Emotion

Eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought: The role of social-evaluative threat

by Peggy Zoccola

This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more... more This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more rumination than a stressor without this explicit evaluative component and whether this difference persists minutes, hours, and days later. The mediating role of shame-related cognition and emotion (SRCE) was also examined. During a laboratory visit, 144 undergraduates (50% female) were randomly assigned to complete a speech stressor in a social-evaluative threat condition (SET; n = 86), in which an audience was present, or a nonexplicit social-evaluative threat condition (ne-SET; n = 58), in which they were alone in a room. Participants completed measures of stressor-related rumination 10 and 40 min posttask, later that night, and upon returning to the laboratory 3–5 days later. SRCE and other emotions experienced during the stressor (fear, anger, and sadness) were assessed immediately posttask. As hypothesized, the SET speech stressor elicited more rumination than the ne-SET speech stressor, and these differences persisted for 3–5 days. SRCE—but not other specific negative emotions or general emotional arousal—mediated the effect of stressor context on rumination. Stressors characterized by SET may be likely candidates for eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought immediately and also days later, potentially by eliciting shame-related emotions and cognitions.

Emotion in HCI - Designing for people

by Marc Fabri

Peter, C., Crane, E., Fabri, M., Agius, H., Axelrod, L. (eds.) (2010) Emotion in HCI - Designing for people: Proceedings of the 2008 International Workshop, Fraunhofer Verlag, Stuttgart, ISBN 978-3-8396-0089-4

As computing is changing and becoming increasingly social in nature, the role of emotions in computing has become ever... more As computing is changing and becoming increasingly social in nature, the role of emotions in computing has become ever more relevant and commercial. Emotion are central to culture, creativity, and interaction. The topic attracts more and more researchers from a range of multidisciplinary fields including design, gaming, sensor technologies, psychology and sociology. The need for discussion, exchange of ideas, and interdisciplinary collaboration is ever-increasing as the community grows. This workshop will meet requirements of individuals working in the field, giving them a podium to explore different aspects of emotion in HCI, raise questions and network with like-minded people on common subjects. The workshop will focus around working group sessions, and will use predominantly small group work, rather than being presentation-based.

When can we choose to forget? An ERP study into item-method directed forgetting of emotional words

by Kate Bailey

Emotionally Expressive Avatars for Collaborative Virtual Environments (PhD Thesis)

by Marc Fabri

Fabri, M. (2006) Emotionally Expressive Avatars for Collaborative Virtual Environments, PhD Thesis, Leeds Metropolitan University, November 2006

When humans communicate with each other face-to-face, they frequently use their bodies to complement, contradict,... more When humans communicate with each other face-to-face, they frequently use their bodies to complement, contradict, substitute, or regulate what is being said. These non-verbal signals are important for understanding each other, particularly in respect of expressing changing moods and emotional states. In modern communication technologies such as telephone, email or instant messaging, these indicators are typically lost and communication is limited to the exchange of verbal messages, with little scope for expressing emotions.

This thesis explores Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) as an alternative communication technology potentially allowing interlocutors to express themselves emotionally in an efficient and effective way. CVE users are represented by three-dimensional, animated embodiments, referred to as “avatars”, capable of showing emotional expressions. The avatar acts as an interaction device, providing information that would otherwise be difficult to mediate. Potential applications for such CVE systems are all areas where people cannot come together physically, but wish to discuss or collaborate on certain matters, for example in distance learning, home working, or simply to chat with friends and colleagues. Further, CVEs could be used in the therapeutic intervention of phobias and help address social impairments such as autism.

To investigate how emotions can efficiently and effectively be visualised in a CVE, an animated virtual head was designed to express, in a readily recognisable manner, the six universal emotions happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. A controlled experiment was then conducted to investigate the virtual head model. Effectiveness was demonstrated through good recognition rates for most emotions, and efficiency was established since a reduced animation feature set was found to be sufficient to build core distinctive facial expressions. A set of exemplar facial expressions and guidelines for their use was developed.

A second controlled experiment was then conducted to investigate the effect such an emotionally expressive, animated avatar has on users of a prototype CVE, the Virtual Messenger (VM). The hypothesis was that introducing emotions into CVE interaction can be beneficial on many levels, namely the users’ subjective experience, their involvement, and how they perceive and interact with each other. The design considerations for VM are outlined, and a newly developed methodological framework for evaluation is presented.

The findings suggest that emotional expressiveness in avatars increases involvement in the interaction between CVE users, as well as their sense of being together, or copresence. This has a positive effect on their subjective experience. Further, empathy was identified as a key component for creating a more enjoyable experience and greater harmony between CVE users. The caveat is that emotionally expressive avatars may not be useful in all contexts or all types of CVEs as they may distract users from the task they are aiming to complete.

