The moral emotions: a social-functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt

Recent research has highlighted the important role of emotion in moral judgment and decision making (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). What is less clear is whether distinctions should be drawn among specific moral emotions. Although some have argued for differences among anger, disgust, and contempt (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999), others have suggested that these terms may describe a single undifferentiated emotional response to morally offensive behavior (Nabi, 2002). In this article, we take a social-functionalist perspective, which makes the prediction that these emotions should be differentiable both in antecedent appraisals and in consequent actions and judgments. Studies 1-3 tested and found support for our predictions concerning distinctions among antecedent appraisals, including (a) a more general role for disgust than has been previously been described, (b) an effect of self-relevance on anger but not other emotions, and (c) a role for contempt in judging incompetent actions. Studies 4 and 5 tested and found support for our specific predictions concerning functional outcomes, providing evidence that these emotions are associated with different consequences. Taken together, these studies support a social-functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt and lay the foundation for future research on the negative interpersonal emotions.     

The effects of incidental anger,contempt, and disgust on hostile language and implicit behaviors

Recent studies have suggested that the combination of the emotions anger‐contempt‐disgust (ANCODI) is associated with intergroup hostility. This study examined if incidental elicitation of this emotion combination causally produces hostile cognitions, language, and behaviors. Members of political groups were primed with either ANCODI, fear + sadness, or no emotion, and then engaged in creativity task in relation to their opponent or a non‐opponent outgroup. The ANCODI mix produced more hostile cognitions, language, and implicit behaviors associated with hostility, in some cases specifically toward their opponent outgroups, than individuals primed with other emotions. Multiple mediation analyses indicated that the three emotions and their interactions mediated many of the effects.     

Infant characteristics and anger reduction

Konrad Lorenz first suggested in 1943 that certain physical and behavioral characteristics common to infants (babyishness) serve as cues to attract adult attention and care as well as to decrease the likelihood of aggression. The present study was designed to determine whether the visual stimuli of a baby's face alone are sufficient to reduce anger. The subjects were 60 female students between 18 and 30 years of age. Anger was evoked by setting unsolvable tasks and by noise and maintained by adequate instructions and by continuing noise. Three procedures of measurement (heart rate, retrospective self-report, and interpretation of facial affect by two observers) were designed to show the reactions of the subjects viewing photos of babies and adults. We found a slight increase in heart rate to be an expression of happiness and a massive acceleration to be an expression of anger. The self-report measures and interpretation of facial affect supported the hypothesis that there is a more positive response to infants than to adults, and to cute babies also a more positive one than to less attractive infants. We found weak evidence that babyishness reduces anger. As a consequence of the length of the experiment, subjects who should not be aroused became angry. Thus, it was possible to register a reduction of anger as reaction to cute infants.     

Less is more: the lure of ambiguity, or why familiarity breeds contempt

The present research shows that although people believe that learning more about others leads to greater liking, more information about others leads, on average, to less liking. Thus, ambiguity--lacking information about another--leads to liking, whereas familiarity--acquiring more information--can breed contempt. This "less is more" effect is due to the cascading nature of dissimilarity: Once evidence of dissimilarity is encountered, subsequent information is more likely to be interpreted as further evidence of dissimilarity, leading to decreased liking. The authors document the negative relationship between knowledge and liking in laboratory studies and with pre- and postdate data from online daters, while showing the mediating role of dissimilarity.     

The social functions of ingroup bias: Creating,confirming, or changing social reality

We describe our motivational analysis of ingroup bias. Central to our approach are two functions of ingroup bias: an identity function (the creation and expression of one's social identity) and an instrumental function (the facilitation of intergroup competition and social change). We present a research programme on the determinants of these two functions in which we have focused on socio-structural factors (group status and status stability), psychological factors (group identification and threat), and strategic considerations concerning the audience to which ingroup bias is communicated. In addition, we relate the different functions of ingroup bias to different forms of ingroup bias (symbolic versus material forms of ingroup bias; ingroup favouritism versus outgroup derogation). Our conclusions centre on the social and diverse nature of motivations underlying ingroup bias, and the integration of identity and instrumental perspectives on this phenomenon.     

