The psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina: contextual differences in psychological symptoms, social support, and discrimination

This study tested a contextual model of disaster reaction by examining regional differences in the psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina. A total of 386 individuals participated in this study. All were recruited in the primary areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and included residents of metropolitan New Orleans (Orleans Parish, Louisiana), Greater New Orleans (i.e., Metairie, Kenner, Gretna), and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (i.e., cities along the coast from Waveland to Ocean Springs, Mississippi). Participants were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, other psychological symptoms, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of social support, evacuation distance, and the extent to which they experienced hurricane-related stressful events. Results were consistent with previous research on the impact of disasters on mental health symptoms. Findings extended research on individual differences in the response to trauma and indicated that regional context predicted unique variance in the experience of discrimination, social support, and emotional symptoms consistent with the theoretical model presented.     

Quality of Work Life as a Mediator Between Emotional Labor and Work Family Interference

Purpose  We adopted the conservation of resources model (COR, Hobfoll Am Psychol 44:513–524, 1989; Hobfoll in Stress, culture, and community: the psychology and philosophy of stress, Plenum, New York, 1998) to examine the associations among emotional labor, work family interference, and quality of work life. Design/Methodology/Approach  Cross-sectional, self-reported data were obtained from 442 Hong Kong Chinese service employees. Findings  Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses showed that surface acting was a salient correlate of work-to-family interference, even when organizational display rules and employees’ demographic information were controlled. Furthermore, quality of work life had partially mediated the relationship between surface acting and work-to-family interference. However, deep acting and expression of naturally felt emotion did not relate to work-to-family interference. Finally, we found that family-to-work interference was a salient correlate of the use of surface acting in workplace. Implication  This study provided useful information of how adopting different emotional labor strategies related to work family interference. Based on our results, the use of deep acting should be promoted in workplace because it related positively to quality of work life and it did not amplify the work-to-family interference. Originality/value  While past studies often explored the role of emotional labor as the precursor of work family interference, our study is among the first attempt to examine family-to-work interference as the antecedent of emotional labor. Additionally, we had also confirmed the role of quality of work life as an important mediator between emotional labor-work-to-family interference.     

Cultural Variability in the Manifestation of Expressed Emotion

We examined the distribution of expressed emotion (EE) and its indices in a sample of 224 family caregivers of individuals with schizophrenia pooled from 5 studies, 3 reflecting a contemporary sample of Mexican Americans (MA 2000, N =126), 1 of an earlier study of Mexican Americans (MA 1980, N =44), and the other of an earlier study of Anglo Americans (AA, N =54). Chi-square and path analyses revealed no significant differences between the 2 MA samples in rates of high EE, critical comments, hostility, and emotional over-involvement (EOI). Only caregiver warmth differed for the 2 MA samples; MA 1980 had higher warmth than MA 2000. Significant differences were consistently found between the combined MA samples and the AA sample; AAs had higher rates of high EE, more critical comments, less warmth, less EOI, and a high EE profile comprised more of criticism/hostility. We also examined the relationship of proxy measures of acculturation among the MA 2000 sample. The findings support and extend Jenkins' earlier observations regarding the cultural variability of EE for Mexican Americans. Implications are discussed regarding the cross-cultural measurement of EE and the focus of family interventions.     

Effectiveness of school-based prevention and intervention programs for children and adolescents with emotional disturbance: A meta-analysis

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of school-based prevention and intervention programs for children and adolescents at-risk for and with emotional disturbance. Published outcome studies (k = 29) from December, 1988, to March, 2006, including 1405 children and adolescents were reviewed. Each investigation was coded on several variables describing the child, parent, and teacher samples, as well as reported outcome results. The overall mean weighted effect size was 1.00 at post-test and 1.35 at follow-up. Mean weighted ESs were 0.42 for between-subjects design studies, 0.87 for within-subjects design studies, and 1.87 for single-subject design studies. Prevention programs yielded a mean weighted ES of 0.54 and intervention programs produced a mean weighted ES of 1.35. Findings for specific outcome foci are presented and implications are discussed.     

