Intensity of positive and negative emotions: Explaining the association between personality and depressive symptoms

The aim was to examine to what extent emotional intensity accounted for associations between the Big Five personality dimensions and depressive symptoms. Study 1 tested the model cross-sectionally, using survey data of 266 Dutch social science students. Study 2 experimentally examined how personality dimensions were related to emotional reactivity after exposure to various emotional stimuli. Dutch psychology students (N = 130) reported on their personality and viewed an amusing or sad film clip, after which the change in intensity of experienced positive and negative emotions was assessed. Individuals scoring higher on neuroticism generally experienced more intense negative emotions, through which they experienced a higher level of depressive symptoms. Individuals who were more agreeable experienced a lower level of depressive symptoms indirectly through higher general intensity of positive emotions. More agreeable individuals showed stronger increase in negative emotions and stronger decrease in positive emotions, though after exposure to the sad stimulus only. Although replication is needed, our results offer empirical support for a more taylor-made approach in decreasing nonclinical depressive symptoms taking into account both personality characteristics and emotion regulation.     

Intelligence and selective attrition in a nationally representative and longitudinal sample of Americans

Selective attrition is a potentially serious problem that can bias the findings that are generated from longitudinal samples. Although the extent to which IQ might be involved in selective attrition has been studied, the results from these studies have been decidedly mixed. The current study adds to the literature examining the link between IQ and selective attrition by examining four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Analysis of these data revealed that IQ is related to attrition, with lower IQ respondents more likely to drop out of the study when compared against higher IQ respondents. The evidence suggests that dropouts score about 4.5 IQ points lower than subjects who did not drop out. Limitations of the study are noted and directions for future research are discussed.     

County-level IQ and fertility rates: A partial test of Differential-K theory

Human intelligence (IQ) correlates with a number of important life outcomes ranging from mortality and morbidity to social rank and status. Noticeably absent from the literature, however, has been a unifying framework from which to examine why IQ should correspond to so many seemingly disparate outcomes. Rushton’s Differential-K theory represents a theoretical perspective capable of accounting for the role of IQ in understanding human flourishing. We tested predictions suggested by Differential-K theory by examining the association between IQ at the aggregate level and two life-history variables: parental investment and fertility rates. Our results provide tentative support for some of the predictions of Differential-K theory.     

The moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between exposure to violence and anxiety and depression

This study investigated the associations among exposure to violence, emotional stability, and psychological symptoms. The moderating role of emotional stability in the relationship between exposure to violence and anxiety and depression was examined in a sample of 482 high school students in Hong Kong. Results showed that both witnessing violence and low levels of emotional stability were positively associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Low levels of emotional stability exacerbated the relation between witnessing violence and symptoms of anxiety and depression; the opposite pattern was found among adolescents with high levels of emotional stability. This study sheds light on the role of emotional stability in ameliorating the detrimental effects of witnessing violence on symptoms of anxiety and depression among adolescents. Findings of this study also have implications for the development of emotionally healthy personalities.     

Wheel chairs and arm chairs: A novel experimental design for the emotional Stroop effect

The emotional Stroop effect demonstrates that people are slower to name the ink colour of emotionally charged words than that of neutral words. Attributing this slowdown to emotionality or threat requires that the emotion and neutral words presented are equal on all extraneous variables. However, it is impossible in principle to match the two types of words on all conceivable variables. To address the problem, we presented the same set of words, polarised to be negative in one condition and neutral in another by using appropriate prime words that produced the desired valence through idiomatic two-word expressions. Across two studies, participants took longer to name the colour of the same words when they were rendered negative than when they were rendered neutral. This difference reflects a true emotional Stroop effect given the control provided for all potentially confounding variables tied to the target stimuli. The new procedure also enables researchers to calculate item-specific emotional Stroop effects for the first time.     