Perceptions of the social and personal characteristics of hypermuscular women and of the men who love them

A predominately European American sample of middle class college students rated hypermuscular female bodybuilders and the men who were romantically involved with them on measures of perceived gender traits, personality traits, social behaviors, and heterosexual behaviors. Participants perceived hypermuscular women, as compared to the average woman, as having more masculine and fewer feminine interests, less likely to be good mothers, and less intelligent, socially popular, and attractive. However, participants also perceived them as being less likely to engage in socially deviant behaviors or to be sexually manipulative and more likely to be extraverted, conscientious, and open to new experiences than the average woman. Participants perceived men who are romantically involved with hypermuscular women as having stronger masculine traits, interests, and identities than the average man. The authors found no relationships between the perceiver's gender type and his or her perceptions of hypermuscular women or the men who were romantically involved with them.     

The social functions of babbling: acoustic and contextual characteristics that facilitate maternal responsiveness

What is the social function of babbling? An important function of prelinguistic vocalizing may be to elicit parental behavior in ways that facilitate the infant's own learning about speech and language. Infants use parental feedback to their babbling to learn new vocal forms, but the microstructure of parental responses to babbling has not been studied. To enable precise manipulation of the proximal infant cues that may influence maternal behavior, we used a playback paradigm to assess mothers’ responsiveness to prerecorded audiovisual clips of unfamiliar infants’ noncry prelinguistic vocalizations and actions. Acoustic characteristics and directedness of vocalizations were manipulated to test their efficacy in structuring social interactions. We also compared maternal responsiveness in the playback paradigm and in free play with their own infants. Maternal patterns of reactions to babbling were stable across both tasks. In the playback task, we found specific vocal cues, such as the degree of resonance and the transition timing of consonant‐vowel syllables, predicted contingent maternal responding. Vocalizations directed at objects also facilitated increased responsiveness. The responses mothers exhibited, such as sensitive speech and vocal imitation, are known to facilitate vocal learning and development. Infants, by influencing the behavior of their caregivers with their babbling, create social interactions that facilitate their own communicative development.     

Held in contempt: the psychological, interpersonal, and performance consequences of contempt in a work context

Guided by a social function of emotions perspective, the authors examined a model of the psychological, interpersonal, and performance consequences of contempt in a series of 3 experiments that tested the outcomes of being a recipient of contempt in the work domain. In these experiments, participants engaged in a business strategy simulation with a virtual partner-a computer programmed to give contemptuous and other types of feedback. In Study 1, which examined the task performance and interpersonal outcomes of contempt, recipients of contempt had significantly better task performance but also significantly more interpersonal aggressiveness toward their virtual partners compared with recipients of failure, angry, or neutral feedback. Study 2 examined 3 psychological outcomes mediating the contempt-task performance/aggression relationship: self-esteem, returned feelings of contempt, and activation levels. Lowered levels of implicit self-esteem and greater levels of activation significantly mediated the relationship between receiving contempt and task performance, whereas the contempt-aggression relationship was mediated by lowered implicit self-esteem and increased feelings of returned contempt. Study 3 examined status as a moderator of these relationships. Low-status recipients had significantly better task performance than did equal-status recipients, who performed significantly better than did the high-status recipients of contempt. In addition, low-status recipients displayed significantly lower levels of aggression in response to contempt than did equal-status and high-status recipients.     

