Intensity of positive and negative emotions: Explaining the association between personality and depressive symptoms

The aim was to examine to what extent emotional intensity accounted for associations between the Big Five personality dimensions and depressive symptoms. Study 1 tested the model cross-sectionally, using survey data of 266 Dutch social science students. Study 2 experimentally examined how personality dimensions were related to emotional reactivity after exposure to various emotional stimuli. Dutch psychology students (N = 130) reported on their personality and viewed an amusing or sad film clip, after which the change in intensity of experienced positive and negative emotions was assessed. Individuals scoring higher on neuroticism generally experienced more intense negative emotions, through which they experienced a higher level of depressive symptoms. Individuals who were more agreeable experienced a lower level of depressive symptoms indirectly through higher general intensity of positive emotions. More agreeable individuals showed stronger increase in negative emotions and stronger decrease in positive emotions, though after exposure to the sad stimulus only. Although replication is needed, our results offer empirical support for a more taylor-made approach in decreasing nonclinical depressive symptoms taking into account both personality characteristics and emotion regulation.     

服务消费中多次情绪感染对消费者负面情绪的 动态影响机制

在深入剖析情绪感染心理机制的基础上,深入研究了在服务消费中多次情绪感染对消费者负面情绪的动态影响。作者采用实验法,使用真实情景录像作为刺激物,验证了在服务消费中,正向情绪感染和负向情绪感染都是真实存在的,并且服务人员的情绪、语言和行为都会对消费者负面情绪产生持续的动态影响,同时证实了情绪感染敏感度对情绪感染过程产生明显的调节作用。     

How identity related goals moderate the role of attributes in product evaluation

This research examines how identity related goals influence product evaluation. It is proposed that products are evaluated based on an attribute level to fulfill an identity related goal. Further, the positive relationship between an attribute level and product evaluation is strengthened by goal activation (the degree to which a goal occupies a consumer's thinking) and goal‐product fit (the extent to which consumers think a product is related to a particular goal). Results of three experimental studies support the above propositions. The research makes contributions in that it identifies two moderators, that is, goal activation and goal‐product fit, in the relationship between attributes ability and product evaluation. First, identity‐related goals are higher order and likely to have higher priority for consumers. However, results in this paper show that it still needs to be activated before it can exert an influence on attribute importance. Specifically, when an identity related goal (e.g., one supportive of the fair trade goal) is activated, it takes over a lower‐order goal (e.g., seek for a good taste or a good priced coffee in this case). As goal activation increases, relevant attributes become more important, and the positive relationship between an attribute level and product evaluation strengthens. Second, this paper introduces a new construct of goal‐product fit into identity‐related goals and product evaluation literature. The results of study three suggest that when goal‐product fit becomes stronger, the relevant attribute that can fulfill the goal becomes more important in the overall product evaluation.     

Effects of induced sad mood on facial emotion perception in young and older adults

Older adults perceive less intense negative emotion in facial expressions compared to younger counterparts. Prior research has also demonstrated that mood alters facial emotion perception. Nevertheless, there is little evidence which evaluates the interactive effects of age and mood on emotion perception. This study investigated the effects of sad mood on younger and older adults’ perception of emotional and neutral faces. Participants rated the intensity of stimuli while listening to sad music and in silence. Measures of mood were administered. Younger and older participants’ rated sad faces as displaying stronger sadness when they experienced sad mood. While younger participants showed no influence of sad mood on happiness ratings of happy faces, older adults rated happy faces as conveying less happiness when they experienced sad mood. This study demonstrates how emotion perception can change when a controlled mood induction procedure is applied to alter mood in young and older participants.     

