Aesthetic principles and cognitive emotion appraisals: How much of the beauty lies in the eye of the beholder?

Although the aesthetic properties of a product have often been linked to consumers’ emotional responses, theory and empirical evidence are yet to fully explain how and why aesthetic properties of a product evoke an emotional response. Drawing on an eclectic literature, we propose hypotheses connecting aesthetic principles with the subconscious cognitive appraisals associated with emotions. Specifically, we empirically test the relationships between the aesthetic principle of harmony and cognitive appraisals (attentional activity and pleasantness), while exploring the moderating role of typicality. Our results suggest that harmony and typicality interact to affect appraisals of pleasantness and attentional activity. Specifically, consumers tend to prefer designs that balance the levels of attentional resources needed and pleasantness in visually evaluating the design. This work advances the growing literature in product design and aesthetics by providing an understanding of the mechanisms through which aesthetic principles might prompt emotional responses in consumers.     

Are cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia mediated by abnormalities in emotional arousal?

We tested 28 individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and 16 healthy individuals on a test of logical reasoning and "cognitive gating," defined as the ability to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information in confirming or disconfirming a given belief. The Logical Reasoning and Cognitive Gating Task tests both processes under neutral and affect-laden conditions. This is done by presenting formally identical constructs using benign and emotionally arousing language. When separated by symptom profiles, we found statistically significant differences for performance and arousal response between patients with delusions, patients with formal thought disorder, and patients with neither delusions nor formal thought disorder, as well as between patients and healthy controls. When analyzed by error type, we found that nearly all errors by delusional patients were caused by overly restrictive information choice, a pattern that may be related to a delusional patient's tendency to "jump to conclusions" on Bayesian probabilistic tasks. This is in contrast to patients with formal thought disorder, whose low performance resulted also from overly extensive information choice. The tendencies towards restriction were exacerbated by arousal, which is consistent with studies on cognition and arousal in healthy individuals. After briefly examining research on emotional arousal and SZ, and the interaction between emotional arousal and restriction of perceptual cues in healthy individuals, we conclude by suggesting a model which accounts for the distinctive cognitive characteristics of delusional patients by their possessing distinct vulnerabilities to emotional arousal. Specifically, these results suggest the possibility that delusional patients process information in a manner that is essentially intact. However, delusional patients may possess an acute vulnerability to emotional arousal that might cause delusional individuals to behave cognitively as if they were healthy individuals under significantly more severe forms of stress.     

Feelings or words? Understanding the content in self-report ratings of experienced emotion

People differ in the extent to which their verbal reports of experienced emotion are valence focused or arousal focused. Three multimethod studies are reported to explore whether differential focus reflects individual differences in the cognitive structure of emotion language versus differences in phenomenological experience. Although there was some evidence that valence focus and arousal focus were linked to variations differences in cognitive structure, the findings are also consistent with the view that self-report ratings are being driven by the properties of the feelings that are being reported. Implications for the study of experienced emotion are discussed.     

Empathy or Intersubjectivity? Understanding the Origins of Morality in Young Children’

This article is about young children’s morality and their concern for others’ wellbeing. Questions of what the value of others’ wellbeing can signify, how this value becomes visible to children and how it is expressed in their interaction will be posed. In this analysis, children’s commitment to others’ wellbeing is discussed in terms of two theories, namely the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1962, 1964) theory of intersubjectivity and the psychologist Martin Hoffman’s (1984, 1987, 2000) theory of empathy. The interaction between children and adults in pre-school, drawn from different studies of morality (Johansson, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003), constitutes the empirical basis. In the discussion, it is claimed that children’s care for others’ wellbeing can be understood in a fruitful way as experiences of, approaches to and ways of being involved in the other’s life-world rather than as expressions of empathy.

Directional bias in the mental representation of spatial events: nature or culture?

