Personality, emotional experience, and efforts to control emotions

Three converging, multimethod studies examined personality and emotional processes. Study 1 (N = 321) examined links among sex, personality, and expectations for emotional events. In Study 2, participants (N = 468) described contents of emotionally evocative slides to a partner (either a friend or a stranger). Participants reported their emotional experience, efforts to control emotion, and the anticipated reactions of their partners. Structural modeling of self-report data and analyses of observational data indicated that Agreeableness and sex were significant predictors of emotional experience and of efforts to control emotion. Study 3 (N = 68) replicated and extended the two previous studies using psychophysiological methods to examine responses to positively and negatively charged emotional materials. Outcomes are discussed in terms of processes underlying the five-factor structural dimension of Agreeableness and links to emotional self-regulation.     

Physiological and self-reported disgust reactions to obesity

There is accumulating evidence that disgust plays an important role in prejudice toward individuals with obesity, but that research is primarily based on self-reported emotions. In four studies, we examined whether participants displayed a physiological marker of disgust (i.e. levator labii activity recorded using facial electromyography) in response to images of obese individuals, and whether these responses corresponded with their self-reported disgust to those images. All four studies showed the predicted self-reported disgust response toward images of obese individuals. Study 1 further showed that participants exhibited more levator activity to images of obese individuals than to neutral images. However, Studies 2–4 failed to provide any evidence that the targets’ body size affected levator responses. These findings suggest that disgust may operate at multiple levels, and that the disgust response to images of obese individuals may be more of a cognitive-conceptual one than a physiological one.     

Face age and sex modulate the other-race effect in face recognition

Faces convey a variety of socially relevant cues that have been shown to affect recognition, such as age, sex, and race, but few studies have examined the interactive effect of these cues. White participants of two distinct age groups were presented with faces that differed in race, age, and sex in a face recognition paradigm. Replicating the other-race effect, young participants recognized young own-race faces better than young other-race faces. However, recognition performance did not differ across old faces of different races (Experiments 1, 2A). In addition, participants showed an other-age effect, recognizing White young faces better than White old faces. Sex affected recognition performance only when age was not varied (Experiment 2B). Overall, older participants showed a similar recognition pattern (Experiment 3) as young participants, displaying an other-race effect for young, but not old, faces. However, they recognized young and old White faces on a similar level. These findings indicate that face cues interact to affect recognition performance such that age and sex information reliably modulate the effect of race cues. These results extend accounts of face recognition that explain recognition biases (such as the other-race effect) as a function of dichotomous ingroup/outgroup categorization, in that outgroup characteristics are not simply additive but interactively determine recognition performance.     

Understanding the power of the picture: the effect of image content on emotional and political responses to terrorism

Viewing images of terrorism can have a powerful impact on individuals' emotional and political responses, yet little is known about the psychological processes underlying these effects. We hypothesized that the content of terrorism images will shape viewers' appraisals of the event, which will elicit specific emotions and political attitudes. British citizens viewed photographs of the 2005 London bombings, either focusing on victims or terrorists. Exposure to images of victims increased appraisals of victim suffering, which predicted feelings of sympathy. Exposure to images of terrorists increased appraisals of terrorists as dangerous, which predicted fear; and of the attack as unjust, which predicted anger. Each emotion predicted support for a distinct counterterrorism policy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Disgust predicts prejudice and discrimination toward individuals with obesity

This study examined the relevance of disgust to evaluations of an obese target person, and the connection between disgust and prejudice toward that person. Participants (n = 598) viewed an image of an obese or non‐obese woman, and then evaluated that woman on a number of dimensions (emotions, attitudes, stereotypes, desire for social distance). Compared with the non‐obese target, the obese target elicited more disgust, more negative attitudes and stereotypes, and a greater desire for social distance. Furthermore, disgust mediated the effect of the target's body size on all of the outcome variables (attitudes, stereotypes, social distance). Disgust plays an important role in prejudice and discrimination toward individuals with obesity, and might in part explain the pervasiveness of weight bias.     

Modification of the startle reflex in a community sample: do one or two dimensions of psychopathy underlie emotional processing?

Recent research on psychopathy has begun to explore two dimensions that possibly underlie psychopathy–one related more to emotional and interpersonal traits, and another related more to antisocial behaviors. A community sample of adults was assessed for psychopathy using Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Eyeblinks elicited by startle probes were recorded while participants viewed pictures of emotionally-laden stimuli. Consistent with previous research, participants scoring high on PCL-R Factor 2 (“antisocial”) showed no affective modification of startle if they also scored high on PCL-R Factor 1 (“emotional detachment”). When the factor scores were analyzed together as continuous variables in a regression analysis, however, affective modification of startle was negatively related to Factor 1 but positively related to Factor 2. The results thus provide further support for a two-factor model of psychopathy.     

Does crying help? Development of the beliefs about crying scale (BACS)

Crying is often considered to be a positive experience that benefits the crier, yet there is little empirical evidence to support this. Indeed, it seems that people hold a range of appraisals about their crying, and these are likely to influence the effects of crying on their emotional state. This paper reports on the development and psychometric validation of the Beliefs about Crying Scale (BACS), a new measure assessing beliefs about whether crying leads to positive or negative emotional outcomes in individual and interpersonal contexts. Using 40 preliminary items drawn from a qualitative study, an exploratory factor analysis with 202 participants (50% female; aged 18–84 years) yielded three subscales: Helpful Beliefs, Unhelpful-Individual Beliefs, and Unhelpful-Social Beliefs, explaining 60% of the variance in the data. Confirmatory factor analysis on the 14-item scale with 210 participants (71% female; aged 17–48 years) showed a good fit to the three factors. The subscales showed differential relationships with measures of personality traits, crying proneness, emotion regulation and expressivity, and emotional identification (alexithymia). The BACS provides a nuanced understanding of beliefs about crying in different contexts and helps to explain why crying behaviour may not always represent positive emotion regulation for the crier.     

Racial discrimination by low-prejudiced whites. Facial movements as implicit measures of attitudes related to behavior

We investigated the relationship of implicit racial prejudice to discriminatory behavior. White university students chose the best of three applicants (two were White and one was Black) for a prestigious teaching fellowship. They then completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a measure of implicit racial bias. Three weeks later, participants completed a second implicit measure of racial bias by viewing photos of Whites and Blacks while facial electromyography (EMG) was recorded from sites corresponding to the muscles used in smiling and frowning. Analyses revealed that bias in cheek EMG activity was related to the race of the chosen applicant, whereas bias on the IAT was not. Motivations to control prejudiced reactions were not related to EMG activity or the race of the applicant chosen, but were related to IAT bias. The findings indicate that facial EMG can be used as an implicit measure of prejudice related to discrimination.     

Desensitization to media violence over a short period of time

This study investigated the desensitization to violence over a short period of time. Participants watched nine violent movie scenes and nine comedy scenes, and reported whether they enjoyed the violent or comedy scenes and whether they felt sympathetic toward the victim of violence. Using latent growth modeling, analyses were carried out to investigate how participants responded to the different scenes across time. The findings of this study suggested that repeated exposure to media violence reduces the psychological impact of media violence in the short term, therefore desensitizing viewers to media violence. As a result, viewers tended to feel less sympathetic toward the victims of violence and actually enjoy more the violence portrayed in the media. Additionally, desensitization to media violence was better represented by a curvilinear pattern, whereas desensitization to comedy scenes was better represented by a linear pattern. Finally, trait aggression was not related to the pattern of change over time, although significant effects were found for initial reports of enjoyment and sympathy. Aggr. Behav. 35:179–187, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.