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The influence of the fear facial expression on prosocial responding
Abstract
Perceiving distress cues appears to be associated with prosocial responding. This being the case, it was hypothesised that the fear facial expression would elicit prosocial responding in perceivers. In Study 1, participants indicated that fear and sadness expressions would be associated with greater sympathy and willingness to help the expresser than would neutral expressions. In Study 2, participants were primed with fear or neutral expressions before reading vignettes featuring protagonists in mild distress. Fear-primed participants reported more sympathy and desire to help the protagonists than neutral-primed participants. Moreover, participants who recognised fear most accurately, as measured by a standard facial expression recognition task, showed the greatest increases in prosocial responding following fear expression primes. This corroborates the notion, supported by research as disparate as behavioural research on bystander intervention and clinical research on psychopaths, that exposure to and correct interpretation of certain distress cues may predict an individual's likelihood of behaving prosocially.
... The ability of a service employee to understand the internal state, i.e., thoughts, feelings, and emotions, of a customer or a co-worker from their external cues (e.g., the facial expressions, mimics, and the body language.) can be seen as the basic tenets of effective social functioning Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Yurur, Koc, Taskin, & Boz, 2019). Moreover, recognising facial expressions and understanding emotions can help the individual develop other interpersonal abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behavior Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh et al., 2005) which form the basis of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998;. ...
... can be seen as the basic tenets of effective social functioning Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Yurur, Koc, Taskin, & Boz, 2019). Moreover, recognising facial expressions and understanding emotions can help the individual develop other interpersonal abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behavior Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh et al., 2005) which form the basis of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998;. ...
... As explained above, the recognition or correct identification of emotions/facial expressions is considered to be the first phase of abilities of emotional intelligence (Adams, 2017; Domes et al., 2009;Elfenbein et al., 2002;Golan et al., 2010;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). The overall findings of the study also support the findings of Goleman (1998), Fariselli et al. (2008), Siskos et al. (2011) and Erasmus (2013), who found that people's emotional intelligence (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) can be developed through training and education. ...
Understanding the basic emotions of people is one of the most important skills of emotional intelligence. This study investigates the emotion/facial expression recognition abilities of tourism and hospitality employees in terms of recognizing customers‘ facial expressions and the fact that whether emotion/facial recognition abilities of employees can be developed. The respondents were selected through convenience sampling. The data were collected from 398 tourism and hospitality employees through an online survey. The data were analyzed by SPSS 19. The findings showed that a brief online training (lasting an average of 40.40 s) (with photos depicting different facial expressions and brief explanations) has improved the emotion/facial expression recognition abilities of tourism and hospitality employees significantly both in terms of accuracy and speed.
... The ability of a service employee to understand the internal state, i.e., thoughts, feelings, and emotions, of a customer or a co-worker from their external cues (e.g., the facial expressions, mimics, and the body language.) can be seen as the basic tenets of effective social functioning Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Yurur, Koc, Taskin, & Boz, 2019). Moreover, recognising facial expressions and understanding emotions can help the individual develop other interpersonal abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behavior Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh et al., 2005) which form the basis of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998;. ...
... can be seen as the basic tenets of effective social functioning Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Yurur, Koc, Taskin, & Boz, 2019). Moreover, recognising facial expressions and understanding emotions can help the individual develop other interpersonal abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behavior Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh et al., 2005) which form the basis of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998;. ...
... As explained above, the recognition or correct identification of emotions/facial expressions is considered to be the first phase of abilities of emotional intelligence (Adams, 2017; Domes et al., 2009;Elfenbein et al., 2002;Golan et al., 2010;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). The overall findings of the study also support the findings of Goleman (1998), Fariselli et al. (2008), Siskos et al. (2011) and Erasmus (2013), who found that people's emotional intelligence (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) can be developed through training and education. ...
The contributors to this book explain the influence of emotional intelligence on various aspects of service encounters in tourism and hospitality and how emotional intelligence as an important ability of employees in tourism and hospitality can be developed. The book has 10 chapters with plenty of student support materials including real-life examples, case studies, links to websites, activities and discussion questions, recent research findings from top-tier journals and presentation slides for in-class use by academics and trainers.
... Therefore, we hypothesized that extraordinary acts of altruism may result from enhanced care-oriented responses to distress that are supported by recruitment of amygdalamidbrain circuitry. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated activity and connectivity in this circuit in a sample of extraordinary altruists and matched controls as they responded to depictions of others' distress [34]. Altruists had all donated a kidney to a stranger with whom they had no prior relationship. ...
... During fMRI scanning, altruists and matched controls (see electronic supplementary material, table S1) completed a decision-making paradigm [34] in which they responded to care-eliciting test scenarios that described vulnerable protagonists (electronic supplementary material, table S2). For example, one scenario describes a young girl who is teased about her appearance in the school cafeteria. ...
... After reading each scenario, participants reported how much sympathy they felt for the protagonist via button press. (This term was selected as more specific than 'caring' and because self-reported sympathy during this task correlates at r ¼ 0.90 with desire to help the protagonist [34].) Distractor scenarios that did not elicit care, because the protagonist did not experience distress, were randomly interspersed with test scenarios and were also preceded by pre-attentive facial expressions. ...
Costly altruism benefitting a stranger is a rare but evolutionarily conserved phenomenon. This behaviour may be supported by limbic and midbrain circuitry that supports mammalian caregiving. In rodents, reciprocal connections between the amygdala and the midbrain periaqueductal grey (PAG) are critical for generating protective responses toward vulnerable and distressed offspring. We used functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging to explore whether these regions play a role in supporting costly altruism in humans. We recruited a rare population of altruists, all of whom had donated a kidney to a stranger, and measured activity and functional connectivity of the amygdala and PAG as altruists and matched controls responded to care-eliciting scenarios. When these scenarios were coupled with pre-attentive distress cues, altruists' sympathy corresponded to greater activity in the left amygdala and PAG, and functional connectivity analyses revealed increased coupling between these regions in altruists during this epoch. We also found that altruists exhibited greater fractional anisotropy within the left amygdala–PAG white matter tract. These results, coupled with previous evidence of altruists' increased amygdala-linked sensitivity to distress, are consistent with costly altruism resulting from enhanced care-oriented responses to vulnerability and distress that are supported by recruitment of circuitry that supports mammalian parental care.
... We discuss two possible interpretations: The first rests upon motivational mechanisms that drive action decisions and the second on perceptual mechanisms. Both interpretations take into account the ambiguity of fearful displays, that simultaneously signal both the presence of potential danger and a need for affiliation 81 , in contrast with anger displays that communicate an unambiguous aggressive intent toward the observer 82 . ...
... Nevertheless, it might be asked whether our findings reflect a decrease in the motivation to avoid individuals displaying ambiguous (fear) expressions leading to stochastic choices, or to an increase in the motivation to approach fearful individuals. In previous experiments using the same protocol 51 , we suggested that, as fearful displays simultaneously signal the presence of potential danger and a need for affiliation 81 , some participants may be prone to approach fearful individuals to either comfort them (prosocial motivation, e.g. 87 ) or to alleviate their own fear (self-preservative motivation, e.g. ...
Study Objectives
Total sleep deprivation is known to have significant detrimental effects on cognitive and socio-emotional functioning. Nonetheless, the mechanisms by which total sleep loss disturbs decision-making in social contexts are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the impact of total sleep deprivation on approach/avoidance decisions when faced with threatening individuals, as well as the potential moderating role of sleep-related mood changes.
Methods
Participants (n = 34) made spontaneous approach/avoidance decisions in the presence of task-irrelevant angry or fearful individuals, while rested or totally sleep deprived (27 hours of continuous wakefulness). Sleep-related changes in mood and sustained attention were assessed using the Positive and Negative Affective Scale and the psychomotor vigilance task, respectively.
Results
Rested participants avoided both fearful and angry individuals, with stronger avoidance for angry individuals, in line with previous results. On the contrary, totally sleep deprived participants favored neither approach nor avoidance of fearful individuals, while they still comparably avoided angry individuals. Drift-diffusion models showed that this effect was accounted for by the fact that total sleep deprivation reduced value-based evidence accumulation toward avoidance during decision making. Finally, the reduction of positive mood after total sleep deprivation positively correlated with the reduction of fearful display avoidance. Importantly, this correlation was not mediated by a sleep-related reduction in sustained attention.
Conclusions
All together, these findings support the underestimated role of positive mood-state alterations caused by total sleep loss on approach/avoidance decisions when facing ambiguous socio-emotional displays, such as fear.
... In an effort to understand the development of CU traits, one prominent line of research focused on the ability of these individuals to attend and accurately identify facial emotional expressions, which is vital for effective social functioning [3,4]. Specifically, the ability to process and understand facial emotional expressions can elicit empathic concern [5], which is associated with increased helping behaviors and decreased antisocial acts [6]. ...
... Our findings suggest that this mechanism can be extended in early developmental stages, since the ineffective pattern of emotional processing among HCU children was supported by a lower fixation rate to the eyes of emotional faces. Since the eye region is particularly vital for the identification of emotional distress expressions [5], the reduced attention to the eye region and the resulting deficient face recognition among HCU individuals might explain their greater engagement in antisocial behaviors [44,47,48]. In addition, their lower fixation in the eyes might leave them unable to identify and infer other's emotional reaction to their antisocial acts, which might make them less likely to withdraw or adjust their behavior. ...
Callous-unemotional traits have been associated with difficulties in identifying and responding to others’ emotions. To inform this line of research, the current study investigated the eye gaze behavior of children (n = 59; mean-age = 6.35) with varying levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits with the use of eye-tracker methodology, as well as their ability to accurately identify emotional expressions. Participating children were selected from a large screening sample (N = 1283). Main findings supported a reduced fixation rate to the eye-region and an increased fixation in the mouth area of emotional faces among children high on callous-unemotional traits (HCU), irrespective of emotion expressed (i.e., fear, sad, angry and happy) and age of individuals portrayed in images (adult versus child faces). Further, findings suggested that HCU children were less likely to accurately identify facial emotional expressions, which might be due to the identified attentional neglect to the eye region of emotional faces. Current findings support the importance of early prevention and intervention programs that can enhance the emotional development and social adjustment of HCU children.
... The ability to understand the internal state of an individual (her/his emotions and feelings) from her/his external cues (e.g. the facial expression, the body language etc.) is seen as the cognitive basis of social functioning (Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). This understanding helps the individual develop abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behaviour (Marsh et al., 2005;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). ...
... The ability to understand the internal state of an individual (her/his emotions and feelings) from her/his external cues (e.g. the facial expression, the body language etc.) is seen as the cognitive basis of social functioning (Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). This understanding helps the individual develop abilities such as empathy, trust and prosocial behaviour (Marsh et al., 2005;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). The empathy, trust, and prosocial behaviour, in turn, form the basis of emotional intelligence. ...
This study investigates the extent to which hospitality employees are aware of their facial expression/emotion recognition abilities in interacting with customers. As a sign of satisfaction and service quality delivered, facial expressions and emotions may have significant implications. The study measured the actual emotion recognition abilities and their self-efficacy beliefs regarding their emotional abilities of 527 hospitality employees in Turkey. The results show that a significant proportion of hospitality employees are not fully aware of their facial expression/emotion recognition abilities and that many of them tend to inflate their abilities. The study has important implications in terms of employee efforts put into tasks (such as effort and concentration), self-development and training, and employee risk-taking behaviour in service encounters.
