Showing papers in "Cognition & Emotion in 1991"
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory specifying how appraisals of a situation determine one's emotional responses (Roseman, 1979) was subjected to an experimental test, and 120 college students read brief stories in which they were manipulated, and rated the intensities of various emotions felt by story protagonists.
Abstract: A theory specifying how appraisals of a situation determine one's emotional responses (Roseman, 1979) was subjected to an experimental test. According to the theory, particular combinations of 5 appraisals determine which of 13 qualitatively different emotions will be experienced in any given situation. The appraisals are: motivational state (rewarding/punishing), situational state (presendabsent), probability (certaiduncertain), legitimacy (positivehegative outcome deserved), and causal agency (circumstanced other person/self). The emotions whose occurrence they determine are joy, relief, hope, liking (“warmth-friendliness”), pride, distress, sorrow, fear, frustration, disliking (“coolness-unfriendliness”), anger, regret, and guilt. In the experiment, 120 college students read brief stories in which these appraisals were manipulated, and rated the intensities of various emotions felt by story protagonists. Results showed that each appraisal had a significant effect upon emotions, and that the pa...
802 citations
TL;DR: A series of six studies investigated different aspects of this hypothesis and found that an overwhelming majority of people reported sharing their emotional experiences and that the memories of these experiences tended to come back spontaneously to their consciousness.
Abstract: We argue that emotion cannot only be conceived of as a short-lived and intrapersonal phenomenon. Rather, based on five theoretical arguments, we propose that the social sharing of an emotional experience forms an integral part of the emotional processes. A series of six studies investigated different aspects of this hypothesis. Study 1 showed that an overwhelming majority of people reported sharing their emotional experiences and that the memories of these experiences tended to come back spontaneously to their consciousness. No difference was found among emotions. Using a different procedure, Studies 2 and 3 replicated these findings in two different populations. In addition, these studies provided indications that women share their experiences with a wider array of individuals than do men. The first three studies did not find any differences among emotions, but they did not include shame. It could be argued that people are less inclined to socially share shame experiences which are typically eli...
486 citations
TL;DR: This paper showed that people remember details from emotional events differently than details from neutral events, and that emotional events led to different performance than non-emotional events. But, their results were limited to five experiments, and they did not consider the effect of unusual events.
Abstract: Previous research has shown that people remember details from emotional events differently than details from neutral events. However, past research suffers from inadequate equating of the details tested in the emotional and neutral events. In the current five experiments, involving a total of 397 subjects, we equated the to-be-remembered detail information. Subjects in these experiments were presented with a thematic series of slides in which the content of one critical slide in the middle of the series varied. When the critical slide was emotional (a woman injured near a bicycle), compared to neutral in nature (a woman riding a bicycle), subjects were better able to remember a central detail but less able to remember a peripheral detail. To determine whether the emotional event led to different performance simply because it was unusual, we included a third condition, in which subjects saw an “unusual” version of the event (a woman carrying a bicycle on her shoulder). Subjects in the unusual cond...
396 citations
TL;DR: Interacting Cognitive Subsytems (ICS) as mentioned in this paper is a comprehensive systemic model of the organisation and function of the resources underlying human cognition, which is used in this paper.
Abstract: Interacting Cognitive Subsytems (ICS) is a comprehensive systemic model of the organisation and function of the resources underlying human cognition. in this paper we use ICS to provide a conceptua...
222 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated the effects of schema-discrepant events on three characteristics of surprise: delay in execution of a simple action, involuntary focusing of attention toward the surprising stimulus, and subjective experience of surprise.
Abstract: We investigated the effects of a schema-discrepant event on three characteristics of surprise: delay in the execution of a simple action (measured by reaction times), involuntary focusing of attention toward the surprising stimulus (measured by memory performance), and subjective experience of surprise (measured by the subjects' ratings). The experimental procedure in each of the four experiments reported here was related to a technique introduced by McLeod, Mathews, and Tata (1986). In each trial 2 words were displayed simultaneously, one above the other, on a computer screen (for 3sec). Either together with the onset of the word display or 0.5sec, 1sec, and 2sec later a dot appeared for 0.1sec, either above the upper or below the lower word. Subjects were instructed to respond to the position of the dot by pressing one of two keys. In the experimental groups, in Trials 1–29 both words were presented as black letters on a white ground. This procedure was expected to establish a schema for the mo...
