Trait emotions and affective modulation of the startle eyeblink: On the unique relationship of trait anger.

We examined relationships among individual differences in trait emotions and the emotion-modulated startle-eyeblink response. In particular, we examined the extent to which trait anger, which is negative in valence, would be associated with a pattern of approach motivation in startle eyeblink responses to appetitive stimuli. Self-reported trait emotions were compared with emotion-modulated startle eyeblink responses to auditory probes during appetitive, aversive, and neutral pictures. Results revealed that trait anger, enjoyment, and surprise were each associated with greater blink inhibition to appetitive pictures, indicating an approach motivational response. No other trait emotions were associated with startle eyeblink responses to appetitive or aversive pictures. These results support the idea that trait anger, although experienced as a negative emotion, is associated with an approach-related motivational response to appetitive stimuli at basic, reflexive levels of processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social justifications for moral emotions: When reasons for disgust are less elaborated than for anger.

In the present research, we tested the unreasoning disgust hypothesis: moral disgust, in particular in response to a violation of a bodily norm, is less likely than moral anger to be justified with cognitively elaborated reasons. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to explain why they felt anger and disgust toward pedophiles. Participants were more likely to invoke elaborated reasons, versus merely evaluative responses, when explaining their anger, versus disgust. Experiment 2 used a between-participants design; participants explained why they felt either anger or disgust toward seven groups that either violated a sexual or nonsexual norm. Again, elaborated reasons were less prevalent when explaining their disgust versus anger and, in particular, when explaining disgust toward a group that violated a sexual norm. Experiment 3 further established that these findings are due to a lower accessibility of elaborated reasons for bodily disgust, rather than inhibition in using them when provided. From these findings, it can be concluded that communicating external reasons for moral disgust at bodily violations is made more difficult due to the unavailability of those reasons to people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling and Believing: The Influence of Emotion on Trust.

The authors report results from 5 experiments that describe the influence of emotional states on trust. They found that incidental emotions significantly influence trust in unrelated settings. Happiness and gratitude--emotions with positive valence--increase trust, and anger--an emotion with negative valence--decreases trust. Specifically, they found that emotions characterized by other-person control (anger and gratitude) and weak control appraisals (happiness) influence trust significantly more than emotions characterized by personal control (pride and guilt) or situational control (sadness). These findings suggest that emotions are more likely to be misattributed when the appraisals of the emotion are consistent with the judgment task than when the appraisals of the emotion are inconsistent with the judgment task. Emotions do not influence trust when individuals are aware of the source of their emotions or when individuals are very familiar with the trustee. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A social functional approach to emotions in bargaining: When communicating anger pays and when it backfires.

Previous research on the communication of emotions has suggested that bargainers obtain higher outcomes if they communicate anger than if they communicate happiness because anger signals higher limits, which in turn leads opponents to give in. Building on a social functional account of communicated emotions, the authors demonstrate that the behavioral consequences of communicated anger strongly depend on structural characteristics of the bargaining situation. The results of 3 experimental studies on ultimatum bargaining corroborate the notion that communicated anger signals higher limits and that emotion effects are contingent on bargainers' expectation that low offers will be rejected. The data also indicate, however, that communicating anger in bargaining may backfire. The findings suggest that bargainers who communicate anger may obtain lower outcomes (a) when their opponent has a possibility to deceive them during bargaining and (b) when the consequences of rejecting their opponent's offer are low. Taken together, the current article reveals the boundary conditions of successful communication of anger in bargaining. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiving outgroup members as unresponsive: Implications for approach-related emotions, intentions, and behavior.

In 2 studies, the authors investigated the determinants of anger and approach-related intentions and behavior toward outgroup members in interracial interactions. In Study 1, White and Black participants who were led to believe that their interracial interaction partner was not open to an upcoming interaction reported heightened anger and approach-related intentions concerning the interaction, including viewing their partner as hostile, intending to ask sensitive race-relevant questions during the interaction, and planning to blame the partner if the interaction went poorly. Results of Study 2 showed that White participants who received negative feedback about their Black partner's openness to interracial interactions behaved in a hostile manner toward their interaction partner. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the quality of interracial interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating advice and experience: Learning and decision making with social and nonsocial cues.

