteem. Social-emotional development includes the ability to express and manage emotions and to establish secure relationships. All children have a natural desire…

  1. Weather and emotional state

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spasova, Z.

    2010-09-01

    Introduction Given the proven effects of weather on the human organism, an attempt to examine its effects on a psychic and emotional level has been made. Emotions affect the bio-tonus, working ability and concentration, hence their significance in various domains of economic life, such as health care, education, transportation, tourism, etc. Data and methods The research has been made in Sofia City within a period of 8 months, using 5 psychological methods (Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Test for Self-assessment of the emotional state (developed by Wessman and Ricks), Test for evaluation of moods and Test "Self-confidence - Activity - Mood" (developed by the specialists from the Military Academy in Saint Petersburg). The Fiodorov-Chubukov's complex-climatic method was used to characterize meteorological conditions because of the purpose to include in the analysis a maximal number of meteorological elements. 16 weather types are defined in dependence of the meteorological elements values according to this method. Abrupt weather changes from one day to another, defined by the same method, were considered as well. Results and discussions The results obtained by t-test show that the different categories of weather lead to changes in the emotional status, which indicates a character either positive or negative for the organism. The abrupt weather changes, according to expectations, have negative effect on human emotions but only when a transition to the cloudy weather or weather type, classified as "unfavourable" has been realized. The relationship between weather and human emotions is rather complicated since it depends on individual characteristics of people. One of these individual psychological characteristics, marked by the dimension "neuroticism", has a strong effect on emotional reactions in different weather conditions. Emotionally stable individuals are more "protected" to the weather influence on their emotions

  2. DOES EMOTIONAL LABOUR AFFECT OCCUPATIONAL COMMITMENT? A STUDY ON ACADEMICIANS

    OpenAIRE

    Giderler, Ceren; Baran, Hilal; Kirmizi, Canan

    2016-01-01

    The main purpose of our study is to descibe the relationship between emotional labor behaviors and the occupational commitment of academicians. The concept of emotional labor on which researchers often emphasized in recent years, is important for a sector where employees is in close and intense relationship with their co-workers.  It discussed the three dimensions of emotional labor in this study; surface, deep and sincere behaviors.  The occupational commitment that is a psychological bond b...

  3. Music–color associations are mediated by emotion

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palmer, Stephen E.; Schloss, Karen B.; Xu, Zoe; Prado-León, Lilia R.

    2013-01-01

    Experimental evidence demonstrates robust cross-modal matches between music and colors that are mediated by emotional associations. US and Mexican participants chose colors that were most/least consistent with 18 selections of classical orchestral music by Bach, Mozart, and Brahms. In both cultures, faster music in the major mode produced color choices that were more saturated, lighter, and yellower whereas slower, minor music produced the opposite pattern (choices that were desaturated, darker, and bluer). There were strong correlations (0.89 colors chosen to go with the music, supporting an emotional mediation hypothesis in both cultures. Additional experiments showed similarly robust cross-modal matches from emotionally expressive faces to colors and from music to emotionally expressive faces. These results provide further support that music-to-color associations are mediated by common emotional associations. PMID:23671106

  4. The Emotional Resources Group: Provisional outcome data for a pilot six-session emotion regulation programme for secondary care.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bacon, Thomas; Doughty, Caitriona; Summers, Andrew; Wiffen, Benjamin; Stanley, Zoe; McAlpine, Susan

    2018-06-01

    To examine the effectiveness of a new, six-session emotion regulation group intervention designed for the secondary care setting: The Emotional Resources Group (ERG). In this pilot study, participants were recruited by referral from secondary care mental health services. Forty-seven individuals participated in the study. Participants who attended the ERG were compared on measures of emotion regulation, well-being, and self-efficacy, pre- and post-intervention. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated highly statistically significant improvements in measures of emotion regulation, well-being, and self-efficacy, accompanied by large effect sizes. In addition, improvements in emotion regulation produced good rates of both reliable and clinically significant change. The ERG may be an effective, brief intervention to improve emotion regulation in the secondary care setting, worthy of further evaluation. Clinical implications Emotion regulation may be an appropriate treatment target to improve well-being and self-efficacy in a transdiagnostic population. The ERG may be effective as a brief emotion regulation intervention for secondary care mental health settings. Outcomes of the ERG appear to be equivalent to other more intensive group-based emotion regulation interventions. The ERG's tailored design may be responsible for positive outcomes. Limitations There was a small sample size. There was no control group. There was no follow-up data. © 2018 The British Psychological Society.

  5. A validated battery of vocal emotional expressions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pierre Maurage

    2007-11-01

    Full Text Available For a long time, the exploration of emotions focused on facial expression, and vocal expression of emotion has only recently received interest. However, no validated battery of emotional vocal expressions has been published and made available to the researchers’ community. This paper aims at validating and proposing such material. 20 actors (10 men recorded sounds (words and interjections expressing six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral and sadness. These stimuli were then submitted to a double validation phase: (1 preselection by experts; (2 quantitative and qualitative validation by 70 participants. 195 stimuli were selected for the final battery, each one depicting a precise emotion. The ratings provide a complete measure of intensity and specificity for each stimulus. This paper provides, to our knowledge, the first validated, freely available and highly standardized battery of emotional vocal expressions (words and intonations. This battery could constitute an interesting tool for the exploration of prosody processing among normal and pathological populations, in neuropsychology as well as psychiatry. Further works are nevertheless needed to complement the present material.

  6. A structural model of emotions of cognitive dissonances.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fontanari, José F; Bonniot-Cabanac, Marie-Claude; Cabanac, Michel; Perlovsky, Leonid I

    2012-08-01

    Cognitive dissonance is the stress that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously in the mind, usually arising when people are asked to choose between two detrimental or two beneficial options. In view of the well-established role of emotions in decision making, here we investigate whether the conventional structural models used to represent the relationships among basic emotions, such as the Circumplex model of affect, can describe the emotions of cognitive dissonance as well. We presented a questionnaire to 34 anonymous participants, where each question described a decision to be made among two conflicting motivations and asked the participants to rate analogically the pleasantness and the intensity of the experienced emotion. We found that the results were compatible with the predictions of the Circumplex model for basic emotions. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. It's the recipient that counts: spending money on strong social ties leads to greater happiness than spending on weak social ties.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lara B Aknin

    Full Text Available Previous research has shown that spending money on others (prosocial spending increases happiness. But, do the happiness gains depend on who the money is spent on? Sociologists have distinguished between strong ties with close friends and family and weak ties--relationships characterized by less frequent contact, lower emotional intensity, and limited intimacy. We randomly assigned participants to reflect on a time when they spent money on either a strong social tie or a weak social tie. Participants reported higher levels of positive affect after recalling a time they spent on a strong tie versus a weak tie. The level of intimacy in the relationship was more important than the type of relationship; there was no significant difference in positive affect after recalling spending money on a family member instead of a friend. These results add to the growing literature examining the factors that moderate the link between prosocial behaviour and happiness.

  8. The role of visual experience in the production of emotional facial expressions by blind people: a review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Valente, Dannyelle; Theurel, Anne; Gentaz, Edouard

    2018-04-01

    Facial expressions of emotion are nonverbal behaviors that allow us to interact efficiently in social life and respond to events affecting our welfare. This article reviews 21 studies, published between 1932 and 2015, examining the production of facial expressions of emotion by blind people. It particularly discusses the impact of visual experience on the development of this behavior from birth to adulthood. After a discussion of three methodological considerations, the review of studies reveals that blind subjects demonstrate differing capacities for producing spontaneous expressions and voluntarily posed expressions. Seventeen studies provided evidence that blind and sighted spontaneously produce the same pattern of facial expressions, even if some variations can be found, reflecting facial and body movements specific to blindness or differences in intensity and control of emotions in some specific contexts. This suggests that lack of visual experience seems to not have a major impact when this behavior is generated spontaneously in real emotional contexts. In contrast, eight studies examining voluntary expressions indicate that blind individuals have difficulty posing emotional expressions. The opportunity for prior visual observation seems to affect performance in this case. Finally, we discuss three new directions for research to provide additional and strong evidence for the debate regarding the innate or the culture-constant learning character of the production of emotional facial expressions by blind individuals: the link between perception and production of facial expressions, the impact of display rules in the absence of vision, and the role of other channels in expression of emotions in the context of blindness.

  9. Facing emotions in narcolepsy with cataplexy: haemodynamic and behavioural responses during emotional stimulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Zambotti, Massimiliano; Pizza, Fabio; Covassin, Naima; Vandi, Stefano; Cellini, Nicola; Stegagno, Luciano; Plazzi, Giuseppe

    2014-08-01

    Narcolepsy with cataplexy is a complex sleep disorder that affects the modulation of emotions: cataplexy, the key symptom of narcolepsy, is indeed strongly linked with emotions that usually trigger the episodes. Our study aimed to investigate haemodynamic and behavioural responses during emotional stimulation in narco-cataplexy. Twelve adult drug-naive narcoleptic patients (five males; age: 33.3 ± 9.4 years) and 12 healthy controls (five males; age: 30.9 ± 9.5 years) were exposed to emotional stimuli (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral pictures). Heart rate, arterial blood pressure and mean cerebral blood flow velocity of the middle cerebral arteries were continuously recorded using photoplethysmography and Doppler ultrasound. Ratings of valence and arousal and coping strategies were scored by the Self-Assessment Manikin and by questionnaires, respectively. Narcoleptic patients' haemodynamic responses to pictures overlapped with the data obtained from controls: decrease of heart rate and increase of mean cerebral blood flow velocity regardless of pictures' content, increase of systolic blood pressure during the pleasant condition, and relative reduction of heart rate during pleasant and unpleasant conditions. However, when compared with controls, narcoleptic patients reported lower arousal scores during the pleasant and neutral stimulation, and lower valence scores during the pleasant condition, respectively, and also a lower score at the 'focus on and venting of emotions' dimensions of coping. Our results suggested that adult narcoleptic patients, compared with healthy controls, inhibited their emotion-expressive behaviour to emotional stimulation, and that may be related to the development of adaptive cognitive strategies to face emotions avoiding cataplexy. © 2014 European Sleep Research Society.

  10. Powerful and Powerless Emotions in Partner Conflicts: Gender Differences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Inmaculada Valor-Segura

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Conflict is inherent in all types of interpersonal relationships. It has especially important consequences in relationships involving high levels of interdependence, such as intimate relationships. Emotions are important to understand how people behave in their interpersonal relationships. Results from other studies suggest that women express powerless emotions like guilt, sadness or fear, and men express powerful emotions like anger or contempt. The aim of this study was to investigate the pattern of emotions that men and women feel when in conflictive situations with their partner. In addition, we examined the effect of emotions on the prevalence of partner conflicts. A total of 142 undergraduate students participated in our study. We used a mixed factorial design with 5 different types of interpersonal conflicts as a within participants variable, and sex as a between-participants variable. Participants then rated the emotions felt in each conflictive situation, as well as the frequency of partner conflicts. Results showed sex differences in emotions in each conflictive situation. Women felt all emotions more intensely. In men, however, powerful emotions predicted a higher prevalence of partner conflicts.

  11. Does cortisol modulate emotion recognition and empathy?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duesenberg, Moritz; Weber, Juliane; Schulze, Lars; Schaeuffele, Carmen; Roepke, Stefan; Hellmann-Regen, Julian; Otte, Christian; Wingenfeld, Katja

    2016-04-01

    Emotion recognition and empathy are important aspects in the interaction and understanding of other people's behaviors and feelings. The Human environment comprises of stressful situations that impact social interactions on a daily basis. Aim of the study was to examine the effects of the stress hormone cortisol on emotion recognition and empathy. In this placebo-controlled study, 40 healthy men and 40 healthy women (mean age 24.5 years) received either 10mg of hydrocortisone or placebo. We used the Multifaceted Empathy Test to measure emotional and cognitive empathy. Furthermore, we examined emotion recognition from facial expressions, which contained two emotions (anger and sadness) and two emotion intensities (40% and 80%). We did not find a main effect for treatment or sex on either empathy or emotion recognition but a sex × emotion interaction on emotion recognition. The main result was a four-way-interaction on emotion recognition including treatment, sex, emotion and task difficulty. At 40% task difficulty, women recognized angry faces better than men in the placebo condition. Furthermore, in the placebo condition, men recognized sadness better than anger. At 80% task difficulty, men and women performed equally well in recognizing sad faces but men performed worse compared to women with regard to angry faces. Apparently, our results did not support the hypothesis that increases in cortisol concentration alone influence empathy and emotion recognition in healthy young individuals. However, sex and task difficulty appear to be important variables in emotion recognition from facial expressions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Differences in male and female subjective experience and physiological reactions to emotional stimuli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poláčková Šolcová, Iva; Lačev, Alek

    2017-07-01

    Research based on self-reported data often indicates that women are the more emotional sex. The present study examined differences in emotion between the sexes across two components of the emotional process: subjective experience and physiological reactions to emotional stimuli. During the experimental study, participants (N=124; 22.5±2.88; 51 males) subjectively rated their emotional experience (valence and intensity) towards presented positive and negative affective stimuli, while physiological reactions (facial electromyography, heart rate, skin conductance, and finger skin temperature) were measured during expositions. Results from self-reports suggest that women declared more intensive emotional experiences for positive and negative stimuli and rated negative stimuli as more negative in comparison to men. Physiological measurements showed differences between the sexes in the physiological baseline measurements (facial electromyography, skin conductance and finger skin temperature). However, physiological responses towards positive or negative emotional stimuli did not prove to be different between men and women, except for finger skin temperature. Relations between self-reported subjective experiences and physiological changes were weak and insignificant. Collectively, our findings suggest certain emotional differences experienced between men and women. These differences can be found specifically in self-reported subjective experiences, while significant differences were not predominantly present in recorded physiological reactions. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  13. Functional neuroimaging of emotional learning and autonomic reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peper, Martin; Herpers, Martin; Spreer, Joachim; Hennig, Jürgen; Zentner, Josef

    2006-06-01

    This article provides a selective overview of the functional neuroimaging literature with an emphasis on emotional activation processes. Emotions are fast and flexible response systems that provide basic tendencies for adaptive action. From the range of involved component functions, we first discuss selected automatic mechanisms that control basic adaptational changes. Second, we illustrate how neuroimaging work has contributed to the mapping of the network components associated with basic emotion families (fear, anger, disgust, happiness), and secondary dimensional concepts that organise the meaning space for subjective experience and verbal labels (emotional valence, activity/intensity, approach/withdrawal, etc.). Third, results and methodological difficulties are discussed in view of own neuroimaging experiments that investigated the component functions involved in emotional learning. The amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and striatum form a network of reciprocal connections that show topographically distinct patterns of activity as a correlate of up and down regulation processes during an emotional episode. Emotional modulations of other brain systems have attracted recent research interests. Emotional neuroimaging calls for more representative designs that highlight the modulatory influences of regulation strategies and socio-cultural factors responsible for inhibitory control and extinction. We conclude by emphasising the relevance of the temporal process dynamics of emotional activations that may provide improved prediction of individual differences in emotionality.

  14. The communication of emotion during conflict in married couples.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sanford, Keith

    2012-06-01

    This study investigated emotion during interpersonal conflicts between mates. It addressed questions about how clearly couples express emotion (encoding), how accurately they recognize each other's emotion (decoding), and how well they distinguish between types of negative emotion. It was theorized that couples express and perceive both: (a) event-specific emotions, which are unique to particular people on particular occasions, and (b) contextual-couple emotions, which reflect the additive effect of emotions across different events and across both partners. Eighty-three married couples engaged in a series of two conflict conversations. Self-report ratings, observer ratings, and partner ratings were used to assess two types of negative emotion: hard emotion (e.g., angry or annoyed) and soft emotion (e.g., sad or hurt). Couples were reasonably accurate in encoding, decoding, and in distinguishing between types of emotion. Emotion expression was strongly associated with general levels of contextual-couple emotion summed across two conversations, whereas emotion perception was more closely tied to specific events. Hard emotion was readily perceived when it was overtly expressed, and soft emotion could sometimes be recognized even when it was not expressed clearly. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

  15. Empathy costs: Negative emotional bias in high empathisers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chikovani, George; Babuadze, Lasha; Iashvili, Nino; Gvalia, Tamar; Surguladze, Simon

    2015-09-30

    Excessive empathy has been associated with compassion fatigue in health professionals and caregivers. We investigated an effect of empathy on emotion processing in 137 healthy individuals of both sexes. We tested a hypothesis that high empathy may underlie increased sensitivity to negative emotion recognition which may interact with gender. Facial emotion stimuli comprised happy, angry, fearful, and sad faces presented at different intensities (mild and prototypical) and different durations (500ms and 2000ms). The parameters of emotion processing were represented by discrimination accuracy, response bias and reaction time. We found that higher empathy was associated with better recognition of all emotions. We also demonstrated that higher empathy was associated with response bias towards sad and fearful faces. The reaction time analysis revealed that higher empathy in females was associated with faster (compared with males) recognition of mildly sad faces of brief duration. We conclude that although empathic abilities were providing for advantages in recognition of all facial emotional expressions, the bias towards emotional negativity may potentially carry a risk for empathic distress. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. The effect of intranasal oxytocin on perceiving and understanding emotion on the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cardoso, Christopher; Ellenbogen, Mark A; Linnen, Anne-Marie

    2014-02-01

    Evidence suggests that intranasal oxytocin enhances the perception of emotion in facial expressions during standard emotion identification tasks. However, it is not clear whether this effect is desirable in people who do not show deficits in emotion perception. That is, a heightened perception of emotion in faces could lead to "oversensitivity" to the emotions of others in nonclinical participants. The goal of this study was to assess the effects of intranasal oxytocin on emotion perception using ecologically valid social and nonsocial visual tasks. Eighty-two participants (42 women) self-administered a 24 IU dose of intranasal oxytocin or a placebo in a double-blind, randomized experiment and then completed the perceiving and understanding emotion components of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. In this test, emotion identification accuracy is based on agreement with a normative sample. As expected, participants administered intranasal oxytocin rated emotion in facial stimuli as expressing greater emotional intensity than those given a placebo. Consequently, accurate identification of emotion in faces, based on agreement with a normative sample, was impaired in the oxytocin group relative to placebo. No such effect was observed for tests using nonsocial stimuli. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that intranasal oxytocin enhances the salience of social stimuli in the environment, but not nonsocial stimuli. The present findings support a growing literature showing that the effects of intranasal oxytocin on social cognition can be negative under certain circumstances, in this case promoting "oversensitivity" to emotion in faces in healthy people. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

  17. Impact of Emotional Intelligence on Academic Achievement and Leadership

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Beena Johnson

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, appraise and control one's emotions. It is the ability to motivate oneself even in stressful situations, to control impulsive behaviour and to manage feelings in perfect way. Emotional intelligence can be considered as a set of skills which contribute to the proper assessment and regulation of emotions, and the utilization of feelings for best achievement in academics, profession and life. Emotional Intelligence is an important predictor of success in life and has significant role in stress management and academic achievement. Students who are high academic performers, usually have higher emotional intelligence scores compared with children with scholastic backwardness. Individuals with high emotional intelligence will correctly understand emotional issues, manage stressful situations successfully and regulate emotions in the best way. They are balanced, empathetic, self-aware and sociable. They have very strong will-power and are intrinsically motivated. Emotional intelligence is also a crucial factor needed for successful leadership. It has significant role in academic and organizational success.

