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Embodied Terror Management: Interpersonal Touch Alleviates Existential Concerns Among Individuals With Low Self-Esteem
Abstract
Individuals with low (rather than high) self-esteem often struggle with existential concerns. In the present research, we examined whether these existential concerns may be alleviated by seemingly trivial experiences of both real and simulated interpersonal touch. A brief touch on the shoulder by a female experimenter led individuals with low self-esteem to experience less death anxiety (Study 1) and more social connectedness after a death reminder (Study 2). Reminding individuals with low self-esteem of death increased their desire for touch, as indicated by higher value estimates of a teddy bear, a toy animal that simulates interpersonal touch (Study 3). Finally, holding a teddy bear (vs. a cardboard box) led individuals with low self-esteem to respond to a death reminder with less defensive ethnocentrism (Study 4). Individuals with high self-esteem were unaffected by touch (Studies 1-4). These findings highlight the existential significance of embodied touch experiences, particularly for individuals with low self-esteem.
... 31). Koole, Sin, and Schneider (2014), in their study on touch and self-esteem, found that interpersonal touch alleviated existential concerns among individuals with low self-esteem. In addition Debrot, Schoebi, Perrez, and Horn (2013) found that couples who engaged in regular physical contact experienced better psychological well-being even at their six-month follow-up. ...
... One of the ways that clients can learn to tolerate intense emotions and gain competence as a means of dealing with trauma is through touch. As evidenced by Koole, Sin and Schneider (2014), interpersonal touch alleviated existential concerns among individuals with low self-esteem (p. 30). ...
... Interpersonal touch powerfully buffers people against stress and anxiety [39]. Experimental research indicates that affectionate touch reduces state anxiety among patients in critical care wards [40], people prompted to think about their death [41], and individuals under threat of an electric shock [42]. Longitudinal interventions that increase interpersonal touch between romantic partners lead to significant declines in both physiological and self-reported stress [43,44]. ...
... Longitudinal interventions that increase interpersonal touch between romantic partners lead to significant declines in both physiological and self-reported stress [43,44]. Beyond human touch, research shows that engaging in experiences that simulate affectionate human tactile experiences, such as petting animals [45], touching soft objects (e.g., a teddy bear) [41], feeling a weighted blanket [46], and being touched by robots [47], can significantly reduce stress and anxiety. ...
Decades of evidence reveal intimate links between sensation and emotion. Yet, discussion of sensory experiences as tools that promote emotion regulation is largely absent from current theorizing on this topic. Here, we address this gap by integrating evidence from social-personality, clinical, cognitive-neuroscience, and animal research to highlight the role of sensation as a tool that can be harnessed to up- or downregulate emotion. Further, we review evidence implicating sensation as a rapid and relatively effortless emotion regulation modality and highlight future research directions. Notably, we emphasize the need to examine the duration of sensory emotion regulation effects, the moderating role of individual and cultural differences, and how sensory strategies interact with other strategies.
... The selection of exercises was extracted from the literature [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57] based on the following three criteria: easy to use anywhere, anytime; does not require planning or support; and easy to understand. The choice of strategies was informed by third-wave cognitive behavioral therapy approaches and determined by the research team. ...
... We chose these approaches because of the encouraging results reported in interventions for issues related to psychosis and substance use [52,58,59]. A total of 20 coping strategies (selected by the research team among the most effective recognized strategies [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57]) were divided into the following four categories ( Figure 1): (1) behavioral (physical), including diaphragmatic breathing, cardiac coherence, physical exercise ( Figure 2), progressive muscle relaxation, and diving exercises; (2) emotional, including sharing my emotions, self-compassion, hugs, seeking laughter, and pleasant activities for the five senses; (3) cognitive, including problem solving (Figure 3), mindfulness strategies (body scan, self-observation, mindful walking ( Figure 4), mindful breathing), and visualizing a safe place; and (4) spiritual, including praying, forgiveness, seeking spiritual advice from a spiritual leader, and reading religious texts. Different strategies were presented in different formats (ie, texts, videos, and audio tracks) to better adjust to the user's preferences. ...
Background
A growing number of studies highlight the importance of emotion regulation in the treatment and recovery of individuals with psychosis and concomitant disorders such as substance use disorder (SUD), for whom access to integrated dual-disorder treatments is particularly difficult. In this context, dedicated smartphone apps may be useful tools to provide immediate support to individuals in need. However, few studies to date have focused on the development and assessment of apps aimed at promoting emotional regulation for people with psychosis.
Objective
The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and potential clinical impact of a dedicated app (ChillTime) for individuals with psychotic disorders and concurrent SUD. The app design process followed recommendations for reducing cognitive effort on a mobile app. A total of 20 coping strategies regrouped in four categories (behavioral, emotional, cognitive, spiritual) were included in the app.
Methods
This open pilot study followed a pre-post design. After the initial assessment, researchers asked participants to use the app as part of their treatment over a 30-day period. Feasibility was determined by the frequency of use of the app and measured using the number of completed strategies. Acceptability was determined by measuring ease of use, ease of learning, satisfaction, and perceived utility at the end of the 30-day study period based on responses to satisfaction questionnaires. Clinical scales measuring emotion regulation, substance use (ie, type of substance, amount taken, and frequency of use), and various psychiatric symptoms were administered at the beginning and end of the 30-day period.
Results
A total of 13 participants were recruited from two first-episode psychosis clinics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. All participants were symptomatically stable, were between 18 and 35 years of age (mostly men; 70% of the sample), and had a schizophrenia spectrum disorder with a comorbid substance use diagnosis. A total of 11 participants completed the study (attrition<20%). Approximately half of the participants used the tool at least 33% of the days (11-21 days). Cognitive and emotion-focused techniques were rated the highest in terms of usefulness and were the most frequently used. The majority of participants gave positive answers about the ease of use and the ease of learning the tool. A nonsignificant association of ChillTime use with negative symptoms and drug use was observed. No other statistically significant changes were observed.
Conclusions
The ChillTime app showed good feasibility (approximately half of the participants used the tool at least 33% of the days) and acceptability among people with schizophrenia spectrum disorder and SUD. Trends suggesting a potential impact on certain clinical outcomes will need to be replicated in larger-sample studies before any conclusion can be drawn.
... fMRI research with adults similarly indicates that patterns of activation to touch from a person are different to those for touch applied by inanimate objects, with larger responses to social touch in somatosensory areas and the posterior insula, emphasising the importance of human touch (Kress, Minati, Ferraro, & Critchley, 2011). Even brief touch can be impactful; young adults felt more socially connected after just a quick touch on the shoulder from an experimenter (Koole, Tjew A Sin, & Schneider, 2014), and in old age, Fast (2002) suggests that the touching of objects can itself express loneliness, with the anxious fondling of objects understood by family as expressing desire for companionship. Touch also appears to have long-term impacts on relational, psychological, and physical health over the lifespan (Lockhart, 2019;Thomas & Kim, 2021). ...
... Being touched also has significant positive effects on altruism (Guéguen & Fischer-Lokou, 2003), social connection (Koole et al., 2014), affect (Peláez-Nogueras et al., 1997), and attachment (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2016), and promotes the release of oxytocin and endogenous opioids (Holt-Lunstad, Birmingham, & Light, 2008;Jakubiak & Feeney, 2017). In the field of nursing studies, touch is often considered an aid to therapeutic engagement (Playfair, 2009) which can be used to communicate support. ...
Loneliness is an increasingly ubiquitous topic in academic, policy, and healthcare domains. This work typically focuses on its negative physical and mental health consequences, generally employing a singular cognitive definition of loneliness. In doing so, one central aspect of our social world has been neglected in loneliness research and policy: touch. Touch is a fundamental human behaviour and a powerful form of communication which plays a role in physical and psychological wellbeing. This narrative review outlines a conceptual basis upon which to consider the relationship between loneliness and social touch and reviews the available research examining this connection. There are strong indications that these social phenomena can interact in a variety of ways and this review argues that elements of presence, absence, and type of touch may impact upon loneliness experiences. Additionally, this review considers the challenges inherent to researching touch and loneliness, reflecting on their sensitive and subjective nature. The increasing relevance of the touch–loneliness connection is described in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and recommendations are given for research, policy, and practice. This review proposes that touch should be a key topic for investigation in loneliness research and outlines the potentially invaluable role of touch in understanding loneliness.
