Affect and the weight of idealistic versus pragmatic concerns in decision situations

Individuals consider abstract values and principles important aspects of their identities. Nonetheless, they often make judgments and decisions that contradict these values and principles for the sake of pragmatic benefits. Assuming that the process of weighting idealistic and pragmatic concerns is context sensitive, the present research argues that affect influences the relative weight of idealistic versus pragmatic concerns in decision situations owing to its influence on the level of abstraction at which individuals represent situations mentally. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that more positive affect increases the prominent weighting of idealistic over pragmatic concerns while less positive affect leads to less differentiation between the relevance of idealistic and pragmatic concerns. Studies 3 and 4 test the assumption that affective influences on mental abstraction are crucial for affect‐dependent shifts in the weighting of idealistic and pragmatic concerns. By bringing together theorizing on affect and cognition with recent theorizing on the role of mental abstraction for decision processes, this article highlights a mechanism through which decisions can be influenced by feelings that goes beyond the mechanisms that have typically been discussed in the affect and cognition literature so far.     

Five-Month-Old Infants Have Different Expectations for Solids and Liquids

ABSTRACT— Many studies have established that 2-month-old infants have knowledge of solid objects' basic physical properties. Evidence about infants' understanding of nonsolid substances, however, is relatively sparse and equivocal. We present two experiments demonstrating that 5-month-old infants have distinct expectations for how solids and liquids behave. Experiment 1 showed that infants use the motion cues from the surface of a contained liquid or solid to predict whether it will pour or tumble from a cup if the cup is upended. Experiment 2 extended these findings to show that motion cues lead to distinct expectations about whether a new object will pass through or remain on top of a substance. Together, these experiments demonstrate that 5-month-old infants are able to use movement cues and solidity to discriminate a liquid from an object of similar appearance, providing the earliest evidence that infants can reason about nonsolid substances.     

Smile intensity in photographs predicts divorce later in life

Based on social–functional accounts of emotion, we conducted two studies examining whether the degree to which people smiled in photographs predicts the likelihood of divorce. Along with other theorists, we posited that smiling behavior in photographs is potentially indicative of underlying emotional dispositions that have direct and indirect life consequences. In the first study, we examined participants’ positive expressive behavior in college yearbook photos and in Study 2 we examined a variety of participants’ photos from childhood through early adulthood. In both studies, divorce was predicted by the degree to which subjects smiled in their photos.

Social Network Sites,Individual Social Capital and Happiness

Can online social contacts replace the importance of real-life social connections in our pursuit of happiness? With the growing use of social network sites (SNSs), attention has been increasingly drawn to this topic. Our study empirically examines the effect of SNS use on happiness for different subgroups of young adults. More specifically, we examine whether the effect of SNSs on happiness is moderated by individual social capital, as measured in terms of frequency of social contacts and feelings of loneliness. Using Dutch data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences panel, we provide robust empirical evidence that there is, on average, no relationship between the amount of time spent on SNSs and happiness. However, we find a negative association between the numbers of hours spent on SNS and happiness for SNS users who feel socially disconnected and lonely. The results hold when we control for socio-demographic characteristics, trust, hours spent on other Internet sites and household income. Hence, SNSs are not a substitute for real-life social connections and, at most, complement them.     

How Does More Attention to Subjective Well-Being Affect Subjective Well-Being?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether pursuing happiness is beneficial for people’s subjective well-being (SWB). To address this question, we tested whether attention to SWB – measured by participation in SWB surveys – is related to experienced SWB in two longitudinal studies. The initial study was conducted from November to December 2013 (N?=?129), and the replication study, three years later from November to December 2016 (N?=?120). The studies include two groups: one group (the control group) answered three SWB surveys over 4 weeks, and the other group (the experimental group) followed the same procedure but additionally tracked their SWB in detail using the experience sampling method four times a day and the day reconstruction method once a day using a smartphone application for two weeks to heighten their attention to their SWB. Both studies show higher SWB scores at later measurements compared to the first ones.     

Developmental Personality Styles: An Attachment Theory Conceptualization of Personality Disorders

Attachment theory, as a developmentally based theory of personality formation, provides a viable framework for understanding the development and maintenance of personality disorders, or what A. E. Ivey and M. B. Ivey (1998) have referred to as “developmental personality styles.” Using K. Bartholomew's (1990) 4‐dimensional model of adult attachment as an organizational framework, 10 developmental personality styles are differentiated regarding their unique attachment experiences, working models of self and other, and feedforward beliefs. Implications of an attachment theory framework for counseling clients with problematic developmental personality styles are discussed.     

Mood and the impact of individuating information on the evaluation of ingroup and outgroup members: The role of mood-based expectancies

This research investigates the role of mood-based expectancies regarding a target's group membership for the impact of individuating information on target judgments. We argue that target judgments in both positive and negative mood may be more or less affected by individuating information depending on whether the target is an ingroup member or an outgroup member. Specifically, in a competitive intergroup setting it should be less congruent with mood-based expectancies when individuals in positive (negative) mood learn that an outgroup (ingroup) member rather than an ingroup (outgroup) member has succeeded. Hence, unexpected (i.e., mood-incongruent) category information should elicit more attention than expected (mood-congruent) category information. More importantly, subsequent individuating information (high vs. low target competence) should be processed more effortful and influence target judgments more strongly given mood-incongruent (vs. mood-congruent) category membership. Findings of an experiment support these predictions. Results are discussed in regard to implications for different research domains.     

Experimental evidence that changes in mood cause changes in body dissatisfaction among undergraduate women

Previous research has found concurrent and prospective associations between negative mood and body dissatisfaction; however, only experimental research can establish causal relationships. This study utilized an experimental design to examine the influence of negative mood on body dissatisfaction. Undergraduate women were randomly assigned to an experimental or control condition. Participants in the experimental condition (n=21) completed a negative mood induction procedure. Participants in the control condition (n=24) completed a neutral mood procedure. All participants completed visual analog scales regarding their mood and satisfaction with weight and shape before and after each manipulation. Body dissatisfaction increased following the procedure for experimental but not control participants, suggesting that negative mood caused increased body dissatisfaction. In cultures that idealize thinness, body dissatisfaction may arise from funneling general feelings of dysphoria into more concrete and culturally meaningful negative feelings about the body.