Affect, Emotion and Feeling

Audible smiles and frowns affect speech comprehension

by Hugo Quené

Co-authored with Gün R. Semin and Francesco Foroni, in press in Speech Communication, 2012.

Highlights:
► Smiles and frowns may interfere with speech production and comprehension. ► Speech synthesis of words with positive and with negative meaning. ► Formants shifted up or down to simulate smiling and frowning. ► Incongruent smiling or frowning impedes speech comprehension. ► Interference due to motor mimicry of smiling and frowning gestures.

Keywords: Smiles; Speech comprehension; Emotion; Affect perception; Motor resonance

Motor resonance processes are involved both in language comprehension and in affect perception. Therefore we predict... more Motor resonance processes are involved both in language comprehension and in affect perception. Therefore we predict that listeners understand spoken affective words slower, if the phonetic form of a word is incongruent with its affective meaning. A language comprehension study involving an interference paradigm confirmed this prediction. This interference suggests that affective phonetic cues contribute to language comprehension. A perceived smile or frown affects the listener, and hearing an incongruent smile or frown impedes our comprehension of spoken words.

Geographies of Geborgenheit: beyond feelings of safety and the fear of crime

by Jan Simon Hutta

published in 'Environment and Planning D: Society and Space', 2009

This paper critically engages with the concepts of `feelings of safety' and `fear of crime' as they have been deployed... more This paper critically engages with the concepts of `feelings of safety' and `fear of crime' as they have been deployed in recent politics of community safety. While the first part of the paper discusses the staging of what is referred to as a dispositif of safety, which discursively frames subjective ^ spatial relations in powerful ways, the second part moves towards an understanding of lived experiences of spaces and places that unfold within, but also beyond, the dispositif of safety. For this purpose, the German concept of Geborgenheit is introduced. For a theoretical elaboration of this concept,Walter Benjamin's work around experience and temporality is referred to and articulated with Deleuzian theory. An analysis of Geborgenheit, it is argued, displaces hegemonic notions of `safety' by addressing the dynamics that enable subjects to open up to and nest within a place. The paper concludes with a discussion of vignettes from a qualitative study in Berlin in order to exemplify the constitution of geographies of Geborgenheit in the context of recent safety politics.

Affect Theory Reader - intro (Seigworth/Gregg)

by Greg Seigworth

Fashioning A Stave, or, Singing Life

by Greg Seigworth

Traffic Crash Involvement: Experiential Driving Knowledge and Stressful Contextual Antecedents

by Daniel Martin

Legree, P. J., Martin, D.E., Medsker, G. (2003). Tacit Driving Knowledge, Emotional Intelligence and Accident Risk: Traffic Safety Implications. Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol 88(1), Feb 2003, 15-26.

Researchers have rarely examined stressful environments and psychological characteristics as predictors of driving... more Researchers have rarely examined stressful environments and psychological characteristics as predictors of driving behavior in the same study. The authors hypothesized that (a) safer drivers more accurately assess physical and emotional traffic hazards and (b) stress and emotional states elevate crash risk. The hypotheses were evaluated with procedural and declarative tacit driving knowledge tests requiring assessment of emotional and contextual hazards and with accident reports describing crash antecedents, including stressful events and environmental conditions. Analyses identified separate driving knowledge factors corresponding to emotional and contextual hazards that were significantly related to the crash criteria. Accident report analyses show that stress significantly elevates at-fault crash risk. The results demonstrate the importance of experiential knowledge acquired without instruction (procedural or tacit knowledge) and provide safety recommendations.