Previous research has shown a tendency for people to imagine simple sentences as evolving from left to right, with the sentence subject being located to the left of the object. In two cross-cultural studies comparing Italian and Arab participants, we investigated whether this bias is a function of hemispheric specialization or of directionality of written language (left to right in Italian, right to left in Arabic). Both studies found a reversal of directional bias in Arabs. Italians tended to position the subject to the left of the object, and Arabs tended to position the subject to the right of the object (Experiment 1); both groups were facilitated in a sentence-picture matching task when the subject was drawn in the position that it would usually occupy in the written language (left for Italians, right for Arabs; Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, an additional, language-independent facilitation was observed when action evolved from left to right, suggesting that both hemispheric specialization and scanning habit affect visual imaging.     

Still servants of work? Exploring the role of the critic in work and organizational psychology

This paper situates the burgeoning movement of critical work and organizational psychology (CWOP) within a broader and ongoing effort to rehabilitate work in a broken society. Drawing upon Loren Baritz's seminal critique of the field, The Servants of Power, the argument is made that while CWOP scholars clearly militate against pandering to the “power elite,” they nonetheless risk becoming servants of work, defined as the propensity to perpetuate work's outsized psychological significance. To support such an argument, a core yet neglected theme in Baritz's book is revisited, that of the role of the critic, to demonstrate how CWOP scholars might navigate their own entanglements with servitude while at the same time contest work's symbolic power. The paper also addresses the charge of intellectual elitism that can result from holding such a position of “critical distance” not just from mainstream scholarship, but from work itself. Implications for the future of CWOP are discussed.     

Juvenile homicide in America: how can we stop the killing?

Juvenile homicide remains a serious problem in the U.S., despite recent decreases in the juvenile arresr rate for murder. Reflecting on her clinical experiences evaluating 90 adolescent murderers, the author identifies 15 factors that appear to have contributed to the escalation in juvenile homicide beginning in the mid-198os. These factors can be grouped into five categories: situational factors (child abuse and neglect, and the absence of positive male role models), societal influences (the crisis in leadership and lack of heroes, and witnessing violence), resource availability (access to guns, involvement in alcohol and drugs, and poverty and lack of resources), personality characteristics (low self-esteem, the inability to deal with strong feelings, boredom, poor judgement, and prejuduce and hatred), and their cumulative effects (little or nothing to lose and the biological connection). Strategies to reduce juvenile violence are addressing using parents, schools, communities, government leaders, the media and individuals. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory development in the second year: for events or locations?

We employed an object-placement/object-removal design, inspired by recent work on 'episodic-like' memory in scrub jays (Clayton, N. S., & Dickinson, A. (1998). Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays. Nature, 395, 272-274), to examine the possibility that children in the second year of life have event-based memories. In one task, a successful search could have been due to the recall of an object-removal event. In the second task, a successful search could only have been caused by recall of where objects were located. Success was general in the oldest group of children (21-25 months), while performance was broadly similar on the two tasks. The parsimonious interpretation of this outcome is that the first task was performed by location memory, not by event memory. We place these data in the context of object permanence development.     

A matter of habit? Stressful life events and cognitive flexibility in 15-month-olds

Exposure to chronic stress is associated with habitual learning in adults. We studied the origins of this association by examining the link between stressful life events and infant cognitive flexibility. The final sample consisted of N = 72 fifteen-month-old infants and their mothers. Mothers completed a survey on pre- and postnatal negative life events. To assess chronic stress physiologically, infant and maternal hair cortisol concentrations were determined for cortisol accumulation during the past 3 months. Each infant participated in two cognitive tasks in the laboratory. An instrumental learning task tested infants’ ability to disengage from a habituated action when this action became ineffective (Seehagen et al., 2015). An age-adequate version of the A-not-B task tested infants’ ability to find a toy at location B after repeatedly finding it at location A. Correlations between cortisol concentrations and postnatal negative life events (number, perceived impact) did not yield significance. Infant and maternal hair cortisol concentrations were not correlated. Infants’ ability to shift to a new action in either task, controlled for acute stress, correlated neither with pre- and postnatal negative life events nor with cortisol concentrations. Taken together, these results indicate that the potential link between long-term stress exposure and cognitive flexibility might not be present in samples with low levels of psychosocial stress.     

