Memories of positive and negative emotional events

Women's memories of emotional events differing by both valence and intensity were examined for differences in narrative content and structure, as well as subjective memory ratings. Emotional valence was related to the content of the women's narratives, and emotional intensity was related to the subjective ratings of the memories. Negative narratives contained more negative emotion, cognitive processing words, and passive sentences than positive narratives, and positive narratives contained more positive emotion words and were more complex than negative narratives. Intensely negative narratives were the longest and the least complex, and intensely positive narratives were the most coherent. Women rated both intensely negative and intensely positive events, in general, as more frequently talked/thought about, significant, unique, emotional, and vivid than moderately emotional events, and negative events were rated as more emotional than positive narratives. There was little relation between the objective content of the narratives and the women's subjective ratings of their memory experiences. Finally, researcher‐defined traumatic events did not differ from other intensely negative events. The results of this study have important implications for narrative research in general, methodological issues such as the validity of text analysis programs and subjective memory ratings, and the quality of traumatic memories. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants’ task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants' task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

Rumination,emotional intensity and emotional clarity

It has been suggested that a high tendency to ruminate presents a deficient emotion regulation. Past research found that people with high tendency to ruminate show sustained attention for negative stimuli and increased negative thinking, which may result in intensified experiences of negative emotions. Moreover, high level of rumination was associated with low emotional understanding. Accordingly, we hypothesized (1) high ruminators (HR) experience more intense emotional reactions than low ruminators (LR) for negative but not positive emotions, (2) LR have higher emotional clarity than HR, and (3) there would be the same pattern of results for brooding but not for reflective pondering. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, a rumination response style questionnaire, and the Beck Depression Inventory-II. They also rated emotional intensity and identified emotion type for scene pictures from the CAP-D (Categorized Affective Pictures Database). The highest (HR) and lowest (LR) quarters of ruminators were compared on levels of emotional intensity and emotional clarity. We found HR experienced negative emotions more intensely than LR, with no difference for positive emotions. In contrast to our hypothesis, the two groups did not differ in their emotion understanding. This pattern of results was found for brooding but not for reflective pondering. Our research sheds light on the mechanism underlying rumination and emotion regulation.     

Associations of trait positive emotion regulation with everyday emotions: An experience sampling approach

Positive emotion regulation is important for enhancing psychological well-being. Previous studies have adopted a cross-sectional design to examine the relationships between positive emotion regulation strategies and psychological functioning. Relatively little is known about the role of positive emotion regulation strategies in positive and negative emotions in everyday life. This study examines associations between perceived capability of savoring and trait positive rumination and everyday emotions. Among 300 Hong Kong Chinese (age 18–77 years), perceived capability of savoring the moment and positive rumination predicted higher positive emotions during positive-valenced events. Perceived capability of savoring the moment predicted lower negative emotions during positive-valenced events and higher positive emotions during negative-valenced events. Positive links between positive valence ratings of events and positive emotions were stronger among individuals who reported higher levels of perceived capability of savoring through reminiscence and greater trait emotion-focused rumination. Positive links between negative valence ratings of events and negative emotions were significant only among individuals who reported low/medium levels of perceived capability of savoring through anticipation. These findings suggest that: (a) perceived capability of savoring and trait positive rumination are key mechanisms for increasing positive emotions and (b) perceived capability of savoring fosters adaptive adjustment to stress during negative events.     

On the dynamics of implicit emotion regulation: Counter-regulation after remembering events of high but not of low emotional intensity

Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.     

The effect of cognitive reappraisal on long‐term emotional experience and emotional memory

One's ability to properly regulate emotion is critical to psychological and physical well‐being. Among various strategies to regulate emotion, cognitive reappraisal has been shown to modulate both emotional experience and emotional memory. However, most studies of reappraisal have focused on reappraisal of negative situations, with reappraisal of positive emotion receiving considerably less attention. In addition, the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions to stimuli are typically only assessed either immediately or after a short delay, and it remains unclear whether reappraisal effects persist over longer time periods. We investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional reactions and long‐term episodic memory for positive and negative stimuli. Men and women viewed emotionally negative, positive, and neutral pictures while they were instructed to either increase, decrease, or maintain the initial emotional reactions elicited by the pictures. Subjective ratings of emotional valence and arousal were assessed during the regulation task and again after 1 week. Memory for the pictures was assessed with free recall. Results indicated that pictures accompanied by instructions to increase emotion were better recalled than pictures reappraised to decrease emotion. Modulation of emotional arousal elicited by stimuli persisted over a week, but this effect was observed only for men. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal can have long‐lasting effects on emotional reactions to stimuli. However, the sex differences observed for the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions highlight the importance of considering individual differences in the effects of regulation.     

