社会互动视角下的人际情绪调节：概念、测量和理论取向

人际情绪调节指的是个体通过与他人的互动，对自己或他人情绪进行调节的社会加工过程，对人际互动和社会关系的维持具有重要的意义。本文基于人际情绪调节社会互动的视角，首先探讨了人际情绪调节的概念；其次简要介绍了人际情绪调节的测量方法及其优缺点，包括主观评价法，实验室法和动态评估法等；最后分别从沟通理论和过程理论两方面梳理了人际情绪调节的研究，并针对这两方面的理论取向，提出相应的未来研究方向。     

初中学生道德推理、移情反应、亲社会行为及其相互关系的比较研究

抽取上海市初中三个年级217名学生为被试,通过对道德判断推理能力、移情反应、亲社会行为的测量和问卷调查,考察初中阶段学生在这三个方面的发展规律,以及三者之间的相互关系。结果显示：道德判断推理与亲社会行为、与移情能力之问没有显著相关;移情能力中的个别指标与亲社会行为之间相关显著;在移情反应、亲社会行为水平、以及助人动机、帮助方式等方面均存在显著的性别差异;故事呈现方式不同会对故事与自己相关程度产生影响。     

人际同步对孤独症儿童合作行为的影响及干预促进

合作是人类行为的核心,也是儿童社会性发展的重要体现。孤独症儿童因神经生理、时间同步以及运动能力等缺陷,导致其在社会交往中合作能力不足。研究发现,人际同步可促进儿童的合作行为。通过人际同步干预,孤独症儿童的联合注意、积极情绪及运动技能等与合作相关的能力获得改善,神经系统得到激活,社会适应能力也有所提高。人际同步干预目前仍在同步机制、感知互动质量等方面存在局限性,未来除了关注同步形式、节奏频率及个体差异等变量对孤独症儿童合作行为的作用机制外,还应关注他们在复杂开放式社交场景中的感知互动质量。     

心理理论对幼儿白谎行为的影响：认知移情的部分中介作用

采用失望礼物研究范式考察心理理论与幼儿白谎行为的关系,及认知移情和情绪移情在其中的中介作用。结果发现：（1）幼儿的白谎行为发生率、心理理论、认知移情和情绪移情能力随年龄的增长而提高;（2）控制年龄与言语能力后,幼儿的心理理论与认知移情呈显著正相关、与白谎行为也呈显著正相关,且认知移情与白谎行为呈显著正相关;（3）幼儿的认知移情在心理理论和白谎行为间起部分中介的作用。结果表明：幼儿的心理理论可直接影响其白谎行为,也可通过认知移情的中介作用间接影响其白谎行为。     

助人意向、助人方式与移情反应关系的研究

1　引言　　大量的研究表明 ,移情增加了助人和其它的亲社会行为(Ｂａｔｓｏｎ ,1991,Ｅｉｓｅｎｂｅｒｇ＆Ｍｉｌｌｅｒ ,1987,1989) ,个体成熟的认知角色承担能力和情绪移情能力使人更有可能理解他人的需要 ,并对他人的需要做出反应 (Ｅｉｓｅｎｂｅｒｇ Ｂｅｒｇ＆Ｍｕｓｓｅｎ ,1978) ,移情关心主要以一种融为一体 (ｏｎｅｎｅｓｓ)的情绪标志影响助人 (Ｃｉａｌｄｉｎｉ,1997)。另据Ｂａｔｓｏｎ等人的研究 ,人们对于需要帮助的人通常会产生两种不同的情绪反应 :个人悲伤的情感和移情情感。移情的情感唤起利他动机 ,个人的悲伤诱发了利…     

情绪社会信息模型:情绪人际效应的新理论

情绪社会信息模型(Emotions as Social Information Model,EASI)是从情绪社会功能研究取向发展而来,它扩展了传统的情绪个人效应研究,构建了一个统一的情绪社会功能研究框架。EASI模型以情绪的信息功能为理论核心,认为情绪通过引发观察者的情感反应和推理过程两条路径来影响他们的行为,且情感反应和推理过程对观察者行为的预测能力还取决于观察者的信息加工的动机和社会情境因素这两个调节变量。新近研究为EASI模型提供了证据,证明了EASI模型在某些情境中可以有效预测情绪对人际效应的作用。未来的研究还需深入探讨东方文化对情绪推理内容形成的影响机制、混合、模糊以及动态情绪的系统研究、EASI模型在不同社会情境下的适用性以及情绪人际效应和相关学科的应用拓展。     