  18. Affective norms of 875 Spanish words for five discrete emotional categories and two emotional dimensions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hinojosa, J A; Martínez-García, N; Villalba-García, C; Fernández-Folgueiras, U; Sánchez-Carmona, A; Pozo, M A; Montoro, P R

    2016-03-01

    In the present study, we introduce affective norms for a new set of Spanish words, the Madrid Affective Database for Spanish (MADS), that were scored on two emotional dimensions (valence and arousal) and on five discrete emotional categories (happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust), as well as on concreteness, by 660 Spanish native speakers. Measures of several objective psycholinguistic variables--grammatical class, word frequency, number of letters, and number of syllables--for the words are also included. We observed high split-half reliabilities for every emotional variable and a strong quadratic relationship between valence and arousal. Additional analyses revealed several associations between the affective dimensions and discrete emotions, as well as with some psycholinguistic variables. This new corpus complements and extends prior databases in Spanish and allows for designing new experiments investigating the influence of affective content in language processing under both dimensional and discrete theoretical conceptions of emotion. These norms can be downloaded as supplemental materials for this article from www.dropbox.com/s/o6dpw3irk6utfhy/Hinojosa%20et%20al_Supplementary%20materials.xlsx?dl=0 .

  19. Effects of induced sad mood on facial emotion perception in young and older adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lawrie, Louisa; Jackson, Margaret C; Phillips, Louise H

    2018-02-15

    Older adults perceive less intense negative emotion in facial expressions compared to younger counterparts. Prior research has also demonstrated that mood alters facial emotion perception. Nevertheless, there is little evidence which evaluates the interactive effects of age and mood on emotion perception. This study investigated the effects of sad mood on younger and older adults' perception of emotional and neutral faces. Participants rated the intensity of stimuli while listening to sad music and in silence. Measures of mood were administered. Younger and older participants' rated sad faces as displaying stronger sadness when they experienced sad mood. While younger participants showed no influence of sad mood on happiness ratings of happy faces, older adults rated happy faces as conveying less happiness when they experienced sad mood. This study demonstrates how emotion perception can change when a controlled mood induction procedure is applied to alter mood in young and older participants.

  20. Induction of depressed and elated mood by music influences the perception of facial emotional expressions in healthy subjects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bouhuys, A L; Bloem, G M; Groothuis, T G

    1995-04-04

    The judgement of healthy subject rating the emotional expressions of a set of schematic drawn faces is validated (study 1) to examine the relationship between mood (depressed/elated) and judgement of emotional expressions of these faces (study 2). Study 1: 30 healthy subjects judged 12 faces with respect to the emotions they express (fear, happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, rejection and invitation). It was found that a particular face could reflect various emotions. All eight emotions were reflected in the set of faces and the emotions were consensually judged. Moreover, gender differences in judgement could be established. Study 2: In a cross-over design, 24 healthy subjects judged the faces after listening to depressing or elating music. The faces were subdivided in six 'ambiguous' faces (i.e., expressing similar amounts of positive and negative emotions) and six 'clear' faces (i.e., faces showing a preponderance of positive or negative emotions). In addition, these two types of faces were distinguished with respect to the intensity of emotions they express. 11 subjects who showed substantial differences in experienced depression after listening to the music were selected for further analysis. It was found that, when feeling more depressed, the subjects perceived more rejection/sadness in ambiguous faces (displaying less intensive emotions) and less invitation/happiness in clear faces. In addition, subjects saw more fear in clear faces that express less intensive emotions. Hence, results show a depression-related negative bias in the perception of facial displays.

  1. The role of cognitive versus emotional intelligence in Iowa Gambling Task performance: What's emotion got to do with it?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webb, Christian A; DelDonno, Sophie; Killgore, William D S

    2014-01-01

    Debate persists regarding the relative role of cognitive versus emotional processes in driving successful performance on the widely used Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). From the time of its initial development, patterns of IGT performance were commonly interpreted as primarily reflecting implicit, emotion-based processes. Surprisingly, little research has tried to directly compare the extent to which measures tapping relevant cognitive versus emotional competencies predict IGT performance in the same study. The current investigation attempts to address this question by comparing patterns of associations between IGT performance, cognitive intelligence (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence; WASI) and three commonly employed measures of emotional intelligence (EI; Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, MSCEIT; Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory, EQ-i; Self-Rated Emotional Intelligence Scale, SREIS). Results indicated that IGT performance was more strongly associated with cognitive, than emotional, intelligence. To the extent that the IGT indeed mimics "real-world" decision-making, our findings, coupled with the results of existing research, may highlight the role of deliberate, cognitive capacities over implicit, emotional processes in contributing to at least some domains of decision-making relevant to everyday life.

  2. Depressive Symptoms, Rumination, and Emotion Reactivity Among Youth: Moderation by Gender.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Somers, Jennifer A; Borelli, Jessica L; Hilt, Lori M

    2018-06-07

    The emotion context-insensitivity hypothesis (ECI; Rottenberg et al., 2005) posits that depressive symptoms are associated with blunted emotional reactivity and is supported by the results of a meta-analysis (Bylsma et al., 2008). Yet it remains unclear how strongly ECI holds across emotional response domains, whether ECI operates similarly in male and female individuals, and whether this pattern of underreactivity is observed in youth. In contrast, rumination, a cognitive style strongly associated with depressive symptoms, may be associated with heightened reactivity. We assessed the effects of youth's depressive symptoms and rumination on subjective and physiological emotion reactivity (N = 160; M age  = 12.67, SD age  = 1.12; 48% female; 94% non-Hispanic). State sadness and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were assessed during a baseline activity (nature video) and a sad mood induction. As hypothesized, depressive symptoms predicted less subjective emotional reactivity, whereas rumination predicted more subjective reactivity. Exploratory analyses revealed that associations for physiological reactivity differed by child gender. ECI may be stronger in terms of subjective rather than physiological emotional reactivity.

  3. The Distancing-Embracing model of the enjoyment of negative emotions in art reception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Menninghaus, Winfried; Wagner, Valentin; Hanich, Julian; Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Jacobsen, Thomas; Koelsch, Stefan

    2017-01-01

    Why are negative emotions so central in art reception far beyond tragedy? Revisiting classical aesthetics in the light of recent psychological research, we present a novel model to explain this much discussed (apparent) paradox. We argue that negative emotions are an important resource for the arts in general, rather than a special license for exceptional art forms only. The underlying rationale is that negative emotions have been shown to be particularly powerful in securing attention, intense emotional involvement, and high memorability, and hence is precisely what artworks strive for. Two groups of processing mechanisms are identified that conjointly adopt the particular powers of negative emotions for art's purposes. The first group consists of psychological distancing mechanisms that are activated along with the cognitive schemata of art, representation, and fiction. These schemata imply personal safety and control over continuing or discontinuing exposure to artworks, thereby preventing negative emotions from becoming outright incompatible with expectations of enjoyment. This distancing sets the stage for a second group of processing components that allow art recipients to positively embrace the experiencing of negative emotions, thereby rendering art reception more intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful. These components include compositional interplays of positive and negative emotions, the effects of aesthetic virtues of using the media of (re)presentation (musical sound, words/language, color, shapes) on emotion perception, and meaning-making efforts. Moreover, our Distancing-Embracing model proposes that concomitant mixed emotions often help integrate negative emotions into altogether pleasurable trajectories.

  4. The Phenomenology of Emotion Experience in First-Episode Psychosis

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vodušek, V V; Parnas, J; Tomori, M

    2014-01-01

    -depth interviews were conducted twice with each of the 20 participants (firstly at admission and secondly 6 months later). Data collection and analysis were guided by the principles of phenomenological study of lived experience. RESULTS: The emotion experiences described by our participants vary greatly in both......BACKGROUND: Although it has been suggested that disturbances in emotion experience and regulation play a central role in the aetiology and psychopathology of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, the phenomenology of emotion experience in schizophrenia remains under-researched. SAMPLING AND METHODS: In...... quality and intensity, but appear to have a common phenomenology. Anxiety is reported as the basic emotion which buffers, transforms and sometimes supplants all others. Emotions in general are experienced as foreign, unstable and perturbing, thereby contributing greatly to feelings of ambivalence...

  5. Effect of rational and irrational statements on intensity and 'inappropriateness' of emotional distress and irrational beliefs in psychotherapy patients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cramer, D; Kupshik, G

    1993-09-01

    Ellis's rational-emotive theory postulates that since irrational statements augment emotional distress, replacing irrational with rational statements should lessen distress. This hypothesis was tested in the initial stages of psychotherapy by having 13 and 14 clinical out-patients respectively repeat for one minute either rational or irrational statements about their major presenting psychological problem. The distinction by Ellis & Harper (1975) that 'inappropriate' emotions differ qualitatively from 'appropriate' emotions was also examined. Although the experimental intervention had no effect on a post-test measure of irrational beliefs, patients repeating rational statements had significantly lower appropriate and inappropriate negative emotions at post-test, suggesting that inappropriate emotions do not differ qualitatively from appropriate emotions and that making rational statements may lower emotional distress in patients. Patients reiterating irrational statements showed no change in emotions, implying that these kinds of irrational cognitions may have already been present.

  6. Visual search and emotion: how children with autism spectrum disorders scan emotional scenes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maccari, Lisa; Pasini, Augusto; Caroli, Emanuela; Rosa, Caterina; Marotta, Andrea; Martella, Diana; Fuentes, Luis J; Casagrande, Maria

    2014-11-01

    This study assessed visual search abilities, tested through the flicker task, in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Twenty-two children diagnosed with ASD and 22 matched typically developing (TD) children were told to detect changes in objects of central interest or objects of marginal interest (MI) embedded in either emotion-laden (positive or negative) or neutral real-world pictures. The results showed that emotion-laden pictures equally interfered with performance of both ASD and TD children, slowing down reaction times compared with neutral pictures. Children with ASD were faster than TD children, particularly in detecting changes in MI objects, the most difficult condition. However, their performance was less accurate than performance of TD children just when the pictures were negative. These findings suggest that children with ASD have better visual search abilities than TD children only when the search is particularly difficult and requires strong serial search strategies. The emotional-social impairment that is usually considered as a typical feature of ASD seems to be limited to processing of negative emotional information.

  7. The neural correlates of cognitive reappraisal during emotional autobiographical memory recall.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holland, Alisha C; Kensinger, Elizabeth A

    2013-01-01

    We used fMRI to investigate the neural processes engaged as individuals down- and up-regulated the emotions associated with negative autobiographical memories (AMs) using cognitive reappraisal strategies. Our analyses examined neural activity during three separate phases, as participants (a) viewed a reappraisal instruction (i.e., Decrease, Increase, Maintain), (b) searched for an AM referenced by a self-generated cue, and (c) elaborated upon the details of the AM being held in mind. Decreasing emotional intensity primarily engaged activity in regions previously implicated in cognitive control (e.g., dorsal and ventral lateral pFC), emotion generation and processing (e.g., amygdala, insula), and visual imagery (e.g., precuneus) as participants searched for and retrieved events. In contrast, increasing emotional intensity engaged similar regions during the instruction phase (i.e., before a memory cue was presented) and again as individuals later elaborated upon the details of the events they had recalled. These findings confirm that reappraisal can modulate neural activity during the recall of personally relevant events, although the time course of this modulation appears to depend on whether individuals are attempting to down- or up-regulate their emotions.

  8. Emotion regulation and disease adjustment in women and men with rheumatoid arthritis

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Middendorp, Henriet; Geenen, Rinie; Sorbi, Marjolijn J.; Vingerhoets, Ad J. J. M.; van Doornen, Lorenz J. P.; Bijlsma, Johannes W. J.

    2008-01-01

    Strategies to regulate emotions (alexithymia, affect intensity, and emotional expression) were examined by questionnaires in 249 female and 96 male patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA; age range: 19-87 years) and compared to the scores of 196 female control participants (age range: 19-82 years).

  9. Music-color associations are mediated by emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Palmer, Stephen E; Schloss, Karen B; Xu, Zoe; Prado-León, Lilia R

    2013-05-28

    Experimental evidence demonstrates robust cross-modal matches between music and colors that are mediated by emotional associations. US and Mexican participants chose colors that were most/least consistent with 18 selections of classical orchestral music by Bach, Mozart, and Brahms. In both cultures, faster music in the major mode produced color choices that were more saturated, lighter, and yellower whereas slower, minor music produced the opposite pattern (choices that were desaturated, darker, and bluer). There were strong correlations (0.89 music and those of the colors chosen to go with the music, supporting an emotional mediation hypothesis in both cultures. Additional experiments showed similarly robust cross-modal matches from emotionally expressive faces to colors and from music to emotionally expressive faces. These results provide further support that music-to-color associations are mediated by common emotional associations.

  10. Helping yourself helps others: Linking children's emotion regulation to prosocial behavior through sympathy and trust.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Ju-Hyun; Colasante, Tyler; Malti, Tina

    2018-06-01

    Although emotionally well-regulated children are more likely to behave prosocially, the psychological processes that connect their emotion regulation abilities and prosocial behavior are less clear. We tested if other-oriented sympathy and trust mediated the links between emotion regulation capacities (i.e., resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA], negative emotional intensity, and sadness regulation) and prosocial behavior in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-olds (N = 131; 49% girls). Resting RSA was calculated from children's electrocardiogram data in response to a nondescript video. Sympathy was child and caregiver reported, whereas negative emotional intensity, sadness regulation, trust, and prosocial behavior were caregiver reported. Regardless of age, higher resting RSA was linked to higher sympathy, which was associated with higher prosocial behavior. The positive link between sadness regulation and prosocial behavior was mediated by higher sympathy and trust. Children's other-oriented psychological processes may play important roles in translating certain emotion regulation capacities into prosocial behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  11. Emotional cues enhance the attentional effects on spatial and temporal resolution.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bocanegra, Bruno R; Zeelenberg, René

    2011-12-01

    In the present study, we demonstrated that the emotional significance of a spatial cue enhances the effect of covert attention on spatial and temporal resolution (i.e., our ability to discriminate small spatial details and fast temporal flicker). Our results indicated that fearful face cues, as compared with neutral face cues, enhanced the attentional benefits in spatial resolution but also enhanced the attentional deficits in temporal resolution. Furthermore, we observed that the overall magnitudes of individuals' attentional effects correlated strongly with the magnitude of the emotion × attention interaction effect. Combined, these findings provide strong support for the idea that emotion enhances the strength of a cue's attentional response.

  12. Major depressive disorder alters perception of emotional body movements

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Morten eKaletsch

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Much recent research has shown an association between mood disorders and an altered emotion perception. However, these studies were conducted mainly with stimuli such as faces. This is the first study to examine possible differences in how people with major depressive disorder (MDD and healthy controls perceive emotions expressed via body movements. 30 patients with MDD and 30 healthy controls observed video scenes of human interactions conveyed by point–light displays (PLDs. They rated the depicted emotions and judged their confidence in their rating. Results showed that patients with MDD rated the depicted interactions more negatively than healthy controls. They also rated interactions with negative emotionality as being more intense and were more confident in their ratings. It is concluded that patients with MDD exhibit an altered emotion perception compared to healthy controls when rating emotions expressed via body movements depicted in PLDs.

  13. The influence of in-game emotions on basketball performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Uphill, Mark; Groom, Ryan; Jones, Marc

    2014-01-01

    This study examined the influence of emotions on performance in basketball. Six female basketball players were videotaped in six games. Frequency of performance behaviours was recorded minute-by-minute and indices of successful (SGI) and unsuccessful (UGI) game involvement derived for each player. Post-game, players reported the intensity of experienced emotions (anger, anxiety, embarrassment, excitement and happiness), and the time of the eliciting incident. The only emotion revealed as a significant predictor of SGI was happiness; both anger and embarrassment were significant predictors of increased UGI. Consideration of individual player analyses suggests that there is variation in the magnitude of the influence of emotions on performance and the extent to which this influence was helpful or harmful to performance. The study provides evidence that emotions are associated with changes in game behaviours in competition. Implications for further research examining the emotion-performance relationship are discussed.

  14. Emotional control in Chinese female cancer survivors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ho, Rainbow T H; Chan, Cecilia L W; Ho, Samuel M Y

    2004-11-01

    Chinese persons are not known as strong in expressing emotions, especially negative ones. However, being diagnosed with cancer and going through treatment can be an emotionally traumatic experience and cancer patients are supposed to have a stronger need to express these negative feelings. The control of expression of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and depression in Chinese female cancer survivors (n=139) was examined in the present study using the Chinese version of the Courtauld Emotional Control Scale (CECS). The reliability, internal consistency and validity of the Chinese CECS were comparable to the original English scale. Correlation analyses suggested that cancer survivors with higher emotional control tended to have higher stress, anxiety and depression levels and to adopt negative coping with cancer. Regression analysis showed that emotional control would positively predict stress level even after the effect of depressed mood was under control. Further investigations are suggested in order to elucidate the causal relationships and specific cultural factors affecting emotional control in Chinese cancer survivors and, most importantly, its effect on health outcomes. Copyright (c) 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  15. Film clips and narrative text as subjective emotion elicitation techniques.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zupan, Barbra; Babbage, Duncan R

    2017-01-01

    Film clips and narrative text are useful techniques in eliciting emotion in a laboratory setting but have not been examined side-by-side using the same methodology. This study examined the self-identification of emotions elicited by film clip and narrative text stimuli to confirm that selected stimuli appropriately target the intended emotions. Seventy participants viewed 30 film clips, and 40 additional participants read 30 narrative texts. Participants identified the emotion experienced (happy, sad, angry, fearful, neutral-six stimuli each). Eighty-five percent of participants self-identified the target emotion for at least two stimuli for all emotion categories of film clips, except angry (only one) and for all categories of narrative text, except fearful (only one). The most effective angry text was correctly identified 74% of the time. Film clips were more effective in eliciting all target emotions in participants for eliciting the correct emotion (angry), intensity rating (happy, sad), or both (fearful).