Reducing the performance-cue bias in work behavior ratings: can groups help?

The authors examined whether the performance-cue bias can be reduced by relying on groups as raters. Study participants (N = 333) were provided with feedback regarding the performance of a workgroup and, after observing the group, assigned to an individual or group rater condition to complete a behavioral rating instrument. Results revealed that when provided with positive (vs. negative) feedback, individuals attributed more effective and fewer ineffective behaviors to the workgroup; however, group ratings were unaffected by the feedback. In addition, feedback biased the decision criteria and false alarm rates of individuals but not of groups. Discussion of when groups may attenuate versus amplify bias in performance appraisal judgments emphasizes 2 key elements-bias magnitude and task perception.     

Student mental health: how can psychiatrists better support the work of university medical centres and university counselling services?

Student psychiatric morbidity is rising. Whilst the influence of university counselling services is widely reported, NHS involvement by psychiatrists and general practitioners is not so well described. Counselling and mental health service providers for students at the University of Leeds were approached for numerical data and a university Group on Student Mental Health discussed the findings. The Student Counselling Centre, the University Medical Practice and a dedicated student psychiatric clinic have all seen a rise in referral rates. The University Medical Practice has also seen a rise in the prescribing of psychoactive medication. Collaborative links at the University of Leeds are explored and options for the future discussed. These include self-help over the internet, a research project to assess student mental health needs and the provision of a dedicated NHS psychiatric team for the university.     

Is the news making us unhappy? The influence of daily news exposure on emotional states

There is evidence that exposure to negative news is making people feel bad, but not much is known about why this only affects some people or whether this also applies to everyday news exposure. This study examined the direct and indirect effects of daily news exposure on people's affective states. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), 63 respondents (24 men and 39 women) reported their news exposure and affective states five times a day for 10 days. In addition, personal relevance of the news and personality characteristics, neuroticism and extraversion, were assessed. Results showed that negative news perceptions were related to more negative affect and less positive affect, and these effects were moderated by personal relevance, but not personality characteristics. The implications of these outcomes are discussed.     

Failures of cognitive control or attention? The case of stop-signal deficits in schizophrenia

We used Bayesian cognitive modelling to identify the underlying causes of apparent inhibitory deficits in the stop-signal paradigm. The analysis was applied to stop-signal data reported by Badcock et al. (Psychological Medicine 32: 87-297, 2002) and Hughes et al. (Biological Psychology 89: 220-231, 2012), where schizophrenia patients and control participants made rapid choice responses, but on some trials were signalled to stop their ongoing response. Previous research has assumed an inhibitory deficit in schizophrenia, because estimates of the mean time taken to react to the stop signal are longer in patients than controls. We showed that these longer estimates are partly due to failing to react to the stop signal (“trigger failures”) and partly due to a slower initiation of inhibition, implicating a failure of attention rather than a deficit in the inhibitory process itself. Correlations between the probability of trigger failures and event-related potentials reported by Hughes et al. are interpreted as supporting the attentional account of inhibitory deficits. Our results, and those of Matzke et al. (2016), who report that controls also display a substantial although lower trigger-failure rate, indicate that attentional factors need to be taken into account when interpreting results from the stop-signal paradigm.     

What harm can it do?: A discussion of the potential for harm inherent in psychodynamic work

Abstract

This paper examines some of the ethical issues raised by the nature of psychodynamic work. It suggests that both the aims and the process of psychodynamic therapy raise ethical issues which we cannot responsibly ignore, but that if the work is to be effective it cannot be made wholly safe. That, however, does not absolve us from the requirement for taking care, and for thinking about what we are doing and what we are risking.     

