Sometimes a Bear is Just a Bear: No Evidence of Nonclinical Adult Toy Animal Ownership Indicating Emotion Dysregulation

Although some studies of clinical populations suggest an association of adult toy animal ownership with personality disorder, studies of nonclinical populations have been lacking. In a nonclinical young adult sample (N?=?148), we found no association of toy animal ownership with use of immature, mature, or neurotic defense mechanisms; avoidant or anxious attachment style; trait conscientiousness; heart rate variability (an index of self-regulatory strength); or social desirability responding. The results do not provide evidence for an association of adult nonclinical toy animal ownership with psychological or psychophysiological indices of immaturity, conscientiousness, insecure attachment, or lack of self-regulatory strength.     

Christianity and Feminism: Do they need each other?

Abstract

This article presents personal reflections on the relationship between Christianity and feminism. It argues that Christian ideas have influenced the historical development of feminism, and that there exists a continuing affinity between some debates of the contemporary secular women's movement and those of committed Christian feminists. It presents an historical example front the nineteenth century which shows how Christian and early feminist ideas were combined in the work of Florence Nightingale. It then discusses the global empowerment of women in relation to the challenge and opportunity this poses for the Christian churches, and reflects on the wisdom of women as an important source for Christian renewal. The article argues that Christianity and feminism both challenge and need each other for mutual transformation. Without a rightly understood feminism Christianity will not remain true to its own nature and, without Christianity or rather without religion and spirituality, feminism will lack an essential source of empowerment. It also raises the question of what difference the participation of women will make to the future of Christian theology.     

Seeing what you ought to see: The role of contextual factors in the social perception of achievement emotions

To assess the impact of context information on emotion perception, participants saw a picture of a male or female person with either a neutral, happy or sad facial expression and received information about the context in which the picture was taken. Their task was to rate the emotion actually expressed in the photo (i.e., focal emotions) as well as emotions not actually expressed (i.e., non-focal emotions) and inferences extracted from them. We predicted and found that context information affected both the perception of emotions and the inferences that the observers drew from them. Perceivers used context information in order to make sense of what was perceived to the extent that in the case of neutral expressions and for non-focal emotions, they “see” things that do not actually exist.     

Individual Differences in Emotional Mimicry: Underlying Traits and Social Consequences

Mimicry, the imitation of the nonverbal behaviour of others, serves to establish affiliation and to smoothen social interactions. The present research aimed to disentangle rapid facial reactions (RFRs) to affiliative emotions from RFRs to nonaffiliative emotions from a trait perspective. In line with the Mimicry in Social Context Model by Hess and Fischer, we expected that only the former are mimicry responses indicative of underlying social relating competence and predictive of social satisfaction, whereas the latter superficially resemble mimicry responses and are driven by social relating incompetence and have opposite effects on social satisfaction. Further, we assumed that social relating competence would moderate the relationship between stable individuals' tendencies to show (mal)adaptive RFRs and social satisfaction. To test these hypotheses, 108 participants first completed scales measuring social relating competence, then participated in a mimicry laboratory task and finally evaluated their naturally occurring social interactions for 10 days. Affiliative RFRs to sadness were related to proximal indices of social relating competence and predicted positive social interactions, whereas nonaffiliative RFRs to disgust were related to social relating incompetence and predicted negative social interactions. By contrast, neither affiliative RFRs to happiness nor nonaffiliative RFRs to anger were linked to proximal indices of social relating competence, and both RFRs were only (dys)functional for interaction quality in less social relating‐competent individuals. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The bidirectional relation of emotion perception and social judgments: the effect of witness’ emotion expression on perceptions of moral behaviour and vice versa

The present research tested the notion that emotion expression and context perception are bidirectionally related. Specifically, in two studies focusing on moral violations (N?=?288) and positive moral deviations (N?=?245) respectively, we presented participants with short vignettes describing behaviours that were either (im)moral, (in)polite or unusual together with a picture of the emotional reaction of a person who supposedly had been a witness to the event. Participants rated both the emotional reactions observed and their own moral appraisal of the situation described. In both studies, we found that situational context influenced how emotional reactions to this context were rated and in turn, the emotional expression shown in reaction to a situation influenced the appraisal of the situation. That is, neither the moral events nor the emotion expressions were judged in an absolute fashion. Rather, the perception of one also depended on the other.     

Emotional expressivity in men and women: Stereotypes and self-perceptions

Three studies were conducted to assess prevalent stereotypes regarding men's and women's emotional expressivity as well as self-perceptions of their emotional behaviour. Emotion profiles were employed to assess both modal emotional reactions and secondary emotional reactions to hypothetical events and personal experiences. In Study 1 we asked how men and women in general would react to a series of hypothetical emotional events. In Study 2 we asked how participants themselves expected to react to these same situations and in Study 3 we asked participants to report a personal emotional event in narrative form. Two gender differences emerged across all three studies. Specifically, women were expected to be more likely to react with sadness to negative emotion-eliciting events in general. They also expected themselves to be more likely to react with sadness as well as to cry and to withdraw more when experiencing negative emotional events. Finally, women report more sadness when describing personal events. In contrast, men were expected to react with more happiness/serenity during negative emotional situations. Also, they expect themselves to react more frequently this way as well as to laugh and smile more and to be more relaxed in negative situations. Finally, men tend to report more happiness when describing negative personal events. In sum, the present study gives a more detailed portrayal of how men and women are expected and expect themselves to react to specific emotional situations and presents some evidence that these expectations may influence the way they reconstruct emotional events from their past.     

Sex differences in neural efficiency: Are they due to the stereotype threat effect?

The neural efficiency hypothesis postulates a more efficient use of brain resources in more intelligent people as compared to less intelligent ones. However, this relationship was found to be moderated by sex and task content. While the phenomenon of neural efficiency was previously supported for men when performing visuo-spatial tasks it occurred for women only when performing verbal tasks. One possible explanation for this finding could be provided by the well-studied phenomenon called stereotype threat. Stereotype threat arises when a negative stereotype of one’s own group is made salient and can result in behavior that confirms the stereotype. Overall, 32 boys and 31 girls of varying intellectual ability were tested with a mental rotation task, either under a stereotype exposure or a no-stereotype exposure condition while measuring their EEG. The behavioral results show that an activated negative stereotype not necessarily hampers the performance of girls. Physiologically, a confirmation of the neural efficiency phenomenon was only obtained for boys working under a no-stereotype exposure condition. This result pattern replicates previous findings without threat and thus suggests that sex differences in neural efficiency during visuo-spatial tasks may not be due to the stereotype threat effect.     

Waking and dreaming: related but structurally independent. Dream reports of congenitally paraplegic and deaf-mute persons

Models of dream analysis either assume a continuum of waking and dreaming or the existence of two dissociated realities. Both approaches rely on different methodology. Whereas continuity models are based on content analysis, discontinuity models use a structural approach. In our study, we applied both methods to test specific hypotheses about continuity or discontinuity. We contrasted dream reports of congenitally deaf-mute and congenitally paraplegic individuals with those of non-handicapped controls. Continuity theory would predict that either the deficit itself or compensatory experiences would surface in the dream narrative. We found that dream form and content of sensorially limited persons was indifferent from those of non-handicapped controls. Surprisingly, perceptual representations, even of modalities not experienced during waking, were quite common in the dream reports of our handicapped subjects. Results are discussed with respect to feedforward mechanisms and protoconsciousness theory of dreaming.