城乡小学生移情发展的比较研究

一、引言移情是指个体由他人的情绪、情感状态引起的并与之一致性的情绪、情感体验,是一种替代性情绪、情感反应能力。它包括认知和情感两个因素,而情感因素又有两个方面:同情感,与利他的助人行为有关;自我感受,与自利的助人行为有关。本研究旨在从移情的情感因素入手,了解小学生移情情感方面的发展趋势及其结构变化,并考察是否存在男女差异及城镇乡的地区差异,以便为探索我国儿童亲社会行为的发展积累资料,为有的放矢地对儿童进行品德教育提供心理学依据。     

人际情绪调节的认知神经基础

人际情绪调节是社会互动一方有意改变另一方情绪状态的过程,它有利于个体的心理健康和社会关系发展,并且具有不同于自我情绪调节的独特优势。近年已有不少脑成像研究考察了人际情绪调节,在一定程度上揭示了该过程的脑神经基础:人际情绪调节涉及心智化系统(楔前叶、颞顶联合区、内侧前额叶等)、情绪反应系统(杏仁核、脑岛等)和情绪调控系统(外侧前额叶、内侧前额叶、扣带回等),其中心智化系统是不同于自我情绪调节的特异性脑区。未来研究可纳入不同人群作为研究对象,将脑观测技术与脑调控技术相结合,从单脑和双脑两个层面对人际情绪调节的认知神经机制深入探讨,为人际情绪调节在应用领域的实施和推广提供科学依据。     

幼儿的情绪表现规则知识发展及其与家庭情绪表露、社会行为的相关研究

通过幼儿情绪表现规则知识的访谈、家庭情绪表露问卷和幼儿社会行为评估问卷调查,考察了112名3～6岁幼儿情绪表现规则知识的发展及其与家庭情绪表露、社会行为的关系。结果表明:(1)幼儿的表情调节知识存在显著的年龄差异,大班幼儿比小班幼儿具有更高的表情调节知识、更倾向于掩饰消极情绪;(2)幼儿的表情调节知识与情绪表达的人际支持、工具支持的结果期望存在显著正相关,即幼儿掩饰消极情绪是因为预期情绪表达不会得到他人理解和帮助;(3)幼儿报告面对父母同伴教师不同在场者时具有不同的情绪体验,且幼儿的人际支持结果预期存在年龄和在场者的交互作用;(4)家庭情绪表露与幼儿的人际支持的结果预期存在显著正相关、与工具支持的结果预期存在显著负相关;(5)倾向于掩饰消极情绪的幼儿表现出更多的亲社会行为,认为表达消极情绪会带来不良结果的幼儿表现出更多的害羞退缩行为。     

移情的测量指标

移情,是一个人对他人情绪情感的共鸣反应,是一个人(观察者)在观察到另一个人(被观察者)处于一种情绪状态下时,产生与被观察者相同的情绪体验。这种共鸣反应的能力依赖于一个人能否认知推理他人的情感状态;同时,唤起的共鸣反应又会为观察者提供内部信息,从而加强由认识推理得到的情感的含义。一般认为移情使人更容易意识到另一个人的需要,通过满足这个人的需要以平息自己的情绪,所以能促使亲社会行为发生。从60年代末国外对移情进行了大量研究。但是不同研究由于采用不同的移情测量指标,得出了不同的结论,因此有必要总结一下移情的测量指标。     

New Mothers’ Psychological Experience and Behavioral Interactions with their Infants in the First 12 Months

We examined the psychological dimensions of parents’ perceptions of their infant children and their own abilities as parents at two observation points in a racially and socio-economically diverse sample of 174 mothers. Parenting perceptions and life circumstances were hypothesized to predict interactive behavior observed in the home. Baseline assessments were conducted in hospital, within 36 hr of delivery. Follow-up assessments were conducted in their homes when the children were 6 to 12 months old. Of five major psychological constructs studied, only parents’ perceptions of children, represented particularly by empathic responsiveness and absence of role-reversal, predicted the quality of behavioral interactions in the home. Perceptions of children were themselves predicted by parents’ perceptions of the quality of care they themselves received from their own parents, and by lifestyle stress. Our findings suggest that clinical interventions with parents should include a focus on strengthening reflective capacities with respect to caregiving experiences, and empathic responsiveness to their children.     

