Showing papers in "Emotion in 2022"

Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults.

Abstract: Aging into later life is often accompanied by social disconnection, anxiety, and sadness. Negative emotions are self-focused states with detrimental effects on aging and longevity. Awe-a positive emotion elicited when in the presence of vast things not immediately understood-reduces self-focus, promotes social connection, and fosters prosocial actions by encouraging a "small self." We investigated the emotional benefits of a novel "awe walk" intervention in healthy older adults. Sixty participants took weekly 15-min outdoor walks for 8 weeks; participants were randomly assigned to an awe walk group, which oriented them to experience awe during their walks, or to a control walk group. Participants took photographs of themselves during each walk and rated their emotional experience. Each day, they reported on their daily emotional experience outside of the walk context. Participants also completed pre- and postintervention measures of anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction. Compared with participants who took control walks, those who took awe walks experienced greater awe during their walks and exhibited an increasingly "small self" in their photographs over time. They reported greater joy and prosocial positive emotions during their walks and displayed increasing smile intensity over the study. Outside of the walk context, participants who took awe walks reported greater increases in daily prosocial positive emotions and greater decreases in daily distress over time. Postintervention anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction did not change from baseline in either group. These results suggest cultivating awe enhances positive emotions that foster social connection and diminishes negative emotions that hasten decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias of children’s faces.

Abstract: Research suggests that individuals are racially biased when judging the emotions of others (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002) and particularly regarding attributions about the emotion of anger (Halberstadt, Castro, Chu, Lozada, & Sims, 2018; Hugenberg & Bodenhausen, 2003). Systematic, balanced designs are rare, and are comprised of adults viewing adults. The present study expands the questions of racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias to the world of children. Findings that adults demonstrate either less emotion accuracy and/or greater anger bias for Black versus White children could potentially explain some of the large racialized disciplinary discrepancies in schools. To test whether racialized emotion recognition accuracy and anger bias toward children exists, we asked 178 prospective teachers to complete an emotion recognition task comprised of 72 children's facial expressions depicting six emotions and divided equally by race (Black, White) and gender (female, male). We also assessed implicit bias via the child race Implicit Association Test and explicit bias via questionnaire. Multilevel modeling revealed nuanced racialized emotion recognition accuracy with a race by gender interaction, but clear racialized anger bias toward both Black boys and girls. Both Black boys and Black girls were falsely seen as angry more often than White boys and White girls. Higher levels of either implicit or explicit bias did not increase odds of Black children being victim to anger bias, but instead decreased odds that White children would be misperceived as angry. Implications for addressing preexisting biases in teacher preparation programs and by children and parents are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Increasing anticipated and anticipatory pleasure through episodic thinking.

Abstract: Episodic future thinking for positive future events is known to evoke positive affect. We aimed to assess whether it specifically evokes anticipated and anticipatory pleasure for future events, and behavioral intention. As a secondary aim, we examined if this differed compared to a condition of thinking of positive past events. In two studies, participants nominated 5 upcoming positive events and 5 positive past events. They then completed guided episodic thinking of past events and guided episodic thinking of future events. After guided episodic thinking, they rated the nominated future events on detail/vividness, mental imagery, anticipated and anticipatory pleasure, and behavioral intention. In Study 1 (N = 32, M age = 37.0, SD = 19.7), increases on all variables were found relative to baseline, although expected pleasure was at trend level. There were no significant differences between future and past conditions. In Study 2 (N = 29, M age = 38.4, SD = 16.3), participants were asked to nominate future events that were not already planned, and perceived control was also assessed. Again, increases in detail/vividness, mental imagery, and anticipated and anticipatory pleasure were found, this time with stronger effects for the future condition. No change was found for perceived control or intention. In both studies, increases in detail/vividness, mental imagery, and anticipated and anticipatory pleasure were generally positively correlated with increases in behavioral intention. This study provides evidence that guided episodic thinking increases anticipated and anticipatory pleasure for positive future events. Clinical implications, particularly in depression and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of a multi-week nostalgia intervention on well-being: Mechanisms and moderation.

