The Emotional Timeline of Unemployment: Anticipation,Reaction, and Adaptation

Unemployment continues to be one of the major challenges in industrialized societies. Aside from its economic and societal repercussions, questions concerning the subjective experience of unemployment have recently attracted increasing attention. Although existing studies have documented the detrimental effects of unemployment for cognitive (life satisfaction) and affective well-being, studies directly comparing these two dimensions of subjective well-being and their temporal dynamics in anticipation of and response to unemployment are absent from the literature. Using longitudinal data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and applying fixed effects regressions, we investigate changes in cognitive and affective well-being prior to and after job loss. Extending previous studies, we use discrete emotion measures instead of affect balance indicators to assess affective well-being. Our results support existing findings that unemployment leads to decreases in life satisfaction and that the unemployed do not adapt towards previous levels of life satisfaction. We also find that individuals more often experience sadness and anxiety, and less often happiness when transitioning into unemployment. Importantly, changes in affective well-being are less enduring compared to the changes in life satisfaction.     

Affective Arousal as Information: How Affective Arousal Influences Judgments,Learning, and Memory

The affect‐as‐information framework posits that affect is embodied information about value and importance. The valence dimension of affect provides evaluative information about stimulus objects, which plays a role in judgment and decision‐making. Affect can also provide evaluative information about one's own cognitions and response inclinations, information that guides thinking and reasoning. In particular, positive affect often promotes, and negative affect inhibits, accessible responses or dominant modes of thinking. Affect thus moderates many of the textbook phenomena in cognitive psychology. In the current review, we suggest additionally that the arousal dimension of affect amplifies reactions, leading to intensified evaluations, increased reliance on particular styles of learning, and enhanced long‐term memory for events. We conclude that whereas valenced affective cues serve as information about value, the arousal dimension provides information about urgency or importance.     

Arousal, Mood, and the Mozart Effect

The "Mozart effect" refers to claims that people perform better on tests of spatial abilities after listening to music composed by Mozart. We examined whether the Mozart effect is a consequence of between-condition differences in arousal and mood. Participants completed a test of spatial abilities after listening to music or sitting in silence. The music was a Mozart sonata (a pleasant and energetic piece) for some participants and an Albinoni adagio (a slow, sad piece) for others. We also measured enjoyment, arousal, and mood. Performance on the spatial task was better following the music than the silence condition, but only for participants who heard Mozart. The two music selections also induced differential responding on the enjoyment, arousal, and mood measures. Moreover, when such differences were held constant by statistical means, the Mozart effect disappeared. These findings provide compelling evidence that the Mozart effect is an artifact of arousal and mood.     

Pleasure,Arousal, Dominance: Mehrabian and Russell revisited

This paper presents a discursive review of the dimensions pleasure, arousal and dominance that Mehrabian and Russell developed in 1974 to assess environmental perception, experience, and psychological responses. Since then numerous researchers applied these dimensions to assess the experience of the physical environment and its perceived qualities. Although the dimensions appeared to be useful, there is a long-lasting debate going on among environmental psychologists about the interpretation of pleasure, arousal and dominance and its underlying mechanisms. Due to the lack of clarity researchers use different adjectives to describe environmental experiences, which makes any comparison between research findings difficult. This paper shows that the three dimensions can be linked to the current ABC Model of Attitudes: pleasure, arousal and dominance can be respectively related to affective, cognitive and conative responses, i.e. Affect, Cognition and Behaviour (ABC). In addition, connecting the three dimensions to the triad feeling, thinking and acting, can also help to improve our understanding, interpretation and measurement of pleasure, arousal and dominance. Based on this review, it is proposed to re-introduce the three dimensions and to replace the nowadays often used two dimensional model with pleasure and arousal by a three dimensional model, including dominance as a third dimension, to represent the complete range of human responses.     

The Pleasures of Anticipation: Enriching Intuitionistic Logic

We explore a relation we call anticipation between formulas, where A anticipates B (according to some logic) just in case B is a consequence (according to that logic, presumed to support some distinguished implicational connective ) of the formula AB. We are especially interested in the case in which the logic is intuitionistic (propositional) logic and are much concerned with an extension of that logic with a new connective, written as a, governed by rules which guarantee that for any formula B, aB is the (logically) strongest formula anticipating B. The investigation of this new logic, which we call ILa, will confront us on several occasions with some of the finer points in the theory of rules and with issues in the philosophy of logic arising from the proposed explication of the existence of a connective (with prescribed logical behaviour) in terms of the conservative extension of a favoured logic by the addition of such a connective. Other points of interest include the provision of a Kripke semantics with respect to which ILa is demonstrably sound, deployed to establish certain unprovability results as well as to forge connections with C. Rauszer's logic of dual intuitionistic negation and dual intuitionistic implication, and the isolation of two relations (between formulas), head-implication and head-linkage, which, though trivial in the setting of classical logic, are of considerable significance in the intuitionistic context.     