The cognitive regulation of emotions: The role of success versus failure experience and coping dispositions

Attention deployment and generating specific types of cognitions are central cognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation. Two groups of hypotheses make contradicting predictions about the emotion-cognition relationship. The moodcongruency hypothesis expects the emergence of mood-congruent cognitions (i.e., negative mood leads to negative and positive mood to positive cognitions). Similarly, a substantial body of research suggests that negative mood induces selffocus, whereas positive mood elicits an external focus of attention. The moodrepair hypothesis, on the other hand, assumes that persons in a negative mood state summon thoughts incongruent with that state and divert attention away from the self. However, the temporal sequence of cognitions assessed as well as coping dispositions, such as vigilance and cognitive avoidance, may moderate these relationships. Positive and negative emotional states were elicited by exposing the participants to the experience of success or failure in a demanding cognitive task. Cognitions that were present after emotion induction were assessed by means of a thought-listing procedure. For the total sample, results clearly confirmed the moodcongruency hypothesis. Thought order was a critical factor only for changes in self-focus. Thought valence (positive, neutral, negative) as well as self-focus were substantially influenced by coping dispositions.     

There's more to emotion than meets the eye: A processing bias for neutral content in the domain of emotional prosody

Research on emotion processing in the visual modality suggests a processing advantage for emotionally salient stimuli, even at early sensory stages; however, results concerning the auditory correlates are inconsistent. We present two experiments that employed a gating paradigm to investigate emotional prosody. In Experiment 1, participants heard successively building segments of Jabberwocky “sentences” spoken with happy, angry, or neutral intonation. After each segment, participants indicated the emotion conveyed and rated their confidence in their decision. Participants in Experiment 2 also heard Jabberwocky “sentences” in successive increments, with half discriminating happy from neutral prosody, and half discriminating angry from neutral prosody. Participants in both experiments identified neutral prosody more rapidly and accurately than happy or angry prosody. Confidence ratings were greater for neutral sentences, and error patterns also indicated a bias for recognising neutral prosody. Taken together, results suggest that enhanced processing of emotional content may be constrained by stimulus modality.     

Retelling everyday emotional events: Condensation,distancing, and closure

Narratives of emotional experiences are widely assumed to reflect how well the speaker has coped with them. Some cross-sectional studies have suggested that well-being and absence of psychopathology correlate with more elaborate and coherent narratives of negative events. Other studies, on the other hand, suggest that retelling and coping render narratives shorter, more cognitive, and explicitly evaluative. To test this latter hypothesis, 30 young women narrated five events eliciting anger, sadness, anxiety, pride and happiness from the past week, and retold the same events three months later. After three months, narratives contained fewer attempts to solve the complication, and evaluations became more global and impersonal. Negative narratives were framed better and re-evaluated positively. Unexpectedly, narrative clauses did not decrease, nor did evaluations shift from past to present. Ways to better differentiate effects of memory and retelling from mere effects of coping are suggested.     

Contextual interference processing during fast categorisations of facial expressions

We examined interference effects of emotionally associated background colours during fast valence categorisations of negative, neutral and positive expressions. According to implicitly learned colour–emotion associations, facial expressions were presented with colours that either matched the valence of these expressions or not. Experiment 1 included infrequent non-matching trials and Experiment 2 a balanced ratio of matching and non-matching trials. Besides general modulatory effects of contextual features on the processing of facial expressions, we found differential effects depending on the valance of target facial expressions. Whereas performance accuracy was mainly affected for neutral expressions, performance speed was specifically modulated by emotional expressions indicating some susceptibility of emotional expressions to contextual features. Experiment 3 used two further colour–emotion combinations, but revealed only marginal interference effects most likely due to missing colour–emotion associations. The results are discussed with respect to inherent processing demands of emotional and neutral expressions and their susceptibility to contextual interference.     

Emotion understanding,pictorial representations of friendship and reciprocity in school-aged children

This study examined the relationship between emotional understanding, friendship representation and reciprocity in school-aged children. Two hundred and fifty-one Caucasian 6-year-old children (111 males and 140 females) took part in the study. The Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) and the Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR) were used. Children having a reciprocal friendship and children having a unilateral friendship with a child named as their “best friend” were compared on the emotional understanding task and on their pictorial representations of friendship. Multilevel analyses indicated that friendship status effects were not influenced by classroom-level differences. Results showed that children with reciprocal friendships drew themselves as more similar to and more cohesive with their best friends, and they showed better understanding of emotions, than children having a unilateral friendship. Finally, the implications of these findings for theoretical and empirical research development on friendship are discussed.