Predicting anger in social anxiety: The mediating role of rumination

Anger and the way that anger is expressed have been linked to attrition and poorer treatment outcomes in patients with Social Anxiety Disorder (e.g., Erwin, B. A., Heimberg, R. G., Schneier, F. R. & Liebowitz, M. R. (2003). Anger experience and expression in social anxiety disorder: Pretreatment profile and predictors of attrition and response to cognitive-behavioral treatment. Behavior Therapy, 34, 331–350). Understanding the connection between social anxiety and anger may be one way to improve outcomes in this population. A cross-sectional regression design was used in a sample of 363 undergraduates to examine the suggestion that ruminative thought is a critical factor linking social anxiety to anger. In support of this hypothesis, brooding fully mediated the relationship between social anxiety and trait anger and partially mediated the relationship between social anxiety and outward anger expression. The relationship between brooding and anger suppression became non-significant after depression was controlled. In contrast, reflective pondering partially mediated the relationship between social anxiety and anger suppression. These results suggest that addressing rumination may be useful in the treatment of socially anxious patients who struggle with anger. They also support the utility of considering multiple forms of rumination and multiple anger outcomes in a single study.     

The relationship of anger and social skills to psychological symptoms

The link between anger, social skills, and psychological symptoms was investigated in a college population. Seven hundred and nine individuals were administered the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory, the Anger Inventory, the Social Problem Solving Inventory, the Social Skills Inventory, and a series of questions about the degree to which anger affected their lives. Symptomatology was measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory and served as the criterion measure for a series of multiple regression analyses. Results indicated that both anger and social factors related to measures of psychological distress. Implications of the relationship between anger, social skills, and psychological symptoms are discussed in terms of research and assessment of individuals who may suffer from anger problems.     

The contempt expression and the relativity thesis

Ekman and Freisen (1986) reported a highly recognizable, pancultural facial expression unique to contempt. This article reports three studies in which the emotion inferred from that expression, a unilaterally raised and tightened lip, varied with the context of judgment. Different contexts of judgment were created by asking subjects to judge zero, one, or six other facial expressions posed by different actors before judging the lip curl. The lip curl was labeledcontempt in one context,disgust in another, andsadness in a third. Ekman and Friesen's result was replicated, but only when the specific anchoring context used in the original studies was reinstituted. People's judgments as to which emotion is conveyed by a particular facial expression can therefore be influenced by the method of gathering judgments.This study was funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I thank Dee-Ann Matsugu, Lara Weick, and Lisa Wong for their careful work on this study. I especially thank Darrin Lehman for his advice.     

Trait anger moderates the impact of anger-associated rumination on social well-being

In this study, we examined whether people’s social well-being is influenced by hostile versus nonhostile goals that people report pursuing when experiencing anger-associated rumination. Moreover, we investigated the impact of trait anger and trait anger rumination on the relationship between anger rumination and perceived social well-being. Participants were 93 students who were equipped with hand-held computers for 28 days to assess anger-related rumination and its social consequences in daily life. Results showed that hostile goal pursuit per se did not affect perceived social well-being. However, impairment of social well-being following hostile rumination was moderated by trait anger. Findings are consistent with recent cognitive models of trait anger and anger rumination.     

宫观应该发挥的作用

道教有许多积极的教义精神和内容,都是通过宫观展示和发挥出来的。依托宫观,道教在历史的过程中进步发展,展现了道教作为一种文化载体特有的精神风貌,许多著名的高道也是在各个历史的时代中依赖宫观环境发     

Anaesthesia or psychotherapy: Eradicating thoughts or working them through

The author presents two sessions from the analysis of a depressive narcissistic doctor, which are characterised by a mixture of co-operation and pseudo-co-operation. The dialogue is in parts intellectualised, complicated, lifeless and schizoid. Points at which the patient shows surprising insights are then partly denigrated by him, on the basis that change is not to be expected. Semi-lifeless contact assists the defensive claustrophobia that he experiences in meaningful contact. It becomes very clear that he is then afraid of entering into an openly aggressive conflict that entails the existential threat of object loss. However, this has so far been avoided. The secret pleasure in an anal-narcissistic, sadomasochistic addiction to doubt persists in the partial denigration. The patient's artificially maintained self-doubt and doubt of the object reinforce a genuine confusion that consists in never knowing exactly what lies behind the helpful and needed object.     

