Motivation to regulate mood as a mediator between state extraversion and pleasant-unpleasant mood

This experience sampling study investigated whether state extraversion (i.e., momentary extraverted behavior) is positively associated with pleasant affect within persons and whether mood regulation motivation mediates this relationship. Seven times per day for one week, 162 participants reported on their state extraversion, pleasant-unpleasant mood, and mood regulation intention. Higher state extraversion was related to more pleasant mood, and this within-persons relationship held for 89% of individuals. Analyses with lagged predictors revealed that state extraversion predicted an increase in pleasant mood from one occasion to the next. Dispositional extraversion did not moderate the within-persons relationship. Hedonic mood regulation intention mediated the relation between state extraversion and pleasant-unpleasant mood. The findings support a self-regulation explanation of the extraversion-pleasant affect link.     

The role of affect in attitudes toward organ donation and donor-relevant decisions

We argue that affect plays a vital role in attitudes toward organ donation and that reluctance to become an organ donor is likely to be related to the experience of affective ambivalence. Assessing the affect associated with organ donation could help to predict donor-relevant decisions. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis on 464 students showed that affective evaluations can be distinguished both from cognitive evaluations and from overall evaluations. As expected, affective evaluations revealed ambivalence (using the ‘Griffin’ measure of ambivalence) toward organ donation, whereas the two other types of evaluations did not. Results of a follow-up study using logistic regression (n?=?85), showed that affective evaluations predicted donor-relevant decisions six months later. The present findings support the proposal to include separate affective evaluations in measures of attitudes to organ donation. More general implications for the measurement and structure of attitudes in health related domains are discussed.     

Character profiles and adolescents’ self-reported affect

Cognitive and behavioral changes during adolescence might be understood from the perspective of increased executive functioning that is expressed as gradual maturing character. Character profiles (combinations of low and high scores in three character traits: Self-directedness, Cooperativeness, and Self-transcendence) of 439 Swedish adolescents were used to evaluate the linear and non-linear relationship between character traits and self-reported positive and negative affect. Linear analysis showed that all three character traits were associated to positive and negative affect. Non-linear analysis showed that Self-directedness was associated with high positive affect and low negative affect when Cooperativeness was high. No association of higher Cooperativeness with positive and negative affect was found. Higher Self-transcendence was associated with higher negative affect when both Self-directedness and Cooperativeness were high. Although, Self-directedness, Cooperativeness, and Self-transcendence are associated to adolescents’ affective experience, these character traits are not associated to positive and negative affect in the same manner or linearly. Self-directedness’s positive relationship to high positive affect and low negative affect was present only when Cooperativeness was high. In other words, an autonomous adolescent (i.e., high Self-directedness) might experience more positive and less negative emotions as long as she/he feels as an integral part of society (i.e., high Cooperativeness).     

Affect as a motivational state

Using Brehm's (1999) intensity of emotion paradigm, we investigated whether basic positive or negative affect operates like a motivational state. We focused on one of the most basic affects, the sensory affect experienced when eating food. Participants tasted a delicious chocolate truffle (Study 1) or some bitter chocolate (Study 2) and were exposed to either a weak, moderately strong, or a very strong reason for feeling an opposing-valence affect or to no reason. In line with the predictions, the affect that participants reported in response to chocolate functioned like a motivational state as its intensity was a cubic function of the importance of the reason for feeling an opposing affect. We discussed the implications of these findings for the conceptualisation of affect and consider several applications for food advertising and consumer rating research.     

Emotions,individual differences and time course: Reflections

I discuss the merits and demerits of the contributions to the present issue as I see them, and their implications for emotions research.     

Symptom-positive and symptom-negative items in the state-trait anxiety inventory: A comparison and replication

Substantially higher mean scores on symptom-negatively versus symptom-positively worded items have consistently been reported in the literature for the balanced Stait-Trait Anxiety Inventory. In this study we aimed at replicating and comparing these findings for the Dutch adaptation of the inventory. Results indicated significantly higher mean subscale scores for symptom-negative as opposed to symptompositive items of both the Trait and State version, across sexes and age groups as well as across different levels of distress in students, policemen and psychiatric out-patients. Positive-negative mean difference scores were consistently larger for the State than for the Trait version. State and Trait mean difference scores were found to be mainly confined to symptom-positive subscales. Scale intercorrelations were lowest between symptom-positive and symptom-negative subscales both within and across measures. Factor analyzing the combined versions identified separate symptom-negative and symptom-positive factors, tentatively labeled “absence of positive affect” and “presence of negative affect”. Several explanations of the findings among which item-intensity specificity, the response style of social desirability and the model of positive and negative affectivity are discussed.     

