Parental Socialization of Emotion

Recently, there has been a resurgence of research on emotion, including the socialization of emotion. In this article, a heuristic model of factors contributing to the socialization of emotion is presented. Then literature relevant to the socialization of children's emotion and emotion-related behavior by parents is reviewed, including (a) parental reactions to children's emotions, (b) socializers' discussion of emotion, and (c) socializers' expression of emotion. The relevant literature is not conclusive and most of the research is correlational. However, the existing body of data provides initial support for the view that parental socialization practices have effects on children's emotional and social competence and that the socialization process is bidirectional. In particular, parental negative emotionality and negative reactions to children's expression of emotion are associated with children's negative emotionality and low social competence. In addition, possible moderators of effects such as level of emotional arousal are discussed.     

Investigating the Role of Emotion in Science Center Visitor Learning

ABSTRACT

A number of investigators have argued that emotion plays an important role in free-choice learning in settings such as museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums, particularly given the relationship between emotion and cognition. Despite considerable research on the cognitive aspects of visits, empirical studies on emotion in such settings are virtually non-existent. This study investigated the role that emotion plays in facilitating and enhancing learning at a science center. Three major research questions were addressed: (a) Can emotion be measured using Russell's Affect Grid in a non-laboratory setting such as an interactive science center? (b) If so, do different types of science center experiences create measurably different levels of emotional arousal and/or valence in visitors? and (c) If so, was there evidence that elevated arousal and/or valence enhanced or retarded visitors' long-term cognitive science learning? The study provided evidence that emotion could be measured using a modified Affect Grid technique and that a particular traveling exhibition generated arousal levels above baseline levels as determined by a control group. Findings suggest a relationship between emotional arousal and positive changes in visitor long-term cognition, attitudes, and behaviors.     

Individual Differences Associated with Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Ambiguous Social Situations in which Rejection Might be Inferred

This study sought to examine the extent to which undergraduates' experiences with and attitudes relevant to rejection may be associated with their emotional and behavioral responses to ambiguous social situations in which rejection might be inferred. Undergraduate students completed questionnaires that assessed their experiences with and attitudes relevant to being rejected. Next, each participant read six hypothetical scenarios that described various situations that could be interpreted as interpersonal rejection. Following each scenario, participants completed questionnaires that assessed their emotional and behavioral responses to the hypothetical situation. Analyses revealed that the participants' experiences with rejection (and, to a lesser extent, their rejection-relevant attitudes) were associated with a negative emotional response and some negative behavioral responses. In sum, when another individual's interpersonal behavior has an uncertain intent, undergraduates' prior experiences with rejection may be especially important in determining the extent to which they feel and act as if they have been rejected.     

Enhanced conflict-driven cognitive control by emotional arousal,not by valence

Emotion is widely agreed to have two dimensions, valence and arousal. Few studies have explored the effect of emotion on conflict adaptation by considering both of these, which could have dissociate influence. The present study aimed to fill the gap as to whether emotional valence and arousal would exert dissociable influence on conflict adaptation. In the experiments, we included positive, neutral, and negative conditions, with comparable arousal between positive and negative conditions. Both positive and negative conditions have higher arousal than neutral ones. In Experiment 1, by using a two-colour-word Flanker task, we found that conflict adaptation was enhanced in both positive and negative contexts compared to a neutral context. Furthermore, this effect still existed when controlling stimulus–response repetitions in Experiment 2, which used a four-colour-word Flanker task. The findings suggest emotional arousal enhances conflict adaptation, regardless of emotional valence. Thus, future studies should consider emotional arousal when studying the effect of emotion on conflict adaptation. Moreover, the unique role of the emotional context in conflict-driven cognitive control is emphasised.     

