Life History and System Justification: Higher Individual Fertility and Lower Provincial Life Expectancy Correlate With Stronger Progovernment Attitudes in China

System justification theory posits that people sometimes legitimize current social arrangements at their own cost. Indeed, research showed that lower socioeconomic status (SES) correlates with stronger progovernment attitudes, but this correlation does not appear reliable. This research proposes a different class of correlates of progovernment attitudes drawing on life history (LH) theory. People who pursue a faster LH strategy (e.g., reproducing earlier and in larger quantities) should be more progovernment because their lower resource‐accruing potential makes them more dependent on government support (e.g., public services and social welfare) to raise a large family. Supporting this hypothesis, Chinese respondents’ individual fertility positively correlated with confidence in government (Study 1) and partially mediated the negative correlation between provincial life expectancy and support of censoring government criticisms (Study 2). These findings suggest an alternative explanation to some of the correlations between SES and progovernment attitudes, provide a new mechanism of system justification, and add to the growing body of work on LH strategy and political psychology.     

Trait self-control and beliefs about the utility of emotions for initiatory and inhibitory self-control

How do people with high trait self-control achieve their success? This research aimed to investigate beliefs about emotion utility as a potential mechanism. Specifically, because beliefs about the utility of emotions predict emotion regulation and successful performance, we investigate the hypothesis that trait self-control influences beliefs about the utility of emotions for self-control. Two preregistered studies examined whether beliefs about the utility of emotions in everyday self-control situations varied depending on the person (trait self-control) and the situation (initiatory or inhibitory self-control). Our key finding was that people considered positive emotions more useful for self-control than negative emotions. This effect was also moderated by situational and individual factors, such that positive emotions were considered especially useful by participants with high trait self-control and in situations requiring initiatory self-control (with the opposite effect for negative emotions). This research suggests a potential role for instrumental emotion regulation in self-control success.     

The processing of task-irrelevant emotion and colour in the Approach-Avoidance Task

When processing information about human faces, we have to integrate different sources of information like skin colour and emotional expression. In 3 experiments, we investigated how these features are processed in a top-down manner when task instructions determine the relevance of features, and in a bottom-up manner when the stimulus features themselves determine process priority. In Experiment 1, participants learned to respond with approach-avoidance movements to faces that presented both emotion and colour features (e.g. happy faces printed in greyscale). For each participant, only one of these two features was task-relevant while the other one could be ignored. In contrast to our predictions, we found better learning of task-irrelevant colour when emotion was task-relevant than vice versa. Experiment 2 showed that the learning of task-irrelevant emotional information was improved in general when participants’ awareness was increased by adding NoGo-trials. Experiment 3 replicated these results for faces and emotional words. We conclude that during the processing of faces, both bottom-up and top-down processes are involved, such that task instructions and feature characteristics play a role. Ecologically significant features like emotions are not necessarily processed with high priority. The findings are discussed in the light of theories of attention and cognitive biases.     

Direct and indirect associations of cognitive reappraisal and suppression with disease biomarkers

Objective: Habitual use of emotion regulation strategies may influence physical health. We examined whether the tendencies to employ cognitive reappraisal and suppression were associated with health biomarkers, and whether stress and sleep quality mediated these associations. Design & main outcome measures: Using data from the Biomarkers substudy (n?=?1255) of the national Midlife in the U.S. Study, we tested the hypothesis that there would be indirect, but not direct, associations of cognitive reappraisal and suppression to biomarker indicators of multisystem physiological dysregulation, that is, allostatic load (AL). We computed the proportion of biomarkers in the highest risk quartile within seven biological systems, and summed these scores to compute AL. Associations with the biological systems were also examined separately.Results: Neither reappraisal nor suppression was directly associated with AL or biomarker function in the seven biological systems. Suppression was indirectly associated with higher AL and greater dysregulation in the inflammatory, metabolic, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal systems via its relations to stress and sleep, p?<?0.05. Reappraisal was indirectly associated with lower AL and less metabolic and inflammatory dysregulation, ps<0.05.Conclusions: Suppression and reappraisal may have different downstream health effects via stress, sleep, and biomarker expression, suggesting malleable emotion regulation strategies may be an important intervention target.     