  16. Machiavellian emotion regulation in a cognitive reappraisal task: An fMRI study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deak, Anita; Bodrogi, Barbara; Biro, Brigitte; Perlaki, Gabor; Orsi, Gergely; Bereczkei, Tamas

    2017-06-01

    Affective coldness is one of the main features of Machiavellianism. Recent studies have revealed that Machiavellians are emotionally detached and that this "affective blunting" is associated with intense feelings, emotional instability, negative emotions, and difficulty in enduring distress. We used brain-imaging techniques to investigate emotion regulation in Machiavellianism at a neuropsychological level. We used situations in which participants were required to demonstrate emotional flexibility to explore the controversy surrounding the fact that Machiavellianism is associated with both cold-mindedness and emotional instability. Participants performed a reappraisal task in which emotionally evocative pictures (from the International Affective Picture System) were presented in different contexts (negative, positive, and neutral). They were asked to interpret a scenario according to its title and to reinterpret it according to another context created by a new title (e.g., negatively labeled pictures shifted to positively labeled ones). During task performance, Machiavellians showed increased activation of brain regions associated with emotion generation-for example, the amygdala and insula. This indicates that Machiavellian individuals are able to be involved emotionally in social situations. Increased activation in the temporal and parahippocampal regions during reappraisal suggests that Machiavellians use semantic-perceptual processes to construct alternative interpretations of the same situation and have enhanced memory for emotional stimuli. Furthermore, they seem to possess an intense awareness that leads them to shift attention from external to internal information to detect environmental changes. These cognitive processes may enable them to adjust their behavior quickly. This study supports the flexibility hypothesis of Machiavellianism and suggests that Machiavellians' approach to emotion regulation is linked to their rational mode of thinking.

  17. Motivation Matters: Differing Effects of Pre-Goal and Post-Goal Emotions on Attention and Memory

    OpenAIRE

    Kaplan, Robin L.; Van Damme, Ilse; Levine, Linda J.

    2012-01-01

    People often show enhanced memory for information that is central to emotional events and impaired memory for peripheral details. The intensity of arousal elicited by an emotional event is commonly held to be the mechanism underlying memory narrowing, with the implication that all sources of emotional arousal should have comparable effects. Discrete emotions differ in their effects on memory, however, with some emotions broadening rather than narrowing the range of information attended to and...

  18. Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People's Emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weis, Patrick P; Herbert, Cornelia

    2017-01-01

    According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person ("my," "his") or the non-referential negation term ("no") as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions ( M. Zygomaticus , M. Corrugator ), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader's self (e.g., "my happiness," "my joy") than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., "his happiness," "his joy"), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real communication partner is present

  19. Generation of facial expressions from emotion using a fuzzy rule based system

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bui, T.D.; Heylen, Dirk K.J.; Poel, Mannes; Nijholt, Antinus; Stumptner, Markus; Corbett, Dan; Brooks, Mike

    2001-01-01

    We propose a fuzzy rule-based system to map representations of the emotional state of an animated agent onto muscle contraction values for the appropriate facial expressions. Our implementation pays special attention to the way in which continuous changes in the intensity of emotions can be

  20. Acceptance alone is a better predictor of psychopathology and well-being than emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kotsou, Ilios; Leys, Christophe; Fossion, Pierre

    2018-01-15

    Emotional competence, emotion regulation, mindfulness and acceptance have all been strongly associated to emotional disorders and psychological well-being in multiple studies. However little research has compared the unique predictive ability of these different constructs. We hypothesised that they will all share a large proportion of common variance and that when compared to the broader constructs emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness, acceptance alone would predict a larger proportion of unique variance METHODS: 228 participants from a community sample completed anonymously measures of anxiety, depression, happiness, acceptance, mindfulness, emotional competence and emotion regulation. We then ran multiple regressions to assess and compare the predictive ability of these different constructs. For measures of psychological distress, the acceptance measure uniquely accounted for between 4 and 30 times the variance that the emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness measures did. These results are based on cross-sectional designs and non-clinical samples, longitudinal and experimental studies as clinical samples may be useful in order to assess the potential protective power of acceptance over time. Another limitation is the use of self-report questionnaires. Results confirmed our hypothesis, supporting the research on the importance of acceptance as a central factor in the understanding of the onset and maintenance of emotional disorders. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  1. Emotion in Schizophrenia: Where Feeling Meets Thinking.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kring, Ann M; Caponigro, Janelle M

    2010-08-01

    Our understanding of the nature of emotional difficulties in schizophrenia has been greatly enhanced by translational research over the past two decades. By incorporating methods and theories from affective science, researchers have been able to discover that people with schizophrenia exhibit very few outward displays of emotion but report experiencing strong feelings in the presence of emotionally evocative stimuli or events. Recent behavioral, psychophysiological, and brain imaging research has pointed to the importance of considering the time course of emotion in schizophrenia. This work has shown that people with schizophrenia have the ability to experience emotion in the moment; however, they appear to have difficulties when anticipating future pleasurable experiences, and this perhaps affects their motivation to have such experiences. While advancements in our understanding of emotional experience and expression in individuals with schizophrenia have been made, these developments have led to a new collection of research questions directed at understanding the time course of emotion in schizophrenia, including the role of memory and anticipation in motivated behavior, translating laboratory findings to the development of new assessment tools and new treatments targeting emotional impairments in people with this disorder.

  2. Evoked emotions predict food choice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dalenberg, Jelle R; Gutjar, Swetlana; Ter Horst, Gert J; de Graaf, Kees; Renken, Remco J; Jager, Gerry

    2014-01-01

    In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.

  3. The effect of the social regulation of emotion on emotional long-term memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Flores, Luis E; Berenbaum, Howard

    2017-04-01

    Memories for emotional events tend to be stronger than for neutral events, and weakening negative memories can be helpful to promote well-being. The present study examined whether the social regulation of emotion (in the form of handholding) altered the strength of emotional long-term memory. A sample of 219 undergraduate students viewed sets of negative, neutral, and positive images. Each participant held a stress ball while viewing half of the images and held someone's hand while viewing the other half. Participants returned 1 week later to complete a recognition task. Performance on the recognition task demonstrated that participants had lower memory accuracy for negative but not for positive pictures that were shown while they were holding someone's hand compared with when they were holding a stress ball. Although handholding altered the strength of negative emotional long-term memory, it did not down-regulate negative affective response as measured by self-report or facial expressivity. The present findings provide evidence that the social regulation of emotion can help weaken memory for negative information. Given the role of strong negative memories in different forms of psychopathology (e.g., depression, posttraumatic stress disorder), these findings may help better understand how close relationships protect against psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  4. Can conflict be energizing? a study of task conflict, positive emotions, and job satisfaction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Todorova, Gergana; Bear, Julia B; Weingart, Laurie R

    2014-05-01

    Scholars have assumed that the presence of negative emotions during task conflict implies the absence of positive emotions. However, emotions researchers have shown that positive and negative emotions are not 2 ends of a bipolar continuum; rather, they represent 2 separate, orthogonal dimensions. Drawing on affective events theory, we develop and test hypotheses about the effects of task conflict on positive emotions and job satisfaction. To this end, we distinguish among the frequency, intensity, and information gained from task conflict. Using field data from 232 employees in a long-term health care organization, we find that more frequent mild task conflict expression engenders more information acquisition, but more frequent intense task conflict expression hinders it. Because of the information gains from mild task conflict expression, employees feel more active, energized, interested, and excited, and these positive active emotions increase job satisfaction. The information gained during task conflict, however, is not always energizing: It depends on the extent to which the behavioral context involves active learning and whether the conflict is cross-functional. We discuss theoretical implications for conflict, emotions, and job satisfaction in organizations. (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

  5. Emotional well-being of orphans and vulnerable children in Ogun ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    Previous research has found strong links between the emotional well-being of children and young people to their personal, social development and academic performance. This study examined stigmatisation, sexual involvement and school enrolment as predictors of emotional well-being of orphans and vulnerable ...

  6. The adaption study of emotional intelligence inventory in sport

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    İlhan Adiloğulları

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Aim: The purpose of this study was to test the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of Emotional Intelligence Inventory in Sport (EIIS. Material and Methods: The emotional intelligence inventory in sport which have consists of nineteen items and five subscales, 157 female (age=20,10±1,95 and 247 male (age=21,25±2,18 in total 404 (age=20,80±2,17 participants completed. Respondents of the EIIS indicate the extent to which they agree with each statement on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree to 5 (strongly agree. Factor structures of the scale were tested by confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS programme. Results: The resulting factor is appropriate for the 19-item inventory value but is below the desired value of the item-total correlation values b4 and paragraphs are seen as loaded with low load factors. However, there was only one item with low factor loadings that was excluded from the inventory. It was obtained acceptable fit index values of inventory that confirming factor structures of Turkish version. Internal consistency coefficients of EIIS were found ranging from 0,69 (Appraisal of others emotions, 0,85 (Appraisal of own emotions, 0,67 (Emotional regulation 0,85 (Use of emotions and 0,61 (Social skills. Conclusion: Turkish version of the Emotional intelligence inventory in Sport is can be used for Turkish athletes.

  7. Resilience and Emotional Intelligence: which role in achievement motivation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paola Magnano

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available In the framework of Positive Organizational Behavior, the construct of Psychological Capital identifies four psychological capacities that affect motivation and performance in the workplace: self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Emotional Intelligence, then, addresses self-regulatory processes of emotions and motivation that enable people to make adjustments to achieve individual, group, and organizational goals; Emotional Intelligence is strongly correlated with individual advancement and success in an organizational setting and with individual performance. Moreover, Emotional Intelligence is considered an antecedent to resilience. The present study aims to investigate the role of resilience and emotional intelligence in achievement motivation, verifying if emotional intelligence mediates the relationship among resilience and achievement motivation. Participants are 488 Italian workers, aged between 18 and 55 years. The findings confirm the significant role played by emotional intelligence on resilience and on motivation to achievement.

  8. The emotional carryover effect in memory for words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schmidt, Stephen R; Schmidt, Constance R

    2016-08-01

    Emotional material rarely occurs in isolation; rather it is experienced in the spatial and temporal proximity of less emotional items. Some previous researchers have found that emotional stimuli impair memory for surrounding information, whereas others have reported evidence for memory facilitation. Researchers have not determined which types of emotional items or memory tests produce effects that carry over to surrounding items. Six experiments are reported that measured carryover from emotional words varying in arousal to temporally adjacent neutral words. Taboo, non-taboo emotional, and neutral words were compared using different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), recognition and recall tests, and intentional and incidental memory instructions. Strong emotional memory effects were obtained in all six experiments. However, emotional items influenced memory for temporally adjacent words under limited conditions. Words following taboo words were more poorly remembered than words following neutral words when relatively short SOAs were employed. Words preceding taboo words were affected only when recall tests and relatively short retention intervals were used. These results suggest that increased attention to the emotional items sometimes produces emotional carryover effects; however, retrieval processes also contribute to retrograde amnesia and may extend the conditions under which anterograde amnesia is observed.

  9. Recruitment of Language-, Emotion- and Speech-Timing Associated Brain Regions for Expressing Emotional Prosody: Investigation of Functional Neuroanatomy with fMRI.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mitchell, Rachel L C; Jazdzyk, Agnieszka; Stets, Manuela; Kotz, Sonja A

    2016-01-01

    We aimed to progress understanding of prosodic emotion expression by establishing brain regions active when expressing specific emotions, those activated irrespective of the target emotion, and those whose activation intensity varied depending on individual performance. BOLD contrast data were acquired whilst participants spoke non-sense words in happy, angry or neutral tones, or performed jaw-movements. Emotion-specific analyses demonstrated that when expressing angry prosody, activated brain regions included the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri, the insula, and the basal ganglia. When expressing happy prosody, the activated brain regions also included the superior temporal gyrus, insula, and basal ganglia, with additional activation in the anterior cingulate. Conjunction analysis confirmed that the superior temporal gyrus and basal ganglia were activated regardless of the specific emotion concerned. Nevertheless, disjunctive comparisons between the expression of angry and happy prosody established that anterior cingulate activity was significantly higher for angry prosody than for happy prosody production. Degree of inferior frontal gyrus activity correlated with the ability to express the target emotion through prosody. We conclude that expressing prosodic emotions (vs. neutral intonation) requires generic brain regions involved in comprehending numerous aspects of language, emotion-related processes such as experiencing emotions, and in the time-critical integration of speech information.

  10. Recruitment of language-, emotion- and speech timing associated brain regions for expressing emotional prosody: Investigation of functional neuroanatomy with fMRI.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rachel L. C. Mitchell

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available We aimed to progress understanding of prosodic emotion expression by establishing brain regions active when expressing specific emotions, those activated irrespective of the target emotion, and those whose activation intensity varied depending on individual performance. BOLD contrast data were acquired whilst participants spoke nonsense words in happy, angry or neutral tones, or performed jaw-movements. Emotion-specific analyses demonstrated that when expressing angry prosody, activated brain regions included the inferior frontal and superior temporal gyri, the insula, and the basal ganglia. When expressing happy prosody, the activated brain regions also included the superior temporal gyrus, insula, and basal ganglia, with additional activation in the anterior cingulate. Conjunction analysis confirmed that the superior temporal gyrus and basal ganglia were activated regardless of the specific emotion concerned. Nevertheless, disjunctive comparisons between the expression of angry and happy prosody established that anterior cingulate activity was significantly higher for angry prosody than for happy prosody production. Degree of inferior frontal gyrus activity correlated with the ability to express the target emotion through prosody. We conclude that expressing prosodic emotions (vs neutral intonation requires generic brain regions involved in comprehending numerous aspects of language, emotion-related processes such as experiencing emotions, and in the time-critical integration of speech information.

  11. Emotion unfolded by motion: a role for parietal lobe in decoding dynamic facial expressions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarkheil, Pegah; Goebel, Rainer; Schneider, Frank; Mathiak, Klaus

    2013-12-01

    Facial expressions convey important emotional and social information and are frequently applied in investigations of human affective processing. Dynamic faces may provide higher ecological validity to examine perceptual and cognitive processing of facial expressions. Higher order processing of emotional faces was addressed by varying the task and virtual face models systematically. Blood oxygenation level-dependent activation was assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 20 healthy volunteers while viewing and evaluating either emotion or gender intensity of dynamic face stimuli. A general linear model analysis revealed that high valence activated a network of motion-responsive areas, indicating that visual motion areas support perceptual coding for the motion-based intensity of facial expressions. The comparison of emotion with gender discrimination task revealed increased activation of inferior parietal lobule, which highlights the involvement of parietal areas in processing of high level features of faces. Dynamic emotional stimuli may help to emphasize functions of the hypothesized 'extended' over the 'core' system for face processing.

  12. “Emotional” versus “Emotioneel”: Advertising Language and Emotional Appraisal

    OpenAIRE

    Puntoni, Stefano

    2006-01-01

    textabstractThe article contributes to current understanding of language effects in advertising by uncovering a previously ignored mechanism shaping consumer response to an increasingly globalized marketplace. Extending recent psycholinguistic research on the emotions of bilinguals, a series of experiments shows that bilingual consumers report greater perceived emotional intensity for stimuli (e.g. ads) presented in their native language than in their second language.

  13. Perceived vulnerability as a common basis of moral emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dijker, Anton J M

    2010-06-01

    It is theorized that many moral emotions are triggered when a mechanism for (parental) care is activated by perceived vulnerability, and changes in the care object's well-being are subsequently evaluated and causally attributed. Participants reported different moral emotions (tenderness, concern, sympathy, guilt, and moral anger) in relation to different photographs of males and females widely differing in age. Using variation between emotion objects, it was shown that emotional reactions were highly intercorrelated and strongly related to perceived vulnerability and aroused protective tendency; with children and elderly arousing the strongest, and adult males the weakest, emotions. Moreover, these intercorrelations largely disappeared when vulnerability and protective tendency were statistically controlled. Theoretical implications are discussed.

  14. The role of cognitive versus emotional intelligence in Iowa Gambling Task performance: What’s emotion got to do with it?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webb, Christian A.; DelDonno, Sophie; Killgore, William D.S.

    2014-01-01

    Debate persists regarding the relative role of cognitive versus emotional processes in driving successful performance on the widely used Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). From the time of its initial development, patterns of IGT performance were commonly interpreted as primarily reflecting implicit, emotion-based processes. Surprisingly, little research has tried to directly compare the extent to which measures tapping relevant cognitive versus emotional competencies predict IGT performance in the same study. The current investigation attempts to address this question by comparing patterns of associations between IGT performance, cognitive intelligence (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence; WASI) and three commonly employed measures of emotional intelligence (EI; Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test, MSCEIT; Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory, EQ-i; Self-Rated Emotional Intelligence Scale, SREIS). Results indicated that IGT performance was more strongly associated with cognitive, than emotional, intelligence. To the extent that the IGT indeed mimics “real-world” decision-making, our findings, coupled with the results of existing research, may highlight the role of deliberate, cognitive capacities over implicit, emotional processes in contributing to at least some domains of decision-making relevant to everyday life. PMID:25635149

  15. Basic Emotions in the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL BE): New Method of Classifying Emotional Stimuli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wierzba, Małgorzata; Riegel, Monika; Wypych, Marek; Jednoróg, Katarzyna; Turnau, Paweł; Grabowska, Anna; Marchewka, Artur

    2015-01-01

    The Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL) has recently been introduced as a standardized database of Polish words suitable for studying various aspects of language and emotions. Though the NAWL was originally based on the most commonly used dimensional approach, it is not the only way of studying emotions. Another framework is based on discrete emotional categories. Since the two perspectives are recognized as complementary, the aim of the present study was to supplement the NAWL database by the addition of categories corresponding to basic emotions. Thus, 2902 Polish words from the NAWL were presented to 265 subjects, who were instructed to rate them according to the intensity of each of the five basic emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear and disgust. The general characteristics of the present word database, as well as the relationships between the studied variables are shown to be consistent with typical patterns found in previous studies using similar databases for different languages. Here we present the Basic Emotions in the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL BE) as a database of verbal material suitable for highly controlled experimental research. To make the NAWL more convenient to use, we introduce a comprehensive method of classifying stimuli to basic emotion categories. We discuss the advantages of our method in comparison to other methods of classification. Additionally, we provide an interactive online tool (http://exp.lobi.nencki.gov.pl/nawl-analysis) to help researchers browse and interactively generate classes of stimuli to meet their specific requirements.

