Action and emotion in everyday life

This study of naturally occurring behaviour employed a "beeper technique" to investigate the actions carried out by 152 subjects in eight different groups, viz. adult students, employed students who were also parents, unemployed, art students, doctoral students, alcoholics, retired people and a control group. Actions were sampled for seven subsequent days, five times per day between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. at randomly selected occasions. Each action was rated on a number of variables, shortly after it was sampled (median delay approximately 10 min). Some of the findings were: Time allocation corresponded well with national estimates. Being under situational control was highly aversive. Instrumental and consummatory orientations correlated positively. The background variables were, on the whole, only rather weakly related to action ratings, but it was found that women and retired persons tended to report a higher level of well-being.     

Inhibition of action, thought, and emotion: A selective neurobiological review

The neural bases of inhibitory function are reviewed, covering data from paradigms assessing inhibition of motor responses (antisaccade, go/nogo, stop-signal), cognitive sets (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sort Test), and emotion (fear extinction). The frontal cortex supports performance on these paradigms, but the specific neural circuitry varies: response inhibition depends upon fronto-basal ganglia networks, inhibition of cognitive sets is supported by orbitofrontal cortex, and retention of fear extinction reflects ventromedial prefrontal cortex–amygdala interactions. Inhibition is thus neurobiologically heterogeneous, although right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex may support a general inhibitory process. Dysfunctions in these circuits may contribute to psychopathological conditions marked by inhibitory deficits.     

Up-regulating positive emotions in everyday life: Strategies, individual differences, and associations with positive emotion and well-being

This research aimed to identify strategies people use to up-regulate positive emotions, and examine associations with personality, emotion regulation, and trait and state positive experience. In Study 1, participants reported use of 75 regulation strategies and trait emotional experience. Principal component analysis revealed three strategy domains: engagement (socializing, savoring), betterment (goal pursuit, personal growth), and indulgence (substance use, fantasy). In Study 2, participants reported state-level regulation and emotional experience. Engagement correlated with greater state and trait positive emotion, and overall greater well-being. Betterment correlated with less state, but greater trait, positive emotion. Indulgence correlated with greater state, but less trait positive emotion and overall lower well-being. This research suggests trade-offs between short-term and long-term emotional consequences of different strategies.     

Gender and emotion in everyday event memory

While women often recall more detailed and socially oriented event memories than men, it is not clear at which stage of remembering such gender differences emerge. This study investigated this question in a sample of young adults (N=60). A random sampling method was used where participants received a text message three times a day during a 1-week period and were asked to record as soon as they read the message what was happening during the past 30 minutes. At the end of the week they received a surprise memory test for the events that they had recorded. Compared with men, women recorded a greater number of event details at the encoding phase and provided more detailed and accurate memories at the delayed recall, although there was no gender difference in the forgetting function during retention. Gender difference in the social orientation of memory was not apparent until recall. In addition the effects of emotion intensity and valence were observed on the detailedness, accuracy, and content of memory. The findings shed new light on the mechanisms underlying gender differences in episodic memory.     

Social anxiety and the experience of positive emotion and anger in everyday life: an ecological momentary assessment approach

Abstract

A few recent studies have found evidence showing that social anxiety is associated with diminished positive affect and elevated anger. However, prior work has relied on trait self-report measures of global positive mood or anger. In this preliminary study, we examined how trait social anxiety relates to moment-to-moment positive and angry emotional states as people navigate through their natural environment in a given day. Of additional interest was whether any associations were limited to social situations or were evident more broadly in non-social situations as well. For 14 days, 38 non-clinical community adults carried electronic diaries to assess their experience of positive emotions, anger, and their current social context and activity. Participants were randomly prompted up to four times per day, leading to 1702 observations. Results showed that social anxiety was associated with less time spent feeling happy and relaxed and more time spent feeling angry throughout the day. In general, people felt happier when they were with other people compared to being alone. Interestingly, people with relatively higher levels of social anxiety reported fewer and less intense positive emotions and greater anger episodes across social and non-social situations.     

