Feeling bad about being sad: the role of social expectancies in amplifying negative mood

Our perception of how others expect us to feel has significant implications for our emotional functioning. Across 4 studies the authors demonstrate that when people think others expect them not to feel negative emotions (i.e., sadness) they experience more negative emotion and reduced well-being. The authors show that perceived social expectancies predict these differences in emotion and well-being both more consistently than-and independently of-personal expectancies and that they do so by promoting negative self-evaluation when experiencing negative emotion. We find evidence for these effects within Australia (Studies 1 and 2) as well as Japan (Study 2), although the effects of social expectancies are especially evident in the former (Studies 1 and 2). We also find experimental evidence for the causal role of social expectancies in negative emotional responses to negative emotional events (Studies 3 and 4). In short, when people perceive that others think they should feel happy, and not sad, this leads them to feel sad more frequently and intensely.     

农村老年人的社会排斥体验与健康状况:有调节的中介作用

基于社会排斥的多元动机模型、负性情绪影响健康的四通路模型,通过对一项覆盖中国31个省级行政区（不含港澳台）农村居民社会调查数据的分析,考察了1803名农村老年人社会排斥体验与健康状况的关系,以及负性情绪、人际信任、经济状况在两者中的作用。结果表明,农村老年人的社会排斥体验负向预测其健康状况;负性情绪在农村老年人社会排斥体验和健康状况之间起中介作用;人际信任、经济状况均在农村老年人社会排斥体验和负性情绪之间起调节作用;经济状况还在农村老年人负性情绪和健康状况之间起调节作用。该结果不仅验证并拓展了上述两个理论模型,还为农村的养老服务体系建设、农村老年人的健康服务工作提供了启示。     

Perceived social pressure not to experience negative emotion is linked to selective attention for negative information

Social norms and values may be important predictors of how people engage with and regulate their negative emotional experiences. Previous research has shown that social expectancies (the perceived social pressure not to feel negative emotion (NE)) exacerbate feelings of sadness. In the current research, we examined whether social expectancies may be linked to how people process emotional information. Using a modified classical flanker task involving emotional rather than non-emotional stimuli, we found that, for those who experienced low levels of NE, social expectancies were linked to the selective avoidance of negative emotional information. Those who experienced high levels of NE did not show a selective avoidance of negative emotional information. The findings suggest that, for people who experience many NEs, social expectancies may lead to discrepancies between how they think they ought to feel and the kind of emotional information they pay attention to.     

Happiness,Dispositions and the Self

I argue that happiness is an exclusively categorical mental state. Daniel Haybron’s inclusion of dispositions into his emotional state theory rests of a confusion of constituents of happiness in the narrow psychological sense with objects of prudential concern, to which obviously belong “mood propensities” and other dispositional states. I further argue that while it is probably correct to require of a constituent of happiness that it must in some sense be “deep” and belong to, or directly impact on, a persons’ self, the importance of depth may be overrated by the emotional state theory, which also ignores the possibility that mental states other than moods and emotions can be deep in the relevant sense.     

道德感动的情绪效价特征:生理研究的证据

深入讨论道德感动的情绪效价特征,采用MP150多导生理记录仪测量个体在感动、积极、消极三种状态下心电、呼吸、皮电的自主神经系统生理心理指标并探讨其差异.结果 发现:感动状态下的皮电水平显著高于消极状态下的皮电水平,而与积极状态下的皮电水平不存在显著差异;感动、消极、积极三种状态下的心电、呼吸指标均不存在显著差异.结论:...     

Dysphoria and the prediction and experience of emotion

Depression and dysphoria have been characterised by dampened positive emotional experiences. However, it remains unclear whether dysphoria is also characterised by dampened expectancies about positive emotional experiences. In the present study, participants with (dysphoric group; n=36) and without (non-dysphoric group; n=36) dysphoria reported on their expected and actual emotional responses to winning and losing money in a computer task. Results showed the dysphoric group predicted and experienced less happiness and contentment after winning money than the non-dysphoric group. Results also showed the dysphoric group predicted and experienced as much negative emotion after losing money as the non-dysphoric group. Moreover, the dysphoric group predicted they would experience more happiness after winning money than they actually did, whereas the non-dysphoric group experienced as much happiness as they had predicted. Results suggest that disturbances in positive emotional responding are characteristic of people experiencing dysphoria.     