The Anticipation of Plant Closing: Employee Reactions

Abstract

In the United States, the Worker Adjustment and Retaining Notification Act requires that companies give employees a 60-day notice in the event of layoffs or a plant closing. A manufacturing plant in the southeastern United States gave over 400 hourly employees a 6-month advance notice before the closing of the plant in which they worked; they also received considerable severance benefits. The present study examined the feelings and reactions of these employees shortly after the announcement of the plant closing. Survey results showed that the majority of these employees had been involved in job search activities during this 6-month advance notice period; some had already been offered jobs. Nevertheless, many had feelings of resignation and sadness. The results are discussed in light of the psychological costs of a plant closing and a corporation's sense of social responsibility.     

Arousal and recognition memory: The effects of impulsivity,caffeine and time on task

Systematic changes in performance on memory tasks have been observed as a function of the number of prior items or lists learned. In an attempt to determine whether this was an ‘attentional’ phenomenon the effect of arousal (as indexed by Impulsivity and manipulated by caffeine) on memory performance was examined. One hundred college students were given either 4 mg of caffeine/kg body weight or a placebo and then shown four lists (two 24-item and two 80-item) of four letter words. A forced-choice recognition test for the last 20 items was given immediately after each list. The performance of the high impulsives who were given a placebo (least aroused subjects) declined as a function of the number of prior lists learned. Low impulsives (more aroused) showed significantly less decline. Caffeine significantly improved recognition memory especially on the final lists. Decrements in memory performance, as a function of number of prior litsts, are thus reduced by the same variables which reduce vigilance decrements. It is suggested that common explanations will be required.     

Arousal, processing, and risk taking: consequences of intergroup anger

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based anger has subtle and less explicitly controlled consequences for information processing, using measures that do not rely on self-reported emotional experience. Specifically, the authors show that intergroup anger involves arousal (Experiment 1), reduces systematic processing of persuasive messages (Experiment 2), is moderated by group identification (Experiment 2, posttest), and compared to intergroup fear, increases risk taking (Experiment 3). These findings provide converging evidence that consistent with IET, emotions triggered by social categorization have psychologically consequential effects and are not evident solely in self-reports.     

The Nature of Arousal and Nonverbal Indices

The current monograph asserts that nonverbal behaviors can serve as useful overt indices of experienced arousal. Various conceptualizations of arousal and factors eliciting arousal in communication situations are examined. It is proposed that, from a communication standpoint, indices of arousal and arousal change are best classified along two dimensions of arousal intensity and arousal valence. Diverse bodies of literature on nonverbal concamitants of arousal are reviewed. As a first test of whether separate profiles exist for negatively, as opposed to positively or neutrally, valenced arousal, data are analyzed from a mock-interview experiment in which, following a baseline interview, participants (N=52) were subjected by an interviewer to either increased or decreased involvement. The involvement changes were expected to elevate arousal intensity for all participants and induce positively or negatively valenced arousal in the two respective conditions. Polynomial regressions and z-test comparisons of correlations revealed that 16 composites, comprising a total of 47 nonverbal variables, showed significant associations with changes in arousal.     

Time/History,Self-disclosure and Anticipation: Pannenberg,Heidegger and the Question of Metaphysics

This essay examines Wolfhart Pannenberg’s defense of metaphysics’ foundational importance for philosophy and theology. Among all the modern philosophers whose claims Pannenberg challenges, Martin Heidegger’s discourse against Western metaphysics receives the major portion of criticism. The first thing one concludes from this criticism is an affirmation of a wide intellectual gap that separates Pannenberg’s thought from Heidegger’s, as if each stands at the very opposite corner of the other’s school of thought. The questions this essay tackles are: is this seemingly irreconcilable difference between Pannenberg and Heidegger fully justifiable? What if there is a reading of Panneberg’s and Heidegger’s view of metaphysics that can reveal deeper similarities between the two thinkers than the first reading of Pannenberg’s criticism of Heidegger allows us to see? It then answers these questions by showing that both thinkers actually share a common emphasis on the concepts of ‘time/history’, ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘anticipation’, and their reliance on these notions reveals that Heidegger’s and Pannenberg’s approaches to the phenomenon of understanding and to metaphysical ontology are not fully contradictory but rather hold noticeable hermeneutical similarities.     

