Patricia Arriaga

ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa | ISCTE · Department of Social and Organizational Psychology

Surgery is a highly stressful event for children and caregivers. Extensive effort has been made to improve preoperative care in order to alleviate worry about the surgical procedure itself. This study tested the impact of an educational multimedia intervention on the cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses of children undergoing surgery,...

The present study examined whether eye movements when regarding pictures of other people in fortunate (positive) and unfortunate (negative) circumstances are influenced by background music. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to three background music conditions (happy music, sad music, or no music) where pairs of negative–positive pict...

This study was conducted to analyze the short-term effects of violent electronic games, played with or without a virtual reality (VR) device, on the instigation of aggressive behavior. Physiological arousal (heart rate (HR)), priming of aggressive thoughts, and state hostility were also measured to test their possible mediation on the relationship...

Background: Human social behavior is modulated by oxytocin (OT). Intranasal administration of OT (IN-OT) is a noninvasive route shown to elicit changes in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity; however, IN-OT's effect on the temporal profile of ANS activity at rest is yet to be described. Aims: We aimed to describe the temporal profile of...

This study examined people’s moral judgments and trait perception toward a healthcare agent’s response to a patient who refuses to take medication. A sample of 524 participants was randomly assigned to one of eight vignettes in which the type of healthcare agent (human vs. robot), the use of a health message framing (emphasizing health-losses for n...

To further understand how to combat COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, we examined the effects of pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging on lay attitudes about vaccine safety and intention to get a COVID-19 vaccine. We surveyed 729 unvaccinated individuals from four countries in the early stages of the pandemic and 472 unvaccinated individuals from tw...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures...

The low reproducibility rate in social sciences has produced hesitation among researchers in accepting published findings at their face value. Despite the advent of initiatives to increase transparency in research reporting, the field is still lacking tools to verify the credibility of research reports. In the present paper, we describe methodologi...

Ideal partner preferences (i.e., ratings of the desirability of attributes like attractiveness or intelligence) are the source of numerous foundational findings in the interdisciplinary literature on human mating. Recently, research on the predictive validity of ideal partner preference-matching (i.e., do people positively evaluate partners who mat...

Humor is a pervasive part of our daily lives that has several important social functions. Although past literature has suggested the existence of a link between certain components of humor and well-being, the extent and specific characteristics of this link are still unclear. To shed light on this issue, we conducted a scoping review of the literat...

The relationship between political ideology and brain activity has captured the fascination of scientists and the public alike. Using approaches from cognitive neuroscience to provide insights into deeply held and personal beliefs requires careful navigation, with the application of robust methods that generate replicable results. A hallmark study...

Research has been showing the negative impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on learning and mental health in youth. The protective factor of socioemotional competencies during lockdown has also been observed. Though, the longitudinal association between these constructs is scarcely documented, especially in research that includes data before and du...

Social and emotional competences are the cornerstone of student health and academic achievement, and an important predictor of individual school engagement, educational achievement, career achievement, health and well-being. It is necessary for universities to understand the general situation of university students' social and emotional competences...

Movies offer viewers a broad range of emotional experiences, providing entertainment, and meaning. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we reviewed the literature on digital systems designed to help users search and browse movie libraries and offer recommendations based on emotional content. Our search yielded 83 eligible documents (published betwe...

Voluntary isolation is one of the most effective methods for individuals to help prevent the transmission of diseases such as COVID-19. Understanding why people leave their homes when advised not to do so and identifying what contextual factors predict this non-compliant behavior is essential for policymakers and public health officials. To provide...

Purpose The purpose of this paper was to study responses to traditional food of a country, focusing on emotion-motivational responses by locals and foreigners. Design/methodology/approach Through an experimental design study, Portuguese and Foreign participants were exposed to both traditional and nontraditional food pictures of a country and aske...

How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on s...

People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from m...

The culture and norms of research laboratories can greatly influence the quality of scientific outputs produced by the lab and the well-being of its members. In most labs, the culture that governs how individual researchers behave in their work is often implicit and situational. In contrast, some labs develop their own lab manual, a written documen...

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in t...

People across the world and throughout history have gone to great lengths to enhance their physical appearance. Evolutionary psychologists and ethologists have largely attempted to explain this phenomenon via mating preferences and strategies. Here, we test one of the most popular evolutionary hypotheses for beauty-enhancing behaviors, drawn from m...

The COVID -19 pandemic dramatically affected people’s lives. In this study, we explored the role of social and personal factors underlying individuals’ adaptive responses during the critical onset period of the outbreak. In particular, we tested two models on the mediating role of health-protective behaviors in the relationship between social suppo...

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about...