  16. Face or body? Oxytocin improves perception of emotions from facial expressions in incongruent emotional body context.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perry, Anat; Aviezer, Hillel; Goldstein, Pavel; Palgi, Sharon; Klein, Ehud; Shamay-Tsoory, Simone G

    2013-11-01

    The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been repeatedly reported to play an essential role in the regulation of social cognition in humans in general, and specifically in enhancing the recognition of emotions from facial expressions. The later was assessed in different paradigms that rely primarily on isolated and decontextualized emotional faces. However, recent evidence has indicated that the perception of basic facial expressions is not context invariant and can be categorically altered by context, especially body context, at early perceptual levels. Body context has a strong effect on our perception of emotional expressions, especially when the actual target face and the contextually expected face are perceptually similar. To examine whether and how OT affects emotion recognition, we investigated the role of OT in categorizing facial expressions in incongruent body contexts. Our results show that in the combined process of deciphering emotions from facial expressions and from context, OT gives an advantage to the face. This advantage is most evident when the target face and the contextually expected face are perceptually similar. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Emotional Interdependence and Well-Being in Close Relationships

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sels, Laura; Ceulemans, Eva; Bulteel, Kirsten; Kuppens, Peter

    2016-01-01

    Emotional interdependence—here defined as partners’ emotions being linked to each other across time—is often considered a key characteristic of healthy romantic relationships. But is this actually the case? We conducted an experience-sampling study with 50 couples indicating their feelings 10 times a day for 7 days and modeled emotional interdependence for each couple separately taking a dyadographic approach. The majority of couples (64%) did not demonstrate strong signs of emotional interdependence, and couples that did, showed great inter-dyad differences in their specific patterns. Individuals from emotionally more interdependent couples reported higher individual well-being than individuals from more independent couples in terms of life satisfaction but not depression. Relational well-being was not (relationship satisfaction) or even negatively (empathic concern) related to the degree of emotional interdependence. Especially driving the emotions of the partner (i.e., sender effects) accounted for these associations, opposed to following the emotions of the partner (i.e., receiver effects). Additionally, assessing emotional interdependence for positive and negative emotions separately elucidated that primarily emotional interdependence for positive emotions predicted more self-reported life satisfaction and less empathic concern. These findings highlight the existence of large inter-dyad differences, explore relationships between emotional interdependence and key well-being variables, and demonstrate differential correlates for sending and receiving emotions. PMID:27014114

  18. Emotional interdependence and well-being in close relationships

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laura eSels

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available Emotional interdependence—here defined as partners’ emotions being linked to each other across time—is often considered a key characteristic of healthy romantic relationships. But is this actually the case? We conducted an experience-sampling study with 50 couples indicating their feelings 10 times a day for 7 days and modeled emotional interdependence for each couple separately taking a dyadographic approach. The majority of couples (64% did not demonstrate strong signs of emotional interdependence, and couples that did, showed great inter-dyad differences in their specific patterns. Individuals from emotionally more interdependent couples reported higher individual well-being than individuals from more independent couples in terms of life satisfaction but not depression. Relational well-being was not (relationship satisfaction or even negatively (empathic concern related to the degree of emotional interdependence. Especially driving the emotions of the partner (i.e., sender effects accounted for these associations, opposed to following the emotions of the partner (i.e., receiver effects. Additionally, assessing emotional interdependence for positive and negative emotions separately elucidated that primarily emotional interdependence for positive emotions predicted more self-reported life satisfaction and less empathic concern. These findings highlight the existence of large inter-dyad differences, explore relationships between emotional interdependence and key well-being variables, and demonstrate differential correlates for sending and receiving emotions.

  19. Pain-related stress in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and salivary cortisol reactivity to socio-emotional stress in 3-month-old very preterm infants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Provenzi, Livio; Giusti, Lorenzo; Fumagalli, Monica; Tasca, Hilarj; Ciceri, Francesca; Menozzi, Giorgia; Mosca, Fabio; Morandi, Francesco; Borgatti, Renato; Montirosso, Rosario

    2016-10-01

    Very preterm (VPT) infants are hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and exposed to varying levels of skin-breaking procedures (pain-related stress), even in absence of severe clinical conditions. Repeated and prolonged pain exposure may alter hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity in VPT infants. During the post-discharge period, altered HPA axis reactivity has been documented in response to non-social stressors, using salivary cortisol as a biomarker. However, little is known about the effects of NICU pain-related stress on subsequent HPA axis reactivity to socio-emotional stress in infants. We examined the relationship between pain-related stress in NICU and HPA axis reactivity (i.e., salivary cortisol reactivity) to an age-appropriate socio-emotional condition in 37 healthy VPT infants compared to 53 full-term (FT) controls. The number of skin-breaking procedures was obtained across NICU stay for VPT infants. At 3 months (corrected age for prematurity), all infants participated in the maternal Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) procedure, in order to assess HPA axis reactivity to socio-emotional stress (i.e., maternal unresponsiveness). VPT infants exhibited a blunted salivary cortisol reactivity, which was associated with the amount of skin-breaking procedures during NICU: greater pain-related stress predicted lower salivary cortisol reactivity, adjusting for neonatal confounders. These findings further advance our knowledge of how early exposure to pain-related stress in NICU contributes to the programming of an altered HPA axis reactivity to socio-emotional stress in 3-month-old VPT infants, even in the absence of major perinatal complications. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. How Context Influences Our Perception of Emotional Faces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Calbi, Marta; Heimann, Katrin; Barratt, Daniel

    2017-01-01

    corresponding to one of the so called ‘basic emotions.’ However, our real experience during social interactions is different: facial expressions of emotion are mostly perceived in a wider context, constituted by body language, the surrounding environment, and our beliefs and expectations. Already in the early...... twentieth century, the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov argued that such context, established by intermediate shots of strong emotional content, could significantly change our interpretation of facial expressions in film. Prior experiments have shown behavioral effects pointing in this direction, but have...

  1. Similar representations of emotions across faces and voices.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuhn, Lisa Katharina; Wydell, Taeko; Lavan, Nadine; McGettigan, Carolyn; Garrido, Lúcia

    2017-09-01

    [Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 17(6) of Emotion (see record 2017-18585-001). In the article, the copyright attribution was incorrectly listed and the Creative Commons CC-BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "© 2017 The Author(s)" and the omitted disclaimer is below. All versions of this article have been corrected. "This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher."] Emotions are a vital component of social communication, carried across a range of modalities and via different perceptual signals such as specific muscle contractions in the face and in the upper respiratory system. Previous studies have found that emotion recognition impairments after brain damage depend on the modality of presentation: recognition from faces may be impaired whereas recognition from voices remains preserved, and vice versa. On the other hand, there is also evidence for shared neural activation during emotion processing in both modalities. In a behavioral study, we investigated whether there are shared representations in the recognition of emotions from faces and voices. We used a within-subjects design in which participants rated the intensity of facial expressions and nonverbal vocalizations for each of the 6 basic emotion labels. For each participant and each modality, we then computed a representation matrix with the intensity ratings of each emotion. These matrices allowed us to examine the patterns of confusions between emotions and to characterize the representations

  2. Monopitched expression of emotions in different vowels.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Waaramaa, Teija; Laukkanen, Anne-Maria; Alku, Paavo; Väyrynen, Eero

    2008-01-01

    Fundamental frequency (F(0)) and intensity are known to be important variables in the communication of emotions in speech. In singing, however, pitch is predetermined and yet the voice should convey emotions. Hence, other vocal parameters are needed to express emotions. This study investigated the role of voice source characteristics and formant frequencies in the communication of emotions in monopitched vowel samples [a:], [i:] and [u:]. Student actors (5 males, 8 females) produced the emotional samples simulating joy, tenderness, sadness, anger and a neutral emotional state. Equivalent sound level (L(eq)), alpha ratio [SPL (1-5 kHz) - SPL (50 Hz-1 kHz)] and formant frequencies F1-F4 were measured. The [a:] samples were inverse filtered and the estimated glottal flows were parameterized with the normalized amplitude quotient [NAQ = f(AC)/(d(peak)T)]. Interrelations of acoustic variables were studied by ANCOVA, considering the valence and psychophysiological activity of the expressions. Forty participants listened to the randomized samples (n = 210) for identification of the emotions. The capacity of monopitched vowels for conveying emotions differed. L(eq) and NAQ differentiated activity levels. NAQ also varied independently of L(eq). In [a:], filter (formant frequencies F1-F4) was related to valence. The interplay between voice source and F1-F4 warrants a synthesis study. Copyright 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel.

  3. Impaired emotion recognition in music in Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Tricht, Mirjam J; Smeding, Harriet M M; Speelman, Johannes D; Schmand, Ben A

    2010-10-01

    Music has the potential to evoke strong emotions and plays a significant role in the lives of many people. Music might therefore be an ideal medium to assess emotion recognition. We investigated emotion recognition in music in 20 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD) and 20 matched healthy volunteers. The role of cognitive dysfunction and other disease characteristics in emotion recognition was also evaluated. We used 32 musical excerpts that expressed happiness, sadness, fear or anger. PD patients were impaired in recognizing fear and anger in music. Fear recognition was associated with executive functions in PD patients and in healthy controls, but the emotion recognition impairments of PD patients persisted after adjusting for executive functioning. We found no differences in the recognition of happy or sad music. Emotion recognition was not related to depressive symptoms, disease duration or severity of motor symptoms. We conclude that PD patients are impaired in recognizing complex emotions in music. Although this impairment is related to executive dysfunction, our findings most likely reflect an additional primary deficit in emotional processing. 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. How Context Influences Our Perception of Emotional Faces

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Calbi, Marta; Heimann, Katrin; Barratt, Daniel

    2017-01-01

    Facial expressions are of major importance in understanding the mental and emotional states of others. So far, most studies on the perception and comprehension of emotions have used isolated facial expressions as stimuli; for example, photographs of actors displaying facial expressions...... corresponding to one of the so called ‘basic emotions.’ However, our real experience during social interactions is different: facial expressions of emotion are mostly perceived in a wider context, constituted by body language, the surrounding environment, and our beliefs and expectations. Already in the early...... twentieth century, the Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov argued that such context, established by intermediate shots of strong emotional content, could significantly change our interpretation of facial expressions in film. Prior experiments have shown behavioral effects pointing in this direction, but have...

  5. Action speaks louder than words: Empathy mainly modulates emotions from theory of mind-laden parts of a story

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Wallentin, Mikkel; Simonsen, Arndis; Nielsen, Andreas Højlund

    2013-01-01

    Narratives are thought to evoke emotions through empathy, which is thought to rely on theory of mind (a.k.a. “mentalizing”). In this study we investigated the extent to which these assumptions hold. Young adults rated their experienced emotional intensity while listening to a narrative...... and subsequently took an empathy test. We show how empathy correlates well with overall level of experienced intensity. However, no correlation with empathy is found in those parts of the story that received highest intensity ratings across participants. Reverse correlation analysis reveals that these parts...... contain physical threat scenarios, while parts where empathy score is highly correlated with intensity describe social interaction that can only be understood through mentalizing. This suggests that narratives evoke emotions, both based on “simple” physical contagion (affective empathy) and on complex...

  6. Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Yaling; Chang, Lei; Yang, Meng; Huo, Meng

    2016-01-01

    The present study investigated gender differences in both emotional experience and expressivity. Heart rate (HR) was recorded as an indicator of emotional experience while the participants watched 16 video clips that induced eight types of emotion (sadness, anger, horror, disgust, neutrality, amusement, surprise, and pleasure). We also asked the participants to report valence, arousal, and motivation as indicators of emotional expressivity. Overall, the results revealed gender differences in emotional experience and emotional expressivity. When watching videos that induced anger, amusement, and pleasure, men showed larger decreases in HR, whereas women reported higher levels of arousal. There was no gender difference in HR when the participants watched videos that induced horror and disgust, but women reported lower valence, higher arousal, and stronger avoidance motivation than did men. Finally, no gender difference was observed in sadness or surprise, although there was one exception—women reported higher arousal when watching videos that induced sadness. The findings suggest that, when watching videos that induce an emotional response, men often have more intense emotional experiences, whereas women have higher emotional expressivity, particularly for negative emotions. In addition, gender differences depend on the specific emotion type but not the valence. PMID:27362361

  7. Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Yaling; Chang, Lei; Yang, Meng; Huo, Meng; Zhou, Renlai

    2016-01-01

    The present study investigated gender differences in both emotional experience and expressivity. Heart rate (HR) was recorded as an indicator of emotional experience while the participants watched 16 video clips that induced eight types of emotion (sadness, anger, horror, disgust, neutrality, amusement, surprise, and pleasure). We also asked the participants to report valence, arousal, and motivation as indicators of emotional expressivity. Overall, the results revealed gender differences in emotional experience and emotional expressivity. When watching videos that induced anger, amusement, and pleasure, men showed larger decreases in HR, whereas women reported higher levels of arousal. There was no gender difference in HR when the participants watched videos that induced horror and disgust, but women reported lower valence, higher arousal, and stronger avoidance motivation than did men. Finally, no gender difference was observed in sadness or surprise, although there was one exception-women reported higher arousal when watching videos that induced sadness. The findings suggest that, when watching videos that induce an emotional response, men often have more intense emotional experiences, whereas women have higher emotional expressivity, particularly for negative emotions. In addition, gender differences depend on the specific emotion type but not the valence.

  8. Gender Differences in Emotional Response: Inconsistency between Experience and Expressivity.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yaling Deng

    Full Text Available The present study investigated gender differences in both emotional experience and expressivity. Heart rate (HR was recorded as an indicator of emotional experience while the participants watched 16 video clips that induced eight types of emotion (sadness, anger, horror, disgust, neutrality, amusement, surprise, and pleasure. We also asked the participants to report valence, arousal, and motivation as indicators of emotional expressivity. Overall, the results revealed gender differences in emotional experience and emotional expressivity. When watching videos that induced anger, amusement, and pleasure, men showed larger decreases in HR, whereas women reported higher levels of arousal. There was no gender difference in HR when the participants watched videos that induced horror and disgust, but women reported lower valence, higher arousal, and stronger avoidance motivation than did men. Finally, no gender difference was observed in sadness or surprise, although there was one exception-women reported higher arousal when watching videos that induced sadness. The findings suggest that, when watching videos that induce an emotional response, men often have more intense emotional experiences, whereas women have higher emotional expressivity, particularly for negative emotions. In addition, gender differences depend on the specific emotion type but not the valence.

  9. The role of emotion and attention in semantic processing: Evidence from N400

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Chwilla, D.J.; Tromp, J.

    2013-01-01

    Does emotional state affect language processing? Little yet is known about the interface between language and emotion. With regard to semantic processing we have shown that emotional state modulates the standard N400 effect. In particular, the N400 cloze probability effect was strongly reduced in a

  10. Expressive Suppression and Enhancement During Music-Elicited Emotions in Younger and Older Adults

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sandrine eVieillard

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available When presented with emotional visual scenes, older adults have been found to be equally capable to regulate emotion expression as younger adults, corroborating the view that emotion regulation skills are maintained or even improved in later adulthood. However, the possibility that gaze direction might help achieve an emotion control goal has not been taken into account, raising the question whether the effortful processing of expressive regulation is really spared from the general age-related decline. Since it does not allow perceptual attention to be redirected away from the emotional source, music provides a useful way to address this question. In the present study, affective, behavioral and physiological consequences of free expression of emotion, expressive suppression and expressive enhancement were measured in 31 younger and 30 older adults while they listened to positive and negative musical excerpts. The main results indicated that compared to younger adults, older adults reported experiencing less emotional intensity in response to negative music during the free expression of emotion condition. No age difference was found in the ability to amplify or reduce emotional expressions. However, an age-related decline in the ability to reduce the intensity of emotional state and an age-related increase in physiological reactivity were found when participants were instructed to suppress negative expression. Taken together, the current data support previous findings suggesting an age-related change in response to music. They also corroborate the observation that older adults are as efficient as younger adults at controlling behavioral expression. But most importantly, they suggest that when faced with auditory sources of negative emotion, older age does not always confer a better ability to regulate emotions.

  11. Evoked Emotions Predict Food Choice

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Dalenberg, Jelle R.; Gutjar, Swetlana; ter Horst, Gert J.; de Graaf, Kees; Renken, Remco J.; Jager, Gerry

    2014-01-01

    In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments.