Abstract: Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for one's past. We examined the effect of a 6-week, weekly nostalgia intervention on well-being (positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, subjective vitality, and eudaimonic well-being) over time. After 3 weeks, participants who engaged in nostalgic reflection had higher well-being than those who engaged in ordinary reflection. After 6 weeks, and at a 1-month follow-up, the positive effect of nostalgic reflection was reserved for those who were high on dispositional nostalgia (i.e., well-suited to the nostalgia intervention). However, at these time points, nostalgic reflection was associated with lower well-being among those particularly low on dispositional nostalgia. Across time points, nostalgic reflection was beneficial to the degree that it fostered social connectedness, meaning in life, and self-continuity, pointing to mechanisms that drive nostalgia's positive influence on well-being. In summary, weekly nostalgic reflection has temporary well-being benefits for most (out to 3 weeks) and, beyond that, is a matter of fit-beneficial or adverse to those especially high or low on dispositional nostalgia, respectively. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Happy facial expressions impair inhibitory control with respect to fearful facial expressions but only when task-relevant.

Abstract: The ability to generate appropriate responses, especially in social contexts, requires integrating emotional information with ongoing cognitive processes. In particular, inhibitory control plays a crucial role in social interactions, preventing the execution of impulsive and inappropriate actions. In this study, we focused on the impact of facial emotional expressions on inhibition. Research in this field has provided highly mixed results. In our view, a crucial factor explaining such inconsistencies is the task-relevance of the emotional content of the stimuli. To clarify this issue, we gave two versions of a Go/No-go task to healthy participants. In the emotional version, participants had to withhold a reaching movement at the presentation of emotional facial expressions (fearful or happy) and move when neutral faces were shown. The same pictures were displayed in the other version, but participants had to act according to the actor's gender, ignoring the emotional valence of the faces. We found that happy expressions impaired inhibitory control with respect to fearful expressions, but only when they were relevant to the participants' goal. We interpret these results as suggesting that facial emotions do not influence behavioral responses automatically. They would instead do so only when they are intrinsically germane for ongoing goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion dynamics in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic and descriptive review.

Abstract: Theories on children and adolescent emotion dynamics were reviewed using data from 102 ecological momentary assessment studies with 19,928 participants and 689 estimates. We examined age-graded differences in emotional intensity, variability, instability, inertia, differentiation, and augmentation/blunting. Outcomes included positive versus negative affect scales, discrete emotions (anger, sadness, anxiety, and happiness), and we compared samples of youth with or without mental or physiological problems. Multilevel models showed more variable positive affect and sadness in adolescents compared with children, and more intense negative affect. Our additional descriptive review suggests a decrease in instability of positive and negative emotions from early to late adolescence. Mental health problems were associated with more variable and less intense positive affect, and more intense anxiety and heightened sadness variability. These results suggest systematic changes in emotion dynamics throughout childhood and adolescence, but the supporting literature proved to be limited, fragmented, and based on heterogeneous concepts and methodology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Positive emotion in daily life: Emotion regulation and depression.

Abstract: Depression is associated with the infrequent use of emotion regulation strategies that increase positive emotion and the frequent use of strategies that decrease positive emotion. However, prior research mostly relies on global, retrospective assessments that fail to capture dynamic relations between positive emotion and emotion regulation in ecologically valid settings. This study used an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) design to test whether depression is related to positive emotion regulation in daily life. We recruited 108 individuals to complete a 14-day EMA study, tracking strategy use and positive emotion over time. Higher momentary positive emotion was associated with greater subsequent use of positive rumination and less use of dampening. Elevated depressive symptoms, however, were associated with lower average use of positive rumination and higher average use of dampening. Depressive symptom levels did not modulate relations between positive emotion and emotion regulation strategy use. Less use of positive rumination and more use of dampening were related to lower levels of momentary positive emotion. Taken together, depression was associated with a pattern of strategy use that is associated with low positive emotion. Emotion regulation may help to explain positive emotion deficits in depression. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Pride: A meta-analytic project.

Abstract: Pride is a complex construct, at times conceptualized positively (as a positive emotional reaction to a personal success) and at other times defined negatively (as exhibiting arrogant or conceited feelings and beliefs). Based on this dichotomy, Tracy and Robins (2007) proposed that pride consists of two facets: authentic pride (AP) and hubristic pride (HP). For over a decade, researchers have used this two-facet model to investigate similarities and differences between AP and HP. The current work aims to synthesize this body of research by presenting findings from a meta-analysis of the association between AP and HP and a wide range of personality characteristics, mental health outcomes, social status constructs, and attributional tendencies. Comprised of 94 independent samples (N = 64,698) of predominantly North American adults, meta-analyses (both unweighted and weighted random effects models) were conducted for the relationship between AP and HP, and for each outcome variable separately, resulting in 103 total analyses (ks = 2-93). This project provides strong evidence that AP and HP are empirically distinct constructs (meta-analytic r = .13) that often align in opposite ways with personality and related variables, with AP exhibiting associations that suggest better psychological health than HP. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Neural representations of awe: Distinguishing common and distinct neural mechanisms.

