AGNOSTIC MEDITATIONS ON BUDDHIST MEDITATION

I first attempt a taxonomy of meditation in traditional Indian Buddhism. Based on the main psychological or somatic function at which the meditative effort is directed, the following classes can be distinguished: (1) emotion‐centered meditation (coinciding with the traditional samatha approach); (2) consciousness‐centered meditation (with two subclasses: consciousness reduction/elimination and ideation obliteration); (3) reflection‐centered meditation (with two subtypes: morality‐directed reflection and reality‐directed observation, the latter corresponding to the vipassanā method); (4) visualization‐centered meditation; and (5) physiology‐centered meditation. In the second part of the essay I tackle the problem of the epistemic validity and happiness‐engendering value of Buddhist meditation. In my highly conjectural view, the claim that meditation represents an infallible tool for realizing the (Supreme) Truth as well as a universally valid method for attaining the highest forms of happiness is largely based on the crēdō effect, that is, a placebolike process. I do not deny that meditation may have some positive effects on mental and physical health or that its practice may bring changes to the mind. Meditation may be a valuable alternative approach in life and clinical treatment, but it is far from being a must or a panacea.     

Young and Older Adults' Expression of Emotional Experience: Do Autobiographical Narratives Tell a Different Story?

Though autobiographical remembering is a common means of emotional expression in everyday life, rarely have autobiographical narratives been used to assess emotion. Studies rely instead on retrospective scalar measures. In this study, 87 young (M = 20) and older (M = 62) adults' scalar reports and narratives of the salience, frequency, and intensity of emotional reactions to the OJ Simpson verdict announcement were compared. Scalar measures and autobiographical narratives sometimes tell different stories about certain aspects of emotion. Supporting theory, scalars measures, and narratives both indicate greater salience of emotion in late life. In contrast to expectation, older adults more frequently expressed negative affect in their narratives, but not in scalars measures. Both types of measures did, however, show a higher intensity of sadness in older adults. Theories of emotion and aging may benefit from incorporating the role of memory, and reactions to specific negative life events.     

群体共享情绪的放大效应

相比独自经历情绪事件,在群体中与他人共享情绪事件会放大个体的情绪体验,该效应被称之为群体共享情绪的放大效应。以往研究为群体共享情绪放大效应提供了部分间接的实验证据,但以往的理论,如群体共同关注理论和情绪传染理论,并不能对该效应做出很好的解释。基于社会评估理论和共享现实理论提出的评估–证实–放大模型可较好地解释群体共享情绪的放大效应。未来研究可在真实互动的群体情境中检验群体共享情绪放大效应及评估–证实–放大模型。     

情绪调节中的认知重评创造力

情绪调节能力是维护个体心理健康和生活幸福的基本能力。认知重评创造力是个体面对负性情境时能够自发产生多种认知重评策略的能力,是情绪调节任务中的创造性行为。研究表明,认知重评创造力与发散性思维和开放性正相关,与神经质、特质愤怒无关;创造性的认知重评策略或运用隐喻和类比的高水平认知重构更有利于负性情绪的调节;创造性的认知重评可以通过基于杏仁核的显著情绪唤醒,基于海马的新联想形成和基于纹状体的精神奖赏的中介来调节情绪,从而产生可以保存在长时记忆中的新颖的、积极的情绪体验。上述结果支持认知重评的创造性重构理论。认知重评创造过程需要自上而下的认知控制和情绪表征的特定执行功能。未来研究可以扩大被试群体,完善认知重评创造力的测量方法,探索影响认知重评创造力的情境因素和内在因素,以及进一步揭示认知重评创造力区别于传统创造力的特别加工或反应机制的神经机制。     

Electromyographic Analysis of Responses to Third Person Intergroup Threat

This study attempts to replicate and extend the findings from Davis and Stephan’s (2011) article investigating facial electromyographic (EMG) responses to individually directed or group-directed realistic threat. Using news footage from the Columbine school shootings as a third-person threatening stimulus, participants were instructed to view the clips while considering how they felt during the original events (individually primed) or how students felt during the original events (group-primed). EMG analysis of activity levels of the medial frontalis and the corrugator supercilii indicated differential activation based on the instructions. Individually primed participants experienced more fontalis activity and group-primed participants experienced more corrugator supercilii activity. These findings replicated the Davis and Stephan results and extended it to a third person-based intergroup threat.     