... Facial fear displays are commonly classified and used as threat stimuli [22]. However, research on the psychology of prosociality has shown that, in adulthood, the capacity to help and benefit others is intimately tied to processes that make us recognize and care about others' emotional displays of distress as exemplified in fearful faces [23][24][25][26]. In fact, there is evidence that extremely antisocial psychopaths and extremely prosocial individuals show substantial differences in fear processing and may thus represent opposite ends of a caring continuum [8]. ...
... In contrast, psychopaths exhibit decreased sensitivity to fearful faces when compared to control individuals [26]. Moreover, research with a typical population of adults has demonstrated that better recognition of fear from faces is associated with higher levels of prosocial behavior [23,24]. ...
The ability to show concern for others in need and distress is thought to be a vital building block for prosocial tendencies among humans. The current review shows that such other-oriented emotional processes play an important role in guiding prosocial behavior from early in development. Recent research supports the view that infants genuinely care about others in need and distress, but also that a caring continuum exists, which underpins variability in infant prosocial action. Novel methods measuring brain, pupillary, and postural responses have provided insights into affective predictors, motivators, and consequences of prosocial behavior in infants. These advances foster a more mechanistic understanding of the ontogenetic roots of prosociality and attest to infants’ affective competency in engaging prosocially with others.
... Expressing negative emotions can also lead to positive consequences. For example, expressing sadness and fear can (Lench, Tibbett and Bench 2016;Marsh and Ambady 2007). ...
Despite firms’ continued interest in using influencers to reach their target consumers, academic and practical insights are limited on what levers an influencer can use to enhance audience engagement using their posts. We demonstrate that posting stories with or about people whom they share close ties with—such as family, friends, and romantic partners—can be one effective lever. Content that incorporates close social ties can be effective for several reasons: it may increase perceptions of authenticity, enhance perceived similarity, increase the perception that the influencer possesses more warmth, and could satisfy viewers’ interpersonal curiosity. We analyze texts and photographs of 55,631 posts of 763 influencers on Instagram, and after controlling for several variables, we find robust support that consumers “like” posts that reference close social ties. Further, this effect enhances when first-person pronouns are used to describe special moments with these close ties. We supplement the Instagram data with an experimental approach and confirm the relationship between close ties and consumer engagement. Managerially, this is a useful insight as we also show that sponsored posts tend to be perceived negatively compared to non-sponsored posts, yet, embedding social ties on the sponsored posts can mitigate consumers’ negative responses.
... Fear can already be recognized from raised eyebrows and widened eyes [58, [94][95][96]. It is common for observers to react to another person exhibiting fear [97]. Such reactions for the observers, called social fear, can be as strong as the person exhibiting the fear [98]. ...
The watching eyes effect influences people to behave more prosocially or less antisocially. It is currently unknown how the eyes themselves induce this effect. To fill this gap, we varied emotional expressions (angry, fear, happy, neutral), age (old, young), and sex (male, female) of the watching eyes to investigate which characteristics influence antisocial behavior. Participants rated the extent to which they would utter 36 stereotypical statements about race, gender, and religion topics. Each statement was presented together with one pair of eyes selected at random. Approval of stereotype statements with neutral eyes did not differ from control flower pictures. However, age, sex, and emotional expressions of the watching eyes influenced the extent to which participants would utter the statements: angry old male eyes increased stereotypical statements, as did happy young eyes (males and females). Fearful eyes decreased the extent to utter stereotypical statements, except for old female eyes. Our data suggest that studies presenting eyes that appear neutral may be a reason why replication of this effect was unsuccessful. Furthermore, the typical stylized eyes used in many watching eyes experiments could be interpreted as angry old male eyes to elicit changes in participants’ behaviors, like making donations or rating scales. We recommend further research to examine how necessary it is to look at the characteristics of watching eyes to better understand the mechanisms underlying this effect. Taken together, our findings show that the watching eyes effect on the extent to utter stereotypical statements may be better replicated with angry old male eyes or young happy eyes.
... Future studies are encouraged to replicate these findings using a clinical sample that includes individuals with elevated levels of alexithymic and psychopathic traits. Training individuals to identify emotional cues through attending to facial features early on could foster empathy and pro-social behaviour [81] as emotion recognition is a subcomponent of empathy. Increasing the ability to correctly identify facial expressions, can be achieved by directing participants' attention to facial features [48] and by encouraging emotional contagion [67]. ...
Background
Alexithymic and psychopathic traits are closely associated, but distinct constructs. Both have been associated with facial emotion processing deficits reflecting empathy deficits, however the underlying mechanism contributing to these deficits is not well-understood.
Methods
This study investigated facial emotion recognition performance in a non-clinical sample (N = 110) including both male and female participants, with varying levels of psychopathic and alexithymic traits. Facial emotion recognition was assessed using a computerized task, that presented different expressions depicting five emotional states (pain, fear, sadness, anger, happiness) and neutral expressions.
Results
Results suggest that the high psychopathic traits group reported lower accuracy compared to the low psychopathic traits group, indicating a more generalized deficit in facial affect recognition, across all emotions. The alexithymic groups (high vs. low) on the other hand did not differ in their performance on the task for any of the emotions presented.
Conclusion
These findings add to the current body of research regarding face processing categorization deficits in relation to psychopathic and alexithymic traits and can inform prevention and intervention efforts that aim to facilitate facial emotion recognition in individuals with these personality traits.
... Since the 2000s, some studies influenced by the winds of cognitivism have investigated the effect of priming in the bystander effect, and exciting aspects have emerged (Garcia et al., 2002;Marsh and Ambady, 2007;Scaffidi Abbate et al., 2014). A well-established line in social psychological research is that social knowledge can be spontaneously triggered in an individual's mind when faced with social stimuli. ...
The present study tested the effect of priming the concept of prosociality on the bystander effect in an online environment. Participants were sent an e-mail requesting a plea for help and randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (Bystander: 0 vs. 14) × 2 (Priming: present vs. absent) design. The results demonstrated support for the study hypothesis. As expected, the virtual presence of many others significantly reduced e-mail responsiveness except when the request for help is preceded by prosocial priming. Implications of these findings for the literature on the bystander effect and priming are discussed.
... When individuals suffer from socioemotional disorders, strategies need to be adapted. Indeed, many socioemotional disorders are associated with deficits in the ability to perceive and interpret facial emotion (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, 2004;Blair, 2005;Marsh et al., 2007). In particular, it has been demonstrated that Autism Spectrum Disorders (Pelphrey et al., 2002;Harms et al., 2010), schizophrenia (Sasson et al., 2007;Kohler et al., 2010), and social phobia (Horley et al., 2003) are associated with deficits in emotion perception. ...
Face masks have proven to be key to slowing down the SARS-Cov2 virus spread in the COVID-19 pandemic context. However, wearing face masks is not devoid of “side-effects”, at both the physical and psychosocial levels. In particular, masks hinder emotion reading from facial expressions as they hide a significant part of the face. This disturbs both holistic and featural processing of facial expressions and, therefore, impairs emotion recognition, and influences many aspects of human social behavior. Communication in general is disrupted by face masks, as they modify the wearer's voice and prevent the audience from using lip reading or other non-verbal cues for speech comprehension. Individuals suffering from psychiatric conditions with impairment of communication, are at higher risk of distress because masks increase their difficulties to read emotions from faces. The identification and acknowledgment of these “side-effects” on communication are necessary because they warrant further work on adaptive solutions that will help foster the use of face masks by the greatest number.
... The results of this study would suggest that when viewing masked faces, people may be susceptible in assigning the emotional state of surprised to people who are experiencing fear and a perceived threat. This has important implications as the ability to facially recognise fear in others can prompt observers to engage in prosocial or helpful behaviours (Marsh & Ambady, 2007). The notion that facial expressions of emotions can influence behavioural responses is also illustrated in Van Kleef's (2009) Emotion as Social Information Model (EASI). ...
Since the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019, there have been global public health initiatives that have advocated for the community use of face masks to reduce spread of the virus. Although the community use of facial coverings has been deemed essential for public health, there have been calls for enquiries to ascertain how face masks may impact non-verbal methods of communication. The present study aimed to ascertain how the brief observations of faces in opaque facial coverings could impact facial emotion recognition. It was also an aim to ascertain if there was an association between levels of empathic concern and facial emotion recognition when viewing masked faces. An opportunity sample of 199 participants, who resided in the UK, were randomly assigned to briefly observe either masked (n = 102) or unmasked (n = 97) faces. Participants in both conditions were required to view a series of facial expressions, from the Radboud Faces Database, with models conveying the emotional states of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprised. Each face was presented to participants for a period of 250ms in the masked and unmasked conditions. A 6 (emotion type) x 2 (masked/unmasked condition) mixed ANOVA revealed that viewing masked faces significantly reduced facial emotion recognition of disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprised. However, there were no differences in the success rate of recognising the emotional state of anger between the masked and unmasked conditions. Furthermore, higher levels of empathic concern were associated with greater success in facially recognising the emotional state of disgust. The results of the present study suggest that significant reductions in emotion recognition, when viewing faces in opaque masks, can still be observed when people are exposed to facial stimuli for a brief period of time.
... Accordingly, expressions of sadness-compared with other emotions-are perceived as useful when attempting to elicit help from others (Hackenbracht & Tamir, 2010). In response to expressions of sadness, observers generally experience sympathy and concern (Batson & Shaw, 1991;Eisenberg et al., 1989;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). In addition to these emotional responses, observers are likely to offer help to individuals expressing sadness. ...
Emotional expressions evoke predictable responses from observers; displays of sadness are commonly met with sympathy and help from others. Accordingly, people may be motivated to feign emotions to elicit a desired response. In the absence of suspicion, we predicted that emotional and behavioral responses to genuine (vs. deceptive) expressers would be guided by empirically valid cues of sadness authenticity. Consistent with this hypothesis, untrained observers (total N = 1,300) reported less sympathy and offered less help to deceptive (vs. genuine) expressers of sadness. This effect was replicated using both posed, low-stakes, laboratory-created stimuli, and spontaneous, real, high-stakes emotional appeals to the public. Furthermore, lens models suggest that sympathy reactions were guided by difficult-to-fake facial actions associated with sadness. Results suggest that naive observers use empirically valid cues to deception to coordinate social interactions, providing novel evidence that people are sensitive to subtle cues to deception.
... Human resources working in the tourism sector must be able to understand the costumers' internal state and their feelings and emotions (body language, facial expressions, tone of voice) so that they can also anticipate their needs, making the customers happy. When human resources working in the tourism sector can understand costumers' emotions, facial expressions and tone of voice the chance of developing trust, empathy, and prosocial behavior increases (Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Marsh et al., 2005). ...
The study aims to characterize, for the first time, the emotional intelligence profile of the tourists visiting the city of Porto as well as to observe its influence on the intention to return and activities perfomed during the stay, along with other socio-demographic factors,To achieve these purposes, we used a sample of 886 responses with the following purposes: on the one hand, to get the emotional intelligence constructs by applying the confirmatory factorial analysis, and on the other hand, to apply a logit model to describe the intention to return. Four constructs of tourists’ emotional intelligence emerged: emotion regulation, emotion use, evaluation of their own emotions, and evaluation of others’ emotions. . The first construct was indicated as the most important leading us to conclude that tourists have the ability to control their own emotions, presenting a strong emotional control. The four constructs and different variables of the tourists’ socio-demographic profile show a positive effect on the intention to return. This type of information is highly useful for the sector since it allows the definition of communication strategies and guides businesses to adapt to the profile of tourists.
