Effects of attentional direction, age, and coping style on cold-pressor pain in children

This study assessed the relative efficacy of two imagery-based attentional strategies for modifying pain experience in children. Children aged 7-14 years (n = 120) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: distraction, sensory-focussing or control (no imagery). The distraction condition prompted children to focus their attention externally; the sensory-focussing condition prompted the child to focus internally on physical sensations. Self-report measures of pain coping style preferences and imagery ability were completed. Children's pain tolerance and perceptions of pain intensity were assessed using a 10 degrees C cold-pressor task. Results showed pain intensity ratings after 1 min were lower for both intervention conditions than for the controls. Younger children (7-9 years) showed higher pain tolerance in the distraction condition than in the sensory-focussing condition, whereas both interventions were equally effective for older children (10-14 years). Among older children, coping style interacted with the intervention type: in the sensory-focussing condition, pain tolerance was negatively associated with self-reported distraction-based coping style, whereas in the distraction condition this association was positive. The results are interpreted with reference to current models of attention. The implications for use of attentional strategies in helping children to cope with clinical pain are discussed.     

Feeling Hopeful Inspires Support for Social Change

Hope is an emotion that has been implicated in social change efforts, yet little research has examined whether feeling hopeful actually motivates support for social change. Study 1 (N = 274) confirmed that hope is associated with greater support for social change in two countries with different political contexts. Study 2 (N = 165) revealed that hope predicts support for social change over and above other emotions often investigated in collective action research. Study 3 (N = 100) replicated this finding using a hope scale and showed the effect occurs independent of positive mood. Study 4 (N = 58) demonstrated experimentally that hope motivates support for social change. In all four studies, the effect of hope was mediated by perceived efficacy to achieve social equality. This research confirms the motivating potential of hope and illustrates the power of this emotion in generating social change.     

The anatomy of adolescents’ emotional engagement in schoolwork

This study explores the complexity of emotionally engaging schoolwork among students by analysing the interrelation between the affective and the social dimensions of emotional engagement. The data were collected from 78 Finnish sixth-grade (aged 12–13 years) and 89 eighth-grade (aged 14–15 years) students using picture tasks. The results show that the main elements of the affective dimension are the valuing of schoolwork and the enjoyment of learning, and the main element of the social dimension is a sense of belonging in terms of social cohesion and the support experienced by students. Furthermore, the results suggest that emotional engagement has internal dynamics: the affective and social dimension influence each other, regulating the students’ sense of emotional engagement. Consequently, neither of the dimensions alone result in strong, balanced emotional engagement. In addition, the results show that the relation between the affective and social dimension was more unbalanced in the peer interaction than in the teacher–student interaction at both grade levels. This suggests that tensions in the peer interaction at school make for a more complicated context in terms of emotional engagement.     

A Typology of Ideological Attitudes Towards Social Solidarity and Social Control

Research on ideological attitudes has identified two main dimensions that refer to two fundamental features of group organization: social solidarity and social control. In response to prior research that has studied their relationship mainly from a correlational perspective, this paper introduces a social reality model based on psychological functionality of ideological attitudes. Social position variables (education, income and material vulnerability) and insecurity variables (fear of crime and distrust) are used to predict the interplay between ideological attitudes towards social solidarity and social control. Using K‐means cluster analysis, a typology with four patterns of support for solidarity and control (‘socials’, ‘repressives’, ‘minimalists’ and ‘social‐repressives’) was created, on the basis of representative survey data for the UK, France and Germany (N = 7034). Results from logistic regression analyses show that the proposed social reality model explains membership in typology categories, with similar results across the three countries. Overall, the model underscores the social origins of ideological attitudes as functional responses to perceived social reality. The paper illustrates how the social psychological study of ideological attitudes may be enriched by a typological approach that examines patterns of attitudes rather than single dimensions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emotional activation in the first and second language

Late Finnish–English bilinguals were presented with neutral, positive, negative and taboo words in a modified Stroop paradigm in both Finnish and English. Significant interference from negative and taboo words compared to neutral words was found in both languages, whereas positive words were not found to differ significantly from neutral words. Furthermore, no differences in the size of the interference were present between languages. This suggests that, for late bilinguals with good knowledge of their second language, the first (L1) and second (L2) language are equally capable of activating the emotional response to word stimuli representing threat, and thus interfering with the cognitive processes involved in responding to colour. This effect was equivalent for negative and taboo words.