The Greatest Gift: happiness, governance and psychology

by john cromby

Social & Personality Psychology Compass 5,11 840-852 (2011)

Both in the UK and internationally, governments are setting out to measure wellbeing, life satisfaction and happiness.... more Both in the UK and internationally, governments are setting out to measure wellbeing, life satisfaction and happiness. Whilst this might seem to offer opportunities for psychology, their chosen method – self- report questionnaires – is problematic. Happiness questionnaires are troubled by problems of definition, introspection, memory and insight; their population-level summation is grossly inaccurate as a representation of everyday emotional experience; and both their reliability and their validity might be better accounted for as products of their ability to model, rather than to measure, psychological processes. Psychology therefore runs the risk of discrediting itself if it becomes too closely associated with these initiatives.

Paranoia: a social account

by john cromby

Co-authored with D.Harper. Theory & Psychology 19,3, 335-361

Both psychology and psychiatry are dominated by individualistic accounts of paranoia (and indeed, other forms of... more Both psychology and psychiatry are dominated by individualistic accounts of paranoia (and indeed, other forms of distress). As a corrective to these, this paper provides a social account of paranoia grounded in a minimal notion of embodied subjectivity constituted from the interpenetration of feelings, perception and discourse. Paranoia is conceptualised as a mode or tendency within embodied subjectivity, co-constituted in the dialectical associations between subjectivity and relational, social and material influences. Relevant psychiatric and psychological literature is briefly reviewed; relational, social structural and material influences upon paranoia are described; and some implications of this account for research and intervention are highlighted.

Between Allegory and Seduction: Perceptual modulation in Battlestar Galactica

by Enrica Picarelli

This paper investigates the relationship between BSG and the post-9/11 ecology of agitation in light of George Bush’s... more This paper investigates the relationship between BSG and the post-9/11 ecology of agitation in light of George Bush’s strategy of collective perceptual management. While most readings focus on its allegory of the war on terror, I address the audiovisual strategies by which BSG appeals to the viewer’s senses, mapping the emergence of a post-9/11 sensibility. My suggestion is that the show’s relationship with the post-9/11 reality rests in the power to address the audience’s feelings. To this end, I look at BSG’s aesthetics of crisis as operating as an affective vector, playing out in an informational system that invests in affective solicitation to provoke a bodily response in the audience. Given the status of television as the principal medium of post-9/11 governmental perceptual modulation, I argue that BSG’s relationship with the war on terror is rooted in an ability to express meaning and feeling, keeping a sensation of agitation alive throughout a four-season run. To expose the political value of the show’s aesthetics, I look not at the codes, as at the expressions and style that make up a scenario of sensorial stimulation where feeling becomes a biopolitical operator. Indeed, BSG’s cinematographic techniques and haptic visuals, chromatic shifts and aural evocations effectively manufacture agitation, exposing a tension between the show’s status as an allegory of the contemporary world and its complicity with practices of televised affective engineering.

Letting Go into the darkness of faith

by Alan MacKenzie

Our journey to God really is one of being stripped down and approaching in our vulnerability and weakness, in our... more Our journey to God really is one of being stripped down and approaching in our vulnerability and weakness, in our disgrace (lack of grace). The important thing to understand is that, when we feel “in control” we are inevitably putting up barriers, making it more difficult for us to be aware of graciousness of God. It is when we are conscious of our own shortcomings and fragility, not a morbid self-pitying way but consciously acknowledging the totality of our personality that we tend to be mostly receptive to the promptings and presence of God’s spirit. This is a personal account of one such journey.

Affective quality and cognitive absorption: Extending technology acceptance research

by Ping Zhang

Love at first sight or sustained effect? The role of perceived affective quality on user's cognitive reactions to information technology

by Ping Zhang

The Importance of Affective Quality

by Ping Zhang

Zhang, Ping and Na Li (2005), The Importance of Affective Quality, Communications of the ACM (CACM), Vol. 48, No. 9, September, pp. 105-108

Users aren’t always rational logical beings—emotion plays an often overlooked role in user acceptance of technology. Users aren’t always rational logical beings—emotion plays an often overlooked role in user acceptance of technology.