Abstract: Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that transcend one's current frames of reference. The psychological form and function of awe differ between two types: positive-awe, which arises from perceptually aesthetic experiences (e.g., the beauty of nature, spiritual experiences, or the virtue of a leader), and threat-awe, which is triggered by threatening stimuli (e.g., natural disasters, wrathful god, or a leader's coercive charisma). Here, using functional MRI, we investigated common and distinct neural responses to experiences of positive- and threat-awe, elicited by watching awe-inspiring videos. We found that both awe experiences deactivated the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) in contrast to control conditions (positive-awe vs. amusement; threat-awe vs. fear), which suggest that awe experiences generally involve the "schema liberation" process since the left MTG plays a critical role in matching existing schema to events. In addition, positive-awe was associated with increased functional connectivity between the MTG and the anterior/posterior cingulate cortex, which are associated with the aesthetic reward process, and the supramarginal gyrus (SMG), which is involved in the self-other representation. Threat-awe was associated with increased functional connectivity between the MTG and amygdala, which detects and processes threat stimuli, as well as between the amygdala and SMG. These findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying the complex psychological processes of awe vary as a function of the type of awe. The implications of these results regarding our understanding of the neural basis of awe and the future directions of human social cognition research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion differentiation and behavioral dysregulation in clinical and nonclinical samples: A meta-analysis.

Abstract: Behavioral dysregulation that may manifest as the use of maladaptive behaviors aimed at regulating or avoiding distress, despite potential negative health consequences, is central to the development and maintenance of common psychological disorders. However, less is known about factors that may influence the engagement of these maladaptive behaviors. Recent research suggests that negative emotion differentiation (NED) may be important. The present investigation was a meta-analysis examining the relationship between NED and maladaptive behaviors ranging from binge drinking and nonsuicidal self-injury to treatment noncompliance, in clinical and nonclinical samples across 17 included studies obtained via electronic literature searches. Despite between-study methodological heterogeneity, our results indicated that NED was negatively associated with the enactment of maladaptive behaviors (r = -.15). Additionally, no significant differences in effect sizes were observed between clinical (n = 7; r = -.15) and nonclinical (n = 10; r = -.16) samples. Critically, the relationship between NED and maladaptive behaviors remained significant even after controlling for negative affect (NA; n = 11; r = -.09). This association also did not depend on levels of NA. Overall, our findings suggest that NED is generally associated with reduced engagement of maladaptive behaviors, regardless of diagnostic status and NA, and have important clinical implications for understanding and treating psychological disorders involving behavioral dysregulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The thrill of victory: Savoring positive affect, psychophysiological reward processing, and symptoms of depression.

Abstract: Depression is characterized by a pattern of maladaptive emotion regulation. Recently, researchers have begun to focus on associations between depression and two positive affect regulation strategies: savoring and dampening. Savoring, or upregulation of positive affect, is positively associated with well-being and negatively associated with depression, whereas dampening, or downregulation of positive affect, is positively associated with depression, anhedonia, and negative affect. To date, no research has examined whether savoring or dampening can affect neurophysiological reactivity to reward, which previous research has shown is associated with symptoms of depression. Here, we examined associations between psychophysiological reward processing-primarily captured by the Reward Positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) deflection elicited by feedback indicating reward (vs. nonreward)-positive affect regulation strategies, and symptoms of depression. One hundred undergraduates completed questionnaires assessing affect, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms and completed a computerized guessing task, once before and again after being randomly assigned to emotion-regulation strategy conditions. Results indicate that (a) the relationship between RewP amplitude and depressive symptoms may, in part, depend upon positive affect regulation strategies and (b) the RewP elicited by reward appears sensitive to a savoring intervention. These findings suggest that mitigating depressive symptoms in emerging adults may depend on both top-down (i.e., savoring) and bottom-up (i.e., RewP) forms of positive affect regulation and have important implications for clinical prevention and intervention efforts for depressive symptoms and disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Satisfied yet striving: Gratitude fosters life satisfaction and improvement motivation in youth.

