Cognition & Emotion最新文献

We aimed to identify maternal characteristics predicting interpretation of infant emotions, as well as relations between such interpretations and mother-infant stress. Specifically, we investigated (1) prospective associations between maternal dispositional mindfulness and interpretation of infant emotions, and (2) concurrent associations between maternal interpretation of infant emotions and mothers' and infants' cortisol during a dyadic stressor in a non-clinical community sample (n = 78) of mother-infant dyads. Mothers completed the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire at 3 months postnatal, and the IFEEL Picture infant emotion interpretation task at 6 months postnatal. At 6-months, mother-infant dyads completed the Face-to-Face Still Face paradigm, and physiological stress was assessed via salivary cortisol. Regression analyses revealed significant links between aspects of maternal mindfulness - specifically, Observing, Describing, and Acting with Awareness facets - and infant emotion interpretation; more mindful mothers' emotion ratings were less negatively biased and covered the full spectrum of infant emotions, congruent with the range of responses given by a low-risk reference sample. In turn, less negativity bias and greater interpretive congruence predicted lower infant and mother cortisol during the stress session, with effects small-medium in size. Findings highlight the potential role of maternal interpretation of infant emotions in mindful parenting.

Trypophobia is a relatively common aversion to clusters of holes. There is no consensus yet on which emotions are involved in Trypophobia nor in its functional utility. This report investigates the role of disgust using contamination tasks in two studies, which contrast people with an aversion to trypophobic stimuli to those without. In Study 1, participants reported their emotional reactions to imagined contamination of trypophobic images. In Study 2, participants evaluated physically present trypophobic, disgust, fear, and control stimuli. The capacity of these stimuli to contaminate other objects was established using a chain of contagion task. Across both studies, contamination was present, however, only those with an aversion to trypophobic stimuli evidenced contamination on the chain of contagion task, a hallmark of disgust responding. Elevated levels were not only reported for disgust, but also alongside fear/anxiety. Participant reports suggest an underlying disease avoidance mechanism in Trypophobia, with trypophobic participants demonstrating an exaggerated response to such stimuli involving disgust and fear/anxiety, which is also seen in small animal phobia, BII, and C-OCD. Implications, particularly for treatment are discussed.

Reading violent stories or watching a war documentary are examples in which people voluntarily engage with the suffering of others whom they do not know. Using a mixed-methods approach, we investigated why people make these decisions, while also mapping the characteristics of strangers' suffering to gain a rich understanding. In Study 1 (N = 247), participants described situations of suffering and their reasons to engage with it. Using qualitative thematic analysis, we developed a typology of the stranger (who), the situation (what), the source (how), and the reason(s) for engaging with the situation (why). We categorised the motives into four overarching themes - epistemic, eudaimonic, social, and affective - reflecting diversity in the perceived functionality of engaging with a stranger's suffering. Next, we tested the robustness of the identified motives in a quantitative study. In Study 2, participants (N = 250) recalled a situation in which they engaged with the suffering of a stranger and indicated their endorsement with a variety of possible motives. Largely mirroring Study 1, Study 2 participants engaged to acquire knowledge, for personal and social utility, and to feel positive and negative emotions. We discuss implications for understanding the exploration of human suffering as a motivated phenomenon.

Worry proneness is a transdiagnostic trait that predicts increased negative affect (NA), potentially in the service of preventing negative emotional contrasts. Although discrete types of NA vary along the dimension of arousal, the extent to which trait worry predicts high vs. low arousal forms of NA in daily life is unclear. This distinction has important implications for conceptualising how worry may perturb adaptive emotionality in various disorders. The present study (not pre-registered) aimed to isolate the effects of trait worry on high (N = 88) and low (N = 122) arousal NA in daily life using ecological momentary assessment while controlling for potential physical and psychological confounds. Participants were assessed for trait worry and depressive symptoms at baseline then reported their affect, heart rate, and exercise three times per day for one week. Multilevel models revealed that trait worry predicted both increased high and low arousal NA after controlling for momentary heart rate, daily exercise, and depression. In contrast, baseline depressive symptoms only predicted low arousal NA in daily life. Findings support the contrast avoidance model of worry and suggest that worry is linked to increased state NA in daily life, independent of arousal.

