Effect of regulating anger and sadness on decision-making

The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination for regulating anger and sadness on decision-making. Participants (N = 165) were asked to recall two autobiographical events in which they felt intense anger and sadness, respectively. Participants were then instructed to reappraise, accept, ruminate, or not use any strategies to regulate their feelings of anger and sadness. Following this manipulation, risk aversion, and decision-making strategies were measured using a computer-based measure of risk-taking and a simulated real-life decision-making task. Participants who were instructed to reappraise their emotions showed the least anger and sadness, the most adaptive decision-making strategies, but the least risk aversion as compared to the participants in the other conditions. These findings suggest that emotion regulation strategies of negative affective states have an immediate effect on decision-making and risk-taking behaviors.     

生命意义与主观幸福感的关系:基于中国样本的元分析

运用元分析的方法来探讨生命意义与主观幸福感的关系。纳入了符合元分析标准的文献45篇,共51个独立样本,总样本量为27291。元分析结果表明:生命意义与主观幸福感(r=0.505,p0.001),生活满意度(r=0.395,p0.001)和积极情感(r=0.325,p0.001)呈显著正相关,而与消极情感(r=-0.195,p0.1)呈显著负相关。生命意义与主观幸福感的关系受到性别和被试群体的调节,如性别能显著正向调节二者的关系。结果表明,生命意义能有效预测主观幸福感。     

Addressing the role of personality,ability, and positive and negative affect in positive psychology interventions: Findings from a randomized intervention based on the authentic happiness theory and extensions

The present study explores the role of personality, ability, and affect in a randomized, group-based positive psychology intervention program based on Seligman’s authentic happiness theory and extensions. A total of 100 adults (M = 45.7, SD = 12.8) were randomly assigned to the 12-week intervention program (five training sessions) or a waiting list control group. The intervention consisted of basic information, group activities, and homework assignments. Participants in the intervention group demonstrated higher levels of happiness, pleasure, and engagement after completion of the program. Baseline levels of psychometric intelligence moderated the intervention effectiveness (greater effects for those higher in reasoning, vocabulary, and general intelligence). There were no effects for the big five personality traits. Finally, increases in positive affect before and after the homework assignment were associated with greater levels of happiness after the program. The relevance of these findings for the development of new programs is discussed.     

Emotion processing deficits in the different dimensions of psychometric schizotypy

Schizotypy refers to a personality structure indicating “proneness” to schizophrenia. Around 10% of the general population has increased schizotypal traits, they also share other core features with schizophrenia and are thus at heightened risk for developing schizophrenia and spectrum disorders. A key aspect in schizophrenia‐spectrum pathology is the impairment observed in emotion‐related processes. This review summarizes findings on impairments related to central aspects of emotional processes, such as emotional disposition, alexithymia, facial affect recognition and speech prosody, in high schizotypal individuals in the general population. Although the studies in the field are not numerous, the current findings indicate that all these aspects of emotional processing are deficient in psychometric schizotypy, in accordance to the schizophrenia‐spectrum literature. A disturbed frontotemporal neural network seems to be the critical link between these impairments, schizotypy and schizophrenia. The limitations of the current studies and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Religiosity moderates the relationship between negative affect and life satisfaction: A study in 29 European countries

Many religions contend that the key to well-being is living one’s life based on religious standards, rather having certain emotional experiences. On this basis, it is predicted that the relationship between positive and negative affect and life satisfaction would be stronger in less religious individuals. Using multi-level modeling in a sample of 50,130 participants from 29 European countries, this study reveals that religiosity moderates the relationship between negative affect and life satisfaction, such that life satisfaction is less strongly influenced by the frequency of negative emotions in more religious (vs less religious) individuals.     