Conservatives Anticipate and Experience Stronger Emotional Reactions to Negative Outcomes

The present work examined whether conservatives and liberals differ in their anticipation of their own emotional reactions to negative events. In two studies, participants imagined experiencing positive or negative outcomes in domains that do not directly concern politics. In Study 1, 190 American participants recruited online (64 male, M_age = 32 years) anticipated their emotional responses to romantic relationship outcomes. In Study 2, 97 Canadian undergraduate students (26 male, M_age = 21 years) reported on their anticipated and experienced emotional responses to academic outcomes. In both studies, more conservative participants predicted they would feel stronger negative emotions following negative outcomes than did more liberal participants. Furthermore, a longitudinal follow‐up of Study 2 participants revealed that more conservative participants actually felt worse than more liberal participants after receiving a lower‐than‐desired exam grade. These effects remained even when controlling for the Big Five traits, prevention focus, and attachment style (Study 1), and optimism (Study 2). We discuss how the relationship between political orientation and anticipated affect likely contributes to differences between conservatives and liberals in styles of decision and policy choices.     

Temporal Changes in Mood Repair Through Music Consumption: Effects of Mood,Mood Salience,and Individual Differences

Prior research on mood management through media consumption has encountered mixed results. This study seeks to address these discrepancies by incorporating time of measurement into the examination of regulatory outcomes and by identifying trait-like cognitive moderators that presumably are involved in the regulation of negative moods. Results showed that sad mood initially fostered longer listening to mood-compatible music but such preference decreased over time, suggesting the merits of considering temporal changes in the mood-repair process. In addition, ruminative trait was found to be a significant factor in how people cope with their sad moods, whereas mood salience was not.     

The Impact of Balanced Risk–Benefit Information and Initial Attitudes on Post‐Information Attitudes1

In a realistic social context, people are confronted with both positive and negative information, yet research on this topic is relatively scarce. We present 2 studies examining the role of initial attitudes on the impact of one‐sided vs. balanced positive and negative information on attitudes toward food production methods. The first experiment demonstrated that one‐sided information influenced post‐information attitudes congruent to the direction of the message content. The second experiment showed that the effect of balanced information on post‐information attitudes may depend on initial attitudes. These results demonstrate that negativity effects are dominant for people with initial positive attitudes, but change into positivity effects for people with initial negative attitudes. Implications for communicating both positive and negative information are discussed.     

Exploring the Paradox of the Enjoyment of Sad Films

The concept of met emotions (appraisals of emotional reactions) was used in three studies designed to explore the enjoyment of sad films and to develop a scale that would reflect such gratifications. Study 1 showed that sad reactions in response to this type of entertainment were positively related to enjoyment and that females reported stronger reactions both in terms of enjoyment and in terms of sad responses than males. The Sad-Film Scale (SFS) developed in Study 1 was positively associated with measures of empathy, femininity, and positive appraisals of sad emotions. Study 2 found evidence of the scale's reliability and validity. Study 3 demonstrated predictive validity of the SFS in terms of the enjoyment of a specific sad film and in terms of favorable ratings of met emotions reported directly after viewing a sad film.     

Adult attachment and attentional inhibition of interpersonal stimuli

In two studies, we used a negative affective priming task with pictures of angry (Study 1), sad (Study 2), and happy faces (Studies 1 and 2) to measure attentional inhibition of emotional stimuli as a function of attachment style. Results showed that attachment avoidance was associated with a stronger inhibition of both angry and sad faces. This indicates that the regulatory strategies of avoidant individuals involve inhibition of different types of negative, but not positive, stimuli. Attachment anxiety, on the other hand, showed no association with inhibitory responding to negative stimuli, although we did find indications of impaired inhibitory processing of happy faces in Study 1. The results are discussed in relation to current evidence on avoidant affect-regulation strategies.     

Inclusion-exclusion of positive and negative past selves: mood congruence as information

The current research challenges the widespread truism that recalling a positive self necessarily increases self-esteem, whereas recalling a negative self necessarily decreases self-esteem. Four experiments demonstrate that chronically happy people show a relative increase in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a negative self. Chronically sad people, however, show a relative decrease in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a negative self. These effects are due to divergent perceptions of mood congruence between the recalled self and the current self. Specifically, happy people perceive high mood congruence between a recalled positive self and the current self but low mood congruence between a recalled negative self and the current self. In contrast, sad people perceive high mood congruence between a recalled negative self and the current self but low mood congruence between a recalled positive self and the current self. Independent of chronic mood, mood congruence leads to perceptions of temporal recency, whereas mood incongruence leads to perceptions of temporal distance. In line with the inclusion-exclusion model of social judgment, perceived temporal recency elicits assimilation effects on self-esteem, whereas perceived temporal distance elicits contrast effects on self-esteem.     