  12. Beyond happiness: Building a science of discrete positive emotions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shiota, Michelle N; Campos, Belinda; Oveis, Christopher; Hertenstein, Matthew J; Simon-Thomas, Emiliana; Keltner, Dacher

    2017-10-01

    While trait positive emotionality and state positive-valence affect have long been the subject of intense study, the importance of differentiating among several "discrete" positive emotions has only recently begun to receive serious attention. In this article, we synthesize existing literature on positive emotion differentiation, proposing that the positive emotions are best described as branches of a "family tree" emerging from a common ancestor mediating adaptive management of fitness-critical resources (e.g., food). Examples are presented of research indicating the importance of differentiating several positive emotion constructs. We then offer a new theoretical framework, built upon a foundation of phylogenetic, neuroscience, and behavioral evidence, that accounts for core features as well as mechanisms for differentiation. We propose several directions for future research suggested by this framework and develop implications for the application of positive emotion research to translational issues in clinical psychology and the science of behavior change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  13. STUDY OF EMOTIONAL MATURITY OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS FROM THE POINT SYSTEMS APPROACH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    L. V. Tarabakina

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The article analyzes the phenomenon of emotional maturity from the perspective of various philosophical and psychological approaches (psychoanalytic, existential, humanistic, cognitive, emotional, cultural and historical. We present the author's definition and criteria for the systematic study of emotional maturity. The results of the research in the period 2009-2015. on a sample of teachers from various universities (volume 477 of some indicators of emotional maturity: situational and personal anxiety, profiles of differential emotions in stressful situations, emotional relationships in the professional activities of basic emotions motivations: interest, joy, anger, shame. The results indicate the difficulties of emotional development of teachers, hindering the achievement of maturity: the dynamics of growth in recent years closed unconscious forms of anxiety, deficiency of positive emotions and excessive intensity of negative and anxious and depressive emotions in stressful situations, teachers with low and high levels of anxiety, deficiency of motivation, which manifests itself in a variety of emotional experiences.

  14. Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music

    OpenAIRE

    Eschrich, Susann; Münte, Thomas F; Altenmüller, Eckart O

    2008-01-01

    Abstract Background Specific pieces of music can elicit strong emotions in listeners and, possibly in connection with these emotions, can be remembered even years later. However, episodic memory for emotional music compared with less emotional music has not yet been examined. We investigated whether emotional music is remembered better than less emotional music. Also, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory performance. Results Recognition of 40 musical excerpts was investiga...

  15. Agent-based Modelling of Social Emotional Decision Making in Emergency Situations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bosse, T.; Hoogendoorn, M.; Klein, M.C.A.; Sharpanskykh, A.; Treur, J.; van der Wal, C.N.; van Wissen, A.

    2013-01-01

    Social decision making under stressful circumstances may involve strong emotions and contagion from others. Recent developments in Social Neuroscience have revealed neural mechanisms by which social contagion of cognitive and emotional states can be realised. In this paper, based on these

  16. How is emotional awareness related to emotion regulation strategies and self-reported negative affect in the general population?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Subic-Wrana, Claudia; Beutel, Manfred E; Brähler, Elmar; Stöbel-Richter, Yve; Knebel, Achim; Lane, Richard D; Wiltink, Jörg

    2014-01-01

    The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) as a performance task discriminates between implicit or subconscious and explicit or conscious levels of emotional awareness. An impaired awareness of one's feeling states may influence emotion regulation strategies and self-reports of negative emotions. To determine this influence, we applied the LEAS and self-report measures for emotion regulation strategies and negative affect in a representative sample of the German general population. A short version of the LEAS, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), assessing reappraisal and suppression as emotion regulation strategies, were presented to N = 2524 participants of a representative German community study. The questionnaire data were analyzed with regard to the level of emotional awareness. LEAS scores were independent from depression, but related to self-reported anxiety. Although of small or medium effect size, different correlational patters between emotion regulation strategies and negative affectivity were related to implict and explict levels of emotional awareness. In participants with implicit emotional awareness, suppression was related to higher anxiety and depression, whereas in participants with explicit emotional awareness, in addition to a positive relationship of suppression and depression, we found a negative relationship of reappraisal to depression. These findings were independent of age. In women high use of suppression and little use of reappraisal were more strongly related to negative affect than in men. Our first findings suggest that conscious awareness of emotions may be a precondition for the use of reappraisal as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. They encourage further research in the relation between subconsious and conscious emotional awareness and the prefarance of adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies The correlational trends found in a representative

  17. Strong field QED in lepton colliders and electron/laser interactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartin, Anthony

    2018-05-01

    The studies of strong field particle physics processes in electron/laser interactions and lepton collider interaction points (IPs) are reviewed. These processes are defined by the high intensity of the electromagnetic fields involved and the need to take them into account as fully as possible. Thus, the main theoretical framework considered is the Furry interaction picture within intense field quantum field theory. In this framework, the influence of a background electromagnetic field in the Lagrangian is calculated nonperturbatively, involving exact solutions for quantized charged particles in the background field. These “dressed” particles go on to interact perturbatively with other particles, enabling the background field to play both macroscopic and microscopic roles. Macroscopically, the background field starts to polarize the vacuum, in effect rendering it a dispersive medium. Particles encountering this dispersive vacuum obtain a lifetime, either radiating or decaying into pair particles at a rate dependent on the intensity of the background field. In fact, the intensity of the background field enters into the coupling constant of the strong field quantum electrodynamic Lagrangian, influencing all particle processes. A number of new phenomena occur. Particles gain an intensity-dependent rest mass shift that accounts for their presence in the dispersive vacuum. Multi-photon events involving more than one external field photon occur at each vertex. Higher order processes which exchange a virtual strong field particle resonate via the lifetimes of the unstable strong field states. Two main arenas of strong field physics are reviewed; those occurring in relativistic electron interactions with intense laser beams, and those occurring in the beam-beam physics at the interaction point of colliders. This review outlines the theory, describes its significant novel phenomenology and details the experimental schema required to detect strong field effects and the

  18. Emotional collectives: How groups shape emotions and emotions shape groups.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Kleef, Gerben A; Fischer, Agneta H

    2016-01-01

    Group settings are epicentres of emotional activity. Yet, the role of emotions in groups is poorly understood. How do group-level phenomena shape group members' emotional experience and expression? How are emotional expressions recognised, interpreted and shared in group settings? And how do such expressions influence the emotions, cognitions and behaviours of fellow group members and outside observers? To answer these and other questions, we draw on relevant theoretical perspectives (e.g., intergroup emotions theory, social appraisal theory and emotions as social information theory) and recent empirical findings regarding the role of emotions in groups. We organise our review according to two overarching themes: how groups shape emotions and how emotions shape groups. We show how novel empirical approaches break important new ground in uncovering the role of emotions in groups. Research on emotional collectives is thriving and constitutes a key to understanding the social nature of emotions.

  19. Do you see what I see? Sex differences in the discrimination of facial emotions during adolescence.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Nikki C; Krabbendam, Lydia; White, Thomas P; Meeter, Martijn; Banaschewski, Tobias; Barker, Gareth J; Bokde, Arun L W; Büchel, Christian; Conrod, Patricia; Flor, Herta; Frouin, Vincent; Heinz, Andreas; Garavan, Hugh; Gowland, Penny; Ittermann, Bernd; Mann, Karl; Paillère Martinot, Marie-Laure; Nees, Frauke; Paus, Tomas; Pausova, Zdenka; Rietschel, Marcella; Robbins, Trevor; Fauth-Bühler, Mira; Smolka, Michael N; Gallinat, Juergen; Schumann, Gunther; Shergill, Sukhi S

    2013-12-01

    During adolescence social relationships become increasingly important. Establishing and maintaining these relationships requires understanding of emotional stimuli, such as facial emotions. A failure to adequately interpret emotional facial expressions has previously been associated with various mental disorders that emerge during adolescence. The current study examined sex differences in emotional face processing during adolescence. Participants were adolescents (n = 1951) with a target age of 14, who completed a forced-choice emotion discrimination task. The stimuli used comprised morphed faces that contained a blend of two emotions in varying intensities (11 stimuli per set of emotions). Adolescent girls showed faster and more sensitive perception of facial emotions than boys. However, both adolescent boys and girls were most sensitive to variations in emotion intensity in faces combining happiness and sadness, and least sensitive to changes in faces comprising fear and anger. Furthermore, both sexes overidentified happiness and anger. However, the overidentification of happiness was stronger in boys. These findings were not influenced by individual differences in the level of pubertal maturation. These results indicate that male and female adolescents differ in their ability to identify emotions in morphed faces containing emotional blends. The findings provide information for clinical studies examining whether sex differences in emotional processing are related to sex differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders within this age group.

  20. Performance and burnout in intensive care units

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Keijsers, GJ; Schaufeli, WB; LeBlanc, P; Zwerts, C; Miranda, DR

    1995-01-01

    The relationship between three different performance measures and burnout was explored in 20 Dutch Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Burnout (i.e. emotional exhaustion and depersonalization) proved to be significantly related to nurses' perceptions of performance as well as to objectively assessed unit

  1. The role of emotion in global warming policy support and opposition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Nicholas; Leiserowitz, Anthony

    2014-05-01

    Prior research has found that affect and affective imagery strongly influence public support for global warming. This article extends this literature by exploring the separate influence of discrete emotions. Utilizing a nationally representative survey in the United States, this study found that discrete emotions were stronger predictors of global warming policy support than cultural worldviews, negative affect, image associations, or sociodemographic variables. In particular, worry, interest, and hope were strongly associated with increased policy support. The results contribute to experiential theories of risk information processing and suggest that discrete emotions play a significant role in public support for climate change policy. Implications for climate change communication are also discussed. © 2013 Society for Risk Analysis.

  2. The creation of strongly coupled plasmas using an intense heavy ion beam: low-entropy compression of hydrogen and the problem of hydrogen metallization

    CERN Document Server

    Tahir, N A; Shutov, A; Varentsov, D; Udrea, S; Hoffmann, Dieter H H; Juranek, H; Redmer, R; Portugues, R F; Lomonosov, I V; Fortov, V E

    2003-01-01

    Intense heavy ion beams deposit energy very efficiently over extended volumes of solid density targets, thereby creating large samples of strongly coupled plasmas. Intense beams of energetic heavy ions are therefore an ideal tool to research this interesting field. It is also possible to design experiments using special beam-target geometries to achieve low-entropy compression of samples of matter. This type of experiments is of particular interest for studying the problem of hydrogen metallization. In this paper we present a design study of such a proposed experiment that will be carried out at the future heavy ion synchrotron facility SIS100, at the Gesellschaft fuer Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt. This study has been done using a two-dimensional hydrodynamic computer code. The target consists of a solid hydrogen cylinder that is enclosed in a thick shell of lead whose one face is irradiated with an ion beam which has an annular (ring shaped) focal spot. The beam intensity and other parameters are consider...

  3. Emotional experiences beyond the classroom: Interactions with the social world

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew S. Ross

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available Research into the emotional experiences of language learners and their impact upon the language-learning process remains relatively undernourished within second language education. The research available focuses primarily on emotions experienced within the classroom, rather than in the daily lives of learners within various social contexts. This article contends that the focus placed upon emotions within the relatively structured environment of the formal classroom is problematic, particularly within an ESL environment, as the target language is more frequently experienced beyond the classroom. Drawing on data collected within Australia, the study explored the emotional experiences of a small cohort of eight university-level ESL learners experienced within their various social interactions beyond the classroom with a specific focus on the emotions of hope, enjoyment and frustration. Semi-structured interviews revealed that their emotional experiences beyond the classroom were particularly intense in comparison to emotional experiences within the formal language-learning classroom.

  4. Crime fiction and moral emotions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Grodal, Torben Kragh

    2011-01-01

    , and especially within literary studies, the inspiration from evolutionary studies has been strong in the last decade. Humans are adapted to group living, and emotions linked to fairness have an innate basis. The article then shows how different crime stories activate different stages in Kohlberg’s functional...

  5. Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People’s Emotions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weis, Patrick P.; Herbert, Cornelia

    2017-01-01

    According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person (“my,” “his”) or the non-referential negation term (“no”) as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader’s self (e.g., “my happiness,” “my joy”) than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., “his happiness,” “his joy”), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real

  6. Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People’s Emotions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Patrick P. Weis

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person (“my,” “his” or the non-referential negation term (“no” as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant to 9 (very pleasant. Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator, heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader’s self (e.g., “my happiness,” “my joy” than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., “his happiness,” “his joy”, suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no

  7. Do People With Psychosis Have Specific Difficulties Regulating Emotions?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lincoln, Tania M; Hartmann, Maike; Köther, Ulf; Moritz, Steffen

    2015-01-01

    Difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) are present in psychotic disorders, but their precise nature is not yet fully understood and it is unclear which difficulties are unique to psychosis compared with other disorders. This study investigated whether ER difficulties in psychosis are more prominent for the ability to modify emotions or for the ability to tolerate and accept them. Furthermore, it investigated whether ER difficulties occur for sadness, anxiety, anger and shame likewise. ER skills were assessed in participants with psychotic disorders (n = 37), participants with depression (n = 30) and healthy controls (n = 28) using the Emotion Regulation Skill Questionnaire that asks participants to rate the intensity of different emotions over the past week and the skills employed to handle each of them. Compared with healthy controls, participants with psychosis showed reduced skills related to awareness, understanding and acceptance of potentially distressing emotions, but not in the ability to modify them. These differences remained significant after controlling for depression. Participants with psychosis showed reduced ER skills in regard to all of the assessed emotions compared with the healthy controls, despite the fact that they only reported sadness as being significantly more intense. The participants with depression showed a similar pattern of ER skills to the psychosis sample, although with a tendency towards even more pronounced difficulties. It is concluded that psychosis is characterized by difficulties in using specific ER skills related to awareness, understanding and acceptance to regulate anger, shame, anxiety and sadness. These difficulties are not unique to psychosis but nevertheless present a promising treatment target. The participants with psychosis found it more difficult to be aware of their emotions, to understand them and to accept them than the healthy control group. However, they reported equal skills when it came to

  8. Gender differences in pain: do emotions play a role?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rhudy, Jamie L; Williams, Amy E

    2005-12-01

    Research suggests that the influence of gender on the processing and experience of pain is a result of several mechanisms. One mediating variable is emotion, which may modulate pain through an interaction of valence (pleasant-unpleasant) and arousal (calm-excited). This review examines whether gender differences in the experience and processing of emotion contribute to differences in the modulation and perception of pain. An English-language search of MEDLINE and PsycINFO was conducted from 1887 to May 2005. Additional literature was obtained from reference lists of articles retained in the initial search. Emotion appears to influence pain through a valence-by-arousal interaction. Specifically, negatively valenced emotions with low to moderate arousal (eg, anxiety) enhance pain, whereas negatively valenced emotions with high arousal (eg, fear) reduce pain. In contrast, positively valenced emotions always reduce pain, as long as minimal arousal is achieved. Some evidence suggests that women are more sensitive than men to threat-related stimuli and thus experience more negative affect than men. This would generally lead to enhanced pain perception in women. It is also possible that women are more likely than men to experience negative affect with high arousal (intense fear) and thus pain inhibition. However, the relatively lower base rate of intense negative emotions is not likely to contribute much to gender differences in pain. Evidence also suggests that men may be more sensitive to positive events, particularly sexual/erotic stimuli, which may lead to more positive emotion-induced pain reduction in men, relative to women. This review suggests that gender differences in the experience of pain may arise from differences in the experience and processing of emotion that, in turn, differentially alter pain processing. Specifically, the system associated with negative affect may be more attuned to threatening stimuli in women, and the system associated with positive

  9. Emotional Testimonies:An Ethnographic Study of Emotional Suffering Related to Migration from Mexico to Arizona

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rebecca eCrocker

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available It is increasingly argued that social and economic inequity poorly affect overall health. One of the means through which these inequities are translated to the body is via negative emotions, which carry known psychological and physiological responses. This paper examines migration-related psychosocial stressors impacting first generation Mexican immigrants in southern Arizona, and reports on the primary emotional experiences immigrants associate with these stressors. Data were drawn from a qualitative, ethnographic study conducted over the course of 14 months during 2013-2014 with first generation Mexican immigrants (N=40 residing in Tucson Arizona and service providers working directly in the immigrant community (N=32. Results indicate that the primary structural vulnerabilities that cause emotional hardship amongst immigrants are pre-migration stressors and adversity, dangerous border crossings, detention and deportation, undocumented citizenship status, family separation, and extreme poverty. Many of these factors have intensified over the past decade due to increased border security and state level anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona. Immigrants connected these hardships to the emotions of trauma (50%, fear (65%, depression (75%, loneliness (75%, sadness (80%, and stress (85%, and most respondents reported suffering from three or more of these emotions. Given the heavy emotional toll of migration and the direct impact that regional legislation and border security had on well-being, this paper argues that emotion be considered an important mechanism for health declines in the immigrant community. In order to stem the frequency and intensity of emotional stress in the Mexican immigrant community in Tucson, it is imperative to support organizations and policies that promote community building and support networks and also expand access to and availability of mental health services for immigrants regardless of documentation status.

  10. Emotional Testimonies: An Ethnographic Study of Emotional Suffering Related to Migration from Mexico to Arizona

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crocker, Rebecca

    2015-01-01

    It is increasingly argued that social and economic inequities poorly affect overall health. One of the means through which these inequities are translated to the body is via negative emotions, which carry known psychological and physiological responses. This paper examines migration-related psychosocial stressors impacting first-generation Mexican immigrants in southern Arizona, and reports on the primary emotional experiences immigrants associate with these stressors. Data were drawn from a qualitative, ethnographic study conducted over the course of 14 months during 2013–2014 with first-generation Mexican immigrants (N = 40) residing in Tucson Arizona and service providers working directly in the immigrant community (N = 32). Results indicate that the primary structural vulnerabilities that cause emotional hardship among immigrants are pre-migration stressors and adversity, dangerous border crossings, detention and deportation, undocumented citizenship status, family separation, and extreme poverty. Many of these factors have intensified over the past decade due to increased border security and state level anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona. Immigrants connected these hardships to the emotions of trauma (50%), fear (65%), depression (75%), loneliness (75%), sadness (80%), and stress (85%), and most respondents reported suffering from three or more of these emotions. Given the heavy emotional toll of migration and the direct impact that regional legislation and border security had on well-being, this paper argues that emotion be considered an important mechanism for health declines in the immigrant community. In order to stem the frequency and intensity of emotional stress in the Mexican immigrant community in Tucson, it is imperative to support organizations and policies that promote community building and support networks and also expand access to and availability of mental health services for immigrants regardless of documentation status. PMID

  11. Relations between emotion and conscious recollection of true and false autobiographical memories: an investigation using lorazepam as a pharmacological tool.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pernot-Marino, Elodie; Danion, Jean-Marie; Hedelin, Guy

    2004-08-01

    Conscious recollection for autobiographical memory is the subjective experience of reliving a personal event mentally. Its frequency is strongly influenced by the emotion experienced at the time of the event. We addressed the issue of whether conscious recollection for autobiographical memories is also influenced by the emotion experienced at the time of retrieval. We used lorazepam, a benzodiazepine, as a pharmacological tool to modulate this emotional experience. Autobiographical memories were recorded in eight healthy volunteers using a diary study methodology. Each day, four entries were made by each subject: two true events, one altered event and one false event. For each event, the subjects were asked to rate emotional variables at encoding and at retrieval. Two months later, there were two sessions of recognition tests during which the subjects received orally an acute administration of either lorazepam (0.038 mg/kg) or placebo using a cross-over design. Subjective states of awareness were assessed using the Remember/Know/Guess procedure. Compared to placebo, lorazepam increased levels of conscious recollection, as assessed by Remember responses, for both true and false memories and induced an overestimation of the personal significance and emotional intensity of past events. Structural equation modelling showed that this overestimation was causal in the increased frequency of conscious recollection. Our results provide experimental evidence that the frequency of conscious recollection for both true and false autobiographical memories is influenced by the emotion experienced at the time of retrieval.