... Upon arrival, participants were greeted and escorted by a female experimenter into the experimental room where they seated at a table. The protocol for manipulating touch in our study closely followed previous research regarding the effect of interpersonal research on human behavior (Koole et al., 2014;Levav & Argo, 2010). In the touch condition, when implementing the verbal instruction, the female experimenter, who was blind to the true purpose of the study, administered a brief unobtrusive touch by lightly placing her hand on the participants' shoulder blade for approximately 1-2 s. ...
... Our research represents the first attempt to investigate the role of tactile touching behaviors, one important form of social interaction, in influencing the willingness to abide by coronavirus rules. The existing literature has almost exclusively focused on the bright side of accidental interpersonal touch such as alleviating existential concerns, elevating generalized trust, and reducing uncertainty (Koole et al., 2014;Levav & Argo, 2010;Van Horen & Mussweiler, 2014). By identifying a dark side of interpersonal touch in the form of more violations of coronavirus guidelines, we presented a more balanced view of the positive and negative psychological outcomes of interpersonal touch. ...
Following preventive measures is crucial for slowing the rate of COVID-19 spread. To date, most research has focused on the role of individual differences and personality in compliance with preventive measures to COVID-19. Building on findings that interpersonal touch instills a feeling of security, we propose that interpersonal touching behavior, an underexplored factor tied to social interaction, leads to more breaches of coronavirus restrictions by inducing security feelings. In a lab experiment (Experiment 1) and a field study (Experiment 2), we demonstrated that a female experimenter’s fleeting and comforting pat on the shoulder made people less willing to abide by preventive measures in their self-report and actual behavior. Further, we excluded a potential alternative explanation that touch intervention by the experimenter presents the defiance of COVID-19 rules because the effect cannot be observed when the touch consists of a handshake rather than a comforting pat on the shoulder (Experiment 3). Finally, consistent with our theoretical perspective, the results revealed that sense of security mediated the effect of interpersonal touch on violation of instructions to follow coronavirus precautions. Taken together, interpersonal touch not only enhances trust and security, but also can push people away from health guidelines.
... Inspired by previous findings (cf. Koole et al., 2014), in the present study, we investigated the hypothesis that typical worldview defense reactions after mortality salience are attenuated among people under OT. Overall, the results did not provide strong support for this idea. ...
... In future research, additional aspects could be addressed. It might be worth including critical traits as possible moderators, for example self-esteem or dispositional attachment orientations as the works by Koole et al. (2014) and Bartz et al. (2010) suggest. A modification of the measurements' order might also be reasonable. ...
Research on terror management theory found evidence for the idea that attachment and interpersonal touch attenuate existential concerns and worldview defense reactions after mortality salience. Oxytocin, on the other hand, is known for stimulating the attachment system. Therefore, we hypothesized that worldview defense reactions after mortality salience would be attenuated under oxytocin. In the present study, participants administered oxytocin or placebo and performed a typical terror management paradigm: After visualizing death or a control topic, worldview defense reactions were assessed by evaluating the authors of a pro- and an anti-German essay. Overall, the results did not provide strong support for the hypothesis. There was no effect of mortality salience on the overall worldview defense measure and, importantly, no moderation by oxytocin. However, with regard to the sympathy dimension, the expected pattern was revealed: The pro- and anti-German authors were evaluated as more balanced under oxytocin after mortality salience, whereas this was not the case under placebo. This was due to more positive evaluations of the anti-German author in the oxytocin group. Although this specific result was not expected a priori, sympathy was the only trait among all worldview defense variables that referred to a social level. Therefore, it seems possible that oxytocin is able to buffer existential concerns, but only if they are socially relevant.
... Experimental research in humans concurs with these observations (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2016a). When college students were touched on the shoulder by an experimenter, they reported more feelings of security and were more willing to take risks (Levav & Argo, 2010; also see Jakubiak & Feeney, 2016b;Koole, Sin, & Schneider, 2013). When married women held hands with their husbands, they showed a reduced neural response to threat, especially if their marriage was of high quality (Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006). ...
... Our reasoning concurs with previous findings. First, touch alleviates anxiety in individuals with low self-esteem but not in those with high self-esteem (Koole et al., 2013). Second, overprotective parenting-such as being protective of children, even when they are not anxious-predicts higher social anxiety levels in children over time (Lieb et al., 2000;Woord, McLeod, Sigman, Hwang, & Chu, 2003). ...
The sense of touch develops in utero and enables parent-child communication from the earliest moments of life. Research shows that parental touch (e.g., licking and grooming in rats, skin-to-skin care in humans) has organizing effects on the offspring's stress system. Little is known, however, about the psychological effects of parental touch. Building on findings from ethology and psychology, we propose that parental touch-even as subtle as a touch on the shoulder-tells children that their environment is safe for exploration, thus reducing their social vigilance. We tested this hypothesis in late childhood (ages 8-10) and early adolescence (ages 11-14) in 138 parent-child dyads. Parents were randomly assigned to touch or not touch their child briefly and gently on the shoulder, right below the deltoid. Parental touch lowered children's implicit attention to social threat. While parental touch lowered trust among socially non-anxious children, it raised trust among those who needed it the most: socially anxious children. The effects were observed only in late childhood, suggesting that parental touch loses its safety-signaling meaning upon the transition to adolescence. Our findings underscore the power of parental touch in childhood, especially for children who suffer from social anxiety.
... Another two studies showed that holding hands with a stranger increased participants' heart rate [72,73]. However, other studies have observed a positive effect of interpersonal touch from strangers during exposure to stress [74,75]. Our findings may provide the evidence that interpersonal touch is a stressor to the strangers which takes up more cognitive resources to adopt this stressful situaction. ...
Background
Interpersonal touch is an essential element of human social life. It’s unclear whether the neural patterns of interpersonal touch are specific to intimate relationships or generally apply to other social relationships. Romantic lovers are typically intimate and have a high level of interpersonal touch. Currently, researchers focused on the neurobiological basis and neural processes of romantic love.
Methods
110 participants finished two resting-state blocks, no-handholding and handholding conditions, with Electroencephalogram (EEG). We aimed to explore the differences in the brain-brain synchrony pattern of interpersonal touch between romantic lovers and strangers by calculating dynamic interpersonal functional connectivity (dIFC) via EEG-based hyperscanning.
Results
Our results supported that the neural processing of interpersonal touch is a dynamic process. At first half, both groups tended to adapt, and then interpersonal touch increased the dIFC between romantic lovers and decreased the dIFC between strangers. Finally, we employed Support Vector Machine (SVM) to classify EEG signals into two different relationships. SVM recognized two relationships with an accuracy of 71% and 0.77 AUC of ROC at the first half, a 73% accuracy and 0.8 AUC of ROC at the second half.
Conclusions
Our study indicates that interpersonal touch may have different meanings between romantic lovers and strangers. Specifically, interpersonal touch enhances the dIFC between romantic lovers while reducing the dIFC between strangers. The research has important implications for planning touch-based interventions in social and medical care.
... For instance, people frequently use physical substances to modify their moods. People may take a hot shower when they feel lonely 26,27 or hold a teddy bear when they feel afraid 28 . Such access to physical objects can significantly modify individuals' ability to manage their emotions. ...
Anger suppression is important in our daily life, as its failure can sometimes lead to the breaking down of relationships in families. Thus, effective strategies to suppress or neutralise anger have been examined. This study shows that physical disposal of a piece of paper containing one’s written thoughts on the cause of a provocative event neutralises anger, while holding the paper did not. In this study, participants wrote brief opinions about social problems and received a handwritten, insulting comment consisting of low evaluations about their composition from a confederate. Then, the participants wrote the cause and their thoughts about the provocative event. Half of the participants (disposal group) disposed of the paper in the trash can (Experiment 1) or in the shredder (Experiment 2), while the other half (retention group) kept it in a file on the desk. All the participants showed an increased subjective rating of anger after receiving the insulting feedback. However, the subjective anger for the disposal group decreased as low as the baseline period, while that of the retention group was still higher than that in the baseline period in both experiments. We propose this method as a powerful and simple way to eliminate anger.
... Beyond regulating stress, interpersonal touch appears to enhance the neurocognitive processes underling flexible goal-directed behavior (Saunders et al., 2018). Interpersonal touch has been found to have many positive psychological benefits for individuals, and can be particularly helpful for those with low self-esteem (Koole et al., 2014). Much work in psychology points to the importance of physical touch in early social, emotional, and cognitive development. ...
