Affective science最新文献

Rumination and negative affect are mutually reinforcing experiences. Their dynamic relation can confer vulnerability to psychopathology. Cultivating mindfulness has been proposed to buffer against such downward spirals of negativity. However, it remains unclear whether practicing mindfulness in daily life causally impacts rumination, negative affect, and their dynamics. We investigated this using a micro-randomized intensive longitudinal trial. Participants (N = 91) were prompted eight times per day for 10 days using a smartphone app. At each prompt, participants were randomized to complete a brief mindfulness intervention or an active-control task and then reported levels of rumination and negative affect. Results of dynamic structural equation models showed that the mindfulness intervention led to lower levels of rumination and negative affect but that it had no reliable impact on their dynamics. Thus, cultivating mindfulness in daily life may be a promising approach for decreasing rumination and negative affect but not their dynamical relation.

Emotion regulation has long been suspected to boost executive functioning. Correlational studies have shown links between emotion regulation and executive functioning. However, experimental studies have been rare, especially with older adults for whom declines in executive functioning may become a pressing concern. In this laboratory-based study, we examined whether instructing older adults to use emotion regulation strategies in response to loss-themed film clips could enhance subsequent executive functioning. The sample consisted of 129 healthy older adults (age 64-83) who completed an experiment consisting of six trials in which they first watched a loss-themed film clip (with the instruction to “just watch” or to regulate their emotions using detachment, positive reappraisal, or emotional acceptance) and then completed an executive functioning task (assessing verbal fluency, inhibition, or working memory). Results showed a selective effect of emotion regulation on verbal fluency, but not inhibition or working memory performance. Older adults who were instructed to regulate negative emotions (vs. “just watch”) subsequently showed greater verbal fluency. Effects of emotion regulation on executive functions did not differ between detachment, positive reappraisal, and emotional acceptance and remained stable when controlling for age, gender, education, and functional status. This study contributes to our understanding of emotion-cognition interactions, highlights emotion regulation as an avenue for enhancing verbal fluency in older adults, and suggests further probing of links between emotion regulation and other executive functioning processes in late life.

Most prior research on basic emotions has relied upon posed, static displays that do not accurately reflect the facial behavior seen in everyday life. To address this gap, the present paper aims to highlight existing facial expression databases (FEDBs) that feature spontaneous and dynamic displays of the six basic emotions. To assist readers in their decisions about stimulus selection, we comprehensively review 25 FEDBs in terms of three key dimensions: (a) conceptual features which reflect thematic approaches in database construction and validation, i.e., emotional content and elicitation procedures, encoder demographics, measurement and elicitation techniques; (b) technical features which concern technological aspects in stimulus development, i.e., stimulus numbers and duration, frame rate, and resolution; and (c) practical features which entail information about database access and potential ethical restrictions. Finally, we outline some of the remaining challenges in stimulus generation and make recommendations for future research.

Emotion socialization is a dynamic transactional process that unfolds at the moment during parent-child interactions. To better understand these transactions (both parent-driven and child-driven) in early childhood, we conducted a lag-sequential analysis examining sequential contingency between maternal emotion coaching and child emotion regulation at ages 3 and 4 years. Mother-child dyads in the southeastern United States (N = 208 for age 3 timepoint [101 boys, 107 girls] and 227 for age 4 timepoint [115 boys, 112 girls]) participated in a laboratory etch-a-sketch task, which was videorecorded and later observationally coded for maternal coaching of both positive and negative emotions and for child emotion regulation (indexed as compliance, engagement, and low frustration) at 30-s intervals. At age 3, we found two reciprocal sequences: (1) When mothers coached positive emotions, children were subsequently more likely to show compliance, and when children complied, mothers were subsequently more likely to coach their positive emotions; (2) when mothers coached negative emotions, children were subsequently more likely to display frustration, and when children showed frustration, mothers were subsequently more likely to coach their negative emotions. At age 4, we only found parent-driven, positive emotion–related sequences: when mothers coached positive emotions, children were subsequently more likely to show compliance and engagement. Findings shed light on the distinct functions of positive and negative emotions as well as the intricacy of dynamic emotion socialization transactions in relation to child emotion regulation during early childhood.

The concept of arousal is ubiquitous and has been suggested as a critical component of many mental and physical phenomena, including emotion, behavior, motivation, learning, attention, motor action, and neural activity. In this review, we discuss theoretical, empirical, and analytic challenges to defining and measuring arousal and suggest avenues for future research to address these challenges. We begin by contesting the typically implicit (but occasionally explicit) assumption in the literature that arousal is a unitary construct representing a generalized, organism-wide phenomenon—an assumption evidenced by the common use of a measure from one arousal domain (e.g., motor action or autonomic activity) as a proxy for arousal in another (e.g., subjective experience). We demonstrate that this assumption is not supported by empirical evidence, and that instead arousal is best conceptualized as multidimensional, comprising multiple factors that can manifest variably both within and across individuals. We then discuss the implications, promises, and pitfalls of adopting this perspective for future research on arousal. We argue that it necessitates employing novel methodological approaches, including highly multimodal data collection from individuals across multiple contexts, preferably in variable real-world settings. It also necessitates bringing innovative data-driven analytic techniques to bear. We conclude that future research stands to dramatically reshape the scientific understanding of arousal by conceptualizing it as multifaceted with a manifestation that is variable in the moment and by leveraging emerging technologies and analyses to improve its measurement.

