Valence Focus and the Perception of Facial Affect.

Individuals differ in the extent to which they emphasize feelings of pleasure or displeasure in their verbal reports of emotional experience, an individual difference termed valence focus (VF). This multimethod study indicates that VF is linked to heightened efficiency in perceptual processing of affective stimuli. Individuals higher in VF (i.e., who emphasized feelings of pleasure/displeasure in reports of emotional experiences) were more sensitive to changes in negative facial expressions than individuals lower in VF. The effect was not accounted for by current affective state or other personality characteristics. Implications for the validity of self-reported experienced emotion are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changes in the sensitivity to appetitive and aversive arousal across adulthood.

In 2 cross-sectional studies, the authors examined age-related differences in the evaluation of emotional stimuli in 2 community samples, with participants ranging in age from young to older adulthood (18–81 years old). Pictures of the International Affective Picture System were used in Study 1, and written verbs were used in Study 2. Participants rated these stimuli along the 2 major affective dimensions of hedonic valence and emotional arousal, thus yielding a 2-dimensional affective space for each participant. Young adults showed the expected pattern of 2 distinct clusters of stimuli in this space, representing increasing pleasantness (appetitive activation) and unpleasantness (aversive activation) with increasing emotional arousal. In contrast, for older adults, emotional valence and arousal ratings were linearly related: Low-arousing stimuli were rated as most pleasant, and high-arousing stimuli were rated as most unpleasant. When regressed on age, these changes revealed a gradual decrease of appetitive activation (i.e., the relationship between pleasure and arousal) across adulthood and a linear increase in aversive activation (i.e., the relationship between displeasure and arousal). These results extend previous work on emotional development, adding information as to the role of emotional intensity for affective experience in different age groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive correlates of emotional traits: Perceptions of self and others.

Two studies examined how individuals' perceptions of self and others are associated with different emotional traits. Study 1 (N = 386) used structural equation modeling of questionnaire data to examine the relations between emotional traits (i.e., affect intensity, affect variability, and trait pleasant and unpleasant affect) and self- and other-perceptions (i.e., self-instability, self-esteem, other-instability, and perceived treatment by others). Study 2 (N = 99) used path analyses of data collected using an event sampling method in which online measures of emotional experiences (i.e., intensity, frequency, and variability of pleasant and unpleasant affect) as well as perceptions of self and others (i.e., self-instability, self-esteem, other-instability, perceived treatment by others) were collected. The strongest and most consistent finding was that affect variability was associated with both self- and other-instability. The results linking affect intensity with self- and other-instability were limited to negative intensity. There was also evidence of pleasant affect being associated with both self-esteem and perceived treatment by others, and unpleasant affect being associated with self-esteem and other-instability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electrophysiological correlates of emotional responding in schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia consistently report normal levels of pleasant emotion when exposed to evocative stimuli, suggesting intact consummatory pleasure. However, little is known about the neural correlates and time course of emotion in schizophrenia. This study used a well-validated affective picture viewing task that elicits a characteristic pattern of event-related potentials (ERPs) from early to later processing stages (i.e., P1, P2, P3, and late positive potentials [LPPs]). Thirty-eight stabilized outpatients with schizophrenia and 36 healthy controls viewed standardized pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures while ERPs were recorded and subsequently rated their emotional responses to the stimuli. Patients and controls responded to the pictures similarly in terms of their valence ratings, as well as the initial ERP components (P1, P2, and P3). However, at the later LPP component (500–1,000 ms), patients displayed diminished electrophysiological discrimination between pleasant versus neutral stimuli. This pattern suggests that patients demonstrated normal self-reported emotional experience and intact initial sensory processing of and resource allocation to emotional stimuli. However, they showed a disruption in a later component associated with sustained attentional processing of emotional stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Static, dynamic, and causative bipolarity of affect.

In what sense are pleasant and unpleasant moods "bipolar?" One must differentiate three types of affective bipolarity: static bipolarity (the zero-order correlation between measures of pleasant and unpleasant affect, net of distortions due to measurement error, tends to be strongly negative), dynamic bipolarity (pleasant and unpleasant feelings generally change in opposite directions and to approximately the same extent), and causative bipolarity (the influence of pleasant and unpleasant affect on other variables is approximately equal and opposite). It is argued that static bipolarity is often attenuated by measurement error, dynamic bipolarity can be masked by asymmetrical scaling artifacts, and causative bipolarity is often obscured by both. The experience and influence of pleasant and unpleasant affect may occur along bipolar lines even if the sources of these feelings are understood as physiologically separable systems with distinct neurological loci. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repressive coping: Distraction using pleasant thoughts and memories.

