Daily interpersonal experiences, context, and alcohol consumption: crying in your beer and toasting good times

The authors explored a multidimensional view of drinking, whereby social and solitary drinking represent distinct behaviors associated with positive and negative experiences, respectively. Using daily diary methodology and multilevel analytic strategy, the authors examined, over 30 days, the within-person association of negative and positive experiences and alcohol consumption in different contexts and focused on interpersonal experiences. On days with more negative interpersonal experiences, participants engaged in more solitary drinking (i.e., drinking at home and alone), whereas on days with more positive interpersonal experiences they drank more in social contexts. The authors also demonstrated that individuals high on neuroticism drank more in solitary contexts on days with more negative interpersonal experiences, relative to those with lower neuroticism. These findings lend support to models linking daily drinking motivation and context-dependent drinking behavior.     

Social and emotional loneliness: an examination of Weiss's typology of loneliness

This study examined Weiss' conceptualization of social and emotional loneliness. Using data from an extensive survey of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Iowa, we measured social and emotional loneliness, students' affective and behavioral reactions to loneliness, students' social relationships, and their judgments of the degree to which their relationships supply the six social provisions described by Weiss. As expected, we found differences in the subjective experiences of social and emotional loneliness, although both forms of loneliness were also characterized by a common core of experiences. The results generally supported Weiss's ideas concerning the determinants of social and emotional loneliness. Predictions concerning the affective and behavioral consequences associated with each type of loneliness, however, were only partly supported, although the two forms of loneliness were associated with different affective reactions and coping behaviors. The implications of these findings for Weiss's typology of loneliness are discussed.     

Children's strategies for controlling affective responses to aversive social experience

It was hypothesized that one mechanism of self-control that children develop is the strategic capacity to select the experiences they encounter. This hypothesis led to the prediction that children would deal with certain aversive social experiences by seeking out or taking advantage of opportunities for nurturant experiences. Young children were exposed to an aversive social experience in which they received less nurturance than a peer, a positive experience in which they received more nurturance, or a neutral experience in which nurturance was equal. Subsequently, an opportunity was provided for children to control the length of time they watched a highly nurturant television program. As predicted, boys experiencing an aversive social encounter increased the length of time they exposed themselves to the nurturant television show, and their level of reduced positive affect was related to how long they watched the nurturant content, further supporting the interpretation that they did so in response to their own affective state. Girls did not adopt the strategy of self-exposure to nurturant television but did appear to engage in self-distraction during the aversive social experience. Despite the apparent use of control strategies, there was no indication that these strategies were effective for the amelioration of reduced positive affect resulting from the aversive social experience. Discussion focuses on the sex differences observed in the adoption of strategic behavior and factors contributing to the ineffectiveness of the control strategies. A general model is proposed for personal and environmental factors requisite for the selection, employment, and effectiveness of strategies to control experiences and their affective consequences.     

My Recency,Our Primacy: How Social Connection Influences Evaluations of Sequences

Individuals have many life experiences (e.g., work and vacations) that consist of a series of interconnected episodes (i.e., temporal sequences). Assessments of such experiences are integral to daily life in that they facilitate future planning and behaviors for individuals. Therefore, these experiences often culminate in evaluations of their global affect. Past work has shown that retrospective, affective evaluations of these sequences generally exhibit an “end effect,” whereby a sequence's end intensity—but not its start intensity—is disproportionately weighted. Yet, researchers have largely investigated experiences that occur alone. In contrast, many real‐world experiences vary in their extent of social connection to others (e.g., working in an office with others versus alone in a cubicle). The present work fills this gap by showing the moderating role of social connection on how episodes are weighted in global affective ratings. Five studies involving two autobiographical experiences spanning several days each (workweek and spring break) and two brief simulated experiences show that high social connection leads to greater (lesser) weighting of the first (last) episode. To our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that these effects persist across different forms of social connection (i.e., interpersonal interaction versus semantic priming tasks) and are supported regardless of whether social connection occurs at encoding or retrieval of an experience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time Flies When You're Having Approach-Motivated Fun: Effects of Motivational Intensity on Time Perception

Time flies when you're having fun, but what is it about pleasant experiences that makes time seem to go by faster? In the experiments reported here, we tested the proposal that approach motivation causes perceptual shortening of time during pleasant experiences. Relative to a neutral state or a positive state with low approach motivation (Experiment 1), a positive state with high approach motivation shortened perceptions of time. Also, individual differences in approach motivation predicted shorter perceptions of time. In Experiment 2, we manipulated approach motivation independently of the affective state and showed that increasing approach motivation caused time to be perceived as passing more quickly. In Experiment 3, we showed that positive approach motivation, as opposed to arousal, shortens perception of time by comparing a highly arousing positive state with a highly arousing negative state. Shortening of time perception in appetitive states may prolong approach-motivated behavior and increase the likelihood of acquiring appetitive objects or goals.     