Sexual minority (SM) populations demonstrate greater emotion regulation (ER) difficulties, which are hypothesized to arise from experiences of minority stress. While little is known under which conditions minority stressors may affect ER abilities in SM individuals, previous literature suggests that alexithymia may disrupt ER. Thus, the present study examined the prospective main and interaction effects of SM stressors and alexithymia on ER. SM adults (N = 392) provided baseline and 1-month follow-up reports of SM stressors, alexithymia, and ER. There were significant interaction effects between alexithymia and both heterosexist discrimination and sexual orientation concealment on cognitive reappraisal. Namely, at high levels of alexithymia, sexual orientation concealment and heterosexist discrimination predicted declines in cognitive reappraisal. There were no significant interaction effects between SM stressors and alexithymia on changes in expressive suppression; however, greater internalized stigma and sexual orientation concealment were associated with increases in expressive suppression. Taken together, our findings and theory may suggest that it is critical to address alexithymia in SM clients prior to targeting ER difficulties as alexithymia may disrupt or impede adaptive ER.

At an early age, humans learn words to communicate their affective states and generalize their identification across differing external conditions. One might call this collection of effects emotion labeling. Previous research investigating analogous effects in nonverbal animal models has largely used drug-induced affective states or metacognitive states that are difficult to control. Some progress has been made by conceptualizing affect as a point within a two-dimensional space with pleasure on one axis and arousal on the other. Distinct affective states may thus serve as cues that control both human and non-human behavior. If conditions supporting responding produce distinct affect, labeling in one circumstance may transfer to novel conditions that elicit the same affective state. The present experiment examined the labeling of affective states induced in pigeons via outcomes of either the delivery of food or its omission. These outcomes followed responses (pecks) made in the presence of three visual stimuli (A, B, and C). On A trials, each outcome was followed by two labels; pecks to one of two labels, depending on whether food was delivered or omitted, were required to progress to the next trial. All pigeons labeled accurately. Consistent with human emotion labeling, pigeons learned to select a label associated with different core affect-inducing outcomes, transferred appropriately to novel conditions (i.e., trials with B and C in Test 1 and 2), and probably relied on more than just external cues (Test 3).

Concerns regarding the potential negative impacts of digital technology use on youth mental health and well-being are high. However, most studies have several methodological limitations: relying on cross-sectional designs and retrospective reports, assessing technology use as an omnibus construct, and focusing on between- instead of within-person comparisons. This study addresses these limitations by prospectively following young adolescents (n = 388) over a 14-day ecological momentary assessment study to test whether adolescents’ digital technology use is linked with self-reported emotional dysregulation and self-esteem and whether these relationships are stronger for adolescent girls than boys. We found no evidence that adolescents experienced higher emotional dysregulation (b = − .02; p = .07) and lower self-esteem (b = .004; p = .32) than they normally do on days where they use more technology than they normally do (within-person). Adolescents with higher average daily technology use over the study period did not experience lower levels of self-esteem (between-person, b = − .02; p = .13). Adolescents with higher average daily technology use across the two-week period did report higher levels of emotional dysregulation (p = .01), albeit the between-person relation was small (b = .08). There was no evidence that gender moderated the associations, both between and within adolescents (bs = − .02–.13, p = .06 − .55). Our findings contribute to the growing counter-narrative that technology use does not have as large of an impact on adolescents’ mental health and well-being as the public is concerned about.

People vary in the precision with which they experience and report on their emotions, known as emotional granularity, and this precision predicts their ability to regulate their emotions. It is not yet known, however, whether links between emotional granularity and emotion regulation are due to variation in knowledge of emotion words—specifically, individuals’ reported usage, understanding, and ability to accurately define emotion words. In the present report, we combined data from six studies to address this gap in the literature using an integrative data analysis. Participants across the studies reported on how often they used and how well they understood a list of precise emotion words, and were tested on whether they could correctly pick a definition for each. They also completed questionnaire measures of self-reported emotional granularity (differentiation) and emotion dysregulation. Emotion word accuracy and understanding were highly correlated, so individual models were tested each separately to predict emotion dysregulation. In the model including usage and understanding, we observed a main effect of understanding, such that participants with greater self-reported understanding of emotion words reported less difficulty regulating their emotions. Similar effects were found for the model including usage and accuracy, such that individuals with higher emotion word accuracy had less difficulty regulating their emotions. Critically, these findings held when accounting for self-reported granularity (differentiation), suggesting that measures of emotion word knowledge have value for predicting emotion regulatory outcomes. Future work should examine whether individuals’ emotion word knowledge is also linked to mental health outcomes.

Among the strategies people can use to regulate their emotions, there is increasing interest in mindfulness. Although prior reviews support that mindful acceptance (equanimity) is an effective strategy, other components of mindfulness (monitoring/ mindful awareness) have received less attention. Further, a recent theoretical framework—the Dual-mode Model of Mindful Emotion Regulation—proposed that mindfulness has two “modes” of action in emotion regulation: (1) implementation to regulate emotions as time-limited strategies and (2) acting as a moderator that facilitates effective emotion regulation. The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the implementation of mindfulness-based strategies and facilitation effects of mindfulness on emotion reactivity and strategy implementation. A total of 2037 records were screened, from which 110 studies with 767 effects (N = 8,105) were analyzed. There was a significant effect of mindfulness-based strategies (g = .28, 95% CI [.18, .38], I² = 83.3%). Components of monitoring (g = .17, 95% CI [.02, .32]) and equanimity (g = .3, 95% CI [.19, .41]) were also effective, although monitoring alone was significantly less effective than other strategies. The effect size was greater for within-subjects designs, text-based emotional stimuli, personally relevant stimuli, and behavioral outcomes (e.g., pain tolerance). Despite small-study effects and publication bias, the estimate was robust to sensitivity analyses (between .15 and .3). Meta-regression of facilitation supported that greater study-level equanimity was associated with reduced reactivity. As hypothesized, mindfulness-based strategies can effectively regulate emotions. Methodological considerations and directions for future study are discussed.