**Poster submissions are now closed**
Poster Locations and Abstracts
*Information for presenters: Please take note of your poster location number. When you arrive to set up your poster, find the board with the appropriate number. The poster session will be held on Thursday, February 7th, from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm, in the Mesilla room of the Marriott. You should plan to set up your poster between 8:00 am and 8:30 am Thursday morning. Your poster must be taken down by 3:30 pm, immediately following the afternoon coffee break. Posters should be no larger than 44” (h) x 90” (w).
Poster Location 1:
She is emotional. He is having a bad day: Attributional explanations for sex-based stereotypes of emotion
Lauren Brennan, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Natalyia Yemelyanova, & Eliza Bliss-Moreau,
Boston College
We provide evidence that emotion-related beliefs about men and women may not stem from their emotional behaviors per se, but from the explanations that people give for those behaviors. In two studies, participants more frequently judged female targets depicting emotions as "emotional" (i.e., a dispositional attribution for the emotional behavior), whereas they more frequently judged male targets as "having a bad day" (i.e., a situational attribution for the emotional behavior). These findings help to explain the pervasive belief that women are more emotional when compared to men, even when the scientific veracity of this belief is questionable.
Poster Location 2:
The role of emotional neural circuits in enhancing memory for self-relevant information
Lian T. Rameson, Ajay B. Satpute, & Matthew D. Lieberman, University of California, Los Angeles
Self-schemas are domain-specific generalizations about the self that are forged through experience and help guide future behavior (Markus, 1977). Interestingly, individuals who possess a self-schema in a particular domain tend to show enhanced recall for information within that domain. A previous investigation into the neural basis of self-schemas showed that making self-relevant decisions in one's schematic domain recruits brain regions that are involved in affective, motivational, and automatic responses, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and amygdala (Lieberman, Jarcho & Satpute, 2004). This finding is suggestive because these brain regions have been found to be involved in processing emotional material and in enhancing recall for emotional material, which tends to be better-remembered than neutral material (LaBar & Cabeza, 2006). Therefore, we hypothesized that the activation of this affective circuit during self-schematic processing may be responsible for the demonstrated relationship between self-schemas and enhanced recall. In this fMRI study, participants made self-relevant judgments in schematic and nonschematic domains to create both behavioral and neural indices of schematicity. To assess memory, participants viewed neutral images related to schematic and non-schematic domains and then underwent a surprise memory test. The results replicated previous work and provided evidence that affective brain regions underlie the relationship between self-schemas and enhanced recall. This suggests that being self-schematic in a domain may cause an individual to process information that is otherwise neutral in an emotionally valenced manner, which results in the material becoming more memorable for that individual.
Poster Location 3:
Squeeze a ball and feel better? Hemispheric asymmetry in implicit affect and implicit self-esteem
Markus Quirin & Stephanie Fröhlich, Universität Osnabrüc, Tobias Gschwendner, Universität Landau
In two studies, we had participants squeeze a ball with either the left or the right hand, which typically engenders activation of the contralateral hemisphere. In Study 1, we assessed implicit and explicit positive and negative affect after manipulation. Implicit but not explicit positive affect was higher after left-hand than after right-hand ball-squeezing. In Study 2, we used implicit and explicit self-esteem as a dependent variable. Implicit self-esteem as measured by the name letter task, but not explicit self-esteem, increased. The data will be discussed with respect to recent theories and evidence suggesting that the right prefrontal cortex plays a role in implicit affect-regulatory processes.
Poster Location 4:
The blocked self: Appraisal and self-discrepancy theory
Margaret Wardle, Chasity Brennan, & Jon Kassel, University of Illinois at Chicago
Higgins' (1987) self-discrepancy theory (SDT) proposes two "self-guides" (the "ideal" and "ought" selves). Critical to the theory is that discrepancies between these self-guides and the "actual self" relate to specific negative affects, with actual-ideal discrepancies predisposing to depression and actual-ought discrepancies resulting in anxiety. However, the mechanism mediating these relationships is unclear, as self-guides have not met criteria as psychological structures (Higgins, Van Hook & Dorfman, 1988). Interestingly, SDT descriptions of self-discrepancies correspond well with appraisal theory descriptions of the appraisals invoking sadness and anxiety (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985), suggesting a framework for explaining the emotional power of self-discrepancies, and predicting new self-guides. The current study attempted to identify a self-guide predicting anger, an emotion not well explained by SDT. Appraisal theory views anger as the result of blocked progress toward a goal. As such, in the present study, we constructed the "blocked self" (What aspects of who you would like to be are blocked by other people or circumstances?). We measured ideal, ought, and blocked self-discrepancies, as well as current depression, anxiety and anger symptomatology. Participants were 94 students from the Introductory Psychology subject pool. The findings failed to confirm a role for the "blocked self" in predicting anger, and also failed to replicate the ideal-depression and ought-anxiety links observed in previous studies. Discussion of these results considers the role of methodological differences across studies, as well as the possibility that these self-effects are not as robust as previously thought (see also Tangney and colleagues [1998]).