Voters, Emotions, and Memory

In this paper we argue that emotional response to information encountered in campaigns has implications for the likelihood of remembering that information at the time of the vote. Most voting models are built on what voters remember—whether it is the placement of candidates on issues, or opened ended responses to prompts. That recall of memory is biased is well-known, but the extent to which those biases are driven by affective response to candidate information has not been studied. Using dynamic process tracing, we examine voters' emotional responses, information search, and candidate evaluations during a simulated presidential primary campaign. By manipulating anxiety and the amount of incongruent information that voters encounter, we can detect the direct influence of affect in information processing. We find evidence that voters are more likely to remember information that generates any affective reaction as opposed to information for which the subjects report no emotional response. However, we find little evidence that anxiety has a special role, compared to enthusiasm or anger, in increasing the likelihood that an individual item is remembered. This challenges a primary contention of the theory of Affective Intelligence that anxiety leads to more memories for campaign information.     

Impaired embodiment and intersubjectivity

This paper considers the importance of the body for self-esteem, communication, and emotional expression and experience, through the reflections of those who live with various neurological impairments of movement and sensation; sensory deafferentation, spinal cord injury and Möbius Syndrome (the congenital absence of facial expression). People with severe sensory loss, who require conscious attention and visual feedback for movement, describe the imperative to use the same strategies to reacquire gesture, to appear normal and have embodied expression. Those paralysed after spinal cord injury struggle to have others see them as people rather than as people in wheelchairs and have been active in the disability movement, distinguishing between their medical impairment and the social induced disability others project onto them. Lastly those with Möbius reveal the importance of the face for emotional expression and communication and indeed for emotional experience itself. All these examples explore the crucial role of the body as agent for social and personal expression and self-esteem.     

Can a Laboratory Measure of Emotional Processing Enhance the Statistical Prediction of Aggression and Delinquency in Detained Adolescents with Callous-unemotional Traits?

In this cross-sectional study, we investigated whether the combination of the presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits and emotional deficits to distressing stimuli, assessed by a computerized dot-probe task, enhanced the statistical prediction of aggression and delinquency in a sample of 88 detained and predominantly African-American (68%) adolescents (M age = 15.57; SD = 1.28). Overall, self-reported CU traits were associated with self-report measures of aggression and delinquency, but not with official records of arrests. However, there was an interaction between CU traits and emotional deficits for predicting self-reported aggression, self-reported violent delinquency, and a record of violent arrests. Youth high on CU traits and who showed a deficit in their responses to visual depictions of distress showed the highest levels of aggression and violent delinquency.     

Explaining the protective effect of trait emotional intelligence regarding occupational stress: Exploration of emotional labour processes

This paper aims at understanding the processes explaining the protective effect of trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) regarding occupational stress. The present study focuses on a widespread occupational stressor: emotional labour (EL). EL refers to the act of managing emotions and emotional expressions in order to be consistent with organizational ‘display rules’, defined as the organizationally required emotions during interpersonal service transactions. As these display rules interact with employees spontaneous feelings, they regularly induce a clash between inner/real and required feelings. Different strategies exist to cope with this dissonance, with either beneficial or deleterious outcomes regarding psychological and physical health. The hypothesis underlying this study was that individuals varying in the level of trait EI would use different EL strategies, with different outcomes in terms of burnout and somatic complaints. Globally, the results showed that, when confronted with emotional labour, high trait EI individuals experience lower levels of burnout and somatic complaints, and this effect was found to be mediated by the choice of emotional labour strategies. Implications of these results for research, theory and practice are discussed.     

Implicit Motives Modulate Attentional Orienting to Facial Expressions of Emotion

We conducted two studies (Ns=52 and 60) to test the notion that the incentive salience of facial expressions of emotion (FEE) is a joint function of perceivers’ implicit needs for power and affiliation and the FEE’s meaning as a dominance or affiliation signal. We used a variant of the dot-probe task (Mogg & Bradley, 1999a) to measure attentional orienting. Joy, anger, surprise, and neutral FEEs were presented for 12, 116, and 231 ms with backward masking. Implicit motives were assessed with a Picture Story Exercise. We found that power-motivated individuals orient their attention towards faces signaling low dominance, but away from faces that signal high dominance, and (b) that affiliation-motivated individuals show vigilance for faces signaling low affiliation (rejection) and, to a lesser extent, orient attention towards faces signaling high affiliation (acceptance).