This article details the theoretical foundation of haptics in consumer research. We structure the review using a continuum from proximal touch‐based interactions to increasingly distal interactions through devices, imagery, or language use. We begin with a focus on product/object touch in marketing highlighting touch for haptic information, touch for haptic pleasure, and touch for nonhaptic functional reasons. We then elaborate on research considering work compensating for actual touch through various mechanisms including device‐mediated touch and imagery processing. Next, we examine interpersonal touch followed by a discussion on touch in sensory words and textual paralanguage. The authors note various avenues for future research in haptics with the aim to encourage research in consumer psychology and marketing.
... The idea of striving to foster close relationships when faced with mortality confirms the evolutionary tendency of looking for protection in others [35]. Further supporting the idea that affiliating to a group works as a defence against existential anxiety, Koole et al. [36] showed that even a brief touch on the shoulder can lessen existential anxiety. Close relationships may then act as 'safe spaces', soothing the individual anxiety originating from multiple existential sources including the idea of one's own inevitable death [33,35]. ...
The Terror Management Theory (TMT) offered a great deal of generative hypotheses that have been tested in a plethora of studies. However, there is a still substantive lack of clarity about the interpretation of TMT-driven effects and their underlying neurological mechanisms. Here, we aimed to expand upon previous research by introducing two novel methodological manipulations aimed to enhance the effects of mortality salience (MS). We presented participants with the idea of the participants’ romantic partner’s death as well as increased the perceived threat of somatosensory stimuli. Linear mixed modelling disclosed the greater effects of MS directed at one’s romantic partner on pain perception (as opposed to the participant’s own mortality). The theta event-related oscillatory activity measured at the vertex of the scalp was significantly lower compared to the control condition. We suggest that MS aimed at one’s romantic partner can result in increased effects on perceptual experience; however, the underlying neural activities are not reflected by a classical measure of cortical arousal.
... Например, когда один компонент безопасности усиливается или постоянно повышается в результате устойчивых психологических ресурсов человека (например, уверенность в контроле или межличностная безопасность), смягчаются защитные наклонности. Это можно объяснить множеством открытий, включая то, что межличностные прикосновения или безопасность диспозиционной привязанности уменьшают экзистенциальные проблемы (Koole et al., 2014); мысли о поддерживающих и любящих отношениях уменьшают предрассудки и дискриминацию ; чувство близости к Богу уменьшает страхи (Laurin et al., 2014) и снижает депрессию в конце жизни (Edmondson et al., 2008); чувство принадлежности связано с высоким уровнем самоуважения (Reitz et al., 2016) и осмысленности жизни (Lambert et al., 2013). Условия психологической безопасности в городах тесно связаны с такими психологическими феноменами, как привязанность к месту, городская идентичность, межличностная безопасность, доверие, лояльность к городскому сообществу и т. д. ...
Более половины населения мира проживает в городах, при этом главной ценностью каждого города являются его жители, а ориентация на жителей и вовлеченность горожан - решающий фактор успеха для любого преобразования современного города. Цель исследования - обобщить результаты работ в области психологии окружающей среды, направленных на выявление условий формирования психологической безопасности жителей городов. Проанализированы статьи на русском и английском языках, доступные в национальной библиографической базе данных научного цитирования (РИНЦ), научных издательствах Elsevier, SprigerLink, SAGE Publishing, издательствах научных журналов с открытым доступом MDPI, Frontiers Media, цифровом репозитории с полнотекстовыми научными статьями открытого доступа PubMed Central. Изучено 385 научных статей (большая часть датируется последним двадцатилетием), из них отобрано 80. Систематизация рассматриваемых фактов проводилась по двум основаниям: объективные условия безопасности, которые связаны с физической средой (визуальная сложность, звуковой ландшафт, климат и т. д.), и субъективные условия безопасности, связанные с особенностями ее восприятия жителями города. Для визуализации полученных условий психологической безопасности жителей городов и создания образа безопасного города применялась нейросеть Midjourney, позволяющая генерировать изображения на базе текста. Представлен анализ психологических исследований, посвященный изучению условий психологической безопасности жителей, описаны условия, формирующие состояние психологической безопасности горожан, при помощи нейросети Midjourney визуализирован образ безопасного города, показана роль звукового ландшафта, упорядоченной среды, наличия социального контроля, сегментации обитаемого пространства и его связи с природой, обоснована определенная степень взаимозаменяемости компонентов безопасности.
... There is also evidence that conscious death reminders cause a person to think of seeking proximity to a close other (Pyszczynski & Sundby, this volume). For example, as compared to a neutral condition, experimentally induced death reminders tend to heighten desire for affectionate touch and preference for sitting close to other people in a group discussion (Koole et al., 2014;Wisman & Koole, 2003) and to strengthen the tendency to overestimate the extent to which one's beliefs are shared by others -false consensus effect (McGregor et al., 2005). This tendency to heighten proximity to protect others when facing existential threats is targeted not only to friends, romantic partners, and spouses but also to social groups, sociopolitical entities (e.g., government), and spiritual figures (e.g., God). ...
... Interpersonal touch can reduce human pain and fear [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] . This mechanism has been investigated by a broad range of disciplines from physiology, such as cutaneous receptors [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] , to psychology, such as emotion and well-being [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] . ...
Social soft robotics may provide a new solution for alleviating human pain and fear. Here, we introduce a hand-held soft robot that can be clenched by the wearer. The robot comprises small airbags that can be inflated to provide the wearer with a feeling of being clenched. We then conducted an in-depth study of 66 adults who participated in a pain research protocol using thermal stimulation to investigate the effect of wearing the robot on pain perception and fear of injections. Pain assessment scale scores for perceived pain decreased significantly (p<0.05) when participants wore the robot compared with the baseline condition in which the robot was not worn. In addition, the saliva test results showed a downward trend in oxytocin level when the robot provided the wearer with haptic feedback via the inflation of the internal airbags in response to the wearer’s clench. Furthermore, the negative psychological state of participants, as measured using the positive and negative affect scale, improved significantly when wearing the robot. We also revealed that the salivary cortisol level, an indicator of stress, decreased significantly across all participants at the end of the experiment. In addition, participants’ fear of injections was significantly improved after participation in the experiment. These results suggest that the wearable soft robot may alleviate the human perception of pain and fear in during medical treatments, such as vaccinations.
... Interpersonal touch can reduce human pain and fear [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] . This mechanism has been investigated by a broad range of disciplines from physiology, such as cutaneous receptors [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] , to psychology, such as emotion and well-being [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] . ...
Social soft robotics may provide a new solution for alleviating human pain and fear. Here, we introduce a hand-held soft robot that can be clenched by the wearer. The robot comprises small airbags that can be inflated to provide the wearer with a feeling of being clenched. We then conducted an in-depth study of 66 adults who participated in a pain research protocol using thermal stimulation to investigate the effect of wearing the robot on pain perception and fear of injections. Pain assessment scale scores for perceived pain decreased significantly (p < 0.05) when participants wore the robot compared with the baseline condition in which the robot was not worn. In addition, the saliva test results showed a downward trend in oxytocin level when the robot provided the wearer with haptic feedback via the inflation of the internal airbags in response to the wearer’s clench. Furthermore, the negative psychological state of participants, as measured using the positive and negative affect scale, improved significantly when wearing the robot. We also revealed that the salivary cortisol level, an indicator of stress, decreased significantly across all participants at the end of the experiment. In addition, participants’ fear of injections was significantly improved after participation in the experiment. These results suggest that the wearable soft robot may alleviate the human perception of pain and fear in during medical treatments, such as vaccinations.
... In a similar vein, neuroimaging studies found increased perception of relief when subject to a painful stimulus and allowed physical contact with a romantic partner (Goldstein et al., 2018). There are also findings on the positive impact of physical contact in the relief of induced existential concerns (fear of death), especially in people with low self-esteem (Koole et al., 2014). ...