Poster Location 5:
Parents' emotion-related beliefs and emotion regulation are associated with adolescent coping strategies
Pa Her, Tiffany Gray, & Julie C. Dunsmore, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
The ability to cope with stress has important consequences for risk behaviors and health. The mechanisms through which adolescents learn coping strategies have been largely unexamined. Because parents' emotion-related beliefs about children's emotions and emotion socialization behaviors are associated with children's socio-emotional outcomes (Dix, 1991), they may also influence how adolescents cope with stressful situations. We investigated parents' emotion-related beliefs, their self-reported emotion regulation, and their adolescents' coping strategies with 30 parents and their 7th and 8th grade children. Parents completed the Parents' Belief about Children's Emotion questionnaire (Halberstadt et al., 2001), and the Emotion Regulation questionnaire (Gross & John, 2000). Adolescents were interviewed about their coping strategies using the Adolescent Coping questionnaire (Patterson & McCubbin, 1987). Regression analyses showed that parents who believe children's emotions are dangerous reported greater suppression of emotion as a regulation strategy. Parents' belief that expressing contempt can be beneficial was positively associated with their own suppression of emotion, whereas their belief that children have a right to emotional privacy was negatively associated with their own suppression of emotion. Parents' belief that children's emotions are valuable, and their belief that children's emotions are dangerous, both independently contributed to adolescent's greater reported use of catharsis as a coping strategy. Parents' belief that children's emotions are valuable was positively related to adolescents' externalizing coping strategies. When parents believe that children use emotions to manipulate, adolescents reported less use of family support during stressful situations. Results support the productivity of multifaceted examination of parental emotion socialization.
Poster Location 6:
Attentional bias to emotional stimuli depends on arousal and not on valence
Julia Vogt, Jan De Houwer, Ernst Koster, Stefaan Van Damme, & Geert Crombez,
Ghent University, Belgium
It is often shown that emotional stimuli attract attention. This attentional bias to emotional stimuli is proposed to be driven by valence and in particular by negativity. However, many negative stimuli are also arousing, leaving the question whether valence or arousal accounts for the bias. The present study addresses this hypothesis using a modified spatial cueing paradigm. Participants responded to targets that were preceded by cues consisting of emotional pictures varying on arousal and valence. Response latencies showed that high arousing pictures evoke an attentional bias through delayed disengagement of attention. The effect was independent of the valence of the pictures and not gender-specific. The findings support the idea that arousal affects the allocation of spatial attention.
Poster Location 7:
Does neuroticism explain the relation between self-concealment and subjective well-being?
Andreas Wismeijer & Marcel van Assen, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Neuroticism is considered as an important predictor of subjective well-being. Recent research also has shown that self-concealment, a stable tendency to conceal distressing personal information, including thoughts, feelings, actions, and events (Larson & Chastain, 1990), is also negatively associated with subjective well-being. Given the seemingly conceptual overlap between neuroticism and self-concealment on aspects such as anxiety and social inhibition, one may argue that the negative association between self-concealment and subjective well-being is spurious, and is explained by neuroticism. We examined, using two student samples, whether self-concealment still predicts well-being after controlling for neuroticism. The results of our SEM analyses show that neuroticism explains only a small part of the association between self-concealment and subjective well-being. We conclude that self-concealment explains a unique portion of subjective well-being, centered around social avoidance processes.
Poster Location 8:
Self-concealment and subjective well-being: The mediating role of mood awareness
Andreas Wismeijer, Marcel van Assen, Klaas Sijtsma, & Ad Vingerhoets,
Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Self-concealment refers to the tendency to conceal distressing personal information, including thoughts, feelings, actions, and events (Larson & Chastain, 1990). Previous studies found a negative effect of self-concealment on various measures of subjective well-being. The goal of this study is to investigate if this effect is, at least partly, mediated by a preoccupation with one's mood states (mood monitoring) and the inability to label these (mood labeling). Mood monitoring has been shown to be associated with a ruminative response style and impaired social support, whereas mood labeling is associated with completeness in categorizing one's moods (Swinkels & Giuliano, 1995). Using a student sample of 588 participants we replicated the negative effect of self-concealment on subjective well-being and fatigue, and we indeed found that this effect was partly mediated by mood monitoring and labeling. As expected, self-concealment was positively correlated with mood monitoring while mood monitoring was negatively correlated with well-being. Inversely, as expected, self-concealment was negatively related with mood labeling while mood labeling was positively related with well-being. The results show that self-concealment is related to a preoccupation with one's (negative) mood states and the inability to label these, suggesting that specific cognitive and social processes are related to self-concealment that may explain the negative association with subjective well-being.
Poster Location 9:
Emotional processes and psychopathology
Filipa Machado Vaz & António Branco Vasco, Lisbon University
Why do people have emotions and what should they do with them? (Greenberg, L. 2004). Emotions and emotional processes have been receiving increasing attention by researchers. Emotional processes are currently seen as the main antecedents of cognition, action, social interaction and development (Barrett, 1998), preparing the organism for action in response to a specific internal stimulus or to an environmental challenge (Kring & Bachorowski, 1999 cit in Mascolo & Griffin, 1998). Emotions have biological, behavioral, cognitive, social and expressive components and operate in a synchronize way in a response based in different types of processing (Greenberg, 2004). All these components develop towards greater complexity and integration between them, while the individual deals with developmental challenges in each developmental stage. A dysfunction in any of these components leads to a maladjustment of the individual. In almost every form of personal non-adjustment, one or more components of the emotional processing are not working in an adaptive way. These deficits can occur, for example, in perception, experience, intensity and function of emotions. (Kring & Bachorowski, 1999 cit in Cichetti, Ackerman, & Izard, 1995). These problems will impede the normative function of emotions. Although emotional processes are crucial in explaining the etiology and development of psychopathology, little research has been conducted in this area in order to increase the current understanding of the emotional processes involved in normal and abnormal development (Kring & Bachorowski, 1999 cit in Cichetti, Ackerman, & Izard, 1995). Disturbed individuals frequently display a non-adapted functioning in one or more of the aspects of the emotional processing, namely on the experience, differentiation, intensity and regulation. Problems in any of these aspects hinder the adaptive function of emotions and when associated to a continuous vulnerability in the ability to differentiate and regulate emotions may lead to the deterioration of the coping strategies to deal with situations creating emotional arousal. Adjustment problems may then arise. In fact, people with disorders tend to have more difficulties in differentiating and regulating emotions, what increases the risk for beginning and/or aggravation of symptoms. The poster aims to present the investigation and some previous results of an investigation about the nature and relation between the processes of emotional activation, differentiation, regulation and expression with the maintenance of several types of psychopathology.
