Showing papers on "Regulation of emotion published in 1992"

Motivation for social contact across the life span: a theory of socioemotional selectivity.

Abstract: Older people engage in social interaction less frequently than their younger counterparts As I mentioned at the start, the change has been interpreted in largely negative terms Yet when asked about their social relationships, older people describe them as satisfying, supportive, and fulfilling Marriages are less negative and more positive Close relationships with siblings are renewed, and relationships with children are better than ever before Even though older people interact with others less frequently than younger people do, old age is not a time of misery, rigidity, or melancholy Rather than present a paradox, I argue here that decreasing rates of contact reflect a reorganization of the goal hierarchies that underlie motivation for social contact and lead to greater selectivity in social partners This reorganization does not occur haphazardly Self-definition, information seeking, and emotion regulation are ranked differently depending not only on past experiences, but on place in the life cycle and concomitant expectations about the future I contend that the emphasis on emotion in old age results from a recognition of the finality of life In most people's lives this does not appear suddenly in old age but occurs gradually across adulthood At times, however, life events conspire to bring about endings more quickly Whether as benign as a geographical relocation or as sinister as a fatal disease, endings heighten the salience of surrounding emotions When each interaction with a grandchild or good-bye kiss to a spouse may be the last, a sense of poignancy may permeate even the most casual everyday experiences When the regulation of emotion assumes greatest priority among social motives, social partners are carefully chosen The most likely choices will be long-term friends and loved ones, because they are most likely to provide positive emotional experiences and affirm the self Information seeking will motivate some social behavior, but for reasons discussed previously, this will also require judicious choices of social partners Narrowing the range of social partners allows people to conserve physical and cognitive resources, freeing time and energy for selected social relationships As such, SST is highly consistent with the selective optimization with compensation model of successful aging formulated by P Baltes and M Baltes (1990) described above SST is meant to describe and explain the underlying mechanisms for age-related changes in social behavior It is not intended to be prescriptive(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Prolegomenon to the structure of emotion: Gleanings from neuropsychology

Abstract: This article presents a model of the structure of emotion developed primarily from a consideration of neuropsychological evidence and behavioural data which have bearing on neuropsychological theories Valence is first considered and highlighted as a defining characteristic of emotion Next, the use of facial behaviour and autonomic nervous system patterns as defining characteristics of discrete emotions is questioned on empirical and conceptual grounds The regulation of emotion is considered and proposed to affect the very structure of emotion itself If there is an invariant pattern of biological activity across different instantiations of the same emotion, it is likely to be found in higher-order associative networks of central nervous system activity, the very same networks that subserve goal-directed behaviour and other cognitive functions Drawing upon evolutionary considerations, it is argued that what is basic about emotion are the dimensions of approach and withdrawal The nature of the