Emotion perception explains age-related differences in the perception of social gaffes

Young (<36 years) and older (>59) adults viewed videos in which the same individual committed a faux pas, or acted appropriately, toward his coworkers. Older participants did not discriminate appropriate and inappropriate behaviors as well as young participants. Older participants also scored lower than young participants on an extensive battery of emotion recognition tests, and emotion performance fully mediated age differences in faux pas discrimination. The results provide further evidence for the role of emotion perception in a range of important social deficits.     

The Political Relevance of Emotions: “Reassessing” Revisited

Ladd and Lenz (2008 ) question a central claim of affective intelligence theory (AIT), namely that anxiety affects political judgments indirectly by reducing the role of predispositions and increasing the role of contemporary information. They claim that alternative hypotheses, especially the notion that emotions are simply rationalizations of political preferences, better explain the role of emotion in politics. Their ultimate conclusions, however, rest on an overly narrow view of both theory and evidence. Even if one accepts Ladd and Lenz's reanalysis of survey data, there is insufficient evidence to cast aside either AIT or the hypothesis that anxiety affects the mode of political judgment. AIT explains a broad range of political relationships that are unchallenged by the reassessment and which cannot be explained by the offered alternatives. Moreover, numerous experimental studies reject the alternative explanations in favor of an exogenous, often interactive role for anxiety. AIT will surely require amendment, if not abandonment, someday. Competing theories of emotion already exist and, unlike the alternative championed by Ladd and Lenz, these theories too suggest a meaningful role for emotion in political judgment and behavior. For now, given all of the research to date, AIT is a robust competitor, scarcely in need of being “salvaged.” Burgeoning research on the political relevance of emotions will benefit from further debates, replications, and extensions, as long as new claims and evidence are put in proper perspective.     

Levinas: thinking least about death—contra heidegger

Detailed exposition of the nine layers of signification of human mortality according to Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological and ethical account of the meaning and role of death for the embodied human subject and its relations to other persons. Critical contrast to Martin Heidegger’s alternative and hitherto more influential phenomenological-ontological conception, elaborated in Being and Time (1927), of mortality as Dasein’s anxious and revelatory being-toward-death. An earlier version of this paper, relating Levinas to Spinoza rather than to Heidegger, entitled “Levinas: Thinking Least about Death—Contra Spinoza,” was presented on January 19, 2006, at an international centennial conference on Levinas held at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. The present paper was delivered as a lecture at St. John’s College, Sante Fe, New Mexico, on January 27, 2006.     

Positive Affect and Health

ABSTRACT— Negative affective styles such as anxiety, depression, and hostility have long been accepted as predictors of increased risk for illness and mortality. In contrast, positive affective styles have been relatively ignored in the health literature. Here we highlight consistent patterns of research associating trait positive affect (PA) and physical health. The evidence we review suggests an association of trait PA and lower morbidity and decreased symptoms and pain. PA is also associated with increased longevity among community-dwelling elderly. The association of PA and survival among those with serious illness is less clear and suggests the possibility that PA may be harmful in some situations. We conclude by raising conceptual and methodological reservations about this literature and suggesting directions for future research.     

How I learned to stop fearing: Ideological differences in choice of reappraisal content

In down-regulating intergroup fear, an intense emotion common to intractable intergroup conflicts, people may employ various fear-reducing appraisals. Adopting a motivated reasoning perspective, we posited that the contents of individuals’ ideological beliefs influence the contents they employ to down-regulate fear, with rightists preferring ingroup-empowering content and leftists preferring outgroup-weakening content. In Study 1, rightists (vs. leftists) reported greater use of ingroup-empowering reappraisal to down-regulate fear, but no differences emerged in the use of outgroup-weakening reappraisal. Study 2 manipulated the contents’ perceived instrumentality in reducing fear, to examine this as an alternative mechanism. Perceived instrumentality influenced participants’ behavioral content preferences ahead of a fear induction, but the manipulation did not mitigate the right-left differences in ingroup-empowering reappraisal use once participants were confronted with the stimulus, replicating Study 1. Study 3 extended these findings, identifying ideological differences in two additional fear-reappraisal themes and in the attitudinal outcomes of fear regulation.     

Strengthening and Expanding Child Services in Low Resource Communities: The Role of Task‐Shifting and Just‐in‐Time Training

In the United States, the demand for child mental health services is increasing, while the supply is limited by workforce shortages. These shortages are unlikely to be corrected without significant structural changes in how mental health services are provided. One strategy for bridging this gap is task‐shifting, defined as a process by which services that are typically delivered by professionals are moved to individuals with less extensive qualifications or training. Although task‐shifting can increase the size of the workforce, there are challenges related to training new workers. In this paper, we propose Just‐In‐Time Training (JITT) as one strategy for improving task‐shifting efforts. We define JITT as on‐demand training experiences that only include what is necessary, when it is necessary, to promote competent service delivery. We offer a proof of concept from our own work shifting counseling and academic support tasks from school mental health professionals to pre‐baccalaureate mentors, citing lessons learned during our iterative process of JITT development. We conclude with a series of key considerations for scaling up the pairing of task‐shifting and JITT, including expanding the science of JITT and anticipating how task‐shifting and JITT would work within the context of dynamic mental health service systems.     

Differential Determinants of Young Adult Substance Use and High‐Risk Sexual Behavior1

This investigation evaluated how personality traits, self‐efficacy, and outcome expectancies differentially relate to young adult substance use and high‐risk sex. Experiments I (N= 481) and 2 (N= 73) report the development of a new questionnaire to assess self‐efficacy for substance use and sexual behavior. Experiment 3 (N= 375) tested self‐efficacy, outcome expectancies, and trait measures of social conformity and sensation seeking as correlates of substance use and high‐risk sex. Using structural equation modeling, cross‐sectional analyses revealed that positive outcome expectancies had the largest association with substance use, whereas self‐efficacy had the largest association with sexual behavior. Further, personality traits were related to substance use and sexual behavior indirectly through outcome expectancies, with social conformity also having a direct effect on behavior. When examined longitudinally, past alcohol and drug use served as the final pathway by which expectancies and personality impacted substance use, whereas past behavior, self‐efficacy, and social conformity all contributed to high‐risk sex. Results support the utility of different models for explaining, and possibly preventing, young adult substance use and high‐risk sex.     

Grace, Doubt, and Evil: The Constructive Task Of Reformation Theology

The Lutheran vocation is to be a friend of grace; and since the 16th century Lutheran systematic theology has built upon a foundation of grace. Two apparent barriers to grace need addressing. First, doubt in the form of agnosticism and atheism provides a metaphysical argument against God's existence. Second, evil and suffering provide a moral argument against God's existence. From a Lutheran point of view the question of God's graciousness takes precedence over God's existence.