When making decisions, people typically gather information from both social and nonsocial sources, such as advice from others and direct experience. This research adapted a cognitive learning paradigm to examine the process by which people learn what sources of information are credible. When participants relied on advice alone to make decisions, their learning of source reliability proceeded in a manner analogous to traditional cue learning processes and replicated the established learning phenomena. However, when advice and nonsocial cues were encountered together as an established phenomenon, blocking (ignoring redundant information) did not occur. Our results suggest that extant cognitive learning models can accommodate either advice or nonsocial cues in isolation. However, the combination of advice and nonsocial cues (a context more typically encountered in daily life) leads to different patterns of learning, in which mutually supportive information from different types of sources is not regarded as redundant and may be particularly compelling. For these situations, cognitive learning models still constitute a promising explanatory tool but one that must be expanded. As such, these findings have important implications for social psychological theory and for cognitive models of learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Weaving together dream, image and relationship: Moving from anger, to fear, to love.

Discussed a case study of play and dream work. After a very difficult couple session, a female client used image play and dream work during a follow-up individual session. There, she was able to take responsibility for the harshness of her verbal communication style with her husband and the destructive belief system that guided her marital interactions. By sharing the client's exploratory and self-reflective play process, the therapist demonstrated how the play stimulated the client's innate capacity to examine her destructive approach to marital relationship, allowed her to uncover her actual (new) needs in the relationship, facilitated her capacity to claim anger, judgment, and "monstrous cobra self', and supported her in finding more helpful interactive patterns. As she faced herself in the mirror of her play, she not only found her shadow (problem), but activated her own inner wisdom and knowing, which offered her viable solutions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beat them or ban them: The characteristics and social functions of anger and contempt.

This article reports 3 studies in which the authors examined (a) the distinctive characteristics of anger and contempt responses and (b) the interpersonal causes and effects of both emotions. In the 1st study, the authors examined the distinction between the 2 emotions; in the 2nd study, the authors tested whether contempt could be predicted from previous anger incidents with the same person; and in the 3rd study, the authors examined the effects of type of relationship on anger and contempt reactions. The results of the 3 studies show that anger and contempt often occur together but that there are clear distinctions between the 2 emotions: Anger is characterized more by short-term attack responses but long-term reconciliation, whereas contempt is characterized by rejection and social exclusion of the other person, both in the short-term and in the long-term. The authors also found that contempt may develop out of previously experienced anger and that a lack of intimacy with and perceived control over the behavior of the other person, as well as negative dispositional attributions about the other person, predicted the emergence of contempt. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness unpacked: Positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience.

Happiness—a composite of life satisfaction, coping resources, and positive emotions—predicts desirable life outcomes in many domains. The broaden-and-build theory suggests that this is because positive emotions help people build lasting resources. To test this hypothesis, the authors measured emotions daily for 1 month in a sample of students (N = 86) and assessed life satisfaction and trait resilience at the beginning and end of the month. Positive emotions predicted increases in both resilience and life satisfaction. Negative emotions had weak or null effects and did not interfere with the benefits of positive emotions. Positive emotions also mediated the relation between baseline and final resilience, but life satisfaction did not. This suggests that it is in-the-moment positive emotions, and not more general positive evaluations of one’s life, that form the link between happiness and desirable life outcomes. Change in resilience mediated the relation between positive emotions and increased life satisfaction, suggesting that happy people become more satisfied not simply because they feel better but because they develop resources for living well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture and mixed emotions: Co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in Japan and the United States.

Previous cross-cultural comparisons of correlations between positive and negative emotions found that East Asians are more likely than Americans to feel dialectical emotions. However, not much is known about the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in a given situation. When asked to describe situations in which they felt mixed emotions, Japanese and American respondents listed mostly similar situations. By presenting these situations to another group of respondents, we found that Japanese reported more mixed emotions than Americans in the predominantly pleasant situations, whereas there were no cultural differences in mixed emotions in the predominantly unpleasant situations or the mixed situations. The appraisal of self-agency mediated cultural differences in mixed emotions in the predominantly pleasant situations. Study 2 replicated the findings by asking participants to recall how they felt in their past pleasant, unpleasant, and mixed situations. The findings suggest that both Americans and Japanese feel mixed emotions, but the kinds of situation in which they typically do so depends on culture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The structure and process of emotional experience following nonmarital relationship dissolution: Dynamic factor analyses of love, anger, and sadness.