Abstract: Could 10 min of gratitude per week have the potential to change the trajectories of young students' lives? With over 1,000 ninth- and tenth-grade students, we tested whether a simple 4-week classroom-based gratitude intervention would prompt increases in well-being and motivate students to become better people and attain better grades. Over the course of 1 month, students were assigned to spend 10 min each week writing gratitude letters to their parents, teachers, coaches, or friends and completing additional gratitude-related reflection activities or to try to become more organized each week by listing their daily activities and reflecting on the obstacles and benefits (control). Importantly, relative to controls, students in the gratitude conditions reported greater LS and motivation to improve themselves and maintained these levels throughout the semester. This sustained self-improvement motivation and LS were partially mediated by increases in feelings of connectedness, elevation, and indebtedness. Interestingly, negative affect partially mediated the effect of gratitude on LS, but not on improvement motivation. No group differences emerged in academic performance over time. This study provides evidence that expressing gratitude and reflecting on their benefactors' actions may help keep high school students motivated and satisfied with their lives over the course of a semester. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of emotions in esports performance.

Abstract: Emotions that differ on the approach-avoidance dimension are thought to have different functions. Based on the motivational dimensional model of affect, we expected high-approach tendency (and not valence) to facilitate sports performance in a gaming context. Moreover, we expected the influence of high-approach emotions on performance to be mediated by higher levels of cognitive and physiological challenge as an approach-related response. To test these hypotheses, 241 men completed 5 matches of a soccer video game FIFA 19. Before each match, approach tendencies and valence were experimentally manipulated by showing films that elicit amusement, enthusiasm, sadness, anger, and neutral states. Approach tendency, challenge/threat evaluations, cardiovascular responses, and game scores were recorded. After watching enthusiastic and amusing videos, gamers displayed stronger approach tendencies, and, in turn, improved performance, compared to negative emotions and neutral conditions. Moreover, enthusiasm produced a stronger approach tendency and promoted better performance than amusement. Elicitation of unpleasant emotions (anger and sadness) had no effect on approach tendencies or gaming-outcomes relative to the neutral conditions. Across all conditions, gamers with higher levels of cognitive and cardiovascular challenge achieved higher scores. These findings indicate that in a gaming context performance is enhanced by pleasant emotions with high-approach tendencies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Daily dyadic coping during COVID-19 among Israeli couples.

Abstract: Declared a global pandemic in March 2020, COVID-19 is unequivocally changing individuals' daily lives. Research suggests that for many people, the current pandemic is stressogenic, propelling myriads of disturbing affective experiences resulting in greater symptoms of depression and anxiety. Little is known, however, about how this ecologically grounded stress is experienced and managed within people's romantic relationships. Guided by the systemic transactional model of dyadic coping, the current study tested 4 preregistered hypotheses examining the effects of dyadic coping processes on partners' daily mood and relational outcomes near to the outbreak of COVID-19 (During May 2020). Using daily diary data collected from 72 Israeli couples over 21 days, the results showed COVID-related stress to be associated with lower daily positive, and higher daily negative, mood. Stress communication (i.e., disclosing stress to one's partner) was not associated with mood or relational outcomes; however, perceived positive and negative forms of dyadic coping (perceived partner's constructive and destructive behaviors in response to one's stress) were associated with poorer daily relational outcomes. Negative dyadic coping also exacerbated the effect of stress on one's negative mood. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of daily dyadic coping and COVID-related stress on people's affective and relational outcomes. The findings may shed light on the ways in which partners can help each other to adaptively cope with global health crises. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

When do adolescents feel loved? A daily within-person study of parent–adolescent relations.

Abstract: Feeling loved has many benefits, but research is limited on how daily behaviors of one person in a relationship shape why someone else feels more or less loved from day to day. The parent-adolescent relationship is a primary source of love. We expected parent-reported warmth and conflict would explain daily fluctuations in how loved adolescents reported feeling. In a sample of 151 families (adolescent MAge = 14.60; 61.6% female) over a 21-day period, we used multilevel models to disentangle within-family (daily variability) and between-family (average levels) parent-reported daily warmth and conflict in relation to adolescents' daily reports about how loved they were feeling. Findings indicated adolescents in families with higher parent-reported warmth across days and higher adolescent-reported closeness with parents felt more loved by their parents, on average. At a within-person level, we found considerable day-to-day variability in how loved adolescents reported feeling that was partially explained by meaningful variability in both parent-reported warmth and conflict across days. On days when parents reported more warmth than usual and less conflict than usual, adolescents reported feeling more loved. Further, a significant within-day interaction indicated that the importance of days' parent warmth was greater on high conflict days, but when parents directed more warmth toward their adolescents, the difference between high- and low-conflict days was negligible. Theoretical implications for studying daily emotional love in parent-youth relationships and suggestions for parenting interventions that focus on daily practices of parent warmth are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Performance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress.