Rather than occurring abstractly (autonomously), ethical growth occurs in interpersonal relationships (IRs). It requires optimally functioning cognitive processes [attention, working memory (WM), episodic/autobiographical memory (AM), inhibition, flexibility, among others], emotional processes (physical contact, motivation, and empathy), processes surrounding ethical, intimacy, and identity issues, and other psychological processes (self-knowledge, integration, and the capacity for agency). Without intending to be reductionist, we believe that these aspects are essential for optimally engaging in IRs and for the personal constitution. While they are all integrated into our daily life, in research and academic work, it is hard to see how they are integrated. Thus, we need better theoretical frameworks for studying them. That study and integration thereof are undertaken differently depending on different views of what it means to live as a human being. We rely on neuroscientific data to support the chosen theory to offer knowledge to understand human beings and interpersonal relational growth. We should of course note that to describe what makes up the uniqueness of being, acting, and growing as a human person involves something much more profound which requires too, a methodology that opens the way for a theory of the person that responds to the concerns of philosophy and philosophical anthropology from many disciplines and methods (Orón Semper, 2015; Polo, 2015), but this is outside the scope of this study. With these in mind, this article aims to introduce a new explanatory framework, called the Interprocessual-self (IPS), for the neuroscientific findings that allow for a holistic consideration of the previously mentioned processes. Contributing to the knowledge of personal growth and avoiding a reductionist view, we first offer a general description of the research that supports the interrelation between personal virtue in IRs and relevant cognitive, emotional, and ethic-moral processes. This reveals how relationships allow people to relate ethically and grow as persons. We include conceptualizations and descriptions of their neural bases. Secondly, with the IPS model, we explore neuroscientific findings regarding self-knowledge, integration, and agency, all psychological processes that stimulate inner exploration of the self concerning the other. We find that these fundamental conditions can be understood from IPS theory. Finally, we explore situations that involve the integration of two levels, namely the interpersonal one and the social contexts of relationships.
... In support of TMT several studies have shown that when self-esteem is increased or is dispositionally high, and defensiveness in response to the threat of receiving painful electric shocks or viewing graphic images of death [5,15], while some others did not approve the result [16]. Some scholars who supplemented TMT proposed a new defense mechanism: the pursuit and investment of close interpersonal relationships can buffer death anxiety [17,18]. Social support is a good interpersonal relationship. ...
Purpose
This study aimed to investigate death anxiety in advanced cancer patients and identify associated factors in the context of Chinese culture.
Methods
Participants (N = 270) with advanced cancer in a tertiary cancer hospital completed anonymous questionnaire surveys. Measures included the Chinese version of a Likert-type Templer-Death Anxiety Scale, Rosenberg’s Self-esteem Scale, Medical Coping Modes Questionnaire, the Social Support Rating Scale, and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. Data were analyzed in SPSS using descriptive statistics, Student’s t test, Pearson correlation test, and linear regression.
Results
Respondents returned 252 (93.33%) of the 270 questionnaires. The total CL-TDAS score was 39.56 ± 10.20. The top three items were “I fear dying a painful death” (3.59 ± 1.41), “I often think about how shortly life really is” (3.11 ± 1.33), and “1 am not particularly afraid of getting cancer” (3.09 ± 1.35). Associated factors of death anxiety (R² = .333, F = 15.756, p < .001) were the medical coping mode (resignation, confronce), self-esteem, the participants’ adult children, the patient-primary caregivers’ relationship, resilience, and the level of activity of daily living.
Conclusions
Our results demonstrate high levels of death anxiety in advanced cancer patients. Generally, patients with adult children, high self-esteem and resilience had low death anxiety. Conversely, patients with low levels of activity of daily living and high coping mode (resignation, confrontation) reported high death anxiety. We determined that associated factors contributed to reduce death anxiety. Social interventions are recommended to improve the end-of-life transition for patients and caregivers.
... The present work is also consistent with theories of embodied emotion regulation (Koole et al., 2014;Koole & Veenstra, 2015;Lotte Veenstra et al., 2017a). According to the latter, emotion regulation is not just something that occurs within the mind or 'between the ears', as traditional perspectives have assumed. ...
People differ in trait anger, or how easily they lose their temper. The present authors suggest
that whether trait anger become translated into angry feelings and behavior may depend on
basic motivational states. Specifically, people with high (versus low) trait anger may display
increased anger and aggression when their current state is more rather than less approachoriented.
Consistent with this, trait anger predicted state anger among participants who assumed
high approach-oriented postures, but not among those who assumed low approachoriented-
oriented postures (Study 1, N= 127; Study 2, N = 151). Trait anger further predicted
aggressive inclinations (Study 2) when participants assumed a high (rather than low) approach-
oriented posture. Finally, trait anger predicted aggression (Study 3, N = 178; Study 4,
N = 177) when participants assumed a high (rather than low) approach-oriented posture.
These findings suggest that motivationally relevant bodily movements regulate whether trait
anger becomes translated into state anger and aggression.
... not given a touch or given a hand-shake) (Levav and Argo, 2010), implying that touch may reduce feelings of distress in a risky situation. Finally, subjects who have low self-esteem and are reminded of death, report lower death anxiety and stronger social connectedness if they are touched on their shoulder by a stranger (when compared to no touch) (Koole et al., 2014). Nevertheless, it is necessary to note that participants were not exposed to any death-related material and, hence, the results cannot be generalized to situations where mortality is made salient and participants are exposed to material arousing death anxiety. ...
Social touch is increasingly utilized in a variety of psychological interventions, ranging from parent-child interventions to psychotherapeutic treatments. Less attention has been paid, however, to findings that exposure to social touch may not necessarily evoke positive or pleasant responses. Social touch can convey different emotions from love and gratitude to harassment and envy, and persons’ preferences to touch and be touched do not necessarily match with each other. This review of altogether 99 original studies focuses on how contextual factors modify target person’s behavioral and brain responses to social touch. The review shows that experience of social touch is strongly modified by a variety of toucher-related and situational factors: for example, toucher’s facial expressions, physical attractiveness, relationship status, group membership, and touched person’s psychological distress. At the neural level, contextual factors modify processing of social touch from early perceptual processing to reflective cognitive evaluation. Based on the review, we present implications for using social touch in behavioral and neuroscientific research designs.
... Affective touch should not be confused with pleasant touch as affective touch can result in unpleasantness when stimulation characteristics are ill-adjusted. Besides stimulation characteristics, perception of (affective) touch is influenced by external factors, such as emotional expressions (Ravaja et al., 2017), olfactory environment (Croy et al., 2016) and even emotional state (Kelley and Schmeichel, 2014) and personality (Koole et al., 2014) of subjects. ...
Previous research has shown the value of the sense of embodiment, i.e., being able to integrate objects into one’s bodily self-representation, and its connection to (assistive) robotics. Especially, tactile interfaces seem essential to integrate assistive robots into one’s body model. Beyond functional feedback, such as tactile force sensing, the human sense of touch comprises specialized nerves for affective signals, which transmit positive sensations during slow and low-force tactile stimulations. Since these signals are extremely relevant for body experience as well as social and emotional contacts but scarcely considered in recent assistive devices, this review provides a requirement analysis to consider affective touch in engineering design. By analyzing quantitative and qualitative information from engineering, cognitive psychology, and neuroscienctific research, requirements are gathered and structured. The resulting requirements comprise technical data such as desired motion or force/torque patterns and an evaluation of potential stimulation modalities as well as their relations to overall user experience, e.g., pleasantness and realism of the sensations. This review systematically considers the very specific characteristics of affective touch and the corresponding parts of the neural system to define design goals and criteria. Based on the analysis, design recommendations for interfaces mediating affective touch are derived. This includes a consideration of biological principles and human perception thresholds which are complemented by an analysis of technical possibilities. Finally, we outline which psychological factors can be satisfied by the mediation of affective touch to increase acceptance of assistive devices and outline demands for further research and development.
... Perry-Jenkins, Repetti, & Crouter (2000) menyatakan bahwa hubungan antara pekerjaan dan keluarga adalah dua arah, beberapa penelitian muncul untuk mengeksplorasi bagaimana keluarga membentuk perilaku di tempat kerja, seperti dampak sentuhan kasih sayang dari pasangan dapat bermanifestasi dalam bentuk relaksasi dan perasaan yang baik, menghilangkan perasaan negatif dan meningkatkan kualitas hubungan (Burleson, Trevathan, & Todd, 2007;Debrot, Schoebi, Perrez, & Horn, 2013;Koole, Tjew A Sin, & Schneider, 2014). ...
Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui apakah terdapat pengaruh workplace romance terhadap kepuasan pernikahan karyawan. Lokasi yang digunakan untuk penelitian adalah Yayasan X. Populasi penelitian adalah seluruh karyawan di Yayasan X yang memiliki pasangan satu tempat kerja yang berjumlah 254 orang. Sampel dalam penelitian ini sebanyak 72 orang. Teknik sampling yang digunakan adalah sampling acak sederhana. Skala yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini yaitu skala workplace romance yang disusun oleh Khan, Jianguo, Usman, & Ahmad (2017) dan Skala Kepuasan Pernikahan berdasarkan aspek-aspek kepuasan pernikahan dari Fowers & Olson (1993). Teknik analisis data yang digunakan adalah analisis regresi sederhana. Hasil analisis data menunjukkan bahwa terdapat pengaruh workplace romance terhadap kepuasan pernikahan. Besar pengaruh workplace romance terhadap kepuasan pernikahan sebanyak 24.6%, sisanya dipengaruhi oleh faktor lain.
