Symposia Abstracts

Feeling Your Way Through Life: Examining the Impact of Emotion on Behavior
Chaired by David DeSteno

Overview

One of the primary putative functions of emotion is to guide behavior in an efficient and adaptive fashion. Although ample evidence exists demonstrating the impact of emotions on multiple types of cognitive processes, investigations extending into the realm of behavior are much rarer, relatively speaking. This lacuna is potentially problematic, as almost all functional theories of emotion directly implicate modulation of behavior as a principle outcome. In this symposium, leading emotion researchers will explore the impact of emotion on decisions and actions in several areas of high import for human functioning. Using social interaction, physiological, neuroendocrine, and fMRI techniques, the ability of emotions to influence social, risk-taking, and economic behavior will be examined with an eye toward illuminating the roles played by emotion in guiding human thought and behavior throughout life.

Putting the Social into Social Emotions: Pride and Empathy in Action

David DeSteno, Northeastern University, Boston

Intergroup Emotion Effects on Stereotyping vs. Evaluative Race Bias

David Amodio, New York University

Linking Emotion and Behavior Across the Developmental Trajectory

Wendy Berry Mendes, Harvard University

Emotional Influences on Social and Economic Decision-Making

Alan Sanfey, University of Arizona

Panel Discussion: What Can (and Can't) We Learn about Emotions from the Brain?
Chaired by Eddie Harmon-Jones

Speakers

Eddie Harmon-Jones, Texas A&M University

Tor Wager, Columbia University

Adam Anderson, University of Toronto

Discussion

Piotr Winkielman, University of California, San Diego

Emotion in Later Life
Chaired by Lisbeth Nielsen

Overview

Psychological research on emotional aging indicates that in contrast to a general profile of age-related decline in fluid cognitive abilities, older adults exhibit remarkable preservation in the patterns of expression, subjective experience, and physiological change associated with emotion. Moreover, evidence from a number of laboratories suggests that older adults possess a preserved or even enhanced ability to regulate their emotional states. Emotional complexity - the ability to appreciate more facets of emotion and to experience mixed emotions - may also be enhanced with advancing age. Similarly, a greater appreciation of emotional factors has been thought to underlie different approaches to problem-solving that emerge in later life, and may contribute to age differences in decision making. Age differences in attention and memory for emotional material have recently been documented, giving rise to the hypothesis that an age-related "positivity effect" (Carstensen, 2006) may underlie some of these observed phenomena. This symposium will present new findings concerning the psychological, behavioral, and neurobiological mechanisms and processes underlying age differences in emotional function, highlighting topics in both affective and social domains, and suggesting directions for future research.

Positive Gaze Preferences in Older Adults: What is Their Function and How Do They Emerge?

Derek Isaacowitz, Brandeis University

How Young and Older Adults Form Emotional Memories

Elizabeth Kensinger, Boston College

Are Older Adults More Effective at Emotion Regulation? Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No

Fredda Blanchard-Fields, Georgia Institute of Technology

Discussion

Lisbeth Nielsen, National Institute on Aging

Panel and Audience Discussion: How Do We "Transform," "Translate," and Apply Emotion Research?
Chaired by Nicole Roberts

Overview

Scientific and funding climates are moving affective science in the direction of being more applied, or "translational" (per NIH) and "transformative" (per NSF). This means being able to generate basic science research that is innovative and offers real-world significance beyond the pages of psychology journals. This symposium brings together researchers from four domains who exemplify this mission, showing how affective science can lead to improvements in people's psychological and physical health, interpersonal relationships, and economic decisions. Audience participation will generate ideas applicable to both junior and senior researchers for how to translate your own research and ultimately transform our understanding of emotion.

Using Affective Neuroscience to Personalize Treatment for Unipolar Depression: Intersections with Social and Personality Psychology

Greg Siegle, Neil Jones, Jennifer Silk, and Michael Thase, University of Pittsburgh

Unipolar depression is characterized by sustained and repetitive processing of negative information. We have observed that these phenomena are associated with increased and sustained physiological reactivity as well as neuroimaging derived indices of limbic reactivity to emotional information and decreased prefrontal regulatory control. These features 1) predict response to clinical interventions for depression, leading to personalized treatment algorithms, 2) change with treatment, leading to insights about the mechanisms of recovery from depression and 3) can be targeted directly by novel behavioral interventions that are not like traditional therapies. Initial investigations of relationships of the phenomenon of sustained emotional information processing to aspects of personality and social functioning are increasingly revealing. For example, there appear to be some differential associations of neural mechanisms of sustained emotional reactivity with trait features of rumination and chronic promotion goal failure. In developmental samples, decreased sustained processing of emotional information is associated with negative affect in the home environment - each is associated with treatment outcome. I will suggest that combining aspects of personality and social assessment with clinical affective neuroscience has the potential to advance all of these disciplines.

The Structure of Affect and Its Immunological Correlates

Suzanne Segerstrom, University of Kentucky

The relationship of affective states to immunological functioning is one of the main areas of inquiry in clinical psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). Some of the earliest investigations in PNI focused on how states such as grief and depression correlated with immunological functions. However, little attention was paid to positive affective states. Eventually, the circumplex model of positive and negative affect trickled down to PNI investigations. As a consequence, a number of investigations found unique relationships between positive affect and immune function or health. The literature on outcome expectancies and immunity provides an example of how better-defined affective structures inform PNI research: earlier studies that used measures of negative affect or combined negative and positive affect did not find that affect mediated the effects of expectancies on immunity and health. However, a recent study that measured both positive and negative affect found that positive affect mediated a within-person relationship between optimism and cellular immunity. PNI research in particular and health research more generally will continue to benefit from refinements in affective science.

The I^3 Theory of Aggression: Implications for Emotion Research

Eli Finkel, Northwestern University

This presentation introduces the I^3 (I-Cubed) theory of aggression, which presents a framework for organizing the risk factors for aggression and for identifying how these risk factors combine to determine whether an individual will enact aggressive behavior. The I^3 theory identifies three central questions researchers must ask regarding a given social interaction to determine whether aggression will transpire. First, does at least one person experience strong Instigating triggers? Second, does that person experience strong Impelling forces? And third, is that person characterized at that time by weak Inhibiting forces? If the answer to all three questions is yes, then the person is likely to engage in aggressive behavior. The presentation includes (a) a literature review from the perspective of the I3 theory, (b) a summary of a series of studies designed to test key components of the theory in the context of intimate relationships, (c) a discussion of the implications of the theory for emotion research, and (d) some thoughts about specific ways aggression research could be advanced by more sophisticated perspectives on emotion.

Gaming Emotions

Eduardo Andrade, University of California, Berkeley

One's own emotions may influence someone else's behavior in a given social interaction. If one believes this, s/he has an incentive to game emotions-to strategically conceal a current emotion or display a non-experienced emotion-in an attempt to influence her/his counterpart. In a series of three experiments, the authors investigate the extent to which people (1) conceal or fake a current emotional state, (2) are willing to acknowledge their strategic actions, and (3) improve their financial wellbeing from emotion gaming.