Abstract: Cognitive reappraisal is among the most effective and well-studied emotion regulation strategies humans have at their disposal. Here, in 250 healthy adults across 2 preregistered studies, we examined whether reappraisal capacity (the ability to reappraise) and tendency (the propensity to reappraise) differentially relate to perceived stress. We also investigated whether cognitive flexibility, a skill thought to support reappraisal, accounted for associations between reappraisal capacity and tendency and perceived stress but found no evidence for this hypothesis. Both Studies 1 and 2 robustly showed that reappraisal tendency was associated with perceived stress, whereas a significant relationship between reappraisal capacity and perceived stress was only observed in Study 2. Further, Study 2 suggested that self-reported beliefs about one's emotion regulation capacity and tendency were predictive of wellbeing, whereas no such associations were observed with performance-based assessments of capacity and tendency. These data suggest that self-reported perceptions of reappraisal skills may be more predictive of wellbeing than actual reappraisal skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The consequences of compulsion: A 4-year longitudinal study of compulsive internet use and emotion regulation difficulties.

Abstract: Little is known about how compulsive Internet use (CIU) relates developmentally to different aspects of emotion regulation. Do young people engage in CIU because they have difficulty regulating emotions (the "consequence" model), does CIU lead to emotion regulation problems (the "antecedent" model), or are there reciprocal influences? We examined the longitudinal relations between CIU and 6 facets of difficulties in emotion regulation. Adolescents (N = 2,809) across 17 Australian schools completed measures yearly from Grades 8 (MAge = 13.7) to 11. Structural equations modeling revealed that CIU preceded the development of some aspects of emotion dysregulation, such as difficulties setting goals and being clear about emotions, but not others (the antecedent model). We found no evidence that emotion regulation difficulties preceded the development of increases in CIU (the consequence model). Our findings indicate that teaching adolescents general emotion regulation skills may not be as effective in reducing CIU as more direct approaches of limiting Internet use. We discuss the implications of our findings for interventions designed to reduce CIU and highlight issues for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Many ways to see your feelings: Successful facial expression recognition occurs with diverse patterns of fixation distributions.

Abstract: Facial expression recognition relies on the processing of diagnostic information from different facial regions. For example, successful recognition of anger versus disgust requires one to process information located in the eye/brow region, or in the mouth/nose region, respectively. Yet, how this information is extracted from the face is less clear. One widespread view, supported by cross-cultural experiments as well as neuropsychological case studies, is that the distribution of gaze fixations on specific diagnostic regions plays a critical role in the extraction of affective information. According to this view, emotion recognition is strongly related to the distribution of fixations to diagnostic regions. Alternatively, facial expression recognition may not rely merely on the exact patterns of fixations, but rather on other factors such as the processing of extrafoveal information. In the present study, we examined this matter by characterizing and using individual differences in fixation distributions during facial expression recognition. We revealed 4 groups of observers that differed in their distribution of fixations toward face regions in a robust and consistent manner. In line with previous studies, we found that different facial emotion categories evoked distinct distribution of fixations according to their diagnostic facial regions. However, individual distinctive patterns of fixations were not correlated with emotion recognition: individuals that strongly focused on the eyes, or on the mouth, achieved comparable emotion recognition accuracy. These findings suggest that extrafoveal processing may play a larger role in emotion recognition from faces than previously assumed. Consequently, successful emotion recognition can rise from diverse patterns of fixations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Enhanced recognition of vocal emotions in individuals with naturally good musical abilities.

Abstract: Music training is widely assumed to enhance several nonmusical abilities, including speech perception, executive functions, reading, and emotion recognition. This assumption is based primarily on cross-sectional comparisons between musicians and nonmusicians. It remains unclear, however, whether training itself is necessary to explain the musician advantages, or whether factors such as innate predispositions and informal musical experience could produce similar effects. Here, we sought to clarify this issue by examining the association between music training, music perception abilities and vocal emotion recognition. The sample (N = 169) comprised musically trained and untrained listeners who varied widely in their musical skills, as assessed through self-report and performance-based measures. The emotion recognition tasks required listeners to categorize emotions in nonverbal vocalizations (e.g., laughter, crying) and in speech prosody. Music training was associated positively with emotion recognition across tasks, but the effect was small. We also found a positive association between music perception abilities and emotion recognition in the entire sample, even with music training held constant. In fact, untrained participants with good musical abilities were as good as highly trained musicians at recognizing vocal emotions. Moreover, the association between music training and emotion recognition was fully mediated by auditory and music perception skills. Thus, in the absence of formal music training, individuals who were "naturally" musical showed musician-like performance at recognizing vocal emotions. These findings highlight an important role for factors other than music training (e.g., predispositions and informal musical experience) in associations between musical and nonmusical domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Prosocial behavior is associated with transdiagnostic markers of affective sensitivity in multiple domains.