Correlates of social support: Personal characteristics and social resources

This study attempted to identify potential determinants of receiving support using multivariate analysis. A community probability sample of 581 adults were surveyed. In addition to recording demographic variables and social support receipt, extraversion and locus of control were measured as personal characteristics; being married and numbers of confidants were recorded as social resources indicators. We found that (1) gender, education, extraversion, locus of control and social resources had direct effects on social support receipt; (2) education also had an indirect effect through locus of control, whereas extraversion had indirect effects through both locus of control and sod resources. Roles of personal characteristics and social resources in determining social support receipt were discussed.     

If you can't join them, beat them: effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior.

Social exclusion was manipulated by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. These manipulations caused participants to behave more aggressively. Excluded people issued a more negative job evaluation against someone who insulted them (Experiments 1 and 2). Excluded people also blasted a target with higher levels of aversive noise both when the target had insulted them (Experiment 4) and when the target was a neutral person and no interaction had occurred (Experiment 5). However, excluded people were not more aggressive toward someone who issued praise (Experiment 3). These responseswere specific to social exclusion (as opposed to other misfortunes) and were not mediated by emotion     

Blinded by anger or feeling the love: how emotions influence advice taking

Across 2 experiments, the authors demonstrate that emotional states influence how receptive people are to advice. The focus of these experiments is on incidental emotions, emotions triggered by a prior experience that is irrelevant to the current situation. The authors demonstrate that people who feel incidental gratitude are more trusting and more receptive to advice than are people in a neutral emotional state, and people in a neutral state are more trusting and more receptive to advice than are people who feel incidental anger. In these experiments, greater receptivity to advice increased judgment accuracy. People who felt incidental gratitude were more accurate than were people in a neutral state, and people in a neutral state were more accurate than were people who felt incidental anger. The results offer insight into how people use advice, and the authors identify conditions under which leaders, policy makers, and advisors may be particularly influential.     

Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: the functions of social exclusion

A reconceptualization of stigma is presented that changes the emphasis from the devaluation of an individual's identity to the process by which individuals who satisfy certain criteria come to be excluded from various kinds of social interactions. The authors propose that phenomena currently placed under the general rubric of stigma involve a set of distinct psychological systems designed by natural selection to solve specific problems associated with sociality. In particular, the authors suggest that human beings possess cognitive adaptations designed to cause them to avoid poor social exchange partners, join cooperative groups (for purposes of between-group competition and exploitation), and avoid contact with those who are differentially likely to carry communicable pathogens. The evolutionary view contributes to the current conceptualization of stigma by providing an account of the ultimate function of stigmatization and helping to explain its consensual nature.     

Peer victimization and subsequent disruptive behavior in school: The protective functions of anger regulation coping

Peer victimization is linked to adjustment problems in youth, including aggressive behavior, yet not all victimized youth are aggressive. The present study investigated whether youth’s anger regulation coping might attenuate the positive association between peer victimization and subsequent aggressive behavior. Longitudinal data from 485 7th-grade students (55% female, mean age = 12.84 years) and their teachers were collected in the fall and six months later. Teacher ratings of youth aggressive behavior at follow-up were the primary outcome, with statistical adjustments for baseline aggressive behavior and demographics. Results from multilevel models showed significant interactive effects of baseline anger regulation and peer victimization on residualized teacher-rated aggressive behaviors that were consistent with the hypothesis that anger regulation played a protective role: under high levels of peer victimization, youth with higher levels of anger regulation displayed lower levels of aggressive behavior than their counterparts with lower levels of anger regulation. These findings suggest that targeting and improving students’ ability to regulate their anger may be protective in the face of peer victimization and reduce subsequent aggressive behavior.