Dynamic factor analysis was used to examine the structure and process of daily emotions in a sample of young adults following a romantic breakup. Participants completed a daily diary for 4 weeks reporting on their love/longing for their ex-partner, anger, and sadness. Using a lag-1 process factor analysis model, results revealed that love/longing, sadness, and anger could be reliably distinguished as separate but correlated mood states in a trivariate model. Four emotional dynamics (amplification, reversing, persistence, and cooccurrence) were operationalized and investigated. Differences in these dynamics were observed on the basis of overall adjustment to the separation and attachment styles. Findings are discussed in terms of attachment and contemporary emotion theories, as well as the need to operationalize time-based affective processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The emotionally engaged analyst II: How emotions impact analytic process as illuminated by dynamic systems theory.

A dynamic systems theory of emotion is presented and used to reveal the complex emotional interactions that create the emotional experience of the patient and of the analyst and that constitute, shape, and direct the analytic process. Through the analysis of clinical vignettes, the dynamic emotional processes that engender intense relational moments, enactments, stalemates, and resistances between the patient and the analyst, as well as sequences of disruption, repairs, and mutative change, are illustrated. The flow of emotional energy that vitalizes the analytic interaction and influences the meanings attributed to the patient-analyst interaction is delineated and related to the analyst's emotional engagement of the patient and to the central position of this emotional relationship in facilitating therapeutic change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Moderators and mediators of the stress-aggression relationship: Executive function and state anger.

The present study examined the effects of executive function (i.e., EF) and anger/hostility on the relationship between stress (across individual stress domains, as well as at the aggregate level) and aggression. Two independent groups of participants—a college sample and a low-income community sample—were administered a battery of self-report measures concerning the subjective experience of stress, aggressive behaviors, and feelings of state anger and hostility in the last month, along with a battery of well-validated neuropsychological tests of EF. Across both samples, the stress domains that demonstrated the strongest associations with aggression were those involving chronic strains of daily living (e.g., job, financial, health) versus interpersonal stressors (e.g., family, romantic). In the community sample, analyses also revealed a significant interaction between perceived stress (aggregated across domains) and EF in predicting aggressive behavior. Specifically, participants with relatively low EF abilities, across different EF processes, showed a stronger relationship between different domains of stress and aggression in the last month. Similar effects were demonstrated in the college sample, although the interaction was not significant. In both samples, experiences of anger and hostility in the last month mediated the relationship between perceived stress (aggregate) and aggressive behavior among those low, but not high, in EF. These findings highlight the importance of higher-order cognitive processes in regulating appropriate affective and behavioral responses across different types of individuals, particularly among those experiencing high levels of stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Guarding against hostile thoughts: Trait anger and the recruitment of cognitive control.

Trait anger is a robust predictor of the angry and aggressive response to hostile situational input, but it is important to better understand the mechanisms underlying this dimension of personality. The present two studies (total N = 106) examined the possibility that individuals low in trait anger systematically recruit cognitive control resources within hostile contexts. These resources would likely be useful in facilitating emotion regulation operations. In support of this cognitive control framework, Experiment 1 found that low (but not high) trait anger individuals exhibited superior response-switching abilities in a hostile stimulus context. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated this pattern using a different cognitive control measure related to flanker interference effects. The convergence of findings across studies provides one likely mechanism for the reduced levels of reactivity at low levels of trait anger. Findings are discussed in relation to broader theories of trait anger and emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Finding the attractor of anger: Bridging the gap between dynamic concepts and empirical data.

Although it accounts for the prototypical course of emotions, the attractor concept has hardly ever been used empirically. Authors applied Empirical Differential Equations (EDE) to frequent (hourly) anger ratings to find the attractor of anger. The attractor concept, its neurological basis, and EDE are explained. The attractor of anger follows an underdamped oscillator, and is affected by the capacity to inhibit prepotent responses. Anger accelerates less fast when inhibitory control increases. Results stress the internal dynamics of emotions, and help to bridge the gap between concepts from dynamic systems theory and empirical data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger?