Can faith move mountains? How implicit theories about willpower moderate the adverse effect of daily emotional dissonance on ego-depletion at work and its spillover to the home-domain

Recent findings have demonstrated that implicit theories about willpower (the belief whether willpower relies on a limited vs. nonlimited resource) moderate the ego-depletion-effect. This study examines this moderating mechanism in occupational settings where employees increasingly have to deal with the unpleasant state of emotional dissonance, which requires the exertion of volitional self-control. By integrating findings on implicit theories about willpower, arguments brought up by the strength model of self-control, and notions from the spillover literature, we propose that believing in a nonlimited resource theory of willpower buffers the effect of emotional dissonance on ego-depletion at work and diminishes the spillover of ego-depletion from the work- to the home-domain. In a diary study covering 10 working days (N = 71), we examine a moderated mediation model in which ego-depletion at work mediates the relation between emotional dissonance and ego-depletion at home and analyse whether implicit theories about willpower moderate both paths (a and b) of the proposed mediation model. Our results provide support for the mediation hypothesis and show that endorsing a nonlimited resource theory buffers the effect of emotional dissonance on ego-depletion at work, thereby disrupting the indirect effect of emotional dissonance on ego-depletion at home. Subsequently, we discuss implications of holding a nonlimited resource theory.     

Understanding or feeling? Motor and sensory processes in recall of haptic experiences

Effects of learning can show in a direct, i.e., explicit way, or they can be expressed indirectly, i.e., in an implicit way. It is investigated whether hepatic information shows implicit effect, and whether implicit haptic memory effects are based primarily on motor or on sensory memory components. In the first phase blindfolded subjects had to palpate objects in order to answer questions about the objects' distinct properties as fast as possible. In the following phase this task was repeated with the same objects and additional control items. Additionally, recognition judgements were required. Results demonstrate reliable effects of implicit memory for haptic information in terms of reaction times to old vs. new objects. Subjects who had to wear plastic gloves in the first stage showed comparable effects of repetition priming. Changing the questions--and, thus, hand movements--during the palpitation of objects known from the first stage, however, abolishes implicit memory expression. It is concluded, therefore, that implicit memory for haptic information is based on motor processes. On the other hand, explicit memory is hampered in subjects wearing gloves during the first phase, as revealed in terms of recognition performance while changing the questions about objects' properties has no effect on recognition judgements. Thus, explicit memory for haptic information seems to be based on the sensory processes when touching objects.     

Outcomes of emotional support in dating relationships: Relational turbulence or sentiment override?

This study tests the relational turbulence model by considering how qualities of dating relationships may polarize positive evaluations of partner supportiveness and emotional improvement following an interaction about a stressful experience. Sentiment override, which is the tendency for negative relationship qualities to attenuate positive evaluations of a partner, was evaluated as a competing hypothesis. Using a laboratory‐based observation method, participants completed stressful activities and talked with a dating partner. Results supported the relational turbulence model, such that the positive association between observer ratings of enacted support and emotional improvement increased when turbulence was high. All results for perceived supportiveness were nonsignificant. Relationship satisfaction did not predict either outcome; therefore, the sentiment override hypothesis was not supported.     

Biased cognitive operations in anxiety: Accessibility of information or assignment of processing priorities?

There is considerable evidence that anxiety is associated with a cognitive bias favouring the processing of threat-related information. Bower's (1981) network model attributes this bias to the enhanced availability of mood congruent information from memory. However, certain experimental tasks do not reveal such a bias, when this effect is strongly predicted by the model. We note that all tasks which have demonstrated such mood congruent processing effects in anxious subjects share the requirement that these subjects must assign priorities to simultaneously available, and differentially valenced, alternative processing options. This feature has been consistently lacking in those paradigms we have found insensitive to the influence of anxiety. It is therefore suggested that anxiety is associated with the assignment of high processing priorities to threat-related options, rather than with the facilitated availability of threat-related information from memory. This proposal was experimentally tested using a lexical decision task, which is sensitive to the accessibility of information from memory, under conditions which either do or do not introduce the requirement to assign priorities to alternative processing options. The results indicate that the facilitated processing of threat related stimulus words, shown by generalised anxiety patients, does indeed appear to reflect a bias in the assignment of processing priorities, rather than the enhanced availability of this information from memory.