The effects of depression on the emotional responses of Spanish-speaking Latinas

Emotional responses (physiology, self-report, and facial expression) of 12 depressed and 10 nondepressed Spanish-speaking Latinas during sad and amusing film clips of human and animal content were compared. Depressed Latinas demonstrated less electrodermal reactivity across all the film clips and displayed fewer social smiles during the amusing-human film clip than nondepressed Latinas. No differences emerged for cardiovascular measures, reports of emotion, or facial expressions of happiness and negative emotion. Observed differences in electrodermal reactivity are similar to results from previous studies of Anglo Americans, suggesting that reduced electrodermal activity may be linked to depression across cultures. The findings also suggest that, for Latinas, depression may selectively alter expressions that serve interpersonal functions.     

Longitudinal findings from the Normative Aging Study: III. Personality, individual health trajectories, and mortality

Individual differences in physical and psychological health trajectories were examined in 1,515 Normative Aging Study men. Mean age at baseline was 47.15 years (range = 28-80), and average follow up was 18.55 years (range = 8-25). Both linear and nonlinear growth curves were estimated with random-effects models and then clustered to identify patterns of change. Men whose physical health trajectories were characterized by high, increasing symptoms were higher in hostility and anxiety, were overweight, and smoked. Those whose trajectories were characterized by low symptoms were emotionally stable, educated, nonsmokers, and thin. Men with high, stable psychological trajectories had high hostility; those with low, stable trajectories had high emotional stability; those with moderate anxiety levels had nonlinear trajectories with peaks in psychological symptoms at different life stages. Personality had life-long effects on health trajectories, but these effects varied across traits and health outcomes.     

Rebound from marital conflict and divorce prediction.

Marital interaction has primarily been examined in the context of conflict resolution. This study investigated the predictive ability of couples to rebound from marital conflict in a subsequent positive conversation. Results showed that there was a great deal of consistency in affect across both conversations. Also examined was the ability of affective interaction to predict divorce over a 4-year period, separately in each of the two conversations. It was possible to predict divorce using affective variables from each conversation, with 82.6% accuracy from the conflict conversation and with 92.7% accuracy from the positive rebound conversation.     

Anger and sadness in response to an emotionally neutral film: evidence for age-specific associations with well-being

When the association between emotion and well-being is being considered, positive emotions usually come to mind. However, negative emotions serve important adaptive functions and particular negative emotions may be especially adaptive at different stages of adult development. We examined the associations between self-reported negative emotions in response to an emotionally neutral, thematically ambiguous film and subjective well-being among 76 young (age 20-29), 73 middle-aged (age 40-49), and 73 older (age 60-69) adults. Results indicated that higher self-reported anger in response to the film was associated with higher well-being for middle-aged adults, but not for young and older adults. Higher self-reported sadness in response to the film was associated with higher well-being for older adults, but not for young and middle-aged adults. These findings were stronger for cognitive well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life) than for affective well-being (i.e., ratio of dispositional positive to negative affect) and were specific to these emotions (not found for self-reported disgust or fear) and to the emotionally neutral film (not found for sad or disgusting films). Results are discussed in terms of the functions that anger and sadness are thought to serve and the control opportunities afforded in midlife and late life that render these functions differentially adaptive.     

Meditation and the startle response: a case study

The effects of two kinds of meditation (open presence and focused) on the facial and physiological aspects of the defensive response to an aversive startle stimulus were studied in a Buddhist monk with approximately 40 years of meditation experience. The participant was exposed to a 115-db, 100-ms acoustic startle stimulus under the 2 meditation conditions, a distraction condition (to control for cognitive and attentional load) and an unanticipated condition (startle presented without warning or instruction). A completely counterbalanced 24-trial, single-subject design was used, with each condition repeated 6 times. Most aspects of the participant's responses in the unanticipated condition did not differ from those of a comparison group of 12 age-matched male controls. Both kinds of meditation produced physiological and facial responses to the startle that were smaller than in the distraction condition. Within meditation conditions, open presence meditation produced smaller physiological and facial responses than focused meditation. These results from a single highly expert meditator indicate that these 2 kinds of meditation can differentially alter the magnitude of a primitive defensive response.     