Souvenirs: Magical objects in everyday life

This article considers the role of souvenirs within domestic spaces. Souvenirs are ambivalent objects; at the same time the very epitome of tourism kitsch and personal objects for which the owner holds significant affection. Rather than pre-framing these objects either as ‘touristic signifiers’ or as personal memory objects, this article reflects on the roles they take as material and embodied co-habitants in domestic space, living - and communicating – with their owners. Hence, this paper departs from ‘humanistic’ accounts of cohabiting people and things and instead attempts to put human and non-human agents on an equal footing. It does so, by discussing the ‘magical capabilities’ of everyday objects that enable these to enchant the lives of their human cohabitants; animating them with affects and emotions, feelings of remembrance, affection, appreciation and loss. By drawing inspiration from autoethnography and in particular its potentials for interrogating objects, the author explores the ‘souvenirish’ qualities of five homely objects; using this exploration to enter into a dialogue with objects as well as theories and studies of objects. Considering the many faces of the souvenir - as utility item, mediator, fetish, tuner and artwork - the article suggests an opening for more imaginative thinking and explorations of how we live with objects in everyday life.     

Beyond reciprocity: gratitude and relationships in everyday life

The emotion of gratitude is thought to have social effects, but empirical studies of such effects have focused largely on the repaying of kind gestures. The current research focused on the relational antecedents of gratitude and its implications for relationship formation. The authors examined the role of naturally occurring gratitude in college sororities during a week of gift-giving from older members to new members. New members recorded reactions to benefits received during the week. At the end of the week and 1 month later, the new and old members rated their interactions and their relationships. Perceptions of benefactor responsiveness predicted gratitude for benefits, and gratitude during the week predicted future relationship outcomes. Gratitude may function to promote relationship formation and maintenance.     

Everyday rhetoric: Argument and persuasion in everyday life

While the study of rhetoric in the humanities has an impressive pedigree, rhetorical analysis in organization studies is rather less developed. In this article, I want to provide an introduction to rhetorical analysis, drawing particularly on the work of Billig (1996) and Potter (1996), and illustrate its application to organizational issues through a case example concerning technological change in a public sector organization. In doing this, I demonstrate how alternative approaches to traditional positivism may augment the explanatory power of research in work and organizational psychology. In particular, I want to argue that an awareness of the everyday rhetoric of organizational talk can be illuminating in explaining how the work of an organization is accomplished.     

Loneliness in everyday life: cardiovascular activity,psychosocial context,and health behaviors

Prior lab research revealed higher basal total peripheral resistance (TPR) and lower cardiac output (CO) in lonely than in nonlonely young adults. In this study, experience sampling was used to obtain ambulatory blood pressure; impedance cardiography: and reports of activities, appraisals, interactions, and health behaviors. Results confirmed that loneliness predicted higher TPR and lower CO during a normal day. Loneliness did not predict differences in time spent alone, daily activities, or health behaviors but did predict higher stress appraisals and poorer social interactions. Independent of loneliness, interaction quality contributed to TPR. Loneliness differences were not mediated by depressed affect or neuroticism. Social support mediated loneliness differences in stress and threat. Concomitants of loneliness were comparable for men and women.     

Inadvertent plagiarism in everyday life

Inadvertent plagiarism is a source monitoring error described in laboratory studies. In the present study, the existence of this phenomenon in everyday life and the impact of a variable considered in laboratory (i.e. source similarity) were investigated. Two hundred and two participants were asked to remember an episode involving inadvertent plagiarism in the past, and to describe it. Results showed that inadvertent plagiarism occurs in real life conditions with respect to various types of activities. Moreover, source similarity had an impact on inadvertent plagiarism. In particular, same‐sex plagiarism occurred more often than opposite‐sex plagiarism. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

在日常生活中悟道

近年来 ,教内外一些道士、居士隐居山水静地专心于打坐静养。无疑 ,静坐炼养是一种悟道养身的行为。许多宫观名胜古迹都是开放旅游场所 ,现代人生活节奏紧张 ,工作压力大 ,暇时静下心闭目打坐 ,为长时精神状态紧张的人们提供了一个休息松弛的好方式。本性迷 ,神即是众生 ;本性悟 ,众生即是神 ,静坐中最重要的目的 ,是在静坐中找回本性。而静坐的关键在于炼心 ,当心住性澄之际 ,便是觉悟之时 ,静坐的好处 ,主要是塞兑闭门。日常生活中所面对的功名、利禄、争强好胜 ,七情六欲等等 ,均一一在这静坐的过程中得以化解。心不动气自固 ,意不动神自…     

Subjective probability and everyday life

Abstract.— Recent research on probability judgement indicates that people's ability to estimate probabilities is very limited. It is argued that people may lack the cognitive apparatus necessary for processing probabilistic information, in so far as probability judgements play an unimportant role in everyday life. When probability judgements occasionally are made in everyday life it is argued that they are not based on frequency data but on some more or less well grounded theory.     