... According to integrated emotions systems (IES) theory (Blair, 2006), individuals with psychopathic traits have impaired withdrawal responses to negative stimuli; therefore, these individuals fail to learn not to harm others, leading to a continuation of aggressive behaviour. Due to this lack of inhibition, children with CU traits are viewed as more likely to persist with violent behaviour, taking advantage of others or pursuing rewards, regardless of the risk of harm to themselves or their victims (Blair, 2001;Marsh & Ambady, 2007). The presence of temperamental fearlessness is also related to poor conscience development in children (Kochanska, 1993). ...
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits have been shown to be a temperamental risk factor identifying a subgroup of antisocial children with more severe and persistent antisocial behaviour. While existing research has demonstrated that antisocial children with CU traits show particularly severe impairment across multiple domains, much of this research has focused on the family context. Therefore, the current thesis aimed to explore CU traits in the school context. The four empirical studies included in this thesis use longitudinal data collected in South Korean primary schools (N = 218, aged 10–12 years; 52% boys) to examine questions regarding: 1) the validity of the CU traits measure in South Korean children; 2) unique associations of CU traits in predicting the trajectories of school-related outcomes; 3) the moderating effect of CU traits on teacher classroom strategies; and 4) associations between CU traits and social affiliation in school. The results of a confirmatory factor analysis supported the validity of the revised CU traits scale in the current sample. Furthermore, the results of latent growth curve modelling showed that CU traits are a unique predictor of a stable pattern of school disengagement across the school year. There was a significant interaction effect between CU traits and teacher strategies in predicting child engagement, such that harsh discipline predicted lower engagement only among children with low CU traits. A cross-lagged model analysis showed significant longitudinal associations between CU traits and social affiliation, such that CU traits predicted decreased teacher affiliation, and in turn, increased CU traits. The current thesis also includes a cross-sectional study examining the indirect effect of CU traits on academic grades via punishment insensitivity in secondary school students in the United Kingdom (N = 437, aged 11–14 years; 51% boys). The results of the mediation analysis showed that CU traits had a significant indirect effect on the association between CU traits and poor Maths and Science but not English grades via punishment insensitivity. The findings from this thesis support the validity of a measure of CU traits in South Korean primary schools in relation to a wide range of school-related outcomes, highlighting the importance of considering CU traits in the school context to identify at-risk children and targets for intervention.
... Previous research suggest that anger and fear are related to perpetrator-related policies rather than victim-related policies (e.g., Iyer et al., 2014). However, outside the context of terrorism news, anger (Vitaglione & Barnett, 2003) and fear (Marsh & Ambady, 2007) have been found to be related to prosocial behavior. Yet, since there is a lack of empirical evidence in the context of terrorism and policy support, we pose a second research question: RQ2: How are (a) anger and (b) fear related to support for restrictive perpetrator policies? ...
Islamist terrorist attacks have become a salient threat to Western countries, and news coverage about such crimes is a key predictor of public emotional reactions and policy support. We examine the effects of two key characteristics of terrorism news coverage: (1) the victim’s religion and (2) first-person narratives that facilitate perspective taking. A quota-based experiment ( N = 354) revealed that irrespective of the narrative type, news reports that mention the victims’ Muslim religion induce less anger and compassion, but more joy among non-Muslim news consumers. However, fear was equally induced by all news articles. As a consequence, fear, anger, and joy predicted support for more restrictive terrorism policies, while anger and compassion were related to more support for victim compensation.
... The ability to infer the internal states of others using external cues such as facial expressions is considered an important building block for social skill development (Schultz, 2005). Accurate emotion recognition is thought to foster empathy, trust, and prosocial behaviors (Marsh & Ambady, 2007) and is critical for successful relationships and social interactions (Unoka, Fogd, Füzy, & Csukly, 2011). Theorists have proposed that emotion recognition facilitates adaptive social interaction by providing information about the displayer's emotions (Ekman & Friesen, 1982;Ekman, 1993) and intentions (e.g., by signaling dominance or affiliation; Knutson, 1996), providing an index of the status or quality of a relationship (e.g., when love and sympathy signal relational commitment ;Frank, 1988), and providing information about the environment (e.g., safety signals; Sorce & Emde, 1981;Walden & Ogan, 1988). ...
Many studies, yielding mixed results, have examined whether individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have skills or deficits in facial emotion recognition (FER). The present studies explored this issue in 2 samples using 3 novel approaches: First, we examined BPD symptoms continuously in a nonclinical sample. Second, we examined the ability of individuals with BPD or elevated BPD symptoms to accurately identify emotions in static faces presented with emotional expressions ranging from neutral to subtle to fully expressed emotion. Third, we parsed accuracy into both correctly identifying an emotion and correctly ruling out an emotion that is not present. In Study 1, the relation between FER and BPD symptoms was examined in a nonclinical sample of undergraduates. In Study 2, individuals with BPD were compared with individuals with current major depression and healthy controls. In the nonclinical sample, BPD symptoms were unrelated to FER. In the clinical sample, we found evidence for enhanced accuracy for subtle and fully expressed facial emotions among individuals with BPD. Specifically, the ability to rule out an emotion when it was in fact not displayed emerged as the source of this increased accuracy. In addition, we did not find evidence of a bias for incorrectly labeling neutral faces as negative emotional expressions in either sample. Our results expand upon existing FER research in BPD that has largely relied on fully expressed emotional stimuli by demonstrating higher accuracy among individuals with BPD for identifying subtle emotional states. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Given that negative emotional expressions are powerful social signals of one's need for help (e.g., Feeney & Collins, 2001;Fischer & Manstead, 2008;S. M. Graham et al., 2008;Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 2001;Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Nesse & Ellsworth, 2009;Trobst et al., 1994;Whitsett et al., 2010), expressions of positivity within negative disclosures (or attempts to seek support for negative events) may dampen the seeker's call for help. ...
Garnering support for distressing experiences is highly important, yet notoriously challenging. We examine whether expressing positive thoughts and feelings when seeking support for negative events can help people elicit support, and we present a theoretical process model that explains why it might do so. The model includes three support-eliciting pathways through which expressing positivity could increase support: by strengthening providers' prorelational motives, increasing providers' positive mood, and enhancing providers' expected support effectiveness. It also includes a support-suppressing pathway through which expressing positivity could decrease support: by undermining providers' appraisals of support seekers' needs. After presenting the model and providing evidence for each indirect pathway, we review research regarding the direct pathway. We then consider various types of positivity, discuss possible moderators, and identify directions for future research. Our model highlights support seekers' underemphasized role in shaping support receipt and provides a novel perspective on positive expressivity's potential value in distress-related contexts.
... In the presence of fearful individuals, who simultaneously signal the presence of a potential danger and a need for affiliation (Marsh & Ambady, 2007), participants' choices suggested neither an approach nor an avoidance preference. The changes induced by adopting expansive compared to constrictive postures on approach and avoidance of fearful individuals were small and non-significant. ...
Individuals’ opportunities for action in threatening social contexts largely depend on their social power. While powerful individuals can afford to confront aggressors and dangers, powerless individuals need others’ support and better avoid direct challenges. Here, we investigated if adopting expansive or constrictive postures, which function as social signals of power, impacts individuals’ approach and avoidance decisions in response to social threat signals using a within-subject design. Overall, participants more often chose to avoid rather than to approach angry individuals, but showed no clear approach or avoidance preference for fearful individuals. Crucially, constrictive posture considerably increased the tendency to avoid angry individuals, whereas expansive postures induced no substantial changes. This suggests that adopting power-related postures can impact action decisions in response to social threat signals. The present results emphasize the social function of power postures and are discussed in the context of the debate on the replicability of power posture effects.
... maddeler), "Kaçınan tarz"(36,37, 58,11, 50,38,13,12,35,32,27. maddeler), "Öfkeli tarz"(33, 54, 20, 21, 56, 34, 4, 25, 57. maddeler), "Duygudan kaçınan/duyarsız tarz"(26,23,28,24,17,15,29,2,30,3,39. maddeler), "Manipülatif tarz"(53, 41, 44, 45, 19, 40, 18, 16, 7, 55. maddeler), "Alaycı/küçümseyici tarz"(22, 47, 10, 1, 14. maddeler) dır. ...
Background: Nursing is a profession where emotion expression and interpersonal styles are important in patient care. Nursing students have an important role in the process of expressing emotions and interpersonal styles which can be improved in the educational processes.
Aim: This research aimed to examine the emotion expressions and interpersonal styles of the nursing students.
Methods: This cross - sectional study was conducted in May 2018. The population of the study consists of 1062 students in the nursing faculty of a university in 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study was calculated by G-power and found to be 283. Personal data form, Emotion Expression Scale and Interpersonal Style Scale were used for the data. Descriptive statistical tests Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U Test, Pearson Correlation and Regression were used to evaluate the data.
Results: The students participating in the research, 74 (26%) were 1st grade, 89 (31.2%) were 2nd grade, 41 (14.4%) were 3rd grade and 81 (28.4%) and 4th. The students, 206 (72.3%) were female, 79 (27.7%) were male, and 155 (54.4%) rated their academic achievement as moderate. There was a significant difference between the subscale style scores of the Interpersonal Style Scale according to the grades (KW = 15.067, p = 0.002). According to gender, emotion expression scores were higher in girls and a significant difference was found (U = 4914,000 p = .000). The dominant style, avoidant style, angry style and insensitive style scores of the students who were not satisfied with the interpersonal relationships were significantly higher (U = 2371.500, p = 0.025; U = 2238.500, p = 0.010; U = 2330.000, p = 0.019; U = 2216.500, p = 0.009)
Conclusion: As a result, students' classes, gender, participation in social activities and satisfaction with their interpersonal relationships affected their emotion expressions and their interpersonal styles.
Keywords: Emotion Expression, Interpersonal Style, Nursing Student
Giriş: Hemşirelik mesleği duygu ifade etmenin ve kişilerarası tarzların hasta bakımında önemli olduğu bir meslektir. Hemşirelik öğrencilerinin eğitim süreçlerinde geliştirilebilir olan duygu ifade etme ve kişilerarası tarzların mesleğe hazırlanma sürecinde önemli bir yeri vardır.
Amaç: Bu çalışma hemşirelik bölümü öğrencilerinin duygu ifadelerinin ve kişilerarası ilişki tarzlarının incelenmesi amacıyla yapılmıştır.
Gereç ve Yöntem: Kesitsel tipteki bu araştırma için çalışma 2018 yılı Mayıs ayında gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırmanın evrenini 2018-2019 eğitim-öğretim yılında bir üniversitenin hemşirelik fakültesindeki 1062 öğrenci oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmanın örneklemi G-power ile hesaplanmış olup 283 bulunmuştur. Veriler için kişisel bilgi formu, Duygu İfadeleri Ölçeği ve Kişilerarası Tarz Ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Verilerin değerlendirilmesinde tanımlayıcı istatistiksel testler Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U Testi, Pearson Korelasyon ve Regresyon kullanılmıştır.
Bulgular: Araştırmaya katılan öğrencilerin, 74’u(%26) 1.sınıf, 89’u(%31,2) 2.sınıf, 41’i(%14,4) 3.sınıf ve 81’i(%28,4) 4.sınıftır. Öğrencilerin 206’sı(% 72,3) kız, 79’u(%27,7) erkek olup, 155’i (%54,4) akademik başarısını orta düzeyde değerlendirmiştir. Cinsiyetlerine göre duygu ifadesi puanları kızlarda yüksek olup anlamlı bir fark bulunmuştur (U=4914,000 p=.000). Kişilerarası ilişkilerinden memnun olmayan öğrencilerde baskın tarz, kaçıngan tarz, öfkeli tarz ve duyarsız tarz puanları anlamlı derecede yüksek bulunmuştur (U=2371.500, p=0,025; U=2238.500, p=0,010; U=2330.000, p=0.019; U=2216.500, p=0.009).