  12. "Now I see it, now I don't": Determining Threshold Levels of Facial Emotion Recognition for Use in Patient Populations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiu, Isabelle; Gfrörer, Regina I; Piguet, Olivier; Berres, Manfred; Monsch, Andreas U; Sollberger, Marc

    2015-08-01

    The importance of including measures of emotion processing, such as tests of facial emotion recognition (FER), as part of a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment is being increasingly recognized. In clinical settings, FER tests need to be sensitive, short, and easy to administer, given the limited time available and patient limitations. Current tests, however, commonly use stimuli that either display prototypical emotions, bearing the risk of ceiling effects and unequal task difficulty, or are cognitively too demanding and time-consuming. To overcome these limitations in FER testing in patient populations, we aimed to define FER threshold levels for the six basic emotions in healthy individuals. Forty-nine healthy individuals between 52 and 79 years of age were asked to identify the six basic emotions at different intensity levels (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, and 125% of the prototypical emotion). Analyses uncovered differing threshold levels across emotions and sex of facial stimuli, ranging from 50% up to 100% intensities. Using these findings as "healthy population benchmarks", we propose to apply these threshold levels to clinical populations either as facial emotion recognition or intensity rating tasks. As part of any comprehensive social cognition test battery, this approach should allow for a rapid and sensitive assessment of potential FER deficits.

  13. Basic Emotions in the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL BE: New Method of Classifying Emotional Stimuli.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Małgorzata Wierzba

    Full Text Available The Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL has recently been introduced as a standardized database of Polish words suitable for studying various aspects of language and emotions. Though the NAWL was originally based on the most commonly used dimensional approach, it is not the only way of studying emotions. Another framework is based on discrete emotional categories. Since the two perspectives are recognized as complementary, the aim of the present study was to supplement the NAWL database by the addition of categories corresponding to basic emotions. Thus, 2902 Polish words from the NAWL were presented to 265 subjects, who were instructed to rate them according to the intensity of each of the five basic emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear and disgust. The general characteristics of the present word database, as well as the relationships between the studied variables are shown to be consistent with typical patterns found in previous studies using similar databases for different languages. Here we present the Basic Emotions in the Nencki Affective Word List (NAWL BE as a database of verbal material suitable for highly controlled experimental research. To make the NAWL more convenient to use, we introduce a comprehensive method of classifying stimuli to basic emotion categories. We discuss the advantages of our method in comparison to other methods of classification. Additionally, we provide an interactive online tool (http://exp.lobi.nencki.gov.pl/nawl-analysis to help researchers browse and interactively generate classes of stimuli to meet their specific requirements.

  14. Emotional arousal and memory after deep encoding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leventon, Jacqueline S; Camacho, Gabriela L; Ramos Rojas, Maria D; Ruedas, Angelica

    2018-05-22

    Emotion often enhances long-term memory. One mechanism for this enhancement is heightened arousal during encoding. However, reducing arousal, via emotion regulation (ER) instructions, has not been associated with reduced memory. In fact, the opposite pattern has been observed: stronger memory for emotional stimuli encoded with an ER instruction to reduce arousal. This pattern may be due to deeper encoding required by ER instructions. In the current research, we examine the effects of emotional arousal and deep-encoding on memory across three studies. In Study 1, adult participants completed a writing task (deep-encoding) for encoding negative, neutral, and positive picture stimuli, whereby half the emotion stimuli had the ER instruction to reduce the emotion. Memory was strong across conditions, and no memory enhancement was observed for any condition. In Study 2, adult participants completed the same writing task as Study 1, as well as a shallow-encoding task for one-third of negative, neutral, and positive trials. Memory was strongest for deep vs. shallow encoding trials, with no effects of emotion or ER instruction. In Study 3, adult participants completed a shallow-encoding task for negative, neutral, and positive stimuli, with findings indicating enhanced memory for negative emotional stimuli. Findings suggest that deep encoding must be acknowledged as a source of memory enhancement when examining manipulations of emotion-related arousal. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

  15. Arousal Rather than Basic Emotions Influence Long-Term Recognition Memory in Humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marchewka, Artur; Wypych, Marek; Moslehi, Abnoos; Riegel, Monika; Michałowski, Jarosław M; Jednoróg, Katarzyna

    2016-01-01

    Emotion can influence various cognitive processes, however its impact on memory has been traditionally studied over relatively short retention periods and in line with dimensional models of affect. The present study aimed to investigate emotional effects on long-term recognition memory according to a combined framework of affective dimensions and basic emotions. Images selected from the Nencki Affective Picture System were rated on the scale of affective dimensions and basic emotions. After 6 months, subjects took part in a surprise recognition test during an fMRI session. The more negative the pictures the better they were remembered, but also the more false recognitions they provoked. Similar effects were found for the arousal dimension. Recognition success was greater for pictures with lower intensity of happiness and with higher intensity of surprise, sadness, fear, and disgust. Consecutive fMRI analyses showed a significant activation for remembered (recognized) vs. forgotten (not recognized) images in anterior cingulate and bilateral anterior insula as well as in bilateral caudate nuclei and right thalamus. Further, arousal was found to be the only subjective rating significantly modulating brain activation. Higher subjective arousal evoked higher activation associated with memory recognition in the right caudate and the left cingulate gyrus. Notably, no significant modulation was observed for other subjective ratings, including basic emotion intensities. These results emphasize the crucial role of arousal for long-term recognition memory and support the hypothesis that the memorized material, over time, becomes stored in a distributed cortical network including the core salience network and basal ganglia.

  16. Arousal rather than basic emotions influence long-term recognition memory in humans.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Artur Marchewka

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Emotion can influence various cognitive processes, however its impact on memory has been traditionally studied over relatively short retention periods and in line with dimensional models of affect. The present study aimed to investigate emotional effects on long-term recognition memory according to a combined framework of affective dimensions and basic emotions. Images selected from the Nencki Affective Picture System were rated on the scale of affective dimensions and basic emotions. After six months, subjects took part in a surprise recognition test during an fMRI session. The more negative the pictures the better they were remembered, but also the more false recognitions they provoked. Similar effects were found for the arousal dimension. Recognition success was greater for pictures with lower intensity of happiness and with higher intensity of surprise, sadness, fear, and disgust. Consecutive fMRI analyses showed a significant activation for remembered (recognized vs. forgotten (not recognized images in anterior cingulate and bilateral anterior insula as well as in bilateral caudate nuclei and right thalamus. Further, arousal was found to be the only subjective rating significantly modulating brain activation. Higher subjective arousal evoked higher activation associated with memory recognition in the right caudate and the left cingulate gyrus. Notably, no significant modulation was observed for other subjective ratings, including basic emotion intensities. These results emphasize the crucial role of arousal for long-term recognition memory and support the hypothesis that the memorized material, over time, becomes stored in a distributed cortical network including the core salience network and basal ganglia.

  17. Emotions and emotion regulation in survivors of childhood sexual abuse: the importance of "disgust" in traumatic stress and psychopathology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coyle, Eimear; Karatzias, Thanos; Summers, Andy; Power, Mick

    2014-01-01

    Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has the potential to compromise socio-emotional development of the survivor resulting in increased vulnerability to difficulties regulating emotions. In turn, emotion regulation is thought to play a key part in a number of psychological disorders which CSA survivors are at increased risk of developing. A better understanding of the basic emotions experienced in this population and emotion regulation strategies will inform current treatment. This paper examines the relationships between type of emotions experienced, emotion regulation strategies, and psychological trauma symptoms in a sample of survivors of CSA. A consecutive case series of CSA survivors (n=109) completed the Basic Emotions Scale (BES)-Weekly, General, and Coping versions; the Regulation of Emotions Questionnaire; the Post-traumatic Stress Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C); and the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation Outcome Measure. Significantly higher levels of disgust than other levels of emotions were reported on the weekly version of the BES. In addition, significantly higher levels of disgust and lower levels of happiness were reported on the BES-General subscale. Regression analyses revealed that sadness, fear, disgust, and external dysfunctional coping strategies predicted global post-traumatic stress disorder and re-experiencing symptomatology measured by the PCL-C. Global distress, as measured by CORE, was predicted by the emotions of sadness, disgust, and low happiness, as well as dysfunctional regulatory strategies. In addition, preliminary exploratory factor analyses supported the structure of all three versions of the BES, with disgust explaining the largest percentage of variance, followed by happiness. The findings highlight the utility of profiling basic emotions in understanding the strong associations between emotional phenomena, particularly the emotion of disgust and psychopathology in CSA survivors.

  18. Self-Study in Emotion Work: Organizing Chaos by Negotiating Private and Public Grief

    Science.gov (United States)

    Farnsworth, Megan

    2016-01-01

    In order to improve her practice, a teacher educator explored emotions as catalysts for teaching and learning by asking the research question, "How can I support preservice teachers' emotional intelligence (EI), as well as my own, as we negotiate the impact of strong emotions in the pedagogical environment?" Three levels of reflection…

  19. "I Know How You Feel": Preschoolers' Emotion Knowledge Contributes to Early School Success

    Science.gov (United States)

    Denham, Susanne A.; Bassett, Hideko H.; Brown, Chavaughn; Way, Erin; Steed, Jessica

    2015-01-01

    Differences in emotion knowledge by children's age, gender, and socioeconomic risk status, as well as associations of emotion knowledge with executive control, social competence, and early classroom adjustment, were investigated. On emotion knowledge, 4- and 5-year-olds scored higher than 3-year-olds, with girls showing this effect more strongly.…

  20. Emotional and non-emotional pathways to impulsive behavior and addiction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Torres, Ana; Catena, Andrés; Megías, Alberto; Maldonado, Antonio; Cándido, Antonio; Verdejo-García, Antonio; Perales, José C.

    2013-01-01

    Impulsivity is tightly linked to addiction. However, there are several pathways by means of which impulsive individuals are more prone to become addicts, or to suffer an addiction more intensely and for a longer period. One of those pathways involves an inadequate appraisal or regulation of positive and negative emotions, leading to lack of control over hazardous behaviors, and inappropriate decisions. In the present work, we assessed cocaine-dependent individuals (CDI; n = 20), pathological gamblers (PG; n = 21), and healthy controls (HC; n = 23) in trait impulsivity measures (UPPS-P model's dimensions), and decision-making tasks (Go/No-go; delay-discounting task). During the Go/No-go task, electroencephalographic (EEG) activity was recorded, and Go/No-go stimuli-evoked potentials (ERP) were extracted. Theory-driven ERP analyses focused on the No-go > Go difference in the N2 ERP. Our results show that negative urgency is one of the several psychological features that distinguish addicts from HC. Nevertheless, among the dimensions of trait impulsivity, negative urgency is unique at independently covarying with gambling over-pathologization in the PG sample. Cocaine-dependent individuals performed more poorly than gamblers in the Go/No-go task, and showed abnormal Go/No-go stimuli-evoked potentials. The difference between the No-go stimulus-evoked N2, and the Go one was attenuated by severity and intensity of chronic cocaine use. Emotional dimensions of impulsivity, however, did not influence Go/No-go performance. PMID:23441001

  1. Emotional and non-emotional pathways to impulsive behavior and addiction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana eTorres

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available Impulsivity is tightly linked to addiction. However, there are several pathways by means of which impulsive individuals are more prone to become addicts, or to suffer an addiction more intensely and for a longer period. One of those pathways involves an inadequate appraisal or regulation of positive and negative emotions, leading to lack of control over hazardous behaviors, and inappropriate decisions. In the present work, we assessed cocaine-dependent individuals (CDI; n=20, pathological gamblers (PG; n=21, and healthy controls (HC; n=23 in trait impulsivity measures (UPPS-P model’s dimensions, and decision-making tasks (Go/No-go; delay-discounting task. During the Go/No-go task, electroencephalographic (EEG activity was recorded, and Go/No-go stimuli-evoked potentials (ERP were extracted. Theory-driven ERP analyses focused on the No Go > Go difference in the N2 ERP.Our results show that negative urgency is one of the several psychological features that distinguish addicts from healthy controls. Nevertheless, among the measures of trait impulsivity, negative urgency is unique at independently covarying with gambling over-pathologization in the PG sample. Cocaine dependent individuals performed more poorly than gamblers in the Go/No-go task, and showed abnormal Go/no-go stimuli-evoked potentials. The difference between the No-go stimulus-evoked N2, and the Go one was attenuated by severity and intensity of chronic cocaine use. Emotional dimensions of impulsivity, however, did not influence go/No-go performance.

  2. Fathers' parenting, adverse life events, and adolescents' emotional and eating disorder symptoms: the role of emotion regulation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McEwen, Ciara; Flouri, Eirini

    2009-04-01

    To investigate the role of emotion regulation in the relation between fathers' parenting (specifically warmth, behavioral control and psychological control) and adolescents' emotional and eating disorder symptoms, after adjustment for controls. A total of 203 11-18 year-old students from a school in a socio-economically disadvantaged area in North-East London completed questionnaires assessing emotional symptoms (measured with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire's (SDQ) Emotional Symptoms Scale), eating disorder symptoms (measured with the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26)), difficulties in emotion regulation (measured with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)), and fathers' overprotection and warmth, measured with the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), as well as behavioral and psychological control. The confounding variables considered were number of proximal (i.e., during the last year) adverse life events experienced, gender, age, and socio-economic status (eligibility for free school meals). Adolescents' difficulties in emotion regulation mediated the link between fathers' psychological control and adolescents' emotional symptoms, but not the link between fathers' parenting and adolescents' eating disorder symptoms, which appeared to be more directly linked to fathers' psychological control and number of proximal adverse life events experienced. Proximal adverse life events experienced were also strongly associated with difficulties in emotion regulation. The study findings have implications for intervention programs which may prove more fruitful in addressing adolescent emotional problems by targeting underlying emotion regulation abilities, and in addressing adolescent eating disorder symptoms by protecting adolescents with a recent experience of multiple adverse life events. Parenting programs also stand to benefit from the evidence presented in this study that paternal psychological control may have uniquely harmful consequences for

  3. Emotional Impact of End-of-Life Decisions on Professional Relationships in the ICU: An Obstacle to Collegiality?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Laurent, Alexandra; Bonnet, Magalie; Capellier, Gilles; Aslanian, Pierre; Hebert, Paul

    2017-12-01

    End-of-life decisions are not only common in the ICU but also frequently elicit strong feelings among health professionals. Even though we seek to develop more collegial interprofessional approaches to care and health decision-making, there are many barriers to successfully managing complex decisions. The aim of this study is to better understand how emotions influence the end-of-life decision-making process among professionals working in ICU. Qualitative study with clinical interviews. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Two independent ICUs at the "Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal." Ten physicians and 10 nurses. None. During the end-of-life decision-making process, families and patients restructure the decision-making frame by introducing a strong emotional dimension. This results in the emergence of new challenges quite different from the immediacy often associated with intensive care. In response to changes in decision frames, physicians rely on their relationship with the patient's family to assist with advanced care decisions. Nurses, however, draw on their relationship and proximity to the patient to denounce therapeutic obstinacy. Our study suggests that during the end-of-life decision-making process, nurses' feelings toward their patients and physicians' feelings toward their patients' families influence the decisions they make. Although these emotional dimensions allow nurses and physicians to act in a manner that is consistent with their professional ethics, the professionals themselves seem to have a poor understanding of these dimensions and often overlook them, thus hindering collegial decisions.

  4. A social dimension to enjoyment of negative emotion in art reception.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bastian, Brock

    2017-01-01

    The proposed model overlooks the contribution of a relational/prosocial dimension to the enjoyment of negative emotion in art reception. Negative experiences have a unique capacity to build social bonds and may also increase motivation to "connect" with the artist. This affiliative motivation ensures that people experience an artwork as more emotional, more intense, more interesting, and ultimately more rewarding.

  5. Effects of empathic paraphrasing - Extrinsic emotion regulation in social conflict

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maria eSeehausen

    2012-11-01

    Full Text Available In the present study, we investigated the effects of empathic paraphrasing as an extrinsic emotion regulation technique in social conflict. We hypothesized that negative emotions elicited by social conflict can be regulated extrinsically in a conversation by a listener following the narrator’s perspective and verbally expressing cognitive empathy.20 participants were interviewed on an ongoing or recently self-experienced social conflict. The interviewer utilized ten standardized open questions inviting participants to describe their perception of the conflict. After each of the ten descriptions, the interviewer responded by either paraphrasing or taking notes (control condition. Valence ratings pertaining to the current emotional state were assessed during the interview along with psychophysiological and voice recordings.Participants reported feeling less negative after hearing the interviewer paraphrase what they had said. In addition, we found a lower sound intensity of participants' voices when answering to questions following a paraphrase. At the physiological level, skin conductance response, as well as heart rate, was higher during paraphrasing than during taking notes, while blood volume pulse amplitude was lower during paraphrasing, indicating higher autonomic arousal.The results show that demonstrating cognitive empathy through paraphrasing can extrinsically regulate negative emotion on a short-term basis. Paraphrasing led to enhanced autonomic activation in recipients, while at the same time influencing emotional valence in the direction of feeling better. A possible explanation for these results is that being treated in an empathic manner may stimulate a more intense emotion processing helping to transform and resolve the conflict.