Poster Location 10:
Emotions in psychotherapy: The impact of patients' and therapists' emotional processes in therapy outcomes
Filipa Machado Vaz & António Branco Vasco, Lisbon University
If emotions are an organizing force in people's lives, the why can they be so disorganizing and painful? (Greenberg, L. 2004). Emotions and emotional processes have been receiving increasing attention by researchers. Emotional processes are currently seen as the main antecedents of cognition, action, social interaction and development (Barrett, 1998). Research in psychotherapy has showed strong empirical evidence that certain emotional processes help to promote therapeutic changes (Greenberg, Korman, & Paivio, 2001 cit in Greenberg, 2004). The patients with the best outcomes in psychotherapy improve their condition by talking about external events in a detached manner, through focusing on internal feelings in a richly descriptive and associative way, to readily accessing feelings to solve problems. Thus, for patients to change in the therapy clients cannot just talk intellectually about themselves and their feelings; they need to viscerally experience what they talk about and use their feelings to identify and solve problems (Greenberg, 2004). The above evidence indicates that certain types of therapeutically facilitated emotional arousal and awareness, when expressed in supportive relational contexts, in conjunction with conscious cognitive processing of the aroused emotional experience is important for therapeutic change for some people and problems (Greenberg, 2004).The poster aims to present the results of an investigation to: (1) Clarify the nature and relation between the processes of emotional activation, differentiation, regulation and expression in patients under therapy. (2) Define the importance of promoting these variables in the therapeutic process; (3) Improve the understanding of the impact of promoting the processes of emotional activation, differentiation, regulation and expression on the psychotherapeutic results; (4) Specify how the processes of emotional activation, differentiation, regulation and expression develop or change along the different stages of the therapeutic; (5) Understand how the therapist abilities to activate, differentiate, regulate and express is own emotions influence the psychotherapeutic evolution and the changes observed in the patient.
Poster Location 11:
Exploring specific reappraisal strategies to reduce prejudiced emotions
Leah R. Zinner & Patricia G. Devine, University of Wisconsin
Past work in emotion regulation has explored the efficacy of cognitive reappraisal, changing the way a situation is construed, in order to reduce its emotional impact. Typically, emotion regulation researchers provide participants with a specific reappraisal strategy (e.g., watching an amputation from an objective, technical perspective). When investigating the effects of reappraisal in a new emotion-eliciting situation, one challenge is identifying a reappraisal strategy that will be not only effective, but clear and easy for participants to implement. By asking participants to generate strategies spontaneously, researchers can ensure the chosen strategy is one participants will understand and be able to use. To this end, we investigated the range of reappraisal strategies that individuals spontaneously adopted to regulate negative emotions towards a gay couple. Participants (n = 95) learned the goals of cognitive reappraisal and were asked to generate an alternative interpretation of a gay romantic scene in order to reduce negative emotions. While participants generated a variety of reinterpretations, the majority used an "ordinary" reinterpretation (i.e., the couple is doing what makes them happy). "Denial" interpretations (i.e., pretending one man was a woman) were adopted primarily by high prejudice individuals and were not perceived as effective, while "gay friend" interpretations (i.e., thinking about a gay friend in a similar situation) were adopted primarily by low prejudice individuals and were perceived as effective. In general, researchers exploring the outcomes associated with cognitive reappraisal should thoughtfully select the specific reappraisal strategy provided to participants to ensure it is understandable and easily implemented.
Poster Location 12:
Exploring three domains of disgust
Joshua M. Tybur, University of New Mexico, Debra Lieberman, University of Hawaii,
& Vladas Griskevicius, Arizona State University
Social scientists have traditionally portrayed disgust as fulfilling symbolic functions (e.g., generally protecting the soul or spirit? defending humans from being reminded that they are animals). We suggest that disgust instead functions in three adaptively relevant domains: pathogen disgust, which motivates avoidance of infectious microorganisms; sexual disgust, which motivates avoidance of costly mating behaviors; and moral disgust, which motivates punitive behavior across a number of social domains (e.g., exchange, collective actions). We provide evidence from multiple populations that sensitivity to these three domains is statistically distinct. Further, we put forth a new individual differences measure that assesses disgust sensitivity across all three functional domains.
Poster Location 13:
Emotional reactions to identity theft
Stephen Reysen & Nyla R. Branscombe, University of Kansas
We manipulated the degree to which another student purportedly copies the participants' identities. Participants (N = 89) were told that the "thief" either copied the participant's shirt (low theft), their shirt and their hairstyle (medium theft), or their shirt, hairstyle, and personality (high theft). Participants then rated their emotional reactions, perception of the copier, and likely behavioral responses. A principle components analysis on the 18 emotion ratings suggested a three factor solution. We interpreted the first factor as assessing positive emotions, the second factor as embodying negative emotions, and the third factor as capturing anxiety related terms. As the degree of copying increased across conditions, positive emotions decreased significantly, while negative and anxiety ratings increased. As the copying increased, the copier was rated as less likeable and less honest. Lastly, as the imitation increased, participants were more likely to endorse confrontation with the copier and telling the person to stop. Ratings of the intention of the copier to imitate the participant mediated the relationship between the perception that the copier is engaged in identity theft and negative feelings. In addition, negative feelings mediated the relationship between the perception that the copier is stealing their identity and the action tendency of telling them to stop. The reported findings support Lazarus' (1991) appraisal pattern for the emotion of anger. Participants perceived the imitation as intentional and felt negative emotions toward the blameworthy imitator, leading toward confrontation with the copycat.