Sonuç: Araştırma sonucunda, öğrencilerin sınıfları, cinsiyeti, akademik başarıları, bireysel sosyal faaliyetlere katılma ve kişilerarası ilişkilerden memnuniyetlerinin, duygu ifadelerini ve kişilerarası tarzlarını etkilediği belirlenmiştir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Duygu ifadesi, Hemşirelik Öğrencileri, Kişilerarası tarz.
... Table S7 for separate regressions per posture and session). Movement duration results are depicted in Figure 5. Replicating previous studies that used the same approach-avoidance task (Mennella, Vilarem, & Grèzes, in preparation; Vilarem et al., under review), we found that facial expressions of anger, which signal direct threat towards the observer (Sander et al., 2007;Sell et al., 2014), elicit more avoidance than approach decisions, while expressions of fear, which simultaneously signal potential danger in the environment and an opportunity to affiliate (A. A. Marsh & Ambady, 2007), prompted avoidance and approach behaviour to the same extent. Of interest here, postures modulated these decisions in a manner that corresponds to the level of dominance or power they signal. ...
Expansive and constrictive body postures serve a primary communicative function in humans and other animals by signalling power and dominance. Whether adopting such “power postures” influences the agent’s own perception and behaviour is currently a subject of debate. In this PhD thesis, I therefore explored effects of adopting power postures on behaviours closely related to the postures’ primary function of social signalling by focusing on responses to faces as particularly salient social signals. In a series of experiments, I utilized reverse correlation methods to visualize mental representations of preferred facial traits. Mental representations of implicitly as well as explicitly preferred faces evoked an affiliative and slightly dominant impression, but revealed no replicable effects of power postures. Two further separate experiments investigated posture effects on the perception of threatening facial expressions, and approach vs. avoidance actions in response to such social signals. While postures did not influence explicit recognition of threatening facial expressions, they affected approach and avoidance actions in response to them. Specifically, adopting a constrictive posture increased the tendency to avoid angry individuals. Finally, an attempt to replicate posture effects on levels of testosterone and cortisol demonstrated that even repeatedly adopting a power posture in a social context does not elicit hormonal changes. Altogether, these findings suggest that our body posture does not influence our mental representations and perception of other people’s faces per se, but could influence our actions in responses to social signals.
... Researchers have shown that managers have greater discretion in the emotions they display, and they face a variety of situations that might call for the display of negative emotions in particular (Humphrey, Pollack, & Hawver, 2008;Van Kleef et al., 2009). For instance, a manager's display of anger toward a subordinate could be used to demonstrate power, disappointment could be used to signal poor performance, and distress could be used to elicit prosocial behavior (Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Sinaceur & Tiedens, 2006;Sy, Côté, & Saavedra, 2005;Tiedens, 2001). ...
The consensus in the emotional labor literature is that surface acting is "bad" for employees. However, the evidence on which this consensus is based has been derived from contexts emphasizing the display of positive emotions, such as customer service. Despite the acknowledgment that many contexts also require the display of negative emotions, scholarly work has proceeded under the assumption that surface acting is harmful regardless of the valence of the emotion being displayed. In this study, we take a hedonic approach to well-being and challenge the consensus that surface acting is bad for employees by examining its effects on changes in emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction, through changes in positive and negative affect, for both positive and negative emotional displays. Using a within-person approach, we focus on managers, whose occupation calls for displays of both positive and negative emotions. Our 3-week, experience-sampling study of 79 managers revealed that faking positive emotions decreases positive affect, which harms well-being more than authentically displaying such emotions. In contrast and counter to what the extant literature would suggest, faking negative emotions decreases negative affect and increases positive affect, which benefits well-being more than authentically displaying such emotions. We further integrate construal level theory with hedonic approaches of emotion to identify trait construal level as an important boundary condition to explain for whom surface acting is harmful versus beneficial. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... Empathy is a crucial factor in social interaction, and it may be important for dangerous driving behaviour because driving takes place in a social context (Nordfjaern & S ßims ßekoglu, 2014). Developmental, behavioural, and clinical research shows that distress cues elicit empathy in those who observe them (Hoffman, 1987;Marsh & Ambady, 2007;Nichols, 2001;Preston & de Waal, 2002), and this is generally associated with decreased antisocial behaviour (Eisenberg, 2000;Marsh, Adams, & Kleck, 2005). The empirical findings provide support for the assertion that empathy is related to some forms of prosocial behaviour (Batson & Shaw, 1991;Eisenberg & Miller, 1987;Stocks, Lishner, & Decker, 2009). ...
It is assumed that emotion recognition is a complex process related to prosocial and antisocial behaviour (Marsh & Blair, 2008). The present study focuses on the connection between recognizing emotions and safe/unsafe driving. We studied whether there are differences in response time in facial emotion recognition. Fifty-one non-offenders and 41 offenders completed a Pictures of Facial Affect test (Ekman & Friesen, 1976) wherein photographs of prototypical facial emotional expressions were presented. Results show differences between the groups in response time to all emotions whether answers were correct or incorrect. Data show that non-offenders are faster in recognizing emotions than are offenders. These findings demonstrate that offenders exhibit specific deficits in response time for facial affect expressions.
... Crucially, these effects are specific to fearful faces, as no such differences are evident in response to other negative emotions such as anger, which sig- nals interpersonal threat (aggression) rather than distress to another person [6]. Enhanced rec- ognition of fear from faces is also associated with higher levels of prosocial behavior among neurotypical adults [9,10]. Moreover, heightened sensitivity to fearful faces has been linked to greater levels of altruistic behavior in 5-year-old children in 2 different cultures [11]. ...
Altruistic behavior is considered a key feature of the human cooperative makeup, with deep ontogenetic roots. The tendency to engage in altruistic behavior varies between individuals and has been linked to differences in responding to fearful faces. The current study tests the hypothesis that this link exists from early in human ontogeny. Using eye tracking, we examined whether attentional responses to fear in others at 7 months of age predict altruistic behavior at 14 months of age. Our analysis revealed that altruistic behavior in toddlerhood was predicted by infants' attention to fearful faces but not happy or angry faces. Specifically, infants who showed heightened initial attention to (i.e., prolonged first look) followed by greater disengagement (i.e., reduced attentional bias over 15 seconds) from fearful faces at 7 months displayed greater prosocial behavior at 14 months of age. Our data further show that infants' attentional bias to fearful faces and their altruistic behavior was predicted by brain responses in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), measured through functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). This suggests that, from early in ontogeny, variability in altruistic helping behavior is linked to our responsiveness to seeing others in distress and brain processes implicated in attentional control. These findings critically advance our understanding of the emergence of altruism in humans by identifying responsiveness to fear in others as an early precursor contributing to variability in prosocial behavior.
... In typical individuals, aversive arousal to others' distress not only inhibits antisocial behaviour but can also potentially serve to motivate prosocial behaviour (e.g., via a "concern mechanism"; Nichols, 2001). Typical individuals express greater sympathy and intent to help towards faces showing distress expressions than non-distress expressions (Marsh & Ambady, 2007), and most people will offer help or comfort to a distressed person (Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley & Birch, 1981). Concerning arousal, individuals with stronger arousal to others' distress (measured via skin conductance responses, SCRs) are more likely to respond altruistically (Krebs, 1975;Hein, et al., 2011), and extremely prosocial individuals (e.g., willing to give a kidney to a stranger) show enhanced amygdala response to distress expressions (i.e., the opposite pattern to psychopaths; Marsh, Stoycos, Brethel-Haurwitz, Robinson, VanMeter, & Cardinale, 2014). ...
(Article accepted 5 April 2018.) In everyday life, other peoples' distress is sometimes genuine (e.g., real sadness), and sometimes pretended (e.g., feigned sadness aimed at manipulating others). Here, we present the first study of how psychopathic traits affect responses to genuine versus posed distress. Using facial expression stimuli, and testing individual differences across the general population (N = 140), we focus on the affective features of psychopathy (e.g., callousness, poor empathy, shallow affect). Results show that, while individuals low on affective psychopathy report greater arousal and intent-to-help towards faces displaying genuine relative to posed distress, these differences weakened or disappeared with higher levels of affective psychopathy. Strikingly, a key theoretical prediction—that arousal should mediate the association between affective psychopathy and intent-to-help—was supported only for genuine distress, and not for posed distress. A further novel finding was of reduced ability to discriminate the authenticity of distress expressions with higher affective psychopathy, which, in addition to and independently of arousal, also mediated the association between affective psychopathy and reduced prosociality. All effects were specific to distress emotions (did not extend to happy, anger, disgust), and to affective psychopathy (did not extend to Factor 2 psychopathy, disinhibition, boldness). Overall, our findings are highly consistent with Blair’s theorising that atypical processing of distress emotions plays a key etiological role in the affective aspects of psychopathy. We go beyond these ideas to add novel evidence that unwillingness to help others is also associated with a failure to fully appreciate the authenticity of their distress.
... Emotional expression via facial, gestural, or verbal means communicates important social information and signals such as an individual's emotional state, intentions, and feelings towards others (Hareli and Hess 2012;Keltner and Haidt 1999;Keltner and Kring 1998). Often, this triggers emotional and behavioural responses in others, which can either be helpful or unhelpful, depending on the individual's ability to regulate the experience and expression of the evoked emotion (Campos et al. 1994;Keltner and Buswell 1997;Keltner and Haidt 1999;Keltner and Kring 1998;Marsh and Ambady 2007). For example, expression of embarrassment can prompt sympathy and forgiveness in others (Keltner and Buswell 1997), while expression of anxiety can prompt helping behaviour from others (Graham et al. 2008). ...
The ability to regulate emotions appropriately and effectively is important in maintaining positive social interactions and outcomes. The current study investigated the association between the habitual use of suppression and reappraisal, and involvement in bullying in high school. Other social outcomes, such as current social satisfaction and support, were also considered. Two hundred and nine first-year psychology university students (mean age 19.13 years, SD = 1.523) completed online questionnaires. Results demonstrated that suppression was associated with greater retrospective reports of victimisation during high school and lower current social satisfaction and support, even when controlling for general affect. Reappraisal was mostly found to be unrelated to bullying and social outcomes, with only one association existing between higher reappraisal use and better social satisfaction, which was no longer significant when controlling for affect. The findings extend on previous research by demonstrating a negative association between suppression and involvement in bullying.
Individuals who deviate from social norms by committing crimes may have reduced facial emotion recognition abilities. Nevertheless, a specific category of offenders – i.e. organised crime (OC) members – is characterised by hierarchically organised social networks and a tendency to manipulate others to reach their illicit goals. Since recognising emotions is crucial to building social networks, OC members may be more skilled in recognising the facial emotion expressions of others to use this information for their criminal purposes. Evidence of a difference between OC and non-organised crime (NOC) offenders in terms of facial emotion recognition is still lacking. To fill this gap in the literature, we tested 50 OC, 50 NOC offenders, and 50 non-offender controls for their ability to identify six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise). All participants underwent a cognitive and psychological evaluation to avoid alternative explanations. Results show that OC members were more able to detect the expression of fear in others as compared to NOC. We interpreted this finding in light of the social context and the behavioural criminal attitude of OC members.
