Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion

At the heart of emotion, mood, and any other emotionally charged event are states experienced as simply feeling good or bad, energized or enervated. These states--called core affect--influence reflexes, perception, cognition, and behavior and are influenced by many causes internal and external, but people have no direct access to these causal connections. Core affect can therefore be experienced as free-floating (mood) or can be attributed to some cause (and thereby begin an emotional episode). These basic processes spawn a broad framework that includes perception of the core-affect-altering properties of stimuli, motives, empathy, emotional meta-experience, and affect versus emotion regulation; it accounts for prototypical emotional episodes, such as fear and anger, as core affect attributed to something plus various nonemotional processes.     

State and Trait Anger Predicting Creative Process Engagement—The Role of Emotion Regulation

Drawing on the specific emotion approach, and based on the emotional regulation theory and cognitive and activation perspectives on emotions, this study examined the differentiated impact of state and trait anger on creative process engagement (CPE) and the moderating influences of emotion reappraisal and suppression. Data were obtained from daily surveys (N = 422) of 98 employees from three consultancy companies. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed that trait anger has a stronger impact on CPE than state anger does. Furthermore, the relationship between state anger and CPE is stronger when emotion reappraisal is lower, rather than higher, and the relationship between trait anger and CPE is also stronger when emotion suppression is lower, rather than higher.     

Emotion Control Values and Responding to an Anger Provocation inAsian-American and European-American Individuals

The present research examined whether Asian-American (AA) versus European-American (EA) women differed in experiential, expressive, or autonomic physiological responding to a laboratory anger provocation and assessed the mediating role of values about emotional control. Results indicate that AA participants reported and behaviorally displayed less anger than EA participants, while there were no group differences in physiological responses. Observed differences in emotional responses were partially mediated by emotion control values, suggesting a potential mechanism for effects of cultural background on anger responding.     

Respiratory feedback in the generation of emotion

This article reports two studies investigating the relationship between emotional feelings and respiration. In the first study, participants were asked to produce an emotion of either joy, anger, fear or sadness and to describe the breathing pattern that fit best with the generated emotion. Results revealed that breathing patterns reported during voluntary production of emotion were (a) comparable to those objectively recorded in psychophysiological experiments on emotion arousal, (b) consistently similar across individuals, and (c) clearly differentiated among joy, anger, fear, and sadness. A second study used breathing instructions based on Study 1's results to investigate the impact of the manipulation of respiration on emotional feeling state. A cover story was used so that participants could not guess the actual purpose of the study. This manipulation produced significant emotional feeling states that were differentiated according to the type of breathing pattern. The implications of these findings for emotion theories based on peripheral feedback and for emotion regulation are discussed.     

The feeling of the story: Narrating to regulate anger and sadness

Admonitions to tell one's story in order to feel better reflect the belief that narrative is an effective emotion regulation tool. The present studies evaluate the effectiveness of narrative for regulating sadness and anger, and provide quantitative comparisons of narrative with distraction, reappraisal, and reexposure. The results for sadness (n?=?93) and anger (n?=?89) reveal that narrative is effective at down-regulating negative emotions, particularly when narratives place events in the past tense and include positive emotions. The results suggest that if people tell the “right” kind of story about their experiences, narrative reduces emotional distress linked to those experiences.     

Cognitive reappraisal increases heart rate variability in response to an anger provocation

Adaptive self-regulatory responses to negative events are associated with good mental health, social functioning, and physical health. Two forms of emotion regulation that have received attention within the context of anger are cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Research suggests that greater heart rate variability (HRV) is a physiological indicator of adaptive emotion regulation and decreased mental load. In the present experiment, we recorded HRV while 131 undergraduate women viewed an anger-inducing video of a fellow student arguing for a position counter to that of the participant on an important political issue. Immediately prior to viewing, participants were instructed to reappraise, suppress their emotions, or simply watch the video as normal. Participants in the reappraisal condition showed increased HRV whereas those in the suppression and control condition showed no such increase. These results provide support for increased HRV as a biological correlate of adaptive emotion regulation. One implication is that cognitive reappraisal might afford greater autonomic flexibility when an individual is confronted with anger-inducing events.     