Face in profile view reduces perceived facial expression intensity: An eye-tracking study

Recent studies measuring the facial expressions of emotion have focused primarily on the perception of frontal face images. As we frequently encounter expressive faces from different viewing angles, having a mechanism which allows invariant expression perception would be advantageous to our social interactions. Although a couple of studies have indicated comparable expression categorization accuracy across viewpoints, it is unknown how perceived expression intensity and associated gaze behaviour change across viewing angles. Differences could arise because diagnostic cues from local facial features for decoding expressions could vary with viewpoints. Here we manipulated orientation of faces (frontal, mid-profile, and profile view) displaying six common facial expressions of emotion, and measured participants' expression categorization accuracy, perceived expression intensity and associated gaze patterns. In comparison with frontal faces, profile faces slightly reduced identification rates for disgust and sad expressions, but significantly decreased perceived intensity for all tested expressions. Although quantitatively viewpoint had expression-specific influence on the proportion of fixations directed at local facial features, the qualitative gaze distribution within facial features (e.g., the eyes tended to attract the highest proportion of fixations, followed by the nose and then the mouth region) was independent of viewpoint and expression type. Our results suggest that the viewpoint-invariant facial expression processing is categorical perception, which could be linked to a viewpoint-invariant holistic gaze strategy for extracting expressive facial cues.     

Colour fluctuations in grapheme‐colour synaesthesia: The effect of clinical and non‐clinical mood changes

Synaesthesia is a condition that gives rise to unusual secondary sensations (e.g., colours are perceived when listening to music). These unusual sensations tend to be reported as being stable throughout adulthood (e.g., Simner & Logie, 2007, Neurocase, 13, 358) and the consistency of these experiences over time is taken as the behavioural hallmark of genuineness. Our study looked at the influence of mood states on synaesthetic colours. In Experiment 1, we recruited grapheme‐colour synaesthetes (who experience colours from letters/digits) and elicited their synaesthetic colours, as well as their mood and depression states, in two different testing sessions. In each session, participants completed the PANAS‐X (Watson & Clark, 1999) and the BDI‐II (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996, Manual for Beck Depression Inventory‐II), and chose their synaesthetic colours for letters A‐Z from an interactive colour palette. We found that negative mood significantly decreased the luminance of synaesthetic colours. In Experiment 2, we showed that synaesthetic colours were also less luminant for synaesthetes with anxiety disorder, versus those without. Additional evidence suggests that colour saturation, too, may inversely correlate with depressive symptoms. These results show that fluctuations in mood within both a normal and clinical range influence synaesthetic colours over time. This has implications for our understanding about the longitudinal stability of synaesthetic experiences, and of how mood may interact with the visual (imagery) systems.     

Big Five personality traits contribute to prosocial responses to others’ pain

ObjectivesTwo studies examined whether observers’ personality traits contribute to prosocial responses to others’ facial expression of pain. Experiment 1 examined the personality traits that could account for observers’ variability in estimating others’ pain intensity. Experiment 2 questioned to what extent the contribution of personality traits on inclination to help people in pain depend on observers’ beliefs about pain’ characteristics.Method59 (experiment 1) and 76 (experiment 2) participants observed to 3-D realistic synthetic face movements mobilizing action units of pain, in order to estimate others’ pain. In experiment 2, painful localizations (e.g., chest, hand) were also manipulated. In each experiment, Big Five personality traits were assessed.ResultsExperiment 1 revealed that agreeableness and conscientiousness contributed to observers’ pain estimates across the increase of facial expression intensity. Experiment 2 showed that conscientiousness contributed to observers’ judgments whatever pain’ characteristics. Neuroticism was only salient for pain referring to life-threatening pain.ConclusionProsocial response to others’ pain depends on agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. However, these links are modulated by the pain behavior elicited and observers’ belief about the characteristic of pain.