Finally, a set of tentative design guidelines for emotionally expressive avatars in CVEs is derived from the work undertaken, covering the appearance and expressive abilities of avatars. These are aimed at CVE researchers and avatar designers.

Effects of Gain-Loss News Framing and Political Ideology on Audience Sympathy

by Itay Gabay

This study examines how valenced news frames interact with audience orientations to influence emotions and how the... more This study examines how valenced news frames interact with audience orientations to influence emotions and how the strength of this effect varies according to whether news stories are held factually equivalent across conditions. Using an experiment, we examined the effect of valence framing and its interaction with respondents’ political ideology on sympathy for individuals — an employee bankrupt due to medical expenses and a business executive — interviewed in a news story about the issue of employee access to health care. Results showed that valence framing interacted with political ideology such that liberals presented with a loss frame expressed the most sympathy for the bankrupt employee, while conservatives presented with a loss frame expressed the most sympathy for the business executive. We explain these findings in light of the relationship between political ideology and attributions of responsibility for personal and social problems. Regarding the different approaches to framing, we found that the addition of frame-resonant facts attenuated the strength of the interaction between gain-loss framing and political ideology on sympathy for the business executive. Directions for future research on valenced framing effects on emotions are discussed.

Effects of recent word exposure on emotion-word Stroop interference: An ERP study

by Leonora Coppens

2011, International Journal of Psychophysiology

Attentional bias towards emotional linguistic material has been examined extensively with the emotion-word Stroop... more Attentional bias towards emotional linguistic material has been examined extensively with the emotion-word Stroop task. Although findings in clinical groups show an interference effect of emotional words that relate to the specific concern of the group, findings concerning healthy groups are less clear. In the present study, we investigated whether emotional Stroop interference in healthy individuals is affected by exposure of the words prior to the task. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the temporal aspects of Stroop interference. Participants took longer to indicate the colour of negative than of neutral words. Exposure of words prior to the Stroop task increased response latencies, but this effect was equal for neutral and negative words. At the neurophysiological level, we found more positive-going ERPs at later latencies (P290, N400 and LPP) in response to negative than in response to neutral Stroop words. The N400 was less negative for exposed than for new words, but this effect did not interact with the emotional valence of the words. For new (i.e., unexposed) words, the behavioural Stroop interference correlated with the P290, N400 and LPP emotion effects (negative minus neutral words). The successive ERP components suggest better prelexical, semantic, and sustained attentional processing of emotion words, even when the emotional content of the words is task-irrelevant.

Affect and Feeling: Special Issue

by john cromby

Co-author: L.Blackman.

Introduction to a special issue of the International Journal of Critical Psychology on 'Affect and Feeling'.

Emotional Inhibition: a discourse analysis of disclosure

by john cromby

Evidence generated within the emotional disclosure paradigm (EDP) suggests that talking or writing about emotional... more Evidence generated within the emotional disclosure paradigm (EDP) suggests that talking or writing about emotional experiences produces health benefits, but recent meta-analyses have questioned its efficacy. Studies within the EDP typically rely upon a unidimensional and relatively unsophisticated notion of emotional inhibition, and tend to use quantitative forms of content analysis to identify associations between percentages
of word types and positive or negative health outcomes. In this article, we use a case study to show how a qualitative discourse analysis has the potential to identify more of the complexity linking the disclosure practices and styles that may be associated with emotional inhibition. This may illuminate the apparent lack of evidence for efficacy of the EDP by enabling
more comprehensive theorisations of the variations within it.

Ciencias Sociales y Literatura Latinoamericana: Del rigor científico que aprendimos a una teoría de las emociones

by Oleski Miranda

Articulo escrito en co-autoría con Daniel Castro Aniyar

Publicado en la Revista de Epistemología Latinoamericana Cintas de Moebio

Emotion in scholarly discourse: denial, deconstruction, reinstatement

by Karen Bennett

In Fernanda Gil Costa & Igor Furão (eds.), Estética das Emoções. V.N.Famalicão: Edições Humus (2011) 271-282.

Since the 17th century, a battle has been raging between two distinct paradigms of knowledge in which the role of... more Since the 17th century, a battle has been raging between two distinct paradigms of knowledge in which the role of emotion has taken centre stage. With the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, all forms of subjectivity were effectively proscribed, a philosophical orientation that was reflected in the lexico-grammar of scholarly discourse. However, despite the increasing centrality of the scientific paradigm in the modern world, the older humanities tradition has continued to make its presence felt over the years, not least through the challenges to objectivity raised by poststructuralism. This paper traces the various phases of this battle in England and Continental Europe. It looks at how the humanities paradigm flourished in Catholic Europe long after Scholasticism and Rhetoric had been discredited in Protestant England, and focuses on various historical moments when the two paradigms came into conflict.