Poster Location 14:
Schadenfreude conflates competition and morality while unnecessarily ignoring first-person caused events
Bryan Koenig & Victor Johnston, New Mexico State University, Leisha A. Colyn, Bowling Green State University, & Timothy Ketelaar, New Mexico State University
Researchers define schadenfreude as the emotion of enjoying another's misfortune or suffering, and have argued that this emotion only occurs when you did not cause the misfortune or suffering (e.g., Leach, Spears, Branscombe, & Doosje, 2003). Two problems with this definition are: 1) it conflates disparate psychological processes, e.g., competition and morality, and 2) it ignores events caused by the pleasure-experiencer. We suggest a functional, evolution-based alternative to understanding schadenfreude and other interpersonal feelings. In an online study, 168 participants provided autobiographical stories of when they enjoyed another's suffering and answered additional questions. Results were consistent with the evolutionary model in that (a) punishment psychology was selectively activated by norm violations, and (b) the identity of the agent causing the suffering (you or other) did not affect pleasure at the suffering or whether or not punishment psychology was activated.
Poster Location 15:
The influence of positive mood on working memory in the older adult
Stephanie M. Carpenter, University of Oregon, Ellen Peters, University of Oregon & Decision Research, Alice M. Isen, Cornell University, & Daniel Västfjäll, Decision Research & Göteborg University
Older adult subjects (n=46; aged 63-85) participated in an experiment assessing the influence of mood on cognitive performance and decision making. Positive-mood subjects received a gift of candy, while neutral-mood subjects did not receive any gift. All subjects completed a computer-based card task where they learned to choose winning outcomes and avoid losing outcomes. In the background of the computer task, positive-mood subjects saw smiling suns, and neutral-mood subjects saw control circles. Participants also completed several tasks measuring cognitive performance (e.g., working memory, speed of processing, matrix reasoning, & vocabulary). Results indicated that positive mood was related to choosing better, and this effect was mediated by an increase in working memory (WM) in the positive-mood condition. A follow-up study, using a subset (n=19) of participants from the original sample, supported our finding that positive mood improves WM by showing that in the absence of a positive-mood induction, WM significantly decreased.
Poster Location 16:
Mood, task difficulty and mental effort: Effects of mood's informational weight
Joana de Burgo & Guido H.E. Gendolla, University of Geneva
This study explores how mood can be used as information for demand appraisals and effort mobilization as long as moods diagnostic value is not called into question. According to the Mood-Behavior-Model (Gendolla, 2000) people in a positive mood invest more effort if a task is difficult and people in a negative mood invest more effort when a task is easy. However, task difficulty should be the only factor influencing effort when participants receive a cue that their mood has been manipulated. 100 participants were randomly assigned to a 2 (mood: negative vs. positive) x 2 (cue: no-cue vs. cue) x 2 (task difficulty: easy vs. difficult) x 2 (time: mood inductions vs. task performance) mixed model design. The procedure consisted of (1) a habituation period, (2) mood manipulations with movies, and (3) performance of a mental task. Effort mobilization was operationalized as systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity. As expected, in the no-cue condition, SBP reactivity was stronger for an easy task in a negative mood and for a difficult task in a positive mood. In the cue condition, mood had no impact and only task difficulty had a main effect on SBP reactivity (more effort was mobilized in the difficult condition). Therefore, participants used their mood as information for effort mobilization as long as they did not receive a cue for the mood manipulation. When mood's informational weight was reduced by this explicit cue, only the task difficulty manipulation had an effect on demand appraisals and effort mobilization.
Poster Location 17:
The effects of positive and negative emotions on insight problem solving
Michiko Sakaki, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology & Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kazuhisa Niki, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Emotion can sometimes facilitate the ongoing cognitive processing (Isen et al., 1987), while other times emotion causes interference on cognitive processing (Dolcos & McCarthy 2006). The present study aimed to examine whether and how positive and negative emotions have opposite direction of effects on insight problem solving. On each trial, one insight problem (i.e., riddle) was presented, which was followed by either a positive, negative, or neutral distractor, and subsequently a solution of the problem was presented. The results of a behavioral study showed that presentation of positive distractors promotes processing the solution, whereas presentation of negative distractors inhibits it. A subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment revealed that although positive and negative distractors evoked activity in a typical emotional processing region (i.e., the amygdala), they have different impacts on insight problem solving: Subjects showed strong activity in areas associated with insight problem solving (e.g., the anterior cingulate or the temporo-parietal junction) following positive distractors, while they did not show an enhanced activity in these areas following negative distractors. In addition, negative distractors evoked a great activity in the anterior insula, which has been considered to play an important role in subjective feelings of emotion. These results suggest that positive stimuli facilitate subsequent processing of insight problem, while negative stimuli induce strong subjective feelings of emotion, which interrupts insight problem solving.
Poster Location 18:
The neural underpinnings of deficits in auditory emotions in people with right hemisphere damage
Vijayachandra Ramachandra, Marywood University
There is considerable evidence showing that the right hemisphere is dominant for the perception and expression of prosodic emotions. However, several behavioral and neuroimaging studies have provided us with a much more complex picture of the neural mechanisms underlying emotional prosody by revealing that both right and left cortical and also a few subcortical areas are involved in this process. Heilman and Watson (1989) proposed that connections between the multimodal cortical areas in the parietal lobe and the limbic lobe, which mediates the emotional arousal are vital for the right hemisphere to process emotions. The aim of my presentation is to discuss the interaction between the cortical and limbic systems in processing auditory emotions by people with Right Hemisphere Damage (RHD). First, I will review the literature pertaining to the neural mechanisms underlying emotional prosody and also discuss the possibility of a disconnection between the multimodal cortical - limbic pathways in processing emotional prosody by people with RHD. I will also present an interesting possibility of an intact connection between the cortical facial recognition system and the limbic emotional arousal system but a disconnection between the cortical voice recognition system and the limbic lobe in people with RHD. Such a disconnection might explain the neural underpinnings of disorders such as Capgras delusion in the auditory modality, where people have difficulty recognizing familiar voices but do not have any problems recognizing their faces. Finally, I will elucidate the role of the mirror neuron system in processing auditory emotions.
