Love alters autonomic reactivity to emotions

Periods of bond formation are accompanied by physiological and emotional changes, yet, little is known about the effects of falling in love on the individual's physiological response to emotions. We examined autonomic reactivity to the presentation of negative and positive films in 112 young adults, including 57 singles and 55 new lovers who began a romantic relationship 2.5 months prior to the experiment Autonomic reactivity was measured by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) to two baseline emotionally neutral films, two negative films, and two positive films. Results demonstrated that RSA in singles decreased during the presentation of negative emotions, indicating physiological stress response. However, no such decrease was found among new lovers, pointing to more optimal vagal regulation during the period of falling in love. Autonomic reactivity, indexed by RSA decrease from the positive to the negative films, was greater among singles as compared to lovers, suggesting that love buffers against autonomic stress and facilitates emotion regulation. Findings suggest that vagal regulation may be one mechanism through which love and attachment reduce stress and promote well-being and health.     

Antecedents and consequences of autonomy- and dependency-oriented help toward refugees

We tested antecedents (paternalistic beliefs; Study 1) and consequences (social change potential; Study 2) of autonomy- and dependency-oriented help and developed scales assessing paternalistic beliefs and both forms of help. In Study 1 (N = 143 Germans), we focused on paternalistic beliefs as an antagonist to social change and a key distinguishing variable between engagement in both forms of help. As expected, paternalistic beliefs were positively related to dependency-oriented help, mediated by concern for a positive national moral image, but negatively related to autonomy-oriented help, mediated by perceived competence of refugees. In Study 2, both refugees (N = 80) and Germans (N = 94) perceived autonomy-oriented help to have more potential for social change than dependency-oriented help.     

Online Commenting About a Victim of Female-on-Male Rape: The Case of Shia LaBeouf’s Sexual Victimization

The present study explored social responses toward male victims of female-perpetrated rape by analyzing 505 comments posted on www.theGuardian.com in response to the report that Shia LaBeouf, an American actor and director, was raped by a woman. Using inductive thematic analysis, three themes were generated: Victim’s Character, Victim’s Behavior and Victim’s Story. In addition, each comment was rated regarding its general attitude toward the victim: negative, positive, or mixed. We found that 55% of the comments expressed negative, blaming attitudes toward the victim, 35% were positive and supportive, and 10% were mixed. The findings show that negative comments depict rape as a sexual act against the victim’s will, whereas positive comments portray rape as sexual acts without the victim’s consent. Additionally, negative comments addressed expectation regarding “real men” and “real rape,” whereas positive comments emphasized gender equality in rape comprehension and victim treatment. Our discussion addresses the findings within the context of traditional gender roles and perceptions of “real” rape and presents implications for education and training. Furthermore, we suggest that the existence of positive and mixed responses may indicate a possible change in boundaries of social responses not just regarding male rape victims, but for all rape victims.     

A psychophysiological study of auditory illusions of approach and withdrawal in the context of the perceptual environment

Auditory perception of the depth of space is based mainly on spectral and amplitude changes of sound waves originating from the sound source and reaching the listener. The perceptive illusion of movement of an auditory image caused by changes in amplitude and/or frequency of the signal tone emanating from an immobile loudspeaker was studied. Analysis of data obtained from the participants revealed the diapason of combinations of amplitude and frequency changes for which the movement direction was perceived similarly by all participants, despite significantly different movement assessment criteria. Additional auditory and visual information of the conditions of radial movement (near or far fields) determined listeners' interpretation of changes in the signal parameters. The data obtained about the perception of approach and withdrawal models are evidence of the fact that the principal cues of the perception of the distance of immobile sound sources manifests similarly to that of an auditory image moving along a radial axis.     

Responsibility judgments and responses to people living with AIDS in China: testing an attributional perspective

With one in five individuals in the world living in China, there is an urgent need for HIV prevention and understanding HIV/AIDS stigma in China. This study applies an attributional analysis to Chinese students' responses to AIDS, examining effects of attributions of causal controllability for HIV infection on reactions to people living with HIV/AIDS. Students (n = 309) read one of two scenarios describing an AIDS patient and manipulating controllability of AIDS onset. Controllability of AIDS onset contributed to responsibility judgments, less positive affect, and lower desires to personally interact with the patient. Responsibility judgments predicted interaction wishes directly and indirectly through positive affect. Results provide support for Weiner's interpersonal attributional model. Implications for responses to AIDS in China are discussed.     

Manipulating affective state influences conditioned appetitive responses

Affective states influence how individuals process information and behave. Some theories predict emotional congruency effects (e.g. preferential processing of negative information in negative affective states). Emotional congruency should theoretically obstruct the learning of reward associations (appetitive learning) and their ability to guide behaviour under negative mood. Two studies tested the effects of the induction of a negative affective state on appetitive Pavlovian learning, in which neutral stimuli were associated with chocolate (Experiment 1) or alcohol (Experiment 2) rewards. In both experiments, participants showed enhanced approach tendencies towards predictors of reward after a negative relative to a positive performance feedback manipulation. This increase was related to a reduction in positive affect in Experiment 1 only. No effects of the manipulation on conditioned reward expectancies, craving, or consumption were observed. Overall, our findings support the idea of counter-regulation, rather than emotional congruency effects. Negative affective states might therefore serve as a vulnerability factor for addiction, through increasing conditioned approach tendencies.     

Experiments on the Automaticity of Political Beliefs and Attitudes

Political science has long relied on explicit responses in order to understand what and how people think. New research in the cognitive sciences suggests that this reliance on conscious considerations provides but a partial picture of how citizens think and reason. Given the limitations of conscious working memory and the growing evidence that much of human cognition occurs outside of awareness, the defining empirical assumption of modern public opinion research—that citizens can tell us what is on their minds—seems increasingly suspect. Moreover, social science is particularly challenged by the sensitivity of their topics, which in turn raises social and personal desirability concerns about self-report data. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose an implicit experimental approach. We contend that implicit measures enable us to measure some of the automatic and affective responses and predispositions that influence thoughts and behaviors outside of conscious awareness.     

Cognitive Decline Influences Emotional Creativity in the Elderly

Little is known about the relationship between emotional creativity and age-related cognitive decline. This study explored how deficits in some cognitive abilities are related to emotional creativity, i.e., cognitive abilities relating to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. One hundred and eighty-seven older adults (mean age = 63.2; 58.4% females) were administered the Emotional Creativity Inventory, the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, and the Cognitive Complaint Interview. As hypothesized, emotional creativity was negatively related to apathy and positively to disinhibition/emotional dysregulation. Several processes, such as apathy-related loss of interest, unconcern, subjective lack of energy, and changed perception of one’s disinhibited emotional reactions, may explain the observed results.     

From Design to Self-organization,or: A Proper Structure for a Proper Function

It is suggested that Charles Sanders Peirce's triadic semiotics provides a framework for a diagrammatic representation of a sign's proper structure. The action of signs is described at the logical and psychological levels. The role of (unconscious) abductive inference is analyzed, and a diagram of reasoning is offered. A series of interpretants transform brute facts into interpretable signs thereby providing human experience with value or meaning. The triadic structure helps in de-mystifying the relations between Penrose's three worlds when the latter are considered as constituting a semiotic triangle. Conference “Dynamic Ontology: An Inquiry into Systems, Emergence, Levels of Reality, and Forms of Causality” University of Trento, Italy, September 7–11, 2004.