El número de estudios sobre la violencia escolar y juvenil ha aumentado en los últimos años y sus resultados resaltan el importante papel de las competencias socioemocionales a la hora de prevenir o intervenir en estas conductas. No obstante, los hallazgos científicos a menudo están desconectados entre sí y además no siempre son accesibles a los profesionales que trabajan en la prevención e intervención contra la violencia. Por ello, en el presente artículo se realiza una exhaustiva revisión de estudios científicos sobre diferentes conductas problema, la importancia de la prevención de la violencia escolar y juvenil y su relación con las competencias socioemocionales. Igualmente, se resumen los componentes principales de los programas que han mostrado ser efectivos contra diferentes tipos de violencia y que incluyen componentes para la promoción de las competencias socioemocionales. Se proporcionan algunas claves para la práctica con base en los resultados científicos y propuestas de futuro.
We are constantly forming impressions about those around us. Social interaction depends on our understanding of interpersonal behavior - assessing one another's personality, emotions, thoughts and feelings, attitudes, deceptiveness, group memberships, and other personal characteristics through facial expressions, body language, voice and spoken language. But how accurate are our impressions and when does such accuracy matter? How is accuracy achieved and are some of us more successful at achieving it than others? This comprehensive overview presents cutting-edge research on this fast-expanding field and will be essential reading for anyone interested in the psychology of interpersonal perception. A wide range of experts in the field explore topics including age and gender effects, psychopathology, culture and ethnicity, workplaces and leadership, clinicians' skills, empathy, meta-perception, and training people to be more accurate in their perceptions of others.
This study aims to give general information about the functions of anxiety and fear from the perspective of psychology. In this direction, the functions of fear and anxiety are discussed in terms of cognitive, social, and pathological aspects. From a cognitive perspective, it has been shown that anxiety and fear are associated with cognitive performance. In particular, it is noteworthy that anxiety narrows attention, but fear helps to direct attention. Anxiety and fear are socially effective in many aspects of people's lives. It is reported to have both functional and non-functional sides. Anxiety and fear seem necessary, functional, and valuable in many parts of daily life. However, it can be said that long-term, frequent and intense anxiety and fear, which differs from ordinary anxiety or fear in everyday life and causes deterioration in important functional areas, causes intense stress and turns into a clinically significant and pathological dimension. Therefore, it is thought that it is important that the level, intensity, and frequency of these emotions are at a certain level and that they do not impair functionality.
La promoción de la convivencia escolar es una tarea imprescindible en las escuelas del siglo XXI, que, aparte de la enseñanza del contenido académico, están llamadas a preparar para la vida y prevenir la violencia. Aunque se reconozca la importancia de la convivencia escolar y se hayan implementado diversos programas para su promoción, todavía es necesario profundizar en el conocimiento de las bases psicológicas que fundamentan el quehacer de las escuelas en relación con la convivencia. Por ello, en el presente artículo se pretende delimitar el concepto de convivencia escolar y se propone un modelo de convivencia escolar basado en los conocimientos de la Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación. Se trata de un modelo en el que la convivencia escolar se nutre de factores personales y contextuales para la prevención de la violencia y promoción de la ciudadanía y la paz. Con este propósito, se realiza una revisión de literatura científica sobre diversos componentes de la convivencia escolar y su desarrollo normativo en el alumnado, y una propuesta de su promoción a través de la educación. La convivencia se conceptualiza desde una perspectiva positiva a partir de la promoción de conductas prosociales.
This teaching case study aims at encouraging meaningful conversations about discipline. The case illustrates the increasing need for school leaders to adopt discipline approaches that foster support, equity, inclusion, and advocacy for cultural differences rather than punishment and the exclusion of marginalized students. This scenario takes place in an urban middle school that is representative of many other American schools. In particular, I examine the challenges educational leaders commonly face with discipline, leading to unsatisfactory student learning outcomes and well-being. The hope is to expose school leaders to a holistic discipline approach that is grounded in support, care, love, and respect for cultural diversity. To promote reflection, I pose questions designed to prepare prospective and current educational leaders facing similar discipline situations.
Violence in schizophrenia is best investigated within the broader context of violent behavior in the general population. Two important domains of general pathology which allow us to take such an approach include impairment in emotion processing, as manifested by faulty facial emotion recognition, and aggressive reactivity which consists of heightened sensitivity to provocation. To test this approach, we included 135 subjects: 38 violent (VS's) and 33 nonviolent patients with schizophrenia, 32 healthy controls and 32 non-psychotic violent subjects (NPV's). We measured violence with the Life History of Aggression Scale, recognition of facial emotions with the Emotion Recognition Task, and aggressive reactivity through the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire. Adolescent antisocial behavior was evaluated as a potential precursor to these deficits. We found that impairment in fear recognition (IFR) and aggressive reactivity have a significant effect on violence in the violent groups. These two impairments interact in different ways in these groups. In NPV's they contribute in an additive fashion to violence, whereas in VS's they represent separate pathways; aggressive reactivity leads to violence only when there is no IFR. Adolescent antisocial behavior has a differential effect on these 2 impairments in the 2 groups. Thus, these findings provide insights on the differential role of IFR and aggressive reactivity for violence in schizophrenia compared to the general population. In NPV's, both dysfunctions represent antisocial features and contribute jointly to violence. In schizophrenia, they have different etiologies and constitute alternative pathways to violence. This has important implications for the conceptualization and treatment of violence.
Already as infants humans are more fearful than our closest living primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Yet heightened fearfulness is mostly considered maladaptive, as it is thought to increase the risk of developing anxiety and depression. How can this human fear paradox be explained? The fearful ape hypothesis presented herein stipulates that, in the context of cooperative caregiving and provisioning unique to human great ape group life, heightened fearfulness was adaptive. This is because from early in ontogeny fearfulness expressed and perceived enhanced care-based responding and provisioning from, while concurrently increasing cooperation with, mothers and others. This explanation is based on a synthesis of existing research with human infants and children, demonstrating a link between fearfulness, greater sensitivity to and accuracy in detecting fear in others, and enhanced levels of cooperative behaviors. These insights critically advance current evolutionary theories of human cooperation by adding an early-developing affective component to the human cooperative makeup. Moreover, the current proposal has important cultural, societal and health implications, as it challenges the predominant view in WEIRD societies that commonly construe fearfulness as a maladaptive trait, potentially ignoring its evolutionary adaptive functions.
This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of the virtual Hero program on the promotion of empathy (emotional contagion, emotional recognition, and perspective taking) and prosocial behavior toward strangers. Moreover, we studied whether promoting empathy strengthened the program’s impact on adolescents’ prosocial behavior. The study included 431 adolescents in the intervention group ( M age = 13.64, 47% of participants identified as cisgender men, and 53% of participants identified as cisgender women) and 325 participants in the waitlist control group ( M age = 13.22, 47% of participants identified as cisgender men, and 53% of participants identified as cisgender women). The adolescents lived in the urban zone of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Participants completed measures of prosocial behavior and empathy. The intervention included seven weekly online sessions (a pretest evaluation, five intervention sessions, and a posttest evaluation) of approximately 40 minutes each, while the control group completed only the pretest and posttest evaluations. The research findings show that the Hero virtual program was effective in promoting prosociality directly (when not mediated by emotional contagion and emotional recognition) and indirectly through emotional contagion and emotional recognition. In addition, the Hero program promoted emotional contagion and emotional recognition, but it was not effective at promoting perspective taking. In conclusion, internet-based interventions could play a prominent role in promoting positive behavior among young adolescents.
Humans have evolved to be highly interdependent: We rely heavily on one another to survive and succeed as individuals and as a species. This interdependence has meant, in turn, the need to ensure the well-being of those with whom we are – or could potentially be – interdependent.
The functioning of social collectives hinges on the willingness of their members to cooperate with one another and to help those who are in need. Here we consider how such prosocial behavior is shaped by emotions. We offer an integrative review of theoretical arguments and empirical findings concerning how the experience of emotions influences people’s own prosocial behavior (intrapersonal effects) and how the expression of emotions influences others’ prosocial behavior (interpersonal effects). We identified research on five broad clusters of emotions associated with opportunity and affiliation (happiness, contentment, hope), appreciation and self-transcendence (gratitude, awe, elevation, compassion), distress and supplication (sadness, disappointment, fear, anxiety), dominance and status assertion (anger, disgust, contempt, envy, pride), and appeasement and social repair (guilt, regret, shame, embarrassment). Our review reveals notable differences between emotion clusters and between intrapersonal and interpersonal effects. Although some emotions promote prosocial behavior in the self and others, most emotions promote prosocial behavior either in the self (via their intrapersonal effects) or in others (via their interpersonal effects), suggesting trade-offs between the functionality of emotional experience and emotional expression. Moreover, interpersonal effects are modulated by the cooperative versus competitive nature of the situation. We discuss the emerging patterns from a social-functional perspective and conclude that understanding the role of emotion in prosociality requires joint attention to intrapersonal and interpersonal effects.
The onset of motor symptoms in Parkinson disease (PD) is typically unilateral. Previous work has suggested that laterality of motor symptoms may also influence non-motor symptoms including cognition and emotion perception. In line with hemispheric differences in emotion processing, we tested whether left side/right brain motor onset was associated with worse expression of facial affect when compared to right side/left brain motor onset. We evaluated movement changes associated with facial affect in 30 patients with idiopathic PD (15 left-sided motor onset, 15 right-sided motor onset) and 20 healthy controls. Participants were videotaped while posing three facial expressions: fear, anger, and happiness. Expressions were digitized and analyzed using software that extracted three variables: two measures of dynamic movement change (total entropy and entropy percent change) and a measure of time to initiate facial expression (latency). The groups did not differ in overall amount of movement change or percentchange. However, left-sided onset PD patients were significantly slower in initiating anger and happiness facial expressions than were right-sided onset PD patients and controls. Our results indicated PD patients with left-sided symptom onset had greater latency in initiating two of three facial expressions, which may reflect laterality effects in intentional behaviour.
While the strength of the fear system can be inferred in part from the conscious experience of fear, it is also instructive to measure the activity of the relevant brain areas directly. Enhanced excitatory activation of some or all of these areas might be expected to increase the intensity of fear. The strength of the fear system has been assessed chiefly via neuroimaging studies in which images of faces showing different emotions (including fear and anger) are presented and regional activation in the viewer’s brain is recorded. Most studies identify a priori regions of interest, but increasingly sophisticated statistical programs and imaging techniques allow researchers to investigate structural, functional and temporal connectivity within and between brain circuits. The interpretation of findings is complicated by the difficulty (some would say impossibility) of mapping the correspondence between structure and function. For example, signals reflecting changes in blood-oxygen levels (so called BOLD signals) indicate regions that are active in response to threat, but these regions could be registering threat, augmenting the fear response, suppressing the fear response, supporting decision-making processes, or a number of other concurrent functions. Nonetheless, some key circuits associated with fear have consistently been identified. These include sub-cortical structures such as the amygdala (located within the medial temporal lobe and associated with fear registration) and the hypothalamus (located at the base of the brain, guiding our autonomic responses). Areas of the mid-brain such as the periaqueductal grey have a role in the expression of behavioural fear while broader regions such as the ventromedial and orbitofrontal cortices show heightened activity in relation to fear regulation, task monitoring, future simulation and action decisions. Appendix B provides more specific details regarding the various neural structures covered within the chapters of this text and their associations with the components of the fear system.
