Emotion最新文献

Humans frequently seek fear-inducing entertainment in social settings, yet the influence of social dynamics on physiological and emotional responses to shared fear remains underexplored. In this field study, we examined physiological synchrony and subjective responses to a high-intensity horror setting at a haunted house attraction. Groups of visitors (N = 347, aged 18-63 years) wore heart rate (HR) monitors and reported their emotional experiences (N = 347 for self-reports; N = 254 for HR analyses). HR synchrony emerged during the haunted house experience across timescales from short (25 s) to long (∼55 min), and greater HR synchrony was associated with increased subjective arousal. Additionally, socially close dyads exhibited higher HR synchrony compared with less close pairs. These findings indicate that physiological synchrony is linked to subjective arousal during shared frightening experiences and is more pronounced among socially close individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

The emotion socialization behaviors that caregivers engage in with their own children are influenced, in part, by their own emotional responses to situations. One theory of why caregivers' behaviors differ in response to different child emotions centers on variability in caregiver discomfort around these emotions. Further, this discomfort is postulated to stem from a caregivers' experience during their emotional expressions in childhood with their own caregivers (hereinafter called "remembered" caregiving). However, limited research exists on the interplay between caregivers' remembered caregiving experiences and their own discomfort in response to children's emotions. This study aimed to explore (a) the association between valence of children's emotions and caregiver discomfort, (b) differences across discrete emotions and caregiver discomfort, and (c) the potential influence of recalled emotion socialization experiences on caregiver discomfort. In a sample of 234 caregivers (136 mothers; 98 fathers; M_age = 35.62, SD = 4.14 years) of 146 preschool-aged children, child negative emotions were found to elicit more discomfort than positive emotions, but no emotion-level differences emerged within discrete negative emotions (i.e., anger, fear, and sadness). Caregivers who recalled that their own caregivers responded to their emotions in childhood with an outcome-oriented goal (e.g., walking away to stop the emotional display) reported more discomfort with their own children's negative emotions. These findings contribute to our understanding of intergenerational transmission of caregiving behaviors, emphasizing the role of negative caregiving experiences in shaping caregiver comfortability with their child's negative emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Olfactory function is closely linked to emotion processing, yet the relationship between olfactory function and human hedonic experiences remains unclear. In this study, 97 healthy young adults participated in assessments of olfactory sensitivity and recognition memory using the standardized Sniffin' Sticks test and the Olfactory Memory Test Battery. Additionally, the olfactory incentive delay task was employed to evaluate the anticipatory and consummatory aspects of olfactory hedonic experiences. Generalized estimating equations analysis revealed that reduced olfactory sensitivity and recognition memory were associated with a diminished unpleasantness response during the anticipation of unpleasant odors. Furthermore, individuals with weaker olfactory recognition memory reported lower pleasure levels when anticipating pleasant odors. However, no associations were found between olfactory sensitivity or olfactory recognition memory and consummatory hedonic experience. These findings suggest that olfactory sensitivity and recognition memory selectively associate with the anticipatory phase of olfactory hedonic experiences, supporting the proposed conceptual framework linking nature, olfaction, and well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "Affective control in adolescence: The influence of age and depressive symptomatology on working memory" by Kirsty Griffiths, Darren L. Dunning, Jenna Parker, Marc Bennett, Susanne Schweizer, Lucy Foulkes, Saz Ahmed, Jovita T. Leung, Cait Griffin, Ashok Sakhardande, Willem Kuyken, J. Mark G. Williams, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Tim Dalgleish and Jason Stretton (Emotion, 2025[Feb], Vol 25[1], 70-78; see record 2025-19056-001). The original article the incorrect open access license listed in the author note due to a processing error. The correct open access license for the article is CC BY 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2025-19056-001). People exhibit marked individual variation in their ability to exercise cognitive control in affectively charged situations. Affective control is typically assessed in laboratory settings by comparing performance in carefully constructed executive tasks performed in both affectively neutral and affectively charged contexts. There is some evidence that affective control undergoes significant improvement throughout adolescence, though it is unclear how adolescents deemed at risk of developing depression exercise affective control despite poor affective control being identified as a contributing factor to ongoing mental ill health in adulthood. The present study therefore investigated affective control in a large (n = 425) sample of adolescents (aged 11-18 years) collected from 