Media, Affect and the Face: Biomediation and the Political Scene

by Anna Gibbs

Co-authored with Maria Angel; published in Southern Review

The television screen, the photograph, the cinematic image
are mirrors of the human self, mirrors that are caught... more The television screen, the photograph, the cinematic image
are mirrors of the human self, mirrors that are caught up in
national, global, and corporatised flows of information.
Usually, media flows are theorised in fairly abstract terms
that speak of technologies, audiences, information or communication
environments. This paper attempts to contribute
to these debates through consideration of a much more concrete,
and perhaps unfamiliar, perspective: one that focuses
on the transmission of affect in communication and that provides
a context for thinking about affect in an evolutionary
and biological context. We argue that media communicate
through processes that are more than semiotic and cognitive.
These processes rely on the appropriation of other aspects of
the human organism, such as the face. On one level, they
feed off the capacity of the human for affect (to affect and be
affected); on another, they rely on the ability of technology to
interface with the human through a process of biomediation.
Eugene Thacker writes of biomedia as processes in which
‘biological components and process are informatically recontextualised
for purposes that may be either biological or nonbiological’
(2003, p. 52). For us, all media are biomediations
of the human

Asymmetries in face and brain related to emotion

by Alexander Shackman

Davidson, R. J., Shackman, A. J., & Maxwell, J. S. (2004). Asymmetries in face and brain related to emotion. Trends in Cognitive Science, 8(9), 389-391.

Research on the neural substrates of emotion has found evidence for cortical asymmetries for aspects of emotion. A... more Research on the neural substrates of emotion has found evidence for cortical asymmetries for aspects of emotion. A recent article by Nicholls et al. has used a new imaging method to interrogate facial movement in 3D to assess possible asymmetrical action during expressions of happiness and sadness. Greater leftsided movement, particularly during expressions of sadness was observed. These findings have implications for understanding hemispheric differences in emotion and lend support to the notion that aspects of emotion processing might be differentially localized in the two hemispheres.

Cognitive vulnerability and frontal brain asymmetry: Common predictors of first prospective depressive episode

by Alexander Shackman

Nusslock, R., Shackman, A. J., Coan, J. A., Harmon-Jones, E., Alloy, L. B. & Abramson, L. Y. (2011). Relations between cognitive and neurophysiological vulnerability to depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 120, 497-503.

The hopelessness theory of depression proposes that individuals with a depressogenic cognitive style are more likely... more The hopelessness theory of depression proposes that individuals with a depressogenic cognitive style are more likely to become hopeless and experience depression following negative life events. Although the neurophysiological underpinnings of cognitive style remain speculative, research indicates that decreased relative left frontal brain electrical activity holds promise as a trait-like marker of depression. This begs the question: Do measures of depressogenic cognitive style and resting frontal brain asymmetry index a common vulnerability? The present study provides preliminary support for this hypothesis. At baseline assessment, increased cognitive vulnerability to depression was associated with decreased relative left frontal brain activity at rest in individuals with no prior history of, or current, depression. Following baseline assessment, participants were followed prospectively an average of 3 years with structured diagnostic interviews at 4-month intervals. Both cognitive vulnerability and asymmetric frontal cortical activity prospectively predicted onset of first depressive episode in separate univariate analyses. Furthermore, multivariate analyses indicated that cognitive vulnerability and frontal asymmetry represented shared, rather than independent, predictors of first depression onset.

La sensation comme outil politique : les représentations anglaises de l'exécution de Charles Ier au XVIIe siècle

by Anne-Laure de Meyer

Ecrit et publié dans le cadre du laboratoire junior "Réfléchir la sensation", hébergé par l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ancienne ENS-LSH).

L'exécution de Charles Ier d’Angleterre en 1649 donna lieu à de nombreuses représentations qu'Anne-Laure de Meyer... more L'exécution de Charles Ier d’Angleterre en 1649 donna lieu à de nombreuses représentations qu'Anne-Laure de Meyer explore dans son article. Les gravures et eaux-fortes qui constituent l’événement en scène construisent tout un dispositif idéologique qui fait usage de la sensation comme d'un instrument pour rassembler les spectateurs et lecteurs autour de la cause du roi martyr. Réfléchir la sensation, dans le contexte de l'exécution de Charles Ier, c'est réverbérer une émotion, créer une communauté mais aussi faire un usage particulier d'outils rhétoriques.

Review: Agnes Heller's A Theory of Feelings

by Katie Terezakis

Dose-dependent differences in short ultrasonic vocalizations emitted by rats during cocaine self-administration

by David Barker

Rationale 
The motivational impetuses underlying self-administration of cocaine and other drugs of abuse... more Rationale 
The motivational impetuses underlying self-administration of cocaine and other drugs of abuse are not fully understood. One emerging factor is affect. Both positive and negative affective states have been hypothesized to influence drug seeking and drug taking. In parallel, it has been posited that the ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of Rattus norvegicus provide insight into the animals’ affective reactions. Furthermore, it has been shown that mesolimbic dopamine (DA) plays a key role in cocaine self-administration and in USV production. Thus, affective processing as measured by rodent USVs likely coincides with cocaine self-administration, but to date has not been studied.
Objective 
The present study examined USVs in both the negative affective (18–32.99 kHz) and positive affective (38–80 kHz) ranges of rats during self-administration of a low (0.355 mg/kg/infusion) or high (0.71 mg/kg/infusion) dose of cocaine.
Results 
USVs in both ranges were observed in both dose groups. Vocalizations of the low-dose animals occurred primarily in the 22-kHz range (18–32.99 kHz), but exhibited shorter durations (10–500 ms) than those traditionally observed for 22-kHz calls in aversive situations. In contrast, USVs of the high-dose group were primarily observed in the 50-kHz frequency range (38–80 kHz), typically associated with appetitive outcomes.
Conclusions 
These results provide evidence for the presence of USVs during cocaine self-administration. The observed dose-dependent difference in USVs provides novel support for the view that affect is one potential motivational factor influencing human drug use and relapse behaviors. Rodent USVs may provide a powerful tool for understanding the role of affect in addiction.

Decision Making in Voluntary Career Change: An Other-Than-Rational Perspective

by Niamh Murtagh

Co-authored with Paulo N. Lopes and Evanthia Lyons
Published in Career Development Quarterly 59(3):249-263

The authors present a qualitative study of voluntary career change, which highlighted the importance of positive... more The authors present a qualitative study of voluntary career change, which highlighted the importance of positive emotions, unplanned action, and building certainty and perceiving continuity in the realization of change. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to broaden theoretical understanding of real-life career decision making. The accounts of 8 women who had changed careers were explored, and the analysis supported other-than-rational perspectives of career decision making. An action-affect-cognition framework of decision making is proposed. The framework adds the role of emotion and the importance of self-regulation to existing theory of career decision making. Implications for career counseling are discussed.

The integration of negative affect, pain and cognitive control in the cingulate cortex

by Alexander Shackman

Shackman, A. J., Salomons, T. V., Slagter, H. A., Fox, A. S., Winter, J. J. & Davidson, R. J. (2011). The integration of negative affect, pain and cognitive control in the cingulate cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12, 154-167.

It has been argued that emotion, pain and cognitive control are functionally segregated in distinct subdivisions of... more It has been argued that emotion, pain and cognitive control are functionally segregated in distinct subdivisions of the cingulate cortex. However, recent observations encourage a fundamentally different view. Imaging studies demonstrate that negative affect, pain and cognitive control activate an overlapping region of the dorsal cingulate — the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). Anatomical studies reveal that the aMCC constitutes a hub where information about reinforcers can be linked to motor centres responsible for expressing affect and executing goal-directed behaviour. Computational modelling and other kinds of evidence suggest that this intimacy reflects control processes that are common to all three domains. These observations compel a reconsideration of the dorsal cingulate's contribution to negative affect and pain.