Over the last decades, the negative effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) directed at men in abusive different-sex and same-sex relationships have been increasingly investigated. Men who are the targets of IPV face many barriers to help-seeking, and to overcome them, public awareness campaigns have been developed. Women who experienced IPV hav...

Background School absenteeism is associated with multiple negative short and long-term impacts, such as school grade retention and mental health difficulties. Objective The present study aimed to understand the role of resilience-related internal assets, student engagement, and perception of school success as protective factors for truancy. Additi...

Student engagement research in university students has been scarce, despite its major positive role on performance, degree completion and mental health. Social and emotional competencies, which are currently called twenty-first-century skills, exert some impact on student engagement in youth. Since engagement is cultural-sensitive, individual (soci...

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychol...

Significance Communicating in ways that motivate engagement in social distancing remains a critical global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tested motivational qualities of messages about social distancing (those that promoted choice and agency vs. those that were forceful and shaming) in 25,718 people in 89 countries...

In recent years, the scientific community has called for improvements in the credibility, robustness, and reproducibility of research, characterized by higher standards of scientific evidence, increased interest in open practices, and promotion of transparency. While progress has been positive, there is a lack of consideration about how this approa...

In this systematic review, we sought to understand the effects of laughter-inducing interventions on blood pressure and heart rate variability. For this purpose, we identified 32 relevant records through database searching. The results suggest that laughter is associated with a decrease in blood pressure in pre-post measurements. However, this asso...

To further understand how to combat COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy, we examined the effects of pro-vaccine expert consensus messaging on lay attitudes of vaccine safety and intention to vaccinate. We surveyed N = 729 individuals from four countries. Regardless of its content, consensus messaging had an overall small positive effect. Most critically...

Através da primeira edição do Orçamento Participativo Portugal (OPP), o ano de 2017 viu nascer uma oportunidade para promo- ver o envelhecimento ativo através de um projeto pioneiro em Portugal, intitulado “Grupos de Canto para Seniores”.

The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) is a multidimensional measure widely used to access nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies. In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the CERQ-Short Portuguese version. A sample of 1052 adolescents (aged 10–25 years old, 60.53% females) completed the CERQ-Short form, the Po...

Browsing online ratings and viewers’ comments is an integral part of the experience of choosing and watching a movie. Current theories have broadened the concept of entertainment beyond amusement (hedonic motives) to include experiences of meaning, value, and self-development (eudaimonic motives). With a between-subjects design, we examined the rol...

People's perception of social robots is essential in determining their responses and acceptance of this type of agent. Currently, there are few instruments validated for the European Portuguese population that measure the perception of social robots. Our goal was to translate, validate, and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Robotic Social...

Understanding the behavioral dynamics that underline human-robot interactions in groups remains one of the core challenges in social robotics research. However, despite a growing interest in this topic, there is still a lack of established and validated measures that allow researchers to analyze human-robot interactions in group scenarios; and very...

Although creativity is an ability that can be developed if trained, most of the systems developed for creativity stimulation focused on individual interventions. This work presents the design, development, and evaluation of CUBUS, a digital tool developed to inspire social creativity in children through storytelling and emotionally expressive chara...

Abstract Humor is a pervasive feature of everyday social interactions that might be leveraged to improve Human-Robot Interactions (HRI). Goals: Our goal is to evaluate how the use of humor can improve HRI and enhance the user’s perception of the robot, as well as to derive implications for future research and development of humorous robots. Method:...

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about...

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about...

Mass media have long been credited as powerful sources that can shape how people experience the world and themselves. Given the unprecedented global health and social crisis created by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), our research topic invited researchers to address the Impact and Role of Mass Media During the Pandemic. Important contribut...

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively...

Creativity plays a central role in children’s development and well‐being, being considered a crucial skill to thrive in their personal and professional lives. Given its importance, researchers and educators highlighted the need to enhance creativity in individuals across the lifespan. However, it is crucial to understand how interventions and progr...

Research has documented the role of emotions in learning and emotion regulation for student engagement (SE). However, knowledge regarding the predictive power of emotion regulation strategies (ERSs) on SE at different age-groups was lacking. Also, our study aimed to provide data on ERSs use based on age and gender since findings are mixed. This cro...

Effectively motivating social distancing—keeping a physical distance from others —has become a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country preregistered experiment (n=25,718 in 89 countries) tested hypotheses derived from self-determination theory concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of differen...

Feeling anxiety in a job interview is common. It is important to have a valid, reliable, and culturally adapted measure, enabling cross‐cultural comparisons. Our main goal was to examine the psychometric properties of the Measure of Anxiety in Selection Interviews (MASI) in a Portuguese sample, since no similar measure is available in the Portugues...