Developmental trajectories of childhood anxiety: Identifying continuity and change in anxious emotion

This paper outlines a way for thinking about continuity and change in childhood anxiety symptoms. Considerations for a model of continuity and change in anxious emotion are discussed first. Then, a perspective which may resolve inconsistencies across studies on the stability of childhood anxiety problems overtime is presented. The perspective views dysregulation of the anxiety response system and distress/negative affect as the core primary and necessary features of maladaptive anxious emotion and views the disorder-specific symptoms (generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, separation anxiety, panic disorder, and simple phobia) as secondary characteristics of maladaptive anxious emotion. The perspective emphasizes ordered complexity in the developmental expression of anxious emotion, and delineates expectations for continuity and change in the features of anxious emotion by describing major normative trajectories across childhood and positing multiple sub-trajectories.     

A neurobehavioral investigation into judgmental processes: effect of bilateral motor behaviors

Two experiments were conducted in order to examine how different bilateral motor activations of the approach and avoidance motivational systems influenced participants' evaluations of valenced stimuli (figurative expressions and pictures of everyday situations). The first Study (Study 1) showed that participants judged valenced expressions according to the motor congruence model put forward by Cretenet and Dru (2004). This may depend on the compatibility of the valenced stimuli with the congruency of the bilateral motor behaviors that involved two unilateral motor behaviors that are congruent to each other. These results were duplicated in Study 2 with the use of valenced pictures taken from the International Affective Picture System. The overall results shed new light on the influence of motor behaviors on judgments, by determining the motor system as operative in evaluative mechanisms, and not merely a simple executive function of higher cognitive processes.     

Autobiographical memory as a dynamic process: Autobiographical memory mediates basic tendencies and characteristic adaptations

Two studies tested whether autobiographical memory content and phenomenology mediate two consistent findings in the personality literature: Neuroticism and subjective health and Conscientiousness and achievement striving. In Study 1, participants (N = 162) retrieved and rated four memories and completed measures of Neuroticism and subjective health. In Study 2, participants (N = 345) retrieved and rated two memories and completed measures of Conscientiousness and achievement goals and study strategies. In both studies, memory content and phenomenology mediated the relations between personality and health and achievement in expected ways. For example, participants high in Neuroticism reported more somatic complaints because their memories were saturated with negative affective content. Discussion focuses on the utility of integrating trait and social–cognitive approaches to personality.     

高低幸福感人群的负情绪特点：生理和表情的依据

为了检测高、低幸福感人群的负情绪反应诸多特点, 研究在实验室诱发厌恶情绪, 以比较高、低幸福组在情绪主观报告、生理、表情、恢复力及调节策略等方面的差异。组间比较结果显示：(1)负情绪情境下, 低幸福组生理唤醒(HR和GSR)较强, 有较多表情抑制; 高幸福组有更多表情行为, 恢复较快; (2)高幸福组有较强的认知再评习惯。研究提示, 逆境中, 高幸福感人群将有较强的情绪表达与恢复力, 低幸福感人群则保留较强的情绪生理动力。     

网络环境下第三方评论对冲动购买意愿的影响机制：以产品类别和评论员级别为调节变量

采用问卷调查和实验研究的方法, 构建了以情感为中介的第三方正面评论与网络消费者冲动购买意愿的关系模型, 并检验了产品类别和评论员级别对该模型的调节效应。研究结果表明：第三方评论的好评度、好评数、时效性直接正向影响冲动购买意愿; 好评度以快乐和唤起情感为中介、好评数以快乐情感为中介间接正向影响冲动购买意愿; 消费者购买低涉入度(VS：高涉入度)产品和阅读高级(VS：初级)评论员发布的评论时, 第三方正面评论对冲动购买意愿的影响更强。     

父母行为控制、心理控制与青少年早期攻击和社会退缩的关系

考察父母行为和心理控制与青少年早期攻击和社会退缩有无特异性联系、是否存在非线性关系、是否以情绪调节策略(认知重评和表达抑制)作为中介。694名青少年(平均年龄13.67岁)完成了父母控制问卷、情绪调节量表、青少年攻击以及社会退缩量表。结果表明:(1)行为控制和心理控制均与两类结果有关,未表现出"一对一"的特异性联系;(2)行为控制与两类结果呈倒U型曲线关系,心理控制与两类结果呈线性关系;(3)认知重评在心理控制与攻击之间具有部分中介作用,表达抑制在心理控制与社会退缩之间具有部分中介作用。