2016 to 2018. A simultaneous visuospatial search and written storage working memory (WM) capacity task was carried out to examine affective control, using affectively neutral and affectively negative social images as the task-irrelevant distractors. Overall, WM capacity increased as a function of age across both affective conditions. Moreover, we report a significant difference between affective conditions, with WM capacity slightly lower during trials with affectively negative social scenes, relative to neutral. Performance in each condition and the performance "cost" for completing the task in negative relative to neutral conditions was not modulated by depressive symptoms. Furthermore, age did not predict performance cost, irrespective of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that WM capacity is relatively robust against socioaffective contexts and mood in adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial emotion perception in real life is inevitably influenced by the affective context, such as the expressions on nearby people's faces. However, to what extent and how the expressions of others exert a contextual influence on our interpretation of target facial emotions remains largely unclear. Using psychophysical methods, we demonstrated that the emotional facial context alone (i.e., without any evident social interaction cues) is sufficient to bias the perceived expression of an ambiguous target face (N = 160, healthy Asian college students, 2017-2025). Intriguingly, the contextual effect induced by faces with fearful, but not happy, expressions was regulated by observers' awareness of the context. For fearful contexts, the contextual effect showed a dissociation between nonconscious and conscious conditions, occurring only when the contextual face was not consciously perceived. By contrast, contextual faces expressing happiness biased emotion perception regardless of awareness. These findings broaden our understanding of the affective contextual effect in situations without explicit social relationships. More crucially, they unveil the intertwined roles of emotional valence and consciousness in emotional information integration, offering valuable insights into the intricate mechanisms whereby affective context shapes facial emotion perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Body posture provides a rich source of information about the emotional states of other people. Recent research has shown that people can recognize emotions even from isolated images of body parts, especially from hands. In perception of emotion from faces, research has emphasized the importance of relational information about the global spatial relations between different parts of the face. The role of holistic processing in perception of emotion from bodies is unknown. One potential signature of holistic processing in emotional perception of bodies is the finding the recognition of emotions is higher when both hands are shown compared with just one hand. This could indicate that the spatial relationship between the hands carries information about emotions over and above that present in each hand individually. Alternatively, it could reflect the fact that when two hands are present, there is simply twice as much total information. This study therefore compared emotion recognition when participants were shown: (a) both hands in their actual configuration, (b) both hands in a distorted configuration, or (c) one hand. Performance was substantially above chance in all conditions, replicating the finding that emotion can be recognized from isolated hand images. Critically, performance was higher when both hands were shown in their actual configuration compared with the other two conditions. These results provide evidence for holistic processing in the perception of emotion from body parts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

New fatherhood is marked by profound psychological and neural transformations. While these changes can be stressful, many fathers also report increased life satisfaction associated with parenthood. Personal meaning-the subjective sense that life has purpose, meaning, and coherence-may reflect positive adaptation to parenthood. This study investigated how personal meaning across the transition to fatherhood is associated with both psychological and neural changes. Among 88 first-time fathers followed from mid-pregnancy into the first year after birth, we found an approximately even split between fathers who reported increases or decreases in personal meaning. Within 35 fathers who also underwent neuroimaging before and after birth, we observed increases in resting-state functional connectivity in the bilateral temporal lobes, right angular gyrus, thalamus, and right lateral occipital cortex, and decreases in regions such as the right frontal pole, left opercular cortex, and anterior cingulate. Increases in insular cortex connectivity predicted greater postnatal personal meaning, even after controlling for both positive and negative parenting-related feelings. These findings suggest that dynamic changes within the insula may support fathers' ability to form a higher order sense of meaning and purpose during this transformative period. Future mixed-methods research may further elucidate how these neural changes contribute to well-being during stressful life transitions. (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).

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).

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).