Emotional Rescue: How Affect Helps Partisans Overcome Collective Action Problems

Why does party identification motivate citizens to participate in politics? From a theoretical standpoint, it is in a partisan's self‐interest to free ride on the efforts of others. Yet, mere identification with a party is enough to motivate many people to overcome this structural hurdle. We theorize that, by virtue of aligning one's self with a party, individuals become more likely to react to their political environment with anger and enthusiasm rather than fear. Anger and enthusiasm are associated with approach and continuation of current behavior, while fear triggers behavior reconsideration. In short, party identification stimulates participation via anger and enthusiasm. On the other hand, fear produces thought but not much action. We find support for our model using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) and an original laboratory experiment.     

AFFECTED BY NATURE: A HERMENEUTICAL TRANSFORMATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

The value‐action gap poses a considerable challenge to normative environmental ethics. Because of the wide array of empirical research results that have become available in the fields of environmental psychology, education, and anthropology, ethicists are at present able to take into account insights on what effectively motivates proenvironmental behavior. The emotional aspect apparently forms a key element within a transformational process that leads to an internalization of nature within one's identity structure. We compare these findings with studies on environmental activists, which appear to a significantly lesser degree hampered by the value‐action gap, thereby attempting to understand what provides them with the drive to act more consistently on their moral attitudes. Hermeneutics is found to play a crucial role in the processes that lead to lasting and consistent motivation toward proenvironmental behavior. An empirically informed hermeneutical approach could therefore provide a promising impetus for contemporary environmental ethics.     

A New Set of Moral Dilemmas: Norms for Moral Acceptability,Decision Times,and Emotional Salience

At the present time, the growing interest in the topic of moral judgment highlights the widespread need for a standardized set of experimental stimuli. We provide normative data for a sample of 120 undergraduate students using a new set of 60 moral dilemmas that might be employed in future studies according to specific research needs. Thirty dilemmas were structured to be similar to the Footbridge dilemma (“instrumental” dilemmas, in which the death of one person is a means to save more people), and thirty dilemmas were designed to be similar to the Trolley dilemma (“incidental” dilemmas, in which the death of one person is a foreseen but unintended consequence of the action aimed at saving more people). Besides type of dilemma, risk‐involvement was also manipulated: the main character's life was at risk in half of the instrumental dilemmas and in half of the incidental dilemmas. We provide normative values for the following variables: (i) rates of participants' responses (yes/no) to the proposed resolution; (ii) decision times; (iii) ratings of moral acceptability; and (iv) ratings of emotional valence (pleasantness/unpleasantness) and arousal (activation/calm) experienced during decision making. For most of the dependent variables investigated, we observed significant main effects of type of dilemma and risk‐involvement in both subject and item analyses. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Relationship between therapist empathy and client-perceived working alliance in China: A multilevel modelling analysis

This naturalistic study examined the relationship between two types of therapist empathy, intellectual empathy and empathic emotion, and client-perceived working alliance (WA) in China. The study adopted the definitions and assessment methods of empathy recommended by Duan and Hill and used the theory of WA by Bordin and WA Inventory-Short by Tracey and Kokotovic. Eighty-six clients and 43 therapists from a university counselling centre at a comprehensive university in China participated in the study. Therapist intellectual empathy and empathic emotion and client-reported WA measured in six consecutive sessions from the second through the seventh session were assessed for each session. The results of multilevel modelling analyses showed that client-perceived WA increased significantly session after session, and therapist empathic emotion significantly predicted Tasks of WA. Moreover, there was significant therapist effect associated with Bond. In the context of empathy and WA research findings reported in the USA, some of the non-significant results of this study were intriguing. We discuss the study results with particular attention to the Chinese cultural context and present suggestions for future research.     

SC-IAT范式下大学生感恩的内隐性

目的：研究探讨了单类内隐联想测验（SC-IAT）测量大学生感恩的可行性,并分析内隐感恩与外显感恩的关系。方法：采用inquisit3.0.2.0编制SC-IAT感恩测量程序,测量了大学生的内隐感恩;采用青少年感恩量表（AGS）测量了大学生的外显感恩,并运用相关技术分析两者之间的关系。结果：采用SC-IAT测量大学生感恩的内隐效应显著,内隐感恩不存在性别、生源地和独生与否等人口统计学指标上的显著差异,大学生的内隐感恩与外显感恩之间相关不显著。结论：（1）大学生整体上存在着积极的内隐感恩;（2）内隐感恩与外显感恩相互分离,是两个不同的建构。     

