Positive reappraisals after an offense: Event-related potentials and emotional effects of benefit-finding and compassion*

Using a within-subjects design, three emotion regulation strategies (compassion-focused reappraisal, benefit-focused reappraisal, and offense rumination) were tested for their effects on forgiveness, well-being, and event-related potentials. Participants (N = 37) recalled a recent interpersonal offense as the context for each emotion regulation strategy. Both decisional and emotional forgiveness increased significantly for the two reappraisal strategies compared to offense rumination. Compassion-focused reappraisal prompted the greatest increase in both decisional and emotional forgiveness. Furthermore, both reappraisal strategies increased positively oriented well-being measures (e.g. joy, gratitude) compared to offense rumination, with compassion-focused reappraisal demonstrating the largest effect on empathy. Late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in response to unpleasant affect words were larger following the benefit-focused reappraisal strategy, indicating frontal LPP augmentation due to affective incongruence of the unpleasant stimuli with the positive, silver-lining orientation of the benefit-focused reappraisal emotion regulation strategy.     

Is happiness a cure-all for mental fatigue?: mood interacts with situational requirements in predicting performance

There is a set of competing theories for how emotion influences behavior after being psychologically challenged. One group of theories emphasize that positive affect enhances performance after a psychological challenge. Conversely, the emotion and goal compatibility theory argues that positive and negative emotions can enhance or reduce performance and motivation to control behavior depending on the task requirements. To test these contrasting predictions, participants were psychologically challenged by completing a Stroop task and then induced into a positive, negative, or neutral mood. A verbal or spatial working memory task was then completed to assess performance and motivation to control behavior. As predicted, positive mood benefited performance and behavioral control on the verbal working memory task, whereas, a negative mood benefited performance and behavioral control on the spatial working memory task. Thus, following a psychological challenge motivation to control behavior depended on interactions between mood and task requirements consistent with the emotion and goal compatibility theory. (155).     

Feasibility,acceptability, and validity of crowdsourcing for collecting longitudinal alcohol use data

Challenges to conducting longitudinal research include financial, time, and geographic constraints. An emerging sampling method positioned to address these concerns is crowdsourcing. This study evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, and validity of collecting intensive longitudinal alcohol use data with the crowdsourcing platform, Amazon.com 's Mechanical Turk (mTurk). Participants (N = 278) recruited from mTurk provided weekly recordings of daily alcohol and soda use over an 18‐week period. Construct and external validity was evaluated using generalized linear mixed models describing associations of between‐subject (e.g., alcohol use severity) and within‐subject (e.g., day of week) variables with prospectively collected alcohol and soda use. High response rates were observed across the 18‐week period demonstrating feasibility (64.1%‐86.8%). The design was acceptable with 94% of participants indicating they were satisfied with the procedures. Multilevel models supported construct and external validity by replicating expected associations, such as more frequent and heavier drinking by individuals with higher AUDIT scores and on weekends. These effects were specific to alcohol use and did not extend to soda consumption. These data support the feasibility, acceptability, and validity of using mTurk for intensive longitudinal data collection. Future studies may leverage this platform to generate large, geographically diverse samples for prospective behavioral analytic research.     

Forensic psychology and Islamic jurisprudence

Islamic jurisprudence is the most widely used system of religious law in the world today. However, how forensic psychology may operate within this system has been largely unexplored. The current review sets out to explore the relationship between Islamic jurisprudence and forensic psychology by examining the Islamic legal concepts of evidence, competence, insanity, psychological disorder and intellectual disability and their implications for forensic practice. Also discussed are the potential barriers to forensic psychological practice in countries using a system of Islamic law.     

Neural and behavioral measures of error-related cognitive control predict daily coping with stress

This study tested the hypothesis that individual differences in cognitive control can predict individual differences in emotion regulation. Participants completed color-word and emotional Stroop tasks while an electroencephalogram was recorded, and then they reported daily stressful events, affect, and coping for 14 days. Greater posterror slowing in the emotional Stroop task predicted greater negative affect in response to stressors and less use of task-focused coping as daily stressors increased. Participants whose neural activity best distinguished errors from correct responses tended to show less stress reactivity in daily self-reports. Finally, depression levels predicted daily affect and coping independent of cognitive control variables. The results offer qualified support for an integrated conception of cognitive and emotional self-regulation.