Abstract: Prosocial behaviors-actions that benefit others-fundamentally shape our interpersonal interactions. Psychiatric disorders have been suggested to be related to prosocial disturbances, which may underlie many of their social impairments. However, broader affective traits, present to different degrees in both psychiatric and healthy populations, also have been linked to variability in prosociality. Therefore, it is unclear to what extent prosocial variability is explained by specific psychiatric disorders relative to broad affective traits. Using a computational, transdiagnostic approach in two online studies, we found that participants who reported being more affectively reactive across a broad cluster of traits manifested greater frequencies of prosocial actions in two different contexts: They reported being more averse to harming others for profit, and they were more willing to exert effort to benefit others. These findings help illuminate the profile of prosociality across psychiatric conditions as well as the architecture of prosocial behavior in healthy individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The variably intense vocalizations of affect and emotion (VIVAE) corpus prompts new perspective on nonspeech perception.

Abstract: The human voice is a potent source of information to signal emotion. Nonspeech vocalizations (e.g., laughter, crying, moans, or screams), in particular, can elicit compelling affective experiences. Consensus exists that the emotional intensity of such expressions matters; however how intensity affects such signals, and their perception remains controversial and poorly understood. One reason is the lack of appropriate data sets. We have developed a comprehensive stimulus set of nonverbal vocalizations, the first corpus to represent emotion intensity from one extreme to the other, in order to resolve the empirically underdetermined basis of emotion intensity. The full set, comprising 1085 stimuli, features eleven speakers expressing 3 positive (achievement/triumph, sexual pleasure, surprise) and 3 negative (anger, fear, physical pain) affective states, each varying from low to peak emotion intensity. The smaller core set of 480 files represents a fully crossed subsample (6 emotions × 4 intensities × 10 speakers × 2 items) selected based on judged authenticity. Perceptual validation and acoustic characterization of the stimuli are provided; the expressed emotional intensity, like expressed emotion, is reflected in listener evaluation and signal properties of nonverbal vocalizations. These carefully curated new materials can help disambiguate foundational questions on the communication of affect and emotion in the psychological and neural sciences and strengthen our theoretical understanding of this domain of emotional experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Shared emotions in shared lives: Moments of co-experienced affect, more than individually experienced affect, linked to relationship quality.

Abstract: Motivated by collective emotions theories that propose emotions shared between individuals predict group-level qualities, we hypothesized that co-experienced affect during interactions is associated with relationship quality, above and beyond the effects of individually experienced affect. Consistent with positivity resonance theory, we also hypothesized that co-experienced positive affect would have a stronger association with relationship quality than would co-experienced negative affect. We tested these hypotheses in 150 married couples across 3 conversational interactions: a conflict, a neutral topic, and a pleasant topic. Spouses continuously rated their individual affective experience during each conversation while watching video-recordings of their interactions. These individual affect ratings were used to determine, for positive and negative affect separately, the number of seconds of co-experienced affect and individually experienced affect during each conversation. In line with hypotheses, results from all 3 conversational topics suggest that more co-experienced positive affect is associated with greater marital quality, whereas more co-experienced negative affect is associated with worse marital quality. Individual level affect factors added little explanatory value beyond co-experienced affect. Comparing co-experienced positive affect and co-experienced negative affect, we found that co-experienced positive affect generally outperformed co-experienced negative affect, although co-experienced negative affect was especially diagnostic during the pleasant conversational topic. Findings suggest that co-experienced positive affect may be an integral component of high-quality relationships and highlight the power of co-experienced affect for individual perceptions of relationship quality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Emodiversity, health, and well-being in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) daily diary study.

Abstract: Emodiversity, or the variety and relative abundance of emotions experienced, provides a metric that can be used to understand emotional experience and its relation to well-being above and beyond average levels of positive and negative affect. Past research has found that more diverse emotional experiences, both positive and negative, are related to better mental and physical health outcomes. The present research aimed to test the relationship between positive and negative emodiversity across the span of 8 days with measures of health and well-being using 2 samples of the Midlife in the United States study (http://midus.wisc.edu/). Participants (N = 2,788) reported emotional states (14 negative, 13 positive) once each day for 8 days. Emodiversity scores were computed for each day using an adaptation of Shannon's biodiversity index and averaged across the days. All models included average affect and demographic covariates. Greater positive emodiversity was associated with fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety and fewer physical health symptoms but was not related to eudaimonic well-being nor cognitive functioning. In contrast to previous research, greater negative emodiversity was related to more symptoms of depression and anxiety and more physical health symptoms. Greater negative emodiversity was only associated with one positive outcome: better executive functioning. These findings illustrate inconsistencies across studies in whether negative emodiversity is associated with better or worse outcomes and raise further questions about how the construct of emodiversity can be better refined. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The self and empathy: Lacking a clear and stable sense of self undermines empathy and helping behavior.

