Psychophysiological reactivity to sleep-related emotional stimuli in primary insomnia

The present study examined psychophysiological reactivity to emotional stimuli related and non-related to sleep in people with primary insomnia (PPI) and in good sleepers (GS). Twenty-one PPI and 18 GS were presented with five blocks of neutral, negative, positive, sleep-related negative and sleep-related positive pictures. During the presentation of the pictures, facial electromyography (EMG) of the corrugator and the zygomatic muscles, heart rate (HR) and cardiac vagal tone (CVT) were recorded. Subjective ratings of the stimuli were also collected. We found that only PPI exhibited greater inhibition of the corrugator activity in response to sleep-related positive stimuli compared to the other blocks of stimuli. Furthermore, PPI rated the sleep-related negative stimuli as more unpleasant and arousing and showed higher CVT in response to all stimuli as compared to GS. Results were interpreted as indicating that PPI exhibit craving for sleep-related positive stimuli, and also hyper-arousability in response to sleep-related negative stimuli, as compared to GS. Our results suggest that psychological treatment of insomnia could benefit by the inclusion of strategies dealing with emotional processes linked with sleep processes.     

Passive leadership,role stressors,and affective organizational commitment: A time-lagged study among health care employees

IntroductionThis study examines the relationships of passive leadership and role stressors to affective organizational commitment among hospital employees.ObjectiveThis study's objective was to understand the mediating effect of role stressors (conflict, overload, and ambiguity) in the relation between passive leadership and affective organizational commitment.MethodWe used a structural equation modeling approach on a sample of 185 hospital employees and a time-lagged design in which predictor and mediators were assessed at Time 1 and affective organizational commitment was obtained 3 years later.ResultsFindings revealed that passive leadership was positively related to all three role stressors and that role ambiguity fully mediated a negative relationship between passive leadership and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, the relationship between passive leadership and role conflict was stronger when role overload was high.ConclusionThis study suggests organizations should strive to limit the emergence of passive leadership behaviors among supervisors due to their detrimental effects on the long-term development of affective commitment via role ambiguity.     

Nervous Instability and Genius: Military and Political Leaders

Participants (N = 106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.     

It's My Campaign I'll Cry if I Want to: How and When Campaigns Use Emotional Appeals

Recent research in the area of campaign advertising suggests that emotional appeals can influence political attitudes, electoral choices and decision‐making processes. Yet is there any evidence that candidates use emotional appeals strategically during campaigns? Is there a pattern to their use? For instance, are fear appeals used primarily late in the campaign by trailing candidates in order to get voters to rethink their choices? And are enthusiasm appeals used more commonly early on in order to shore up a candidate's base? We use affective intelligence theory—and supplement it with the idea of a voter backlash—to generate expectations about when candidates use certain emotional appeals (namely, anger, fear, enthusiasm, and pride) and which types of candidates are most likely to do so. We then test these ideas using campaign advertising data from several U.S. Senate races from 2004. Our research thus provides a link between research on campaign decision making—here the decision to “go emotional”—and research focusing on the effects of emotional appeals on voters.     

Antecedents and Consequences of Real-Time Affective Reactions at Work

Based partly on Weiss and Cropanzano's (H. M. Weiss & R. Cropanzano, 1996) Affective Events Theory, hypotheses were stated about likely antecedents and consequences of positive and negative real-time affective reactions at work. Somewhat different antecedents and consequences were predicted for positive as opposed to negative affective reactions. Affective reactions were operationalized as the average of up to 50 reports of momentary positive and negative feelings collected at work over a 2-week period. Structural equation analyses suggest that the data are consistent with the theoretical model proposed. As expected, job characteristics and positive dispositional affectivity predict positive affective reactions, role conflict and negative affectivity predict negative affective reactions, positive affective reactions predict affective commitment and helping behavior, and intention to leave is predicted by attitudes rather than by affective reactions. The results are consistent with Affective Events Theory as well as with 2-domain models that propose different causes and consequences of positive versus negative affect.     

