Implicit but Not Explicit Affectivity Predicts Circadian and Reactive Cortisol: Using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test

ABSTRACT Self-report measures assess mental processes or representations that are consciously accessible. In contrast, implicit measures assess automatic processes that often operate outside awareness. Whereas self-report measures have often failed to show expected relationships with endocrine stress responses, little effort has been made to relate implicit measures to endocrine processes. The present work examines whether implicit affectivity as assessed by the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT) predicts cortisol regulation. In Study 1 , implicit low positive affectivity, but not negative affectivity, significantly predicted circadian cortisol release. In Study 2 , implicit negative affectivity, but not positive affectivity, significantly predicted the cortisol response to acute stress. By contrast, cortisol regulation was not predicted by self-reported affectivity. The findings support the use of implicit affectivity measures in studying individual differences in endocrine stress responses and point to a differential role of positive and negative affectivity in baseline versus stress-contingent cortisol release, respectively.     

Narcissism Distorts the Fading Affect Bias in Autobiographical Memory

The Fading Affect Bias (FAB) occurs when the affect associated with personal events fades differentially across time: Positive affect fades slower than negative affect. Three studies examined whether the magnitude of the FAB is moderated by narcissism. Results from Study 1 (diary method, N = 26) showed that low narcissism participants evidenced a large FAB, but high narcissism participants evidenced a reversed FAB. Results from Study 2 (retrospective recall method, N = 110) showed that low narcissism participants evinced a large FAB and that the FAB diminished or dissipated as narcissism increased. Results from Study 3 (retrospective recall method, N = 83) showed that high narcissists evinced a FAB when they recalled achievement‐themed autobiographical events but evinced a reversed FAB when they recalled communal‐themed events. These findings occurred independently of event rehearsal frequency. Results are discussed in terms of the idea that emotion regulation efforts may be disrupted in narcissists. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

积极情感消极情感量表（PANAS）的修订

以情感二维结构理论为基础,对Watson等（1988）编制的积极情感消极情感量表（PANAS）进行了修订。收集了几种主要的情感环丛模型中积极情感和消极情感项目后,用专家评定法剔除了不属于情绪描述词的项目,并用问卷法考察了这些情感体验的典型性,试测后确定了积极情感和消极情感项目各9项构成最终量表。最后用自评、同伴评价和认知测量法对量表的心理测量学属性进行了较为全面的分析。结果表明,修订后的PANAS中各项目具有良好的区分度,是情感幸福感有效和可靠的测量工具。     

Not All Laughs Are Alike: Voiced but Not Unvoiced Laughter Readily Elicits Positive Affect

We tested whether listeners are differentially responsive to the presence or absence of voicing, a salient, distinguishing acoustic feature, in laughter. Each of 128 participants rated 50 voiced and 20 unvoiced laughs twice according to one of five different rating strategies. Results were highly consistent regardless of whether participants rated their own emotional responses, likely responses of other people, or one of three perceived attributes concerning the laughers, thus indicating that participants were experiencing similarly differentiated affective responses in all these cases. Specifically, voiced, songlike laughs were significantly more likely to elicit positive responses than were variants such as unvoiced grunts, pants, and snortlike sounds. Participants were also highly consistent in their relative dislike of these other sounds, especially those produced by females. Based on these results, we argue that laughers use the acoustic features of their vocalizations to shape listener affect.     

Fading of Affect Associated with Negative Child‐Related Memories Varies by Parental Child Abuse Potential

Positive memories tend to hold their affective intensity across time better than negative memories, a phenomenon referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB). An initial study explored this bias in the context of parents' affective responses to memories involving their children. Specifically, parents (N = 90 for Study 1) were asked to recall three positive events and three negative events involving their children. Next, parents rated how positively or negatively they felt when each event occurred and at recall. Results revealed that parents at high risk of physical child abuse showed a smaller FAB than low‐risk parents. The smaller FAB effect observed among high‐risk parents occurred largely because affect associated with negative child‐related events faded minimally over time. This risk moderation effect did not emerge in a second study in which parents (N = 90 for Study 2) recalled general events that were not limited to events involving children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bias in Performance Ratings: Clarifying the Role of Positive Versus Negative Escalation