Emotion-Focused Therapy: A Synopsis

The basic principles of an emotion-focused approach to therapy (EFT) are presented. In this view, emotion is seen as foundational in the construction of the self and is a key determinant of self-organization. As well as simply having emotion, people also live in a constant process of making sense of their emotions. Personal meaning emerges by the self-organization and explication of one’s own emotional experience, and optimal adaptation involves an integration of reason and emotion. In EFT, distinctions between different types of emotion (i.e., primary versus secondary, adaptive versus maladaptive) provide therapists with a map for differential intervention. Therapists are viewed as emotion coaches who help people become aware of, accept, and make sense of their emotional experience. Four major empirically supported principles of emotion awareness, emotion regulation, emotion transformation and reflection on emotion guide emotion coaching and serve as the goals of treatment. A case example illustrates how the principles of EFT helped a young woman to overcome her core maladaptive fears and mobilize her ability to protect herself.     

不同情绪状态下自动表达抑制对情绪及表情知觉敏感性的影响

以103名大学生为对象,在正性、负性两种情绪状态下,用句子整理任务引发被试抑制情绪或表达情绪两种情绪调节方式,采用信号检测论测得正、负性表情的表情知觉敏感性。结果表明：（1）表情知觉敏感性存在情绪一致性效应,在负性情绪状态下,人们对负性表情更敏感,差异显著（p=0.002）;在正性情绪状态下,人们对正性表情更敏感,虽然只是边缘显著（p=0.700）。（2）自动抑制情绪会降低人们的情绪体验,并且会影响表情知觉敏感性的情绪一致性效应。在自动抑制启动的状态下,人们对正、负性表情都不太敏感。     

A closer look at ability emotional intelligence (EI): What are its component parts,and how do they relate to each other?

In this review, we focus on two key questions about the nature of emotional intelligence (EI). First, we consider what the different parts of EI might be, suggesting a taxonomy that builds on the well‐known hierarchical four‐branch model to include six narrow abilities (emotion perception, emotion expression, emotion attention regulation, emotion understanding, emotion regulation of self, and emotion regulation of others). Second, we review evidence for the interrelations between these six narrow abilities. The interrelationships of the EI narrow abilities are a key criterion for viewing EI as a kind of intelligence, rather than a typical way of behaving. Our review concludes that the six narrow abilities comprising EI are all positively interrelated—the component parts of EI converge to form a whole. In addition, the level of interrelationships shows that emotion expression and emotion perception are clearly separate, with weaker evidence for the separation between emotion regulation of self versus emotion regulation of others. Using the older research tradition of emotion recognition (which predates EI), we present a detailed overview of the relationship between emotion perception and other narrow abilities of EI. We conclude that the narrow facets of EI converge with each other, providing one form of evidence to support the validity of EI as a type of intelligence.     

Performance and learning goals for emotion regulation

Goal orientation theory is concerned with performance and learning goals in academic, athletic, and other ability areas. Here we examine performance and learning goals for emotion regulation. We define performance goals for emotion regulation as seeking to prove one’s ability to manage emotions; learning goals for emotion regulation are defined as seeking to improve one’s ability to manage emotions. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that performance goals for emotion regulation would be associated with greater use of defensive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms. Results from both studies showed that individuals with greater performance goals for emotion regulation reported higher levels of rumination and thought suppression and greater depressive symptoms, while individuals with greater learning goals reported greater use of cognitive reappraisal. The findings suggest that goals for emotion regulation may help explain individual differences in use of defensive versus constructive emotion regulation strategies.     

Distinguishing Between Negative Emotions: Children's Understanding of the Social-regulatory Aspects of Emotion

This paper deals with children's understanding of the social-regulatory aspects of emotion. A total of 108 children between 6 and 12 years old responded to three vignettes describing social dilemmas. In each story one child (the expresser) displayed anger, sadness, or fear to their partner (the recipient), and children were asked about the expresser's goals as well as the effects of the emotion on recipients' actions and emotions. Anger expression was associated with children thinking that expressers feel dominant in interaction. When anger was expressed during interaction children thought that it elicited more anger and aggression from recipients. Sadness and fear elicited prosocial responses from recipients, including comfort, proximity, and goal reinstatement. The differentiation between anger, sadness, and fear was greater in older than in younger children. Results are discussed in terms of the differentiation between emotions, the development of individual differences in emotion expression, and emotion regulation.     

