Event-related brain potentials reveal differences in emotional processing in alexithymia

ABSTRACT

The inability to recognise and describe emotions in the self is known as Alexithymia. In the present study we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the locus of processing emotional differences in alexithymia. We tested men, both those scoring high (score?>?61) and controls who scored low (score?<?51) on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 on an emotional face discrimination task. We assessed three ERP components: P1 (an index of early perceptual processing), N170 (an index of early facial processing) and P3 (an index of late attentional suppression). While controls showed a stronger P3 effect for angry faces relative to happy and neutral faces, Alexithymic men showed no significant differences in P3 across emotions. Alexithymic men showed delayed P1 and N170 amplitudes compared to controls. These results suggest that the locus of processing differences between alexithymic men and controls occur both early in perceptual processing and later in conscious processing.     

Psychological contract breach,affective commitment to organization and supervisor,and newcomer adjustment: A three-wave moderated mediation model

This study examines the relationship of psychological contract breach to newcomer adjustment outcomes using affective commitments to organizations and supervisors as mediators and also looks at the moderating role of affective commitment to supervisors. Drawing from data collected at three points in time among a sample of newcomers (N = 224), we found that Time 2 affective organizational commitment mediated a positive relationship between Time 1 psychological contract breach and Time 3 turnover intention and emotional exhaustion. Moreover, affective commitment to supervisors interacted with organizational commitment such that the latter was more negatively related to Time 3 outcomes at low levels of commitment to supervisors. Similarly, the indirect relationships of psychological contract breach to Time 3 outcomes were stronger and negative at low levels of commitment to supervisors. Affective commitment's role in the psychological contract breach-outcome relationships during the entry period is discussed.     

Great expectations for Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods

In Big Gods (2013), Ara Norenzayan argues that the rise of large-scale societies was made possible by an extension of small-scale religious prosociality, presided over (and enforced) by Big moralizing watchful Gods. While religious prosociality is, of course, a redundant characterization of any small-scale religious group, it is doubtful that its extension can account for the historical emergence of large-scale societies, nor can cooperation be explained as an effect of surveillance. Rather, the archaeological and historical record indicates that such large-scale expansions of human societies are better explained by economic factors, political power, and/or military force. Difficulties with Norenzayan's theory are explored and several alternative theories to his ‘neglect of history’ are suggested.     

Level of emotional awareness in the general French population: Effects of gender,age, and education level

The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) developed by Lane et al. ( 1990 1990) measures the ability of a subject to discriminate his or her own emotional state and that of others. The scale is based on a cognitive‐developmental model in which emotional awareness increases in a similar fashion to intellectual functions. Because studies performed using North American and German populations have demonstrated an effect of age, gender, and level of education on the ability to differentiate emotional states, our study attempts to evaluate whether these factors have the same effects in a general French population. 750 volunteers (506 female, 244 male), who were recruited from three regions of France (Lille, Montpellier, Paris), completed the LEAS. The sample was divided into five age groups and three education levels. The results of the LEAS scores for self and others and the total score showed a difference in the level of emotional awareness for different age groups, by gender and education level. A higher emotional level was observed for younger age groups, suggesting that emotional awareness depends on the cultural context and generational societal teachings. Additionally, the level of emotional awareness was higher in women than in men and lower in individuals with less education. This result might be explained by an educational bias linked to gender and higher education whereby expressive ability is reinforced. In addition, given the high degree of variability in previously observed scores in the French population, we propose a standard based on our French sample.     

Intensity of positive and negative emotions: Explaining the association between personality and depressive symptoms

The aim was to examine to what extent emotional intensity accounted for associations between the Big Five personality dimensions and depressive symptoms. Study 1 tested the model cross-sectionally, using survey data of 266 Dutch social science students. Study 2 experimentally examined how personality dimensions were related to emotional reactivity after exposure to various emotional stimuli. Dutch psychology students (N = 130) reported on their personality and viewed an amusing or sad film clip, after which the change in intensity of experienced positive and negative emotions was assessed. Individuals scoring higher on neuroticism generally experienced more intense negative emotions, through which they experienced a higher level of depressive symptoms. Individuals who were more agreeable experienced a lower level of depressive symptoms indirectly through higher general intensity of positive emotions. More agreeable individuals showed stronger increase in negative emotions and stronger decrease in positive emotions, though after exposure to the sad stimulus only. Although replication is needed, our results offer empirical support for a more taylor-made approach in decreasing nonclinical depressive symptoms taking into account both personality characteristics and emotion regulation.     

The moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between exposure to violence and anxiety and depression

This study investigated the associations among exposure to violence, emotional stability, and psychological symptoms. The moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between exposure to violence and anxiety and depression was examined in a sample of 482 high school students in Hong Kong. Results showed that both witnessing violence and low levels of emotional stability were positively associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Low levels of emotional stability exacerbated the relation between witnessing violence and symptoms of anxiety and depression; the opposite pattern was found among adolescents with high levels of emotional stability. This study sheds light on the role of emotional stability in ameliorating the detrimental effects of witnessing violence on symptoms of anxiety and depression among adolescents. Findings of this study also have implications for the development of emotionally healthy personalities.     

The cognitive regulation of emotions: The role of success versus failure experience and coping dispositions

Attention deployment and generating specific types of cognitions are central cognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation. Two groups of hypotheses make contradicting predictions about the emotion-cognition relationship. The moodcongruency hypothesis expects the emergence of mood-congruent cognitions (i.e., negative mood leads to negative and positive mood to positive cognitions). Similarly, a substantial body of research suggests that negative mood induces selffocus, whereas positive mood elicits an external focus of attention. The moodrepair hypothesis, on the other hand, assumes that persons in a negative mood state summon thoughts incongruent with that state and divert attention away from the self. However, the temporal sequence of cognitions assessed as well as coping dispositions, such as vigilance and cognitive avoidance, may moderate these relationships. Positive and negative emotional states were elicited by exposing the participants to the experience of success or failure in a demanding cognitive task. Cognitions that were present after emotion induction were assessed by means of a thought-listing procedure. For the total sample, results clearly confirmed the moodcongruency hypothesis. Thought order was a critical factor only for changes in self-focus. Thought valence (positive, neutral, negative) as well as self-focus were substantially influenced by coping dispositions.     

There's more to emotion than meets the eye: A processing bias for neutral content in the domain of emotional prosody

Research on emotion processing in the visual modality suggests a processing advantage for emotionally salient stimuli, even at early sensory stages; however, results concerning the auditory correlates are inconsistent. We present two experiments that employed a gating paradigm to investigate emotional prosody. In Experiment 1, participants heard successively building segments of Jabberwocky “sentences” spoken with happy, angry, or neutral intonation. After each segment, participants indicated the emotion conveyed and rated their confidence in their decision. Participants in Experiment 2 also heard Jabberwocky “sentences” in successive increments, with half discriminating happy from neutral prosody, and half discriminating angry from neutral prosody. Participants in both experiments identified neutral prosody more rapidly and accurately than happy or angry prosody. Confidence ratings were greater for neutral sentences, and error patterns also indicated a bias for recognising neutral prosody. Taken together, results suggest that enhanced processing of emotional content may be constrained by stimulus modality.     

Retelling everyday emotional events: Condensation,distancing, and closure

Narratives of emotional experiences are widely assumed to reflect how well the speaker has coped with them. Some cross-sectional studies have suggested that well-being and absence of psychopathology correlate with more elaborate and coherent narratives of negative events. Other studies, on the other hand, suggest that retelling and coping render narratives shorter, more cognitive, and explicitly evaluative. To test this latter hypothesis, 30 young women narrated five events eliciting anger, sadness, anxiety, pride and happiness from the past week, and retold the same events three months later. After three months, narratives contained fewer attempts to solve the complication, and evaluations became more global and impersonal. Negative narratives were framed better and re-evaluated positively. Unexpectedly, narrative clauses did not decrease, nor did evaluations shift from past to present. Ways to better differentiate effects of memory and retelling from mere effects of coping are suggested.     

Where's the impairment: An examination of factors that impact sustained attention following a stressor

This contribution examines the emotional engagement of men and women when reading narrative texts, aiming to see under which textual conditions men and women turn out to be different from or similar to each other in what they think and feel during reception. As part of an experimental mixed-methods study, male and female readers are asked to read either experience-type texts (focusing on inner experiences of characters) or action-type texts (focusing on actions as part of a suspenseful plot) and report their engagement on questionnaire scales and in written protocols. Results show that men and women differ in their engagement when reading action texts and in their emotional affinity to plots. They are highly similar when reading the experience texts, however, and in their affinity to characters. This study underlines that the emotional responses of males and females during reading are highly dependent on (con)textual cues.