148 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between measures of expressive control, affective communication, self-consciousness, empathy, and affective intensity reported by trainee hairdressers.
Abstract: This study is concerned with the strategies of expressive control and interaction styles reported by trainee hairdressers. Thirty-nine young women on a Youth Training Scheme (YTS) hairdressing scheme were interviewed about their experiences of dealing with clients and asked to fill out a series of standardised personality questionnaires. Relationships between measures of expressive control, affective communication, self-consciousness, empathy, and affective intensity were investigated, and the influence of these variables on job satisfaction, general well-being, and reported level of tips was assessed using correlational analyses. Ratings of job satisfaction and general well-being were found to be significantly related to low levels of self-monitoring, and more specifically to the absence of a socially deceptive strategy of impression management. Self-ratings of emotional expressive ability and scores on a self-report cognitive/affective index of “open” interaction style together accounted for ab...
95 citations
TL;DR: Theories of embarrassment were investigated by having subjects either recall an occasion when they were embarrassed or describe their idea of a typical instance of embarrassment as mentioned in this paper, and subjects then rated their account on a questionnaire designed to measure five theoretical approaches to embarrassment: dramaturgic theory, social anxiety theory, and three decreased self-esteem theories.
Abstract: Theories of embarrassment were investigated by having subjects either recall an occasion when they were embarrassed or describe their idea of a typical instance of embarrassment. Subjects then rated their account on a questionnaire designed to measure five theoretical approaches to embarrassment: dramaturgic theory, social anxiety theory, and three decreased self-esteem theories. Patterns of means and of covariation for actual embarrassment best supported the dramaturgic theory. In contrast, subjects' accounts of typical embarrassment contained elements of all five theories. The written accounts were analysed to produce a prototype of embarrassment, which consisted mostly of elements of the dramaturgic and social anxiety theories. We propose that the concept of embarrassment is necessarily linked to dramaturgic difficulties, whereas it is contingently linked to social anxiety and decreased self-esteem.
81 citations
TL;DR: Men were liked best when they cried, and women when they did not as mentioned in this paper, and women were seen as more depressed and emotional than individuals who laughed, but not as more feminine.
Abstract: Weeping has traditionally been seen as a sign of weakness, and laughter as a sign of health. In the current study, attitudes and reactions toward emotional expressions were evaluated in a laboratory setting. Subjects (n = 168) viewed a movie with a confederate who cried, laughed, or expressed no emotion; they then engaged in 3 minutes of videotaped interaction. Results indicated that men were liked best when they cried, and women when they did not. Criers were seen as more depressed and emotional than individuals who laughed, but not as more feminine. More personal conversations were initiated in the Control condition, and contagion occurred in the Laugh condition, where moods were most positive. These results are consistent with other research which suggests that gender role expectations of emotional expression, especially crying, may have changed in recent years; they also demonstrate that reactions to others' expressions depend upon the expression and also the expressor.
76 citations
TL;DR: For instance, this article found that phobic subjects showed less free recall of spider words than control words, and that this occurs only in the context of a live (not a dead) spider and that results at delayed testing paralleled those at immediate testing.
Abstract: Previous work has shown that spider phobics have poor recognition memory for spiders. A parallel effect is demonstrated here for memory for spider words. The first experiment found that spider phobic subjects showed less free recall of spider words than control words. The second experiment confirmed this effect, showing additionally that phobin recall fewer spider words than control subjects, that this occurs only in the context of a live (not a dead) spider, that results at delayed testing paralleled those at immediate testing and that comparable results could be obtained for recognition. Poor recall of spider words was found to be accompanied by a high level of spider-related intrusions. It is suggested that phobic subjects do not encode well exactly which spider words are presented for learning, and so may employ a category-based strategy at recall.
