专业背景、主观印象和情绪对量刑决策的影响

为了考察司法决策者对案件当事人的主观印象如何影响刑罚决策及情绪在其中的作用,本研究要求法律与非法律专业被试对案情相同但对案件当事人的主观印象不同的刑事案件进行刑罚强度决策,并要求被试对犯罪行为所引发的情绪强度进行评定。研究结果发现,被试对施害人的消极印象比积极印象条件下产生更强的愤怒和厌恶情绪,更少的同情情绪,同时,给予的刑罚更重;被试对受害人的积极印象比消极印象条件下,低年级组被试对施害人给予的刑罚更重,但在高年级组被试中不存在显著差异,两组被试在情绪强度上也没有显著差异。法律专业比非法律专业被试对犯罪行为所产生的情绪强度更低。被试的专业背景对量刑决策没有显著影响。中介效应检验发现,在施害人的主观印象对刑罚决策的影响过程中,愤怒和同情表现出部分中介效应,厌恶情绪表现出完全中介效应。     

Doing emotions: The role of culture in everyday emotions

Emotional experience is culturally constructed. In this review, we discuss evidence that cultural differences in emotions are purposeful, helping an individual to meet the mandate of being a good person in their culture. We also discuss research showing that individual’s fit to the cultural emotion norm is associated with well-being, and suggest that this link may be explained by the fact that normative emotions meet the cultural mandate. Finally, we discuss research that sheds light on some of the collective processes of emotion construction: social interactions and emotion representations are geared towards promoting emotions that are conducive to the cultural mandate. In conclusion, we suggest that individuals become part of their culture by “doing emotions” in a way that is consistent with the cultural mandate, and that in intercultural interactions, emotions can be literally “at cross purposes”: each person’s emotions are constructed to fit the purposes of their own culture.     

The reactive theory of emotions

Evaluative theories of emotions purport to shed light on the nature of emotions by appealing to values. Three kinds of evaluative theories of emotions dominate the recent literature: the judgment theory equates emotions with value judgments; the perceptual theory equates emotions with perceptions of values, and the attitudinal theory equates emotions with evaluative attitudes. This paper defends a fourth kind of evaluative theory of emotions, mostly neglected so far: the reactive theory. Reactive theories claim that emotions are attitudes which arise in reaction to perceptions of value.     

The secret life of emotions

The possibility of unconsciously evoked emotions is often denied because awareness of an emotion's cause is considered to be precisely what produces the emotion. However, we argue that because emotional responding is important for successful living, both global and specific emotional responses can be induced without awareness. The present research used quick and super-quick subliminal priming techniques, and cognitive, feelings, and behavioral measures, to test this hypothesis. Our results show that both global moods and specific emotions can be evoked without conscious awareness of their cause.     

The irrationality of recalcitrant emotions

A recalcitrant emotion is one which conflicts with evaluative judgement. (A standard example is where someone is afraid of flying despite believing that it poses little or no danger.) The phenomenon of emotional recalcitrance raises an important problem for theories of emotion, namely to explain the sense in which recalcitrant emotions involve rational conflict. In this paper I argue that existing ‘neojudgementalist’ accounts of emotions fail to provide plausible explanations of the irrationality of recalcitrant emotions, and develop and defend my own neojudgementalist account. On my view, recalcitrant emotions are irrational insofar as they incline the subject to accept an evaluative construal that the subject has already rejected.

The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions

In this article, the author describes a new theoretical perspective on positive emotions and situates this new perspective within the emerging field of positive psychology. The broaden-and-build theory posits that experiences of positive emotions broaden people's momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn serves to build their enduring personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources. Preliminary empirical evidence supporting the broaden-and-build theory is reviewed, and open empirical questions that remain to be tested are identified. The theory and findings suggest that the capacity to experience positive emotions may be a fundamental human strength central to the study of human flourishing.     

The Zhuangist views on emotions

In this article, I will look into the Zhuangist views on emotions. I will argue that the psychological state of the Zhuangist wise person is characterized by emotional equanimity accompanied by a general sense of calmness, ease, and joy. This psychological state is constitutive of and instrumental to leading a good life, one in which one wanders the world and explores the plurality of daos. To do so, I will first provide an overview of the scholarly debate on this issue and unveil the disconcerting disagreement that underlies it. Then, I will survey some passages in the Zhuangzi and sketch my interpretation of the Zhuangist views on emotions. Next, I will examine the theoretical foundation for this interpretation by referencing the Zhuangist pluralism and their conception of the good life. Finally, I will look into some potential objections to the Zhuangist views on emotions and attempt responses to them.     