Cultural effects in emotion and gender recognition

There is evidence for cultural differences in how people respond to basic properties of faces. We examined task switching between two properties of faces, emotion and gender, for individuals drawn from Western (White UK citizens) and Asian (Pakistani) cultures. There were three main results of interest. First, there was a double dissociation between gender and emotion classification across the participant populations – Western participants were faster to make gender than emotion classifications while Asian participants were faster to make emotion than gender classifications. It is argued that the different patterns of results reflect the greater attentional weight given to contrasting face dimensions in the different cultures, and the dependence on using different attributes to make gender discriminations in individuals from varying cultures. Second, Asian participants showed smaller switch costs overall than did White British participants. This result may be attributed to effects of bilingualism in the Asian participants, which results in their having greater executive resources. Third, emotion decisions showed larger switch costs than gender decisions but essentially because emotion decisions benefited from priming on non‐switch trials. It is argued that emotion decisions benefit from the activation of a specific processing module across consecutive trials.     

Can third-party observers detect the emotional rewards of generous spending?

Can others detect the emotional consequences of our personal choices? Here, we investigate whether third-party observers can detect the emotional benefits of two factors shown to influence self-reported happiness: the speed with which people make decisions and the generosity of spending choices. Participants were randomly assigned to purchase a goody bag either for themselves or for a sick child, and to choose the contents of this goody bag either as quickly as possible, or by taking as much time as needed. Then, participants reported their current emotional state and were rated for happiness by a research assistant blind to their spending condition. Analyses revealed that purchasing a gift for someone else not only improved participants’ self-reported mood, but that observers could detect these affective differences as well. Observers also rated participants who made their spending decision more quickly as happier, although participants did not report these emotional differences.     

消费者不道德行为与员工情绪衰竭关系的调节性中介模型

大量研究业已揭示,消费者针对员工的不道德行为是导致员工情绪衰竭的重要因素,但是对于消费者不针对员工的不道德行为（consumer unethical behavior that are not employee directed,CUB）是否会影响员工的情绪衰竭,研究还较少涉及。基于道义伦理学,本研究提出了一个调节性中介模型,以分析CUB与员工情绪衰竭的关系。该模型假定,CUB与员工情绪衰竭之间的关系以情绪抑制为中介,并且受到员工道德认同的调节。对198名销售人员的研究发现,即使控制了消费者针对员工的不道德行为,CUB仍影响着员工的情绪衰竭;CUB与员工情绪衰竭的关系受到道德认同的调节,道德认同较高的员工表现出较高程度的情绪抑制与情绪衰竭。研究支持了假设的调节性中介模型,情绪抑制在CUB和情绪衰竭之间发挥着部分中介作用,不仅如此,这一中介作用还受到道德认同的调节,情绪抑制在CUB和情绪衰竭之间的间接效应主要表现在道德认同较高的员工中。最后探讨了研究发现的理论意义、不足及未来发展方向。     

A Theory of Blame

We introduce a theory of blame in five parts. Part 1 addresses what blame is: a unique moral judgment that is both cognitive and social, regulates social behavior, fundamentally relies on social cognition, and requires warrant. Using these properties, we distinguish blame from such phenomena as anger, event evaluation, and wrongness judgments. Part 2 offers the heart of the theory: the Path Model of Blame, which identifies the conceptual structure in which blame judgments are embedded and the information processing that generates such judgments. After reviewing evidence for the Path Model, we contrast it with alternative models of blame and moral judgment (Part 3) and use it to account for a number of challenging findings in the literature (Part 4). Part 5 moves from blame as a cognitive judgment to blame as a social act. We situate social blame in the larger family of moral criticism, highlight its communicative nature, and discuss the darker sides of moral criticism. Finally, we show how the Path Model of Blame can bring order to numerous tools of blame management, including denial, justification, and excuse.     

抑制范式下的情绪注意偏向

与中性信息相比,情绪信息会引起更快更多的注意并具有一种认知加工上的优先权.在注意实验中,与不带情绪色彩的刺激相比,具有情绪意义的刺激更能吸引注意或占用注意资源且引起注意偏向.个体对情绪信息的适度偏向具有重要的社会生活意义.本文介绍了情绪注意偏向的注意成分理论、图式理论、注意资源理论和平行分布处理(PDP)模型,并分别对抑制范式下以不同情绪材料展开的正常被试和特殊被试的情绪注意偏向研究进行了总结概括,同时指出了未来在抑制范式下利用ERPs、fMRI新技术研究不同被试群体情绪与注意关系的可能性.