... Wisman proposes that in the early stages of human civilisation, humanity was aware of some meaning threats such as one's mortality (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1997). Accordingly, these presymbolic mechanisms may have been modified through evolution to help people cope with meaning threats when symbolic capacities to regulate meaning were not developed or available (Kesebir & Pyszczynski, 2012; see also Koole et al., 2014;Tai et al., 2011). ...
Boredom is a common, unpleasant emotion that conveys meaninglessness in life and compels people to escape from this adverse existential experience. Within the paradigm of social psychology frameworks, previous research found that bored people endorse cultural sources of meaning as compensation against this state (e.g., nostalgia, political ideologies). In recent years, another
form of defence against meaning threats has been identified. An existential escape hypothesis relating to boredom claims that people seek to avoid meaninglessness when people encounter meaning threats such as boredom. By engaging in behaviours with low self-awareness, people counteract awareness of their bored and meaningless self. In this article, we review the current literature on boredom in light of such acts of existential escape. We also provide
suggestions for future research to highlight under which circumstances people are more likely to engage in existential escape and identify phenomena that need to be tested within the escape process.
... In addition, physical touch even from people who are not close family or friends may be beneficial, as evidenced by the positive impact of physical touch from nurses on patients' improved sleep, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and pain (Papathanassoglou and Mpouzika, 2012). Even the brief touch on a shoulder by an experimenter was related to less anxiety about death (Koole et al., 2014). Collectively, much of this research has focused on the effects of physical touch on health in the short-term, but less is known about the long-term effects of physical touch on health, even though long-term inflammation has important implications for age-related disease and impairment (Jenny et al., 2012). ...
Objectives:
Growing research on the impact of physical touch on health has revealed links to lower blood pressure, higher oxytocin levels, and better sleep, but links to inflammation have not been fully explored. Physical touch may also buffer stress, underscoring its importance during the stressful time of living in the COVID-19 global pandemic - a time that has substantially limited social interactions and during which physical touch has been specifically advised against.
Methods:
We analyze nationally representative longitudinal data on older adults (N=1124) from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project using cross-lagged path models.
Results:
More frequent physical touch is significantly related to a lower likelihood of subsequent elevated inflammation.
Discussion:
These findings highlight the importance of finding safe ways to incorporate physical touch, even in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
... Although these relations were not observed in all participants, touch seemed to be associated with social communication and self-esteem. This is supported by literature [42,55]. Literature shows that after touching a dog, hormones associated with relaxation, prosocial behavior and emotional bonding, are released [28]. ...
Social communication and self-esteem are often affected in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Implementation and evaluation of interventions targeting social skills are challenged due to specific characteristics of autism. Intensive, valid evaluation of social skills programs is needed. In this explorative multiple case study, we examined effects and working mechanisms of dog-assisted therapy on social communication and self-esteem, by analyzing detailed observations with Monte Carlo permutation tests (testing against 10,000 random samples) and using self- and other-reports in N=6 high-functioning adults with ASD. Results showed significant positive effects on secure body posture. There was an indication of improved self-esteem and more spontaneous touching of the dog, while no convincing increase was found for verbal initiatives. Cross-correlation analyses revealed that touching the therapy dog may be an important determinant to elicit social development in Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT). Considering preliminary results, we recommend exploring underlying mechanisms more thoroughly with real-time observations, accounting for possible gender-effects.
... Moreover, those who have engaged in workplace romances have more favorable attitudes toward productivity than those who have not experienced love in the workplace [26]. Debrot et al. [14] stated that romantic relationships in the workplace positively affect the behavior and life satisfaction of engaged employees, and once engaged in a romantic relationship, they are likely to experience its positive impact on their behaviors [46]. Meanwhile, Wright and Cropanzano [41] reported that employees involved in a workplace romance show improved job satisfaction and performance. ...
With the aim of providing insights to scholars, administrators, and managers on how an employee’s romantic involvement influences job engagement and performance, this study examined workplace romance as a psychological mechanism for determining job performance. A total of 224 deluxe hotel employees in South Korea participated in the research. The results indicate that workplace romance significantly affects employees’ job engagement and performance. Employees who sustain a favorable and positive relationship with others in their organization eventually exhibit increased work effectiveness, which then exerts a constructive effect on hotel services and performance. Moreover, workplace romance experience can significantly improve the effect of workplace romance on job engagement. The paper also discusses limitations and future research directions.
... According to the polyvagal theory, these neurochemical changes are likely due to vagus nerve stimulation from skin pressure (e.g., Field, 2010;Gamse, Lembeck, & Cuello, 1979;Porges, 2001;Stock & Uvnäs-Moberg, 1988). These neurochemical changes may explain why touch decreases anxiety in cardiac patients (Weiss, 1990), as well as existential anxiety after a death reminder (Koole, Tjew A Sin, & Schneider, 2014). ...
... Linguistic expression seems to enormously enhance emotional regulatory capabilities, as a result of enabling both emotional communication (Burleson 1985), and simply emotional articulation (Lieberman 2011;Samur, Tops, Schlinkert, Quirin, Cuijpers, & Koole 2013). People's ability to redirect their emotional experiences is also tremendously enhanced by a variety of material resources and activities including hot showers for alleviating loneliness (Bargh & Shalev 2012), cuddling soft toys or seeking interpersonal touch for down-regulating existential anxiety (Koole, Sin, & Schneider 2014), and seeking out and utilising cleaning products to down-regulate disgust (Koole, Webb, & Sheeran 2015;Vogt, Lozo, Koster, & De Houwer 2010). ...
... In the control condition, participants completed a neutral 12-item questionnaire about leisure-time activities, using a similar 7-point scale. 3 This procedure has been used successfully to prime thoughts of death in previous studies (Koole, Tjew A Sin, & Schneider, 2014;Mikulincer & Florian, 2000). Following this manipulation, all participants performed a 10trial filler/distraction categorization task (e.g., Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, Simon, & Breus, 1994), and then completed a 4-item questionnaire concerning readiness to self-sacrifice. ...
In 8 studies, we examined the terror management function of self-sacrifice and the moderating role of attachment orientations. Studies 1-5 focused on readiness to self-sacrifice for a cause, whereas Studies 6-8 focused on self-sacrifice to save a relationship partner's life. In Studies 1-3 and 6, we examined whether mortality salience increases readiness to self-sacrifice. In Studies 4-5 and 7-8, we examined the defensive nature and anxiety-buffering role of self-sacrifice-that is, whether providing another terror management defense reduces the readiness to self-sacrifice following mortality salience and whether thoughts about self-sacrifice mitigate death-thought accessibility. Findings indicated that self-sacrifice for a cause served a terror management function mainly among attachment-anxious participants, whereas self-sacrifice for a relationship partner served this defensive function mainly among participants scoring low on avoidant attachment. Attachment-avoidant participants reacted to mortality salience with reluctance to self-sacrifice for another person. Discussion focuses on attachment orientation as a basis for using self-sacrifice as an existential defense.
... This explains why touch is more intimate and creates a direct link between a person and the environment (ecological, digital). In the same way, a mother hugging her child will transmit the love and the feeling of security that the child needs for his well-being and for building his self-esteem [39]. Furthermore, the fact of feeling material properties such as temperature and texture strengthens the emotional dimension of other modalities [40]. ...
Integration of haptics in Serious Games (SGs) remains limited compared to vision and audio. Many works seem to limit haptic interactions to the mimicking of real life feelings. Here, we address this by investigating the use of haptics to promote learning outcomes in serious games. By analyzing how we learn, we proposed a model that identifies three learning outcomes: (1) engage the user with the content of the game, (2) develop technical skills, and (3) develop cognitive skills. For each learning skill, we show how haptic interactions may be exploited. We also show that the proposed model may be used to describe and to evaluate existing methods. It may also help in the designing of new methods that take advantage of haptics to promote learning outcomes.
... Finally, general romantic relationship literature also suggests that committed romantic relationships and their manifestations in the form of love, long-term commitment, dating, affectionate touch and kissing positively affects the romance participants' behaviors and life satisfaction. 4,25,29,30 Thus, we follow the constructive effect premise of workplace romance to develop the following hypothesis. ...