Adult attachment and attentional inhibition of interpersonal stimuli

In two studies, we used a negative affective priming task with pictures of angry (Study 1), sad (Study 2), and happy faces (Studies 1 and 2) to measure attentional inhibition of emotional stimuli as a function of attachment style. Results showed that attachment avoidance was associated with a stronger inhibition of both angry and sad faces. This indicates that the regulatory strategies of avoidant individuals involve inhibition of different types of negative, but not positive, stimuli. Attachment anxiety, on the other hand, showed no association with inhibitory responding to negative stimuli, although we did find indications of impaired inhibitory processing of happy faces in Study 1. The results are discussed in relation to current evidence on avoidant affect-regulation strategies.     

The De‐biasing Effect of Incidental Anger on Other‐provided Anchors

The current research investigates the effect of incidental anger on anchoring bias. We hypothesized that feeling angry will make people less influenced by other‐provided anchors because of the moving against action tendency associated with anger. That is, individuals in an angry state will be likely to perceive a given anchor as a viable target for their desire to attack and actively seek out anchor‐inconsistent information, thereby committing less anchoring bias. To examine our hypothesis, in Study 1, we manipulated emotions using film clips and administered a general knowledge task with other‐provided anchors. As predicted, participants in the anger condition showed less anchoring bias to the other‐provided anchors than those in the sad or neutral condition. Study 2 replicated the finding with a different emotion manipulation technique and different anchoring questions. More important, consistent with the moving against action tendency explanation, we also found that people in an angry state committed more anchoring bias for self‐generated anchors, compared with people in a sad or neutral state. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“I know you can do this” versus “How can you be so stupid?” Feedback among Chinese and American young adult friends

According to past research, young adults prefer positive feedback from their friends, but emotional reactions to negative feedback are less severe in Korea than in the United States. We extended this past work in several ways: We studied both giving and receiving feedback, recruited Chinese young adults, used realistic scenarios, and employed the situation‐sampling method. Using text‐message‐based vignettes, Study 1 found that both American and Chinese friends used happy emojis when exchanging positive feedback whereas Americans used less positive emojis than did the Chinese when exchanging negative feedback. We then collected actual examples of feedback that people had given to their friends (Study 2a) and showed them to new samples of Chinese and American young adults (Study 2b). This situation‐sampling methodology found that (a) Americans rated negative feedback from both cultures especially negatively, and (b) negative feedback examples from China were rated especially negatively by people in both cultures. That is, although Chinese negative feedback is seemingly more harsh, Chinese young adults do not react as negatively.     

Personality Certainty and Politics: Increasing the Predictive Utility of Individual‐Difference Inventories

Research on political psychology has benefitted from using individual‐difference measures to predict political attitudes and behavior. And, previous research has further identified a number of specific variables that enhance the predictive utility of individual‐difference scales. However, a potentially important factor that has been overlooked is the certainty with which people make their responses. The present research establishes that the certainty with which people respond to scales is associated with stability of the scale responses over time and correspondence between the scale and related outcomes. In addition, the effects of certainty in political ideological identification in predicting politically relevant outcomes hold when controlling for a number of previously established moderators. This research suggests that measuring certainty in answers to individual‐difference scales can be a useful and efficient way to increase the predictive utility of those scales within the political domain and beyond. This benefit is demonstrated with need for cognition (Study 1), need to evaluate (Study 2), and ideological identification (Studies 2 and 3).     