This study replicated and refined research on the effects of escalation of commitment in performance ratings. We utilized experimental manipulations in a laboratory setting to determine whether positive escalation or negative escalation (or both) could be responsible for the effect. In one session, participants (N = 210) were assigned to the perspective of the potential employee's supervisor and chose 1 of 2 candidates for a sales position. In a second session, participants rated the performance of (a) the individual they selected; (b) the individual they rejected; or (c) a third individual, whose preselection information they never viewed. Results replicated previous findings, such that ratings were biased upward when participants rated the performance of the salesperson they had originally selected. Results were not biased downward when individuals rated the performance of the salesperson they had rejected, however. Thus, our results suggest that positive escalation, and not negative escalation, was the cause of the bias.     

Laughter and Stress in Daily Life: Relation to Positive and Negative Affect

The present study investigated the proposal that increased laughter can serve to moderate the affective impact of negative life events. Community participants kept a record of their actual frequency of laughter for a 3-day period, and completed a measure of stressful life events each evening. Current levels of positive and negative affect were also obtained in the morning and evening of each day. A series of simple correlations, computed on a daily basis, provided little evidence for any direct relationships between amount of daily laughter and either positive or negative affect. Instead, more complex moderator analyses revealed that greater negative affect was clearly associated with a higher number of stressful life events, but only for those individuals with a lower frequency of actual laughter. In contrast, and in support of a stress buffering hypothesis, it was found that individuals with a higher frequency of laughter did not show greater levels of negative affect as stressful life events increased. When considering positive affect, it was found that only males showed a significant moderating effect of laughter. For males who laughed more frequently, a greater number of stressful life events was associated with higher levels of positive affect. These findings are discussed in terms of several possible mechanisms which may account for the moderating effects of laughter on affect, including the use of cognitive appraisals and emotion-focused coping strategies.     

暴力犯罪者对负性情绪信息注意偏向的ERP研究

采用视觉搜索范式,探讨了暴力犯罪者对情绪刺激（愤怒面孔与高兴面孔）的注意偏向特点。行为数据显示,相比非暴力组,暴力组对愤怒面孔的反应要显著快于高兴面孔,初步验证了暴力犯罪者对负性情绪信息存在注意偏向。ERP数据进一步表明,当目标刺激为愤怒面孔时,暴力组N2pc的潜伏期要显著小于非暴力组,说明暴力犯罪者对愤怒面孔的觉察早于高兴面孔,对负性情绪刺激更为敏感。由于N2pc的波幅不存在显著差异,差异主要表现在反应时和潜伏期,说明暴力犯能够更快的觉察到负性情绪面孔,但并没有对其投入更多的注意资源,出现回避模式,表明暴力犯对负性情绪信息的加工是一种警觉—回避模式。     

Intolerance of Uncertainty Is Associated With Increased Threat Appraisal and Negative Affect Under Ambiguity but Not Uncertainty

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) has gained increasing interest as a vulnerability factor for worry in Generalized Anxiety Disorder and other emotional disorders. We extended the procedure of Grupe and Nitschke (2011) to compare threat processing in High IU (n = 29) and Low IU (n = 26) participants. Participants viewed four cues: two reference cues that preceded aversive pictures on 100% or 0% of trials, and a target cue that preceded aversive pictures on 50% of trials (Uncertain condition). Participants were instructed about these probabilities in advance. In addition, we surprised participants with a second target cue that also preceded aversive pictures on 50% of trials but that had not been mentioned in the instructions (Ambiguous condition). Results provided preliminary evidence that High IU participants showed greater online threat expectancy, postexperimental covariation estimates and negative mood for the target cues compared to the reference cues. The results also suggest that among high IU individuals, ambiguity, rather than uncertainty per se, may be a particularly powerful trigger for biased threat appraisal and negative affect. Clinically, the results suggest that patients with high IU may benefit from interventions to help them calibrate the degree of risk in situations involving ambiguous threat.     