Purpose
The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, we examined the relationship between workplace romance and employee job performance and tested the role of affective commitment foci – namely, affective coworker commitment, affective supervisor commitment, and affective organizational commitment – as parallel mediators in the relationship between workplace romance and employee job performance. Second, we tested the moderating role of culture on the interrelationships between workplace romance, affective commitment foci, and employee job performance.
Methods
A two-wave (3-month interval) survey data were collected from 312 paramedics – 162 and 150 from Pakistani and Chinese public-sector hospitals, respectively. The first and second waves of data collection took place in January and May 2017, respectively. Structural equation modeling (SEM), bootstrapping technique, and multigroup analysis were used to test the interrelationships between workplace romance, affective commitment foci, and employee job performance and to examine the cross-cultural differences in these interrelations.
Results
Results obtained using SEM show that workplace romance positively influences employee performance. Importantly, the study revealed that the three foci of affective commitment – namely, coworker affective commitment, supervisor affective commitment, and organizational affective commitment – as parallel mediators fully mediate the relationship between workplace romance and employee performance. Moreover, national culture moderates the indirect relationship between workplace romance and employee job performance, where workplace romance is stronger for the Chinese data sample.
Conclusion
It is concluded that workplace romance is positively related to employee job performance and that affective commitment foci fully mediate the positive relationship between workplace romance and employee job performance. Moreover, culture moderates the indirect relationship between workplace romance and employee job performance. The study contributes to theory and practice by studying an essential but largely ignored aspect of the workplace and portraying it as a constructive influence on employee job performance and their affective commitment to coworkers, supervisor, and organization.
... Further, multisensory interactions that impact the brain's response to social touch are not limited to the visual system, as unpleasant odors can reduce the perceived pleasantness and alter the response of insular and opercular cortices to affective touch (Croy et al., 2016a,b). Finally, touch can interact with much more complex and multiple aspects of the context of the encounter, as in the alleviation of induced existential concerns (i.e., fear of death) by touch from an experimenter (Koole et al., 2014). Interestingly, in this study, the effect of social touch on fear was specific to individuals with low self-esteem. ...
Social touch is a powerful force in human development, shaping social reward, attachment, cognitive, communication, and emotional regulation from infancy and throughout life. In this review, we consider the question of how social touch is defined from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. In the former category, there is a clear role for the C-touch (CT) system, which constitutes a unique submodality that mediates affective touch and contrasts with discriminative touch. Top-down factors such as culture, personal relationships, setting, gender, and other contextual influences are also important in defining and interpreting social touch. The critical role of social touch throughout the lifespan is considered, with special attention to infancy and young childhood, a time during which social touch and its neural, behavioral, and physiological contingencies contribute to reinforcement-based learning and impact a variety of developmental trajectories. Finally, the role of social touch in an example of disordered development –autism spectrum disorder—is reviewed.
... immediate buffering function of affiliation may be mediated to a considerable degree by faster, automatic, sub-cognitive, biologically based mechanisms (see also Koole, Sin, & Schneider, 2014). Although the consequences of conformity and its potential multiple roles were not the central focus of our research, we acknowledge that more research is required to demonstrate the specific consequences of conformity in existential escape and their functionality. ...
Belief in free will is founded on the idea that people are responsible for their behavior. People who believe in free will derive meaning in life from these beliefs. Conformity refers to succumbing to external pressures and imitating others’ behaviors. Sometimes, conformity involves a loss of self‐awareness, which reduces perceived meaninglessness. We tested if disbelief in free will increases perceived meaninglessness and if people subsequently become more conformist to address this negative existential perception. We conducted three studies to test this hypothesis. In Study 1, experimentally induced disbelief in free will resulted in perceived meaninglessness. In Study 2, perceived meaninglessness correlated with conformity. Finally, in Study 3, perceived meaninglessness mediated the relationship between disbelief in free will and conformity, especially under high self‐awareness. We conclude that perceptions about meaning play a central role in the relationship between disbelief in free will and conformity.
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Receiving touch is of critical importance, as many studies have shown that touch promotes mental and physical well-being. We conducted a pre-registered (PROSPERO: CRD42022304281) systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis encompassing 137 studies in the meta-analysis and 75 additional studies in the systematic review (n = 12,966 individuals, search via Google Scholar, PubMed and Web of Science until 1 October 2022) to identify critical factors moderating touch intervention efficacy. Included studies always featured a touch versus no touch control intervention with diverse health outcomes as dependent variables. Risk of bias was assessed via small study, randomization, sequencing, performance and attrition bias. Touch interventions were especially effective in regulating cortisol levels (Hedges’ g = 0.78, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.24 to 1.31) and increasing weight (0.65, 95% CI 0.37 to 0.94) in newborns as well as in reducing pain (0.69, 95% CI 0.48 to 0.89), feelings of depression (0.59, 95% CI 0.40 to 0.78) and state (0.64, 95% CI 0.44 to 0.84) or trait anxiety (0.59, 95% CI 0.40 to 0.77) for adults. Comparing touch interventions involving objects or robots resulted in similar physical (0.56, 95% CI 0.24 to 0.88 versus 0.51, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.64) but lower mental health benefits (0.34, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.49 versus 0.58, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.73). Adult clinical cohorts profited more strongly in mental health domains compared with healthy individuals (0.63, 95% CI 0.46 to 0.80 versus 0.37, 95% CI 0.20 to 0.55). We found no difference in health benefits in adults when comparing touch applied by a familiar person or a health care professional (0.51, 95% CI 0.29 to 0.73 versus 0.50, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.61), but parental touch was more beneficial in newborns (0.69, 95% CI 0.50 to 0.88 versus 0.39, 95% CI 0.18 to 0.61). Small but significant small study bias and the impossibility to blind experimental conditions need to be considered. Leveraging factors that influence touch intervention efficacy will help maximize the benefits of future interventions and focus research in this field.
Considered as a transitional object, the comforting power of the teddy bear has often been asserted in many past studies without knowing its underlying determinants. Through a participatory study conducted during the European Researchers’ Night, this study aims to identify characteristics of teddy bears that influence their comforting power, including visual, olfactory and kinesthetic properties. We also tested the effect of ownership on comforting power. Our study revealed that the emotional bond shared with a teddy bear is a predominant factor. However, we identified characteristics that play a significant role in the perception of comfort, which lies in a combination of visual, olfactory, and especially kinesthetic characteristics. Through these results, our study identifies the determinants spontaneously taken into account in the attribution of teddy bears’ capacity to provide comfort. These results were independent of participants’ age, reminiscent of the teddy bear’s ability to provide comfort at all stages of life.
Mate choice is a potent generator of diversity and a fundamental pillar for sexual selection and evolution. Mate choice is a multistage affair, where complex sensory information and elaborate actions are used to identify, scrutinize, and evaluate potential mating partners. While widely accepted that communication during mate assessment relies on multimodal cues, most studies investigating the mechanisms controlling this fundamental behavior have restricted their focus to the dominant sensory modality used by the species under examination, such as vision in humans and smell in rodents. However, despite their undeniable importance for the initial recognition, attraction, and approach towards a potential mate, other modalities gain relevance as the interaction progresses, amongst which are touch and audition. In this review, we will: (1) focus on recent findings of how touch and audition can contribute to the evaluation and choice of mating partners, and (2) outline our current knowledge regarding the neuronal circuits processing touch and audition (amongst others) in the context of mate choice and ask (3) how these neural circuits are connected to areas that have been studied in the light of multisensory integration.
Leveraging spatiotemporal variation in homicides that occurred during a 2.5-year weekly panel survey of 387 women ages 18–22 in Flint, Michigan, we investigate how young women's desires to become pregnant and to avoid pregnancy evolve in response to local homicides during the transition to adulthood. To address the endogeneity of exposure, we explore how the same woman's pregnancy desires (1) differed, on average, across weeks before and after the first homicide occurred within a quarter mile of her home; (2) evolved in the aftermath of this initial homicide exposure; and (3) changed in response to additional nearby homicides. One-fifth (22%) of women were exposed to a nearby homicide at least once during the study, and one-third of these women were exposed multiple times. Overall, the effects of nearby homicides were gradual: although average desires to become pregnant and to avoid pregnancy differed after initial exposure, these differences emerged approximately three to five months post-exposure. Repeated exposure to nearby homicides had nonlinear effects on how much women wanted to become pregnant and how much they wanted to avoid pregnancy. Together, our analyses provide a new explanation for why some young women—especially those who are socially disadvantaged—desire pregnancy at an early age.