To avoid exposure to unpleasant or unwanted emotional material, some people may distract themselves by summoning up pleasant thoughts such as happy memories. Manipulation of negative affect might therefore result in heightened accessibility of pleasant thoughts and memories, contrary to hypotheses of mood-congruent recall. In Experiment 1, repressors were faster to recall happy memories after watching an unpleasant film than after watching a neutral film. Nonrepressors showed the opposite effect (i.e., mood-congruent memory). In Experiment 2, after an unpleasant film, repressors were faster to recall a happy memory than to recall a sad memory. In Experiment 3, repressors spontaneously generated pleasant thoughts after watching an unpleasant film, whereas nonrepressors did not. Thus, repressors apparently cope with exposure to negative affective material by accessing pleasant thoughts. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive defenses against emotional distress and the associative structure of repression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The 120-S minute: using analysis of work activity to prevent psychological distress among elementary school teachers

To avoid exposure to unpleasant or unwanted emotional material, some people may distract themselves by summoning up pleasant thoughts such as happy memories. Manipulation of negative affect might therefore result in heightened accessibility of pleasant thoughts and memories, contrary to hypotheses of mood-congruent recall. In Experiment 1, repressors were faster to recall happy memories after watching an unpleasant film than after watching a neutral film. Nonrepressors showed the opposite effect (i.e., mood-congruent memory). In Experiment 2, after an unpleasant film, repressors were faster to recall a happy memory than to recall a sad memory. In Experiment 3, repressors spontaneously generated pleasant thoughts after watching an unpleasant film, whereas nonrepressors did not. Thus, repressors apparently cope with exposure to negative affective material by accessing pleasant thoughts. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive defenses against emotional distress and the associative structure of repression.     

Evidence of convergent validity on the dimensions of affect.

Despite widely differing methodologies, previous studies on affect (emotion as represented in language) have often obtained what appear to be the same basic dimensions. Whether these similarly named dimensions from different methodologies are actually equivalent was tested in 3 experiments (a total of 276 undergraduate Ss) by intercorrelating dimensions obtained from multidimensional scaling, successive-intervals scaling, semantic differential scaling, and factor analysis of verbal self-report data. Results strongly support the convergent validity of pleasure–displeasure and degree of arousal, but are equivocal on additional dimensions. Separate multidimensional scalings of pleasant, intermediate, and unpleasant affect terms (a) confirmed the presence of an arousal dimension at each level of pleasure and (b) obtained 3 additional dimensions: control/potency/dominance, depth of experience, and locus of causation. These 3 dimensions are interpreted as describing not the emotion per se but rather beliefs about the antecedents or consequences of the emotion. In Exp III, internal vs external locus of causation was shown to be reliably decoded from emotion-denoting words. (50 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Duchenne smile: Emotional expression and brain physiology: II.

Facial expression, EEG, and self-report of subjective emotional experience were recorded while subjects individually watched both pleasant and unpleasant films. Smiling in which the muscle that orbits the eye is active in addition to the muscle that pulls the lip corners up (the Duchenne smile) was compared with other smiling in which the muscle orbiting the eye was not active. As predicted, the Duchenne smile was related to enjoyment in terms of occurring more often during the pleasant than the unpleasant films, in measures of cerebral asymmetry, and in relation to subjective reports of positive emotions, and other smiling was not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diminished response to pleasant stimuli by depressed women.

This study examined the self-report and facial expressions of emotional response to pictorial stimuli and the incidental learning of pleasant and unpleasant words by depressed (n?=?20) and nondepressed (n?=?20) women. Depression was associated with reports of diminished emotional response and reduced frequency and intensity of facial expressions only to pleasant stimuli. The 2 groups did not differ in response to hedonically unpleasant stimuli, even those specifically relevant to the emotion of sadness. In a similar vein, depressed and nondepressed participants showed differences in incidental recall for only pleasant self-referential terms. There was no difference in recall of unpleasant words. These findings suggest the importance of hedonic deficits on psychological processes in clinical depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective valence and arousal in ADHD and normal boys during a startle habituation experiment

