Does integral affect influence intentions to use artificial intelligence for skin cancer screening? A test of the affect heuristic

Objective: This study investigated how affect influences people’s processing of messages about risks and benefits of using autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) technology to screen for skin cancer. We examined integral affect (emotion derived during decision making) separately from incidental affect (extraneous mood states).

Design: Using the affect heuristic framework, we randomly assigned 273 participants to conditions featuring risk (high, low, uncertain) or benefit (high, low, uncertain) messages about AI. Following ‘affect-as-spotlight’, we also explored whether people’s integral affect towards skin cancer moderated the relationship between risk/benefit messages and AI screening intentions.

Outcomes: Perceived risk, perceived benefit, positive and negative affect toward AI, intention to use AI screening.

Results: After controlling for incidental affect and risk perceptions, we found that compared to low risk messages, uncertain risk messages increased participants’ negative affect toward AI, decreased positive affect toward AI, increased AI risk evaluations and reduced AI benefit evaluations. Perceptual variables significantly mediated participants’ intentions to use AI for risk messages but not benefit messages. No moderation effects were found.

Conclusions: Results suggest extending the affect heuristic framework to include uncertain risk conditions. Integral AI affect influenced people’s interpretation of messages, which then impacted likelihood to use AI technology for health.     

“R U Mad?”: Computerized text analysis of affect in social media relates to stress and substance use among ethnic minority emerging adult males

Objective: This study examined the interactive role of affectivity and stress in substance use severity among ethnic minority, emerging adult males, using linguistic indicators of affect obtained through social media.

Method: Participants were 119 emerging adult, ethnic minority males (ages 18–25) who provided access to their mobile phone text messaging and Facebook activity for 6-months. Computerized text analysis (LIWC2015) was used to obtain linguistic indices of positive and negative affect from texts and Facebook posts. The Perceived Stress Scale was used to measure stress, and items from the Drug Abuse Screening Test were used to measure substance use severity.

Results: Generalized estimating equations showed that higher negative affect in texts was associated with greater substance use severity. Stress moderated the relationship between positive affect expressed in Facebook posts and substance use such that higher positive affect in Facebook posts was associated with less substance use at higher stress and greater substance use at lower stress.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the complexities of interactions between stress and affectivity. Findings could inform development of substance use interventions for young males that employ social technologies.     

On the longitudinal interplay between perfectionism and general affect in adolescents

Cross-sectional studies on perfectionism and general affect tend to interpret their findings suggesting affect is an outcome of perfectionism. However, personality theories posit that individual differences in general affect may also influence perfectionism. Expecting to find bidirectional relations, this 3-wave study sought to examine the longitudinal interplay between perfectionism and general affect in a sample of 489 adolescents (54% female) aged 12–19 years. Cross-lagged panel analyses showed a positive unidirectional effect from positive affect to perfectionistic standards as well as a positive bidirectional effect between perfectionistic concerns and negative affect. As expected, general affect was both an antecedent and an outcome of perfectionism. Implications of the findings for the development and outcomes of perfectionism are discussed.     

Temporality and the Lyotardian Sublime: Kant between Husserl and Freud

ABSTRACT

While Lyotard's first book was an introduction to phenomenology, most of the work that follows can be said to openly challenge the limits of phenomenological analysis. This is particularly evident in the well-known writings on the Kantian sublime, which Lyotard reads as a “temporal crisis” that undoes the conscious knowing subject and escapes “experience” in the phenomenological sense. Nonetheless, if this allows him to relate the sublime to Freud's “unconscious affect,” this “crisis” only becomes visible in contrast to a figure of subjective temporalization the model of which, I argue, is broadly Husserlian. Approaching the sublime as a temporal crisis thus allows not only for a clearer view of the import of Lyotard's late work on the affect with regard to subjectivity, knowledge, and experience; it also reveals what that work continues to owe to a certain phenomenological analysis.     

When Times Get Tough: Savoring and Relationship Satisfaction in Couples Coping with a Stressful Life Event

Background and Objectives: When couples face a stressful life event, this can adversely impact relationship satisfaction. Because savoring positive experiences is thought to enhance intimate relationships and there is evidence that savoring buffers the negative effects of stress at the intrapersonal level, this study examined savoring as an interpersonal resource for couples who experienced a stressful life event.

Methods: One hundred and twenty-eight opposite-sex couples completed measures of impact of event, savoring, positive affect, and relationship satisfaction.

Results: Results from actor-partner interdependence models found that: (1) For couple members who reported a relatively low impact of event, their own savoring was positively predicted by their partner’s impact of event; (2) For women, their own savoring the moment predicted their own and their partner’s greater relationship satisfaction; (3) The relationship between one’s own impact of event and relationship satisfaction was buffered by one’s partner’s savoring the moment; and (4) The relationship between one’s own savoring and relationship satisfaction was mediated by one’s own positive affect.

Conclusions: The findings support the study of savoring as an interpersonal resource in times of stress and have implications for couples-based interventions.     

Impact of aggressive humor on dysfunctional resistance

The present study examined the mediating effects of negative affect at work between abusive supervision and dysfunctional resistance, considering aggressive humor as a moderator. Two hundred and thirty-five full time working employees participated in the study. Correlational results indicated that aggressive humor was related to dysfunctional resistance. However aggressive humor was not related to negative affect at work. Aggressive humor moderated the direct path (i.e., between abusive supervision and dysfunctional resistance), but it did not moderate the indirect paths. Finally, the study found support for negative reciprocity beliefs (Gouldner, 1960). Implications for practice include an emphasis on self-awareness training for managers.     

Spillover of authenticity from work to home: The mediating role of affect

A growing area of research is beginning to examine the state-like nature of authenticity. The current study builds on this research by examining the (dis)continuity in state authenticity across two different social contexts: work and home. We surveyed 154 full-time employees twice a day for five consecutive workdays. Results showed that state authenticity at work and at home shared a relatively strong positive relationship that appeared to be mediated by the spillover of affect from one context to the next. This is consistent with prior work showing that affect tends to “spillover” from one context to the next and work that suggests a causal impact of affect on authenticity judgments. Implications for the study of state authenticity as well as work–home interaction are discussed.     

Self-Efficacy and Psychological Well-Being in Cardiac Patients: Moderated Mediation by Affect and Meaning-Making

Abstract

Prior research suggests a potential moderated mediation effect between self-efficacy and psychological well-being. Based on the Meaning Making Model and the Broaden-and-Build Theory, this study examines the relationship between self-efficacy and psychological well-being in the moderated mediation perspective of affect and meaning-making in coronary heart disease patients. The questionnaires measuring self-efficacy, psychological well-being, affect, and meaning-making were used to collect data from one hundred and fifty six patients (73 women and 83 men) who were suffering from coronary heart disease. The patients had a history of coronary heart disease in the previous .1?7.9?years and were aged 47?82. Findings demonstrated that meaning-making mediated the indirect relationship between self-efficacy and psychological well-being. In addition, the moderated mediation effect of positive affect, but not of negative affect was significant. Positive affect moderated the indirect effect between self-efficacy and psychological well-being through meaning-making; the indirect effect was stronger when positive affect was high as opposed to low. The results suggest the interplay of affective and meaning-making processes in the relationship between self-efficacy and well-being.