The positives of negative emotions: willingness to express negative emotions promotes relationships

Four studies support the hypothesis that expressing negative emotion is associated with positive relationship outcomes, including elicitation of support, building of new close relationships, and heightening of intimacy in the closest of those relationships. In Study 1, participants read vignettes in which another person was experiencing a negative emotion. Participants reported they would provide more help when the person chose to express the negative emotion. In Study 2, participants watched a confederate preparing for a speech. Participants provided more help to her when she expressed nervousness. In Study 3, self-reports of willingness to express negative emotions predicted having more friends, controlling for demographic variables and extraversion. In Study 4, self-reports of willingness to express negative emotion measured prior to arrival at college predicted formation of more relationships, greater intimacy in the closest of those relationships, and greater received support from roommates across participants' first semester of college.     

The social signal value of emotions

Human interactions are replete with emotional exchanges. In these exchanges information about the emotional state of the interaction partners is only one type of information conveyed. In addition, emotion displays provide information about the interaction partners' disposition and the situation as such. That is, emotions serve as social signals. Acknowledging this role of emotions, this special section brings together research that illustrates how both person perception and situational understanding can be derived from emotional displays and the modulation of this process through context. Three contributions focus on information about expressers and their intentions. An additional article focuses on the informative value of emotional expressions for an observer's construal of social situations and another article exemplifies the way context determines the social impact of emotions. Finally, the last article presents the dynamic nature of mutual influence of emotions. In an attempt to integrate these contributions and offer lenses for future research, this editorial offers a contextualised model of social perception which attempts to systematise not only the types of information that emotion expressions can convey, but also to elaborate the notion of context.     

The effect of caffeine on handwriting movements in skilled writers

In laboratory tasks, caffeine has been shown to improve psychomotor performance. The aim of the present experiment was to assess the effects of caffeine on a skilled everyday life task in habitual caffeine consumers. The assessment of handwriting movements of 20 adults was performed following the administration of 0mg/kg (placebo), 1.5mg/kg, 3.0mg/kg or 4.5mg/kg of caffeine. A digitising tablet was used for the assessment of fine motor movements. Participants were asked to perform a simple writing task. Kinematic analysis of handwriting movements showed that, in comparison to placebo administration, high doses of caffeine (i.e., 4.5mg/kg) can produce improvements in handwriting as indicated by more fluent handwriting movements as well as an increase in maximum velocity and maximum positive and negative accelerations. The results suggest that higher doses of caffeine can enhance psychomotor performance.     

The structure of negative emotions in adolescents

This study examined the structure of negative emotions in a sample of nonclinical adolescents, using an approach that exclusively relied on child self-report. A large sample of adolescents (N = 968) completed self-report questionnaires measuring symptoms of fear, anxiety, and depression. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the notion that fear, anxiety, and depression are distinct yet correlated components of negative emotions. This result is in agreement with recent empirical findings and current theoretical notions on the structure of negative emotions in children and should be taken as an encouragement for researchers to develop more specific measures for assessing fear, anxiety, and depression in children.     

The experience of emotions in everyday life

Abstract

A total of 47 employed adults were asked to record, in structured diaries, details of four episodes of emotion from the set that we regard as basic (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) and also to note occurrences of other emotions not in this set. Subjects experienced an average of about one episode of consciously recognised emotion a day, and in rating intensities they said that 11% of episodes were as intense as they could imagine. Anger was the most frequent of the basic emotions, and disgust the least frequent. There were no significant differences in rates or intensities of basic emotions as a function of gender. We predicted 69% of these emotions correctly from the goal-relevant events that elicited them: happiness was typically caused by achievements, sadness by losses, anger by frustration, and fear by threat, but the causation of disgust was more difficult to identify. In 31% of episodes pairs of basic emotions occurred in mixtures. Positive emotions tended to help plans, while negative ones tended to hinder them.     

The world of emotions is not two-dimensional

For more than half a century, emotion researchers have attempted to establish the dimensional space that most economically accounts for similarities and differences in emotional experience. Today, many researchers focus exclusively on two-dimensional models involving valence and arousal. Adopting a theoretically based approach, we show for three languages that four dimensions are needed to satisfactorily represent similarities and differences in the meaning of emotion words. In order of importance, these dimensions are evaluation-pleasantness, potency-control, activation-arousal, and unpredictability. They were identified on the basis of the applicability of 144 features representing the six components of emotions: (a) appraisals of events, (b) psychophysiological changes, (c) motor expressions, (d) action tendencies, (e) subjective experiences, and (f) emotion regulation.