The Structure of Emotion

ABSTRACT— One common point of debate in the study of emotion is whether the basic, irreducible elements of emotional life are discrete emotion categories, such as anger , fear , sadness , and so on, or dimensions such as approach and avoidance . Resolving this debate will identify the basic building blocks of emotional life that are the most appropriate targets of scientific inquiry. In this paper, we briefly review meta-analytic work on the neuroimaging of emotion and examine its potential for identifying "natural kinds" of emotion in the brain. We outline criteria for identifying such natural kinds, summarize the evidence to date on category and dimensional approaches, and suggest ways in which neuroimaging studies could more directly address fundamental questions about the nature of emotion.     

The Neural Bases of Placebo Effects in Pain

Abstract— Placebo effects are beneficial effects of treatment caused not by the biological action of the treatment but by one's response to the treatment process itself. One possible mechanism of placebo treatments is that they create positive expectations, which change one's appraisal of the situation and may thereby shape sensory and emotional processing. Recent brain-imaging evidence suggests that placebo-induced expectations of analgesia increase activity in the prefrontal cortex in anticipation of pain and decrease the brain's response to painful stimulation. These findings suggest that placebo treatments can alter experience, not just alter what participants are willing to report about pain. To the extent that they involve neural systems mediating expectancy and appraisal, placebo effects in pain may share common circuitry with placebo effects in depression, Parkinson's disease, and other disorders.     

Adolescent Suicide Attempters: What Predicts Future Suicidal Acts?

Predictors for repetition of suicide attempts were evaluated among 92 adolescent suicide attempters 9 years after an index suicide attempt (90% females). Five were dead, two by suicide. Thirty-one (42%) of 73 had repeated a suicide attempt. In multiple Cox regression analysis, four factors had an independent predictive effect: comorbid disorders, hopelessness, having ever received treatment for mental or behavior problems, and having a father exerting control without affection. Prediction on an individual level was difficult. Since almost half repeated a suicidal act, the best strategy is to evaluate all adolescent suicide attempters thoroughly and provide treatment as needed.     

Neuroimaging studies of working memory:

We performed meta-analyses on 60 neuroimaging (PET and fMRI) studies of working memory (WM), considering three types of storage material (spatial, verbal, and object), three types of executive function (continuous updating of WM, memory for temporal order, and manipulation of information in WM), and interactions between material and executive function. Analyses of material type showed the expected dorsal-ventral dissociation between spatial and nonspatial storage in the posterior cortex, but not in the frontal cortex. Some support was found for left frontal dominance in verbal WM, but only for tasks with low executive demand. Executive demand increased right lateralization in the frontal cortex for spatial WM. Tasks requiring executive processing generally produce more dorsal frontal activations than do storage-only tasks, but not all executive processes show this pattern. Brodmann’s areas (BAs) 6, 8, and 9, in the superior frontal cortex, respond most when WM must be continuously updated and when memory for temporal order must be maintained. Right BAs 10 and 47, in the ventral frontal cortex, respond more frequently with demand for manipulation (including dual-task requirements or mental operations). BA 7, in the posterior parietal cortex, is involved in all types of executive function. Finally, we consider a potential fourth executive function: selective attention to features of a stimulus to be stored in WM, which leads to increased probability of activating the medial prefrontal cortex (BA 32) in storage tasks.     

The N-Effect: More Competitors, Less Competition

ABSTRACT— This article introduces the N-effect —the discovery that increasing the number of competitors ( N ) can decrease competitive motivation. Studies 1a and 1b found evidence that average test scores (e.g., SAT scores) fall as the average number of test takers at test-taking venues increases. Study 2 found that individuals trying to finish an easy quiz among the top 20% in terms of speed finished significantly faster if they believed they were competing in a pool of 10 rather than 100 other people. Study 3 showed that the N-effect is strong among individuals high in social-comparison orientation and weak among those low in social-comparison orientation. Study 4 directly linked the N-effect to social comparison, ruling out ratio bias as an explanation of our results and finding that social comparison becomes less important as N increases. Finally, Study 5 found that the N-effect is mediated by social comparison. Limitations, future directions, and implications are discussed.     

Rankings,standards, and competition: Task vs. scale comparisons

Research showing how upward social comparison breeds competitive behavior has so far conflated local comparisons in task performance (e.g. a test score) with comparisons on a more general scale (i.e. an underlying skill). Using a ranking methodology ( Garcia, Tor, & Gonzalez, 2006) to separate task and scale comparisons, Studies 1–2 reveal that an upward comparison on the scale (e.g. being surpassed in rank), rather than in the mere task (e.g., being outperformed), is necessary to generate competition among rivals proximate to a standard (e.g. ranked #3 vs. 4, near “the top”); rivals far from a standard (e.g. ranked #203 vs. 204), on the other hand, still tend to cooperate. Study 3 illustrates this finding with player trades in Major League Baseball. Study 4 further shows how an implicit scale comparison, instead of the commonly assumed explicit task comparison, may account for those classical competition findings in the literature. Study 5 then reveals how scale ranking becomes all important in the proximity of a standard, leading rivals to tolerate even an upward scale comparison to increase their proximity to the standard. Implications for the increasingly popular “forced ranking” management systems (e.g., at General Electric) are also discussed.     

Focusing failures in competitive environments: explaining decision errors in the Monty Hall game,the Acquiring a Company problem,and multiparty ultimatums

This paper offers a unifying conceptual explanation for failures in competitive decision making across three seemingly unrelated tasks: the Monty Hall game (Nalebuff, 1987), the Acquiring a Company problem (Samuelson & Bazerman, 1985), and multiparty ultimatums (Messick, Moore, & Bazerman, 1997). We argue that the failures observed in these three tasks have a common root. Specifically, due to a limited focus of attention, competitive decision makers fail properly to consider all of the information needed to solve the problem correctly. Using protocol analyses, we show that competitive decision makers tend to focus on their own goals, often to the exclusion of the decisions of the other parties, the rules of the game, and the interaction among the parties in light of these rules. In addition, we show that the failure to consider these effects explains common decision failures across all three games. Finally, we suggest that this systematic focusing error in competitive contexts can serve to explain and improve our understanding of many additional, seemingly disparate, competitive decision‐making failures. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual differences in multiple types of shifting attention

Many researchers consider costs in shifting attention and mental set to reflect a basic ability to use top-down goal information to guide action. Although switch costs have been used as measures of individuals' executive function, whether common abilities underlie task set switching across different types of shifting tasks has not been well studied. In 249 participants, we studied whether switch costs in a novel two-choice reaction time task were correlated across variations in two variables: thelocus of representation (stimuli were either perceptually available or stored in working memory [WM]) and which of two judgment tasks was performed. Switch costs were asymmetrical, in that it was easier to switch to the easier judgment, and were related to overall and relative processing speed: Switch costs were higher when the task was more difficult. These factors should be accounted for when one is measuring individual differences in switch costs. After controlling for these effects, we found evidence for a common ability underlying switch costs that involved both task set preparation and response selection; however, residual shift costs, which involve only response selection, were uncorrelated across tasks. Correlations among switch costs were substantially higher within task type (e.g., correlations of WM shifting tasks with other WM shifting tasks and of perceptual tasks with perceptual ones), suggesting that there are also processes unique to switching within WM and switching among visible stimuli.