Creativity and mental health in everyday life

Abstract

The connection between mental health and creativity has traditionally been studied in terms of outstanding aesthetic‐professional creativity and mental illness. More interesting however, is the possible connection between “everyday “ creativity and mental health. Everyday creativity involves attacking day to day activities in a divergent way: It derives from a complex of cognitive, affective, personal, motivational, and social factors, and is characterized by openness, flexibility, autonomy, playfulness, humor willingness to take risks, and perseverance. These characteristics are also consistently emphasized in models of “normal”; personality growth, so that the possibility of promoting mental health arises by fostering creativity in day to day life. Several small studies described in this article give examples of how this might be done and the kinds of benefits which can result.     

Behavioral activation and inhibition in everyday life

Joint effects of daily events and dispositional sensitivities to cues of reward and punishment on daily positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) were examined in 3 diary studies. Study 1 showed that positive events were strongly related to PA but not NA, whereas negative events were strongly related to NA but not PA. Studies 2 and 3 examined how the dispositional sensitivities of independent appetitive and aversive motivational systems, the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) and the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS), moderated these relationships. Participants in Study 2 with higher BAS sensitivity reported more PA on average; those with more sensitive BIS reported more NA. Also, BIS moderated reactions to negative events, such that higher BIS sensitivity magnified reactions to negative events. Study 3 replicated these findings and showed that BAS predisposed people to experience more positive events. Results demonstrate the value of distinguishing within-person and between-person effects to clarify the functionally independent processes by which dispositional sensitivities influence affect.     

Self-awareness and aversive experience in everyday life

One hundred and seven adults reported their activities, thoughts, and feelings at randomly designated intervals over seven days, resulting in more than 4,800 self-reports. The present investigation focused on the relation of self-awareness and voluntariness to the quality of experience. Results indicated that perceived voluntariness is associated with positive experience, while self-awareness is associated with lower affect, activation, and personal involvement, but only when the activity is felt to be voluntary. This conditional association between self-awareness and aversive experience is discussed as it relates to current theory on self-awareness and recent models of human motivation.     

Self-focused attention, coping responses, and distressed mood in everyday life

Several questions concerning the relation between self-focused attention and depressed mood were examined: (a) Does the association involve global negative affect, rather than sadness per se? (b) is self-focus associated with specific negative affects other than sadness? and (c) does the association occur at the between-subjects or within-subject level? Also hypothesized was that self-focus is associated with coping responses that may perpetuate negative mood. In an idiographic/nomothetic design, 40 male community residents completed daily reports for 30 days. Results suggest that self-focus is linked with global negative mood as well as specific negative affects other than sadness and that the association occurs on a between-persons, rather than a day-to-day within-person, basis. In addition, highly self-focused men reported using passive and ruminative coping styles, which in turn were associated with distressed affect.     

Depressive personality styles, dysphoria, and social comparisons in everyday life

"Sociotropic" people are supposedly vulnerable to dysphoria after negative interpersonal events, whereas "autonomous" people are supposedly vulnerable to achievement-related failures. The present study examined whether these personality styles are borne out in social comparison processes. For 3 weeks, 27 sociotropic and 35 autonomous undergraduates completed records of their social comparisons. Depressive personality style moderated comparison frequency and the affective consequences of comparisons, especially for dysphoric individuals: Dysphoric respondents were especially likely to make comparisons in domains that were congruent with their personalities, and comparisons in congruent domains were associated with greater mood change than comparisons in other domains, perhaps especially for dysphoric respondents. These results have implications for the literatures on social comparison and on depressive personality styles.