Teachers' emotional experiences in response to daily events with individual students varying in perceived past disruptive behavior

Students' disruptive behavior during classroom events can elicit strong emotions in teachers and impact teachers' occupational wellbeing. This research was the first to test the proposition that teachers' emotional responses depend not solely on the specific classroom events themselves, but also on the perceived history of disruptive behavior of the student involved. Two complimentary studies examined whether teachers' perceptions of students' past disruptive behavior moderated the link between teachers' valence appraisals (i.e., how positive or negative an event was) and emotions in response to the event (i.e., enjoyment, anger, anxiety, self-, and other-related emotions). It was expected that teachers would be more emotionally reactive to events involving students whom they perceived as more disruptive in the past. Study 1 (N = 218 teachers) examined one teacher-selected relevant event of a workday with an individual student. Study 2 (N = 37 teachers) examined multiple events collected through daily diaries across the school year regarding two target students (N = 77) varying in perceived disruptive behavior. Both studies showed that teachers reacted more emotionally negative to students they perceived as more disruptive in the past compared to similarly appraised events with students perceived as less disruptive. Findings were most consistent for teachers' anger. In addition, Study 1 examined whether teachers' event-related emotions were related to their occupational wellbeing that workday. Teachers' anger was the only emotion associated with both teachers' emotional exhaustion and dedication. Intervention efforts to increase teachers' occupational wellbeing may profit from focusing on specific anger-evoking teacher-student dyads and try changing teachers' underlying judgments and associated emotions about disruptive students.     

Differential effects of arousal in positive and negative autobiographical memories

Autobiographical memories are characterised by a range of emotions and emotional reactions. Recent research has demonstrated that differences in emotional valence (positive vs. negative emotion) and arousal (the degree of emotional intensity) differentially influence the retrieved memory narrative. Although the mnemonic effects of valence and arousal have both been heavily studied, it is currently unclear whether the effects of emotional arousal are equivalent for positive and negative autobiographical events. In the current study, multilevel models were used to examine differential effects of emotional valence and arousal on the richness of autobiographical memory retrieval both between and within subjects. Thirty-four young adults were asked to retrieve personal autobiographical memories associated with popular musical cues and to rate the valence, arousal and richness of these events. The multilevel analyses identified independent influences of valence and intensity upon retrieval characteristics at the within- and between-subject levels. In addition, the within-subject interactions between valence and arousal highlighted differential effects of arousal for positive and negative memories. These findings have important implications for future studies of emotion and memory, highlighting the importance of considering both valence and arousal when examining the role emotion plays in the richness of memory representation.     

Narrating emotional events in schizophrenia

Research has indicated that schizophrenia patients report similar amounts of experienced emotion in response to emotional material compared with nonpatients. However, less is known about how schizophrenia patients describe and make sense of their emotional life events. We adopted a narrative approach to investigate schizophrenia patients' renderings of their emotional life experiences. In Study 1, patients' (n=42) positive and negative narratives were similarly personal, tellable, engaged, and appropriate. However, negative narratives were less grammatically clear than positive narratives, and positive narratives were more likely to involve other people than negative narratives. In Study 2, emotional (positive and negative) narratives were less tellable and detached, yet more linear and social compared with neutral narratives for both schizophrenia patients (n=24) and healthy controls (n=19). However, patients' narratives about emotional life events were less appropriate to context and less linear, and patients' narratives, whether emotional or not, were less tellable and more detached compared with controls' narratives. Although schizophrenia patients are capable of recounting life events that trigger different emotions, the telling of these life events is fraught with difficulty.     

