Emotionally positive self-directed speech widens the cone of gaze.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 759-768; doi:10.1037/emo0001304The perception of another individual’s gaze direction is not a low-level, stimulus-driven visual process but a higher-level process that can be top-down modulated, for example, by emotion and theory of mind. The present study investigated the influence of directed (self vs. other) and emotional (positive vs. negative) speech on judging whether another individual’s gaze or an arrow is directed toward the self or not. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that participants perceived a wider range of gaze deviations as looking at them when the speech was directed to themse...
Source: Emotion - September 28, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
What makes a word a good representative of the category of “emotion”? The role of feelings and interoception.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 745-758; doi:10.1037/emo0001300The words we use to describe emotions vary in terms of prototypicality; that is, some of these words may be more representative of the semantic category of emotion than others (e.g., anger refers more clearly to an emotion than boredom). Based on a multicomponential conception of emotions, the aim of the present study was to examine the contribution of several variables to emotion prototypicality. Some of those variables are related to the distinct components of emotions: evaluation, action, body expression, internal body sensations (interoception), and feelings....
Source: Emotion - September 28, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Feelings in words: Emotion word use and cardiovascular reactivity in marital interactions.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 733-744; doi:10.1037/emo0001299Putting feelings into words is often thought to be beneficial. Few studies, however, have examined associations between natural emotion word use and cardiovascular reactivity. This laboratory-based study examined emotion word use (i.e., from computerized text analysis) and cardiovascular reactivity (i.e., interbeat interval changes from baseline) across two interaction contexts (i.e., conflict and positive conversations) in 49 mixed-sex married couples (age: M = 43.11, SD = 9.20) from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. We focused on both frequency (i.e., relative...
Source: Emotion - September 28, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Physiological arousal underlies preferential access to visual awareness of fear-conditioned (and possibly disgust-conditioned) stimuli.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 718-732; doi:10.1037/emo0001296Fear and disgust have been associated with opposite influences on visual processing, even though both constitute negative emotions that motivate avoidance behavior and entail increased arousal. In the current study, we hypothesized that (a) homeostatic relevance modulates early stages of visual processing, (b) through widespread physiological responses, and that (c) the direction of these modulations depends on whether an emotion calls for immediate regulatory behavior or not. Specifically, we expected that increased arousal should facilitate the detection of fea...
Source: Emotion - September 28, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
From memory to motivation: Probing the relationship between episodic simulation, empathy, and helping intentions.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 703-717; doi:10.1037/emo0001294Research has documented a strong link between constructing episodic simulations—vivid imaginations of specific events—and empathy. To date, most studies have used episodic simulations of helping someone to facilitate affective empathy and promote helping intentions, but have not studied how episodic simulations of another’s distressing situation affect empathy. Moreover, affective empathy encompasses both personal distress (i.e., an egocentric experience of distress in response to another’s circumstances) and empathic concern (i.e., compassion for another...
Source: Emotion - September 28, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Negative emotions disrupt intentional synchronization during group sensorimotor interaction.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 687-702; doi:10.1037/emo0001282Emotions play a fundamental role in human interactions and trigger responses in physiological, psychological, and behavioral modalities. Interpersonal coordination often entails attunement between individuals in various modalities. Previous research has elucidated the mechanisms of interpersonal synchronization and the emotions aroused by joint action: cardiac activity aligns in disputing marital couples, spectators share enjoyment in observing live dance performances, and joint finger-tapping evokes positive emotions. However, little is known about the impact of...
Source: Emotion - September 25, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
How do people use reappraisal? An investigation of selection frequency and affective outcomes of reappraisal tactics.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 676-686; doi:10.1037/emo0001259Although the effects of different emotion regulation strategies are well-documented, most studies to date have focused on the selection and implementation of broad strategies, while overlooking the selection and implementation of specific tactics to enact those strategies. The present research investigated the strategy of cognitive reappraisal and the differences in selection frequency and affective outcomes that are associated with the implementation of different reappraisal tactics to enact that strategy. Participants completed a laboratory task in which they w...
Source: Emotion - September 14, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Mother–child dyadic responses to children facing challenges: An examination across ethnicities.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 663-675; doi:10.1037/emo0001295The current study (a) examined ethnic differences in mothers’ and children’s responses to children’s performance in a challenging task, (b) tested the associations among children’s desire for assistance, maternal control, and children’s emotional responses to the challenge, and (c) explored whether these associations held across three ethnicities—Asian Americans (AA), Latinx Americans (LA), and European Americans (EA). Results showed that children’s emotional arousal significantly increased and emotional valence became significantly less positive ov...