A Multi-Occasion Multi-Rater Model of Affective Dispositions and Affective Well-Being

Personality theories assume that affective dispositions have a strong influence on affective experience and well-being, produce cross-situational consistency, and that positive and negative experiences are influenced by separate dispositions. These assumptions were tested using multi-method data. 97 married couples completed self and informant ratings of affective dispositions, a 14-day experience sampling study, and retrospective self and informant ratings of affective experiences (overall and with spouse). Analysis was conducted using a multi-trait-multi-method matrix and structural equation modeling. Main findings were (a) strong effects of affective dispositions on affective experiences with partner and affective well-being, (b) shared method variance among disposition and well-being ratings by the same rater, and (c) moderate to strong negative correlations between dispositions for positive and negative affect.     

Who am I? The interactive effect of early family experiences and self-esteem in predicting self-clarity

Previous research suggests that inconsistencies between self-esteem and social feedback reduce feelings of coherence. The current research tested effects of discrepancies between people’s self-esteem and feedback they received in the form of chronic early family experiences. In two studies, participants completed measures of global self-esteem, perceived early family experiences, and self-clarity. Early family experiences that were inconsistent with participants’ current self-views (i.e., negative experiences for high self-esteem, positive experiences for low self-esteem) were associated with lower self-clarity; in contrast, consistent experiences were associated with higher self-clarity. These findings have implications for understanding the development of self-clarity and suggest novel consequences of early family experiences.     

Affect intensity in voice recognized by tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri)

Shared acoustic cues in speech, music, and nonverbal emotional expressions were postulated to code for emotion quality and intensity favoring the hypothesis of a prehuman origin of affective prosody in human emotional communication. To explore this hypothesis, we examined in playback experiments using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm whether a solitary foraging, highly vocal mammal, the tree shrew, is able to discriminate two behaviorally defined states of affect intensity (low vs. high) from the voice of conspecifics. Playback experiments with communication calls of two different types (chatter call and scream call) given in the state of low affect intensity revealed that habituated tree shrews dishabituated to one call type (the chatter call) and showed a tendency to do so for the other one (the scream call), both given in the state of high affect intensity. Findings suggest that listeners perceive the acoustic variation linked to defined states of affect intensity as different within the same call type. Our findings in tree shrews provide first evidence that acoustically conveyed affect intensity is biologically relevant without any other sensory cue, even for solitary foragers. Thus, the perception of affect intensity in voice conveyed in stressful contexts represents a shared trait of mammals, independent of the complexity of social systems. Findings support the hypothesis that affective prosody in human emotional communication has deep-reaching phylogenetic roots, deriving from precursors already present and relevant in the vocal communication system of early mammals.     

Antiphonal laughter between friends and strangers

Drawing from an affect-induction model of laughter (Bachorowski & Owren, 2001; Owren & Bachorowski, 2002), we propose that "antiphonal" laughter--that is, laughter that occurs during or immediately after a social partner's laugh--is a behavioural manifestation of a conditioned positive emotional response to another individual's laugh acoustics. To test hypotheses concerning the occurrence of antiphonal laughter, participants (n = 148) were tested as part of either same- or mixed-sex friend or stranger dyads, and were audiorecorded while they played brief games intended to facilitate laugh production. An index of antiphonal laughter for each dyad was derived using Yule's Q. Significantly more antiphonal laughter was produced in friend than in stranger dyads, and females in mixed-sex dyads produced more antiphonal laughter than did their male partners. Antiphonal laughter may therefore reflect a mutually positive stance between social partners, and function to reinforce shared positive affective experiences.     

Positive experiences of high arousal martial arts rituals are linked to identity fusion and costly pro-group actions

A cross-sectional study was conducted with 605 practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) to test the hypothesis that high arousal rituals promote social cohesion, primarily through identity fusion. BJJ promotion rituals are rare, highly emotional ritual events that often feature gruelling belt-whipping gauntlets. We used the variation in such experiences to examine whether more gruelling rituals were associated with identity fusion and pro-group behaviour. We found no differences between those who had undergone belt-whipping and those who had not and no evidence of a correlation between pain and social cohesion. However, across the full sample we found that positive, but not negative, affective experiences of promotional rituals were associated with identity fusion and that this mediated pro-group action. These findings provide new evidence concerning the social functions of collective rituals and highlight the importance of addressing the potentially diverging subjective experiences of painful rituals.     

