Emotion最新文献

Does emotional information have a place in court, or does it bias legal decisions? We address this longstanding question using real-world national sentencing patterns and laboratory-based mock jury decisions. Archival analysis of 918,152 observations reveals that the introduction of Victim Impact Statements, in which victims express the effect of crimes on their lives, did not change sentencing outcomes for violent crimes (Study 1). We hypothesized this may occur if observers empathize with victims over defendants by default. In two experimental studies (including a preregistered replication; data collected 2018 and 2019), exposure to the facts of a crime produced empathy for victims but dehumanization of defendants, a pattern not altered by Victim Impact Statements. Upon exposure to both the defendant's perspective and the victim's perspective, people express empathy for the victim and defendant, humanize defendants, and support more lenient sentencing. Internal meta-analyses of Study 2 and 3 found that the pooled effect of the defendant's perspective was much stronger than that of the victim, despite a content analysis demonstrating no significant difference in the emotionality or tone of the two statements. Taken together, the large and real-world sample of Study 1, combined with the experimental manipulation of Studies 2 and 3, suggests that "empathic defaults" are part of legal decision making and that introducing-rather than ignoring-multiple perspectives may balance the emotional scales. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

During the transition to middle school, difficulties understanding and identifying emotions may place youth at risk for maladaptive responses to peer victimization. In turn, maladaptive responses to victimization may increase the likelihood of engaging in aggressive behaviors. In a prospective, multi-informant study of 636 youth (338 girls; M_age in fourth grade = 9.94 years; 66.7% White; 34.75% receiving subsidized lunch) from fourth to sixth grades (2008-2011), we examined the indirect pathways from emotional clarity to aggressive behavior via responses to peer victimization. Results revealed that poor emotional clarity predicted less effortful engagement and more involuntary disengagement responses to peer victimization, which predicted more aggressive behaviors. These results highlight the importance of promoting emotional understanding to enhance effective coping with victimization and reduce aggression. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

A growing body of literature suggests that prosocial behavior, or behavior intended to help others, benefits well-being. However, modern society often places a greater emphasis on self-focused acts in the pursuit of well-being. To understand the effects of these differing forms of kindness (to others or the self), we conducted a 2-week intervention study of a community sample during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Participants were randomly assigned to a prosocial (other-kindness), self-kindness, or control condition, and those in the active conditions were asked to perform three acts of kindness each week. Of those who completed the intervention (N = 777), we found that participants in the other-kindness (vs. control) group experienced significant decreases in depression, anxiety, and loneliness from pre- to postintervention, offering compelling evidence for the mental health benefits of prosocial behavior. Furthermore, we found that participants in the self-kindness (vs. control) group experienced significant decreases in depression, but no differences in anxiety and loneliness. While the self-kindness group reported experiencing more positive feelings during their acts of kindness, the other-kindness group felt more connected. Exploratory mediation analyses revealed that, for the prosocial group, the effect of condition on depression, anxiety, and loneliness was mediated by increases in feelings of social connection, whereas for the self-kindness group, the effect of condition on depression was mediated by increases in positive feelings. Overall, these findings reaffirm the benefits of prosocial behavior on well-being and suggest unique pathways to mental health benefits for these two forms of kindness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Interpersonal affect worsening involves intentionally making others feel bad and can stem from varied motives, including counterhedonic (to purely harm emotionally) and altruistic (to benefit others without personal gain) reasons. While prior research has examined these motives, their interplay with specific strategies remains underexplored. This study used ecological momentary assessment to investigate the links between motives (altruistic and counterhedonic) and strategies (negative engagement and rejection) in a sample of 228 participants across 21 ecological momentary assessments (three times a day over 7 days). Results revealed significant within-person associations: Higher levels than usual of altruistic motives positively predicted higher levels than usual in the use of negative engagement strategies, while counterhedonic motives positively predicted rejection strategies at the same time. The same pattern was true from strategies to motives. However, no evidence was found for spillover effects across time from motives to strategies. Nevertheless, the use of both rejection and negative engagement strategies at a previous time positively predicted higher counterhedonic motives at a later time. Similar links were also observed at the between-person level, suggesting specific alignments between motives and strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

