Applying the attractor field model to social cognition: Perceptual discrimination is facilitated, but memory is impaired for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions

A new model of mental representation is applied to social cognition: the attractor field model. Using the model, the authors predicted and found a perceptual advantage but a memory disadvantage for faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions. In Experiment 1, participants completed a same/different perceptual discrimination task involving morphed pairs of angry-to-happy Black and White faces. Pairs of faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions (i.e., happy Black, angry White) were more likely to be labeled as similar and were less likely to be accurately discriminated from one another than faces displaying evaluatively congruent expressions (i.e., angry Black, happy White). Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that objective discriminability of stimuli moderated the impact of attractor field effects on perceptual discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 3, participants completed a recognition task for angry and happy Black and White faces. Consistent with the attractor field model, memory accuracy was better for faces displaying evaluatively incongruent expressions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

On the (mis)categorization of unattractive brides and attractive prostitutes: extending evaluative congruency effects to social category activation

Numerous studies have shown that social categorization is a flexible process that partly depends on contextual variables. However, little is known about the role of affect in people's access to categorical dimensions. We investigated the hypothesis that social category activation is facilitated on evaluatively congruent dimensions. Two studies provide support for this evaluative-matching hypothesis, in which social categorization was found to be faster and more accurate for evaluatively congruent categories (i.e., unattractive foreigners, unattractive prostitutes, attractive fellow-citizens and attractive brides) than for evaluatively incongruent categories (i.e., attractive foreigners, attractive prostitutes, unattractive fellow-citizens and unattractive brides). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

The affect heuristic in early judgments of product innovations

According to the affect heuristic, people often rely upon their overall affective impression of a target to form judgments of risk. However, innovation research has largely characterized risk perception as a function of what the consumer knows rather than how they feel. In three studies, this research investigates the use of the affect heuristic in consumer judgments of product innovations. The findings indicate that judgments of risks and benefits associated with product innovations are inversely related and affectively congruent with evaluations of those innovations. Additionally, more affectively extreme evaluations are associated with increasingly disparate judgments of risk and benefit. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of both consumers' evaluations of product innovations and the affect heuristic. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender Differences in the Social Cost of Affective Deviance

The current study tested whether men and women receive different degrees of social punishment for violating norms of emotional expression. Participants watched videos of male and female targets (whose reactions were pre-tested to be equivalent in expressivity and valence) viewing either a positive or negative slideshow, with their emotional reaction to the slideshow manipulated to be affectively congruent, affectively incongruent, or flat. Participants then rated the target on a number of social evaluation measures. Displaying an incongruent emotional expression, relative to a congruent one, harmed judgments of women more than men. Women are expected to be more emotionally expressive than men, making an incongruent expression more deviant for women. These results highlight the importance of social norms in construing another person’s emotion displays, which can subsequently determine acceptance or rejection of that person.     

Parental Contributions to Preschoolers' Emotional Competence: Direct and Indirect Effects

The present study examines the contributions of (1) parental socialization of emotion and preschoolers' emotional interaction with parents to their emotional competence, and (2) parental socialization and child emotional competence to their general social competence. Both observational and self-report techniques were used to measure emotion socialization, emotional competence, and social competence of preschoolers (average age = 49.8 months) from 60 middle-socioeconomic-status families. Data were collected in both classroom and home settings. In general, the results suggest that parental modeling of expressive styles and emotional responsiveness to child emotions are important predictors of preschoolers' emotional competence and their overall social competence. Children whose parents were more affectively positive tended to display more positive emotion with peers, whereas children whose parents were more negative appeared less socially competent in the preschool. Parents who were better coaches of their children's emotions had children who understood emotions better. Age and sex moderated several of the study's key findings. The results are consistent with earlier research indicating that parental socialization of emotion impacts the child's emotional and social functioning both at home and in the preschool.     