Abstract construal levels attenuate state self-esteem reactivity

The reactivity of state self-esteem has been linked to a number of important psychological outcomes, ranging from general well-being to psychological dysfunction. The present research aimed to identify a cognitive factor underlying state self-esteem reactivity by exploring how construal levels influence the extent to which state self-esteem reacts to positive and negative experiences. It was hypothesized that abstract construals would mitigate the effects of evaluative information on state self-esteem. The results of two studies supported this hypothesis. Participants in an abstract mindset did not differ in state self-esteem after receiving positive, negative, or no evaluative information. Participants in a concrete mindset, in contrast, experienced lower levels of state self-esteem following negative evaluative information. The significance of these findings for understanding the link between abstraction and psychological vulnerability is discussed.     

"Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effect of context on perception": Retraction of Avramova, Stapel, and Lerouge (2010)

Reports the retraction of "Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effects of context on perception" by Yana R. Avramova, Diederik A. Stapel and Davy Lerouge (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2010[Aug], Vol 99[2], 203-214). This retraction follows the results of an investigation into the work of Diederik A. Stapel (further information on the investigation can be found here: https://www.commissielevelt.nl/). The Levelt Committee has determined data supplied by Diederik A. Stapel to be fraudulent. The other co-authors were unaware of his actions and were not involved in the collection of the fraudulent data. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2010-14719-001.) Five studies show that mood affects context-dependence, such that negative mood promotes attention to a salient target, whereas positive mood enhances attention to both target and context. Judgments of temperature (Study 1), weight (Study 2), and size (Studies 3 and 4) were more strongly affected by the context in a positive than in a negative mood. Moreover, these effects extend to the social domain: When perceiving a target person's emotions, happy people were more influenced by the context than were sad people (Study 5). Thus, positive mood enhanced, and negative mood reduced, the magnitude of perceptual context effects. The results suggest that this pattern is not easily explained in terms of effort or depth of processing differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Striving for the moral self: the effects of recalling past moral actions on future moral behavior

People's desires to see themselves as moral actors can contribute to their striving for and achievement of a sense of self-completeness. The authors use self-completion theory to predict (and show) that recalling one's own (im)moral behavior leads to compensatory rather than consistent moral action as a way of completing the moral self. In three studies, people who recalled their immoral behavior reported greater participation in moral activities (Study 1), reported stronger prosocial intentions (Study 2), and showed less cheating (Study 3) than people who recalled their moral behavior. These compensatory effects were related to the moral magnitude of the recalled event, but they did not emerge when people recalled their own positive or negative nonmoral behavior (Study 2) or others' (im)moral behavior (Study 3). Thus, the authors extend self-completion theory to the moral domain and use it to integrate the research on moral cleansing (remunerative moral strivings) and moral licensing (relaxed moral strivings).     

The effects of mood on spontaneous trait inferences about the actor: Evidence from Chinese undergraduates

Prior research has indicated that positive moods increase but negative moods decrease the trait activation of spontaneous trait inferences (STIs). However, it is unknown whether this difference is also present in STIs about the actor. In Study 1, using a false recognition paradigm, we found that Chinese undergraduates made STIs about the actor. In Study 2, we found that the happy Chinese undergraduates were more likely to make STIs about the actor than the sad Chinese undergraduates. These findings showed that Chinese people made STIs about the actor and moods had an influence on their STIs about the actor.     

Memory accessibility, mood regulation, and dysphoria: difficulties in repairing sad mood with happy memories?

Recent studies have suggested that mood-incongruency effects are due to mood-regulatory processes, in which people retrieve positive memories to repair negative moods. In Study 1, the authors investigated whether dysphoria influences the accessibility of autobiographical memories following a positive or a negative mood induction combined with subsequent rumination or distraction. The results showed a mood-repair effect for nondysphoric but not for dysphoric participants following rumination. In Study 2, participants were asked to either distract themselves or to recall positive autobiographical memories after a negative mood induction. Whereas nondysphoric participants' mood improved under both conditions, dysphoric participants' mood improved only after distraction. These results suggest that dysphoria is associated with a reduced ability to use mood-incongruent recall to repair sad moods.