OBJECTIVE: To measure two dimensions of emotion (affective valence and arousal) in 29 boys with attention-deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADHD) and 32 normal boys. METHOD: After a startle habituation experiment during which these subjects heard 40 startling sounds while watching a silent interesting movie, they were asked 12 questions (categorized a priori into questions relating to affective valence and to arousal) about their emotional reactions to these putatively unpleasant and pleasurable stimuli. Responses were recorded for the two dimensions of emotion, using two cartoon strips in each of which five expressions of a cartoon character varied linearly from happy to unhappy (affective valence dimension) and calm to excited (arousal dimension). RESULTS: Factor analyses of the 12 responses revealed four factors in which the highest loadings were for affective valence to the startle responses, affective valence to the silent movie, arousal, and scary feelings. Relative to the normal group, the responses of the ADHD group were significantly biased toward pleasurable valence to the startling stimuli and to the silent movie, with a trend toward hypoarousal. Startle magnitude and habituation were similar in both groups. The normal tonic heart rate acceleration throughout the experimental session was not sustained in the ADHD group. CONCLUSIONS: The self-reports of affective valence biased in the direction of pleasure and away from displeasure and the trend toward hypoarousal suggest an emotional dysfunction in ADHD.     

Role quality, multiple role involvement, and psychological well-being in midlife women.

Examined women's occupancy of the social roles of paid worker, wife, and mother, and the quality of their experience in these 3 roles in relation to psychological well-being. Data were from a disproportionate (i.e., women from high-prestige occupations) random sample of 23 White women (aged 35–55 yrs). Well-being was measured by indices of self-esteem, depression, and pleasure; pleasure was assessed by a scale consisting of single-item measures of happiness, satisfaction, and optimism. Role quality was measured by scales developed for this study that assessed the balance between the positive and negative attributes women perceived in their roles. Hierarchical regression analyses controlling for age, education, and income indicated that role occupancy was unrelated to well-being with one exception: Occupying the role of paid worker significantly predicted self-esteem. In contrast, the 3 role-quality variables were significant predictors of the well-being indices, except that quality of experience in the role of mother did not predict pleasure. Findings suggest the importance of qualitative rather than quantitative aspects of role involvement and the need to examine different dimensions of well-being in relation to social roles. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of personality measures in terms of basic dimensions of temperament.

Studied 211 college students to explore the heuristic value of a 3-dimensional framework of temperament (trait pleasure; arousability and its converse, screening; and dominance–submissiveness) by analyzing commonly employed measures of personality (e.g., the Eysenck Personality Inventory and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). Regression analyses yielded the following groupings of available measures: exuberant (pleasant, arousable, dominant); anxious (unpleasant, arousable, submissive); relaxed (pleasant, unarousable, dominant); disdainful (unpleasant, unarousable, dominant); dependent (pleasant, arousable, submissive); aggressive (unpleasant, arousable, dominant); docile (pleasant, unarousable, submissive); and depressed (unpleasant, unarousable, submissive). These 8 groups in turn help define 4 additional temperament dimensions (exuberant–depressed, relaxed–anxious, disdainful–dependent, hostile–docile) that are the diagonals of the 3-dimensional temperament space. Of the 8 groups, the last 2 seem underrepresented among commonly used measures of personality for normal populations. Measures of depression are available for clinical populations, but measures of docility (which differs from dependency in terms of arousability) do not seem to be available. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional states alter force control during a feedback occluded motor task.

The aim of the current experiment was to determine the extent to which pleasant and unpleasant emotional states altered the ability of men and women to control force production on a feedback occluded motor task that was not direction specific. Participants produced a precision pinch grip with visual feedback. After 5 s, feedback was occluded and replaced with a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral image. The amplitude, variability, and structure of force production were calculated. As expected, the removal of visual feedback led to progressive force decay. More important, relative to neutral conditions, pleasant and unpleasant emotional states led to greater force production, resulting in attenuated force decay. The variability and structure of force production were not altered by affective state. In addition, men and women performed similarly across all conditions for all measures. We conclude that when sustained force production is not directed toward or away from the body, pleasant and unpleasant emotional states similarly excite the motor system. Neurobiological mechanisms are proposed to account for these findings. Implications and future research directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond good and evil: The time-course of neural activity elicited by specific picture content.