Experimental Evidence of the Knowledge Gap: Message Arousal,Motivation, and Time Delay

This study experimentally tested the knowledge gap from an information processing perspective. Specifically, knowledge acquisition was investigated under conditions of medium and low news message arousal, with time delay. Results show the persistence of a knowledge gap, particularly for low arousing messages. In fact, at low levels of message arousal, the gap is larger than at medium levels of arousal. Some existing research suggests that message salience explains the knowledge gap. Findings from this study show that information processing aptitude may also be a significant factor. Measures of several dimensions of participant motivation to cognitively engage with news messages were added as covariates to statistical analyses. These were found not to affect the knowledge gap outcomes in this data set.     

Odor Semantics and Visual Cues: What We Smell Impacts Where We Look,What We Remember,and What We Want to Buy

The current research uses eye‐tracking technology in a consumer context to explore the interactive effects of olfactory and visual cues on consumers' eye gaze patterns. We manipulate the semantic correspondence between pictorial objects depicted in print advertisements and odors smelled (or not) while looking at the ads. The results indicate that smelling a scent that shares learned semantic associations with an object in the advertisement diverts consumers' eye gazes to the semantically related object in the ad, with positive downstream effects on advertising recall and purchase intent. This is the first study we are aware of demonstrating multisensory integration of odors and pictures on consumer eye gaze patterns with clear implications for consumer choice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effects of Auditory Structural Complexity on Attitudes,Attention, Arousal,and Memory

Twenty-five participants listened to 8 radio messages—half of which were greater in auditory structural complexity. Physiological measures were taken during message presentation, and self-report measures after each. Results show that increased auditory structural complexity led to higher self-reported and physiological arousal, better attitudes toward the messages overall and toward their nonclaim components. There were no differences in attitudes toward the claims made in the messages at each level of structural complexity. Structurally complex messages were also freely recalled more often than simple messages. The prediction that messages high in auditory structural complexity would result in greater self-reported attention levels received only moderate support. Furthermore, high levels of auditory structural complexity resulted in unexpectedly higher cardiac activity compared to messages low in structural complexity.     

Arousal,Suppression, and Persistence: Frustration Theory,Attention, and its Disorders

Abstract

In this article I deal first with the relevance of theories of frustration and general persistence to the concept of attention, and offer an interpretation of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in terms of persistence deficits. After summarising these theories and the manner in which they integrate the concepts of arousal, suppression, and persistence, I describe relevant developmental work in infant rats comprising an ontogenetic sequence of first appearance of a number of reward-schedule effects, and suggest their possible utility as a behavioural assay. Finally, I briefly review neuroanatomical and behavioural work on fetal alcohol and its possible implications for theories of attention and hyperactivity, and provide some data from experiments on fetal alcohol effects in infant rats which may have some relevance to such an interpretation.     

Liking, Arousal Potential, and the Emotions Expressed by Music

Previous research indicates that the specific emotions expressed by stimuli may be closely associated with their pleasing and arousing qualities, and this parallels psychomusicological research on the relationship between these two stimulus qualities. In light of this, the present research contends that the emotions expressed by musical stimuli are associated with their pleasing and arousing qualities. Sixty subjects rated 32 musical excerpts on 11-point scales representing the expression of eight specific emotions. Statistical analyses showed that these emotion ratings were predictable on the basis of 60 additional subjects' ratings of each excerpt in terms of 'liking' and 'arousal potential'. This indicates that ratings of liking and arousal potential are essentially similar to ratings of the specific emotions expressed by musical stimuli. These results are discussed in terms of the relationship between liking and arousal potential, and the implications that this may have for research on affective processes.     

Considering Personal Strengths: The Effect of Three Different Methods on Mood,Arousal, and Self-Esteem1

One hundred twenty-eight college students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 strength consideration conditions: (a) open-ended generation of strengths, (b) cued generation of strengths using 7 Divisions of Self (social, cognitive, behavioral, physical, emotional, motivational, spiritual; Dees, Dansereau, Peel, Boatler, & Knight, 1991) as cues, and (c) selection of strengths using the Tower of Strengths Activity (Sia & Czuchry, 1997). After all 3 conditions, students showed an increase in specific aspects of self-esteem and positive mood, and a decrease in global self-esteem. Students’ arousal decreased after both open-ended generation and cued generation, whereas after the selection of strengths, students’ arousal remained the same. Applications of the strength consideration activities are discussed.