愤怒和悲伤情绪对助人决策的影响:人际责任归因的作用

基于具体情绪理论——评价倾向框架理论(ATF),采用两项研究考察负性情绪愤怒和悲伤对助人决策的影响,并探究人际责任归因在这一关系中的作用。两项研究均采用自传体情绪记忆任务诱发情绪,研究一中自变量情绪为组间变量,包括愤怒、悲伤和中性三个水平,因变量助人决策操作为为他人花费时间;研究二中自变量1为组间变量情绪,包括愤怒和悲伤,自变量2为组内变量人际责任归因,操作为模糊归因、不可控的情景归因、可控的自我归因三种情境,因变量助人决策操作为为他人花费金钱。结果发现:(1)与愤怒情绪相比,悲伤情绪下个体为他人花费的时间和捐助的金钱更多;(2)在模糊的人际责任归因条件下,悲伤个体会比愤怒个体捐助更多的钱。研究表明:同为负性情绪的愤怒和悲伤在助人决策上的作用不同,悲伤个体比愤怒个体做出更多的助人决策;人际责任性归因会影响附带情绪和助人决策的关系。研究结论有助于理解附带情绪对助人决策的影响,进一步丰富并延伸ATF理论的证据和领域,对发挥情境中人际责任归因在助人决策中的作用具有一定的现实意义。     

Unresolved anger and sadness: Identifying vocal acoustical correlates

The authors conducted 2 studies to identify the vocal acoustical correlates of unresolved anger and sadness among women reporting unresolved anger toward an attachment figure. In Study 1, participants (N = 17) were induced to experience and express anger then sadness or sadness then anger. In Study 2, a 2nd group of participants (N = 22) underwent a relationship-oriented, emotion-focused analogue therapy session. Results from both studies showed that, relative to emotionally neutral speech, anger evoked an increase in articulation rate and in mean fundamental frequency (F0) and F0-range, whereas sadness evoked an increase in F0-perturbation. Both F0 and F0-range were larger for anger than for sadness. In addition, results from the mood-induction-procedure study revealed 2 Emotion×Order interactions. Whereas variations in amplitude range suggested that anger evoked less physiological activation when induced after sadness, variations in F0-perturbation suggested that sadness evoked more physiological activation when induced after anger. These findings illustrate the feasibility of using acoustical measures to identify clients' personally and clinically meaningful emotional experiences, and shifts between such emotional experiences, in the context of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: the effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral

Four studies examined status conferral (decisions about who should be granted status). The studies show that people confer more status to targets who express anger than to targets who express sadness. In the 1st study, participants supported President Clinton more when they viewed him expressing anger about the Monica Lewinsky scandal than when they saw him expressing sadness about the scandal. This effect was replicated with an unknown politician in Study 2. The 3rd study showed that status conferral in a company was correlated with peers' ratings of the workers' anger. In the final study, participants assigned a higher status position and a higher salary to a job candidate who described himself as angry as opposed to sad. Furthermore, Studies 2-4 showed that anger expressions created the impression that the expresser was competent and that these perceptions mediated the relationship between emotional expressions and status conferral.     

Willingness to express emotion depends upon perceiving partner care

Two studies document that people are more willing to express emotions that reveal vulnerabilities to partners when they perceive those partners to be more communally responsive to them. In Study 1, participants rated the communal strength they thought various partners felt toward them and their own willingness to express happiness, sadness and anxiety to each partner. Individuals who generally perceive high communal strength from their partners were also generally most willing to express emotion to partners. Independently, participants were more willing to express emotion to particular partners whom they perceived felt more communal strength toward them. In Study 2, members of romantic couples independently reported their own felt communal strength toward one another, perceptions of their partners’ felt communal strength toward them, and willingness to express emotions (happiness, sadness, anxiety, disgust, anger, hurt and guilt) to each other. The communal strength partners reported feeling toward the participants predicted the participants’ willingness to express emotion to those partners. This link was mediated by participants’ perceptions of the partner’s communal strength toward them which, itself, was a joint function of accurate perceptions of the communal strength partners had reported feeling toward them and projections of their own felt communal strength for their partners onto those partners.     

When feeling bad is expected to be good: emotion regulation and outcome expectancies in social conflicts

According to the instrumental approach to emotion regulation, people may want to experience even unpleasant emotions to attain instrumental benefits. Building on value-expectancy models of self-regulation, we tested whether people want to feel bad in certain contexts specifically because they expect such feelings to be useful to them. In two studies, participants were more likely to try to increase their anger before a negotiation when motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) a negotiation partner. Participants motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) their partner expected anger to be more useful to them, and this expectation in turn, led them to try to increase their anger before negotiating. The subsequent experience of anger, following random assignment to emotion inductions (Study 1) or engagement in self-selected emotion regulation activities (Study 2), led participants to be more successful at getting others to concede to their demands, demonstrating that emotional preferences have important pragmatic implications.     