Age Differences in Perceived Positive Affect, Negative Affect, and Affect Balance in Middle and Old Age

Meta-analysis was used to synthesize findings from 125 studies on age differences in positive affect, negative affect, and affect balance. We found a small age-associated decline of positive affect and affect balance, and a small age-associated increase of negative affect. In addition, a quadratic age trend emerged, showing stronger declines of positive affect and stronger increases of negative affect in older subjects. Looking at changes of specific emotions, we found an age-associated decline of those positive and negative feelings that are associated with high arousal (e.g., feeling excited or upset), and an age-associated increase of positive and negative low-arousal emotions (e.g., feeling relaxed or depressed). Furthermore, older adults from the former communist Eastern European countries showed the strongest age-associated decline of positive affect and the strongest age-associated increase of negative affect. We conclude that age-associated losses in the oldest old and economic hardship make the optimization of subjective well-being increasingly difficult.     

Development of a Japanese version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children

In this paper, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children originally developed in 1999 by Laurent, et al. was adapted for use in Japan. In Study 1, a total of 763 children in Grades 4 to 6 completed this Schedule, and 103 of them completed it again about three months later. Principal factor analysis with promax rotation identified two factors, positive and negative affect, in the Japanese version, whose alphas (over .80) and test-retest correlations (over .50) were sufficient to indicate internal consistency and stability over time. In Study 2, a total of 328 children completed the Japanese version, the Depression Self-rating Scale for Children, and the Trait Form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Intercorrelations showed convergent and discriminant validity using these self-report measures of depression and anxiety. Overall these data support the reliability and validity of this Japanese version.     

Positive and Negative Affect in Parents and Adolescents: Gender and Assessment Method Considerations

This study examined adolescents’ self-reports and parents’ reports of adolescents’ positive and negative affect toward their parents, as well as mothers’ and fathers’ self-reports of positive and negative affect toward their adolescents. Based on behavioral observations, adolescent–parent interactions were examined to determine the relation between adolescent–parent behavior, adolescents’ perceptions of parental affect, and parents’ perceptions of adolescent affect. Gender of adolescents, gender of parents, and adolescent gender by parent gender interaction effects were studied as was adolescents’ age. Findings suggest that parent gender (i.e., mothers and fathers) and adolescent gender (i.e., boys and girls) are important considerations when studying affect in parent–adolescent relationships. Age-related differences were not evident. Results are discussed with an eye toward improving the assessment of parent–adolescent affect by using multiple methods of assessment such as direct behavioral observations and multiple informants on questionnaire measures.     

Ratings of Emotional Response to Pictorial Stimuli: Positive and Negative Affect Dimensions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the structure of emotional responses to pictorial stimuli within the affective space defined by orthogonal dimensions of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). College student participants (N = 151) viewed 60 color photographic slides from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1995) and rated their emotional responses to each slide using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Consistent with prediction, affective reactions to pleasant slides were characterized as high in PA, and low in NA. Unpleasant slides produced elevations on the NA scale, but contrary to expectation, also produced elevated ratings of PA, with the magnitude of PA scale scores increasing systematically with NA scale scores. The results suggest an interesting divergence between the structure of pictorially elicited affective reactions and that of ad hoc mood states. Directions for future research are discussed in relation to the unique properties of the slide viewing paradigm.     

Specificity of cognitive and behavioral variables to Positive and Negative Affect

The Tripartite Model proposes that a combination of greater Negative Affect (NA) and reduced Positive Affect (PA) contributes to depressive symptoms. The purpose of this study was to test a model of affective experience in which cognitive variables (i.e., negative cognitions and appraisals) are uniquely related to NA but not PA, and in which behavioral variables (i.e., activity participation) are uniquely associated with PA but not NA. Participants included 88 spousal Alzheimer caregivers (mean age = 74 years). Multiple regression models, in which negative cognitions (i.e., helplessness, blames self, and negative appraisals) and activity participation (i.e., frequency of engaging in social and recreational activities) were used to predict depressive symptoms, PA and NA. Results indicated that while helplessness, blaming oneself, negative appraisals, and activity participation all significantly predicted depressive symptoms, only negative cognitive variables significantly predicted NA, and only activity participation significantly predicted PA. These data confirm that depressive experience consists of two relatively independent components - increased Negative Affect and reduced Positive Affect - which have unique correlates in negative cognitions and activity participation. If confirmed, the findings suggest the utility of focusing interventions on each of these components in the management of depressive symptoms.     