Abstract: Empathy is fundamental to social functioning. Although empathy involves sharing the emotional experience of another, research also highlights the importance of distinguishing the self from the other for optimal empathic responding. Without adequate self-other distinction, sharing another person's emotions can induce personal distress, a self-focused aversive reaction that often leads to withdrawing from the situation, rather than empathic concern, an other-oriented response of care. To date, no work has examined the psychological factors that might facilitate such self-other distinction in the context of empathy. We show that self-concept clarity (SCC), the extent to which the self is clearly defined, coherent, and temporally stable, predicts empathic responding. In Study 1 (N = 453, student sample), we show that low SCC is associated with more dispositional empathic personal distress and less empathic concern. We replicate these dispositional associations in Study 2 (N = 319, community sample) and, using Batson's classic Katie Banks paradigm, show that these associations hold in an actual empathy-inducing situation. Moreover, in Study 2, SCC predicts helping behavior, an effect that is mediated by feelings of personal distress and empathic concern. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 658, community sample), we again use the Katie Banks paradigm but in an experimental framework; consistent with Study 2, state SCC predicts empathic personal distress, empathic concern and helping behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of a clear, coherent and stable self-concept for empathy, and suggest that interventions aimed at increasing empathy may be futile in the presence of a weak and unclear sense of self. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Relational savoring intervention: Positive impacts for mothers and evidence of cultural compatibility for Latinas.

Abstract: Parenting young children poses numerous emotion regulation challenges, and prevention programs that promote emotion regulation skills can help with this important task of parenthood. Relational savoring (RS), which entails savoring a positive experience of interpersonal connectedness, is a brief manualized intervention program, 4 weeks in length, grounded in positive psychology and attachment theory. In the current longitudinal, randomized, controlled trial, we examined the impacts of RS compared with an active control (personal savoring [PS], defined as savoring a positive individual experience) in a sample of N = 164 mothers of toddlers (Mage = 20.93 months) on outcomes that were assessed immediately postintervention (positive emotion, closeness to child) and at a 3-month follow-up visit (parenting sensitivity, reflective functioning [RF], savoring uptake, and parenting wellness). Compared with mothers assigned to the PS condition, mothers in the RS condition had greater immediate response to the intervention (greater increases in positive emotions [gratitude, pride], closeness to their child) as well as greater increase in sensitivity to toddlers' cues at the three-month follow-up. Neither RS nor PS increased overall parenting wellness at the three-month follow-up. Latina mothers (but not non-Latina mothers) in the RS condition had higher RF and greater savoring uptake than Latina mothers in the PS condition at follow-up. Findings provide preliminary evidence of the efficacy of RS in modifying therapeutic targets and suggest evidence of the cultural congruence of RS for Latina mothers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Are you looking or looking away? Visual exploration and avoidance of disgust- and fear-stimuli: An eye-tracking study.

Abstract: The present eye-tracking study investigates whether individuals with different levels of contamination fear are more likely to focus their attention on disgusting stimuli to explore them or to pull their attention away to avoid them. Ninety-two nonclinical participants with varying degrees of contamination fear performed a dot probe task. Eye-tracking methodology was employed to record gaze patterns during the task. In each trial participants looked at two pictures (disgust-neutral, fear-neutral, or neutral-neutral). Participants were further asked about the contents of the picture and the confidence of their answer. The results show that reaction times were slower and fixations were longer and more frequent for disgust targets compared with fear and neutral targets, which was further amplified in individuals with high contamination fear. However, image details of disgusting pictures were remembered less correctly than details of fearful pictures. These findings confirm the idea that attention on disgusting stimuli is maintained. Further, the findings indicate that disgust is processed more superficially and might also be related to disgust-associated uncertainty and ambiguity. The results may help to understand the difficult-to-change nature of disgust, which could be relevant to habituation and extinction processes in exposure therapy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The functions of anger in moral courage—Insights from a behavioral study.

