Experiments on habit reversal in the white rat following electro-convulsive treatment

Rats in a T-maze were taught two opposite habits successively, the first being heavily over learned compared to the second. One group of 14 rats was then given a series of 6 electroconvulsive shocks. The control group of 11 rats underwent a dummy procedure.

Tested subsequently the control group maintained the second habit but among the shocked animals some adopted the second habit and some the first. This was no evidence of habit reversal, however, for the behaviour of the shocked animals at the choice point was not distinguishable statistically from random behaviour.

The data of earlier workers are re-examined and, in all cases, animals said to have undergone habit reversal act as if at random.     

Long-term memory for the emotional gist and the emotional essence of an experience

We investigated accuracy in recalling past emotional behaviours and emotionality. Male couples discussed the history of their relationship, and coders rated the extent to which each partner engaged in behaviours such as complimenting or criticising. These ratings were combined into dimensions representing the deeper, emotional essence of that partner's discussion (expressions of We-ness, Fondness, Negativity, and Disappointment). Four years later, participants accurately recalled some of their own and some of their partner's emotional gist-level behaviours, but their answers indicated that they also remembered the emotional essence of the conversation. We conclude that individuals can retain the emotional essence of an experience for a long time, and that they may use this memory to infer, in part, gist-level details of the experience.     

Long-term memory for the emotional gist and the emotional essence of an experience

We investigated accuracy in recalling past emotional behaviours and emotionality. Male couples discussed the history of their relationship, and coders rated the extent to which each partner engaged in behaviours such as complimenting or criticising. These ratings were combined into dimensions representing the deeper, emotional essence of that partner's discussion (expressions of We-ness, Fondness, Negativity, and Disappointment). Four years later, participants accurately recalled some of their own and some of their partner's emotional gist-level behaviours, but their answers indicated that they also remembered the emotional essence of the conversation. We conclude that individuals can retain the emotional essence of an experience for a long time, and that they may use this memory to infer, in part, gist-level details of the experience.     

Memory for emotional words in sentences: the importance of emotional contrast

Numerous researchers have demonstrated that emotional words are remembered better than neutral words. However, the effect has been attributed to factors other than emotion because it is somewhat fragile and influenced by variables such as the experimental designs employed. To investigate the role of emotion per se in memory for emotional words, negative-affect but low arousal emotional words were placed in sentence contexts that either activated high emotional meanings of the words (Shane died in his car last night.), or low emotional meanings of the words (Shane's old car died last night). The high-emotional contexts led to better memory than the low-emotional contexts, but only in mixed lists of emotional and neutral words. Additionally, the traditional emotional memory effect was also limited to mixed lists. The results are consistent with the idea that an emotional contrast is responsible for the emotional memory effect with low arousal emotional words.     

Processing emotional category congruency between emotional facial expressions and emotional words

Facial expressions are critical for effective social communication, and as such may be processed by the visual system even when it might be advantageous to ignore them. Previous research has shown that categorising emotional words was impaired when faces of a conflicting valence were simultaneously presented. In the present study, we examined whether emotional word categorisation would also be impaired when faces of the same (negative) valence but different emotional category (either angry, sad or fearful) were simultaneously presented. Behavioural results provided evidence for involuntary processing of basic emotional facial expression category, with slower word categorisation when the face and word categories were incongruent (e.g., angry word and sad face) than congruent (e.g., angry word and angry face). Event-related potentials (ERPs) time-locked to the presentation of the word-face pairs also revealed that emotional category congruency effects were evident from approximately 170 ms after stimulus onset.     

Characteristic emotional intelligence and emotional well-being

Both theory and previous research suggest a link between emotional intelligence and emotional well-being. Emotional intelligence includes the ability to understand and regulate emotions; emotional well-being includes positive mood and high self-esteem. Two studies investigated the relationship between emotional intelligence and mood, and between emotional intelligence and self-esteem. The results of these studies indicated that higher emotional intelligence was associated with characteristically positive mood and higher self-esteem. The results of a third study indicated that higher emotional intelligence was associated with a higher positive mood state and greater state self-esteem. The third study also investigated the role of emotional intelligence in mood and self-esteem regulation and found that individuals with higher emotional intelligence showed less of a decrease in positive mood and self-esteem after a negative state induction using the Velten method, and showed more of an increase in positive mood, but not in self-esteem, after a positive state induction. The findings were discussed in the light of previous work on emotional intelligence, and recommendations were made for further study.