Source: Emotion - September 14, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Elasticity of emotions to multiple interpersonal transgressions.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 648-662; doi:10.1037/emo0001286After an interpersonal mishap—like blowing off plans with a friend, forgetting a spouse’s birthday, or falling behind on a group project—wrongdoers typically feel guilty for their misbehavior, and victims feel angry. These emotions are believed to possess reparative functions; their expression prevents future mistakes from reiterating. However, little research has examined people’s emotional reactions to mistakes that happen more than once. In seven preregistered studies, we assessed wrongdoers’ and victims’ emotions that arise after one transgression...
Source: Emotion - September 14, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Empathic concern motivates willingness to help in the absence of interdependence.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 628-647; doi:10.1037/emo0001288Previous research suggests that empathic concern selectively promotes motivation to help those with whom we typically have interdependent relationships, such as friends or siblings, rather than strangers or acquaintances. In a sample of U.S. participants (collected between 2018 and 2020), our studies not only confirmed the finding that empathic concern is directed somewhat more strongly toward interdependent relationship partners, but also showed cross-sectionally (Studies 1a–1b), and when manipulating target distress experimentally (Study 2), that empathic con...
Source: Emotion - September 14, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Emotional context and predictability in naturalistic reading aloud.
This study sought to extend current knowledge one step further, beyond stand-alone sentences or sentence pairs, by investigating how word frequency and lexical valence, along with their interactions, influence oral reading performance for multisentence stimuli in a naturalistic context. Lexical features were averaged over short passages of text, which were presented to participants on-screen simultaneously, and performance was assessed as reading speed, in words per second. Overall, we find that the same patterns emerge for multisentence oral reading as in the prior literature: strong frequency effects that benefit higher-...
Source: Emotion - September 14, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Sensitivity to basic emotional expressions and the emotion perception space in the absence of facial mimicry: The case of individuals with congenital facial palsy.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 602-616; doi:10.1037/emo0001275According to sensorimotor simulation models, recognition of another person’s emotion is achieved by recreating the motor production of the perceived facial expression in oneself. Therefore, congenital difficulties in the production of facial expressions may affect emotion processing. The present study assessed a sample (N = 11) of Moebius syndrome (MBS) patients and a matched control group (N = 33), using a highly sensitive emotion recognition task. Leveraging the uniqueness of MBS, which is characterized by congenital facial paralysis, the role of facial mimic...
Source: Emotion - September 7, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Shining our humanity: The benefits of awe on self-humanity.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 589-601; doi:10.1037/emo0001293Attributing humanness to oneself (i.e., self-humanity) can be malleable and can lead to various crucial outcomes. Researchers have not investigated whether and how awe as a self-related emotion affects people’s perception of their own humanness. We proposed two competing hypotheses: awe impairs self-humanity via self-smallness, and awe promotes self-humanity via authentic-self pursuit. Across seven studies (N = 1539), we found that awe is positively related to (Studies 1 and 4) and predicts self-humanity (Studies 2a, 2b, 5, and 6). Moreover, this relationship w...
Source: Emotion - September 7, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Contextual variations in emotion polyregulation: How do regulatory goals shape the use and success of emotion regulation strategies in everyday life?
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 574-588; doi:10.1037/emo0001285Emotion regulation strategies are frequently combined within one emotional episode, a phenomenon labeled emotion polyregulation. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies examining which regulatory strategies are commonly combined across different contexts and how effective these combinations are in everyday life. Targeting this research gap, the present ecological momentary assessment study modeled emotion polyregulation and its success for contexts of (a) downregulation, (b) upregulation, and (c) maintenance goals in N = 321 adults. The endorsement and succe...
Source: Emotion - September 7, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The interplay between music engagement and affect: A random-intercept cross-lagged panel analysis.
Emotion, Vol 24(3), Apr 2024, 562-573; doi:10.1037/emo0001279Engagement with music has the capacity to influence and be influenced by affective experiences. Although cross-sectional and experimental research provides evidence that music engagement is related to higher positive and lower negative affect, few studies have investigated the bidirectional nature of this relationship over time. The present longitudinal study, therefore, examined the interplay between passive and active music engagement and affect using random-intercept cross-lagged panel analysis. Over 8 weeks in 2022, 428 participants regularly engaging with mu...
Source: Emotion - September 7, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