Evidence for mixed feelings of happiness and sadness from brief moments in time

Theorists disagree about whether valence is a basic building block of affective experience or whether the positive and negative substrates underlying valence are separable in experience. If positivity and negativity are separable in experience, people should be able to feel happy and sad at the same time. We addressed limitations of earlier evidence for mixed feelings by collecting moment-to-moment measures of happiness and sadness that required participants to monitor their feelings only occasionally. In Study 1, participants were occasionally cued to press one button if they felt happy and another if they felt sad. Participants spent more time reporting mixed feelings (i.e., simultaneously pressing both buttons) during bittersweet scenes than non-bittersweet scenes. In Study 2, participants reported their feelings only once. Participants spent more time reporting mixed feelings when cued during a bittersweet, as opposed to non-bittersweet, scene. These results extend earlier evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur.     

Emotional expressivity in men and women: Stereotypes and self-perceptions

Three studies were conducted to assess prevalent stereotypes regarding men's and women's emotional expressivity as well as self-perceptions of their emotional behaviour. Emotion profiles were employed to assess both modal emotional reactions and secondary emotional reactions to hypothetical events and personal experiences. In Study 1 we asked how men and women in general would react to a series of hypothetical emotional events. In Study 2 we asked how participants themselves expected to react to these same situations and in Study 3 we asked participants to report a personal emotional event in narrative form. Two gender differences emerged across all three studies. Specifically, women were expected to be more likely to react with sadness to negative emotion-eliciting events in general. They also expected themselves to be more likely to react with sadness as well as to cry and to withdraw more when experiencing negative emotional events. Finally, women report more sadness when describing personal events. In contrast, men were expected to react with more happiness/serenity during negative emotional situations. Also, they expect themselves to react more frequently this way as well as to laugh and smile more and to be more relaxed in negative situations. Finally, men tend to report more happiness when describing negative personal events. In sum, the present study gives a more detailed portrayal of how men and women are expected and expect themselves to react to specific emotional situations and presents some evidence that these expectations may influence the way they reconstruct emotional events from their past.     

Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice

Three experiments supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express attitudes that could be viewed as prejudiced when their past behavior has established their credentials as nonprejudiced persons. In Study 1, participants given the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist statements were later more willing to favor a man for a stereotypically male job. In Study 2, participants who first had the opportunity to select a member of a stereotyped group (a woman or an African American) for a category-neutral job were more likely to reject a member of that group for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. In Study 3, participants who had established credentials as nonprejudiced persons revealed a greater willingness to express a politically incorrect opinion even when the audience was unaware of their credentials. The general conditions under which people feel licensed to act on illicit motives are discussed.     

Can you forgive? It depends on how happy you are

This paper examined how individual group status and happiness influence forgiveness. In Study 1, happiness was treated as a trait difference: highly happy people, compared with very unhappy people, were found to be more willing to forgive murderers. More important, an interaction effect between happiness and group status on forgiveness was found, that is, highly happy people tended to be more forgiving when either ingroup or outgroup members were killed; unhappy people, however, tended to be less forgiving about murder when ingroup rather than outgroup members were killed. In Study 2, happiness was treated as an emotional state difference: happiness, rather than sadness, was found to bring greater forgiveness. Moreover, consistent with the interaction effect displayed in Study 1, happy participants tended to forgive more when ingroup or outgroup members were hurt; sad participants tended to forgive less when ingroup members rather than outgroup members were hurt. Implications for connections between happiness, group membership, and forgiveness are discussed.     

Age differences in emotional reactivity: the sample case of sadness

Past studies have suggested that the intensity of subjective reactions to emotion-arousing stimuli remains stable, whereas the magnitude of autonomic reactions declines with age. The goal of the present studies was to investigate whether this evidence will generalize to newly edited films dealing with age-relevant themes such as the loss of loved ones. In Study 1, greater self-reported sadness was found in older than in younger adults in response to all films. Findings of Study 2, which were based on an independent sample, replicated those of Study 1. In addition, 6 indicators of autonomic nervous system activity were assessed. Young and old adults did not differ in their autonomic reactions to the films. This evidence suggests that when older people are exposed to stimuli featuring themes that are relevant to their age group, they show greater subjective and physiological reactions than would be expected on the basis of past research.     

Evidence for utilitarian motives in emotion regulation

This investigation demonstrates that emotion regulation can be driven by considerations of utility per se. We show that as participants prepared for a negotiation, those who were motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) another person believed that anger would be more useful to them. However, only participants who were motivated to confront another and expected to receive a monetary reward for their performance (i.e., high utility), were motivated to increase their anger in preparation for the negotiation. Participants who were motivated to confront another but did not expect their performance to be rewarded (i.e., low utility), did not try to increase their anger, even though they expected anger to be useful in the negotiation. Such patterns demonstrate that people are motivated to experience even unpleasant emotions to maximise utility.     

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.     

