The Contribution of Music to Positive Aging: A Review

Many people value music as an important part of their everyday lives. The published literature reveals that the role of music in life is varied: it can be recreational, educational, social, emotional, therapeutic, and spiritual. The importance and relevance of music depends on the life needs and interests of the individual and the social group within which he/she lives. It is now widely recognized that music for many older people is crucial in supporting a sense of well-being. The article reviews the evidence on the role of music in promoting health and well-being, and how it can produce positive psychological and physiological benefits for individuals. The aim of this article is to increase awareness among health professionals of the importance of music and discuss how it can be used to add to older people's lives.     

儒家伦理与情感

The Confucian understanding of emotions and their ethical importance confirms and exemplifies the contemporary Western renewed understanding of the nature of emotions. By virtue of a systematic conceptual analysis of Confucian ethics, one can see that, according to Confucians, the ethical significance of emotions, lies in that an ethical life is also emotional and virtues are inclinational. And a further exploration shows that the reason for the ethical significance is both that emotions are heavenly-endowed and that there exists a union of emotions and reason in Confucian ethics. This will constitute a challenge to the so-called mainstream ethical theories which have been popularly engaged in seeking justifications for abstract moral rules. __________ Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Research), 2007, (3): 86–92     

Personality and the four faces of positive affect: A multitrait-multimethod analysis using self- and peer-report

The present study investigates the relationship between personality and positive affects (contentment, love, interest, and joy). Using multitrait-multimethod analysis and structural equation modeling procedures with self- and peer-report, the authors demonstrated the importance of differentiating between the positive affects. A multidimensional model fitted better than a general-factor model. Concerning the personality–affect relationship, the strongest relations were found between extraversion and both joy and love, agreeableness and love, openness to experiences and interest, and neuroticism and contentment. Thus, results suggest that it is insufficient to concentrate solely on extraversion when investigating the personality–positive affect relationship.     

Procedural justice effects on self-esteem under certainty versus uncertainty emotions

Building upon the idea that procedural justice effects are more pronounced when uncertainty is high, we proposed that recall of an uncertainty-eliciting emotion (fear) will render people more responsive to variations in procedural justice than will recall of a certainty-eliciting emotion (disgust). Results from Study 1, (n = 79 undergraduate students) confirmed that a fair procedure (voice condition) enhanced self-esteem relative to an unfair procedure (no voice condition) to a greater extent when people recalled fear than when they recalled disgust. Results from Study 2 (n = 147 undergraduate students) also showed that a fair, relative to an unfair, procedure enhanced self-esteem more strongly when recalling the emotion of fear rather than disgust, but only when these emotions were recalled from a self-immersed than a self-distanced perspective. These findings confirm that discrete emotions that orient people to interpret situations in uncertain versus certain ways are important antecedents of procedural justice effects.     

Shame expressions reduce the recipient’s insult from outgroup reparations

Despite a growing literature on the consequences of group-based guilt and shame, little work has examined how expressions of self-conscious emotions are received by targets of collective wrongdoing. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that when an outgroup member offers apologies accompanied by reparations, the recipients are likely to take insult unless the outgroup member expresses the self-abasing emotion of shame rather than guilt. Experiment 1 showed that when reparations were offered, participants were less insulted by shame than guilt expressed by an outgroup member, rather than an ingroup member. Experiment 2 improved Experiment 1 by manipulating the culprit’s action (reparation vs. withdrawal), and this experiment replicated Experiment 1’s interaction on a measure of insult, but only when reparations were offered. These interactions on insult were not explained by the emotion’s perceived intensity or surprisingness. Our results indicate a possible functional aspect of expressions of shame in an intergroup context. Self-abasement, as opposed to a mere admission of culpability and regret, can reduce the insult taken from an outgroup’s reparations.     

Perceived control and emotions: interactive effects on performance in achievement settings

Individual differences in cognitions and emotions play a critical role in difficult academic situations, such as the transition into college, a period infused with uncertainty. Perceived academic control (low vs. high) and emotions (course boredom, anxiety, and enjoyment) were examined to determine how they jointly predicted 620 first-year students’ achievement and attrition over an entire academic year. It was expected that students’ emotions would moderate the effects of high perceived control on achievement (final psychology grade, cumulative GPA) and attrition (overall course credits dropped). Regression results revealed several Perceived Control  ×  Emotion interactions that supported this moderation hypothesis: negative emotions impeded the benefits of high control (i.e., boredom and anxiety predicted worse performance in high-control students); positive emotions enhanced the benefits of high control (i.e., enjoyment predicted better performance in high-control students). Conversely, achievement emotions did not predict performance among low-control students. Together, these findings indicate that for a high level of perceived control to enhance students’ academic achievement and inhibit attrition, “adaptive” levels of emotions (lower boredom, lower anxiety, or higher enjoyment) are required. Implications for maximizing academic success among both low- and high-control students are discussed.