Effects of perceived similarity on vicarious emotional conditioning

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that perceived similarity between observers and models enhances vicarious emotional conditioning. Subjects were led to believe that they were either similar to the model in beliefs and attitudes, different from him or were given no information about him. They then underwent a vicarious classical conditioning procedure by witnessing the model express pain reactions in conjunction with a neutral stimulus. Observers developed emotional reactions to the neutral stimulus alone after seeing it paired with modeled pain expressions. Preceived similarity, however, had no significant effect on either the level of vicarious conditioning or the rate of extinction. Subjects who had no information concerning the model displayed stronger autonomic responses to the model's pain expressions, and more frequent and intense autonomic responses to the conditioned stimulus during tests for acquisition and extinction. In correlational analyses, subjects in the latter condition also yielded a significant positive relationship between self-reported arousal and vicarious emotional conditioning. The obtained findings were interpreted in terms of the emotion arousing properties of unfamiliarity.     

The role of physiological arousal in time perception: psychophysiological evidence from an emotion regulation paradigm

Time perception, crucial for adaptive behavior, has been shown to be altered by emotion. An arousal-dependent mechanism is proposed to account for such an effect. Yet, physiological measure of arousal related with emotional timing is still lacking. We addressed this question using skin conductance response (SCR) in an emotion regulation paradigm. Nineteen participants estimated durations of neutral and negative sounds by comparing them to a previously memorized duration. Instructions were given to attend either to temporal or to emotional stimulus features. Attending to emotion with negative sounds generated longer subjective duration and greater physiological arousal than attending to time. However, a shared-attention condition showed discrepancy between behavioral and physiological results. Supporting the idea of a link between autonomic arousal and subjective duration, our results however suggest that this relation is not as direct as was expected. Results are discussed within recent model linking time perception, emotion and awareness.     

Emotional arousal and negative affect in marital conflict: the influence of gender,conflict structure,and demand‐withdrawal

This report covers two studies that examined how spouses' emotional arousal and negative affect in response to marital conflict are shaped by gender, conflict structure, and demand‐withdraw communication. In Study 1, 86 couples participated in a video analogue presentation procedure, and in Study 2, 32 couples participated in an observational methodology. In both studies, spouses' evaluative reports of their emotional arousal and negative affect were collected within two experimental conditions in which either the husband's or the wife's issue was discussed. In both studies, husbands—but not wives—reported lower levels of post‐interaction arousal and negative affect in the wife's issue condition than in the husband's issue condition. In both studies, husbands' as well as wives' level of emotional arousal was positively associated with their level of negative affect. In Study 2, husbands who were less demanding and more withdrawing during marital conflict were less aroused after the discussion. In contrast, wives reported more emotional arousal and negative affect as they were more withdrawing and less demanding, respectively. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Observational learning of a conditional hue discrimination in pigeons

Three experiments examined a relationship between cooperation and observational learning in pigeons using procedures similar to Skinner (1962). In Experiment 1, dyads cooperated by searching and pecking nearly simultaneously on the correct pair of adjacent keys of a 2 × 2 matrix. The dyads learned to search for the correct keys in a coordinated fashion, but only if they were permitted to watch one another's performance. Experiment 2 disconfirmed the hypothesis that the coordinated performance of cooperating pigeons reflects an unlearned response tendency to peck at locations close to where the other bird is pecking. Experiment 3 demonstrated that prior cooperation training involving an observer and demonstrator pigeon facilitated subsequent observational learning of a conditional hue discrimination. Cooperation training appeared to facilitate observational learning by establishing the demonstrator's peck response as an instructional stimulus which indicated the reward significance of the discriminative stimuli.     

Dialectical Behavior Therapy Applied to Parent Skills Training: Adjunctive Treatment for Parents With Difficulties in Affect Regulation

Poor outcomes in parent training programs have been associated with parental psychopathology in general, and difficulties in parental affect regulation in particular. Although many parents may be able to learn behavioral management skills in a controlled therapy setting, for those who experience affect dysregulation, generalization of these skills to the natural environment may be challenging when their emotions are aroused. Parents, particularly those who struggle with affect dysregulation around their child's behavior, may benefit from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) because it specifically targets problems in emotion regulation. Thus, the purpose of this article is to discuss relevant aspects of DBT (e.g., dialectics, biosocial model, and validation) and highlight its applicability to parents who struggle with affect dysregulation. Several clinical case studies will also be presented to elucidate how mental health professionals can address the affect dysregulation in parents by teaching them DBT skills to manage their own negative emotions, particularly when their child's behavior is the source of emotional arousal.     

Emotion, attention, and the startle reflex

This theoretical model of emotion is based on research using the startle-probe methodology. It explains inconsistencies in probe studies of attention and fear conditioning and provides a new approach to emotional perception, imagery, and memory. Emotions are organized biphasically, as appetitive or aversive (defensive). Reflexes with the same valence as an ongoing emotional state are augmented; mismatched reflexes are inhibited. Thus, the startle response (an aversive reflex) is enhanced during a fear state and is diminished in a pleasant emotional context. This affect-startle effect is not determined by general arousal, simple attention, or probe modality. The effect is found when affects are prompted by pictures or memory images, changes appropriately with aversive conditioning, and may be dependent on right-hemisphere processing. Implications for clinical, neurophysiological, and basic research in emotion are outlined.     

Judgements of others’ emotional appropriateness are multidimensional

This study investigated the multidimensional structure of judgements of emotional appropriateness, the degree to which an observer judges a target's emotion to conform to observer-valued expectations for emotion in that context. Participants (N=169) were shown one of two brief video clips of an actor either showing anger or neutral expressions in an anger-evoking situation of either low, medium, or high severity. Participants rated the target's emotion on the Perception of Emotion Appropriateness Rating Scale (PEARS), which taps observers’ perceptions of a target's emotional appropriateness for a specific situation. We found that appropriateness ratings are comprised of three factors, assessment of Type Present (type of emotion in expression); Type Absent (missing key emotions); and Intensity (intensity with which the emotion is felt or expressed). Results are discussed in terms of the usefulness of a multidimensional conceptualisation of emotional appropriateness.     

BRIEF REPORT Functional and dysfunctional feelings in Ellis' cognitive theory of emotion: An empirical analysis

This study is to our knowledge the first to investigate how rational and irrational beliefs (RBs and IBs) generate qualitatively different feelings/emotions based on the same physiological arousal when the immediate environment is devoid of relevant cues. Participants in this study (N = 120) were evaluated for and primed with rational or irrational beliefs. Next, they exercised or sat still, and either immediately or after a delay, rated their emotional state. Consistent with the bifactorial theory of emotion and with Ellis' cognitive theory of emotion, participants in the exercise delayed‐rating condition, who lacked an obvious explanation for their residual arousal, interpreted their arousal in terms of primed beliefs. RBs were associated with positive emotions, while IBs were associated with dysfunctional negative emotions and their corresponding functional negative emotions (e.g., both depressed and sad). Participants in the exercise immediate‐rating condition and those in the no‐exercise condition were not influenced by their primed beliefs. Implications for Ellis' cognitive theory of emotion are discussed.     

Learning-Theoretical Aspects of Primary Dysmenorrhea

Abstract

Women suffering from severe primary dysmenorrhea (PD) show a typical behaviour pattern characterized by flight, avoidance, inactivity and helplessness. The question is if there is a common mechanism of origin in all those individual women who display such PD behaviour. A learning-theoretical model is presented concerning the origin of the connection between the stimulus of menstruation and the response of PD behaviour in women with severe PD: — Women have an increased physiological arousal premenstrually and during menstruation. — Women have a tendency to label the increased arousal negatively for two reasons: (1) Because of negative attitudes towards menstruation acquired from the social environment. (2) Because women have a lack of knowledge about their genitals and their functions, there is a lack of correct labelling of menstruation. Inexplicable arousal is mostly labelled as something “wrong”. — The negatively labelled increased arousal pre- and intermenstrually leads to an increased receptivity for conditioning. — The increased receptivity for conditioning means an increased proneness to react with a specific response to a certain stimulus, i. e. with PD behaviour as a response to the stimulus of menstruation. — Premenstrually highly anxious women are more receptive to conditioning than women who are not anxious premenstrually. The experience of PD makes the woman anticipate menstruation with anxiety, which thus forms the basis of a vicious circle. The validity of this theoretical model needs to be tested in experimental research.     