Differentiating the effects of anger and sadness: A perspective of spontaneous trait inference

In the present research, three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of anger and sadness on spontaneous trait inferences (STIs). Using a probe recognition paradigm, Experiment 1 revealed that angry participants made more errors in response to probes following trait‐implying behaviours than sad participants did. Using a false recognition paradigm, Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that angry participants made more errors in response to systematic pair trials than sad participants did. The three experiments provided convergent evidence that angry individuals were more inclined to form STIs than sad individuals were. The current research first demonstrated the different effects of specific negative mood states (anger vs. sadness) on STIs, providing further insight into the relationship between mood and STIs.     

Together we cry: Social motives and preferences for group-based sadness

Group-based emotions play an important role in helping people feel that they belong to their group. People are motivated to belong, but does this mean that they actively try to experience group-based emotions to increase their sense of belonging? In this investigation, we propose that people may be motivated to experience even group-based emotions that are typically considered unpleasant to satisfy their need to belong. To test this hypothesis, we examined people's preferences for group-based sadness in the context of the Israeli National Memorial Day. In two correlational (Studies 1a and 1b) and two experimental (Studies 2 and 3) studies, we demonstrate that people with a stronger need to belong have a stronger preference to experience group-based sadness. This effect was mediated by the expectation that experiencing sadness would be socially beneficial (Studies 1 and 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding motivated emotion regulation and intergroup relations.     

Action/inaction regret as a function of severity of loss

Two studies were conducted to examine whether people who experience severe losses tend to regret their failures to act more than people that experience less severe losses. Two time points were considered, after the event (short term), and a year later (long term). In Study 1, participants responded to scenarios depicting losses varying in degree of severity. As hypothesized, protagonists in the heavy loss cases were attributed with more regrets of omission (inaction) both in the short and in the long term. In the less severe loss scenarios, action regrets decreased significantly in the long term. In Study 2, one of the severe loss scenarios from Study 1 was presented with a less severe outcome. As expected, participants generated more inaction regrets in the severe loss version. Severity of loss influenced the preference for omission regrets in both studies for the short term and the long term. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Misery loves company: when sadness increases the desire for social connectedness

In three experiments, the authors investigated the effects of sadness on the desire for social connectedness. They hypothesized that sadness serves an adaptive function by motivating people to reach out to others and preferentially attend to information related to one's current level of social connectedness, but only when it is instigated by social loss. Consistent with this hypothesis, the authors observed that sadness induced by an emotional depiction of social loss enhanced (a) attention to nonverbal cues, an important source of information concerning an individual's current level of social connectedness (Experiment 1), and (b) the desire to engage in social behaviors (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3 the authors found that sadness that results from imagined social loss uniquely produced this pattern of effects. Sadness that resulted from imagined failure had different effects on motivation and no effect on sensitivity to nonverbal cues. These results support and refine functional explanations for the universality of sadness.     

How predictions of economic behavior are affected by the socio-economic status of the target person

We investigate how the stereotype of the poor (vs. middle class) influences behavioral predictions. In Study 1, participants made predictions regarding another person’s economic behavior in scenarios pertaining to rate of time preferences (loss, gain of smaller and larger amount). We find that participants, across scenarios, expect individuals with low SES to show more short-sightedness—i.e., steeper temporal discounting. This pattern persisted until strong diagnostic information about previous economic behavior was provided. These results are novel but consistent with previous work on stereotype application. Study 2 probed stereotype accuracy. Participants with lower vs. higher SES reported how they would act in scenarios matching those of Study 1. We find that they respond very similarly, which is in contrast to the stereotype that poor people are more short-sighted and may possibly be taken to suggest that the association between low SES and short-sightedness is biased.     

Justice through consensus: Shared identity and the preference for a restorative notion of justice

We propose a concept of restorative justice as a sense of justice deriving from consensus about, and the reaffirmation of, values violated by an offence (in contrast to punishment‐based retributive justice). Victims should be more likely to seek restorative justice (and less likely retributive justice) when they perceive to share a relevant identity with the offender. In Study 1, when the relevant identity (university affiliation) shared with the offender was made salient (vs. not), participants found a consensus‐based response more justice‐restoring. In Study 2, when the group (company) shared with the offender was cohesive (vs. not), participants more strongly endorsed a restorative justice philosophy and, mediated by this, responded in consensus‐restoring ways. In Study 3, when the offender was an ingroup (vs. outgroup) member, participants more strongly endorsed a restorative justice philosophy, fully mediated by sadness emotions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-reflection and feelings of self-worth: When Rosenberg meets Heisenberg

The more people think about their attitude toward some issue, the stronger their attitude becomes. The present research examined whether this strengthening effect also applies to self-evaluative attitudes. In four studies, we had some participants complete a self-evaluation measure before rating their momentary feelings of self-worth (Studies 1, 2, and 4) or implicit self-feelings (Study 3). In all four studies, evaluative self-reflection led low self-esteem participants to feel worse about themselves and high self-esteem participants to feel better about themselves. We did not find this self-esteem polarization effect when more general emotions of happiness and sadness were measured (Study 2) or when participants reflected on non-evaluative aspects of themselves (Study 4). These findings suggest that evaluative self-reflection has different consequences for low self-esteem people than for high self-esteem people, and that order effects in personality research may represent actual changes in self-feelings rather than methodological confounds.