Dimensions of Temperament: Affect Intensity and Consumer Lifestyles

This article focuses on the relation between affect intensity and 3 fundamental dimensions of temperament—emotionality, sociability, and sensory arousability. The purpose was to show that individual differences in affect intensity as a dimension of temperament can influence not only advertising responses, but also the lifestyles and preferences of consumers. Study 1 confirmed the emotionality dimension in that high affect intensity individuals responded with significantly stronger levels of emotion when exposed to an affectively charged advertising appeal, but not when exposed to a nonemotional appeal. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that the fundamental dimensions of temperament are accompanied by heightened emotional intensity and do predict different preferences for lifestyle activities for high and low affect intensity consumers. A significant Affect Intensity × Gender interaction occurred indicating that both men and women expressed stronger emotions when experiencing activities that were gender‐congruent (e.g., watching sports on TV for men, and smelling perfumes for women). Future research directions are also discussed.     

Judging risk behaviour and risk preference: The role of the evaluative connotation of risk terms

Two experiments investigate the impact of the evaluative connotation of risk terms on the judgment of risk behaviour and on risk preference. In the first experiment we focus on (1) the evaluation congruence of the risk terms with a general risk norm and (2) with subjects' individual risk preference, and its effects on the extremity of judgments of risk behaviour. In the second experiment we address (3) the effects of evaluative connotation of risk terms on risk preference. In the first experiment subjects were presented with four decision problems, each with a risky and a cautious decision option, and were required to judge options. Results showed that the judged discrepancy between the risky and cautious option was larger on scales which were evaluatively congruent with the general risk norm for that specific decision problem or with subjects' individual preference. More specificly, in decision problems for which there was considerable consensus about the risk-norm judgments were more extreme on scales which were congruent with the risk norm, in those problems lacking a clear-cut risk-norm judgments were more extreme on scales congruent with subjects' individual risk preference. In the second experiment we studied the reverse relation between the evaluative connotation of risk terms and risk preference. This experiment demonstrates that using evaluatively biased risk terms can affect risk preference. Using terms which imply a positive evaluation of risk-taking and a negative evaluation of risk avoidance led to increased risk preference, and vice versa. Results are discussed in the context of accentuation theory.     

Evaluative priming in a semantic flanker task: ERP evidence for a mutual facilitation explanation

In semantic flanker tasks, target categorization response times are affected by the semantic compatibility of the flanker and target. With positive and negative category exemplars, we investigated the influence of evaluative congruency (whether flanker and target share evaluative valence) on the flanker effect, using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We hypothesized a moderation of the flanker effect by evaluative congruency on the basis of the assumption that evaluatively congruent concepts mutually facilitate each other’s activation (see Schmitz & Wentura in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 38:984–1000, 2012). Applying an onset delay of 50 ms for the flanker, we aimed to decrease the facilitative effect of an evaluatively congruent flanker on target encoding and, at the same time, increase the facilitative effect of an evaluatively congruent target on flanker encoding. As a consequence of increased flanker activation in the case of evaluative congruency, we expected a semantically incompatible flanker to interfere with the target categorization to a larger extent (as compared with an evaluatively incongruent pairing). Confirming our hypotheses, the flanker effect significantly depended on evaluative congruency, in both mean response times and N2 mean amplitudes. Thus, the present study provided behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the mutual facilitation of evaluatively congruent concepts. Implications for the representation of evaluative connotations of semantic concepts are discussed.     

Subtle activation of a social categorization triggers group-level emotions

Previous research [Smith, E. R., Seger, C. R., & Mackie, D. M. (2007). Can emotions be truly group-level? Evidence regarding four conceptual criteria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 431-446] has demonstrated that when people are explicitly asked about the emotions they experience as members of a particular group, their reported emotions converge toward a profile typical for that group. Two studies demonstrate that the same type of convergence occurs when a group identity is made situationally salient through priming, without an explicit request to report group-level emotions. People who identify more strongly with the group converge more, and show more similarity between their group-primed emotions and explicitly reported group-level emotions. This research confirms that activating a social identity produces convergence for emotions as well as for attitudes and behaviors. It also suggests that some previous emotion research may have tapped group rather than individual-level emotions, potentially requiring some reconceptualization.     