  6. Emotional distress and positive and negative memories from military deployment: The influence of PTSD symptoms and time

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Niziurski, Julie Ann; Johannessen, Kim Berg; Berntsen, Dorthe

    2017-01-01

    positive deployment memories from a company of 337 soldiers who were deployed together to Afghanistan. We examined how the level of emotional distress of the soldiers and the valence of the memory were related to the emotional intensity, experience of reliving, rehearsal and coherence of the memories......, and how the perceived impact of these memories changed over time. We found that soldiers with higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were more affected by both their negative and positive memories, compared with soldiers with lower levels of PTSD symptoms. Emotional intensity...... of the most negative memory increased over time in the group with highest levels of PTSD symptoms, but dropped in the other groups. The present study adds to the literature on emotion and autobiographical memory and how this relationship interacts with an individual’s present level of emotional distress...

  7. Perception of emotion in abstract artworks: a multidisciplinary approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Melcher, David; Bacci, Francesca

    2013-01-01

    There is a long-standing and fundamental debate regarding how emotion can be expressed by fine art. Some artists and theorists have claimed that certain features of paintings, such as color, line, form, and composition, can consistently express an "objective" emotion, while others have argued that emotion perception is subjective and depends more on expertise of the observer. Here, we discuss two studies in which we have found evidence for consistency in observer ratings of emotion for abstract artworks. We have developed a stimulus set of abstract art images to test emotional priming, both between different painting images and between paintings and faces. The ratings were also used in a computational vision analysis of the visual features underlying emotion expression. Overall, these findings suggest that there is a strong bottom-up and objective aspect to perception of emotion in abstract artworks that may tap into basic visual mechanisms. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. The Role of Body Sensations in Understanding One's Own Emotions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Balueva O.V.

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available There are at least three different viewpoints among all theories of emotions that attempt to explain the role of body sensations in understanding one's own emotions. In order to compare the explanatory resources of these viewpoints we conducted a research in which the subjects (n=59 were shown a series of neutral and emotionally significant slides (taken from the IAPS database. During the slideshow we registered the subjects' pulse and galvanic skin response. The subjects were asked to assess the intensity of their emotional reactions and body sensations in response to the emotionally significant slides, and also filled in a questionnaire on emotional intelligence that enabled us to measure their ability to understand their own emotions as well as those of other people. The outcomes of our research show that sensations accompanying emotional experiences are not the result of interoception as they do not correspond with objective indicators of the changes in physiological arousal, whereas they do correspond in many ways with the subjects' emotional appraisal of the stimuli and selfassessment of sensations. These outcomes also revealed that subjective evaluations of body sensations correlate with emotional valence, while heart rate (the objective indicator of arousal correlates with modality of the emotion

  9. Corticolimbic gating of emotion-driven punishment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Treadway, Michael T; Buckholtz, Joshua W; Martin, Justin W; Jan, Katharine; Asplund, Christopher L; Ginther, Matthew R; Jones, Owen D; Marois, René

    2014-09-01

    Determining the appropriate punishment for a norm violation requires consideration of both the perpetrator's state of mind (for example, purposeful or blameless) and the strong emotions elicited by the harm caused by their actions. It has been hypothesized that such affective responses serve as a heuristic that determines appropriate punishment. However, an actor's mental state often trumps the effect of emotions, as unintended harms may go unpunished, regardless of their magnitude. Using fMRI, we found that emotionally graphic descriptions of harmful acts amplify punishment severity, boost amygdala activity and strengthen amygdala connectivity with lateral prefrontal regions involved in punishment decision-making. However, this was only observed when the actor's harm was intentional; when harm was unintended, a temporoparietal-medial-prefrontal circuit suppressed amygdala activity and the effect of graphic descriptions on punishment was abolished. These results reveal the brain mechanisms by which evaluation of a transgressor's mental state gates our emotional urges to punish.

  10. Beyond arousal and valence: the importance of the biological versus social relevance of emotional stimuli

    OpenAIRE

    Sakaki, Michiko; Niki, N.; Mather, M.

    2012-01-01

    The present study addressed the hypothesis that emotional stimuli relevant to survival or reproduction (biologically emotional stimuli) automatically affect cognitive processing (e.g., attention, memory), while those relevant to social life (socially emotional stimuli) require elaborative processing to modulate attention and memory. Results of our behavioral studies showed that (1) biologically emotional images hold attention more strongly than do socially emotional images, (2) memory for bio...

  11. Relationship between the components of product/service quality and the customers’ emotions and satisfaction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gavriel Meirovich

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to study the links between quality and consumers’ emotions and eventually with their satisfaction. There is mounting evidence that, while quality evaluation may be strictly cognitive, satisfaction gauges customers’ emotions towards the product/service provider’s performance. The existing approaches used in measuring quality have certain limitations. This study introduces two components of total quality structure – quality of design and quality of conformance – for analysis of the link between quality and customer emotions.  Undergraduate college students were surveyed in regard to four scenarios for food establishments. Respondents were asked to select, from a pre-tested list of emotions, those arising from these scenarios. The equality of means of the valence and the intensity of emotions among the four scenarios were tested using ANOVA and Scheffe paired comparisons. The results show that there is a significant relationship between possible combinations of two quality dimensions and customers’ affective responses in terms of both their valence and intensity. Important managerial implications are discussed.

  12. Odor Emotional Quality Predicts Odor Identification.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bestgen, Anne-Kathrin; Schulze, Patrick; Kuchinke, Lars

    2015-09-01

    It is commonly agreed upon a strong link between emotion and olfaction. Odor-evoked memories are experienced as more emotional compared with verbal, visual, and tactile stimuli. Moreover, the emotional quality of odor cues increases memory performance, but contrary to this, odors are poor retrieval cues for verbal labels. To examine the relation between the emotional quality of an odor and its likelihood of identification, this study evaluates how normative emotion ratings based on the 3-dimensional affective space model (that includes valence, arousal, and dominance), using the Self-Assessment Manikin by Bradley and Lang (Bradley MM, Lang PJ. 1994. Measuring emotion: the Self-Assessment Manikin and the Semantic Differential. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 25(1):49-59.) and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson D, Clark LA, Tellegen A. 1988. Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. J Pers Soc Psychol. 54(6):1063-1070.) predict the identification of odors in a multiple choice condition. The best fitting logistic regression model includes squared valence and dominance and thus, points to a significant role of specific emotional features of odors as a main clue for odor identification. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  13. [Psychological aspects of emotional regulation in smoking dependency].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carton, S

    2001-04-01

    We reviewed the literature on the relationships between smoking and affect regulation. There is strong evidence that vulnerability to smoking dependence is a function of a high initial sensitivity to nicotine, which produces reinforcing consequences that lead to chronic use. These strong reinforcers of tobacco dependence include regulation of mood and modulation of arousal. We focused on studies concerned with the subjective component of arousal and emotional experience. We discuss first the models and classifications used to differentiate types of smoking as related to the management of emotions and studies evaluating the stimulant and subjective effects of smoking behavior, questioning the paradoxical tranquilizing and anxiety-reducing effects of nicotine. We also looked into the mood regulation effects that may explain the strong relationships observed between depression and smoking and finally focus on some of the personality risk factors that may make individuals more susceptible to these rewarding properties of smoking.

  14. "It's Been a Bit of a Rollercoaster": Special Educational Needs, Emotional Labour and Emotion Work

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mackenzie, Suzanne

    2012-01-01

    This article presents an analysis of data collected--by semi-structured interviews and focus groups--from staff working with children with special educational needs (SEN) in England. The analysis highlighted the role of strong emotions, and how participants (unsurprisingly) experienced these differently, largely according to their position in…

  15. Interplay among pain intensity, sleep disturbance and emotion in patients with non-specific low back pain

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shilabant Sen Sribastav

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Background Low back pain (LBP is the most common problem worldwide. There are several negative consequences of LBP, such as sleep disorders, work leave, disability, depression, anxiety, and poor quality of life. In this study, we designed to evaluate the prevalence of sleep disturbance in patients with non-specific LBP(NSLBP, and cross-correlation among sleep disorder, anxiety, depression and pain intensity in patients with NSLBP. Aim In this study, we designed to evaluate the prevalence of sleep disturbance in patients with NSLBP, and cross-correlation among sleep disorder, anxiety, depression and pain intensity in patients with NSLBP. Methods A cross-sectional self-assessment questionnaire survey was carried out in an outpatient clinic. Anonymous assessments were used to characterize the presence of NSLBP, PSQI, VAS, SF-36 form, ODI, BAI and BDI. Cross-correlation among the severity of NSLBP and sleep disturbance, anxiety, depression and life quality were evaluated. Results Patients with NSLBP have a higher incidence of sleep disorder, anxiety and depression, and higher ODI scores than healthy people without LPB (P < 0.01. NSLBP patients with sleep disorders have more severe anxiety, depression, an increased VAS score and poor daily living (P < 0.05. NSLBP patients with anxiety have declined sleep quality, poor daily living, decreased work and social skills, and increased LBP severity (P < 0.05. NSLBP patients with depression have declined sleep quality, poor daily living, decreased work and social skills (P < 0.05. Significant associations were found between the severity of NSLBP and sleep disorders, anxiety and ODI scores. Conclusion Psychological and social factors play an important role in the development of NSLBP. NSLBP leads to sleep disorders, which decrease the sleep quality and increase the unpleasant emotions and memories in return; these can exacerbate the severity of LBP, with the cycle repeating to form a vicious circle.

  16. Facial expression primes and implicit regulation of negative emotion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoon, HeungSik; Kim, Shin Ah; Kim, Sang Hee

    2015-06-17

    An individual's responses to emotional information are influenced not only by the emotional quality of the information, but also by the context in which the information is presented. We hypothesized that facial expressions of happiness and anger would serve as primes to modulate subjective and neural responses to subsequently presented negative information. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a functional MRI study in which the brains of healthy adults were scanned while they performed an emotion-rating task. During the task, participants viewed a series of negative and neutral photos, one at a time; each photo was presented after a picture showing a face expressing a happy, angry, or neutral emotion. Brain imaging results showed that compared with neutral primes, happy facial primes increased activation during negative emotion in the dorsal anterior cingulated cortex and the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which are typically implicated in conflict detection and implicit emotion control, respectively. Conversely, relative to neutral primes, angry primes activated the right middle temporal gyrus and the left supramarginal gyrus during the experience of negative emotion. Activity in the amygdala in response to negative emotion was marginally reduced after exposure to happy primes compared with angry primes. Relative to neutral primes, angry facial primes increased the subjectively experienced intensity of negative emotion. The current study results suggest that prior exposure to facial expressions of emotions modulates the subsequent experience of negative emotion by implicitly activating the emotion-regulation system.

  17. The neonatal nurses' view of their role in emotional support of parents and its complexities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Turner, Melanie; Chur-Hansen, Anna; Winefield, Helen

    2014-11-01

    To explore the nurses' views of their role both in the neonatal intensive care unit and in the provision of interacting with, and emotionally supporting, families. The neonatal intensive care nurse has a large and complex clinical role and also a role of emotional supporter for parents in the neonatal intensive care unit. Identifying components of their role and recognising the elements within the nursery that obstruct or encourage this role can allow for modification of nurse education and peer support. Qualitative study based on semistructured interviews. Nine neonatal nurses from a single neonatal intensive care unit were interviewed and the data analysed thematically using NVIVO version 10. Participants viewed their role as an enjoyable yet difficult one, requiring seniority, training and experience. They provided support to parents by communicating, listening, providing individualised support and by encouraging parental involvement with their baby. Constructive elements that contributed to the provision of support included a positive neonatal intensive care unit environment and providing a parent support group. More obstructive elements were a lack of physical neonatal intensive care unit space, little time available for nurse-to-parent conversation and language and cultural barriers between nurses and parents. The role of the neonatal nurse in providing emotional support is complex and requires a high level of ongoing support and education for staff, and minimisation of physical and staff-related obstructions. The modern neonatal intensive care unit offers complex medical and nursing services and with this care comes higher needs from both babies and their parents. Neonatal intensive care unit nurses should be supported in their roles by having peer support available in the neonatal intensive care unit and education and training in emotional support and counselling skills. The nursing staff also require a comfortable and practical physical working space in

  18. Predicting consumer liking and preference based on emotional responses and sensory perception: A study with basic taste solutions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samant, Shilpa S; Chapko, Matthew J; Seo, Han-Seok

    2017-10-01

    Traditional methods of sensory testing focus on capturing information about multisensory perceptions, but do not necessarily measure emotions elicited by these food and beverages. The objective of this study was to develop an optimum model of predicting overall liking (rating) and preference (choice) based on taste intensity and evoked emotions. One hundred and two participants (51 females) were asked to taste water, sucrose, citric acid, salt, and caffeine solutions. Their emotional responses toward each sample were measured by a combination of a self-reported emotion questionnaire (EsSense25), facial expressions, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses. In addition, their perceived intensity and overall liking were measured. After a break, participants re-tasted the samples and ranked them according to their preference. The results showed that emotional responses measured using self-reported emotion questionnaire and facial expression analysis along with perceived taste intensity performed best to predict overall liking as well as preference, while ANS measures showed limited contribution. Contrary to some previous research, this study demonstrated that not only negative emotions, but also positive ones could help predict consumer liking and preference. In addition, since there were subtle differences in the prediction models of overall liking and preference, both aspects should be taken into account to understand consumer behavior. In conclusion, combination of evoked emotions along with sensory perception could help better understand consumer acceptance as well as preference toward basic taste solutions. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  19. Communications and relationships between patient and nurse in Intensive Care Unit: knowledge, knowledge of the work, knowledge of the emotional state.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foà, Chiara; Cavalli, Lisa; Maltoni, Alessia; Tosello, Nicoletta; Sangilles, Chiara; Maron, Ilaria; Borghini, Marina; Artioli, Giovanna

    2016-11-22

    In an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) the communication between nurse and patient, the core of the care, is often hindered by patient's cognitive alterations and critical situation, by devices employed for the mechanical ventilation, and by the clinical and care-giving setting. How to overcome these barriers? How is the relational and communicative approach between nurse and patient unable to express him or herself to be managed? The available literature reveals that studies on communication with difficult patients, such as those treated in ICU are currently scarce. The present research offers a contribution in this respect, through fact-finding about the knowledge acquired by professional studies or work experiences, the personal and institutional techniques implemented in regards to communication (knowledge of the work), the relational behaviours and the emotional experience with patients (knowledge of the emotional state) of nurses working in the Intensive Care Units. A semi-structured interview have been designed and submitted to 30 nurses working in fourteen Highly Specialized Centres (HUB) in Emilia Romagna, Italy. Two nurses with different years of experience in the field have been chosen for each Operating Unit. According to the interviewees paraverbal communication is the most common way to communicate with patients: different strategies are employed such as facial expression or lip movement. In any case, the nurse has the task to choose the most suitable technique according to his or her experiences, his or her knowledge and the patient him or herself. The results claim that lack of specific training on communicative aspects of care, should be combined with an attitude of being prone to listening to and understanding the needs of the patient and of his or her family as well. The interviewees declare they have a solid preparation in the bio-clinical aspect of care, but both new hired nurses and experts affirm that they need a specific training in relational and

  20. [Association between Emotional Labor, Emotional Dissonance, Burnout and Turnover Intention in Clinical Nurses: A Multiple-Group Path Analysis across Job Satisfaction].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Back, Chi Yun; Hyun, Dae Sung; Chang, Sei Jin

    2017-12-01

    This study was conducted to investigate the influence of emotional labor, emotional dissonance, and burnout on nurse's turnover intention and examine the effect of job satisfaction on the relationships among emotional labor, emotional dissonance, burnout, and turnover intention. The sample consisted of 350 nurses recruited from 6 general hospitals in 2 cities in Korea. A multiple-group analysis was utilized. Data were analyzed using SPSS statistics 23 and AMOS 20. In the path analysis, turnover intention was directly related to burnout in clinical nurses who had a high job satisfaction (β=.24, p=.003), while it was indirectly related to emotional dissonance (β=.13, p=.002). In the multiple-group path analysis, turnover intention was directly related to emotional dissonance (β=.18, p=.033) and burnout (β=.26, p=.002) for nurses with low job satisfaction. These results indicate that manuals and guidelines to alleviate the negative effects of emotional labor, emotional dissonance, and burnout, and to increase job satisfaction are strongly required to reduce turnover intention in nurses at the organizational level as well as at the individual level. © 2017 Korean Society of Nursing Science

  1. Compton scattering at high intensities

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Heinzl, Thomas, E-mail: thomas.heinzl@plymouth.ac.u [University of Plymouth, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA (United Kingdom)

    2009-12-01

    High-intensity Compton scattering takes place when an electron beam is brought into collision with a high power laser. We briefly review the main intensity signatures using the formalism of strong-field quantum electrodynamics.

  2. The Perceived Invalidation of Emotion Scale (PIES): Development and psychometric properties of a novel measure of current emotion invalidation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zielinski, Melissa J; Veilleux, Jennifer C

    2018-05-24

    Emotion invalidation is theoretically and empirically associated with mental and physical health problems. However, existing measures of invalidation focus on past (e.g., childhood) invalidation and/or do not specifically emphasize invalidation of emotion. In this article, the authors articulate a clarified operational definition of emotion invalidation and use that definition as the foundation for development of a new measure of current perceived emotion invalidation across a series of five studies. Study 1 was a qualitative investigation of people's experiences with emotional invalidation from which we generated items. An initial item pool was vetted by expert reviewers in Study 2 and examined via exploratory factor analysis in Study 3 within both college student and online samples. The scale was reduced to 10 items via confirmatory factor analysis in Study 4, resulting in a brief but psychometrically promising measure, the Perceived Invalidation of Emotion Scale (PIES). A short-term longitudinal investigation (Study 5) revealed that PIES scores had strong test-retest reliability, and that greater perceived emotion invalidation was associated with greater emotion dysregulation, borderline features and symptoms of emotional distress. In addition, the PIES predicted changes in relational health and psychological health over a 1-month period. The current set of studies thus presents a psychometrically promising and practical measure of perceived emotion invalidation that can provide a foundation for future research in this burgeoning area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Developmental changes in facial expressions of emotions in the strange situation during the second year of life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Izard, Carroll E; Abe, Jo Ann A

    2004-09-01

    Infants' expressions of discrete emotions were coded during the more stressful episodes (4 through 8) of the Strange Situation at 13 and 18 months. The data showed a significant decrease in full-face expressions (more complex configurations of movements) and a significant increase in component expressions (simpler and more constrained patterns of movements). The authors interpreted this trend as a developmental change toward more regulated and less intense emotions. Consistent with this view, the aggregate index of infants' full-face negative emotion expressions, interpreted as reflecting relatively unregulated intense emotions, correlated significantly with maternal ratings of difficult temperament. The authors discuss alternative interpretations of the findings in terms of changes in reactivity/arousability and the emerging capacity for self-regulation. (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved

  4. Diamonds in the rough: a strong case for the inclusion of weak-intensity X-ray diffraction data

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang, Jimin; Wing, Richard A.