The Role of Culture and Gender in the Relationship between Positive and Negative Affect

An integrative explanation proposes that culture and gender interact to produce fundamentally different patterns of association between positive and negative emotions. People in independent-based cultures (e.g. the United States) experience emotions in oppositional (i.e. bipolar) ways, whereas people in interdependent-based cultures (e.g. China) experience emotions in dialectic ways. These patterns are stronger for women than men in both cultures. In support of the theory, Study 1 showed that positive and negative emotions are strongly correlated inversely for American women and weakly correlated inversely for American men, but strongly correlated positively for Chinese women and weakly correlated positively for Chinese men. In Study 2, findings for Koreans, although mixed, were closer to the results for Chinese.     

Filling in the Gaps: False Memories and Partisan Bias

While cognitive psychologists have learned a great deal about people's propensity for constructing and acting on false memories, the connection between false memories and politics remains understudied. If partisan bias guides the adoption of beliefs and colors one's interpretation of new events and information, so too might it prove powerful enough to fabricate memories of political circumstances. Across two studies, we first distinguish false memories from false beliefs and expressive responses; false political memories appear to be genuine and subject to partisan bias. We also examine the political and psychological correlates of false memories. Nearly a third of respondents reported remembering a fabricated or factually altered political event, with many going so far as to convey the circumstances under which they “heard about” the event. False-memory recall is correlated with the strength of partisan attachments, interest in politics, and participation, as well as narcissism, conspiratorial thinking, and cognitive ability.     

Measuring Positive Affect,Negative Affect,and Physiological Hyperarousal among Italian Youth: Translations of the PANAS-C and PH-C

Italian-language versions of the Positive and Negative Affect Scale for Children (PANAS-C; Laurent et al. Psychological Assessment, 11, 326–338, 1999) and Physiological Hyperarousal Scale for Children (PH-C; Laurent et al. Psychological Assessment, 16, 373–380, 2004) were developed. Students (N = 1026; M age = 12.05 years, SD = 1.49) from central Italy completed these scales. Measures were evaluated based on criteria from previous studies resulting in an 11-item PANAS-C PA scale (α = .88), a 13-item PANAS-C NA scale (α = .87), and a 14-item PH-C (α = .85). Confirmatory factor analyses resulted in best-fit indices that favored a 3-factor model consistent with the tripartite model of anxiety and depression. Similar to results reported with the original English-language and other translations of these measures, scores on the PA scale were lower and scores on the NA and PH scales were higher for older girls than older boys and younger boys and girls. Findings suggested that the psychometric properties of the Italian-language versions of the PANAS-C and PH-C were similar to the English-language versions and other translated versions of the measures.     

正、负性情绪的跨文化心理测量:PANAS维度结构检验

对中国大学生(N=201)和美国大学生(N=321)进行PANAS测评,以检验该量表中、英文版的因素效度。探索性因素分析会聚性地验证了该量表的PA和NA两维度结构具有跨文化一致性,中、英文量表两因子的累积方差贡献率分别为51.31％和44．25％,接近Watson等的研究结果。然而研究结果也显示测项偏差问题,因此中文量表的PA分量表的测项组成不等同于原量表。中、英文量表的PA与NA分量表同样具有较高内在一致性信度,表明其符合心理测量学要求。     

The relationship between positive and negative affect in the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) is one of the most widely used affect scales. Nevertheless, the relation between its two scales, positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), is still controversial. Previous results that suggest independence between NA and PA were limited to manifest variables. In this study, the relation between PA and NA for both state and trait instructions was analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. Two hundred ninety-two participants responded to the PANAS at three occasions of measurement. No association was found between trait PA and NA, but significant negative correlations between state PA and NA emerged. In the second step, the observed variance of state PA and NA was decomposed into a dispositional component, an occasion-specific component, a method-specific component, and a component due to measurement error by employing a multi-construct latent state–trait model. This analysis confirmed and extended the results of our first analysis: the dispositional components of state PA and NA were unrelated. In contrast, the situation-specific components were negatively associated. Thus, the negative correlation between state PA and NA could be traced back to situation-specific effects.