Recognition of facial expressions of different emotional intensities in patients with frontotemporal lobar degeneration

Behavioural problems are a key feature of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). Also, FTLD patients show impairments in emotion processing. Specifically, the perception of negative emotional facial expressions is affected. Generally, however, negative emotional expressions are regarded as more difficult to recognize than positive ones, which thus may have been a confounding factor in previous studies. Also, ceiling effects are often present on emotion recognition tasks using full-blown emotional facial expressions. In the present study with FTLD patients, we examined the perception of sadness, anger, fear, happiness, surprise and disgust at different emotional intensities on morphed facial expressions to take task difficulty into account. Results showed that our FTLD patients were specifically impaired at the recognition of the emotion anger. Also, the patients performed worse than the controls on recognition of surprise, but performed at control levels on disgust, happiness, sadness and fear. These findings corroborate and extend previous results showing deficits in emotion perception in FTLD.     

Assessing Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder: The Emotion Regulation Interview

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is thought to involve emotional hyper-reactivity and emotion dysregulation. However, the precise nature of the emotion dysregulation in SAD has not been well characterized. In the present study, the Emotion Regulation Interview (ERI) was developed to quantify the frequency and self-efficacy of five emotion regulation strategies specified by Gross’s (Review of General Psychology 2: 271–299, 1998) process model of emotion regulation. Forty-eight individuals with SAD and 33 healthy controls (HCs) were interviewed about responses during (a) a laboratory speech task and (b) two recent social anxiety-evoking situations. Individuals with SAD reported greater use of avoidance and expressive suppression than HCs, as well as lesser self-efficacy in implementing cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. These regulation deficits were not accounted for by differences in emotional reactivity. These findings highlight specific emotion regulation deficits in SAD, and support the idea that the Emotion Regulation Interview may be usefully applied to other clinical disorders.     

Dual Diathesis-Stressor Model of Emotional and Linguistic Contributions to Developmental Stuttering

This study assessed emotional and speech-language contributions to childhood stuttering. A dual diathesis-stressor framework guided this study, in which both linguistic requirements and skills, and emotion and its regulation, are hypothesized to contribute to stuttering. The language diathesis consists of expressive and receptive language skills. The emotion diathesis consists of proclivities to emotional reactivity and regulation of emotion, and the emotion stressor consists of experimentally manipulated emotional inductions prior to narrative speaking tasks. Preschool-age children who do and do not stutter were exposed to three emotion-producing overheard conversations—neutral, positive, and angry. Emotion and emotion-regulatory behaviors were coded while participants listened to each conversation and while telling a story after each overheard conversation. Instances of stuttering during each story were counted. Although there was no main effect of conversation type, results indicated that stuttering in preschool-age children is influenced by emotion and language diatheses, as well as coping strategies and situational emotional stressors. Findings support the dual diathesis-stressor model of stuttering.     

Taxing behavioral control diminishes sharing and costly punishment in childhood

Instances of altruism in children are well documented. However, the underlying mechanisms of such altruistic behavior are still under considerable debate. While some claim that altruistic acts occur automatically and spontaneously, others argue that they require behavioral control. This study focuses on the mechanisms that give rise to prosocial decisions such as sharing and costly punishment. In two studies it is shown in 124 children aged 6–9 years that behavioral control plays a critical role for both prosocial decisions and costly punishment. Specifically, the studies assess the influence of taxing aspects of self‐regulation, such as behavioral control (Study 1) and emotion regulation (Study 2) on subsequent decisions in a Dictator and an Ultimatum Game. Further, children's perception of fairness norms and emotional experience were measured. Taxing children's behavioral control prior to making their decisions reduced sharing and costly punishment of unfair offers, without changing perception of fairness norms or the emotional experience. Conversely, taxing children's emotion regulation prior to making their decisions only led to increased experience of anger at seeing unfair offers, but left sharing, costly punishment and the perception of fairness norms unchanged. These findings stress the critical role of behavioral control in prosocial giving and costly punishment in childhood.     