青少年与成人不同情绪刺激调节效应的差异

旨在探究增强调节和减弱调节调节效应量的年龄差异。通过两个实验系统考察青少年和成人对不同情绪刺激使用不同调节策略时,调节效应的差异。实验一采用“情绪反应性—调节图片任务（REAR-I Task）”考察了35名青少年和35名成人情绪调节的效应量。实验二进一步对情绪图片的唤醒度进行分组（高唤醒/低唤醒）,考察了59名青少年和59名成人情绪调节的效应量。结果验证了研究假设：整体而言,对不同效价和唤醒度情绪刺激采用增强调节或减弱调节时,成人的调节效应量均大于青少年,对正性情绪的减弱调节方面尤为明显。     

The impact of changes in spatial distance on emotional responses

Drawing on motivational approaches to emotion, the authors propose that the perceived change in spatial distance to pictures that arouse negative emotions exerts an influence on the significance of these pictures. Two experiments induced the illusion that affective pictures approach toward the observer, recede from the observer, or remain static. To determine the motivational significance of the pictures, emotional valence and arousal ratings as well as startle responses were assessed. Approaching unpleasant pictures were found to exert an influence on both the valence and the arousal elicited by the pictures. Furthermore, movement of pleasant or neutral pictures did not influence startle responses, while the second experiment showed that approaching unpleasant pictures elicited enhanced startle responses compared to receding unpleasant pictures. These findings support the view that a change of spatial distance influences motivational significance and thereby shapes emotional responses.     

Age and emotional experience during mutual reminiscing

In the present article, the authors examined age differences in the emotional experiences involved in talking about past events. In Study 1, 129 adults in an experience-sampling study reported whether they were engaged in mutual reminiscing and their concurrent experience of positive and negative emotion. Their experiences of positive and negative emotion during mutual reminiscing were compared with emotional experience during other social activities. Age was associated with increasing positive emotion during mutual reminiscing. In Study 2 (n = 132), the authors examined emotions during reminiscing for specific positive and negative events. In this case, age was associated with improved emotional experiences but only during reminiscing about positive experiences. Findings are discussed in terms of socioemotional selectivity theory and the literature on reminiscence and life review.     

How emotional auditory stimuli modulate time perception

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. Meck, 1984), this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events.     

PiSCES: Pictures with social context and emotional scenes with norms for emotional valence,intensity, and social engagement

Picture databases are commonly used in experimental work on various aspects of emotion processing. However, existing standardized facial databases, typically used to explore emotion recognition, can be augmented with more contextual information for studying emotion and social perception. Moreover, the perception of social engagement, i.e., the degree of interaction or engagement inferred between the people in target pictures, has not been measured. In this paper, we describe the development of a database comprising 203 black-and-white line drawings depicting people within various situational contexts, and normed on perceived emotional valence, intensity, and social engagement, a new construct. Analyses of ratings collected from 62 young adults (30 females, 32 males; mean age 22 years) revealed the typical quadratic relationship between valence and intensity, i.e., stimuli that are more emotionally charged, whether positively or negatively valenced, are more intense than emotionally-neutral stimuli. Moreover, the results showed significant linear and quadratic relationships between valence and social engagement ratings, indicating that emotionally-charged social scenes were perceived as more engaging than emotionally-neutral social scenes. This new database will facilitate investigations of how people perceive and interpret social and emotional information in everyday interactions, and is offered as a resource to experimenters involved in social and/or emotional processing research.     

NEVER forget: negative emotional valence enhances recapitulation

A hallmark feature of episodic memory is that of “mental time travel,” whereby an individual feels they have returned to a prior moment in time. Cognitive and behavioral neuroscience methods have revealed a neurobiological counterpart: Successful retrieval often is associated with reactivation of a prior brain state. We review the emerging literature on memory reactivation and recapitulation, and we describe evidence for the effects of emotion on these processes. Based on this review, we propose a new model: Negative Emotional Valence Enhances Recapitulation (NEVER). This model diverges from existing models of emotional memory in three key ways. First, it underscores the effects of emotion during retrieval. Second, it stresses the importance of sensory processing to emotional memory. Third, it emphasizes how emotional valence – whether an event is negative or positive – affects the way that information is remembered. The model specifically proposes that, as compared to positive events, negative events both trigger increased encoding of sensory detail and elicit a closer resemblance between the sensory encoding signature and the sensory retrieval signature. The model also proposes that negative valence enhances the reactivation and storage of sensory details over offline periods, leading to a greater divergence between the sensory recapitulation of negative and positive memories over time. Importantly, the model proposes that these valence-based differences occur even when events are equated for arousal, thus rendering an exclusively arousal-based theory of emotional memory insufficient. We conclude by discussing implications of the model and suggesting directions for future research to test the tenets of the model.     