A widely cited idea in the emotion regulation literature holds that expressive suppression impairs memory while cognitive reappraisal has no effect on or may enhance memory relative to control. However, empirical evidence for these effects has been inconsistent. To provide a definitive test, we conducted four well-powered experiments with more than 4,000 participants to examine the effects of reappraisal and suppression of negative emotion (Experiments 1 and 3) and positive emotion (Experiments 2 and 4) on verbal and nonverbal memory. Results showed no consistent evidence for an effect of reappraisal on either type of memory, though expressive suppression of negative emotion consistently impaired verbal memory relative to control. Obtained effect sizes were small given successful emotion regulation manipulations and adequate statistical power (ds < 0.11). Conclusions are constrained to English-speaking online samples, and may not generalize to other types of memory. These findings highlight the need to systematically test widely accepted assumptions as a field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies have indicated that adolescents are susceptible to emotional cues and can benefit from peers' interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). However, it remains unclear how an adolescent regulator's personal traits shape an effective IER. The present study examined the role of regulator's trait empathy and social distance between the regulator and the target on IER effectiveness among adolescents and explored the underlying behavioral mechanism. A total of 420 adolescent dyads with ages ranging from 12 to 18 years participated (212 dyads of friends; 208 dyads of strangers). After reporting their empathy levels, each regulator inferred the emotional intensity of the target based on the given negative events the target had experienced and then wrote down regulation strategies. Targets rated their own emotions before and after reading regulation strategies and evaluated the suitability of the strategies for them. The results showed that regulators with higher cognitive empathy were better at accurately perceiving targets' negative emotions, which, in turn, enhanced their regulation effectiveness. Similarly, regulators' behavioral empathy was positively related to regulation effectiveness through target-perceived strategy suitability. Additionally, close social distance enhanced the role of regulator's cognitive empathy in emotion perception accuracy and strengthened the impact of the regulator's behavioral empathy on regulation effectiveness. In contrast, closer social distance weakened the positive effect of regulator's behavioral empathy on target-perceived strategy suitability. These findings first highlight how and when different components of an adolescent regulator's trait empathy are linked to IER effectiveness, emphasizing the importance of adopting a dyadic design in the field of IER. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Schematized knowledge structures have been extensively studied in the cognitive domain, and yet the nature of affective schemas remains an uncharted area, with experimental work virtually nonexistent. Here, we examined how affective schemas are acquired, updated, and used for inference-making using three novel experimental paradigms. We show that affective schemas emerge by abstracting a common affective value from a distribution of unique affective associations. This common abstracted affective value semanticizes from the discrete exemplars into complex, valenced schemas (negative, positive, neutral), which consolidates across a 24-hr period. Valenced schemas (negative/positive) form faster than neutral schemas, resist affective reversals more strongly, and facilitate rapid learning and memory for related emotional information. Negative-valenced schemas, in particular, are most prioritized for learning, show greater resilience to change, and are more effective in supporting generalized (gist-based) inferences. This work defines key features of affective schemas, moving the study of emotional learning and memory systems from the conditioning of specific associations to the abstraction and consolidation of complex emotional knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Group-based guilt is known for its role in mitigating intergroup conflict and facilitating reconciliation. Although extensive research has explored this emotion among adults, its development and reparative functions during childhood remain unclear. The present study investigated the emergence and development of group-based guilt and its reparative prosocial behaviors among children (Han Chinese aged 4-11 years, N = 268, 135 girls) in response to transgressions committed by in-group members. The results indicated that children began to report group-based guilt soon after they reached 5 years old, with the intensity of this feeling increasing with age. Between the ages of 5 and 6 years, children developed a tendency to engage in verbal prosocial expressions (e.g., apologizing, comforting, and helping) to repair the harm caused by their in-group. However, it was not until nearly 8 years of age that they began sacrificing their possessions to compensate the victim. Both forms of reparative behavior were strengthened with age. Group-based guilt mediated the relationships between harm illegitimacy, in-group responsibility, and reparative behaviors. Overall, these findings suggest that harm illegitimacy and in-group responsibility serve as cognitive antecedents to group-based guilt, which emerges in preschool and transforms into more sophisticated intergroup reparative behaviors as children grow older. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Interoceptive attention refers to how an individual typically allocates their attentional resources to physiological signals. We do not, however, fully understand how interoceptive attention relates with other forms of internally focused attention, such as attention to internal thoughts (e.g., mind-wandering, reflection, worry), and whether these factors compete for limited attentional resources at the trait and state level. Across two studies (n = 222, n = 109; years data collected: 2021-2022, 2023-2024; from a U.K.-based predominantly undergraduate population), we isolated two components from several established trait-level measures of attention to thoughts, these reflected negative automatic thoughts (worry, rumination) and controlled thoughts (deliberate mind-wandering, reflection). In subsequent regression analyses, negative automatic thoughts, but not controlled thoughts, were a significant positive predictor of interoceptive attention, even when controlling for perceived interoceptive accuracy. This significant relationship was, however, accounted for by trait anxiety when included in the model. To test this pattern at the state-level, a novel monotonous responding task with three-dimensional attention probes was developed, which measures the reported allocation of attention between thoughts, bodily sensations, and the task. In contrast to trait-level attention, reported priority of attention to thoughts and body signals was inversely correlated, despite both increasing across the task. The results suggest that in a single moment attention to bodily signals and internal thoughts may compete; but over time, individuals who report focusing more on their internal thoughts also report more time attending to their body, with some evidence showing that this positive correlation could be due to underlying trait anxiety. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

One factor that relates to clinical symptoms, affect, and emotion regulation is beliefs that individuals hold about the nature of emotions, specifically the degree to which they view emotions as changeable (E. T. Kneeland, Dovidio, et al., 2016). Across two studies (Study 1, N = 371, data collected from June 2021 to May 2023; Study 2, N = 143, data collected from January 2023 to December 2023), we examined how the discrepancy between individuals' beliefs about the malleability of emotion in general relative to their own emotions related to and predicted clinical symptoms, affect, and emotion regulation efforts. Mechanisms linking the discrepancy in emotion beliefs to emotional distress and emotion regulation also were investigated, as well as how differences in emotion beliefs varied by depression status (Study 2). In line with hypotheses, a stronger bias toward viewing emotion in general as more malleable compared to one's own emotions was associated with higher psychological distress and less active emotion regulation concurrently and longitudinally. As expected, individuals with past depression or no history of depression had more of a bias toward viewing their own emotions as more malleable compared to emotion in general. The present studies address a gap in existing emotion belief research to clarify how discrepancies in general versus personal emotion beliefs are associated with emotional distress and emotion regulation and mechanisms in these relationships.143, data collected from January 2023 to December 2023), we examined (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).