Caregivers’ emotional competence and behavioral responsiveness as correlates of early childcare workers’ relationships with children in their care

In the current study, we examined associations among early childcare workers’ emotional competence, observed responsiveness, comfort with socioemotional teaching practices, and the quality of their relationships with children in their care. The participants were 100 early childcare workers (72 center-based Early Head Start teachers and 28 family childcare providers). Results showed that caregivers’ emotion regulation ability was positively associated with caregiver–child relational closeness. Understanding and regulation of emotion were both positively associated with childcare workers’ comfort with socioemotional teaching practices. Their observed responsiveness was positively related to relational closeness and negatively related to relational conflict. Findings are consistent with aspects of the prosocial classroom model, which asserts that educators high in emotional and social competence tend to adopt childcare practices that result in supportive relationships with children. Results provide insight into whether childcare workers’ responsiveness to young children and their perceived socioemotional teaching practices provide a pathway between emotional competence and the quality of caregiver–child relationships.     

Parents' Empathic Responses and Pain and Distress in Pediatric Patients

We investigated the relationship between parents' empathic responses prior to their children undergoing cancer treatment procedures and children's pain/distress during the procedures. We hypothesized: (1) parents' empathic distress would be positively associated with children's pain/distress, (2) parents' empathic concern would be negatively associated with children's pain/distress; and (3) parents' enduring dispositions and social support would be associated with their empathic responses. Parents completed: (1) measures of dispositions and perceived social support several weeks before their children underwent the procedures, and (2) state measures of empathic distress and empathic concern just before the procedures. Empathic distress was positively associated with children's pain; empathic concern was negatively associated with children's pain/distress. Predictions about dispositions and social support were also substantially confirmed.     

Parental Contributions to Preschoolers' Emotional Competence: Direct and Indirect Effects

The present study examines the contributions of (1) parental socialization of emotion and preschoolers' emotional interaction with parents to their emotional competence, and (2) parental socialization and child emotional competence to their general social competence. Both observational and self-report techniques were used to measure emotion socialization, emotional competence, and social competence of preschoolers (average age = 49.8 months) from 60 middle-socioeconomic-status families. Data were collected in both classroom and home settings. In general, the results suggest that parental modeling of expressive styles and emotional responsiveness to child emotions are important predictors of preschoolers' emotional competence and their overall social competence. Children whose parents were more affectively positive tended to display more positive emotion with peers, whereas children whose parents were more negative appeared less socially competent in the preschool. Parents who were better coaches of their children's emotions had children who understood emotions better. Age and sex moderated several of the study's key findings. The results are consistent with earlier research indicating that parental socialization of emotion impacts the child's emotional and social functioning both at home and in the preschool.     

Written prayers and religious coping in a paediatric hospital setting

Hospitalised children represent a threatened future to parents. Such stressors call forth people's coping styles. Some individuals cope religiously or spiritually, and religious coping through prayer may be utilised. A sample of prayers written in a paediatric hospital chapel was coded by styles of religious coping evident within them. Styles associated with coping to gain control of their situation and with coping by seeking comfort from God were present. Seeking to cope for gaining control of a situation was more common than seeking comfort from God during the event. Written prayers did not contain evidence of coping by making meaning. Regression analysis showed that the probability of writing a prayer to gain control decreased over time and a trend towards increasing probability of writing a prayer expressing coping by seeking God's comfort. Clinical implications are discussed. Future research should include a larger sample and cognitive interviews with prayer writers.     

Would situational stress be harmful for anyone? The influence of situational factors and trait empathy on women’s response to infant crying

Individual differences in responsiveness toward infant crying are well understood. Little research, however, has examined the effects of situational risk factors (e.g., social stress, cognitive load) and possible interactions between situational and dispositional factors on response toward infant crying. This study examined if trait empathy (conceptualized as empathic concern; EC, and personal distress; PD) moderate situational factors’ relationship with people’s intentions in response to infant crying. Social stress was manipulated using the Trier Social Stress Test. Cognitive load was manipulated by requiring participants to keep syllable-strings of either two or eight syllables in mind while listening to an infant crying. Participants responded to question items examining their caregiving and neglect intentions in response to the crying stimulus. Multilevel regression analyses demonstrated that trait empathy (empathic concern in particular) was strongly associated with neglect intention under cognitive load. Participants with high EC showed strong neglect intention with increasing cognitive load. Furthermore, results also showed that social stress increased neglect intentions and reduced care intentions; these effects were more remarkable among participants with both low EC and low PD. These results suggest that dispositional factors moderate situational factors’ effect on response to infant crying.     