Emotional intensity predicts autobiographical memory experience

College students generated autobiographical memories from distinct emotional categories that varied in valence (positive vs. negative) and intensity (high vs. low). They then rated various perceptual, cognitive, and emotional properties for each memory. The distribution of these emotional memories favored a vector model over a circumplex model. For memories of all specific emotions, intensity accounted for significantly more variance in autobiographical memory characteristics than did valence or age of the memory. In two additional experiments, we examined multiple memories of emotions of high intensity and positive or negative valence and of positive valence and high or low intensity. Intensity was a more consistent predictor of autobiographical memory properties than was valence or the age of the memory in these experiments as well. The general effects of emotion on autobiographical memory properties are due primarily to intensity differences in emotional experience, not to benefits or detriments associated with a specific valence.     

The effects of valence‐based and discrete emotional states on aesthetic response

There is increasing recognition that consumer aesthetics—the responses of consumers to the aesthetic or appearance aspects of products—has become an important area of marketing in recent years. Consumer aesthetic responses to a product are a source of pleasure for the consumer. Previous research into the aesthetic responses to products has often emphasized exterior factors and visual design, but studies have seldom considered the psychological aesthetic experience of consumers, and in particular their emotional state. This study attempts to bridge this gap by examining the link between consumers’ emotions and their aesthetic response to a product. Thus, the major goal of this study was to determine how valence‐based and discrete emotional states influence choice. In Studies 1 and 2, positive and negative emotions were manipulated to implement two different induction techniques and explore the effect of emotions on participants’ choices in two separate experiments. The results of both experiments confirmed the predictions, indicating that aesthetic responses and purchase intention are functions of emotional valence, such that both are stronger for people in a positive emotional state than for those in a negative emotional state. Study 2 also used a neutral affective state to establish the robustness of this observed effect of incidental affect. The results of Study 3 demonstrate that aesthetic response and purchase intention are not only a function of affect valence, but also are affected by the certainty appraisal associated with specific affective states. This research, therefore, contributes to the literature by offering empirical evidence that incidental affect is a determinant of aesthetic response.     

不同抑郁症状青少年调节不同强度情绪时策略选择的差异

最新研究发现,情绪强度会影响健康个体的情绪调节策略选择。然而,至今尚未有研究考察情绪强度对不同抑郁症状青少年策略选择的影响。对此,本研究通过流调中心用抑郁量表划分出无抑郁、阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年,进而考察其在面对高-低强度积极-消极日常情绪事件时选择认知重评和认知沉浸的差异。结果发现：当面对高强度积极情绪、低强度积极情绪和低强度消极情绪时,三组被试的策略选择均无显著差异;当面对高强度消极情绪时,无抑郁青少年比阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年更多选择认知重评而更少选择认知沉浸,但阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年之间无显著差异。结果表明：不同抑郁症状青少年在面对不同强度和效价情绪时的情绪调节策略选择存在差异,表现为高强度消极情绪下抑郁症状越多的青少年越少选择认知重评而越多选择认知沉浸。这一发现有助于识别和干预青少年的抑郁症状。     

Emotional distress and positive and negative memories from military deployment: the influence of PTSD symptoms and time

During military deployment, soldiers are confronted with both negative and positive events. What is remembered and how it affects an individual is influenced by not only the perceived emotion of the event, but also the emotional state of the individual. Here we examined the most negative and most positive deployment memories from a company of 337 soldiers who were deployed together to Afghanistan. We examined how the level of emotional distress of the soldiers and the valence of the memory were related to the emotional intensity, experience of reliving, rehearsal and coherence of the memories, and how the perceived impact of these memories changed over time. We found that soldiers with higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were more affected by both their negative and positive memories, compared with soldiers with lower levels of PTSD symptoms. Emotional intensity of the most negative memory increased over time in the group with highest levels of PTSD symptoms, but dropped in the other groups. The present study adds to the literature on emotion and autobiographical memory and how this relationship interacts with an individual’s present level of emotional distress and the passage of time.