Effects of hedonic valence and physiological arousal on emotion: A comparison of two theoretical perspectives

Two theoretical perspectives concerned with how one emotional state may influence a subsequent one were examined. Zillmann's (1979) excitation transfer theory suggests that undetected residual arousal from a first state will transfer and intensify a subsequent state—regardless of the first state's hedonic valence. Baron's (1977) incompatible response model, on the other hand, suggests that the hedonic valence of an earlier state will affect the experience of a second state and that this effect will be strongest when the two states are temporally close. The results of this investigation support the incompatible response model but not the excitation transfer model. Unrecognized residual arousal from a prior state failed to affect subjects' second emotional state, although the hedonic valence of the prior state did affect the final emotional state when the second state was induced immediately after the first. All emotional states, although they may be equally arousing, do not affect subsequent emotion in an identical manner. When two emotional states are induced in quick succession, the hedonic valence of the prior state plays an important role in determining the intensity of the subsequent emotional state.     

Unique associations between young adult men's emotional functioning and their body dissatisfaction and disordered eating

Research on emotional functioning, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating in males is predominated by studies of negative affect and emotion regulation. Other aspects of emotional functioning, namely emotion recognition and attentional biases toward emotional stimuli, have received little empirical attention. The present study investigated the unique associations between different aspects of men's emotional functioning and their disordered eating attitudes, muscularity dissatisfaction, and body fat dissatisfaction. Results from 132 male undergraduates showed that muscularity dissatisfaction was uniquely associated with both emotion regulation difficulties and an attentional bias toward rejecting faces. Body fat dissatisfaction was not uniquely associated with any aspect of emotional functioning. Disordered eating was uniquely associated with emotion regulation difficulties. Collectively, the results indicate differences in the patterns of associations between men's emotional functioning and their body dissatisfaction and disordered eating.     

情绪性记忆的定向遗忘效应

刺激的情绪性具有增强记忆的效果,那么,带有情绪信息的刺激对遗忘又会产生怎样的影响？已有研究从行为及认知神经机制层面探讨了情绪性刺激对定向遗忘效应的影响,但结果并不一致。总结已有文献发现,以情绪性刺激的材料类型、情绪效价、唤醒度和熟悉度为主的客观因素和以被试的情绪状态为主的主观因素均为影响定向遗忘效应产生及其稳定性的重要原因。这类研究是对有意遗忘研究领域的重要补充,也加深了人们对有意遗忘机制的理解。     

Observational evaluative conditioning of an embedded stimulus element

Evaluative conditioning refers to the observation that the mere paired presentation of a neutral stimulus (CS) with a liked or disliked stimulus (US) may result in the neutral stimulus itself acquiring positive or negative valence. In most studies, the CS is an autonomous, invariant stimulus, and the subject directly experiences both CS and US. In this experiment, we investigated whether evaluative conditioning can be extended to a situation wherein the CS is no more than an invariant element of a complex, variable stimulus configuration, and wherein the subject experiences the CS–US co-occurrences indirectly, i.e. by observing a socius who is exposed to the CS–US pairings and facially expresses either liking or disliking the US. During acquisition, subjects watched video-taped sequences of an actor drinking a glass containing a liquid and facially expressing either liking or disliking the drink. The stimulus element which was systematically paired with the actor's facial expression of liking or disliking, was whether the glass contained a ‘foot’ or no ‘foot’ (CS), while other characteristics of the scenes were systematically varied and paired equally often with an expression of like and dislike. Next, valence ratings were obtained for pictures in which the CS element (foot/no foot) was embedded. A clear observational evaluative learning effect could be demonstrated when the feature CS was embedded in objects identical to those presented during learning, but not when it was embedded in new objects. These data demonstrate the possibility of vicarious evaluative conditioning of an embedded stimulus element, but probably at a lower level of abstraction than intended.     