THE FAULT IN US: ETHICS,INFINITY, AND CELESTIAL BODIES

Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible knits together process theology and relational ontology with quantum mechanics. In quantum physics, she finds a new resource for undoing the architecture of classical metaphysics and its location of autonomous human subjects as the primary gears of ethical agency. Keller swarms theology with the quantum perspective, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, by which quantum particles are found to remain influential over each other long after they have been physically separated—what Albert Einstein and his collaborators recklessly dismissed as “spooky action at a distance.” This spooky action, Keller suggests, reroutes process thought—classically concerned with flux—to a new concern with intransigence—particularly the intransigence of the ethical relationship. Attending to the ethical urgency of the Other, she leaves process theology in a position of susceptibility to the moral imperative posed by the marginalized, the victimized, and the oppressed. This essay argues that although the ontological work of Keller's book productively integrates quantum physics into process theology, the ethical dimension of relationality is left cold in the quantum field. This is because, contra the ethical framework of contemporary deconstruction, which, following Emmanuel Levinas, sees ethical relationships as emerging out of a dynamic of infinite distance, moral connection has nothing to do with the remote reaches of the quantum scale or the macro‐scale limits of space—nothing to do with “infinity” at all. Ethics emerges out of a much messier landscape—the evolved dynamic of fleshy, finite, material bodies. Rather than seeing ethical labor as a matter of physics, my contention (and here I think I am arguing with, rather than against Keller) is that interdisciplinary undertakings like Cloud of the Impossible are ethical disciplinary practices, re‐acquainting us with the non‐sovereignty of the self in order to open up new habits of relating rather than spotlighting ethical imperatives.     

Coping as a building mechanism to explain the unique association of affect and goal motivation with changes in affective states

Background and objectives: In this study, we examined the mediating role of university students’ coping strategies in the unique/additive influence of affective states and goal motivation on upward changes in affect during a midterm exam period. Design: Using a short-term prospective design, key assumptions from the self-concordance model and the broaden-and-build theory were drawn upon to determine whether coping strategies are influenced by goal motivation and affective states, while also subsequently influencing short-term changes in affective states during a semester. Method: A sample of 272 students (79% females and 21% males) participated in a study in which they completed questionnaires twice during the semester. Results: Results of structural equation modeling, using a true latent change approach, have generally supported our hypotheses. Positive affective states and autonomous goal motivation prospectively predicted task-oriented coping which, in turn, was associated with increases in positive affect. Negative affective states and controlled goal motivation prospectively predicted disengagement-oriented coping which, in turn, was associated with increases in negative affect. Conclusion: Coping partially mediates the unique association of affect and goal motivation with changes in affective states of university students.     

Mindfulness and psychological well-being among black South African university students and their relatives

This study investigated the relationship between mindfulness and psychological well-being in a convenience sample of black South African students (n = 203) and their parents and other relatives (n = 204) (66.1% = female; age range 18–73). The students self-reported on their mindfulness on the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale and psychological well-being on the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, Adult Trait Hope Scale and the Meaning in Life Questionnaire. A multivariate regression model was specified and analysed via structural equation modelling in Mplus 7.3. Results revealed that mindfulness scores strongly predicted elevated levels of meaning and positive affect, and lowered levels of negative effect, and were moderately strong predictors of life satisfaction and hope. The findings imply that mindfulness likely plays an important role in relation to the psychological well-being of cross-generational African culture community members.     

Mother–Toddler Affect Exchanges and Children's Mastery Behaviours during Preschool Years

This study examined the longitudinal relations of mother–child affect exchanges at 18 months with children's mastery motivation at 39 months. Observation and questionnaire data were collected from mother–child dyads when children were 18 months; 43 mothers again rated their children's mastery motivation at 39 months. Results suggested that after controlling for gender and the corresponding 18‐month mastery aspect, positive affect exchanges had long‐term positive relationships with children's persistence and competence, whereas dismissed affect exchanges had long‐term negative relationships with children's persistence and independent mastery. Findings suggest that children's autonomous mastery‐oriented endeavours have deep roots in their early mother–child affective interactions. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.