For social species, having strong and high-quality social relationships is an important safety cue. Loneliness occurs when an individual perceives they have insufficient relationships resulting in feelings of lack of safety. States of perceived unsafety are linked to an increased tendency to construe ambiguous information - information lacking a unique clear interpretation - as threatening. Here, we explore whether the ambiguity of social cues of interpersonal rejection moderates effects of loneliness on feelings of rejection while undergoing social exclusion. Data were collected in 2021; 144 adults completed a progressive social exclusion paradigm where they were randomly assigned to be equally included, excluded, or over-included. Social exclusion/inclusion cues became more pronounced over the course of multiple rounds of a ball-tossing game (Cyberball) resulting in a scenario where ambiguity was highest in earlier rounds and decreased over time. Participants reported feelings of loneliness prior to the task and feelings of rejection throughout the task. Results demonstrated that higher loneliness predicted increased feelings of rejection regardless of exclusion condition. Notably, this positive relationship was strongest during earlier rounds when social cues were most ambiguous. These findings contribute to our understanding of how loneliness modulates social perception to enable organisms to adequately adapt to changing circumstances.

Prior studies have shown that people imagine their personal future to be more positive than their country's collective future. The present research extends the nascent literature by examining the valence and perceived control of personal and national future events in a new experimental paradigm, the cultural generalizability of the findings, and the relation of future thinking to psychological well-being. US college students (Study 1) and US and Turkish community participants (Study 2) imagined what might happen to them and their country in three time points (i.e., next week, next year, and in 10-15 years). They then rated the emotional valence and perceived control of the events and completed a psychological well-being measure. Both US and Turkish participants imagined their personal future to be more positive than their country's future, whereas they attributed higher perceived control to their countries for national future events than to themselves for personal future events. The positivity of national (Study 1) and personal future events (Study 2) predicted better psychological well-being, whereas perceived control did not. These original findings enrich our theoretical understanding of future thinking.

Nature contact has associations with emotional ill-being and well-being. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not fully understood. We hypothesised that increased adaptive and decreased maladaptive emotion regulation strategies would be a pathway linking nature contact to ill-being and well-being. Using data from a survey of 600 U.S.-based adults administered online in 2022, we conducted structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses. We found that (1) frequency of nature contact was significantly associated with lesser emotional ill-being and greater emotional well-being, (2) effective emotion regulation was significantly associated with lesser emotional ill-being and greater emotional well-being, and (3) the associations of higher frequency of nature contact with these benefits were partly explained via emotion regulation. Moreover, we found a nonlinear relationship for the associations of duration of nature contact with some outcomes, with a rise in benefits up to certain amounts of time, and a levelling off after these points. These findings support and extend previous work that demonstrates that the associations of nature contact with emotional ill-being and well-being may be partly explained by changes in emotion regulation.

Attentional bias to threat has been almost exclusively examined after participants experienced repeated pairings between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US). This study aimed to determine whether threat-related attentional capture can result from observational learning, when participants acquire knowledge of the aversive qualities of a stimulus without themselves experiencing aversive outcomes. Non-clinical young-adult participants (N = 38) first watched a video of an individual (the demonstrator) performing a Pavlovian conditioning task in which one colour was paired with shock (CS+) and another colour was neutral (CS-). They then carried out visual search for a shape-defined target. Oculomotor measures evidenced an attentional bias toward the CS+ colour, suggesting that threat-related attentional capture can ensue from observational learning. Exploratory analyses also revealed that this effect was positively correlated with empathy for the demonstrator. Our findings extend empirical and theoretical knowledge about threat-driven attention and provide valuable insights to better understand the formation of anxiety disorders.

The present study investigated the effect of social feedback on the experiences of our actions and the outcomes (e.g. temporal binding between an action and its outcome, reflecting individuals' causal beliefs modulated by their agency judgments). In Experiment 1a, participants freely decided (voluntary action) their action timing to cause an outcome, which was followed by social feedback. A larger temporal binding (TB) following negative vs. positive events was found. This effect appeared neither in the random context where the causal belief between the action and outcome was absent (Experiment 1b) nor in the involuntary action context where participants' action timing was instructed (Experiment 1c). Experiments 2a and 2b examined the effect when the action-outcome was occluded, including reversing the order of outcome and feedback in Experiment 2b. Experiments 3a and 3b investigated the effect with only social feedback or only action-outcome presented. Results revealed that the effect found in Experiment 1 was driven by social feedback and independent of the availability of the action-outcome and the position of social feedback. Our findings demonstrate a stronger temporal integration of the action and its outcome following negative social feedback, reflecting fluctuations in sense of agency when faced with social feedback.