Enhanced embodied response following ambiguous emotional processing

It has generally been assumed that high-level cognitive and emotional processes are based on amodal conceptual information. In contrast, however, “embodied simulation” theory states that the perception of an emotional signal can trigger a simulation of the related state in the motor, somatosensory, and affective systems. To study the effect of social context on the mimicry effect predicted by the “embodied simulation” theory, we recorded the electromyographic (EMG) activity of participants when looking at emotional facial expressions. We observed an increase in embodied responses when the participants were exposed to a context involving social valence before seeing the emotional facial expressions. An examination of the dynamic EMG activity induced by two socially relevant emotional expressions (namely joy and anger) revealed enhanced EMG responses of the facial muscles associated with the related social prime (either positive or negative). These results are discussed within the general framework of embodiment theory.     

Happiness is an Emotion

Accounts of happiness in the philosophical literature see it as either a judgment of satisfaction with one’s life or as a balance of positive over negative feelings or emotional states. There are sound objections to both types of account, although each captures part of what happiness is. Seeing it as an emotion allows us to incorporate both features of the accounts thought to be incompatible. Emotions are analyzed as multicomponent states including judgments, feelings, physical symptoms, and behavioral dispositions. It is shown that prototypical happiness contains all these components, and each is explicated. The concept of happiness, like the concepts of other emotions, is a cluster concept. The features of such concepts are made clear. Happiness is shown to be similar to other emotions in many respects, including the phenomenon of adaptation, the “paradox of happiness,” and the existence of both paradigm and borderline instances. The account allows us to capture all that was right in earlier accounts while avoiding objections to them.     

The Role of Dysphoria in Social Thinking and Behaviour

In response to Palermo (2016, Australian Psychologist, in press) comments, some aspects of the target paper are further elaborated here. In particular, given Palermo's timely emphasis on the potential social and cultural implications of research demonstrating the beneficial consequences of negative affect, the historical background, and practical implications of the experimental evidence are elaborated. Furthermore, the reviewer also comments on the applicability of alternative theoretical conceptualizations to the data reported here, and this issue also receives further attention. Overall, it is concluded that there is now strong and convergent evidence for the often beneficial consequences of mild negative affect, and these findings deserve serious consideration in practical applications of psychology, and in our conceptions of what represents a healthy and balanced emotional life. Embracing and accepting periods of negative affectivity should be recognised as a normal and healthy part of the human condition, and the cultural bias towards positive affect should be tempered by an appreciation of the adaptive benefits of dysphoria.     

On Being Happy or Unhappy1

The psychological condition of being happy is best understood as a matter of a person's emotional condition. I elucidate the notion of an emotional condition by introducing two distinctions concerning affect, and argue that this “emotional state” view is probably superior on intuitive and substantive grounds to theories that identify happiness with pleasure or life satisfaction. Life satisfaction views, for example, appear to have deflationary consequences for happiness’ value. This would make happiness an unpromising candidate for the central element in a theory of well‐being, as it is in L. W. Sumner's work. Yet on an emotional state conception, happiness may prove to be a key constituent of well‐being. the emotional state view also makes happiness less vulnerable to common doubts about the importance of happiness, and indicates that mood states are more important for well‐being than is generally recognized.

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MMPI Item Changes by College Students under Ideal-Self Response Set

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The Differentially Discriminating Properties of Alcohol Expectancies for Female and Male Drinkers

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Trajectories of Happiness 5 Years Following Medical Discharge for Traumatic Disability: Differences Between Insider and Outsider Perspectives

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