An Attempt to Predict Change in Mood in Response to Velten-Like Mood Induction Procedures

College student subjects were rated high or low in cognitive and behavioral depression proneness, based on their scores on a screening battery that included the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (Hollon & Kendall, 1980), the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (Weissman, 1979), the Intemality-Extemality Scale (Rotter, 1966), the Pleasant Events Schedule and the Unpleasant Events Schedule (Lewinsohn & Amenson, 1978). The students were subsequently exposed to one of two different Velten-like depressive mood inductions, one based on Beck's (1974) model of depression, and the other based on Lewinsohn's (1974) model. We hypothesized that subjects who scored higher on the cognitive measures would tend to become more depressed when exposed to the Beck statements and that those who scored higher on the behavioral measures would tend to become more depressed when exposed to the Lewinsohn statements. The hypothesis was not supported. Instead, pre-existing cognitively or behaviorally defined depression proneness appeared to be unrelated to subjects' susceptibility to one or the other model of depression as defined by the two mood inductions. However, the inductions themselves were found to produce a significant lowering of mood, and both inductions were equally effective in lowering mood.     

Parental,Peer, and Teacher Influences on the Social Behavior of Hong Kong Chinese Adolescents

Intensive interviews and self-report questionnaires were used to investigate parental, peer, and teacher influences on the prosocial and antisocial behaviors of Hong Kong Chinese adolescents. Students came from 5 academically different high schools. Results indicated that perceived parental influence was positively associated with frequency of prosocial behavior and negatively associated with frequency of delinquent behavior. Students with good relationships with their parents and peers showed lower frequencies of antisocial behaviors than did students with bad relationships. Adolescents in different identity statuses (achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, diffusion; E. H. Erikson, 1968) showed different patterns of prosocial and antisocial behaviors. For example, adolescents in the identity achievement group exhibited high frequencies of prosocial behaviors and low frequencies of antisocial behaviors, but those in the identity moratorium group exhibited quite high frequencies of both prosocial and antisocial behaviors.     

Emotional dysfunction in avoidant compared to borderline personality disorder: A study of affect consciousness

Knowledge of emotional dysfunction in patients with avoidant personality disorder (APD) is much needed. The present study examined affect consciousness (AC) in patients with APD compared to borderline personality disorder (BPD). AC, defined as capacity to perceive, reflect on, tolerate, and express emotional experiences, is assumed to be central to structure‐building in personality. The study tested the hypotheses that patients with APD have lower general AC and lower AC for pleasant affects compared to BPD. Fifty‐nine patients, 26 with APD and 33 with BPD were rated on several aspects of AC using the specialized AC interview. The structured interview SCID‐II was applied for diagnostic evaluations. The APD group had significantly lower levels of global AC and conceptual expressivity compared to the BPD group. Among 11 specific affects the APD group had significantly lower AC for interest and contempt. Emotional dysfunction is an important feature of APD and the findings indicate that psychotherapies for APD patients should focus on emotional experiences, aiming to improve emotional awareness, tolerance, and expressivity. The notion of a general avoidance of positive emotions in APD needs further exploration, including a possible dysfunction in the evolutionary based neuro‐affective Seeking system.     

Who am I? Differential effects of three contemplative mental trainings on emotional word use in self-descriptions

In a large-scale longitudinal mental training study, we examined whether learning different contemplative practices can change the emotional content of people’s self-concept as assessed through emotional word use in the Twenty Statement Test. During three 3-month training modules, participants learned distinct practices targeting attentional, socio-affective, or socio-cognitive capacities, or were re-tested. Emotional word use specifically increased after socio-cognitive training including perspective-taking on self and others, compared to attentional and socio-affective compassion-based trainings, and retest-controls. Overall, our findings demonstrate training-induced behavioral plasticity of the emotional self-concept content in healthy adults and could indicate greater emotional granularity. These findings can inform future interventions in mental health, given that alterations in self-referential processing are a common contributing factor in psychopathology.