James J. Gross’s research while affiliated with Stanford University and other places

Esports refers to competitive video gaming where individuals compete against each other in organized tournaments for prize money. Here, we present the Competitive Esports Physiological, Affective, and Video (CEPAV) dataset, in which 300 male Counter Strike: Global Offensive gamers participated in a study aimed at optimizing affect during esports tournament¹. The CEPAV dataset includes (1) physiological data, capturing the player’s cardiovascular responses from before, during, and after over 3000 CS: GO matches; (2) self-reported affective data, detailing the affective states experienced before gameplay; and (3) video data, providing a visual record of 552 in-laboratory gaming sessions. We also collected (affect-related) individual differences measures (e.g., well-being, ill-being) across six weeks in three waves. The self-reported affective data also includes gamers’ natural language descriptions of gaming affective situations. The CEPAV dataset provides a comprehensive resource for researchers and analysts seeking to understand the complex interplay of physiological, affective, and behavioral factors in esports and other performance contexts.

Background Despite bilateral mastectomy (BLM) for early‐stage breast cancer (BC) showing no survival benefit and increased risk compared to breast conserving surgery, some patients still choose this treatment. This study examined whether emotion reactivity and regulation influence treatment decision making among newly diagnosed women with breast cancer. Methods Cross‐sectional survey data were analyzed as part of a larger study. Measures included the Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy (CPM) survey, PROMIS Anxiety scale, and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) Cognitive Reappraisal and Emotional Suppression subscales. Primary analysis included a logistic regression model predicting treatment choice (BLM vs. non‐BLM). Results Participants (N = 137) with unilateral BC (Stages 0–III) were divided between BLM (n = 66) versus breast conserving surgery (i.e., non‐BLM, n = 71) treatment groups. Compared to the non‐BLM group, the BLM group was younger, more likely to be partnered, and had a higher household income. Women with high levels of BC‐specific worry were 3.6 times more likely to choose BLM compared to women with low levels of worry (OR = 3.09, 95% CI: 1.07–0.8.93). Those who used cognitive reappraisal were 10% less likely to choose BLM compared to women who did not use cognitive reappraisal (OR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.82–0.99). There were no group differences in levels of generalized anxiety (OR = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.87–0.99) or emotional suppression (OR = 1.02, 95% CI: 0.90–1.16). Conclusions Findings suggest the choice of BLM may be due, in part, to negative emotional experiences after a BC diagnosis and lesser use of reappraisal to reframe cancer‐related fears. These may be important targets of intervention to support women making BC treatment decisions.

Past research on individual differences in emotion regulation has focused either on specific sets of strategies or on the engagement versus disengagement orientation of the regulatory efforts. A new measure, the Process Model of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (PMERQ; Olderbak et al., 2022 ), comprehensively assesses engagement-oriented and disengagement-oriented strategies across all stages of the emotion generation process. In this article, we present a German version of the PMERQ. In Study 1 ( N = 189), we investigated the factor structure of a forward-backward translation of the original 10-scale, 45-item questionnaire. We describe how necessary revisions were identified and implemented. In Study 2 ( N = 241) and Study 3 ( N = 198), we show that the ten PMERQ subscales of the final German version had a predominantly appropriate factor structure and sufficient reliability. In terms of validity, the convergent, discriminant, and criterion correlations were as expected and comparable to those in the original instrument. We conclude that the German version of the PMERQ provides a reliable and valid tool for the comprehensive assessment of individual differences in emotion regulation. Due to differences in measurement models, we advise caution when using the German version for comparisons across age groups and genders.

Alexithymia is characterised by difficulties identifying and describing feelings, as well as a lack of focus on feelings. Alexithymia is a transdiagnostic risk factor for developing a wide array of psychopathologies, such as anxiety and depression, with a key hypothesised mechanism being the impairing impact of alexithymia on emotion regulation. However, no study has tested whether difficulties with emotion regulation mediate the link between alexithymia and clinically relevant symptoms using longitudinal designs. The present study aimed to address this limitation by collecting data from 242 Iranian high school students at two time points, seven months apart. The results revealed that baseline alexithymia levels not only related to future emotion regulation difficulties but predicted increased emotion regulation difficulties in the future. Furthermore, these increased difficulties in emotion regulation mediated the relationship between baseline alexithymia and worsening of psychological distress (e.g., depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms) over time. This study, therefore, supports the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia in its theoretical account linking alexithymia and emotion regulation difficulties and highlights the critical role that alexithymia plays in emotional health and illness during adolescence.

Political segregation is a pressing issue, particularly on social media platforms. Recent research suggests that one driver of segregation is political acrophily—people's preference for others in their political group who have more extreme (rather than more moderate) political views. However, acrophily has been found in lab experiments, where people choose to interact with others based on little information. Furthermore, these studies have not examined whether acrophily is associated with animosity toward one's political out-group. Using a combination of a survey experiment (N = 388) and an analysis of the retweet network on Twitter (3,898,327 unique ties), we find evidence for users' tendency for acrophily in the context of social media. We observe that this tendency is more pronounced among conservatives on Twitter and that acrophily is associated with higher levels of out-group animosity. These findings provide important in- and out-of-the-lab evidence for understanding acrophily on social media.

Engaging with people’s lived experiences is foundational for HCI research, especially in designing and evaluating (mental) healthinterventions. The field has developed a range of methods for eliciting this information (e.g., interviews, probes, surveys), eachbalancing data richness with participant burden and required resources. This paper introduces a novel narrative elicitation method toempower people to easily articulate ‘micro-narratives’ emerging from their lived experiences, irrespective of their writing ability orbackground. Our approach aims to enable at-scale collection of rich, co-created datasets that highlight target population’s voices withminimal participant burden, while precisely addressing specific research questions (e.g., understanding individuals’ challenges witha digital intervention). To pilot this idea and test its feasibility we: (i) developed an AI-powered prototype; (ii) deployed it in threemixed-methods studies involving over 380 users; and (iii) consulted with established academics as well as C-level staff at (inter)nationalnonprofits to map out potential applications.

When faced with negative emotions, the higher people are in alexithymia, the more likely they are to disengage from their emotions rather than engage with their emotions in an adaptive way. This emotion regulation profile is thought to explain links between alexithymia and negative life outcomes. What is not yet clear, however, is why alexithymia is linked to this emotion regulation profile. One possible explanation is greater emotional intensity. After all, initial evidence suggests that alexithymia is related to greater negative emotional intensity, and it is widely thought that greater negative intensity predicts the use of disengagement over engagement emotion regulation strategies. To address this issue, we conducted two intensive longitudinal studies (N = 273) to test three propositions, namely that in daily life (1) alexithymia is related to greater negative emotional intensity, (2) alexithymia is related to using more disengagement and less engagement emotion regulation, and (3) negative emotional intensity is a mediator explaining the link from alexithymia to using more disengagement and less engagement emotion regulation. In Study 1, we employed a daily diary design where participants reported on a negative event from their day. In Study 2, we used an intensive experience sampling design (nine surveys per day over seven days) to examine whether negative emotion intensity mediated the relationship from alexithymia to subsequent emotion regulation orientation. As expected, we found in both studies that greater negative intensity mediated the relationship between total alexithymia and more disengagement. However, only the difficulty identifying and describing emotion facets, but not externally oriented thinking, were related to negative emotion and disengagement. Contrary to expectation, total alexithymia was unrelated to engagement in both studies. Though in Study 2 alone, we found that externally oriented thinking predicted less reappraisal.