Smile intensity in social networking profile photographs is related to greater scientific achievements

Theory and research indicates that individuals with more frequent positive emotions are better at attaining goals at work and in everyday life. In the current study we examined whether the expression of genuine positive emotions by scientists was positively correlated with work-related accomplishments, defined by bibliometric (e.g. number of citations) and sociometric (number of followers for scholarly updates) indices. Using a sample of 440 scientists from a social networking site for researchers, multiple raters coded smile intensity (full smile, partial smile, or no smile) in publicly available photographs. We found that scientists who presented a full smile had the same quantity of publications yet of higher quality (e.g. citations per paper) and attracted more followers to their updates compared to less positive emotionally expressive peers; results remained after controlling for age and sex. Thin-slicing approaches to the beneficial effects of positive emotionality offer an ecologically valid approach to complement experimental and longitudinal evidence. Evidence linking positive emotional expressions to scientific impact and social influence provides further support for broaden and build models of positive emotions.     

Breath Versus Emotions: The Impact of Different Foci of Attention During Mindfulness Meditation on the Experience of Negative and Positive Emotions

Mindfulness meditation yields beneficial effects on the processing of emotions. However, it is still unclear whether the focus of attention during meditation influences these effects. In the present study we aimed at comparing the effects of breathing meditation and emotion-focused meditation on the immediate and delayed processing of negative and positive emotions. The study included 65 adult novice meditators who were exposed to positively and negatively valenced film clips. Participants were randomly assigned to three conditions. While watching the films at t1, they were asked to mindfully focus on their breath (condition 1), on emotions (condition 2), or on nothing in particular (condition 3). Ten minutes later at t2, comparable film clips were shown but all participants watched them without taking up a mindful attitude. Dependent measures were emotional states at t1 and t2. Participants of both meditation conditions particularly showed a more preferable delayed emotional reaction to negative stimuli than participants of the control condition. Breathing meditation and emotion-focused meditation may constitute effective emotion regulation strategies to deal with negatively valenced emotional states.     

On Ground as a Guide to Realism

According to Fine (among others), a nonbasic factual proposition must be grounded in facts involving those of its constituents that are both real and fundamental. But the principle is vulnerable to several dialectically significant counterexamples. It entails, for example, that a logical Platonist cannot accept that true disjunctions are grounded in the truth of their disjuncts; that a Platonist about mathematical objects cannot accept that sets are grounded in their members; and that a colour primitivist cannot accept that an object's being scarlet grounds its not being chartreuse. The Finean might try to defend these implications, but it generates further problems. Instead, the principle should be rejected. An important upshot is that the principle cannot be relied on to distinguish robust realism from anti‐realism about a propositional domain, for the principle obscures ways of taking features to be both real and fundamental.     

Feeling at home in the occupied territories: Emotion work of the religious settler movement

Religious settlers exhibit a strong desire to settle the entire Land of Israel despite resistance among the local Palestinian population and among opposition within Israel. The return to the Promised Land and the establishment of settlements elicit strong emotions that are connected to the socio-spatial identities of the settlers. Introducing the concept of emotion work the article focuses on the collective construction of emotions inside the movement and on active practices directed at the Israeli audience at large. Emotions are elicited and regulated in the political process in order to make and defend territorial claims. After discussing the concepts of emotional geographies, emotion regulation, and emotion work, the article analyzes the multi-layered passions of the settlers and strategies of creating an emotional attachment to the conquered territories in the Israeli public. Finally, the Second Intifada revealed tensions between the desire for the land and a contracting geography of fear. The article discusses how the settlers dealt with violence, threats, and experiences of conjoint emotions.     

Positive psychotherapy: A strength-based approach

Positive psychotherapy (PPT) is a therapeutic approach broadly based on the principles of positive psychology. Rooted in Chris Peterson’s groundbreaking work on character strengths, PPT integrates symptoms with strengths, resources with risks, weaknesses with values, and hopes with regrets in order to understand the inherent complexities of human experiences in a way that is more balanced than the traditional deficit-oriented approach to psychotherapy. This paper makes the case of an alternative approach to psychotherapy that pays equal attention and effort to negatives and positives. It discusses PPT’s assumptions and describes in detail how PPT exercises work in clinical settings. The paper summarizes results of pilot studies using this approach, discusses caveats in conducting PPT, and suggests potential directions.     

“This is My Community”: Reproducing and Resisting Boundaries of Exclusion in Contested Public Spaces

The way that public space is structured has significant implications for identity, social interaction, and participation in society. For those experiencing homelessness, with no or limited private space, survival hinges on the accessibility and livability of public space. However, the increasing privatization of public space in the United States has contributed to the implementation of anti‐homeless ordinances in cities, restricting sitting, standing, panhandling, and sleeping in public. This study analyzes data from interviews with housed and unhoused community members, text from a local policy document, and ethnographic observations to explore how boundaries between “insiders” and “outsiders” are drawn in public space and mediated through individual discourse. Our findings suggest that boundaries of exclusion are constructed through dominant narratives that portray the unhoused as a threat to safety and economic vitality, thus justifying the need for regulation and punishment through the criminalization of homelessness. Yet, informants also demonstrate resistance to this narrative by discussing how criminalization of homelessness perpetuates dehumanization, violence, and economic inequality. Policy implications for the regulation of public space are discussed.     

Judging the Goring Ox: Retribution Directed Toward Animals

Prior research on the psychology of retribution is complicated by the difficulty of separating retributive and general deterrence motives when studying human offenders (Study 1). We isolate retribution by investigating judgments about punishing animals, which allows us to remove general deterrence from consideration. Studies 2 and 3 document a “victim identity” effect, such that the greater the perceived loss from a violent animal attack, the greater the belief that the culprit deserves to be killed. Study 3 documents a “targeted punishment” effect, such that the responsive killing of the actual “guilty” culprit is seen as more deserved than the killing of an almost identical yet “innocent” animal from the same species. Studies 4 and 5 extend both effects to participants' acceptance of inflicting pain and suffering on the offending animal at the time of its death, and show that both effects are mediated by measures of retributive sentiment, and not by consequentialist concerns.     

A Single Counterexample Leads to Moral Belief Revision

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision.     

Beliefs About the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about (a) what a person values, (b) whether a person is happy, (c) whether a person has shown weakness of will, and (d) whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non‐moral in nature.     

An Indecent Proposal: The Dual Functions of Indirect Speech

People often use indirect speech, for example, when trying to bribe a police officer by asking whether there might be “a way to take care of things without all the paperwork.” Recent game theoretic accounts suggest that a speaker uses indirect speech to reduce public accountability for socially risky behaviors. The present studies examine a secondary function of indirect speech use: increasing the perceived moral permissibility of an action. Participants report that indirect speech is associated with reduced accountability for unethical behavior, as well as increased moral permissibility and increased likelihood of unethical behavior. Importantly, moral permissibility was a stronger mediator of the effect of indirect speech on likelihood of action, for judgments of one's own versus others' unethical action. In sum, the motorist who bribes the police officer with winks and nudges may not only avoid public punishment but also maintain the sense that his actions are morally permissible.