Anger In Or Out,Which Is Healthier? An Attempt To Reconcile Inconsistent Findings

Abstract

A survey of the literature concerning the relationship between style of anger expression and health disorders does not lead to a clear-cut conclusion. Some studies suggest that the outward expression of anger (anger-out) contributes to health problems of various types, while others present evidence suggesting that it is the suppression of anger (anger-in) which contributes to health problems. The present study examined three conceivable explanations for the contradictory evidence produced in this research area: (1) different aspects of anger expression are differentially related to the individual's health; (2) the pattern of anger expression is related differentially to health disorders of different types; (3) the degree of matching between the individual's style of anger expression and social desirability accounts for the inconsistency in the empirical findings. A sample of 134 men underwent comprehensive medical examinations and also filled in several anger expression questionnaires. The results supported the first hypothesis, namely that intensity of anger expression was negatively correlated with ill health while frequency of anger expression was positively correlated with ill health. No support was found for the hypothesis that anger expression relates differentially to health disorders of different types. However, the matching hypothesis was confirmed in part. It was found that individuals low on both intensity of anger expression and social desirability reported the highest frequency of health problems. The theoretical significance of these findings and their practical implications are discussed.     

Do I feel sadness,fear or both? Comparing self-reported alexithymia and emotional task-performance in children with many or few somatic complaints

Children with many somatic complaints seem to report problems with emotion identification and communication (‘alexithymia’). The aim of this study was to verify whether children with somatic complaints do indeed show signs of alexithymia. We compared 35 children (M age = 10.99, SD = 13 months) with many somatic complaints with 34 children (M age = 11.03, SD = 12 months) reporting few complaints on the basis of a self-report alexithymia scale and tasks that require the skill to identify and communicate emotions: an emotional attention task, a structured interview about own emotions, and a mixed-emotion task. Children were also asked about the intensity of the reported emotions. Compared to children with few complaints, children with many complaints seemed to have higher self-reports of alexithymia. However, these results were explained by difficulty in communicating negative internal states and experiencing indefinable internal states, rather than difficulty in identifying emotions. In addition, children with many complaints reported higher intensities of fear and sadness. The children did not differ in their attention to emotions or causes of emotions. Children with many somatic complaints more often described previous emotional experiences and showed better abilities in identifying multiple emotions. Children with many somatic complaints thus show more negative emotional processing, but the alexithymia-hypothesis was unsupported.     

Thalamic fear

This paper suggests that some neuroscience concepts particularly concerned with brain pathways in trauma and fear, as well as the neurobiology of emotion, provide an additional vertex to the psychoanalytic understanding of patients' material. The role of the body has been neglected in psychoanalytic thought and formulations in favour of purely ‘mental’ experience. The paper attempts to show how neuro-psychoanalytic understanding, which is conveyed to patients through interpretation, can increase their depth of understanding. Different types of memory are delineated and the paper describes a simplified schema of emotional processing, drawing on Damasio's distinction between emotion as an instinctual body based experience and its mental representation as feeling. Clinical examples are used to illustrate the usefulness of the distinction. The concept of emotional regulation is discussed as well as showing how its failure is associated with the appearance of persecutory superego structures.     

Social psychology of Making Poverty History: Motivating anti‐poverty action in Australia

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent the first global, tractable effort to combat world poverty and preventable disease. The success of the MDGs, however, depends critically upon the support of the people who do not themselves experience the disadvantage: That is, the people and governments of developed countries. In this paper it is argued that the solution to combating poverty and preventable disease in developing nations lies in creating sufficient political will among people in developed countries such as Australia. The authors draw on social psychological insights to explore ways to inspire social and political action in support of the anti‐poverty cause. Taking a social identity perspective, the role is reviewed of three key variables in promoting anti‐poverty action: (a) the presence of meaningful social identities that prescribe action, (b) motivating group emotions, and (c) group efficacy beliefs. A method is described that crystallises these three elements to boost commitment to the anti‐poverty cause. The paper concludes by arguing for the importance of meaningful group memberships in motivating social and political action to make poverty history for people in developing countries.     