Background: Nursing is a profession where emotion expression and interpersonal styles are important in patient care. Nursing students have an important role in the process of expressing emotions and interpersonal styles which can be improved in the educational processes.
Aim: This research aimed to examine the emotion expressions and interpersonal styles of the nursing students.
Methods: This cross - sectional study was conducted in May 2018. The population of the study consists of 1062 students in the nursing faculty of a university in 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the study was calculated by G-power and found to be 283. Personal data form, Emotion Expression Scale and Interpersonal Style Scale were used for the data. Descriptive statistical tests Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U Test, Pearson Correlation and Regression were used to evaluate the data.
Results: The students participating in the research, 74 (26%) were 1st grade, 89 (31.2%) were 2nd grade, 41 (14.4%) were 3rd grade and 81 (28.4%) and 4th. The students, 206 (72.3%) were female, 79 (27.7%) were male, and 155 (54.4%) rated their academic achievement as moderate. There was a significant difference between the subscale style scores of the Interpersonal Style Scale according to the grades (KW = 15.067, p = 0.002). According to gender, emotion expression scores were higher in girls and a significant difference was found (U = 4914,000 p = .000). The dominant style, avoidant style, angry style and insensitive style scores of the students who were not satisfied with the interpersonal relationships were significantly higher (U = 2371.500, p = 0.025; U = 2238.500, p = 0.010; U = 2330.000, p = 0.019; U = 2216.500, p = 0.009)
Conclusion: As a result, students' classes, gender, participation in social activities and satisfaction with their interpersonal relationships affected their emotion expressions and their interpersonal styles.
Keywords: Emotion Expression, Interpersonal Style, Nursing Student
Giriş: Hemşirelik mesleği duygu ifade etmenin ve kişilerarası tarzların hasta bakımında önemli olduğu bir meslektir. Hemşirelik öğrencilerinin eğitim süreçlerinde geliştirilebilir olan duygu ifade etme ve kişilerarası tarzların mesleğe hazırlanma sürecinde önemli bir yeri vardır.
Amaç: Bu çalışma hemşirelik bölümü öğrencilerinin duygu ifadelerinin ve kişilerarası ilişki tarzlarının incelenmesi amacıyla yapılmıştır.
Gereç ve Yöntem: Kesitsel tipteki bu araştırma için çalışma 2018 yılı Mayıs ayında gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırmanın evrenini 2018-2019 eğitim-öğretim yılında bir üniversitenin hemşirelik fakültesindeki 1062 öğrenci oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmanın örneklemi G-power ile hesaplanmış olup 283 bulunmuştur. Veriler için kişisel bilgi formu, Duygu İfadeleri Ölçeği ve Kişilerarası Tarz Ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Verilerin değerlendirilmesinde tanımlayıcı istatistiksel testler Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U Testi, Pearson Korelasyon ve Regresyon kullanılmıştır.
Bulgular: Araştırmaya katılan öğrencilerin, 74’u(%26) 1.sınıf, 89’u(%31,2) 2.sınıf, 41’i(%14,4) 3.sınıf ve 81’i(%28,4) 4.sınıftır. Öğrencilerin 206’sı(% 72,3) kız, 79’u(%27,7) erkek olup, 155’i (%54,4) akademik başarısını orta düzeyde değerlendirmiştir. Cinsiyetlerine göre duygu ifadesi puanları kızlarda yüksek olup anlamlı bir fark bulunmuştur (U=4914,000 p=.000). Kişilerarası ilişkilerinden memnun olmayan öğrencilerde baskın tarz, kaçıngan tarz, öfkeli tarz ve duyarsız tarz puanları anlamlı derecede yüksek bulunmuştur (U=2371.500, p=0,025; U=2238.500, p=0,010; U=2330.000, p=0.019; U=2216.500, p=0.009).
Sonuç: Araştırma sonucunda, öğrencilerin sınıfları, cinsiyeti, akademik başarıları, bireysel sosyal faaliyetlere katılma ve kişilerarası ilişkilerden memnuniyetlerinin, duygu ifadelerini ve kişilerarası tarzlarını etkilediği belirlenmiştir.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Duygu ifadesi, Hemşirelik Öğrencileri, Kişilerarası tarz.
Emotional intelligence is the capability to recognize, use and manage one's own emotions and those of others. The use of emotional information guides thinking and behaviour, allowing adjustment of emotions to adapt to environments. As tourism and hospitality services are produced and consumed simultaneously, with a high level of contact between employees and customers, the development of emotional intelligence of employees in tourism and hospitality establishments is vital.
This book has a skills-based approach and explains how emotional intelligence can be developed in tourism and hospitality students and employees. Key features:
A foreword by Gill Hasson
The first tourism and hospitality book to describe emotional intelligence
Covers all major literature, concepts, theories and research findings from the perspective of emotional intelligence.
Includes exercises, end of chapter questions, practical examples, student aids and Powerpoint slides for each chapter that can be used in class by academicians and practitioners in their training sessions.
The book is intended for use by tourism and hospitality students, researchers and practitioners.
Previous reviews exploring facial affect processing among forensic samples have focused on the presence of psychopathy and/or have not distinguished on the basis of offence type. In order to develop understandings about etiological processes implicated in different types of antisocial behavior, the principle aim of this review was to systematically explore facial affect processing in incarcerated violent offenders, relative to other non-violent offenders, sexual offenders, and non-offenders. Following a systematic search of electronic databases and subsequent manual search, eight studies were assessed as meeting inclusion criteria, of which seven obtained a quality score deemed acceptable for review. These studies examined recognition accuracy, sensitivity and response bias for seven emotion categories (including neutral) in incarcerated male offenders with a history of violence. Findings supported the presence of generally impaired facial affect processing among violent offenders, including deficits in fear, anger, and disgust. Overall the findings of the review did not support the presence of a hostile attribution bias among violent offenders. The review also highlights differences in sample composition, stimuli, and study designs in emotion recognition research. Recommendations are made for future work on facial affect processing in clinically relevant groups.
Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the psychology of emotion has grown to become its own field of study. Because the study of emotion draws inspiration from areas of science outside of psychology, including neuroscience, psychiatry, biology, genetics, computer science, zoology, and behavioral economics, the field is now often called emotion science or affective science. A subfield of affective science is affective neuroscience, the study of the emotional brain. This revised second edition of Psychology of Emotion reviews both theory and methods in emotion science, discussing findings about the brain; the function, expression, and regulation of emotion; similarities and differences due to gender and culture; the relationship between emotion and cognition; and emotion processes in groups. Comprehensive in its scope yet eminently readable, Psychology of Emotion serves as an ideal introduction for undergraduate students to the scientific study of emotion. It features effective learning devices such as bolded key terms, developmental details boxes, learning links, tables, graphs, and illustrations. In addition, a robust companion website offers instructor resources.
The aim of this chapter is to add to our knowledge of the contribution of facial expression to educational leadership perception. Although there is a considerable amount of studies investigating leaders' emotional displays, the majority of this research does not use the sophisticated facial expression coding methods available in other psychological settings. However, research using such sophisticated methods shows that even subtle facial actions can result in significantly different impressions, indicating that credibility of facial expression interpretation might depend on the accuracy of facial expression description (see Rosenberg, 2005). In this chapter, the few leadership studies that have used sophisticated facial expression coding methods are reviewed. On the basis of these studies, it is recommended that educational organizations should be aware of the added value of these methods in order increase research credibility and provide educational leaders with specialized knowledge and skills that could eventually increase their effectiveness.
Conduct disorder (CD) is a common condition that emerges in childhood or adolescence, and is characterised by rule-breaking, aggression and delinquency. CD entails a considerable economic burden and is linked to unfavourable adult outcomes such as antisocial personality disorder and persistent criminality. CD therefore represents a considerable treatment need. However, it remains difficult to treat, and this is partly due to the extensive heterogeneity of the disorder. Part of this heterogeneity is a result of comorbidity with other disorders. There is converging evidence that links CD with anxiety disorders (ADs). However, the precise relationship between CD and ADs is as yet unclear: there is evidence for attenuating and exacerbating effects of ADs on CD severity and prognosis. Furthermore, little is known regarding the neuropsychological profile of individuals with comorbid CD+ADs compared to those with CD alone. This is important given that alterations in emotion processing have been implicated in the aetiologies of both CD and ADs.
The present study investigated the effect of comorbid ADs on the clinical presentation and emotion processing styles of adolescents with CD, by comparing groups of adolescents with CD-only (n = 31), ADs-only (n = 23), comorbid CD+ADs (n = 20) and a typically-developing control group (n = 30). We used a range of clinical and questionnaire-based assessments, as well as a series of emotion processing tasks: three threat processing tasks and a facial emotion recognition task. We found that whilst the presence of comorbid ADs in CD had little effect on the clinical and personality characteristics of CD (e.g., callous-unemotional traits), individuals with comorbid CD+ADs performed differently on the emotion processing tasks compared to individuals with CD or ADs alone (and tended to perform similarly to controls, suggesting a protective effect of comorbid ADs). This suggests that the comorbid CD+ADs condition may represent a distinct disorder with its own distinct emotion processing style, which may have implications for the treatment of individuals with CD.
Fear responses to media exert a powerful influence over people's perceptions, expectations, and behavior. Grounded in emotion theory, this chapter provides a framework for understanding fear responses to mediated threats in three areas of media scholarship: immediate responses to media, risk perceptions, and intergroup relations. First, the chapter examines why and how mediated messages evoke fear, and the consequences of fear during and after media use. Second, theory and research on the relationship between media-induced fear and risk perceptions are reviewed. Third, media-related fear is examined in the context of social relations, focusing on (1) how framing various groups as threats can lead to fear, stereotyping, and behavioral responses, and (2) how groups portrayed as threats respond when anticipating media influence on others. Finally, limitations of the literature and suggestions for future research (including the role of new technologies) are discussed.
Emotion expression is critical for the communication of important social information, such as emotional states and behavioral intentions. However, people tend to vary in their level of emotional expression. This meta-analysis investigated the relationships between levels of emotion expression and suppression, and social and interpersonal outcomes. PsycINFO databases, as well as reference lists were searched. Forty-three papers from a total of 3,200 papers met inclusion criteria, allowing for 105 effect sizes to be calculated. Meta-analyses revealed that greater suppression of emotion was significantly associated with poorer social wellbeing, including more negative first impressions, lower social support, lower social satisfaction and quality, and poorer romantic relationship quality. Furthermore, the expression of positive and general/nonspecific emotion was related to better social outcomes, while the expression of anger was associated with poorer social wellbeing. Expression of negative emotion generally was also associated with poorer social outcomes, although this effect size was very small and consisted of mixed results. These findings highlight the importance of considering the role that regulation of emotional expression can play in the development of social dysfunction and interpersonal problems. (PsycINFO Database Record
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present review syntheses 64 investigations on the determinants of helping and aggression involving more than 12,000 subjects, providing empirical tests of Weiner's (1986, 1995) theory of social conduct. A meta-analytic test of the proposed causal cognition-emotion-behaviour sequence reveals that judgements of responsibility determine the emotional reactions of anger and sympathy, and that these emotional reactions, in turn, directly influence help giving and aggression. Results are highly consistent across several potential moderator variables including type of culture, sample characteristics, publication year, and publication status. Moreover, the present analyses suggest that the hypothesised model holds true for real events as well as for simulated data. Exploratory comparisons between the helping versus the aggression domain suggest that comparable results are obtained for these two domains, except that perceptions of responsibility are more likely to exert an additional proximal role in aggressive retaliation as compared to help giving. The implications of these findings for a general theory of motivation in the interpersonal and the intrapersonal domains are discussed.