The Role of Perspective Taking and Empathy in Children's Machiavellianism,Prosocial Behavior,and Motive for Helping

Fourth- and fifth-grade children (N = 117) were categorized into high- and low-empathy and affective-perspective-taking (APT) groups based on their scores on the Bryant (1982) empathy scale and a modified version of the Rothenberg (1970) and Silvern, Waterman, Sobesky, and Ryan (1979) APT measures. Children in the low-empathy/high-APT group had significantly higher Machiavellianism scores on Braginsky's (1970) measure than did children in the other empathy/APT groups. Highly empathic children were rated by their teachers as more helpful under certain circumstances and cited other-oriented reasons for their own helping behavior more frequently than did less empathic children.     

Empathic distress and concern predict aggression in toddlerhood: The moderating role of sex

Impaired empathy is an important risk factor of aggression, but results are contradictory in toddlerhood. The association between empathy and aggression may differ for empathic distress and empathic concern in response to empathy-evoking situations, and for boys and girls. Therefore, the current study investigated whether empathic distress and empathic concern at age 20 months (N = 133, 69 boys) predicted aggression at ages 20 and 30 months (N = 119, 62 boys), while taking a potential moderating effect of sex into account. Empathic behavior was observed during a distress simulation task 20 months post-partum. Physical aggression was assessed through maternal report, using the Physical Aggression Scale for Early Childhood. Linear regression analyses revealed sex differences in the associations between empathic distress and concern on the one hand and physical aggression at age 20 months on the other. Furthermore, physical aggression at age 30 months was predicted by the interaction of sex with empathic distress at age 20 months, while controlling for aggression at age 20 months. More empathic distress and concern were associated with less physical aggression in girls, but not in boys. The findings indicate that the prediction of physical aggression by empathic distress was more robust over time than for empathic concern. This study sheds new light on the intricate relationship between empathy, aggression, and sex from a developmental perspective.     

Differential effects of social and non‐social reward on response inhibition in children and adolescents

An important issue in the field of clinical and developmental psychopathology is whether cognitive control processes, such as response inhibition, can be specifically enhanced by motivation. To determine whether non‐social (i.e. monetary) and social (i.e. positive facial expressions) rewards are able to differentially improve response inhibition accuracy in typically developing children and adolescents, an ‘incentive’ go/no‐go task was applied with reward contingencies for successful inhibition. In addition, the impact of children's personality traits (such as reward seeking and empathy) on monetary and social reward responsiveness was assessed in 65 boys, ages 8 to 12 years. All subjects were tested twice: At baseline, inhibitory control was assessed without reward, and then subjects were pseudorandomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, including (1) social reward only, (2) monetary reward only, (3) mixed social and monetary reward, or (4) a retest condition without reward. Both social and non‐social reward significantly improved task performance, although larger effects were observed for monetary reward. The higher the children scored on reward seeking scales, the larger was their improvement in response inhibition, but only if monetary reward was used. In addition, there was a tendency for an association between empathic skills and benefits from social reward. These data suggest that social incentives do not have an equally strong reinforcing value as compared to financial incentives. However, different personality traits seem to determine to what extent a child profits from different types of reward. Clinical implications regarding probable hyposensitivity to social reward in subjects with autism and dysregulated reward‐seeking behaviour in children with attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are discussed.     

The mediating role of maternal responsiveness in some longer term effects of postnatal depression on infant development

We hypothesized a mediating role for low maternal responsiveness in certain child developmental deficits found previously to be associated with postnatal depression. Forty depressed inpatients and 48 control (non-depressed) mothers and their infants were followed until 42 months postpartum. Mother–infant interactions were impaired at 6 months postpartum in the depressed group. Subsequent cognitive deficits were found in children's Full Scale IQ on the Wechsler Preschool Primary Scale of Intelligence (Revised) at 42 months of age. Statistical modeling of the mediation hypothesis confirmed that these effects were overwhelmingly explained by lowered maternal responsiveness at 6 months. Similarly, increased temperamental difficulties were apparent in children of depressed mothers but were not correlated with maternal responsiveness. Male infants of depressed mothers were disproportionately vulnerable (compared to females) to impaired cognitive abilities associated with maternal depression. The data concur with previous work and provide empirical support for the theoretical prediction that early disturbances of the mother–infant interaction will mediate some developmental deficits in the children of depressed mothers.