Blind spots in the search for happiness: Implicit attitudes and nonverbal leakage predict affective forecasting errors

We investigated implicit knowledge and affective forecasting, reasoning that although conscious evaluations are available to people when predicting their future emotional responses, nonconscious evaluations are not. However, these automatically-activated evaluations should contribute to in-the-moment emotional experiences, and thus they should account for misforecasts (i.e., discrepancies between affective forecasts and actual experiences). We conducted two studies to explore affective misforecasts, using food items as stimuli. In Study 1, participants' implicit attitudes (but not their explicit attitudes) predicted misforecasts of food enjoyment, supporting the role of nonconscious evaluations in affective forecasting errors. In Study 2, we examined participants' facial expressions (another index of nonconscious evaluation) upon the presentation of food items, and we found that these nonverbal behaviors predicted affective misforecasts as well. In sum, although nonconscious evaluations are unavailable when anticipating the future, they may contribute to one's in-the-moment experiences and thus serve as blind spots in affective forecasting.     

汉语普通话声调T2-T4范畴化感知的老化效应

本研究考察了50~80岁说普通话的中老年人对普通话声调T2—T4的范畴化感知表现,探究影响声调范畴化感知老化的因素。采用经典范畴感知范式。结果显示,(1)中老年组所有年龄段(50~60岁、60~70岁、70~80岁)的范畴边界宽度都显著大于年轻组,但中老年组间差异不显著。(2)中老年人范畴边界宽度与记忆广度测试得分呈显著负相关,而与年龄的相关性不显著。(3)和年轻组相比,中老年组范畴内识别函数的斜率差异显著,而范畴间差异不显著。结果表明,中老年人声调感知范畴化程度下降,音系层面的加工能力发生衰退,记忆广度的衰退与声调范畴化感知老年化之间存在关联。此外,50到80岁间,年龄不会直接影响声调感知范畴化程度。     

汉语普通话声调感知的老年化效应：来自ERP的证据

研究考察汉语普通话老年人前注意阶段声调感知状况,探究是否存在领域特殊的老年化。运用事件相关电位技术,采用被动oddball范式诱发MMN回应,控制领域一般性因素的影响。结果显示涉及范畴变化的声调和非语音音调诱发MMN强度衰减,不涉及范畴变化的声调诱发MMN强度未衰退。研究结果表明在前注意阶段,在特定汉语普通话声调范畴知识加工能力上存在领域特殊的衰退,而不涉及母语音位知识的声调的感知存在领域特殊的一定程度的保留,这一保留与时间维度上补偿机制的调用有关。受补偿机制调节,语言加工呈现出衰退或保留等不同的老年化进程。     

中国人人际情感的差序格局关系:来自EAST的证据

本研究采用外部情感西蒙任务(EAST),以36名大学生为被试对自我词及亲人、熟人、陌生人三种人际关系词与积极情感和消极情感的关系进行探究,从而检验个体对自我和不同人际关系对象的情感是否存在差序格局的表现形式。结果显示,在EAST中,对自我词和亲人词作积极反应比作消极反应时间更短;对陌生人词作消极反应比作积极反应时间更短;对熟人词作积极反应和消极反应的时间差异不明显。并且,自我词的EAST效应值最大,接着依次是亲人词和熟人词;陌生人词的EAST效应值为负值。表明了在个体的认知图式中,对自我、亲人持有积极的情感,而对陌生人持有消极的情感,对熟人情感偏向不明显;且不同人际关系在情感的联结强度上表现出差序格局的形式。     

发音人和语境变异与声调知觉

本文用Garner快速分类法研究了发音人规范化和语境补偿过程与声调知觉的关系。得到的主要结果是:(1)发音人变化对声调识别产生了显著的Gar-ner干扰;声调变化对男女声判别产生了同样的十扰。(2)语境变化对声调识别也产生了显著的Garner干扰。按照Garner方法的假设,这说明发音人规范化和语境变异补偿与声调识别之问是相互联系和相互影响的。(3)虽然发音人和语境同时变化引起的声调识别反应时延长约等于它们单独变化时反应时延长量之和,但正确率下降远大于单独变化时下降量之和。说明发音人和语境变异对声调识别的干扰不是独立的,它们之间存在相互作用。这种作用增加了声调识别的难度。