Emotional Gratification in Entertainment Experience. Why Viewers of Movies and Television Series Find it Rewarding to Experience Emotions

This article presents four studies designed to assess different types of gratifications that can be associated with the experience of emotions in movie and television audiences. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of a pool of statements derived from qualitative interviews revealed three factors that reflect rewarding feelings: 1) fun, 2) thrill, and 3) empathic sadness, and four factors that reflect the role of emotional media experiences within the broader context of individuals' social and cognitive needs: 4) contemplative emotional experiences, 5) emotional engagement with characters, 6) social sharing of emotions, and 7) vicarious release of emotions. Validation analyses showed that the scales developed to assess these factors are predicted by the experience of emotions and meta-emotions and served in turn to predict different aspects of positive content evaluation. Results are discussed with regard to theoretical issues including entertainment audiences' voluntary exposure to unpleasant feelings, and the role of entertainment in psychosocial need satisfaction and eudaimonic wellbeing.     

Are Pre-Assembly Shared Work Experiences Useful for Temporary-Team Assembly Decisions? A Study of Olympic Ice Hockey Team Composition

The purpose of this study was to investigate if pre-assembly shared work experiences among temporary team members facilitate individual and team performance. Archival data from the 2014 Men’s Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament (12 teams, 25 players each) was used in the study. Measures of social network centrality were computed based on the pre-assembly shared work experiences among national team members derived from professional and amateur affiliations. These measures were used to predict objective individual and team performance criteria. Players’ closeness centrality scores, from pre-assembly shared work experience networks, positively predicted their goals, assists, and being involved in more positive than negative plays. Teams with less centralized pre-assembly shared work experience network structures tended to perform better than teams with more centralized pre-assembly shared work experience network structures. Temporary teams are commonly used by organizations to perform tasks that are specific, important, and of short duration. Because temporary teams have little time to develop the shared properties required for effective team functioning, assembly decisions are of paramount importance. The results from this study suggest that centrality measures derived from pre-assembly shared work experiences are useful to consider when assembling temporary teams. Few studies have investigated the impact of pre-assembly shared work experiences on individual and team performance. Using objective data, this study provides evidence that pre-assembly shared work experiences relate to individual and team performance in temporary teams, supporting the need for expanded research in this area.     

Genetic moderation of sensitivity to positive and negative affect in marriage

Hypothesizing that genetic factors partially govern sensitivity to interpersonal cues, we examined whether a polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) in the serotonin transporter gene would moderate spouses' sensitivity to positive and negative partner affect. Before and after marital discussions, participants from 76 couples (total n = 150) reported their affective states. Spouses carrying the short allele of the 5-HTTLPR were more responsive to their partner's preinteraction positive affect and anxiety/nervousness, compared with spouses with two long alleles. These data support the contention that the serotonin system influences affective responses to social stimuli. In contrast to the view that the 5-HTTLPR primarily affects response to adverse experiences, these results suggest that this polymorphism moderates sensitivity to positive as well as negative affect.     

Affective influences on within-person changes in work performance as mediated by attentional focus

A great deal of research has investigated the performance consequences of affective experiences at work, but the mediating mechanisms that explain these consequences remain understudied. In this study, we used experience sampling method to examine within-person relationships between changes in affective states and episodic performance, as mediated by attentional allocation and regulation. Our findings show that within-person changes in negative affective states have a concurrent association with episodic performance as mediated by reduced attentional allocation and regulation, while positive affective states are associated with better performance, as mediated by enhanced attentional allocation and regulation. Our results are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding the performance and attentional consequences of affective states at work.     

Love and Power,and the Development of the Brain,Mind, and Agency

In drawing on my own research and collaborative work with Karl Pribram, I show that love (affective attachment) and power (social control) play a central role in psychosocial evolution. When these relations are coupled in a self-regulating system of cooperative interactions, brain growth is stimulated, mind and agency develop, and stable forms of collective social organization are generated. Focusing on the endogenous dynamics of social collectives, the article is organized in four parts. (A "social collective" is defined as a durable arrangement of relations among two or more individuals that is distinguished by shared membership and collaboration in relation to a common function or goal.) Part I summarizes evidence from developmental neuropsychology and social science to show that stable psychosocial organization, across the human life span, is associated with social interaction organized along two dimensions. One dimension involves love, positive affective attachment, and the second involves power, social regulation of the aroused affective energy. Part II draws on Piaget's theory of cooperation and Bradley and Pribrams' theory of communication to describe how mind and agency are generated, and how stable organization is produced, respectively, from the relations involved in the arousal and regulation of affective energy. Combining elements of the two theories, Part III presents a sketch of a holographic model of collective organization in which goal-directed behavior is generated by a feed-forward process involving imaging and information processing of interaction along the two dimensions. Part IV shows how the model accounts for the emergence of human agency within the context of a more general evolutionary theory, such as Laszlo's. The article concludes with a discussion of my approach for building a "fully human theory of evolution."     