When people have strong moral convictions about outcomes, their judgments of both outcome and procedural fairness become driven more by whether outcomes support or oppose their moral mandates than by whether procedures are proper or improper (the moral mandate effect). Two studies tested 3 explanations for the moral mandate effect. In particular, people with moral mandates may (a) have a greater motivation to seek out procedural flaws when outcomes fail to support their moral point of view (the motivated reasoning hypothesis), (b) be influenced by in-group distributive biases as a result of identifying with parties that share rather than oppose their moral point of view (the group differentiation hypothesis), or (c) react with anger when outcomes are inconsistent with their moral point of view, which, in turn, colors perceptions of both outcomes and procedures (the anger hypothesis). Results support the anger hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trust, trustworthiness, and trust propensity: A meta-analytic test of their unique relationships with risk taking and job performance.

The trust literature distinguishes trustworthiness (the ability, benevolence, and integrity of a trustee) and trust propensity (a dispositional willingness to rely on others) from trust (the intention to accept vulnerability to a trustee based on positive expectations of his or her actions). Although this distinction has clarified some confusion in the literature, it remains unclear (a) which trust antecedents have the strongest relationships with trust and (b) whether trust fully mediates the effects of trustworthiness and trust propensity on behavioral outcomes. Our meta-analysis of 132 independent samples summarized the relationships between the trust variables and both risk taking and job performance (task performance, citizenship behavior, counterproductive behavior). Meta-analytic structural equation modeling supported a partial mediation model wherein trustworthiness and trust propensity explained incremental variance in the behavioral outcomes when trust was controlled. Further analyses revealed that the trustworthiness dimensions also predicted affective commitment, which had unique relationships with the outcomes when controlling for trust. These results generalized across different types of trust measures (i.e., positive expectations measures, willingness-to-be-vulnerable measures, and direct measures) and different trust referents (i.e., leaders, coworkers). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of specific emotions in children's responses to interparental conflict: A test of the model.

Mothers, fathers, and their 6-year-old children (N?=?164) participated in a study testing key tenets of the specific emotions model of marital conflict. Parents reported their marital conflict strategies, were observed interacting with their children, and rated children's behavioral adjustment. Children reported their emotional reactions to specific interparental conflicts. Results support the specific emotions model. Children's behaviors mirrored the marital or parental behaviors of same-gender parents. Indirect effects of marital aggression through parental behavior were detected, and marital and parental behaviors interacted to predict girls' externalizing. Girls' anger, sadness, and fear increased with fathers' marital aggression. Fear and the anger by fear interaction predicted girls' internalizing. Fathers' marital aggression interacted with anger to predict externalizing and interacted with fear to predict internalizing behavior in boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the likelihood of destructive anger responses under different relationship contexts: A comparison of mainland and Hong Kong Chinese.

This brief report examined how the likelihood of destructive anger responses varied with age across relationship contexts. Seventy-six older adults and 100 younger adults from Hong Kong and Mainland China reported their responses to anger-eliciting scenarios elicited by a kin, a close or a casual friend. Results indicated that compared with their younger counterparts, older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report direct aggression toward kin, but older Mainland Chinese were more likely to do so. Older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report malevolent and fractious motives than were younger Chinese across all relationships; Older Mainland Chinese were less likely to do so only in friendship. Findings have implications for conceptualizing age-related emotion regulation across relationships and cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anger, disgust, and the negative aesthetic emotions: Expanding an appraisal model of aesthetic experience.

Negative aesthetic emotions, such as disgust and anger, are central to understanding why people reject, deface, and censor art. Psychological theories of aesthetic preferences have little to say about negative aesthetic emotions, however, and the major theories associated with Berlyne and Martindale cannot in principle explain emotions like anger and disgust. The present research uses a recent appraisal model of aesthetic emotions to illuminate negative responses to art. People viewed a set of pictures, which included offensive and controversial works. The predictions were based on the appraisal profiles of anger and disgust. As expected, anger was associated with appraising a picture as incongruent with one's values and as intentionally offensive, and disgust was associated with appraising a picture as incongruent with one's values and as unpleasant. Implications for competing theories of aesthetic emotions are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)