Exiles of anger: The spatial politics of difficult emotions in contemporary education

Anger is an under-examined yet potent and disruptive emotion with a complex social and spatial history. This paper examines the spatial politics of anger as it emerges in contemporary secondary education, arguing that everyday experience of young people is at odds with tools of emotional governance that are widely practiced across the sector. State education in the UK has increasingly turned to social and emotional forms of learning to both broaden the range of skills taught and to encourage different forms of self-governance. By exploring the operation of this particularly resonant and volatile emotion, the paper attempts to go beyond the intentions of policy to examine the everyday presentation of emotions through the bodies and spaces of governance. Specifically, I draw on young people's experience of anger and examine the individual and institutional responses that position and shape their emotional geographies. I argue that rather than treating emotions in their generality, examining anger specifically reveals a spatiality based on exile and eradication, rather than internal psychological governance.     

Trait Anger and Music Perception

The Spielberger Trait Anger test was administered to 287 undergraduate college students enrolled in courses in jazz appreciation. The recording of a jazz saxophone improvisation was played for the students, and they were asked to rate its emotion. The mean trait anger score for listeners who rated the music as angry was significantly higher than the mean trait anger score of those who rated it as friendly. A small but significant correlation was found between perceptions of anger in the music and listener scores on the trait anger test. Results suggest that personality may influence perception of emotion in music and that jazz improvisation may not be reliable for communicating emotions because of wide individual differences in how its emotional content is perceived.     

Emotion words shape emotion percepts

People believe they see emotion written on the faces of other people. In an instant, simple facial actions are transformed into information about another's emotional state. The present research examined whether a perceiver unknowingly contributes to emotion perception with emotion word knowledge. We present 2 studies that together support a role for emotion concepts in the formation of visual percepts of emotion. As predicted, we found that perceptual priming of emotional faces (e.g., a scowling face) was disrupted when the accessibility of a relevant emotion word (e.g., anger) was temporarily reduced, demonstrating that the exact same face was encoded differently when a word was accessible versus when it was not. The implications of these findings for a linguistically relative view of emotion perception are discussed.     

Influence of children's emotional states on the recognition of emotion in peers and social motives to change another's emotional state

This experiment addressed the question of whether children's own emotional states influence their accuracy in recognizing emotional states in peers and any motives they may have to intervene in order to change their peers' emotional states. Happiness, sadness, anger, or a neutral state were induced in preschool children, who then viewed slides of other 4-year-old children who were actually experiencing each of those states. Children's own emotional states influenced only their perception of sadness in peers. Sad emotional states promoted systematic inaccuracies in the perception of sadness, causing children to mislabel sadness in peers as anger. Children had high base rates for using the label “happy,” and this significantly enhanced their accuracy in recognizing that state. Low base rates for labeling others as in a neutral state reduced accuracy in recognizing neutrality. Children were generally motivated to change sad, angry, and neutral states in peers, and they were most motivated to change a peer's state if they were to be the agent of such change. The results are discussed in terms of the limited role of children's own emotional states in their recognition of emotion in others or motives to intervene and in terms of factors influencing the perception of emotion, such as base rate preferences for labeling others as experiencing, or not experiencing, particular emotional states.     

Adults' emotional states and recognition of emotion in young children

This study addressed the degree to which adults' emotional states influence their perception of emotional states in children and their motivation to change such states. Happiness, sadness, anger, or a neutral state was induced in adults, who then viewed slides of 4-year-old children who were actually experiencing various emotional states. Adults' own emotional states had little impact on their accurate recognition of children's emotions or on their motives for social action to change such emotions. However, adults' states did influence the intensity they assigned to children's emotions, with happy adults tending to rate some emotions as more intense for black children (sadness) and for girls (anger and neutrality). The base rates with which adults used different emotion labels also influenced judgments, increasing it for the recognition of happiness and reducing it for anger. The results are discussed in terms of the factors that influence whether or not emotional states affect judgment processes and the role of emotion labels in the effective recognition of ongoing emotional states. Also addressed is the consequence of adults' recognition of emotion in children for the effective socialization of emotion.