Facial composites constructed from Identi-Kit materials were used to assess the impact of characteristically mature and immature eyebrows, eyes, lips, and jaws on perceptions of social dominance and attractiveness. Male and female faces were identically composed except for hair. Subjects rated faces on scales for dominance and attractiveness. Mature traits were hypothesized to make all faces look dominant and male faces appear attractive. Female faces were predicted to look attractive when displaying immature, nondominant facial cues. The results confirmed that mature traits generally raised dominance and attractiveness ratings for male faces. The traits that successfully raised dominance ratings for male faces made females look less attractive. Eye size had the most reliable effect on both dominance and attractiveness ratings for female faces. Eyes that make females look nondominant also made them look attractive. The results were generally consistent with sociobiological arguments generating predictions.
Facial expressions of emotions convey not only information about emotional states but also about interpersonal intentions. The present study investigated whether factors known to influence the decoding of emotional expressions—the gender and ethnicity of the stimulus person as well as the intensity of the expression—would also influence attributions of interpersonal intentions. For this, 145 men and women rated emotional facial expressions posed by both Caucasian and Japanese male and female stimulus persons on perceived dominance and affiliation. The results showed that the sex and the ethnicity of the encoder influenced observers' ratings of dominance and affiliation. For anger displays only, this influence was mediated by expectations regarding how likely it is that a particular encoder group would display anger. Further, affiliation ratings were equally influenced by low intensity and by high intensity expressions, whereas only fairly intense emotional expressions affected attributions of dominance.
The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) was designed to measure individual differences in the accurate sending and receiving of nonverbal social information. The DANVA consists of four receptive and three expressive subtests that measure nonverbal processing accuracy in children from 6 to 10 years of age. Four propositions were offered to guide the gathering of construct validity data for the DANVA. In support of the propositions, researchers found that DANVA accuracy scores increased with age, were internally consistent and reliable over time, and snowed significant relationships with indices of personal and social adjustment and academic achievement but were not related to IQ. Evidence for construct validity was stronger for receptive, as compared to expressive, subtests. Future research should include additional populations of subjects and study of the impact of intensity of emotion being sent or received.
The processing of emotional expressions is fundamental for normal socialisation and interaction. Reduced responsiveness to the expressions of sadness and fear has been implicated in the development of psychopathy (R. J. R. Blair, 1995). The current study investigates the sensitivity of children with psychopathic tendencies to facial expressions. Children with psychopathic tendencies and a comparison group, as defined by the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD; P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press), were presented with a cinematic display of a standardised set of facial expressions that depicted sadness, happiness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise. Participants observed as these facial expressions slowly evolved through 20 successive frames of increasing intensity. The children with psychopathic tendencies presented with selective impairments; they needed significantly more stages before they could successfully recognise the sad expressions and even when the fearful expressions were at full intensity were significantly more likely to mistake them for another expression. These results are interpreted with reference to an amygdala and empathy impairment explanation of psychopathy.
Is facial muscular movement capable of altering emotional state? Facial feedback theories answer this question in the affirmative but do not specify the intervening process. Cognitive appraisal theories do not address this question at all. The vascular theory of emotional efference (VTEE) holds that facial muscular movement, by its action on the cavernous sinus, may restrict venous flow and thereby influence cooling of the arterial blood supply to the brain. Subjective reactions resulting from facial action (phonetic utterance), resembling but unrelated to emotional efference, were found to differ in hedonic quality and to produce correlated changes in forehead temperature. Direct tests that introduced air into the nasal cavity revealed that cooled air was pleasurable, whereas warm air was aversive. It is conjectured that variations in cerebral temperature might influence the release and blocking of emotion-linked neurotransmitters—a consequence that would explain, in part, why some experiences are felt subjectively as pleasant and others as unpleasant.
We investigated the hypothesis that people's facial activity influences their affective responses. Two studies were designed to both eliminate methodological problems of earlier experiments and clarify theoretical ambiguities. This was achieved by having subjects hold a pen in their mouth in ways that either inhibited or facilitated the muscles typically associated with smiling without requiring subjects to pose in a smiling face. Study 1's results demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure. Subjects reported more intense humor responses when cartoons were presented under facilitating conditions than under inhibiting conditions that precluded labeling of the facial expression in emotion categories. Study 2 served to further validate the methodology and to answer additional theoretical questions. The results replicated Study 1's findings and also showed that facial feedback operates on the affective but not on the cognitive component of the humor response. Finally, the results suggested that both inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms may have contributed to the observed affective responses.
In a prior review involving a meta-analysis (Underwood & Moore, 1982), no relation between affective empathy and prosocial behavior was found. In this article, the literature relevant to this issue is reexamined. The studies were organized according to the method used to assess empathy. When appropriate, meta-analyses were computed. In contrast to the earlier review, low to moderate positive relations generally were found between empathy and both prosocial behavior and cooperative/socially competent behavior. The method of assessing empathy did influence the strength of the relations; picture/story measures of empathy were not associated with prosocial behavior, whereas nearly all other measures were. Several possible explanations for the pattern of findings are discussed, as are the implications of the findings.
In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators.
Children's views of authority interactions were examined in 144 children from 6 to 11 yrs of age. Vignettes describing everyday conflicts between children and adult authorities (parent, teacher, police, lifeguard, store manager, and librarian) were used. A subjects factor was introduced into the log-linear analyses. The children were reported as feeling bad, as complying, and as anticipating negative consequences for noncompliance. There was a positive correlation between compliance and the anticipation of negative consequences. Although the children saw the authority interactions as coercive, their justifications did not refer primarily to coercion. The children viewed authority relations as involving an interplay between coercion and legitimate reasons for compliance. Age changes were found in reporting feelings and in a small set of justifications.
Conflicts between animals of the same species usually are of ``limited
war'' type, not causing serious injury. This is often explained as due
to group or species selection for behaviour benefiting the species
rather than individuals. Game theory and computer simulation analyses
show, however, that a ``limited war'' strategy benefits individual
animals as well as the species.
This experiment tested whether social power and sex affect amount and type of smiling. Participants were assigned to low-, high-, or equal-power positions and interacted in dyads. For high- and equal-power participants, smiling correlated with positive affect, whereas for low- power participants, it did not. Women smiled more than men overall and showed more Duchenne smiling in the equal-power context, but they did not differ in the high-power context or low-power context. Results are interpreted as reflecting the license given to high-power people to smile when they are so inclined and the obligation for low-power people to smile regardless of how positive they feel.
Most psychologists identify James's theory of emotion with the idea that we experience emotion because we act, for example, feel angry because we strike. Yet, the idea about emotions that was most central to James's psychology was his concept of emotion as feeling. He argued that when consciousness and cognition are without feeling, they are "void of human significance. " James's emphasis on expressive behavior as the source of sensory data for emotion experience inspired the contemporary facial feedback hypothesis of emotion activation. Many emotion theorists can find roots in James's writings, but his emphasis on the significance of feeling in giving meaning and direction to cognition and action has probably had its greatest impact on those who emphasize the motivational features of emotions. Behavioral scientists have overlooked James's conviction that feelings are central to personality and individuality and the best means of explaining the behaviors of everyday life.
Same-sex pairs of high or low "openers, "persons more or less adept at encozvraging others to talk, engaged in 10-minute conversations. Conversations were videotaped, and the moment-by-moment patterning of speech and gaze was examined by computer. Interest and attentiveness expressed in the subjects' faces were also judged. The high openers used a set of behaviors that may serve to reinforce their partners' participation. An attentive facial expression and the appearance of comfort and enjoyment are part of their visual display during conversation. Brief utterances of simultaneous speech were also emitted by higher opener males while their partners were speaking.
Submission in the wolf and dog is defined on the basis ot its motivation: submission is the effort of the inferior to attain friendly or harmonic social integration.
Submission functions as an appeal or a contribution to social integration, but only if it meets a corresponding attitude in the superior. The form of submissive behavior in wolf and dog is ritualized and symbolized cub-behavior. Two main forms of submissive behavior occur in wolf and dog: active submission, derived from begging for milk or food, and passive submission, derived from the posture which the cub adopts when cleaned by its mother.
The definition of submission is generally applicable to vertebrates living in groups based on intimacy and a social hierarchical order. The concept of submission as the role of the defeated in the terminal phase of fight with the function to inhibit automatically aggression in the superior should be dismissed. In vertebrates at least three types of conflict with different terminal phases occur: (1). Severe fight based on intolerance; ends with flight by the inferior or with his death. (2). Ritualized fight over a privilege; ends with the “giving-up-the-claim ritual” of the inferior, which automatically blocks the aggression of the superior. (3). Minor conflict in closed groups; settled by submissive behavior of the inferior.
In closed vertebrate groups, intermediate forms between (1) and (3) occur, depending on the proportion between activated intimacy and intolerance.
In recent studies of the structure of affect, positive and negative affect have consistently emerged as two dominant and relatively independent dimensions. A number of mood scales have been created to measure these factors; however, many existing measures are inadequate, showing low reliability or poor convergent or discriminant validity. To fill the need for reliable and valid Positive Affect and Negative Affect scales that are also brief and easy to administer, we developed two 10-item mood scales that comprise the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The scales are shown to be highly internally consistent, largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period. Normative data and factorial and external evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scales are also presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
Do we read character in faces? What information do faces actually provide? Why do we associate certain facial qualities with particular character traits? What are the social and psychological consequences of reading character in faces? Zebrowitz unmasks the face and provides the first systematic, scientific account of our tendency to judge people by their appearance. Offering an in-depth analysis of two appearance qualities that influence our impressions of others, babyfaceness" and attractiveness", and an account of these impressions, Zebrowitz has written an accessible and valuable book for professionals and general readers alike.The assumption that people's faces provide a window to their inner nature has a long and distinguished history, eloquently expressed in the works of ancient philosophers, like Aristotle, and great writers, like Shakespeare. Zebrowitz examines this assumption, focusing on four central points. She shows that facial appearance, particularly babyfaceness and attractiveness, has a strong impact on how we perceive an individual's character traits and on social outcomes in the workplace, in the criminal justice system, and in other settings. She proposes that facial stereotypes derive from evolutionarily adaptive reactions to useful information that faces can provide. She assesses the accuracy of facial stereotypes in light of plausible links between appearance and character. Finally, Zebrowitz suggests ways to counteract the consequences of reading faces.