67 citations
TL;DR: This article investigated mood effects on perceptions of Asian or Causcasian characters who were part of a same-race or a mixed-race dyad and found consistent mood-congruent biases in such.
Abstract: What role does affect play in stereotype judgements? This experiment investigated mood effects on perceptions of Asian (heterosterotype) or Causcasian (autostereotype) characters who were part of a same-race or a mixed-race dyad. We expected that mood should (a) distort stereotype judgements in a mood-consistent direction, and (b) that mood biases should be stronger for mixed-race dyads that require more detailed and inferential processing. Happy, neutral or sad mood was induced in subjects (n=198) using an audio-visual mood induction procedure in an allegedly separate experiment. Subjects were then asked to form impressions of Asian or Caucasian targets associated with a same-race or an other-race partner. As predicted, we found consistent mood-congruent biases in such. However, both positive and negative mood effects were significantly greater when a target was part of a mixed-race dyad, a condition presumably requiring more detailed and substantive inferential processing. These findings are in...
66 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a theoretical model of the mood-cognition interface was derived and tested empirically that positive mood enhances constructive memory biases, and the empirical findings lend support to these predictio...
Abstract: Based on a theoretical model of the mood-cognition interface, the prediction is derived and tested empirically that positive mood enhances constructive memory biases. After reading an ambiguous personality description, participants received a positive or negative mood treatment employing different films. Within each mood group, half of the participants were then questioned about the applicability of either desirable or undesirable personality traits to the target person. This questioning treatment was predicted to bias subsequent impression judgements in the evaluative direction of the questioned attributes. As earlier research had shown that such a bias is stronger for negative than positive attributes (presumably because of the higher diagnosticity of negative attributes), a non-trivial test of the sup posed mood effect was possible. Positive mood should enhance constructive effects, but this should be most apparent for negative attributes. The empirical findings lend support to these predictio...
TL;DR: In this article, three experiments used the colour perception task described by Gotlib, McLachlan, and Katz (1988) to examine attentional biases in anxiety and depression, and the results indicated that this pattern of bias was more closely associated with state anxiety, than with depression.
Abstract: Three experiments used the “colour perception” task described by Gotlib, McLachlan, and Katz (1988) to examine attentional biases in anxiety and depression. Contrary to expectation, Experiment 1 suggested that neither state nor trait anxiety was associated with an attentional bias favouring threat stimuli. Experiment 2 also failed to show a bias towards threat in clinically anxious individuals compared with normal controls. In an attempt to explain these null findings, Experiment 3 sought to replicate Gotlib et al.k original evidence of a positive bias in nondepressed individuals. The results indicated that this pattern of bias was more closely associated with state anxiety, than with depression. The discrepant findings are discussed in relation to methodological factors that may reveal the presence or absence of attentional biases, and some suggestions are made for future research.
TL;DR: For example, the authors found that half of the participants thought they might receive an electric shock while they exercised, and the same number of physical sensations were perceived as noticeable to the same degree as did the no-instruction subjects.
Abstract: Contrary to the assumptions of common sense—and of some research—focusing on one's physical sensations does not necessarily make them more unpleasant. Rather, attention and affect interact to produce somatic meaning. Fifty-six male subjects exercised at 60% of their aerobic capacity with either no instructions, or instructions to closely monitor their somatic sensations. Half of each group thought they might receive an electric shock while they exercised. Subjects then listed the sensations they perceived, and indicated their degree of noticeability, their subjective unpleasantness, and their presumed cause. Monitoring subjects reported the same number of physical sensations as did the no-instruction subjects, and rated them as noticeable to the same degree. Nonetheless, monitoring produced a more negative interpretation of one's sensations under threat, but a more positive one under no threat. The findings support and extend the view of somatic experience as inherently plastic. The results also ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the perceptibility of affectively charged words and found that the affect elicited via preattentive processing of an impinging word amplifies subsequent attentive processing.