Poster Location 19:
Preferential emotional signaling of fitness-enhancing information
Jennifer S. Davis & Timothy Ketelaar, New Mexico State University
Theories such as inclusive fitness (Hamilton, 1964) and selective investment (Brown & Brown, 2006) suggest that helping behavior is directed preferentially to some individuals over others in a way that promotes the most adaptive outcome. These theories suggest that preferential allocation of helping is mediated by specific cues such as genetic relatedness or emotional closeness to the recipient. Facial displays of emotion may be helping behaviors that preferentially signal fitness-enhancing information, such as whether a stimulus is beneficial or hazardous. The current study investigated whether people preferentially emit emotional signals in response to a pleasant fitness-enhancing stimulus (a sweet drink) or a simulated contamination-threat stimulus (a bitter drink) depending upon their relationship with the audience. Participants were videotaped while tasting both a sweet and a bitter drink in the presence of a genetic relative, a friend, a stranger, or while alone. Participants facial displays of emotion while tasting the drinks were compared to a canonical disgust facial display and to canonical "smiling" facial displays. Results indicate that (a) while tasting the sweet drink, participants smiled more when observed by a genetic relative or friend than when observed by a stranger or when alone, and (b) while tasting the bitter drink, participants displayed more disgust when observed by a genetic relative or friend than when observed by a stranger or when alone. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive value of signaling preferentially when with kin and friends, rather than when with strangers or when alone.
Poster Location 20:
Through the lens of shame: How shame-proneness shapes psychological, physiological, and nonverbal reactions to social evaluation
Lavonia Smith LeBeau & Wendy Berry Mendes, Harvard University
Shame is a self-conscious emotion that arises due to experienced failure or transgressions during interactions with other people. In the current work we investigated how shame-proneness (i.e., the tendency to experience shame in negative situations) infleunced stress appraisals, self-reported affect, physiological and non-verbal responses during a socially evaluative situation. We hypothesized that shame-proneness would infleunce perceptions of and reactions to evaluative social interactions as measured by hormone levels, pre and post task affect, and nonverbal behavior during the interaction. We found that shame-proneness was associated with increased levels of basal cortisol, increased negative and decreased positive affect prior to the task, as well as perceiving the task as demanding and one's resources as lacking. Additionally, behavioral ratings indicated a distinct behavioral manifestation of shame in that increases in shame proneness were highly correlated with nave raters judgements of closed body posture. These results are interesting given previous research indicating that indiviudals experiencing shame self-report wanting to shrink or dissapear. In sum, results from this study indicate that individual difference in shame-proneness influence perceptions of and reactions to ambiguous social interactions. Specifically, these results imply that individuals high in shame-proneness approach socially evaluative situations with heightened vulnerability and ultimately manifest more malignant stress responses.
Poster Location 21:
The Shame and Guilt Inventory: Further validation of a new scenario-based measure of shame- and guilt-proneness
Heidi L. Eyre, Jennifer L. Klein & Kayla R. Ogura, Jacksonville State University
The purpose of this study was to further validate a new scenario-based measure of shame- and guilt-proneness entitled the Shame and Guilt Inventory (SAGI). This measure was validated by examining the associations between the SAGI and other widely used measures of guilt-proneness and shame-proneness (e.g., Test of Self-Conscious Affect, Personal Feelings Questionnaire, Gilbert Shame and Guilt Scale, Guilt Inventory) as well as with measures of psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, depression). As in previous studies, three of the SAGI subscales showed adequate convergent and divergent validity in a sample of 254 college students. However, one SAGI subscale did not show the expected results. Discussion focuses on the strengths and limitations of the SAGI, including potential issues with the fourth subscale.
Poster Location 22:
From wealth to well being: Spending money on others promotes happiness
Lara B. Aknin & Elizabeth W. Dunn, University of British Columbia, Michael I. Norton, Harvard Business School
Previous research investigating the link between money and happiness has focused on the relationship between income level and well-being. While most of this research has shown that money has a weak effect on happiness once basic needs are met, we suggest that how people spend their money may be at least as important for their well-being as how much money they earn. Specifically, we hypothesized that spending money on other people may have a more positive impact on well-being than spending money on oneself. To examine this hypothesis we conducted a set of two related studies. In Study 1, a sample of 16 employees rated their happiness before receiving and after spending a profit-sharing bonus. In addition, employees reported the percentage of their windfall spent on others (gifts for others and donations to charity) and on themselves (bills, expenses, and self gifts). Analyses revealed that spending more of one's bonus money on others was associated with higher happiness levels 6-8 weeks later, even while controlling for initial happiness levels. In Study 2, a sample of 46 undergraduates was randomly assigned to spend $5 or $20 on either themselves or others. Again, analyses revealed that participants randomly assigned to spend the given amount on others were happiest at the end of the day, regardless of the monetary amount. Taken together, these two studies provide initial converging evidence for the idea that spending money on others can promote happiness.
Poster Location 23:
Core affect trajectories in a laboratory study: A comparison of two assessment tools
Jennifer C. Veilleux & Jon D. Kassel, University of Illinois at Chicago
In a recent article, Kuppens, Van Mechelen, Nezlek, Dossche and Timmermans (2007) calculated new measures of individual variability (Pulse, a measure of intensity variability, and Spin, a measure of quality variability) in emotional self-report over time. Kuppens et al. (2007) found these core affect trajectories to provide meaningful information about individual differences in emotion variability and associations with personality dimensions, but were unable to directly compare the two assessment tools used in two separate studies. An additional question is whether emotional variability experienced in a laboratory setting is phenomenologically equivalent to emotions experienced in daily life. The current study calculated the same core affect trajectories as Kuppens et al (2007) using two similar emotion scales, the Affect Grid and selected subscales from the PANAS-X, in a single session. Using a within-subjects design, each participant (63 college students; mean age 18.81, 58% female) experienced three induced emotions (Excitement, Anxiety, and Contentment) and rated their emotion response at baseline and following each induction. Specific affect scales were transformed into valence and arousal prior to calculating variability indices and core affect trajectories. The resulting Affect Grid calculations were similar to Kuppens et al (2007) Affect Grid ratings using ecological momentary assessment. However, with the exception of Pulse, emotion variability ratings between the Affect Grid and the PANAS-X were significantly different. Our findings suggest that the scale used to measure affect variability influences the results, and provide some indication that emotion variability in the lab is similar to fluctuation observed in daily life.
