Affective science最新文献

Psychological ill-being is on the rise, with 1 in 5 Americans suffering from a mental disorder in any given year. Additional evidence demonstrates that psychological well-being has also decreased over time. These trends are particularly worrisome given the substantial and growing body of evidence demonstrating that psychological ill-being (e.g., depression, anxiety, anger) is associated with an elevated risk of developing chronic diseases and premature mortality, while aspects of psychological well-being (e.g., positive affect, sense of purpose and meaning, life satisfaction) are independently associated with improved physical health outcomes. An underexplored but promising approach to enhancing both psychological and physical health is through developing a set of tools that specifically target psychological well-being (often referred to as positive psychological interventions (PPIs) although many interventions developed outside the field of positive psychology also achieve these goals). Such interventions hold promise as a strategy for improving population health. However, critical knowledge gaps hold us back, and we have not yet developed a robust set of intervention strategies that can improve psychological well-being in meaningful, durable, and scalable ways that would also have downstream effects on physical health. The goal of this special issue is to help address these knowledge gaps by bringing together current conceptual frameworks, critical examination of key constructs, and novel empirical evidence needed to identify and examine interventions that can modify psychological well-being, particularly those that have the potential to be scaled at the population level and with durable effects.

Sleep is an important predictor of social functioning. However, questions remain about how impaired sleep—which is common and detrimental to affective and cognitive functions necessary for providing high quality support—is linked to both the provision and perception of support, especially at the daily level. We tested links between impaired sleep and provided and perceived support in romantic couples, and whether these links were mediated by negative affect and perspective-taking. In preregistered analyses of two 14-day diary studies (Study 1 N = 111 couples; Study 2 N = 100 couples), poor daily subjective sleep quality—but not duration—was associated with less self-reported support toward a partner (in both studies), less perceived support from a partner and less partner-reported support (in Study 1), and partner perceptions of receiving less support (in Study 2). Only greater daily negative affect consistently mediated the association between participants’ impaired sleep (i.e., poor subjective sleep quality and duration) and their own support provision, as well as their partner’s perceptions of received support. Our findings suggest that the effect of sleep on social processes may be strongest for self-reported measures of support and that unique aspects of sleep might be differentially associated with social outcomes given that sleep quality—but not duration—was consistently linked to support outcomes. These findings highlight the psychosocial influences of sleep and negative affect, and may inform approaches to promote supportive partner interactions.

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Inequities in pain assessment are well-documented; however, the psychological mechanisms underlying such biases are poorly understood. We investigated potential perceptual biases in the judgments of faces displaying pain-related movements. Across five online studies, 956 adult participants viewed images of computer-generated faces (“targets”) that varied in features related to race (Black and White) and gender (women and men). Target identity was manipulated across participants, and each target had equivalent facial movements that displayed varying intensities of movement in facial action-units related to pain (Studies 1–4) or pain and emotion (Study 5). On each trial, participants provided categorical judgments as to whether a target was in pain (Studies 1–4) or which expression the target displayed (Study 5) and then rated the perceived intensity of the expression. Meta-analyses of Studies 1–4 revealed that movement intensity was positively associated with both categorizing a trial as painful and perceived pain intensity. Target race and gender did not consistently affect pain-related judgments, contrary to well-documented clinical inequities. In Study 5, in which pain was equally likely relative to other emotions, pain was the least frequently selected emotion (5%). Our results suggest that perceivers can utilize facial movements to evaluate pain in other individuals, but perceiving pain may depend on contextual factors. Furthermore, assessments of computer-generated, pain-related facial movements online do not replicate sociocultural biases observed in the clinic. These findings provide a foundation for future studies comparing CGI and real images of pain and emphasize the need for further work on the relationship between pain and emotion.

Abstract

Emotionally-salient stimuli receive attentional priority. Here, we tested the extent to which top-down control can modulate this prioritization within the domain of temporal attention. To test this prioritization, we measured emotion-induced blindness, which is the effect whereby the perception of a target is impaired by the presentation of a negative distractor that precedes the target in a rapid serial visual presentation stream, relative to target perception following a neutral distractor. The degree of top-down control was investigated by manipulating participants’ concurrent working memory load while performing the task. The working-memory load consisted of participants performing mathematical calculations (no load = no calculation; low load = adding two numbers; and high load = adding and subtracting four numbers). Results indicated that the magnitude of emotion-induced blindness was not affected by the working-memory load. This finding, when combined with those of previous studies, supports the notion that the prioritization of emotionally-salient stimuli in the temporal allocation of attention does not require top-down processing, while it does in the spatial allocation of attention.

Despite declines in cognition associated with age, emotional health tends to increase. However, extant studies find few differences in the type or number of emotion regulation strategies used by older compared to younger adults. This study tested the hypothesis that older adults have greater clarity of their emotions and goals compared to younger adults. Participants (total N = 709, ages 18–81) recruited in age-stratified samples completed measures of emotional clarity, goal clarity, depression, and life satisfaction. Results suggested that emotional clarity and goal clarity are positively correlated factors, with emotional clarity showing the lowest levels in emerging adults and highest levels in older adults. Goal clarity was lowest among emerging adults, but only small differences were found between middle and older adults. Across adulthood both emotional clarity and goal clarity were linked to lower depressive symptoms and greater life satisfaction. Limitations include data being cross-sectional and self-report based and the youngest sample being recruited differently from the older samples, but the results raise the possibility of developmental changes in emotional clarity across adulthood.

Emotion understanding involves appreciating the significance of the relational context; the “aboutness” of the emotion. This study examined how children labeled emotions and described relational elements of discrete emotion contexts. Preschool children (3.5-year-olds, n = 22; 4.5-year-olds, n = 23) described images of 5 emotion contexts (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, and joy). Researchers assessed children’s (1) correct labeling of discrete emotions, and (2) differential mentioning of the emoter (person displaying the emotion) and the referent (the elicitor of the emotion) across discrete emotions. Children’s pattern of accurately labeling discrete emotions was similar to prior research, with both age groups correctly labeled anger, sadness, and joy more often than disgust or fear. Novel to the present study, we found that older children differentially highlighted emotional elements (i.e., the emoter, the referent) when describing discrete emotion contexts. Specifically, 4.5-year-olds emphasized the emoter more when describing anger, sadness, and joy than fear and disgust contexts, and mentioned the referent more in disgust, fear, and joy than anger and sadness contexts. Differential emphasis of relational elements was not observed for 3.5-year-olds. These findings highlight the importance of examining children’s appreciation of relational contexts and indicate important differences in how children differentially emphasize relational elements when viewing discrete emotion contexts. Potential developmental mechanisms, opportunities for further empirical research, and implications for emotion theory are discussed.

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