Time-limited effects of emotional arousal on item and source memory

Two experiments investigated the time-limited effects of emotional arousal on consolidation of item and source memory. In Experiment 1, participants memorized words (items) and the corresponding speakers (sources) and then took an immediate free recall test. Then they watched a neutral, positive, or negative video 5, 35, or 50?min after learning, and 24 hours later they took surprise memory tests. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1 except that (a) a reality monitoring task was used; (b) elicitation delays of 5, 30, and 45?min were used; and (c) delayed memory tests were given 60?min after learning. Both experiments showed that, regardless of elicitation delay, emotional arousal did not enhance item recall memory. Second, both experiments showed that negative arousal enhanced delayed item recognition memory only at the medium elicitation delay, but not in the shorter or longer delays. Positive arousal enhanced performance only in Experiment 1. Third, regardless of elicitation delay, emotional arousal had little effect on source memory. These findings have implications for theories of emotion and memory, suggesting that emotion effects are contingent upon the nature of the memory task and elicitation delay.     

Illusions of Learning: Irrelevant Emotions Inflate Judgments of Learning

People use assessments of how much they have learned to choose and recommend instructors, seminars, and weekend trips. How do people assess how much they have learned? Recent theorizing has depicted emotion as a cue for learning, and so people may be misled by recent emotional states to infer that they have learned more than they actually have. Four studies showed that people associated emotion with learning and believed, often falsely, that they learned more when in an emotional than unemotional state. Factual lessons were coupled with manipulations of arbitrary, irrelevant emotional states. Participants rated that they learned more after an emotion had been induced than in emotionally neutral control conditions. These differences remained significant after controlling for actual learning as measured by objective tests, which was unaffected by emotion. This illusion of learning caused by emotion was robust with respect to changes of procedure and sample, including whether the emotion came before or after the information to be learned. Alternative explanations were ruled out, including that emotion would intensify ratings generally, that emotion would make incoming information seem particularly personally relevant, that emotion increased engagement in the research, and that illusory learning would depend on retrospective exaggeration of one's prior ignorance. Because irrelevant emotions can increase people's judgments that they have learned something, incidental emotional experiences could increase a person's likelihood of deciding to take another class with a particular instructor, to sign up for another leadership seminar, or to engage in a risky (but emotion‐filled) excursion. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of modification of expressive displays on vicarious emotional arousal

Several recent experiments have demonstrated that modulation of the facial expressive response is accompanied by changes in autonomic arousal and subjective response to painful stimuli. The present study asked whether facial self-regulation may also bring about changes in covert vicarious emotional experience. Three groups of subjects were exposed to a videotaped model displaying intermittent pain to shock in a differential vicarious autonomic conditioning paradigm. Subjects in the inhibit and amplify groups were asked, respectively, (a) to inhibit their facial muscles or (b) to pose a facial response of pain when the model was shocked. It was predicted that the inhibit group would show less autonomic arousal to the model's expressive display (empathy) and less conditioning (as measured by skin conductance and heart rate change), and the amplify group more empathy and conditioning, than a third group who was given no facial instruction. In fact, the amplify group showed more skin conductance arousal, heart rate acceleration, and activity in response to the model's expressive display of pain than did the other two groups (which were not different from each other), but no more autonomic or facial conditioning. The overall pattern of physiological data is interpreted as generally supportive of a facial feedback theory of emotion: where significant between-groups' differences were obtained in facial activity, as in vicarious instigation, autonomic arousal differences also emerged; where no expressive differences were obtained, as in vicarious conditioning, no differences in autonomic arousal were found.