Catholicism,Protestantism, and Mexicanness on the US–Mexico border: discourses,narrative identities,habits, and affect

ABSTRACT

In Mexico, Catholicism and national identity are deeply intertwined through what we call a process of articulation. Thus, not surprisingly, despite the recent impressive growth of Protestantism in the nation, most people still believe that being Mexican and being Catholic are almost synonymous. Additionally, because the two identifications do not ‘cross each other’ (as the metaphor of intersectionality posits) but, instead, enter a very complex process of articulation in which each modifies the other, there is a particular way in which many Mexicans experience and perform their Catholicism, in the same vein that there is a particular way in which Catholics experience and perform their Mexicanness. Simultaneously, because neither nationality nor religion is narrated and/or performed in isolation to other forms of identification (e.g. race, ethnicity, region, gender) other possible identifications are also articulated or co-inform (in different ways) nationality and religion in the identitarian encounters that occur on the border. In the way people build their identifications around religion, narratives, practices, habits, affect, and emotions are continuously interrelated. We show that having an altar outside one’s house or making the sign of the cross on one’s body is both (depending on the unfolding of the social interactions and their patterns of relations) a non-linguistic discourse and a habit. We also show that their mere presence (in the case of altars) or performance (in the case of the sign of the cross) affect the people around the site or the performance, triggering complex emotions. That altar and sign of the cross can potentially be all these things simultaneously highlights their importance as ‘affective conductors’—stressing their significance as central objects in the intensification of relations that give new capacities to the entities involved in the patterns of relationship at play in the identitarian encounter at stake.     

Relations between empathy and anxiety dimensions in inpatient adolescents

Background and objectives: A better understanding of the relationships between empathy and internalizing disorders is needed to plan therapeutic interventions for children and adolescents. Several studies have revealed positive relations of internalizing symptoms to personal distress and affective empathy. However, there is a lack of studies that take into account the multidimensional nature of anxiety in its relation to empathy.

Design: Structural equation modeling was used to test the moderated mediation model of the relations between empathy, depression and anxiety dimensions and the moderating role of gender on these associations in inpatient adolescents.

Method: A total of 403 inpatient adolescents aged 12–17 years completed the Basic Empathy Scale, the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children, and the Beck Depression Inventory-II.

Results: Affective empathy was positively related to all the anxiety dimensions – most strongly to separation/panic and humiliation/rejection anxiety, whereas cognitive empathy was negatively related to social and separation/panic anxiety. Relations between affective and cognitive empathy and anxiety were partly mediated by depressive symptoms. No evidence of a moderating role of gender has been found.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that processes associated with empathy may play a role in the development or maintenance of anxiety symptoms.     

Autonomic and subjective responsivity to emotional images in people with dissociative seizures

People with dissociative seizures (DS) report a range of difficulties in emotional functioning and exhibit altered responding to emotional facial expressions in experimental tasks. We extended this research by investigating subjective and autonomic reactivity (ratings of emotional valence, arousal and skin conductance responses [SCRs]) to general emotional images in 39 people with DS relative to 42 healthy control participants, whilst controlling for anxiety, depression, cognitive functioning and, where relevant, medication use. It was predicted that greater subjective negativity and arousal and increased SCRs in response to the affective pictures would be observed in the DS group. The DS group as a whole did not differ from controls in their subjective responses of valence and arousal. However, SCR amplitudes were greater in ‘autonomic responders’ with DS relative to ‘autonomic responders’ in the control group. A positive correlation was also observed between SCRs for highly arousing negative pictures and self‐reported ictal autonomic arousal, in DS ‘autonomic responders’. In the DS subgroup of autonomic ‘non‐responders’, differences in subjective responses were observed for some conditions, compared to control ‘non‐responders’. The findings indicate unaffected subjective responses to emotional images in people with DS overall. However, within the group of people with DS, there may be subgroups characterized by differences in emotional responding. One subgroup (i.e., ‘autonomic responders’) exhibit heightened autonomic responses but intact subjective emotional experience, whilst another subgroup (i.e., ‘autonomic non‐responders’) seem to experience greater subjective negativity and arousal for some emotional stimuli, despite less frequent autonomic reactions. The current results suggest that therapeutic interventions targeting awareness and regulation of physiological arousal and subjective emotional experience could be of value in some people with this disorder.     