Constructing Crime, Enacting Morality: emotion, crime and anti-social behaviour in an inner-city community

by john cromby

Research into emotion, crime and anti-social behaviour has lacked psychological input and rarely considered the... more Research into emotion, crime and anti-social behaviour has lacked psychological input and rarely considered the multi-directional associations between emotion, crime and morality. We present a study analysing audio recordings of two community groups meeting in a deprived inner city area with high rates of crime, using conversation analytic and discursive psychological techniques to conduct an affective-textual analysis that draws out aspects of participants’ moral reasoning and identifies its emotional dimensions. Moral reasoning around crime and ASB took three forms (invoking moral categories, developing moral hierarchies, invoking vulnerable others), and was bound up with a wide range of emotional enactments and emotion displays. Findings are discussed in relation to contemporary government policy and possible future research.

Inhibition and reappraisal within emotional disclosure: the embodying of narration

by john cromby

Co-Author: D.Ellis

The emotional disclosure paradigm (EDP) associates better health with repeated disclosure of emotional experiences.... more The emotional disclosure paradigm (EDP) associates better health with repeated disclosure of emotional experiences. However, disclosure does not bring health benefits for all, and neither does the EDP adequately specify embodied mechanisms or neural pathways whereby benefits might be produced. This paper addresses these issues by offering more sophisticated notions of emotional inhibition and cognitive reappraisal. It then outlines aspects of the somatic marker hypothesis which supports a more comprehensive conceptualization of the processes that may enable both the positive and negative health effects of disclosure.

Arbitrating between Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory: Evidence from a Think-aloud Study of Counterfactual Reasoning

by Meredith Wilkinson

Co-authored with Linden J. Ball and Rachel Cooper

Wilkinson, M. R., Ball, L. J., & Cooper, R. (2010).  Arbitrating between theory-theory and simulation theory:  Evidence from a think-aloud study of counterfactual reasoning. Chapter in S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.) Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 1008-1013) Austin, Texas: Cognitive Science Society     

Approach and avoidance as action effects

by Diane Pecher

Van Dantzig, S., Pecher, D., & Zwaan, R. A. (2008). Approach and avoidance as action effects. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(9), 1298-1306. doi:10.1080/17470210802027987

Numerous studies use arm movements (arm flexion and extension) to investigate the interaction between emotional... more Numerous studies use arm movements (arm flexion and extension) to investigate the interaction between emotional stimuli and approach/avoidance behaviour. In many experiments, however, these arm movements are ambiguous. Arm flexion can be interpreted either as pulling (approach) or as withdrawing (avoidance). On the contrary, arm extension can be interpreted as reaching (approach) or as pushing (avoidance). This ambiguity can be resolved by regarding approach and avoidance as flexible action plans that are represented in terms of their effects. Approach actions reduce the distance between a stimulus and the self, whereas avoidance actions increase that distance. In this view, action effects are an integral part of the representation of an action. As a result, a neutral action can become an approach or avoidance reaction if it repeatedly results in decreasing or increasing the distance to a valenced stimulus. This hypothesis was tested in the current study. Participants responded to positive and negative words using key-presses. These "neutral" responses (not involving arm flexion or extension) were consistently followed by a stimulus movement toward or away from the participant. Responses to emotional words were faster when the response's effect was congruent with stimulus valence, suggesting that approach/avoidance actions are indeed defined in terms of their outcomes.

Love, eye contact and the deveopmental origins of empathy v psychopathy

by Jennifer L. Allen

Background
A propensity to attend to other people’s emotions is a necessary condition for human empathy.
... more Background
A propensity to attend to other people’s emotions is a necessary condition for human empathy.

Aims
To test our hypothesis that psychopathic disorder begins as a failure to attend to the eyes of attachment figures, using a ‘love’ scenario in young children.

Method
Children with oppositional defiant disorder, assessed for callous–unemotional traits, and a control group were observed in a love interaction with mothers. Eye contact and affection were measured for each dyad.

Results
There was no group difference in affection and eye contact expressed by the mothers. Compared with controls, children with oppositional defiant disorder expressed lower levels of affection back towards their mothers; those with high levels of callous–unemotional traits showed significantly lower levels of affection than the children lacking these traits. As predicted, the former group showed low levels of eye contact toward their mothers. Low eye contact was not correlated with maternal coercive parenting or feelings toward the child, but was correlated with psychopathic fearlessness in their fathers.

Conclusions
Impairments in eye contact are characteristic of children with callous–unemotional traits, and these impairments are independent of maternal behaviour.