Evaluative priming of naming and semantic categorization responses revisited: a mutual facilitation explanation

The evaluative priming effect (i.e., faster target responses following evaluatively congruent compared with evaluatively incongruent primes) in nonevaluative priming tasks (such as naming or semantic categorization tasks) is considered important for the question of how evaluative connotations are represented in memory. However, the empirical evidence is rather ambiguous: Positive effects as well as null results and negatively signed effects have been found. We tested the assumption that different processes are responsible for these results. In particular, we argue that positive effects are due to target-encoding facilitation (caused by a congruent prime), while negative effects are due to prime-activation maintenance (caused by a congruent target) and subsequent response conflict. In 4 experiments, we used a negative prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) to minimize target-encoding facilitation and maximize prime maintenance. In a naming task (Experiment 1), we found a negatively signed evaluative priming effect if prime and target competed for naming responses. In a semantic categorization task (i.e., person vs. animal; Experiments 2 and 3), response conflicts between prime and target were significantly larger in case of evaluative congruence compared with incongruence. These results corroborate the theory that a prime has more potential to interfere with the target response if its activation is maintained by an evaluatively congruent target. Experiment 4a/b indicated valence specificity of the effect. Implications for the memory representation of valence are discussed.     

Some Problems About Affectivity

Neu's work is splendid. In addition to offering wonderfully illuminating characterizations of various emotions, it helps show that these individual characterizations, rather than an overall characterization of emotions or affectivity, have always been Neu's main concern. Nonetheless he is concerned with specific instances of, and often the general nature of, affectivity: what differentiates mere thoughts, desires, and values from emotions where the complex is affectively charged. I argue that his accounts of affectivity do not succeed — in that they can be satisfied by what is affectless.     

The three faces of Eve: Strategic displays of positive,negative, and neutral emotions in negotiations

In a series of laboratory experiments, we tested the influence of strategically displaying positive, negative, and neutral emotions on negotiation outcomes. In Experiment 1, a face-to-face dispute simulation, negotiators who displayed positive emotion, in contrast to negative or neutral emotions, were more likely to incorporate a future business relationship in the negotiated contract. In Experiment 2, an ultimatum setting, managers strategically displaying positive emotion were more likely to close a deal. This effect was mediated by negotiators’ willingness to pay more to a negotiator strategically displaying positive versus negative emotions. In Experiment 3, display of positive emotion was a more effective strategy for gaining concessions from the other party in a distributive setting. Negotiators made more extreme demands when facing a negotiator strategically displaying negative, rather than positive or neutral, emotions. Implications for strategic display of emotion in negotiations are discussed.     

I know how you feel: Task-irrelevant facial expressions are spontaneously processed at a semantic level

Previous studies have demonstrated that emotions are automatically processed. Even with subliminal presentations, subjects involuntarily mimic specific facial expressions, are influenced by the valence of a preceding emotion during judgments, and exhibit slowed responses to personally meaningful emotions; these effects are due to reflexive mimicry, unconscious carryover of valence, and attentional capture, respectively. However, perception-action effects indicate that rapid processing should involve deep, semantic-level representations of emotion (e.g., “fear”), even in the absence of a clinical emotion disorder. To test this hypothesis, we developed an emotional Stroop task (Emostroop) in which subjects responded nonverbally to emotion words superimposed over task-irrelevant images of faces displaying congruent or incongruent emotional expressions. Subjects reliably responded more slowly to incongruent than to congruent stimuli, and this interference was related to trait measures of emotionality. Rapid processing of facial emotions spontaneously activates semantic, content-rich representations at the level of the specific emotion.     

Aristotle on virtues and emotions

Conclusion Aristotle is certainly right to suggest that a philosophical psychology of the virtues will importantly involve tracing the connections between virtues and emotions. But while he is admirably diligent about scouting some kinds of differences between virtues, (notably what virtues are about — dangers, bodily pleasures, spending and getting money, distributions of honor or money, etc.), he does not seem prepared to admit that their logical/psychological structure can differ in respect of their general relations with emotions. Instead, he wishes to see them as homogeneous in this respect. But the main two connections he discovers — the propriety of affect relation and the index relation — are not general. They are true at best only of some virtues, and then only in improved formulations. Our brief investigation of his claims has shown, I think, that the virtues do display variety that is in part a function of their relations to emotion-types. We await a psychology of the virtues in which the connections of particular virtues to emotions, and the connections between the virtues that would become visible in the light of this structural variety, are fully traced.     