Subjective,physiological, and behavioural responses towards evaluatively conditioned stimuli

Evaluative Conditioning (EC) is commonly defined as the change in liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) due to its pairings with an affective unconditioned stimulus (US). In Experiment 1, we investigated effects of repeated stimulus pairings on affective responses, i.e. valence and arousal ratings, pupil size, and duration estimation. After repeatedly pairing the CSs with affective USs, a consistent pattern of affective responses emerged: The CS_negative was rated as being more negative and more arousing, resulted in larger pupils, and was temporally overestimated compared to the CS_neutral. In Experiment 2, the influence of a mere instruction about the contingency between a CS and US on affective responses was examined. After mere instruction about upcoming pairings between the CS and US, subjective ratings also changed, but there was neither evidence for differential pupillary responses nor for differential temporal processing. The results indicate that EC via pairings or instructions can change the affective responses towards formerly neutral stimuli and introduce pupil size as a physiological measure in EC research. However, Experiment 2 suggests that there might be moderating factors based on the type of EC procedure involved.     

情感预测的影响偏差——聚焦错觉还是适应忽视?

为了考察情感预测影响偏差中聚焦错觉和适应忽视的作用,本研究通过两个实验,先让大学生被试对考研(实验1a)、骨折手术(实验1b)、搬到新校区(实验2)进行情感预测,然后将其与情感体验进行比较,并比较了去焦点化训练、适应训练和控制组对影响偏差的干预效果。结果发现:去焦点化训练显著地降低了情感预测的影响偏差,而适应训练和控制组则没有显著降低影响偏差。因此,本研究认为,当情境线索清楚的时候,聚焦错觉是导致情感预测影响偏差的主要原因。     

The Influence of Temporal Orientation and Affective Frame on Use of Ethical Decision-Making Strategies

This study examined the role of temporal orientation and affective frame in the execution of ethical decision-making strategies. In reflecting on a past experience or imagining a future experience, participants thought about experiences that they considered either positive or negative. The participants recorded their thinking about that experience by responding to several questions, and their responses were content-analyzed for the use of ethical decision-making strategies. The findings indicated that a future temporal orientation was associated with greater strategy use. Likewise, a positive affective frame was associated with greater strategy use. Future orientation may permit better strategy execution than a past orientation because it facilitates more objective, balanced contemplation of the reflected-upon situation and minimizes potential self-threat associated with past behavior. A positive affective frame likely improves strategy execution because it facilitates active analysis of the experience. Future directions and implications of these findings are discussed.     

Affective Empathy and Moral Disengagement Related to Late Adolescent Bullying Perpetration

Bullying has damaging short-term and long-term consequences. Research suggests that perpetrators have low empathy and high moral disengagement, but relations between these variables are unclear and are rarely integrated in a single study. Thus, the objective of this study was to discover if empathy and moral disengagement mechanisms were related to bullying perpetration. This study was conducted with 904 Polish adolescents enrolled in 6 rural and urban upper secondary schools. High affective empathy predicted lower bullying perpetration. Moral-disengagement mechanisms such as moral justification, euphemistic language, advanced comparison, and distorting consequences were uniquely related to increased bullying perpetration. Low affective empathy was also uniquely related to increased perpetration. These findings have important implication for school policy and practice.     

Prospective and concurrent correlates of emotion perception in psychotic disorders: A naturalistic,longitudinal study of neurocognition,affective blunting and avolition

This naturalistic study investigated longitudinal and cross‐sectional symptomatic and neurocognitive correlates of social cognition indexed by emotion perception. Participants were 31 persons admitted to a psychiatric emergency ward due to acute psychosis. Positive and negative (i.e., affective blunting and avolition) symptoms were assessed at baseline and 12‐month follow‐up using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Participants completed neuropsychological assessments with alternative versions of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status at baseline and at 12‐month follow‐up. Emotion perception was measured using the Face/Voice Emotion Test at 12‐month follow‐up. Correlational analyses (Spearman's rho) revealed strong and statistically significant associations between neurocognition and emotion perception (baseline r = 0.58, follow‐up r = 0.43). Associations between positive symptoms and emotion perception were weak or non‐existent (baseline r = 0.13, follow‐up r  =  –0.01). Emotion perception was moderately, but not significantly, associated with affective blunting at follow‐up (r = 0.33), but not at baseline (r = 0.21). The association with avolition was non‐existent (baseline r  =  –0.05, follow‐up r = 0.01). This study supports the notion that emotion perception has neurocognitive correlates. The cross‐sectional trend level association with affective blunting suggests that the ability to perceive emotions might be related to, but dissociable from the ability to express emotions.