Emotion,Sophistication and Political Behavior: Evidence From a Laboratory Experiment

The way emotions affect political behavior has been a central theme in politics since ancient times, but it is only in the past few decades that it has been the focus of rigorous empirical inquiry. Recent empirical research suggests that emotions may affect different groups of people in distinct ways, but experimental evidence remains scant. Through a double‐blind experiment, this article investigates the degree to which emotions (shame and anger) motivate people with different levels of political sophistication to be more politically active. The findings are two‐fold: (1) Once treated with shame, more sophisticated individuals are more likely to change their political behavior than less sophisticated ones; and (2) once treated with anger, it is people with low levels of prior political involvement who are more likely to report a change in their behavior. The findings highlight the potential of going beyond the existing investigations by adding shame in empirical analyses of how emotions affect behavioral change. The evidence here also shows that different emotions might display different patterns of interaction with sophistication. Practically, the findings point to an emotional venue for the mobilization of citizens who are generally difficult to engage in political life.     

Sentimental Utility Theory: Interpreting the Utilization of Collective Emotions by the Political Elite Through the Erdoğan‐Obama Friendship

Barack Obama's 2009 visit to Turkey resulted in an Obama‐Mania in Turkish media, followed by a friendship between Obama and Recep Erdo?an, which was widely reported in the media and emphasized in their rhetoric. This article explains the existence of the Erdo?an‐Obama friendship narrative, in spite of no actual political friendship existing. We first interpret their relationship through five key components of political friendship (affect, grand project, altruistic reciprocity, moral obligations, equality) and argue that, despite a strong friendship narrative, their histories, leadership styles, and political goals diverged to such an extent that a friendship never existed. We then introduce sentimental utility theory (SUT) to explain the utility of maintaining the appearance of a friendship. Through SUT, this article illuminates the utility of collective emotions and offers insight into how collective emotions produce ingroup identities and generate stability for a state's population. SUT reveals how Erdo?an utilized the Obama‐mania in Turkey to create a personal bond with Obama which linked himself, and his policies, to Obama and his progressive policies. Future research can deploy SUT to make sense of other claims of friendship and special relationships between states and between state leaders.     

Emotions as guardians of group norms: expressions of anger and disgust drive inferences about autonomy and purity violations

Other people’s emotional reactions to a third person’s behaviour are potentially informative about what is appropriate within a given situation. We investigated whether and how observers’ inferences of such injunctive norms are shaped by expressions of anger and disgust. Building on the moral emotions literature, we hypothesised that angry and disgusted expressions produce relative differences in the strength of autonomy-based versus purity-based norm inferences. We report three studies (plus three supplementary studies) using different types of stimuli (vignette-based, video clips) to investigate how emotional reactions shape norms about potential norm violations (eating snacks, drinking alcohol), and contexts (groups of friends, a university, a company). Consistent with our theoretical argument, the results indicate that observers use others’ emotional reactions not only to infer whether a particular behaviour is inappropriate, but also why it is inappropriate: because it primarily violates autonomy standards (as suggested relatively more strongly by expressions of anger) or purity standards (as suggested relatively more strongly by expressions of disgust). We conclude that the social functionality of emotions in groups extends to shaping norms based on moral standards.     

Blocking incidental frustration during bargaining

The current study examined the effects of an intervention aimed at blocking the transfer of frustration from a previous experience (i.e. recall task) to a subsequent and unrelated task (i.e. ultimatum bargaining task). Participants who went through the intervention were more likely to accept unfair offers in the ultimatum bargaining task than those who did not go through the intervention. These results show that participants who were blocked from transferring their feelings of frustration from the recall task to the subsequent bargaining task (no-transfer condition) more likely accepted unfair offers than those who inadvertently transferred their feelings of frustration (transfer condition). The effect of conditions on accept-reject decisions in the ultimatum bargaining was mediated by reported feelings of frustration.