The HUMAINE database

by Christopher Edward Peters

Douglas-Cowie, E., Cox, C., Martin, J-C., Devillers, L., Cowie, R., Sneddon, I., McRorie, M., Pelachaud, C., Peters, C., Lowry, O., Batliner, A., and Hoenig, F. "The HUMAINE database". In P. Petta, C. Pelachaud and R. Cowie (Eds.), Emotion-Oriented Systems: The Humaine Handbook, pp. 243-284, Cognitive Technologies Series, Springer, January 2011
Bibtex available here: http://www.coventry.ac.uk/ec/~cpeters/bibtex/bibtex.html#HandbookDatabase2011

The HUMAINE database is grounded in HUMAINE’s core emphasis on considering emotion in a broad sense – ‘pervasive... more The HUMAINE database is grounded in HUMAINE’s core emphasis on considering emotion in a broad sense – ‘pervasive emotion’ – and engaging with the way it colours action and interaction. The aim of the database is to provide a resource to which the community can go to see and hear the forms that emotion takes in everyday action and interaction, and to look at the tools that might be relevant to describing it. Earlier chapters in this handbook describe the techniques and models underpinning the collection and labeling of such data. This chapter focuses on conveying the range of forms that emotion takes in the database, the ways that they can be labeled, and the issues that the data raises. The HUMAINE Database
provides naturalistic clips which record that kind of material, in multiple modalities, and labelling techniques that are suited to describing it.

Sense and Sensibility: Mothering practices and school choice under neoliberalism

by Andrew Wilkins

For consideration in ‘Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism’.  M.V. Giles (ed.)

Draft copy only.
Please do not quote without permission from author.

Since the late 1970s/early 80s political and public policy opinion in England has been saturated with inflated claims... more Since the late 1970s/early 80s political and public policy opinion in England has been saturated with inflated claims to the waste and inefficiency generated through government intervention over the control and delivery of public services.  As a corrective to such top-down bureaucracy, neoliberal ideologues insist that citizens should be ‘empowered’ to pursue their own self-interest as a condition of their rights (and obligations) as consumers of public resources.  The expectation here is that market-driven reform will produce direct incentives for welfare providers to improve their services through appealing to welfare users as rational economic actors; in other words, informed and discriminating.  In the case of education, parents are expected to exercise choice over which school to send their child to.  But how do parents know how to choose and how are parents expected to know what is the ‘right’ choice? This chapter intends to move beyond the abstractions and estimations posited through government advice on choice in order to capture the fractures, tensions and dilemmas pertaining to mothers’ choice-making practices.  Utilising in-depth data taken from semi-structured interviews with several mothers, this chapter brings into question the neoliberal orthodoxy that works to subsume human behaviour to fit with a tidy, narrow utilitarian construction of the parent as consumer.  In doing so, it offers a grounded discussion of the ways in which neoliberal meanings and representations are lived as well as negotiated through sites and practices of mothering.

Pantti, M., and Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2007). On the political possibilities of therapy news: Media responsibility and the limits of objectivity in disaster coverage. Studies in Communication (Estudos em Comunicação) 1(1)

by Karin Wahl-Jorgensen

Les émotions ont-elles une place en logique? Un examen de la réponse peircienne

by J.M.C. Chevalier

Hepper, E. G., Ritchie, T. D., Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2012). Odyssey's end: Lay conceptions of nostalgia reflect its original Homeric meaning. Emotion, 12, 102-119

by Timothy D. Ritchie

Hepper, E. G., Ritchie, T. D., Sedikides, C., & Wildschut, T. (2012). Odyssey's end: Lay conceptions of nostalgia reflect its original Homeric meaning. Emotion, 12, 102-119. doi: 10.1037/a0025167

Nostalgia fulfills pivotal functions for individuals, but lacks an empirically derived and comprehensive definition.... more Nostalgia fulfills pivotal functions for individuals, but lacks an empirically derived and comprehensive definition. We examined lay conceptions of nostalgia using a prototype approach. In Study 1, participants generated open-ended features of nostalgia, which were coded into categories. In Study 2, participants rated the centrality of these categories, which were subsequently classified as central (e.g., memories, relationships, happiness) or peripheral (e.g., daydreaming, regret, loneliness). Central (as compared with peripheral) features were more often recalled and falsely recognized (Study 3), were classified more quickly (Study 4), were judged to reflect more nostalgia in a vignette (Study 5), better characterized participants’ own nostalgic (vs. ordinary) experiences (Study 6), and prompted higher levels of actual nostalgia and its intrapersonal benefits when used to trigger a personal memory, regardless of age (Study 7). These findings highlight that lay people view nostalgia as a self-relevant and social blended emotional and cognitive state, featuring a mixture of happiness and loss. The findings also aid understanding of nostalgia’s functions and identify new methods for future research.