Our commentators explore the operation of grounded procedures across all levels of analysis in the behavioral sciences, from mental to social, developmental, and evolutionary/functional. Building on them, we offer two integrative principles for systematic effects of grounded procedures to occur. We discuss theoretical topics at each level of analysis, address methodological recommendations, and highlight further extensions of grounded procedures.
Lee and Schwarz (L&S) suggest that separation is the grounded procedure underlying cleansing effects in different psychological domains. Here, we interpret L&S's account from a hierarchical view of cognition that considers the influence of physical properties and sensorimotor constraints on mental representations. This approach allows theoretical integration and generalization of L&S's account to the domain of formal quantitative reasoning.
Lee and Schwarz suggest grounded procedures of separation as a mechanism for embodied cleansing. We compare this process to other mechanisms in grounded cognition and suggest a broader conceptualization that allows integration into general cognitive models of social behavior. Specifically, separation will be understood as a mindset of completed avoidance resulting in high abstraction and openness to new experiences.
Using terror management theory and research findings, we expand the framework provided by Lee and Schwarz to highlight the potential link between separation and connection effects to existential, death-related concerns. Specifically, we address how death awareness may motivate separation and connection behaviors and how engaging in these behaviors may serve a protective terror management function.
Despite demographers’ long-standing preoccupation with the effects of child mortality on women’s fertility desires, scholars continue to know little about the consequences of other pervasive mortality exposures. We use nationally representative data from the high-mortality context of Peru to examine whether the desire to have a(nother) child varies as a function of sibling loss and to assess heterogeneity in this association by women’s current number of children and a range of conditions related to siblings’ deaths. Women who have experienced sibling bereavement and have two or more children report higher odds of desiring another child. These effects are not contingent on the age or sex of the deceased sibling but are only significant if the sibling died during the respondent’s lifetime (not before). These findings highlight the theoretical and empirical import of investigating the relationship between fertility desires and a wider range of familial mortality exposures beyond own child mortality.
This narrative review summarizes research on three forms of touch that have enhanced development and well-being. These include social touch, CT touch, and massage therapy. The lightest form of touch called CT touch (stimulation of unmyelinated afferents) is important for parent-infant and romantic relationships and for pain syndromes. Social touch including hugging and handholding is also important for those relationships. And the deepest form of touch, i.e. moderate pressure massage therapy, has been important for reducing stress. Most of the CT touch research has focused on identifying optimal velocities of touch and using fMRI scans to identify parts of the brain that are activated by light touch. The social touch literature has been primarily oriented toward the role of touch during early mother-infant interactions and later romantic relationships. The deepest form of touch has been researched for its therapeutic applications including massage therapy for pain syndromes. Each form has several methodological limitations that are reviewed here. Although the literatures on these forms of touch have many differences, they also have similarities, and they share their importance for enhancing development and well-being.
Affectionate Communication in Close Relationships - by Kory Floyd December 2018
Cambridge Core - Communications - Affectionate Communication in Close Relationships - by Kory Floyd
Terror Management Theory (TMT; Greenberg et al., 1997) proposes that mortality concerns may lead people to reject other cultures than their own. Although highly relevant to multiculturalism, TMT has been rarely tested in a European multicultural society. To fill this void, two studies examined the effects of mortality salience (MS) among native Dutch people with varying levels of national identification and self-esteem. Consistent with TMT, MS led to less favorable attitudes about Muslims and multiculturalism among participants with high (rather than low) national identification and low (rather than high) self-esteem (Study 1). Likewise, MS led participants with high national identification and low self-esteem to increase their support of Sinterklaas, a traditional Dutch festivity with purported racist elements (Study 2). Together, these findings indicate that existential concerns may fuel resistance against multiculturalism, especially among people with low self-esteem who strongly identify with their nationality.
There is little empirical research to date that looks at how the deleterious effects of social exclusion can be mitigated. We examined how touching an inanimate object—a teddy bear—might impact the effect of social exclusion on prosocial behavior. Across two studies, we found that socially excluded individuals who touched a teddy bear acted more prosocially as compared to socially excluded individuals who just viewed the teddy bear from a distance. This effect was only observed for socially excluded participants and not for socially included (or control) participants. Overall, the findings suggest that touching a teddy bear mitigates the negative effects of social exclusion to increase prosocial behavior. In Study 2, positive emotion was found to mediate the relationship between touch and prosocial behavior. These results suggest a possible means to attenuate the unpleasant effects of social exclusion.
Interpersonal touch is a fundamental but undervalued aspect of human nature. In the present article, the authors review psychological research showing that even fleeting forms of touch may have a powerful impact on our emotional and social functioning. Given its significant beneficial effects, touch may be valuable as a therapeutic or health-promoting tool.
This chapter proposes that the potential for abject terror created by the awareness of the inevitability of death in an animal instinctively programmed for self-preservation and continued experience lies at the root of a great deal of human motivation and behavior. This chapter presents the results of a substantial body of research that attests to the broad influence of the problem of death on human social behavior and illuminates the processes through which concerns about mortality exert their influence. The chapter overviews the primary assumptions and propositions of terror management theory and a description of the initial research conducted to test the theory. It presents a detailed consideration of more recent research that establishes the convergent and discriminant validity of the mortality salience treatment and the robustness of its effects through the use of alternative mortality salience treatments and comparison treatments, and replications by other researchers; it extends the range of interpersonal behaviors that are demonstrably influenced by terror management concerns. Moreover, it demonstrates the interaction of mortality salience with other theoretically relevant situational and dispositional variables, and provides an account of the cognitive processes through which mortality salience produces its effects. Finally, this chapter discusses the relation of terror management motives to other psychological motives and gives a consideration of issues requiring further investigation.
Humans live out their lives knowing that their own death is inevitable; that their most cherished beliefs and values, and even their own identities, are uncertain; that they face a bewildering array of choices; and that their private subjective experiences can never be shared with another human being. This knowledge creates five major existential concerns: death, isolation, identity, freedom, and meaning. The role of these concerns in human affairs has traditionally been the purview of philosophy. However, recent methodological and conceptual advances have led to the emergence of an experimental existential psychology directed toward empirically investigating the roles that these concerns play in psychological functioning. This new domain of psychological science has revealed the pervasive influence of deep existential concerns on diverse aspects of human thought and behavior.
From the perspective of terror management theory, the human body is problematic because it serves as a perpetual reminder of the inevitability of death. Human beings confront this problem through the development of cultural worldviews that imbue reality-and the body as part of that reality-with abstract symbolic meaning. This fanciful flight from death is in turn the psychological impetus for distancing from other animals and the need to regulate behaviors that remind us of our physical nature. This analysis is applied to questions concerning why people are embarrassed and disgusted by their bodies' functions; why sex is such a common source of problems, difficulties, regulations, and ritualizations; why sex tends to be associated with romantic love; and why cultures value physical attractiveness and objectify women. This article then briefly considers implications of this analysis for understanding psychological problems related to the physical body and cultural variations in the need to separate oneself from the natural world.
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among 292 unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships between the predictors employment commitment, financial hardship, job-search self-efficacy, and motivation control and the outcome job-search intensity. Support was not found for a relationship between perceived job-search constraints and job-search intensity. Motivation control was highlighted as the only lagged predictor of job-search intensity over time for those who were continuously unemployed. Job-search intensity predicted Time 2 reemployment status for the sample as a whole, but not reemployment quality for those who found jobs over the study's duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
On the basis of the terror management theory proposition that self-esteem provides protection against concerns about mortality, it was hypothesized that self-esteem would reduce the worldview defense produced by mortality salience (MS). The results of Exps 1 (49 undergraduates) and 2 (50 undergraduates) confirmed this hypothesis by showing that individuals with high self-esteem (manipulated in Exp 1; dispositional in Exp 2) did not respond to MS with increased worldview defense, whereas individuals with moderate self-esteem did. The results of Exp 3 (48 undergraduates) suggested that the effects of the 1st 2 experiments may have occurred because high self-esteem facilitates the suppression of death constructs following MS. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This research builds on terror management theory to examine the relationships among self-esteem, death cognition, and psychological adjustment. Self-esteem was measured (Studies 1-2, 4-8) or manipulated (Study 3), and thoughts of death were manipulated (Studies 1-3, 5-8) or measured (Study 4). Subsequently, satisfaction with life (Study 1), subjective vitality (Study 2), meaning in life (Studies 3-5), positive and negative affect (Studies 1, 4, 5), exploration (Study 6), state anxiety (Study 7), and social avoidance (Study 8) were assessed. Death-related cognition (a) decreased satisfaction with life, subjective vitality, meaning in life, and exploration; (b) increased negative affect and state anxiety; and (c) exacerbated social avoidance for individuals with low self-esteem but not for those with high self-esteem. These effects occurred only when death thoughts were outside of focal attention. Parallel effects were found in American (Studies 1-4, 6-8) and Chinese (Study 5) samples.