Alone but together,autonomous but related: Self‐construal effects on happiness in social experiences

Communal tables and open workspaces have become popular servicescapes, that is, contemporary spaces for experiencing, dining, or working alone but together. Previous research demonstrates that experiencing with close others (e.g., with friends or family) increases happiness and satisfaction, but experiences shared with strangers in contexts such as communal tables or workshops have not yet been thoroughly analyzed. Addressing this research gap from a social–psychological perspective, we suggest that even though individuals are generally happier when they share experiences with loved ones, self‐construal plays a moderating role in the relationship. Individuals with high autonomy and high relatedness do not anticipate greater happiness from experiences shared with friends than with those shared with strangers. Three experimental studies (two online and one field) demonstrate this effect, using different operationalizations of autonomy relatedness. Managerial implications are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research.     

Predicting Job‐Related Expectancies and Affective Reactions to Employees With Disabilities From Previous Work Experience1

The relationship between the quality of previous work experience with a coworker who was disabled, job‐related expectancies of employees with disabilities, and affective reactions to employees with disabilities was investigated. Data from individuals who had worked with a coworker who was disabled were collected via an Internet‐based survey. The quality of previous experience with coworkers with disabilities predicted job‐related expectancies of employees with disabilities and affective reactions to employees with disabilities. More positive work experiences were associated with more positive expectancies and affective reactions. The relationship between previous experience and affective reactions was mediated by job‐related expectancies. Perceptions of increased job difficulty that were attributed to a coworker who was disabled predicted less positive job‐related expectancies and affective reactions.     

Blind spots in the search for happiness: Implicit attitudes and nonverbal leakage predict affective forecasting errors

We investigated implicit knowledge and affective forecasting, reasoning that although conscious evaluations are available to people when predicting their future emotional responses, nonconscious evaluations are not. However, these automatically-activated evaluations should contribute to in-the-moment emotional experiences, and thus they should account for misforecasts (i.e., discrepancies between affective forecasts and actual experiences). We conducted two studies to explore affective misforecasts, using food items as stimuli. In Study 1, participants' implicit attitudes (but not their explicit attitudes) predicted misforecasts of food enjoyment, supporting the role of nonconscious evaluations in affective forecasting errors. In Study 2, we examined participants' facial expressions (another index of nonconscious evaluation) upon the presentation of food items, and we found that these nonverbal behaviors predicted affective misforecasts as well. In sum, although nonconscious evaluations are unavailable when anticipating the future, they may contribute to one's in-the-moment experiences and thus serve as blind spots in affective forecasting.     

A Retrospective Survey of Childhood Experiences

The present study introduces a balanced survey of a range of behavioral and emotional experiences to assess impressions of a person’s childhood. Ninety-one undergraduates and 70 of their parents rated exposure to positive and negative social and solitary experiences. The survey demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and 4-week test–retest reliability, and scores correlated with Zimbardo’s Time Perspective Inventory of temporally based beliefs and values, Batcho’s inventory of personal nostalgia, and Holbrook’s measure of historical nostalgia. Correlations with time perspective and nostalgia inventories suggest that favorable impressions of childhood are associated with benefits such as social connectedness, personal continuity, and health-promoting behaviors and adverse impressions with less adaptive impacts such as unsatisfactory relationships, discontinuity, and distress. Ratings of social experiences were correlated more closely with childhood happiness than were solitary experiences. The Childhood Survey shows promise as a tool to expand the exploration of childhood experiences beyond adverse events to encompass components that comprise a happy childhood.     

The role of partners for employees' recovery during the weekend

We examined the effects of positive and negative experiences with the partner (absorption in joint activities and conflict with the partner) during the weekend on affective states at the beginning of the following work week and tested whether recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, and mastery experiences) mediated these effects. In total, 269 university faculty members completed online surveys before and after the weekend. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that absorption in joint activities with the partner predicted recovery experiences during the weekend and increased positive affective states (vigor, joviality, serenity) at the beginning of the following work week. Relaxation mediated the effects of absorption in joint activities on positive affective states. Conflict with the partner increased negative affective states (negative activation, fatigue), but was unrelated to recovery experiences. Our findings emphasize the importance of experiences with the partner for employees' recovery and show that the social environment of employees matters for their recovery.