    2014-01-01

    Here, new evidence is provided to show that the inclusion of weak-intensity, high-resolution X-ray diffraction data helps to improve the quality of experimental phases by imposing proper constraints on electron-density models during noncrystallographic symmetry averaging. Overwhelming evidence exists to show that the inclusion of weak-intensity, high-resolution X-ray diffraction data helps improve the refinement of atomic models by imposing strong constraints on individual and overall temperature B factors and thus the quality of crystal structures. Some researchers consider these data to be of little value and opt to discard them during data processing, particularly at medium and low resolution, at which individual B factors of atomic models cannot be refined. Here, new evidence is provided to show that the inclusion of these data helps to improve the quality of experimental phases by imposing proper constraints on electron-density models during noncrystallographic symmetry (NCS) averaging. Using electron-density correlation coefficients as criteria, the resolution of data has successfully been extended from 3.1 to 2.5 Å resolution with redundancy-independent merging R factors from below 100% to about 310%. It is further demonstrated that phase information can be fully extracted from observed amplitudes through de novo NCS averaging. Averaging starts with uniform density inside double-shelled spherical masks and NCS matrices that are derived from bound heavy-atom clusters at the vertices of cuboctahedrally symmetric protein particles

  5. Latent semantics of action verbs reflect phonetic parameters of intensity and emotional content

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Petersen, Michael Kai

    2015-01-01

    already in toddlers, this study explores whether articulatory and acoustic parameters may likewise differentiate the latent semantics of action verbs. Selecting 3 X 20 emotion, face, and hand related verbs known to activate premotor areas in the brain, their mutual cosine similarities were computed using...... latent semantic analysis LSA, and the resulting adjacency matrices were compared based on two different large scale text corpora; HAWIK and TASA. Applying hierarchical clustering to identify common structures across the two text corpora, the verbs largely divide into combined mouth and hand movements...... versus emotional expressions. Transforming the verbs into their constituent phonemes, and projecting them into an articulatory space framed by tongue height and formant frequencies, the clustered small and large size movements appear differentiated by front versus back vowels corresponding to increasing...

  6. Emotion regulation strategies mediate the associations of positive and negative affect to upper extremity physical function.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Talaei-Khoei, Mojtaba; Nemati-Rezvani, Hora; Fischerauer, Stefan F; Ring, David; Chen, Neal; Vranceanu, Ana-Maria

    2017-05-01

    The Gross process model of emotion regulation holds that emotion-eliciting situations (e.g. musculoskeletal illness) can be strategically regulated to determine the final emotional and behavioral response. Also, there is some evidence that innate emotional traits may predispose an individual to a particular regulating coping style. We enrolled 107 patients with upper extremity musculoskeletal illness in this cross-sectional study. They completed self-report measures of positive and negative affect, emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), upper extremity physical function, pain intensity, and demographics. We used Preacher and Hayes' bootstrapping approach to process analysis to infer the direct effect of positive and negative affect on physical function as well as their indirect effects through activation of emotion regulation strategies. Negative affect was associated with decreased physical function. The association was partly mediated by expressive suppression (b (SE)=-.10 (.05), 95% BCa CI [-.21, -.02]). Positive affect was associated with increased physical function. Cognitive reappraisal partially mediated this association (b (SE)=.11 (.05), 95% BCa CI [.03, .24]). After controlling for pain intensity, the ratio of the mediated effect to total effect grew even larger in controlled model comparing to uncontrolled model (33% vs. 26% for expressive suppression and 32% vs. 30% for cognitive reappraisal). The relationships between affect, emotion regulation strategies and physical function appear to be more dependent on the emotional response to an orthopedic condition rather than the intensity of the nociceptive stimulation of the pain. Findings support integration of emotion regulation training in skill-based psychotherapy in this population to mitigate the effect of negative affect and enhance the influence of positive affect on physical function. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. EMOTIONAL HANDICAPS TO LEARNING IN TWO CULTURES*

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    1971-03-06

    Mar 6, 1971 ... Emotional problems in 11 European and 16 African schoolchildren are ... Cognitive Inefficiency ... motivation in 3 cases, a strong desire for acceptance by the peer .... to affect the children secondarily include social incom-.

  8. Musical emotions: predicting second-by-second subjective feelings of emotion from low-level psychoacoustic features and physiological measurements.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coutinho, Eduardo; Cangelosi, Angelo

    2011-08-01

    We sustain that the structure of affect elicited by music is largely dependent on dynamic temporal patterns in low-level music structural parameters. In support of this claim, we have previously provided evidence that spatiotemporal dynamics in psychoacoustic features resonate with two psychological dimensions of affect underlying judgments of subjective feelings: arousal and valence. In this article we extend our previous investigations in two aspects. First, we focus on the emotions experienced rather than perceived while listening to music. Second, we evaluate the extent to which peripheral feedback in music can account for the predicted emotional responses, that is, the role of physiological arousal in determining the intensity and valence of musical emotions. Akin to our previous findings, we will show that a significant part of the listeners' reported emotions can be predicted from a set of six psychoacoustic features--loudness, pitch level, pitch contour, tempo, texture, and sharpness. Furthermore, the accuracy of those predictions is improved with the inclusion of physiological cues--skin conductance and heart rate. The interdisciplinary work presented here provides a new methodology to the field of music and emotion research based on the combination of computational and experimental work, which aid the analysis of the emotional responses to music, while offering a platform for the abstract representation of those complex relationships. Future developments may aid specific areas, such as, psychology and music therapy, by providing coherent descriptions of the emotional effects of specific music stimuli. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

  9. Emotional Intelligence Relates to Well-Being: Evidence from the Situational Judgment Test of Emotional Management.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burrus, Jeremy; Betancourt, Anthony; Holtzman, Steven; Minsky, Jennifer; MacCann, Carolyn; Roberts, Richard D

    2012-07-01

    This research was conducted to examine whether people high in emotional intelligence (EI) have greater well-being than people low in EI. The Situational Test of Emotion Management, Scales of Psychological Well-being, and Day Reconstruction Method were completed by 131 college students. Responses to the Situational Test of Emotion Management were strongly related to eudaimonic well-being as measured by responses on the Scales of Psychological Well-being (r=.54). Furthermore, the ability to manage emotions was related to hedonic well-being, correlating with both the frequency of experienced positive affect and the frequency of experienced negative affect, as measured by the Day Reconstruction Method. Two aspects of these results suggest a relationship between EI and well-being. First, the observed relationship between ability EI and psychological well-being is the largest reported in the literature to date. Second, this study is the first use of the Day Reconstruction Method to examine the relationship between well-being and EI. Results are discussed in terms of the potential for training emotion management to enhance well-being. Methodological advances for future research are also suggested. © 2012 The Authors. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being © 2012 The International Association of Applied Psychology.

  10. Flow of Emotional Messages in Artificial Social Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chmiel, Anna; Hołyst, Janusz A.

    Models of message flows in an artificial group of users communicating via the Internet are introduced and investigated using numerical simulations. We assumed that messages possess an emotional character with a positive valence and that the willingness to send the next affective message to a given person increases with the number of messages received from this person. As a result, the weights of links between group members evolve over time. Memory effects are introduced, taking into account that the preferential selection of message receivers depends on the communication intensity during the recent period only. We also model the phenomenon of secondary social sharing when the reception of an emotional e-mail triggers the distribution of several emotional e-mails to other people.

  11. Emotional approach coping and the effects of online peer-led support group participation among patients with breast cancer: a longitudinal study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Batenburg, Anika; Das, Enny

    2014-11-28

    Previous research on the effects of online peer support on psychological well-being of patients with cancer showed mixed findings. There is a need for longitudinal studies explaining if and when online peer-led support groups are beneficial. How patients cope with emotions that come along with the cancer diagnosis might influence effectiveness of online participation. Emotional approach coping is a construct encompassing the intentional use of emotional processing and emotional expression in efforts to manage adverse circumstances. In this longitudinal study, we hypothesize that mixed findings in previous research are partly caused by individual differences in coping with emotions, which may moderate the effects of online support group participation on patients' well-being. A total of 133 Dutch patients with breast cancer filled out a baseline (T0) and a follow-up (T1, 6 months later) questionnaire assessing intensity of online participation within the online support community, emotional approach coping (ie, actively processing and expressing emotions), and psychological well-being (depression, emotional well-being, and breast cancer-related concerns). There were 109 patients who visited an online support community at both points in time. Repeated measures ANOVAs assessed change in well-being over time. Results showed 3-way interactions of time, online intensity of participation, and emotional approach coping on emotional well-being (F1,89=4.232, P=.04, η(2) ρ=.045) and depression (F1,88=8.167, P=.005, η(2) ρ=.085). Online support group participation increased emotional well-being over time for patients who scored low on emotional approach coping at T0, provided that they were highly active online. Patients who were highly active online with a high score on emotional approach coping reported no change in sense of well-being, but showed the highest score on well-being overall. Participating less frequently online was only beneficial for patients who scored high

  12. Subjective emotional experience at different stages of Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vicente, Siobhan; Péron, Julie; Biseul, Isabelle; Ory, Sophie; Philippot, Pierre; Drapier, Sophie; Drapier, Dominique; Vérin, Marc

    2011-11-15

    Subjective emotional experience is thought to rely on a large cortical-subcortical network including orbitofrontal and cingulate frontostriatal circuits together with the mesolimbic dopaminergic system that modulates their activity. Parkinson's disease (PD) provides a model for exploring this issue. By using an original emotion induction procedure, the present study examined to what extent subjective experience of emotion of PD patients at different stages of the disease was modulated by emotion in the same way as healthy individuals. A battery of film excerpts was used to elicit different emotional feelings (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and neutral) in 15 newly diagnosed PD patients, 18 patients with advanced PD and 15 matched controls. The newly diagnosed patients were examined in two conditions: "on" and "off" dopaminergic medication. Participants reported the intensity of their emotional feelings on a scale consisting of 10 emotional categories. Results indicated that PD patients at different stages of the disease did not significantly differ from the controls in the self-reported emotional experience to the presented film excerpts. Moreover, analyses conducted within the newly diagnosed PD group (on-dopa vs. off-dopa conditions) indicated that the patients' emotional reactivity to the presented film excerpts was not significantly modulated by dopaminergic medication. These results thus question the possible role of dopaminergic pathways in subjective emotional experience, at least in this sample and in the context of emotion induction. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Gender-specific effects of emotional modulation on visual temporal order thresholds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liang, Wei; Zhang, Jiyuan; Bao, Yan

    2015-09-01

    Emotions affect temporal information processing in the low-frequency time window of a few seconds, but little is known about their effect in the high-frequency domain of some tens of milliseconds. The present study aims to investigate whether negative and positive emotional states influence the ability to discriminate the temporal order of visual stimuli, and whether gender plays a role in temporal processing. Due to the hemispheric lateralization of emotion, a hemispheric asymmetry between the left and the right visual field might be expected. Using a block design, subjects were primed with neutral, negative and positive emotional pictures before performing temporal order judgment tasks. Results showed that male subjects exhibited similarly reduced order thresholds under negative and positive emotional states, while female subjects demonstrated increased threshold under positive emotional state and reduced threshold under negative emotional state. Besides, emotions influenced female subjects more intensely than male subjects, and no hemispheric lateralization was observed. These observations indicate an influence of emotional states on temporal order processing of visual stimuli, and they suggest a gender difference, which is possibly associated with a different emotional stability.

  14. The Relationship between Teacher Support and Students' Academic Emotions: A Meta-Analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hao Lei

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available This meta-analysis examines the association between teacher support and students' academic emotions [both positive academic emotions (PAEs and negative academic emotions (NAEs] and explores how student characteristics moderate these relationships. We identified 65 primary studies with 58,368 students. The results provided strong evidence linking teacher support and students' academic emotions. Furthermore, students' culture, age, and gender moderated these links. The correlation between teacher support and PAEs was stronger for Western European and American students than for East Asian students, while the correlation between teacher support and NAEs was stronger for East Asian students than for Western European and American students. Also, the correlation between teacher support and PAEs was strong among university students and weaker among middle school students, compared to other students. The correlation between teacher support and NAEs was stronger for middle school students and for female students, compared to other students.

  15. Positive emotion, reward, and cognitive control: emotional versus motivational influences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kimberly Sarah Chiew

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available It is becoming increasingly appreciated that affective influences can contribute strongly to goal-oriented cognition and behaviour. However, much work is still needed to properly characterize these influences and the mechanisms by which they contribute to cognitive processing. An important question concerns the nature of emotional manipulations (i.e., direct induction of affectively-valenced subjective experience versus motivational manipulations (e.g., delivery of performance-contingent rewards and punishments and their impact on cognitive control. Empirical evidence suggests that both kinds of manipulations can influence cognitive control in a systematic fashion, but investigations of both have largely been conducted independently of one another. Likewise, some theoretical accounts suggest that emotion and motivation may modulate cognitive control via common neural mechanisms, while others suggest the possibility of dissociable influences. Here, we provide an analysis and synthesis of these various accounts, suggesting potentially fruitful new research directions to test competing hypotheses.

  16. Emotional Experiences as Predictors of Teachers' Mental Health

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ivana Macuka

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Teaching profession is considered emotionally demanding since teachers experience a variety of positive and negative emotions of significant intensity at work. Emotions they experience in relation to their professional activities can affect their professional and personal development. Frequent experiences of teachers' negative emotions in relation to students, parents, colleagues or educational system in general as well as feelings of emotional exhaustion (as an important aspect of burnout, can have a negative impact on teachers' psychological well-being and increase the occurrence of psychopathological symptoms. The aim of this study was to examine the role of emotions (experienced in relation to students, parents, and educational system and emotional exhaustion in explaining symptoms of anxiety, depression, and somatization among teachers. The study was conducted on a sample of 1149 subject-specific elementary school teachers from different regions in Croatia. A total of 210 male and 939 female teachers, aged between 24 and 65, participated in the study. Considering the expected gender differences in the prevalence of psychopathological symptoms, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted separately on the subsamples of male and female teachers. Results showed that, after controlling for working experience (which explains the somatization symptoms, certain emotions (exhaustion, love, anger, and hopelessness experienced in relation to students; anxiety experienced in relation to parents; and disappointment with educational system and emotional exhaustion significantly explain the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and somatization among teachers. The obtained results emphasise the importance of emotional exhaustion, which results from daily stressors and pressures at work, in explaining psychopathological outcomes in the teaching profession.

  17. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ORGANIZATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS: MANAGEMENT MODEL APPROACH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    John N. N. Ugoani

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Modern organization theory considers emotional intelligence as the index of competencies that help organizations to develop a vision for competitiveness. It also allows organizational leaders to enthusiastically commit to the vision, and energize organizational members to achieve the vision. To maximize competiveness organizations use models to simplify and clarify thinking, to identify important aspects, to suggest explanations and to predict consequences, and explore other performance areas that would otherwise be hidden in an excess of words. The survey research design was used to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational competitiveness. The study found that emotional intelligence has strong positive relationship with organizational competitiveness

  18. Emotion models for textual emotion classification

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bruna, O.; Avetisyan, H.; Holub, J.

    2016-11-01

    This paper deals with textual emotion classification which gained attention in recent years. Emotion classification is used in user experience, product evaluation, national security, and tutoring applications. It attempts to detect the emotional content in the input text and based on different approaches establish what kind of emotional content is present, if any. Textual emotion classification is the most difficult to handle, since it relies mainly on linguistic resources and it introduces many challenges to assignment of text to emotion represented by a proper model. A crucial part of each emotion detector is emotion model. Focus of this paper is to introduce emotion models used for classification. Categorical and dimensional models of emotion are explained and some more advanced approaches are mentioned.

  19. Generalizations of the subject-independent feature set for music-induced emotion recognition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Yuan-Pin; Chen, Jyh-Horng; Duann, Jeng-Ren; Lin, Chin-Teng; Jung, Tzyy-Ping

    2011-01-01

    Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based emotion recognition has been an intensely growing field. Yet, how to achieve acceptable accuracy on a practical system with as fewer electrodes as possible is less concerned. This study evaluates a set of subject-independent features, based on differential power asymmetry of symmetric electrode pairs [1], with emphasis on its applicability to subject variability in music-induced emotion classification problem. Results of this study have evidently validated the feasibility of using subject-independent EEG features to classify four emotional states with acceptable accuracy in second-scale temporal resolution. These features could be generalized across subjects to detect emotion induced by music excerpts not limited to the music database that was used to derive the emotion-specific features.

  20. Emotion model of interactive virtual humans on the basis of MDP

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    WANG Guojiang; WANG Zhiliang; TENG Shaodong; XIE Yinggang; WANG Yujie

    2007-01-01

    Emotion plays an essential role in the adaptation and social communication of organisms.Similarly,an appropriately timed and clearly expressed emotion is a central requirement for believable interactive virtual humans.Presently,incorporating emotion into virtual humans has gained increasing attention in the academia and industry.This strong interest is driven by a wide spectrum of promising applications in many areas such as virtual reality,e-learning,entertainment,etc.This paper introduces an emotion model of artificial psychology,in which the transition of emotion can be viewed as a Markov process and the relation of emotion,external incentive and personality can be described by a Markov decision process (MDP).In order to demonstrate the approach,this paper integrates the emotion model into a system composed of voice recognition and a realistic facial model.Thus,the model could be used for generating a variety of emotional expressions of autonomous,interactive virtual human beings.