The Automaticity of Affect for Political Leaders, Groups, and Issues: An Experimental Test of the Hot Cognition Hypothesis

We report the results of three experimental tests of the "hot cognition" hypothesis, which posits that all sociopolitical concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged and that this affective charge is automatically activated within milliseconds on mere exposure to the concept, appreciably faster than conscious appraisal of the object.
We find support for the automaticity of affect toward political leaders, groups, and issues; specifically:

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  Most Ss show significantly faster reaction times to affectively congruent political concepts and significantly slower response times to affectively incongruent concepts;

       
  
  

Episodic processes in emotional labor: perceptions of affective delivery and regulation strategies

This study examined emotional labor processes from a within-person, episodic framework. The authors hypothesized that the influence of negative emotions on affective delivery would be lessened by regulation strategies for supervisor perceptions but not self-perceptions. In addition, difficulty maintaining display rules was hypothesized to mediate the relation between negative emotions and self-perceptions of affective delivery. Finally, the influence of surface acting strategies on these processes as well as correlations with individual differences was investigated. Hypotheses were tested using ecological momentary assessment of a sample of cheerleading instructors. Results suggest that surface actors can regulate emotions effectively on an episode-to-episode basis but find the episode more difficult. In addition, surface actors exhibit more general tendencies to devalue themselves and experience fewer positive emotions.     

Feeling skeptical: Worry,dread, and support for environmental policy among climate change skeptics

Emotions about climate change are the subject of a growing area of interdisciplinary scholarship. But so far scholars have not studied the emotions expressed by self-declared climate change skeptics; nor have social scientists turned to affect studies to develop nuanced understandings of the constellation of emotions related to fear. Our team conducted 33 interviews and 1000 surveys with self-identified skeptics living in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The data demonstrates the variability in perspectives, ideologies, and behaviors among skeptics themselves in new and unique ways, including tracking skeptics’ emotions about climate change. This article focuses on worry and dread. We find that those who believe climate change is a hoax, and skeptics who are politically conservative, tend to express less of these two emotions, as do men who identify as skeptics. Religiosity, as measured by frequency of religious attendance, does not significantly correlate with worry and dread; however, specific religious beliefs related to climate change (e.g. “Climate change is punishment for our sins”) do seem to increase those two feelings. Negative firsthand environmental experiences are also associated with higher degrees of worry and dread. Perhaps most significantly, our data suggests that worry and dread correlate strongly with environmental concern and policy support.Our interdisciplinary approach has several methodological advantages. First, affect studies encourages more nuance in emotion language, including more detailed definitions of emotions like worry and dread, which simmer over time, as opposed to discrete emotions like fear, which are shorter-lived. Second, sociological approaches remind us that emotions function within particular political, historical, and cultural contexts, which are fundamentally shaped by power structures. Finally, humanities scholars can provide useful input both in research design and the interpretation of results by helping craft survey questions and data codes, and by providing close attention to the language of the survey and interview responses. Combined with quantitative data, this multi-pronged methodology brings together forms of knowledge from the humanities and social sciences. Our approach serves as a model for new work in the growing field of empirical ecocriticism and expands the boundaries of the environmental humanities.     

不同情境中幼儿情绪表达规则认知发展的追踪研究

用追踪研究方法,对60名幼儿在高兴、惊讶与害怕情境中的情绪表达规则认知两年的发展进行探讨,并考察情绪情境、性别和人际背景对其发展的影响。结果表明：(1)幼儿的情绪表达规则知识、目标和策略水平均随年龄增长显著提升;(2)幼儿在害怕情境中为自我保护而较多使用掩饰策略,在惊讶情境中较多使用掩饰和夸大策略,在高兴情境中综合运用掩饰、弱化和夸大策略;(3)性别和人际背景均对幼儿情绪表达规则认知发展有显著影响。