Subjective, behavioral, and physiological reactivity to ethnically matched and ethnically mismatched film clips

This study examined whether individuals from 4 major ethnic groups within the United States (African American, Chinese American, European American, and Mexican American) showed greater subjective, behavioral, and physiological responses to emotional film clips (amusement, sadness, and disgust) with actors from their own ethnic group (ethnically matched) compared with actors from the other 3 ethnic groups (ethnically mismatched). Evidence showed greater responsivity to ethnically matched films for African Americans and European Americans, with the largest effect for African Americans. These findings were consistent across both sex and level of cultural identification. Findings of ethnic difference notwithstanding, there were many areas in which ethnic differences were not found (e.g., little or no evidence was found of greater response to ethnically matched films in Chinese-American or Mexican- American participants). These findings indicate that the emotional response system clearly reacts to stimuli of diverse ethnic content; however, the system is also amenable to subtle "tuning" that allows for incrementally enhanced responding to members of one's own ethnic or cultural group.     

Cultural and temperamental variation in emotional response

To examine the relative influence of cultural and temperamental factors on emotional response, we compared the emotional behavior, reports of emotional experience, and autonomic responses of 50 European American (EA) and 48 Chinese American (CA) college-age dating couples during conversations about conflicts in their relationships. EA couples showed more positive and less negative emotional behavior than did CA couples, despite similarities in reports of emotional experience and autonomic reactivity. Group differences in emotional behavior were mediated by cultural (values and practices) but not temperamental factors (neuroticism and extraversion). Collapsing across groups, cultural factors accounted for greater variance in emotional behavior but lesser variance in reports of emotional experience compared with temperamental factors. Together, these findings suggest that the relative influence of cultural and temperamental factors on emotion varies by response component.     

In Search of the Person in the Patient: An Interpersonal Perspective on “Roles in the Psychoanalytic Relationship”: Commentary on Paper by Richard Almond

I am postulating an irreconcilable discrepancy between psychoanalytic metapsychology and praxis. Metapsychology reaches for the abstract, for the general class of which the patient is an ostensible member—said class, somewhat tautologically, demonstrating the validity of the professed metapsychology. Yet, from the Interpersonal view, therapy depends on grasping the highly idiosyncratic way the patient plays out his or her life both in and out of the therapy room. Abstracting the patient concretizes the process and reduces information. As a consequence, the clinical material falls short of utilizing the rich, recursive patterning of the therapist's exchanges with the patient, failing to fully realize the uncanny enmeshment of unconscious gears that so defines the psychoanalytic mystique.     

An Interpersonal Perspective on Dreams: Commentary on Paper by Hazel Ipp

A basic rhythm of breakdown–recovery, with many offshoots and permutations, characterizes aspects of psychic life. This rhythm threads its way through Elkin's, Winnicott's, and Bion's work and plays an important role in the unconscious processing of affects. If this rhythm is damaged or jammed, affect processing goes awry. Dream work helps initiate affect processing, a kind of emotional digestion. If the dream work's rhythm of breakdown–recovery is damaged, one lives in a state of chronic emotional indigestion or starvation. Clinical work, including a child's dream of the World Trade Center disaster, illustrates the discussion.     

Gentile reception of Herzlian zionism, a reconsideration

This paper examines the gentile reception of Herzlian Zionism in its first decade as reflected in the journal Die Welt and in the writings of three supporters of Herzl. Despite defining itself as the party of Autoemancipation, Herzlian Zionists avidly sought to demonstrate gentile concern, thereby cultivating a different kind of philosemitism from that cultivated by the Jewish mainstream. The cases of the missionary Protestant Carl Friedrich Heman, the literary radical Hermann Bahr, and the novelist Bertha von Suttner offer examples of how various misreadings of Herzlian Zionism enabled individuals to enlist as supporters of the movement. Herzl's own receptivity to gentile enthusiasm and his willingness to gloss over points of difference emerges as an effective and probably necessary tactic for a leader committed to propelling Zionism to world prominence. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.