Poster Location 24:
Emotional contagion and susceptibility to affect: Implications for leadership
Eugene Y.J. Tee & Neal M. Ashkanasy, University of Queensland Business School, Australia
The present study examines emotional contagion processes and individual differences in susceptibility to affect as a determinant of leadership effectiveness. We argue that followers can influence leaders' moods and performance via their moods via contagion processes, and that the leader's extraversion and neuroticism will moderate the leaders susceptibility to positive, and negative affect respectively. In a laboratory experiment, undergraduate students formed forty-eight (48) five-member teams. Each team consisted of one leader, two followers and two observers. Leaders were required to direct the followers in the construction of a small but surprisingly complex Lego© model car, whilst observers provided an objective rating of the leaders mood and performance in terms of task effectiveness and decision-making speed. Unbeknownst to the leaders, followers were assigned as confederates for this study, deliberately portraying either positive, neutral or negative mood when interacting with the leader. Initial results are supportive of followers' ability to influence leaders' mood and performance. Leaders interacting with positive-mood followers reported themselves, and were evaluated by observers as experiencing more positive mood. Likewise, leaders interacting with negative-mood followers reported themselves, and were evaluated by observers to be exhibiting more negative mood. Additionally, we found that leaders high on neuroticism, in contrast with emotionally stable leaders, were more receptive of followers' negative mood, and performed less effectively and less expediently when interacting with negative-mood followers.
Poster Location 24:
Stumbling off happiness: The role of perceived motivation in the affective consequences of prosocial behavior
Jason M. Chin & Jonathan W. Schooler, University of British Columbia
Psychological research supports the notion that people who perform a prosocial act tend to experience an increased positive mood afterwards. This finding smoothly leads to the advice: do good for others, and you'll also benefit. We ask if knowledge of these findings on the hedonic benefits of prosocial behaviors effectively changes the motivation for performing them, making them less prosocial and more "pro-me." This change in apparent motivation may, in turn, rob the behavior of any emotional rewards it once had. Our interpretation follows from a self signaling model of motivation, which posits that people observe their own behaviors in order to gain insights about themselves. People are therefore motivated to engage in seemingly prosocial ways. A laboratory study found tentative evidence for this self-signaling interpretation. Participants were assigned to feel as if they either chose or had to write a thank you card, or write about their average day (control). We also manipulated whether or not participants were told that the task was known to improve mood. The results suggest that when participants felt they chose to engage in the control task, thinking this task would make them happy did make them happy. Alternatively, when they felt they chose to write a thank you card, expecting this task would make them happy actually caused the opposite trend. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Poster Location 25:
Stumbling behavioral double dissociation of two cognitive control strategies of emotion: Distraction & reappraisal
Gal Sheppes, Edward Skripnik, Erez Catran, & Nachshon Meiran, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Recent imaging data offered a theoretical dissociation between two major emotion regulation strategies. Distraction recruits the left prefrontal cortex (PFC) in performing a secondary task which involves the production of working memory contents unrelated to the emotional situation. By contrast, reappraisal recruits the right lateral PFC in transforming/reinterpreting emotional contents to neutral contents, hence requiring increased inhibition to prevent reactivation of the emotional contents. However, a double dissociation of these strategies has never been reported in a single study and existing behavioral results did not support the neurologically inspired theory. The authors provide, for the first time, a direct behavioral double dissociation that supports these neurological findings. By making emotion regulation challenging, they show that reappraisal results in impaired inhibition (via Stroop performance) relative to distraction, thus providing evidence that reappraisal involves inhibitory resources. By contrast, distraction but not reappraisal impaired memory encoding of the emotional situation.
Poster Location 26:
Positive emotions and consumption behavior: A look at how different positive emotions broaden in different ways
Lisa Cavanaugh, Jim Bettman, & Mary Frances Luce, Duke University
Prior research provides limited understanding of the differential effects of distinct positive emotions on consumption behaviors. We build on both appraisal theory and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions to understand the influence of different positive emotions on consumption behavior. We examine new appraisal dimensions important to positive emotions and show that different positive emotions lead to different specific broadening behaviors, using both manipulated and measured emotions. Our approach acknowledges that emotions are characterized not simply by single appraisal dimensions but by patterns of appraisal and that any pair of emotions differs on more than one appraisal dimension. We introduce a new methodology for taking into account multiple appraisal dimensions underlying specific emotions. More specifically, by accounting for the extent to which an individual regularly experiences an array of emotions, we are able to develop scores reflecting which appraisal dimensions are most likely to be chronically active. We call these scores appraisal dispositions. We find a dissociation such that an appraisal disposition high in social fusion but not problem-solving increases socially conscious behaviors benefiting distant others, whereas an appraisal disposition for problem-solving but not social fusion increases consideration set size. In sum, we show that different positive emotions broaden in different ways and demonstrate that different types of broadening foster different types of consumption behaviors.