The ability to recognize the emotions of others is a crucial skill. In the visual modality, sensorimotor mechanisms provide an important route for emotion recognition. Perceiving facial expressions often evokes activity in facial muscles and in motor and somatosensory systems, and this activity relates to performance in emotion tasks. It remains un...

The present study sought to contribute to a better understanding of children’s attitudes and behaviors regarding oral health and dental practices. The sample was composed of 101 children (8–10 years), collected from several schools in the Lisbon metropolitan area. Our main goals were to collect a survey of information about the beliefs, attitudes,...

In the emotion regulation process more than one strategy is often used, though studies continue to rely on the manipulation of one strategy alone. This study compares the effects of Combined Cognitive Reappraisal (CCR: acceptance and reappraise via perspective-taking) and suppression using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). One hundred participan...

We present the design process of the robot YOLO aimed at stimulating creativity in children. This robot was developed under a human-centered design approach with participatory design practices for two years and involving 142 children as active contributors at all design stages. The main contribution of this work is the development of methods and to...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has quickly swept the globe leaving a devastating trail of lost human lives and leading to a public health and economic crisis. With this in mind, prosociality has been heralded as potential important factor to overcome the negative effects of the pandemic. As such, in this study, we examined the effectiveness of a bri...

O Manual do Programa da Intervenção “Cante Pela Sua Saúde” (Sing4Health) constitui um instrumento orientador para Intervenções de Canto em Grupo que sejam dirigidas a seniores com 60 ou mais anos de idade e que visem promover o seu bem-estar subjetivo e social, funções cognitivas, e saúde física e mental. O Programa foi desenvolvido no âmbito do Pr...

Através da primeira edição do Orçamento Participativo Portugal, o ano de 2017 viu nascer uma oportunidade para promover o envelhecimento ativo através de um projeto pioneiro em Portugal, intitulado “Grupos de Canto para Seniores”. Na conceção do programa deste projeto foram tidas em consideração recomendações teóricas e práticas consolidadas, basea...

The aim of this study was to analyze the link between power and the quality of decision. Participants were 50 employees from an organizational company, consisting of two groups (High-Power, N=24; Low-Power, N=26) based on the organization's hierarchical power position. To evaluate the quality of the decisions, all participants performed tasks invol...

The aim of this study was to analyze the link between power and the quality of decision. Participants were 50 employees from an organizational company, consisting of two groups (High-Power, N=24; Low-Power, N=26) based on the organization's hierarchical power position. To evaluate the quality of the decisions, all participants performed tasks invol...

The ability to recognize the emotions of others is a crucial skill. In the visual modality, sensorimotor mechanisms provide an important route for emotion recognition. Perceiving facial expressions often evokes activity in facial muscles and in motor and somatosensory systems, and this activity relates to performance in emotion tasks. It remains un...

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. The persistence of this behavior throughout adulthood has fascinated and puzzled many researchers. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by triggering social support intentions. Initial experimental studie...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01450.].

There has been considerable debate about media effects, especially concerning the effect of exposure to violence on cognition, emotions, and aggressive behavior. Leonard Berkowitz systematically researched aggression and was an influential author who investigated the effects of this exposure in the 1960s. Berkowitz's contribution to the field of me...

Context: Increased attention has been placed on the role of technological artefacts in the promotion of prosocial behaviours. However, up to this date, there is still no systematic exploration of the effectiveness of robots and virtual agents as promoters of this type of behaviour. Goals: The goal of this paper is to map research on the effectiven...

Situations involving increased closeness or exceptional kindness are often labeled as moving or touching and individuals often report bodily symptoms, including tears, goosebumps, and warmth in the body. Recently, the kama muta framework has been proposed as a cross‐cultural conceptualization of these experiences. Prior research on kama muta has mo...

Background Pediatric cancer treatments interfere with the patient’s life on physical, psychological, and social levels. Hospital Clowns (HCs) use nonpharmacological techniques to reduce the distress that hospital treatments can cause and increase children’s wellbeing, but few studies have analyzed their effects. Objective This study examined the H...

Men who are victimized in their intimate different-sex (DS) and same-sex (SS) relationships often report not having information to help them escape their abusive situations. To overcome this lack of information, public awareness campaigns have been created. But thus far, there is no clear understanding of how these campaigns reflect theoretical pri...

In this paper, we aim to increase the understanding of human-robot interaction by considering the goal orientation displayed by the robot (i.e., competitive vs. cooperative) and the role displayed by each player (partner vs. opponent) in an entertainment group scenario. Sixty participants engaged in a card game called Sueca (two robots and two huma...

Creativity is at the core of what it means to be human. It is an intrinsic ability that we all have and influences our well-being self-expression throughout life. However, a decline in creativity abilities occurs in children around the age of 7 years old. Our work aims to contribute to a re-balance of creative levels using social robots. In this vi...