We show that minimal physical contact can increase people's sense of security and consequently lead them to increased risk-taking behavior. In three experiments, with both hypothetical and real payoffs, a female experimenter's light, comforting pat on the shoulder led participants to greater financial risk taking. Further, this effect was both mediated and moderated by feelings of security in both male and female participants. Finally, we established the boundary conditions for the impact of physical contact on risk-taking behaviors by demonstrating that the effect does not occur when the touching is performed by a male and is attenuated when the touch consists of a handshake. The results suggest that subtle physical contact can be strongly influential in decision making and the willingness to accept risk.
The present research highlights affiliation defenses in the psychological confrontation with death. In 3 experiments, it was found that mortality salience led to increased affiliation strivings, as indicated by a greater preference for sitting within a group as opposed to sitting alone. Mortality salience actually led to increased affiliation with a worldview-threatening group (Experiments 1-2), even when affiliation with the group forced participants to attack their own worldviews (Experiment 3). Taken together, the findings support a distinct role of affiliation defenses against existential concerns. Moreover, affiliation defenses seem powerful enough to override worldview validation defenses, even when the worldviews in question are personally relevant and highly accessible.
A large body of research has shown that when people are reminded of their mortality, their defense of their cultural worldview intensifies. Although some psychological defenses seem to be instigated by negative affective responses to threat, mortality salience does not appear to arouse such affect. Terror management theory posits that the potential to experience anxiety, rather than the actual experience of anxiety, underlies these effects of mortality salience. If this is correct, then mortality-salience effects should be reduced when participants believe they are not capable of reacting to the reminder of mortality with anxiety. In a test of this hypothesis, participants consumed a placebo purported to either block anxiety or enhance memory. Then we manipulated mortality salience, and participants evaluated pro- and anti-American essays as a measure of worldview defense. Although mortality salience intensified worldview defense in the memory-enhancer condition, this effect was completely eliminated in the anxiety-blocker condition. The results suggest that some psychological defenses serve to avert the experience of anxiety rather than to ameliorate actually experienced anxiety.
The meaning maintenance model (MMM) proposes that people have a need for meaning; that is, a need to perceive events through a prism of mental representations of expected relations that organizes their perceptions of the world. When people's sense of meaning is threatened, they reaffirm alternative representations as a way to regain meaning-a process termed fluid compensation. According to the model, people can reaffirm meaning in domains that are different from the domain in which the threat occurred. Evidence for fluid compensation can be observed following a variety of psychological threats, including most especially threats to the self, such as self-esteem threats, feelings of uncertainty, interpersonal rejection, and mortality salience. People respond to these diverse threats in highly similar ways, which suggests that a range of psychological motivations are expressions of a singular impulse to generate and maintain a sense of meaning.
In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that a comprehensive understanding of language, cognitive and affective processes, and social and interpersonal phenomena cannot be achieved without understanding the ways these processes are grounded in bodily states. The term 'embodiment' captures the common denominator of these developments, which come from several disciplinary perspectives ranging from neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, and affective sciences. For the first time, this volume brings together these varied developments under one umbrella and furnishes a comprehensive overview of this intellectual movement in the cognitive-behavioral sciences. The chapters review current work on relations of the body to thought, language use, emotion and social relationships as presented by internationally recognized experts in these areas.
There are few topics so fascinating both to the research investigator and the research subject as the self-image. It is distinctively characteristic of the human animal that he is able to stand outside himself and to describe, judge, and evaluate the person he is. He is at once the observer and the observed, the judge and the judged, the evaluator and the evaluated. Since the self is probably the most important thing in the world to him, the question of what he is like and how he feels about himself engrosses him deeply. This is especially true during the adolescent stage of development.
Human ethnocentrism--the tendency to view one's group as centrally important and superior to other groups--creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence. Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to promote cooperation among in-group members. In double-blind, placebo-controlled designs, males self-administered oxytocin or placebo and privately performed computer-guided tasks to gauge different manifestations of ethnocentric in-group favoritism as well as out-group derogation. Experiments 1 and 2 used the Implicit Association Test to assess in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Experiment 3 used the infrahumanization task to assess the extent to which humans ascribe secondary, uniquely human emotions to their in-group and to an out-group. Experiments 4 and 5 confronted participants with the option to save the life of a larger collective by sacrificing one individual, nominated as in-group or as out-group. Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate "love drug" or "cuddle chemical" and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.
Grooming is a widespread activity throughout the animal kingdom, but in primates (including humans) social grooming, or allo-grooming (the grooming of others), plays a particularly important role in social bonding which, in turn, has a major impact on an individual's lifetime reproductive fitness. New evidence from comparative brain analyses suggests that primates have social relationships of a qualitatively different kind to those found in other animal species, and I suggest that, in primates, social grooming has acquired a new function of supporting these. I review the evidence for a neuropeptide basis for social bonding, and draw attention to the fact that the neuroendrocrine pathways involved are quite unresolved. Despite recent claims for the central importance of oxytocin, there is equally good, but invariably ignored, evidence for a role for endorphins. I suggest that these two neuropeptide families may play different roles in the processes of social bonding in primates and non-primates, and that more experimental work will be needed to tease them apart.
The feasibility of using a shorter version of the Profile of Mood States is examined. Eighty-three cancer patients were administered the Profile of Mood States. The scales' internal consistency (coefficient alpha) and the items' face validity were used as criteria for eliminating items. The number of items was reduced from 65 to 37 and the correlation coefficients between the short and original scales were all above .95, indicating the suitability of the short version for estimating the original mood scale scores in this population.
Although touch is one of the most neglected modalities of communication, several lines of research bear on the important communicative functions served by the modality. The authors highlighted the importance of touch by reviewing and synthesizing the literatures pertaining to the communicative functions served by touch among humans, nonhuman primates, and rats. In humans, the authors focused on the role that touch plays in emotional communication, attachment, bonding, compliance, power, intimacy, hedonics, and liking. In nonhuman primates, the authors examined the relations among touch and status, stress, reconciliation, sexual relations, and attachment. In rats, the authors focused on the role that touch plays in emotion, learning and memory, novelty seeking, stress, and attachment. The authors also highlighted the potential phylogenetic and ontogenetic continuities and discussed suggestions for future research.
Experimental existential psychology: Coping with the facts of life
- T Pyszczynski
- J Greenberg
- S Solomon
- S L Koole
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Koole, S. L.
(2010). Experimental existential psychology: Coping
with the facts of life. In D. T. Gilbert & S. T. Fiske (Eds.),
Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 724-760). New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Persönlichkeits-Stil-und-StörungsInventar (PSSI) [Personality Styles and Disorders Inventory]
- J Kuhl
- M Kazén
Kuhl, J., & Kazén, M. (1997). Persönlichkeits-Stil-und-StörungsInventar (PSSI) [Personality Styles and Disorders Inventory].
Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions The denial of death Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism
- L S Aiken
- S G West
- Simon
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- C K W Dreu
- L L Greer
- Van Kleef
- G A Shalvi
- S Handgraaf
Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. De Dreu, C. K. W., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. J. J. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 108, 1262–1266.
A shortened version of the Profile of Mood States
- S Shacham
Shacham, S. (1983). A shortened version of the Profile of Mood
States. Journal of Personality Assessment, 47, 305–306.
Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism
- De Dreu
- C K W Greer
- L L Van Kleef
- G A Shalvi
- S Handgraaf
De Dreu, C. K. W., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S.,
& Handgraaf, M. J. J. (2011). Oxytocin promotes human
ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, USA, 108, 1262–1266.
Persönlichkeits-Stil-und-Störungs-Inventar (PSSI)
- J Kuhl
- M Kazén
Kuhl, J., & Kazén, M. (1997). Persönlichkeits-Stil-und-Störungs-Inventar (PSSI) [Personality Styles and Disorders Inventory].