Poster Location 27:
Simulation bias: A test of embodied emotion knowledge
Sara Lakdawala, Alyssa Mellor, & Kristen Lindquist, Boston College, Lawrence Barsalou, Emory University & Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College
According to current theories of embodied emotion, seeing emotion in the face of another requires conceptualization involving simulation in sensory and motor cortices of a prior instance or exemplar of that emotion (Barrett, 2006; Niedenthal, et al, 2005; Niedenthal, in press). It should therefore be possible to seed the conceptual system for emotion with specific depictions of emotion and bias subsequent perception of a target face. In the present studies, participants first completed a bias phase designed to seed simulations for fear and anger categories. Participants viewed facial depictions of fear and anger that are typically assumed to be most prototypical. Next, participants completed a study phase where they were exposed to the same target identities depicting facial configurations that are believed to be less typical for fear and anger. After a delay, participants completed a test phase where they recalled which target faces were seen in the study phase. Participants chose between the seeded face presented during the bias period, the target face presented in the study period and a morphed image of the two faces. We predicted and found that participants more often remembered seeing the seed faces than the actual targets, indicating that they had simulated those faces when perceiving target faces in the study phase. This effect was replicated and extended in Study 2, where non-prototypical faces were seeded and targets were prototypical faces. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that people use simulations of previously seen emotion exemplars to support the perception of current instances of emotion.
Poster Location 28:
Individual differences in associative affective learning
Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Christopher Sege, Ashley Blanco, & Jon Horvitz, Boston College,
Karen Quigley, War Related Illness & Injury Study Center,
Department of Veterans Affairs-New Jersey Heath Care System, Peter Balsam, Columbia University & Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College
People vary in their sensitivity to the hedonic or affect-inducing properties of their environments (called sensitivity to affective value). We present evidence to show that this individual difference systematically influences people's ability to learn about the affective value of new stimuli. Participants first completed behavioral and self-report measures of sensitivity to affective value. They then completed a differential classical conditioning task. Compared to participants who were less sensitive to affective value at the outset, affective learning proceeded more robustly for those who were both behaviorally sensitive to affective value and described themselves as being particularly sensitive to negative affective value. Implications for individual differences in affective experience are discussed.
Poster Location 29:
Facial affect influences affective learning
Adam Akpinar & Eliza Bliss-Moreau, Boston College, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Boston College and Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
To effectively navigate the social environment, people must learn who is friend and who is foe. Previous studies from our lab have shown that such affective learning proceeds under minimal conditions, where neutral faces acquire value by being paired four times with sentences describing positive or negative behaviors. In the present study, we investigated whether the affective expressions of target people influence how affective learning about them proceeds. In a learning phase, participants viewed pictures of faces that were each paired with a sentence describing a valenced or neutral behavior. Half of the faces paired with positive sentences had slightly positive facial expressions, while half of the faces paired with negative sentences had slightly negative facial expressions. All other faces were neutral. During the judgment phase, participants viewed the target faces (that all had neutral expressions) alone and rapidly judged them as positive or negative. Finally, participants recalled the sentences with which each face was paired. Target faces paired with negative sentences were more likely than chance to be judged as negative only if their facial expressions were neutral during learning. Participants also recalled more sentence content for identities paired with negative sentences when their facial expressions were neutral as compared with negative during learning. These findings suggest people's negative affective expressions influence the extent to which contextual information about them is encoded by observers.
Poster Location 30:
Uncovering the affective core of self-esteem and narcissism: Authentic and hubristic pride
Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, University of British Columbia, Richard W. Robins, University of California, Davis, & Kali H. Trzesniewski, University of Western Ontario
Do individuals with high self-esteem enjoy positive interpersonal relationships and mental health, or are they better characterized as aggressive and anti-social? Does narcissism represent an abundance of self-worth and pride, or inflated and unrealistic self-views driven by an overcompensation for low self-worth? The present research addresses the apparently two-sided nature of self-esteem and narcissism by distinguishing between two distinct self-regulatory systems (i.e., narcissistic self-aggrandizement and genuine self-esteem), and proposing that two distinct facets of pride - authentic and hubristic - form the affective core of each. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these two systems have highly divergent influences on personality, social behavior, and psychopathology, and these differences map onto differences between the two facets of pride. In fact, distinguishing between the two pride facets helps solve the self-esteem puzzle, allowing us to understand why some individuals can appear to have high self-esteem (i.e., narcissism) yet show a range of problematic interpersonal behaviors and mental health outcomes. Findings from several studies (N = 2300) demonstrate that: (a) narcissistic and genuine self-esteem can be empirically distinguished by controlling for their shared variance; (b) genuine self-esteem is positively related to successful social relationships and mental health, whereas narcissistic self-aggrandizement is positively related to aggression and other anti-social behaviors; (c) authentic and hubristic pride have divergent correlates that parallel those of self-esteem and narcissism; and (d) hubristic pride may represent a less well-defended component of narcissism, evidenced by its positive relationship with a range of maladaptive social and mental health outcomes.
Poster Location 31:
The impact of emotions on implicit and explicit preferences for 'green' products
Vera Sacharin & Richard Gonzalez, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
Hurricanes, droughts, and floods raise the awareness of global warming's disastrous effects. Ideally, this knowledge should increase environmentally responsible behavior and a preference for 'green' products. However, being confronted with the ravages of nature might back-fire. When individuals feel threatened they might withdraw from natural things. The expression of negative attitudes towards natural products then serves ego-defensive functions rather than value expressive functions (Katz, 1960). We predicted that nature images that arouse negative emotions would result in a reduced preference for natural products. 160 participants were either primed with positive, neutral, or negative emotions with a series of nature pictures from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1998). Objects (e.g., bowls) that differed in how environmentally friendly they looked but were of equal attractiveness were presented to participants for implicit and explicit evaluations. Implicit evaluations were assessed in an Implicit Association Task (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Negative emotions reduced the preference for natural products, however, only for women. Men resembled women in preferring natural products when positive emotions were aroused. However, they favored natural products the most in the negative condition. The interaction of valence and gender remained significant in the IAT also after controlling for individual differences in environmental attitudes, and the same trend emerged in the explicit judgments. The results imply that independent of environmental attitudes, emotions aroused by nature images can impact the preference for 'green' products. Reasons for gender differences in reactions to nature stimuli are discussed.