Abstract: This study examined the perceptibility of affectively charged words. It was hypothesised that the affect elicited via preattentive processing of an impinging word amplifies subsequent, attentive processing. According to this hypothesis, the affect should impair the veridical perception when the word is presented in an extremely impoverished manner and, as a consequence, attentive processing is likely to be misdirected to an irrelevant perceptual code. In Experiment 1, 52 subjects were shown an affectively positive, negative, or neutral target word (128 words in total) with an extremely diminished contrast for 100, 150, or 200msec. They then chose, from a pair of equivalently valenced words, the one presented. As predicted, choice accuracy was lower for both affectively positive and negative words than for neutral words in all the three exposure time conditions. In further support of the current analysis, Experiment 2 showed that once the stimulus contrast was increased, the accuracy was no worse ...
TL;DR: In this article, mood induction procedures that enlist subjects' co-operation in creating and sustaining moods tend to bias memory toward mood congruence, but this phenomenon may be explained in ways that are not directly related to mood.
Abstract: Laboratory mood induction procedures that enlist subjects' co-operation in creating and sustaining moods tend to bias memory toward mood congruence, but this phenomenon may be explained in ways that are not directly related to mood. One such account is the “subject compliance hypothesis” (proposed by Blaney, 1986). which argues that mood congruent recall is the result of subjects' attempts to maintain or boost their moods, not the result of the moods per se. To test this hypothesis, happy and sad moods were induced using the musical mood induction procedure, which enlists subjects' co-operation in altering their moods. After subjects had performed several tasks, however, they were told that they could stop maintaining their mood. When asked to recall autobiographical memories a minute later, subjects nevertheless exhibited mood congruent bias. This finding argues against the subject compliance hypothesis, and suggests that subjects' moods persisted without active maintenance. Implications concern...
TL;DR: For example, this article found that mood congruence requires a modicum of awareness of one's own mood state, an awareness which is perhaps chronic among females and which becomes elevated in both genders simply by completing a BDI-short form.
Abstract: A considerable, but sometimes inconsistent, body of research exists indicating that affective state imposes a mood congruent bias upon memory. The present study sought to identify the conditions under which this bias is present. College students were classified as dysphoric vs. nondysphoric on the basis of their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory-Short Form (BDI-SF). Memories elicited were of recent autobiographical events, subsequently rated with respect to happiness/unhappiness. Two variables were considered: gender, and whether or not the subject had completed the BDI-SF just prior to generating memories. Among males who had not just taken the BDI-SF, mood congruence was absent. Both being female and completing the BDI-SF resulted in mood congruence, and these effects were additive. This indicates that mood congruence requires a modicum of awareness of one's own mood state—an awareness which is perhaps chronic among females and which becomes elevated in both genders simply by completing a...
TL;DR: The results of this study demonstrated that spinal cord lesions do not result in an overall reduction of emotional excitability, and according to the opinion of the spinal cord lesioned patients themselves, their overallotional excitability was increased after injury, rather than decreased.
Abstract: The emotional excitability of patients with spinal cord injury was studied. In contrast to what might be expected according to Hohmann (1966) and various emotion theories, the results of this study demonstrated that spinal cord lesions do not result in an overall reduction of emotional excitability. According to the opinion of the spinal cord lesioned patients themselves, their overall emotional excitability was increased after injury, rather than decreased.
TL;DR: This article found that spider phobics were more likely than non-phobics to recall nonspecific spider-related information contained in the text, and that this preferential recall was maintained even when individuals were encouraged to adopt a different perspective at recall.
Abstract: A number of studies have reported that anxious and phobic individuals differ from controls in demonstrating early perceptual pick-up of potentially threatening information. The present study examined the consequences of this attentional bias on the processing and subsequent recall of a passage of text. The results indicated that spider phobics were more likely than non-phobics to recall nonspecific spider-related information contained in the text, and that this preferential recall was maintained even when individuals were encouraged to adopt a different perspective at recall. The findings are contrasted with earlier studies which have indicated impaired recall of threat-related words, following attentional shifts towards those items at presentation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined two forms of simplifying restructuring: chunking and integration, and found that subjects under stress, integrated and identified the words sooner than those who were exposed to little or no stress.