Gathers evidence from biology and psychology bearing on the issue of whether altruism is part of human nature. The traditional views of both evolutionary biology and psychology left little room for altruism. Current variants of the Darwinian model—group selection, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and inclusive fitness—point to the acquisition of altruistic as well as egoistic structures in humans. Psychological research is also compatible with this view. There may be a general human tendency to help others in distress that has properties analogous to egoistic motivation and yet comes into play independently of egoistic motivation. The theory of inclusive fitness also requires that mediators of altruistic action be selected (rather than altruistic action itself), because this would provide the necessary flexibility. Evidence is presented suggesting that empathy may fit the evolutionary requirements of such a mediator: It is reliably aroused in humans in response to misfortune in others, it predisposes the individual toward helping action and yet is amenable to perceptual and cognitive control, and it appears to have a neural base that may have been present early in human evolution. (80 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Proposed that a distinction be made between 2 emotional responses to seeing another person suffer—personal distress and empathy—and that these 2 emotions lead to 2 different kinds of motivation to help: Personal distress leads to egoistic motivation; empathy, to altruistic motivation. These distinctions were tested in 3 studies, each using 10 male and 10 female undergraduates. Across the 3 studies, factor analysis of Ss' self-reported emotional response indicated that feelings of personal distress and empathy, although positively correlated, were experienced as qualitatively distinct. The pattern of helping in Studies 1 and 2 indicated that a predominance of personal distress led to egoistic motivation, whereas a predominance of empathy led to altruistic motivation. In Study 3, the cost of helping was made especially high. Results suggest an important qualification on the link between empathic emotion and altruistic motivation: Ss reporting a predominance of empathy displayed an egoistic pattern of helping. Apparently, making helping costly evoked self-concern, which overrode any altruistic impulse produced by feeling empathy. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested the hypothesis that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help. 44 female college students watched another female undergraduate receive electric shocks and were then given a chance to help her by taking the remaining shocks themselves. In each of 2 experiments, Ss' empathic emotion (low vs high) and their ease of escape from continuing to watch the victim suffer if they did not help (easy vs difficult) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 design. It was reasoned that if empathy led to altruistic motivation, Ss feeling a high degree of empathy for the victim should be as ready to help when escape without helping was easy as when it was difficult. But if empathy led to egoistic motivation, Ss feeling empathy should be more ready to help when escape was difficult than when it was easy. Results followed the former pattern when empathy was high and the latter pattern when empathy was low, supporting the hypothesis that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Children's views of authority interactions were examined in 144 children from 6 to 11 yrs of age. Vignettes describing everyday conflicts between children and adult authorities (parent, teacher, police, lifeguard, store manager, and librarian) were used. A subjects factor was introduced into the log-linear analyses. The children were reported as feeling bad, as complying, and as anticipating negative consequences for noncompliance. There was a positive correlation between compliance and the anticipation of negative consequences. Although the children saw the authority interactions as coercive, their justifications did not refer primarily to coercion. The children viewed authority relations as involving an interplay between coercion and legitimate reasons for compliance. Age changes were found in reporting feelings and in a small set of justifications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated the effects of ambiguity of an emergency and potential cost of intervention for a bystander(s) on helping behavior in 2 experiments with a total of 180 male undergraduates. In Exp I, more helping was found for alone and 2-person group Ss who were exposed to a nonambiguous emergency than for similar Ss who were exposed to a highly ambiguous emergency. In Exp 2, there was a tendency for the 2-person Ss to help less than would be expected from the alone Ss' percentage of helping. Ss helped in spite of the potential danger present, although they helped in ways that they perceived to be safe. In addition, Ss who were considered competent were not only more likely to help the victim but did so with less risk to themselves. Results indicate that the characteristics of the emergency situation are important determinants of bystander behavior. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In recent attempts to characterize the cognitive mechanisms underlying altruistic motivation, one central question is the extent to which the capacity for altruism depends on the capacity for understanding other minds, or ‘mindreading’. Some theorists maintain that the capacity for altruism is independent of any capacity for mindreading; others maintain that the capacity for altruism depends on fairly sophisticated mindreading skills. I argue that none of the prevailing accounts is adequate. Rather, I argue that altruistic motivation depends on a basic affective system, a ‘Concern Mechanism’, which requires only a minimal capacity for mindreading.
This research examines the impact of spontaneous nonverbal expressiveness and physical attractiveness on the formation of initial interpersonal impressions. It was hypothesized that in the absence of a relationship history with a person, those people who provide more spontaneous, uncensored, nonverbal information would be viewed as more interpersonally attractive. In addition, as a secondary focus of the study, data were analyzed to examine the relationship between physical attractiveness and nonverbal communication abilities. Results suggest that both physical attractiveness and nonverbal expressiveness independent of one another and in conjunction with one another positively impact on interpersonal perceptions. In addition, physical attractiveness was found to positively covary with nonverbal encoding accuracy but negatively covary with nonverbal decoding abilities.
The complex musculature of the human face has been shaped by natural selection to produce gestures that communicate information about intentions and emotional states between senders and receivers. According to the preparedness hypothesis, different facial gestures are differentially prepared by evolution to become associated with different outcomes. As attested by psychophysiological responses in Pavlovian conditioning experiments, expressions of anger and fear more easily become signals for aversive stimuli than do expression of happiness. Consistent with the evolutionary perspective, the superior conditioning to angry faces is stronger for male than for female faces, for adult than for child faces, and for faces directed toward the receiver rather than directed away. Furthermore, it appears to be primarily located in the right cerebral hemisphere. The enhanced autonomic activity to angry faces signaling electric shock is not mediated by conscious cognitive activity, but is evident also when recognition of the facial stimulus is blocked by backward masking procedures. Similarly, conditioned responses can be established to masked angry, but not to masked happy faces. Electromyographic measurement of facial muscle activity reveals a tendency for emotional facial expression to rapidly and automatically elicit its mirror image in the face of the receiver, typically accompanied by the appropriate emotional experience. The research reviewed in this paper supports the proposition that humans have been evolutionarily tuned to respond automatically to facial stimuli, and it is suggested that such early automatic reactions shape the subsequent conscious emotional processing of the stimulus.
Attention is drawn to three interrelated types of error that are committed with high frequencies in the description and analysis of studies of nonverbal behavior. The errors involve the calculation of inappropriate measures of accuracy, the use in statistical analyses of inappropriate chance levels, and misapplications ofX
2 and binomial statistical tests. Almost all papers published between 1979 and 1991 that reported performance separately for different stimulus and response classes suffer from one or more of these errors. The potential consequences of these errors are described, and a variety of proposed measures of performance is examined. Since all measures formerly proposed have weaknesses, a new and easily calculated measure, an unbiased hit rate (H
u
), is proposed. This measure is the joint probability that a stimulus category is correctly identified given that it is presented at all and that a response is correctly used given that it is used at all. Two available data sets are reanalyzed using this measure, and the differences in the conclusions reached compared to those reached with an analysis of hit rates are described.
Contrary to a recent claim (D. Maestripieri, 1996), the concept of formal dominance (F. B. M. de Waal, 1986) is not dependent on higher order intentionality (D. C. Dennett, 1983). Instead, it is implied that primates have a concept of relative dominance and express this relational assessment by context-independent, unidirectional status indicators. Present evidence supports the view that primates are able to categorize social relationships. In a semiotic framework, a distinction is made between (a) ritualized displays that are symptoms of acute emotional states (e.g., fear) and (b) formal status indicators that are symbols for a long-term social relationship (e.g., subordination). Criteria to distinguish empirically between these functions relate to species membership and familiarity of interactants, consolidation of relationships, spontaneity of signaling, and specialization of signals.
Social psychological research on helping has, in part, been concerned with the intervention of bystanders into emergencies. Pertinent empirical literature does not seem to be available on what factors bystanders use to define an emergency nor the effect of such a decision on the rate of helping. A series of four studies was conducted to answer these questions. We found that (a) Emergencies are a subclass of problem situation that usually result from accidents; (b) there is a high degree of agreement concerning what problem situations are definitely an emergency; (c) emergency situations are differentiated from other problem situations by threat of harm or actual harm worsening with time, unavailability of an easy solution to the problem, and necessity of obtaining outside help to solve the problem; (d) disagreement on whether a problem situation is an emergency or not results from differing perceptions of the degree to which threat of harm or actual harm worsens with time; (e) bystanders are more likely to help in emergency than in nonemergency problem situations. The results were interpreted as indicating that the need of the victim is a salient feature used by bystanders in determining whether or not to help.
The blind are generally perceived as helpless and dependent. The lack of behavioral research in the psychology of the blind results in great uncertainty as to how these attitudes may be manifested in the behavior toward the blind and how these attitudes affect the personality and self-image of the blind. Field research investigated whether blind persons would be helped more than sighted persons in situations in which sight was not essential to the person's plight. Help was sought from 428 adults randomly selected from a phone book by a caller who identified himself as either blind or sighted, in a situation involving either high or low dependency. Help was given more frequently to the blind than to the sighted caller across situations, and more frequently to the caller in the high dependency situation. Additionally, female Ss were much more sensitive than males to the vision and situational dependency of the caller.
In 1943 Konrad Lorenz postulated that certain infantile cues served as releasers for caretaking behaviour in human adults. This study is an attempt to confirm this hypothesis and to identify relevant cues. The stimuli studied were variations in facial features, and the responses were ratings of the attractiveness of the resultant infant faces. Parametric variations of eye height, eye width, eye height and width, iris size, and vertical variations in feature position (all presented in full-face drawings) were tested for their effect on the ratings, and highly significant preferences for particular stimuli were found. In general these preferences are consistent across a wide variety of environmental factors such as social class and experience with children. These findings are consistent with an ethological interpretation of the data.
The distinctiveness and recognizability of taste-elicited facial expressions in newborns were examined in 2 studies. Sucrose, sodium chloride, citric acid, and quinine hydrochloride solutions were presented to 12 infants at 2 hours of age. In Study 1, the anatomically based Facial Action Coding System adapted for infants (Baby FACS) was used to obtain detailed, objective descriptions of the infants' videotaped facial responses to each solution. Facial responses to sucrose were characterized primarily by facial relaxation and sucking. The responses to salty, sour, and bitter solutions shared the same hedonically negative upper- and midface components but differed in the accompanying lower-face actions: lip pursing in response to sour and mouth gaping in response to bitter. There was no distinctive facial expression for sodium chloride. These findings demonstrate that newborns differentiate sour and bitter from each other and from salt, as well as discriminating sweet versus nonsweet tastes. In Study 2, untrained adults viewing videotapes of the infants' facial reactions made forced-choice judgments identifying the stimuli presented and rated the hedonic tone of the infants' responses. While the judges accurately identified the newborns' responses to sucrose, there were systematic errors in their judgments of the 3 nonsweet stimuli. The judges' hedonic ratings, on the other hand, clearly differentiated between the infants' responses to the bitter stimulus and the other 3 tastes. The findings are discussed in terms of the possible functional origins and communicative value of taste-elicited facial expressions in infants.
Investigated the question of whether any facial expressions of emotion are universal. Recent studies showing that members of literate cultures associated the same emotion concepts with the same facial behaviors could not demonstrate that at least some facial expressions of emotion are universal; the cultures compared had all been exposed to some of the same mass media presentations of facial expression, and these may have taught the people in each culture to recognize the unique facial expressions of other cultures. To show that members of a preliterate culture who had minimal exposure to literate cultures would associate the same emotion concepts with the same facial behaviors as do members of Western and Eastern literate cultures, data were gathered in New Guinea by telling 342 Ss a story, showing them a set of 3 faces, and asking them to select the face which showed the emotion appropriate to the story. Ss were members of the Fore linguistic-cultural group, which up until 12 yr. ago was an isolated, Neolithic, material culture. Results provide evidence in support of the hypothesis. (30 ref.)
This article discusses the controversy over whether attribution (recognition) of emotions from facial expressions is universal (P. Ekman, 1994; C. E. Izard, 1994; J. A. Russell, 1994). Agreement emerged on various issues. There exists at least Minimal Universality (people everywhere can infer something about others from their facial behavior). Anger, sadness, and other semantic categories for emotion are not pancultural and are not the precise messages conveyed by facial expressions. Emotions can occur without facial expressions, and facial expressions can occur without emotions. Further evidence is needed to determine the relationship between emotion and facial behavior, what determines that relationship, how facial behavior is interpreted, and how much the interpretation varies with culture and language. Ekman's (1994) objections are answered.