Poster Location 32:
Affective influences on investment decisions: Behavioral and neural correlates
Julie L. Hall, Richard Gonzalez, & Oliver C. Schultheiss, University of Michigan
Previous research indicates that facial expressions of emotion can influence preference ratings and judgments, consumption behavior, and physiological responses. More recently, research has begun to examine the important role of affect in decision making. However, the specific mechanisms of how affect influences financial decisions are still not well understood. To address this question, the current study used affective primes (i.e., happy, angry, and neutral faces) presented under supraliminal and subliminal conditions combined with an investment task. Based on previous research demonstrating that positive moods promote optimistic judgments and choices whereas negative moods promote pessimistic judgments and choices, we predicted that the presentation of happy faces would be associated with greater risk-seeking while angry faces would be associated with greater risk-aversion. During fMRI scans, twenty-four participants completed conscious and unconscious trials consisting of an affective prime followed by an investment task where they had to decide between risky, high-payoff stocks and a safe, low-payoff bond. As predicted, participants were more likely to choose risky stocks after happy versus neutral face presentations in both supraliminal and subliminal conditions. After angry versus neutral face presentations, participants were more likely to choose the safe bond although this effect was nonsignificant. Our results demonstrate that facial expressions of emotion, even when they are not consciously perceived, can influence investment behavior and the areas of the brain involved in financial decision making. In conclusion, our findings suggest that the inclusion of affect may lead to more accurate models of economic decision making that better predict choice.
Poster Location 33:
The relative influence of context and face on judgments of emotion
HyiSung Hwang & David Matsumoto, San Francisco State University, Kahoru Takabatake & Hiroshi Yamada, Nihon University, HwaRyung Lee, YonSei University
This study examined the effects of context compared with faces on judgments of emotion, extending the previous findings (Matsumoto, 2007; Ekman & O'Sullivan, 1988). Systematical pairing was done of varying contextual information with different facial expressions. Contextual information was paired with congruent or incongruent facial expressions (USA, Japan, Korea). We hypothesized that Americans are more likely to rely on facial expressions than Asians, and that Asians tend to rely more on context than Americans do when judging other's emotions in incongruent pairs. Participants were presented with a vignette paired with a neutral photo. Then they were shown the same vignette with an emotion photo (anger, happiness, sadness). The emotion of this photo was congruent or incongruent with the emotion suggested in the vignette. Then they were asked to judge the emotion the person in the photo was feeling in a forced choice judgment task with seven alternatives. They rated the intensity of the person's experience using a 7-point scale. This was repeated with 18 vignettes, six of which presented congruent face and vignette information, and twelve which were incongruent. The results indicated that Americans' judgments tended to agree more with the facial expressions than the Asians', whereas the Asians' judgments agreed more with the vignette than the faces. However, there were no significant differences in intensity rating across cultures (p <.05).
Poster Location 34:
Resilience in the face of stress: Cognitive reappraisal ability moderates the relationship between stress and depression
Allison Troy Caston, Amanda J. Shallcross, & Iris B. Mauss, University of Denver
Previous research suggests a robust link between exposure to stress and depression (Tennant, 2002). It is not well understood, however, why some individuals become depressed after exposure to stressors while others do not. Recent findings in the field of emotion regulation point to a potentially crucial factor: cognitive reappraisal, or reframing emotional events so as to render them less emotional. In the context of stress, it may be that individuals who can use reappraisal as needed may be protected against increases in depressive symptoms. The present study examined this hypothesis. It expands upon existing research in two ways. First, by measuring individuals' ability to use reappraisal rather than relying on self-report measures of reappraisal use. Second, by assessing reappraisal ability in the context of high life stress, a situation in which successful emotion regulation may be particularly important. A sample of women who had recently experienced a stressful life event (n = 70) was instructed to use reappraisal during a laboratory sadness induction. Reappraisal ability was measured by examining decreases in sadness in two affective domains (self-reported sadness and skin conductance level). Stress levels and depressive symptoms were also measured. Results indicate that, at low levels of stress, there are no differences in depressive symptoms between participants with high versus low reappraisal ability. However, at high levels of stress, women with high reappraisal ability exhibit significantly less depressive symptoms than their low-reappraisal-ability counterparts, suggesting that reappraisal ability may be an important moderator of the link between stress and depression.
Poster Location 35:
Parents' emotion-related beliefs and behaviors and children's coping with emotional events
Amy G. Halberstadt, North Carolina State University, Julie A. Thompson, Duke University, Alison E. Parker, innovation, Research and Training, Inc., & Julie C. Dunsmore, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Parents' beliefs and behaviors regarding emotion and children's coping strategies were investigated after a set of terrorist attacks. Parents filled out the Parents' Beliefs about Negative Emotions questionnaire and were interviewed within two weeks of the attacks about their behaviors with their children (discussion and expression). Their elementary and middle school-aged children were interviewed eight weeks after the attacks. Parents' beliefs about the value of children's emotions and the danger of children's emotions were both positively related to their discussion with their children. Parents' belief about the danger of children's emotions was negatively related to parents' expressiveness with their children. Parents' beliefs were also related to the five kinds of coping strategies reported by their children. Parents' belief about the value of children's emotions predicted children's reports of their problem-solving, emotion-oriented, and support-seeking coping strategies following the attacks. Parents' belief about the danger of children's emotions predicted children's reports of avoidance and distraction coping strategies following the attacks. Parents' beliefs about the importance of children's emotions may foster a family atmosphere that facilitates children's coping with intensely emotional events. Results support the utility of differentiated, multi-faceted analysis of the broader construct of parental beliefs.