Abstract: Recent theories maintain that stressors and the reactions they elicit demand part of individuals' limited information-processing capacity. In order to cope with the resulting decrement in processing capacity, individuals narrow their span of attention or restructure information into patterns that are easier to attend to, store, retrieve, and process. The present study examined two forms of simplifying restructuring: chunking and integration. The first two experiments showed that stressed subjects who were given a list of objects and the instruction to divide them into groups yielded fewer, more inclusive groups than their less stressed counterparts. In the third experiment the subjects performed a word identification task which required visual integration. Subjects under stress, integrated and, hence, identified the words sooner than those who were exposed to little or no stress. Implications of these findings for the understanding of the effects of stress on complex cognitive processes, such as ...
TL;DR: In this article, three groups of 30 six-year-old children were tested to examine whether one's own happiness or sadness mood state causes a specific preference for happy or sad expressions in others, a systematic bias in the labelling of ambiguous expressions, and a selective memory for positive or negative expressions.
Abstract: Three groups of 30 six-year-old children were tested to examine whether one's own happy or sad mood state causes a specific preference for happy or sad expressions in others, a systematic bias in the labelling of ambiguous expressions, and a selective memory for happy or sad expressions. In two of these groups, a happy or sad mood state was induced by a mental imagery procedure. The third group served as control subjects. It was found that all groups showed a distinct preference for happy faces. Happy children, however, tended to opt for extremely happy faces, whereas sad children chose mildly happy expressions. Furthermore, children (especially the children that received a happy mood induction) were inclined to interpret ambiguous expressions as being congruent with their own mood state. Finally, the “sad” group recalled fewer expressions correctly than the other two, irrespective of the nature of these expressions. Overall, the happy face was more often correctly identified than the sad one.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, subjects were induced into happy or sad moods prior to studying a list of words, and then induced into either the same or different mood prior to freely recalling the list.
Abstract: In six experiments, subjects were induced into happy or sad moods prior to studying a list of words, and then induced into either the same or different mood prior to freely recalling the list. In addition, subjects were administered various individual difference measures of mood states. The hypothesis was that subjects who profess to be most aware of their moods would be most likely to show disrupted performance when study and test moods were different. Mood-dependent performance was not generally observed, nor was there any evidence that it more consistently emerged for high-aware subjects.
TL;DR: The authors found that chronic schizophrenics do manifest a deficit of facial emotion expression which can best be explained by task parameters, such as verbal cueing of emotions, perceptual recognition, and bucco-facial dyspraxia in decreasing order of importance.
Abstract: Chronic schizophrenics are known to manifest a deficit of categorisation and recognition of primary emotional facial expression despite intact recognition of face identity. An equivalent deficit of expression of the same primary facial emotions in schizophrenics has not been clearly established. Twenty chronic hospitalised schizophrenics and 20 normals were therefore tested on tasks of facial emotional expression upon verbal command, of facial emotional expression imitation, and of non-affective bucco-facial praxic imitation. Results indicate that chronic schizophrenics do manifest a deficit of facial emotion expression which can best be explained by task parameters, such as verbal cueing of emotions, perceptual recognition, and bucco-facial dyspraxia in decreasing order of importance. The deficit does not appear to result from neuroleptic or anticholinergic medication nor length of hospitalisation or disease.
TL;DR: This paper found that children in the second and fourth grades listen to 10 sentences on-5 situational themes, with each theme being presented in an active version and a role-reversed version.
Abstract: To test divergent predictions of a “prototype” versus “affective tag” model for representing affect, children in the second and fourth grades listened to 10 sentences on-5 situational themes, with each theme being presented in an active version and a role-reversed version. Subjects made inferences about the story target's affective reactions or cognitions about these themes. Inferences about affective reactions were drawn more quickly than inferences about cognitions. For all inferences, the second, role-reversed presentation of a theme led to shorter response latencies. Responses were categorised into one of five response categories (Affect, Evaluation, Attribution, Script, and Reiteration). Although inferences about affect predominantly cited affect and inferences about cognitions tended not to cite affect, there was considerable response overlap so that affective inferences occasionally cited cognitions and cognitive inferences occasionally cited affect. The pattern of findings supports a prot...