Bad things come easier to the mind but harder to the body: Evidence from brain oscillations

An intriguing finding of research on emotional processing is a discrepancy between perception and behavior. Perceptually, a robust finding is that negative stimuli are processed faster and more efficiently than positive stimuli. Behaviorally, a similarly robust finding is that response times are slower for negative than for positive stimuli. We proposed and tested a novel account to explain this still unexplained discrepancy, on the basis of the assumption that negative valence narrows perceptual processes to the benefit of speeded perception, but broadens motor processes at the cost of slowed responding. Participants performed a valence judgment task in which they responded with their left or right hand to negative and positive stimuli that were presented on the left or right, and we measured the activation of relevant/deactivation of irrelevant perceptual and motor processes, as revealed by the lateralization of electroencephalographic brain oscillations. Stimulus-related lateralization of alpha activity (8–12 Hz) over perceptual areas was increased for negative stimuli, indicating more efficient perceptual processing. By contrast, response-related lateralization of beta activity (20–25 Hz) over motor areas was decreased for negative stimuli, indicating less efficient response activation. Consistent with our predictions, more detailed analyses showed that both lateralization effects were caused by dynamics at the level of inhibiting irrelevant processes. For negative as compared to positive stimuli, the inhibition of irrelevant perceptual processes was increased, but the inhibition of irrelevant motor processes was decreased. These findings indicate that the discrepancy between perception and behavior in emotional processing may stem from asymmetrical effects of emotional valence on the breadth of cortical activations in perceptual and motor networks.     

Commission errors in delay–execute prospective memory tasks

Individuals frequently retrieve an intention, but the execution of the task needs to be delayed due to ongoing task demands - so-called delay-execute prospective memory (PM) tasks. We investigated commission errors in the delay-execute paradigm. Participants were told that a PM task is finished (PM task has been executed and is now finished for a final phase) or cancelled (PM task has been cancelled immediately after introduction). We observed commission errors and ongoing task performance in the final phase which included several irrelevant PM cues. In two experiments, we observed significantly more commission errors for cancelled compared to the finished intentions. In Experiment 2, commission errors were eliminated if the final phase required divided attention, regardless of PM task status. In addition, we observed significantly more PM cue interference on the ongoing task in the cancelled compared to the finished group, indicating that the PM task was retrieved in the cancelled group but not in the finished group. As retrieval and execution of the PM task were separated by a delay, the results indicate that commission errors are not always the result of a quick, spontaneous retrieval-execution sequence and may also occur when retrieval and execution are temporally separated.     

Meta-analytic evidence of the effectiveness of stress management at work

To increase employees’ psychological health and to achieve a competitive advantage, organizations are increasingly introducing flexible work arrangements (FWAs) and stress management training (SMT). This paper provides meta-analytic evidence of the effects of two forms of FWA (flexitime and telecommuting) and three forms of SMT (cognitive-behavioural skills training, relaxation techniques and multiple SMT) on employees’ psychological health, job satisfaction, job performance and absenteeism. Applying the conservation of resource theory, we conjecture that both FWAs and SMT improve all four employee-related outcomes. Quantitative meta-analyses based on 43 primary studies and 22,882 employees show that both FWAs and SMT are positively associated with psychological health and job satisfaction. However, due to a lack of primary studies we were mostly unable to analyse the effects on performance and absenteeism. Although we found a large heterogeneity in the hypothesized relationships, additional moderator analyses of study quality, age, gender, duration and intention of intervention yielded no significant effects. We discuss limitations and implications for practice and for future research.     

Delivering your daily dose of well-being to the workplace: a randomized controlled trial of an online well-being programme for employees

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a newly developed brief, cost-effective, flexible, and broadly accessible online programme designed to enhance employee well-being. Considering the demands of the working world, the development of the positive intervention (PI) programme was based on empirical findings and latest theoretical advances from the field of positive psychology, namely the PERMA model of well-being. The new PERMA-based programme’s effectiveness to increase employee well-being was evaluated with a longitudinal field experiment, including a wait list control group and an already established PI programme (i.e., gratitude programme) for comparison (three-armed randomized controlled trial; n = 303, N_male = 99, N_female = 203, M_age = 41.16, SD = 12.26). Repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) supported that on average, participants of the gratitude programme and the PERMA-based programme reported significant increases in employee well-being after the intervention, as compared to no increases in the wait list control group. The significant increases yielded small effect sizes for general subjective well-being and medium effect sizes for work-related subjective well-being. Post-hoc analyses controlling for baseline well-being also supported the efficacy of the PIs. Contrary to the prediction of the PERMA-based programme’s superiority, participants of both online PI programmes reported similar gains in employee well-being components. Practical implications, limitations, and future research are discussed.     

The effects of emotion on younger and older adults’ monitoring of learning

Age-related differences in memory monitoring appear when people learn emotional words. Namely, younger adults’ judgments of learning (JOLs) are higher for positive than neutral words, whereas older adults’ JOLs do not discriminate between positive versus neutral words. In two experiments, we evaluated whether this age-related difference extends to learning positive versus neutral pictures. We also evaluated the contribution of two dimensions of emotion that may impact younger and older adults’ JOLs: valence and arousal. Younger and older adults studied pictures that were positive or neutral and either high or low in arousal. Participants made immediate JOLs and completed memory tests. In both experiments, the magnitude of older adults’ JOLs was influenced by emotion, and both younger and older adults demonstrated an emotional salience effect on JOLs. As important, the magnitude of participants’ JOLs was influenced by valence, and not arousal. Emotional salience effects were also evident on participants’ free recall, and older adults recalled as many pictures as did younger adults. Taken together, these data suggest that older adults do not have a monitoring deficit when learning positive (vs. neutral) pictures and that emotional salience effects on younger and older adults’ JOLs are produced more by valence than by arousal.     

Visual long-term memory is not unitary: Flexible storage of visual information as features or objects as a function of affect

Research has shown that observers store surprisingly highly detailed long-term memory representations of visual objects after only a single viewing. However, the nature of these representations is currently not well understood. In particular, it may be that the nature of such memory representations is not unitary but reflects the flexible operating of two separate memory subsystems: a feature-based subsystem that stores visual experiences in the form of independent features, and an object-based subsystem that stores visual experiences in the form of coherent objects. Such an assumption is usually difficult to test, because overt memory responses reflect the joint output of both systems. Therefore, to disentangle the two systems, we (1) manipulated the affective state of observers (negative vs. positive) during initial object perception, to introduce systematic variance in the way that visual experiences are stored, and (2) measured both the electrophysiological activity at encoding (via electroencephalography) and later feature memory performance for the objects. The results showed that the nature of stored memory representations varied qualitatively as a function of affective state. Negative affect promoted the independent storage of object features, driven by preattentive brain activities (feature-based memory representations), whereas positive affect promoted the dependent storage of object features, driven by attention-related brain activities (object-based memory representations). Taken together, these findings suggest that visual long-term memory is not a unitary phenomenon. Instead, incoming information can be stored flexibly by means of two qualitatively different long-term memory subsystems, based on the requirements of the current situation.     

Referate und diskussionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Nachruf auf Moritz Schlick

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Hans Hahn

Ohne Zusammenfassung