Abstract: Moral courage is manifested when bystanders intervene to stop or prevent others' norm transgressions, despite potential costs to themselves. Although theoretical models propose a key role of emotions, in particular anger, in the psychological processes underlying moral courage, to date this role is underexplored. In a behavioral study, we proposed a conceptual differentiation between experienced and expressed anger in response to a witnessed moral transgression. By staging the embezzlement of money from project funds in the lab, we tested whether anger arises in response to a witnessed moral norm transgression and scrutinized its unique contribution to predicting who intervenes and who remains inactive in the context of other theoretically relevant emotions (guilt, fear, and empathy). In addition, we investigated the role of bystanders' anger expression in response to the transgression. Lastly, we tested whether experienced and expressed anger reactions were predicted across time from dispositions. Our paradigm allowed us to obtain observational data of behavioral responses and anger expression and experienced emotion reports in response to a realistic moral norm transgression. Results showed that experienced anger increased after the transgression and uniquely predicted intervention. Experienced anger reaction was predictable across time from dispositional sensitivity to observed injustice. Anger expression was only loosely associated with anger experience and intervention, suggesting it may constitute a display of disapproval in itself. The present findings from a realistic moral transgression situation evidence the important role of anger in the psychological process underlying moral courage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Infant fecal microbiota composition and attention to emotional faces.

Abstract: The gut microbiota has been suggested to influence neurodevelopment in rodents. Preliminary human studies have associated fecal microbiota composition with features of emotional and cognitive development as well as differences in thalamus-amygdala connectivity. Currently, microbiota-gut-brain axis studies cover heterogenous set of infant and child brain developmental phenotypes, while microbiota associations with more fine-grained aspects of brain development remain largely unknown. Here (N = 122, 53% boys), we investigated the associations between infant fecal microbiota composition and infant attention to emotional faces, as bias for faces is strong in infancy and deviations in early processing of emotional facial expressions may influence the trajectories of social-emotional development. The fecal microbiota composition was assessed at 2.5 months of age and analyzed with 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Attention to emotional faces was assessed with an age-appropriate face-distractor paradigm, using neutral, happy, fearful, and scrambled faces and salient distractors, at 8 months of age. We observed an association between a lower abundance of Bifidobacterium and a higher abundance of Clostridium with an increased "fear bias," that is, attention toward fearful versus happy/neutral faces. This data suggests an association between early microbiota and later fear bias, a well-established infant phenotype of emotionally directed attention. However, the clinical significance or causality of our findings remains to be assessed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Induced negative arousal modulates the speed of visual working memory consolidation.

Abstract: This study examines how induced negative arousal influences the consolidation of fragile sensory inputs into durable working memory (WM) representations. Participants performed a visual WM change detection task with different amounts of encoding time manipulated by random pattern masks inserted at different levels of memory-and-mask Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA). Prior to the WM task, negative or neutral emotion was induced using audio clips from the International Affective Digital Sounds (IADS). Pupillometry was simultaneously recorded to provide an objective measure of induced arousal. Self-report measures of early-life stress (i.e., adverse childhood experiences) and current mood states (i.e., depressed mood and anxious feeling) were also collected as covariates. We find that participants initially remember a comparable number of WM items under a short memory-and-mask SOA of 100 ms across emotion conditions, but then encode more items into WM at a longer memory-and-mask SOA of 333 ms under induced negative arousal. These findings suggest that induced negative arousal speeds up WM consolidation. Yet, induced negative arousal does not seem to significantly affect participants' WM storage capacity estimated from a separate no mask condition. Furthermore, this emotional effect on WM consolidation speed is moderated by key affect-related individual differences. Participants who have greater pupil responses to negative IADS sounds or have more early-life stress show faster WM consolidation under induced negative arousal. Collectively, our findings reveal a critical role of phasic adrenergic responses in the rapid consolidation of visual WM content and identify potential moderators of this association. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

On the relationship between valence and arousal in samples across the globe.

Abstract: Affect is involved in many psychological phenomena, but a descriptive structure, long sought, has been elusive. Valence and arousal are fundamental, and a key question-the focus of the present study-is the relationship between them. Valence is sometimes thought to be independent of arousal, but, in some studies (representing too few societies in the world) arousal was found to vary with valence. One common finding is that arousal is lowest at neutral valence and increases with both positive and negative valence: a symmetric V-shaped relationship. In the study reported here of self-reported affect during a remembered moment (N = 8,590), we tested the valence-arousal relationship in 33 societies with 25 different languages. The two most common hypotheses in the literature-independence and a symmetric V-shaped relationship-were not supported. With data of all samples pooled, arousal increased with positive but not negative valence. Valence accounted for between 5% (Finland) and 43% (China Beijing) of the variance in arousal. Although there is evidence for a structural relationship between the two, there is also a large amount of variability in this relation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).