The Neural Bases of Placebo Effects in Pain

Abstract— Placebo effects are beneficial effects of treatment caused not by the biological action of the treatment but by one's response to the treatment process itself. One possible mechanism of placebo treatments is that they create positive expectations, which change one's appraisal of the situation and may thereby shape sensory and emotional processing. Recent brain-imaging evidence suggests that placebo-induced expectations of analgesia increase activity in the prefrontal cortex in anticipation of pain and decrease the brain's response to painful stimulation. These findings suggest that placebo treatments can alter experience, not just alter what participants are willing to report about pain. To the extent that they involve neural systems mediating expectancy and appraisal, placebo effects in pain may share common circuitry with placebo effects in depression, Parkinson's disease, and other disorders.     

信息反馈不一致导致习得无助机制的实验研究

研究以90名大学生为被试,探讨认知活动中,信息反馈不一致性和操作成绩评价反馈导致大学生无助现象的机制。结果表明:认知活动中,信息反馈不一致,损害了被试的认知和情绪,对动机的损害没有达到显著性水平;实验中是否给予被试操作成绩评价,对被试的动机、认知和情绪影响不显著。说明在认知活动中,信息反馈不一致,是导致习得无助的关键因素,是否对被试的操作成绩给予评价反馈,不会导致习得无助,验证了习得无助的信息加工理论模型。实验也表明,信息反馈不一致不会形成被试反应性的抑郁。     

When Parsimony Subdues Distinctiveness: Simplified Public Perceptions of Politicians' Personality

Voters develop uniquely simplified perceptions of political candidates' personalities during election campaigns. In an earlier study, voters described their own personalities, and also those of celebrities, using the same five factors typical of the Big Five model of personality. In contrast, the appraisal of political candidates' personalities by voters in both Italy and the United States was reduced to only a few factors. The present research extends that exploration of the relationship between personality and politics to the public's perception of politicians' personalities across a wider variety of politicians and across a long time span after an election campaign. Two studies conducted in Italy, with more than 3,000 voters, replicated the earlier results: The factors of Energy and Agreeableness are primary anchors for evaluating politicians' personalities both during campaigns and for several years thereafter. Also uncovered were congruences between the ways that voters tend to present themselves (self-schemata) and the schemata they use to evaluate candidates representing their political preference.     

Processes of appraisal and coping in the development and maintenance of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder

This article examines the role of appraisal and coping strategies in relation to women's subjective negotiation of premenstrual changes, drawing on a series of narrative interviews conducted with women who met diagnostic criteria for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD). The major themes that emerged from the interviews were: the PMDD sufferer as split; over‐responsibility is linked to PMDD; PMDD = lack of control; methods of coping; attributions for symptoms; and PMDD as a relational issue. This article draws on each of these narrative themes, in order to illustrate three interrelated psychological processes of appraisal and coping central to the development and maintenance of ‘PMDD’ or ‘PMS’ (Premenstrual Syndrome). The first process is awareness of changes in psychological or physical experiences, ability to cope, or reactivity to others, premenstrually. The second process involves expectations and perceptions of premenstrual changes. The third is women's response and ways of coping. This study thus stands in contrast to research positioned within a positivist epistemological framework, where PMDD is viewed as a fixed entity; and women's subjective experience of premenstrual changes, is marginalized or negated. It is argued that premenstrual changes evolve in the context of an ongoing interaction between internal experiences, perceptions, reactions, relationships, and cultural expectations, that differ between women, across menstrual cycles, and can shift within a specific cycle: described as a material‐discursive‐intrapsychic interaction. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

情绪效价、唤醒度和有无评价影响手部动作

研究探讨情绪正-负效价、唤醒度水平(高、中、低)以及有意识评价对推拉动作的影响。分3个实验进行, 收集反应时(RT)和手部动作指标等。实验1使用正-负效价下高、中、低唤醒水平的图片进行评价并执行推-拉动作任务; 实验2使用中性图片和灰色空白图片完成相同任务; 实验3在不进行效价评估情况下完成推-拉动作。结果表明(1)情绪效价对反应时, 运动时间和到达峰速时间等有显著影响：向上拖动图片时, 消极图片拖得更快; 向下拖动时, 则积极图片更快。(2)情绪唤醒度调节情绪效价对推-拉动作的作用：唤醒度越高, 情绪效价尤其是负性情绪对推-拉动作的作用越大; 反之, 则作用越小。(3)无评价条件下, 情绪效价对推-拉动作无显著影响; 即情绪对动作的影响需要有意识评价的参与。这些结果说明情绪对推拉动作影响可能发生在早期, 不仅影响动作计划, 而且影响到随后动作的执行, 而高唤醒度和有意识评价增强了这种影响。     

个体攻击性对愤怒表情类别知觉的影响

探讨了个体攻击性对愤怒表情加工中反应偏向和敏感性的影响。使用愤怒、恐惧原型生成表情连续体作为实验材料, 采用类别知觉实验范式考察了高、低攻击个体识别和辨别愤怒-恐惧连续体的类别转折点和斜率。结果发现, 与低攻击个体相比, 高攻击个体识别愤怒-恐惧连续体类别界线处的曲线斜率更大; 高攻击个体具有类别界线向恐惧一端偏移的倾向, 但并没有达到统计显著。这表明, 高攻击个体不存在敌意归因偏向, 而是对愤怒和恐惧表情的转变具有更高的敏感性。     

Development of a social emotional information processing assessment for adults (SEIP‐Q)

An expanded self‐report, vignette‐based, questionnaire was developed to assess five components in a social emotional information processing model (SEIP: attribution, emotional response, response valuation, outcome expectancy, response efficacy, and response enactment), first in a population‐based sample (n = 250) and, second in healthy control participants (n = 50) and in those with DSM‐5 Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED: n = 50). SEIP‐Q vignettes depict, separately, both overtly aggressive and relationally aggressive as well as socially ambivalent scenarios. This expanded SEIP‐Q assessment demonstrated good internal reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity, for all five SEIP components. IED participants differed from healthy controls in all SEIP‐Q components. This expanded SEIP‐Q assessment is thus proposed as a reliable and valid method for studying the various stages of SEIP in adult human subjects. Aggr. Behav. 43:47–59, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Measuring emotions during epistemic activities: the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales

Measurement instruments assessing multiple emotions during epistemic activities are largely lacking. We describe the construction and validation of the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales, which measure surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration, and boredom occurring during epistemic cognitive activities. The instrument was tested in a multinational study of emotions during learning from conflicting texts (N?=?438 university students from the United States, Canada, and Germany). The findings document the reliability, internal validity, and external validity of the instrument. A seven-factor model best fit the data, suggesting that epistemically-related emotions should be conceptualised in terms of discrete emotion categories, and the scales showed metric invariance across the North American and German samples. Furthermore, emotion scores changed over time as a function of conflicting task information and related significantly to perceived task value and use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies.