Emotion makes a difference: Induced sadness reduces preschool boys' sharing behavior

This study investigated how external negative emotional stimuli influenced 5–6-year-old children's (N?=?98) sharing behavior. Children were asked to watch a video that induced either sad or neutral emotion and then share stickers simultaneously with poor and wealthy recipients. Compared to the neutral emotion condition, boys shared less, and offered more self-focused reasons for sharing after being induced sad emotions; girls however, shared equally, and provided self-focused and other-focused reasons equally in both emotional conditions. Results indicated that sadness increased children's tendency to defend their own interest in boys but not in girls, which supports the evolutionary “male warrior hypothesis”. In addition, although children indicated that they liked the wealthy recipient better than the poor one, they shared equally between the two recipients, suggesting an early development of equality concern and charity behavior (i.e., care for the disadvantaged individuals). These findings revealed gender differences in the socio-affective processes underlying children's resource allocation and added developmental evidence for the adaptive function of negative emotions.     

The true trigger of shame: social devaluation is sufficient,wrongdoing is unnecessary

What is the trigger of shame? The information threat theory holds that shame is an evolved adaptation that is designed to limit the likelihood and costs of others forming negative beliefs about the self. By contrast, attributional theories posit that concerns over others' evaluations are irrelevant to shame. Instead, shame is triggered when a person attributes a negative outcome to their self, rather than to a particular act or circumstance. We conduct a strong test of the information threat hypothesis. In Study 1, participants imagined taking an action that, though morally unimpeachable, could be interpreted unfavorably by others. As predicted by the information threat theory, shame increased with the publicity of this act. In Study 2, participants played a public good game and then learned that the other participants either chose to keep interacting with them (inclusion) or not (exclusion)—ostensibly because of their contributions, but in fact randomly determined by the experimenter. Exclusion increased shame. Under-contribution did not. In fact, even the highest contributors tended to feel shame when excluded. These findings strongly suggest that the true trigger of shame is the prospect or actuality of being devalued by others.     

关于执行护航任务舰艇官兵情绪的影响因素探讨

目的:执行护航任务过程中,有很多因素会影响舰艇官兵的情绪,出现各种不良情绪问题。本文的目的是探索究竟是哪些因素影响官兵情绪,使情绪调控更有针对性。方法:本文采取自编《护航官兵情绪调控问卷》对329名执行过不同批次护航任务的官兵进行调查分析。结果:根据问卷结果,通过对问卷进行因素分析,发现KMO值为0,934,并得出在8个因素上具有较高的载荷,分别是人际、舆论、领导、归因、管理、任务、认知和个性八种影响因素。这八种因素根据护航任务的不同阶段有不同表现,对官兵情绪产生不同程度的影响。结论:影响护航舰艇官兵情绪的因素为八种,分别是人际、舆论、领导、归因、管理、任务、认知和个性,并且这些因素对情绪产生着不同程度的影响。     

Functional neuroimaging of emotional learning and autonomic reactions

This article provides a selective overview of the functional neuroimaging literature with an emphasis on emotional activation processes. Emotions are fast and flexible response systems that provide basic tendencies for adaptive action. From the range of involved component functions, we first discuss selected automatic mechanisms that control basic adaptational changes. Second, we illustrate how neuroimaging work has contributed to the mapping of the network components associated with basic emotion families (fear, anger, disgust, happiness), and secondary dimensional concepts that organise the meaning space for subjective experience and verbal labels (emotional valence, activity/intensity, approach/withdrawal, etc.). Third, results and methodological difficulties are discussed in view of own neuroimaging experiments that investigated the component functions involved in emotional learning. The amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and striatum form a network of reciprocal connections that show topographically distinct patterns of activity as a correlate of up and down regulation processes during an emotional episode. Emotional modulations of other brain systems have attracted recent research interests. Emotional neuroimaging calls for more representative designs that highlight the modulatory influences of regulation strategies and socio-cultural factors responsible for inhibitory control and extinction. We conclude by emphasising the relevance of the temporal process dynamics of emotional activations that may provide improved prediction of individual differences in emotionality.     

Time perception,emotions and mood disorders

In this review, we describe recent internal clock models accounting for time perception and look at how they try to explain the time distortions produced by emotion. We then discuss the results of studies of patients suffering from affective disorders (depression) who experience the feeling of time slowing down. A distinction is thus made between time perception and explicit awareness of the passage of time. We conclude that the feeling that time is passing slowly is not systematically associated with a disruption in the basic mechanisms underlying time perception.     

负性情绪对不同视野条件下工作记忆的影响

目的:研究结合延迟样本匹配任务和分视野范式,探讨负性情绪对言语和空间工作记忆的影响。方法:32名大学本科生参加实验,在中性和负性情绪图片呈现阶段,所有被试完成言语和空间工作记忆任务各160个trial。结果:言语工作记忆任务在右视野呈现时正确率较高,反应时较短,而空间工作记忆任务则在左视野呈现时表现出相似的反应优势;负性情绪状态下的工作记忆表现均优于中性情绪状态。结论:言语及空间工作记忆分别具有左、右半球的加工优势,且负性情绪对工作记忆具有促进作用。     

Analysis of physiological signals for recognition of boredom,pain, and surprise emotions

Background

The aim of the study was to examine the differences of boredom, pain, and surprise. In addition to that, it was conducted to propose approaches for emotion recognition based on physiological signals.

Methods

Three emotions, boredom, pain, and surprise, are induced through the presentation of emotional stimuli and electrocardiography (ECG), electrodermal activity (EDA), skin temperature (SKT), and photoplethysmography (PPG) as physiological signals are measured to collect a dataset from 217 participants when experiencing the emotions. Twenty-seven physiological features are extracted from the signals to classify the three emotions. The discriminant function analysis (DFA) as a statistical method, and five machine learning algorithms (linear discriminant analysis (LDA), classification and regression trees (CART), self-organizing map (SOM), Naïve Bayes algorithm, and support vector machine (SVM)) are used for classifying the emotions.

Results

The result shows that the difference of physiological responses among emotions is significant in heart rate (HR), skin conductance level (SCL), skin conductance response (SCR), mean skin temperature (meanSKT), blood volume pulse (BVP), and pulse transit time (PTT), and the highest recognition accuracy of 84.7 % is obtained by using DFA.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the differences of boredom, pain, and surprise and the best emotion recognizer for the classification of the three emotions by using physiological signals.     

Personality and Electrodermal Response Lability: An Interpretation

Electrodermal response (EDR) lability is a psychophysiological trait reflecting stable individual differences in electrodermal activation as indexed by frequency measures of phasic EDR activity. There is no consistent evidence that EDR lability reflects dispositional or clinical anxiety. However, EDR lability appears to be related to individual differences in the overt expression of emotional and antagonistic impulses. Greater EDR lability is associated with a relatively undemonstrative and agreeable disposition, whereas greater EDR stability is associated with a relatively expressive and antagonistic disposition. The inverse relationship between EDR lability and the expression of emotional and antagonistic impulses suggests that EDR lability may reflect individual differences in the effortful control of such expression. This hypothesis is consistent with cognitive effort interpretations of phasic EDR activity, with evidence of the sensitivity of phasic EDR activity to capacity-demanding tasks, and with evidence of reduced spare capacity among EDR labile individuals under cognitive challenge. Individual differences in effortful self-control may explain the association of greater EDR lability with essential hypertension and greater EDR stability with forms of antisocial behavior.     

Salience of emotional displays of danger and contagion in faces is enhanced when progesterone levels are raised

Findings from previous studies of hormone-mediated behavior in women suggest that raised progesterone level increases the probability of behaviors that will reduce the likelihood of disruption to fetal development during pregnancy (e.g. increased avoidance of sources of contagion). Here, we tested women's (N=52) sensitivity to potential cues to nearby sources of contagion (disgusted facial expressions with averted gaze) and nearby physical threat (fearful facial expressions with averted gaze) at two points in the menstrual cycle differing in progesterone level. Women demonstrated a greater tendency to perceive fearful and disgusted expressions with averted gaze as more intense than those with direct gaze when their progesterone level was relatively high. By contrast, change in progesterone level was not associated with any change in perceptions of happy expressions with direct and averted gaze, indicating that our findings for disgusted and fearful expressions were not due to a general response bias. Collectively, our findings suggest women are more sensitive to facial cues signalling nearby contagion and physical threat when raised progesterone level prepares the body for pregnancy.     

A female advantage in the recognition of emotional facial expressions: test of an evolutionary hypothesis

A set of computerized tasks was used to investigate sex differences in the speed and accuracy of emotion recognition in 62 men and women of reproductive age. Evolutionary theories have posited that female superiority in the perception of emotion might arise from women's near-universal responsibility for child-rearing. Two variants of the child-rearing hypothesis predict either across-the-board female superiority in the discrimination of emotional expressions (“attachment promotion” hypothesis) or a female superiority that is restricted to expressions of negative emotion (“fitness threat” hypothesis). Therefore, we sought to evaluate whether the expression of the sex difference is influenced by the valence of the emotional signal (Positive or Negative). The results showed that women were faster than men at recognizing both positive and negative emotions from facial cues, supporting the attachment promotion hypothesis. Support for the fitness threat hypothesis also was found, in that the sex difference was accentuated for negative emotions. There was no evidence that the female superiority was learned through previous childcare experience or that it was derived from a sex difference in simple perceptual speed. The results suggest that evolved mechanisms, not domain-general learning, underlie the sex difference in recognition of facial emotions.