The present study examined electrocortical evidence for a negativity bias, focusing on the impact of specific picture content on a range of event-related potentials (ERPs). To this end, ERPs were recorded while 67 participants viewed a variety of pictures from the International Affective Picture System. Examination of broad categories (i.e., pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) found no evidence for a negativity bias in two early components, the N1 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN), but revealed that unpleasant images did elicit a larger late positive potential (LPP) than pleasant pictures. However, images of erotica and mutilation elicited comparable LPP responses, as did affiliative and threatening images. Exciting (i.e., sports) images and disgusting images elicited smaller LPPs than other emotional images, similar to neutral images containing people—which were associated with the largest LPPs among neutral pictures. When these three anomalous categories (exciting, disgusting, and scenes with people) were excluded, unpleasant images no longer elicited a larger LPP than pleasant images. Thus, including exciting images in pleasant ERP averages disproportionately reduces the LPP. The present findings are discussed in light of the motivational significance of specific picture subtypes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's facial responsiveness to odors: Influences of hedonic valence of odor, gender, age, and social presence.

Facial responsiveness to pleasant and unpleasant odors was examined in 5- to 12 year-old children in either an alone condition (AC) or a social presence condition (SPC). The children failed to display reflex-like patterns, but they exhibited facial configurations that varied according to the odor valence and the social condition. Girls evidenced more smiles than did boys, but this sex difference was significant only in response to unpleasant odors in the SPC. Furthermore, untrained observers were able to accurately identify the children's facial responses to unpleasant odors in the AC only and to pleasant odors in the SPC only. These findings (a) suggest that facial responsiveness to odors is flexible and able to reorganize when display rules operate and (b) support the emotional and communicative functions of human facial behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional state affects the initiation of forward gait.

The aim of the current study was to determine the extent to which pleasant and unpleasant emotional states impact the initiation of forward gait. Participants initiated gait and walked for several steps following the presentation of low arousing pleasant, high arousing pleasant, low arousing unpleasant, high arousing unpleasant, and neutral pictures. Reaction time, displacement, and velocity of the center of pressure (COP) trajectory, and length and velocity of the first and second steps were calculated. Exposure to the highly arousing unpleasant pictures reduced reaction times compared to all other affective conditions. Compared to the low arousing unpleasant pictures, exposure to the high and low arousing pleasant pictures increased the displacement of the COP movement during the anticipatory postural adjustment phase of gait initiation. Additionally, exposure to the low arousing pleasant pictures increased the velocity of the COP movement during the anticipatory postural adjustment phase, compared to the high and low arousing unpleasant pictures. Exposure to the high and low arousing pleasant pictures increased the velocity of the first step relative to the low arousing unpleasant pictures. These findings demonstrate that highly arousing unpleasant emotional states accelerate the initial motor response, but pleasant emotional states generally facilitate the initiation of forward gait due to the approach-oriented directional salience of the movement. These findings extend the scope of the motivational direction hypothesis by demonstrating the effects of emotional reactivity on the initiation of gait. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eye movement assessment of selective attentional capture by emotional pictures.

The eye-tracking method was used to assess attentional orienting to and engagement on emotional visual scenes. In Experiment 1, unpleasant, neutral, or pleasant target pictures were presented simultaneously with neutral control pictures in peripheral vision under instruction to compare pleasantness of the pictures. The probability of first fixating an emotional picture, and the frequency of subsequent fixations, were greater than those for neutral pictures. In Experiment 2, participants were instructed to avoid looking at the emotional pictures, but these were still more likely to be fixated first and gazed longer during the first-pass viewing than neutral pictures. Low-level visual features cannot explain the results. It is concluded that overt visual attention is captured by both unpleasant and pleasant emotional content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding extraverts' enjoyment of social situations: The importance of pleasantness.

Extraversion is a broad, multifaceted trait, yet researchers are still unsure of its defining characteristics. One possibility is that the essential feature of extraversion is the tendency to enjoy social situations. An alternative possibility is that extraversion represents sensitivity to rewards and the tendency to experience pleasant affect. In three studies, participants rated situations that varied on two dimensions: (a) whether they were social or nonsocial and (b) whether they were very pleasant, moderately pleasant, moderately unpleasant, or very unpleasant. Extraverts only rated social situations more positively than introverts did when the situations were pleasant, and extraverts also rated nonsocial situations more positively than introverts did if the situations were pleasant. Thus, the pleasantness of situations was more important than whether they were social or nonsocial in determining extraverts' and introverts' enjoyment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)