Adult attachment avoidance and automatic affective response to sad facial expressions

The present work represents the first study to investigate the relationship between adult attachment avoidance and anxiety and automatic affective responses to basic facial emotions. Subliminal affective priming methods allowed for the assessment of unconscious affective reactions. An affective priming task using masked sad and happy faces, both of which are approach‐related facial expressions, was administered to 30 healthy volunteers. Participants also completed the Relationship Scales Questionnaire and measures of anxiety and depression. Attachment avoidance was negatively associated with affective priming due to sad (but not happy) facial expressions. This association occurred independently of attachment anxiety, depressivity, and trait anxiety. Attachment anxiety was not correlated with priming due to sad or happy facial expressions. The present results are consistent with the assumption that attachment avoidance moderates automatic affective reaction to sad faces. Our data indicate that avoidant attachment is related to a low automatic affective responsivity to sad facial expressions.     

Emotions in sport: Perceived effects on attention,concentration, and performance

This study explored attentional patterns associated with positive and negative emotions during sport competition, and athletes' perceptions of the consequences of these attentional changes for concentration and performance. Sixty‐nine athletes completed the Sport Emotion Questionnaire following a national softball competition. They also retrospectively reported their perceptions of how emotions influenced their attention, concentration, and sport performance. Excitement and happiness were more closely associated with concentration than anxiety, dejection, and anger. Although excitement demanded more attention than the negative emotions, the positive emotions were perceived as more likely to lead to a performance‐relevant focus and automatic physical movements, both of which were beneficial for concentration and performance. Emotional intensity increased these effects.     

Information processing bias against emotional facial expressions in social anxiety

The present study examined whether information processing bias against emotional facial expressions is present among individuals with social anxiety. College students with high (high social anxiety group; n  = 26) and low social anxiety (low social anxiety group; n  = 26) performed three different types of working memory tasks: (a) ordering positive and negative facial expressions according to the intensity of emotion; (b) ordering pictures of faces according to age; and (c) ordering geometric shapes according to size. The high social anxiety group performed significantly more poorly than the low social anxiety group on the facial expression task, but not on the other two tasks with the nonemotional stimuli. These results suggest that high social anxiety interferes with processing of emotionally charged facial expressions.     

Emotion and object processing in Parkinson’s disease

The neuropsychological literature on the processing of emotions in Parkinson’s disease (PD) reveals conflicting evidence about the role of the basal ganglia in the recognition of facial emotions. Hence, the present study had two objectives. One was to determine the extent to which the visual processing of emotions and objects differs in PD. The other was to assess the impact of cognitive load on the processing of these types of information. Thirty-one patients with idiopathic PD (IPD) under dopamine replacement therapy (DRT) were compared to 30 control subjects on emotion and object recognition tasks. Recognition of objects was more accurate and faster than recognition of facial expressions of emotion, for both groups of subjects. In a second experiment using an N-back procedure with the same stimuli—a more demanding task with a higher cognitive load—patients with IPD were as accurate as control subjects in detecting the correct sequential presentation of stimuli, but were much slower in their decision responses. This indicates that IPD patients under DRT are not impaired in encoding emotion or object information, but that they have difficulty with the processing demands of the N-back task. Thus, patients with IPD appear to be more sensitive to cognitive load than to type of information, whether facial emotions or objects. In this perspective, one must consider that a deafferented dopaminergic system has problems processing more complex information before one can posit the existence of deficits affecting a specific type of information.     

青少年网络道德与其网络偏差行为的关系

青少年已经成为中国互联网的最大用户群体,他们在使用互联网中表现出的偏差行为与道德的关系值得关注。该研究使用问卷法探讨了496名青少年的网络道德特点与网络偏差行为表现以及二者之间的关系。结果发现:(1)青少年的网络道德表现较积极,网络道德认知、情感和意向之间存在显著正相关;(2)青少年的网络偏差行为不算严重,但男生的网络过激行为和网络色情行为显著多于女生,且网络过激行为随着年级升高而减少:其中网络攻击性、易怒、敌意和冲突水平都随着年级的增长而呈下降趋势;(4)青少年的网络道德认知和意向对网络偏差行为有反向预测作用,网络道德情感不能预测其网络偏差行为表现。网络道德越积极,表现出来的网络偏差行为越少。