Showing papers by "Phoebe C. Ellsworth published in 2012"

Feeling Blue or Turquoise? Emotional Differentiation in Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract: Some individuals have very specific and differentiated emotional experiences, such as anger, shame, excitement, and happiness, whereas others have more general affective experiences of pleasure or discomfort that are not as highly differentiated. Considering that individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD) have cognitive deficits for negative information, we predicted that people with MDD would have less differentiated negative emotional experiences than would healthy people. To test this hypothesis, we assessed participants’ emotional experiences using a 7-day experience-sampling protocol. Depression was assessed using structured clinical interviews and the Beck Depression Inventory-II. As predicted, individuals with MDD had less differentiated emotional experiences than did healthy participants, but only for negative emotions. These differences were above and beyond the effects of emotional intensity and variability.

More Than Skin Deep Visceral States Are Not Projected Onto Dissimilar Others

Abstract: What people feel shapes their perceptions of others. In the studies reported here, we examined the assimilative influence of visceral states on social judgment. Replicating prior research, we found that participants who were outside during winter overestimated the extent to which other people were bothered by cold (Study 1), and participants who ate salty snacks without water thought other people were overly bothered by thirst (Study 2). However, in both studies, this effect evaporated when participants believed that the other people under consideration held political views opposing their own. Participants who judged these dissimilar others were unaffected by their own strong visceral-drive states, a finding that highlights the power of dissimilarity in social judgment. Dissimilarity may thus represent a boundary condition for embodied cognition and inhibit an empathic understanding of shared out-group pain. Our findings reveal the need for a better understanding of how people's internal experiences influence their perceptions of the feelings and experiences of those who may hold values different from their own.

Culture, attention, and emotion.

Abstract: This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency. In Study 2, Russian Latvians were randomly primed with symbols of each culture, after which we measured the speed of recognition for positive versus negative trait words. Biculturals were significantly faster in recognizing negative words (as compared with baseline) when primed with Russian versus Latvian cultural symbols. Greater identification with Russian culture facilitated this effect. We provide a theoretical discussion of mental processes underlying cultural differences in emotion research.

Saving the Last for Best A Positivity Bias for End Experiences

Abstract: Imagine that your favorite restaurant is closing, and your final meal tastes especially delicious. Is it actually more tasty than normal, or is it just more enjoyable because you know it is the last one? Previous research suggests that salient endings may foster more positive attitudes toward the events that preceded them. For example, students reminded of graduation felt greater affection for their school than did students not given such reminders (Ersner-Hershfield, Mikels, Sullivan, & Carstensen, 2008), and people who considered relocating valued their hometown friends more highly than did people who did not consider relocating (Fredrickson & Carstensen, 1990). However, “lasts” are also common in everyday life and need not involve significant experiences. For example, on a typical day, someone might read the last chapter of a book, eat the last bite of lunch, listen to the last symposium speaker, and give the last kiss goodnight. In turn, he or she may assess the quality of each event (e.g., “How interesting was that final talk?”). When made salient, serial positioning may affect such assessments; this occurs because people are highly sensitive to temporal contexts, which influence many evaluations besides major life episodes (Aaker, Rudd, & Mogilner, 2011; Levine, 1997; McGrath & Tschan, 2004). Thus, just as graduations trigger more positive perceptions of school, people might judge everyday “last” events more positively because they generally signal the end of an experience. To test this possibility, we recruited participants to eat different flavors of chocolates one by one. We predicted that when the last chocolate was made salient, it would be more enjoyable, and it would taste better than the other chocolates irrespective of flavor. We also predicted that when the last chocolate was made salient, the experiment would be more enjoyable overall, because endings drive global evaluations (as in duration neglect—Redelmeier & Kahneman, 1996); in other words, if the last chocolate tastes better than the ones before it, the overall experience should seem better.

Acceptability of Favor Requests in the United States and Japan

Abstract: In previous research, the authors showed that Japanese and Americans would rather be asked to perform a favor than to have their friend solve the problem by asking someone else or getting it done professionally. In the current research, the authors further explore the similarities and differences in Japanese and American reactions to requests for favors by examining whether (a) increasing the size of the request can increase positive feelings, (b) the perceived closeness of the relationship and appraisals of control mediate the effect of request size on feelings, and (c) the increase in positive feelings only occurs in close friendship. In Japan and to some extent the United States, being asked a larger favor made people happier than being asked a smaller favor—up to a point. However, as in the authors’ previous study, cultural differences emerged in the basic pattern and in the associated appraisals. Results are discussed in relation to the Japanese phenomenon of Amae.

BRIEF REPORT Culture, Attention, and Emotion

Abstract: This research provides experimental evidence for cultural influence on one of the most basic elements of emotional processing: attention to positive versus negative stimuli. To this end, we focused on Russian culture, which is characterized by brooding and melancholy. In Study 1, Russians spent significantly more time looking at negative than positive pictures, whereas Americans did not show this tendency. In Study 2, Russian Latvians were randomly primed with symbols of each culture, after which we measured the speed of recognition for positive versus negative trait words. Biculturals were significantly faster in recognizing negative words (as compared with baseline) when primed with Russian versus Latvian cultural symbols. Greater identification with Russian culture facilitated this effect. We provide a theoretical discussion of mental processes underlying cultural differences in emotion research.