Working models of attachment: implications for explanation, emotion and behavior

Two studies examined attachment style differences in social perception. In Study 1, participants wrote open-ended explanations for hypothetical relationship events and described how they would feel and behave in response to each event. Compared with secure participants, preoccupied participants explained events in more negative ways; they also reported more emotional distress and behaviors that were likely to lead to conflict. Avoidant participants also provided negative explanations, but did not report emotional distress. Path analysis indicated that attachment style differences in behavior were mediated by explanation patterns and emotional distress. Study 2 was designed to replicate Study 1 and test the relative importance of attachment style and relationship quality to predicting each outcome. Results indicated that both variables were significant predictors of explanations, but only attachment style predicted emotional responses. These findings are consistent with the idea that adults with different working models of attachment are predisposed to think, feel, and behave differently in their relationships.     

Seeking security or growth: A regulatory focus perspective on motivations in romantic relationships.

Using a multimethod approach, we examined how regulatory focus shapes people's perceptual, behavioral, and emotional responses in different situations in romantic relationships. We first examined how chronic regulatory focus affects romantic partners' support perceptions and problem-solving behaviors while they were engaged in a conflict resolution discussion (Study 1). Next, we experimentally manipulated regulatory focus and tested its effects on partner perceptions when individuals recalled a prior conflict resolution discussion (Study 2). We then examined how chronic regulatory focus influences individuals' emotional responses to hypothetical relationship events (Study 3) and identified specific partner behaviors to which people should respond with regulatory goal-congruent emotions (Study 4). Strongly prevention-focused people perceived their partners as more distancing and less supportive during conflict (Studies 1 and 2), approached conflict resolution by discussing the details related to the conflict (Study 1), and experienced a negative relationship outcome with more agitation (Study 3). Strongly promotion-focused people perceived their partners as more supportive and less distancing (Studies 1 and 2), displayed more creative conflict resolution behavior (Study 1), and experienced a negative relationship outcome with more sadness and a favorable outcome with more positive emotions (Study 3). In Study 4, recalling irresponsible and responsible partner behaviors was associated with experiencing more prevention-focused emotions, whereas recalling affectionate and neglectful partner behaviors was associated with more promotion-focused emotions. The findings show that regulatory focus and approach–avoidance motivations influence certain interpersonal processes in similar ways, but regulatory focus theory also generates novel predictions on which approach–avoidance models are silent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

In search of the "hot" cognitions: Attributions, appraisals, and their relation to emotion.

Two studies examined the hypothesized status of appraisals, relative to attributions, as proximal antecedents of emotion. In Study 1, which looked at 6 emotions (happiness, hope-challenge, anger, guilt, fear-anxiety, and sadness), 136 undergraduates reported on their attributions, appraisals, and emotions during past encounters associated with a variety of situations. In Study 2, which focused on anger and guilt, 120 undergraduates reported on these same variables in response to experimenter-supplied vignettes that systematically manipulated theoretically relevant attributions. The results of both studies indicated that the emotions were more directly related to appraisals than they were to attributions, and Study 2 provided evidence that appraisal serves as a mediator between attribution and emotional response. These findings lend support to the hypothesized status of appraisal as the most proximal cognitive antecedent of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narrating emotional events in schizophrenia.

Research has indicated that schizophrenia patients report similar amounts of experienced emotion in response to emotional material compared with nonpatients. However, less is known about how schizophrenia patients describe and make sense of their emotional life events. We adopted a narrative approach to investigate schizophrenia patients' renderings of their emotional life experiences. In Study 1, patients' (n = 42) positive and negative narratives were similarly personal, tellable, engaged, and appropriate. However, negative narratives were less grammatically clear than positive narratives, and positive narratives were more likely to involve other people than negative narratives. In Study 2, emotional (positive and negative) narratives were less tellable and detached, yet more linear and social compared with neutral narratives for both schizophrenia patients (n = 24) and healthy controls (n = 19). However, patients' narratives about emotional life events were less appropriate to context and less linear, and patients' narratives, whether emotional or not, were less tellable and more detached compared with controls' narratives. Although schizophrenia patients are capable of recounting life events that trigger different emotions, the telling of these life events is fraught with difficulty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reported emotions and conventions of emotionality among college students.

In Study 1, 53 college students were asked to appraise their affective experiences in terms of typically and atypically experienced emotions. Results reveal a strong trend toward the delineation of positive affects as typical and negative affects as atypical. Studies 2 and 3, with 101 college students, examined forms of response set that might have contributed to the findings of Study 1, with a particular focus on the effects to conventions of feelings. The results of both studies suggest that the designation of positive affects as typical and negative affects as atypical might have stemmed from widely shared beliefs about the emotions. To further examine the nature of these biases, Study 4 assessed preferences and acceptance in viewing the emotions among 82 college students. Findings indicate strong preferences for positive emotions and view with disapproval the negative emotions. It is argued that the acceptable emotional range appears to be narrow, strongly favoring positive affective experiences. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological resilience, positive emotions, and successful adaptation to stress in later life.

In 3 studies, the authors investigated the functional role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the stress process. Studies 1a and 1b explored naturally occurring daily stressors. Study 2 examined data from a sample of recently bereaved widows. Across studies, multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that the occurrence of daily positive emotions serves to moderate stress reactivity and mediate stress recovery. Findings also indicated that differences in psychological resilience accounted for meaningful variation in daily emotional responses to stress. Higher levels of trait resilience predicted a weaker association between positive and negative emotions, particularly on days characterized by heightened stress. Finally, findings indicated that over time, the experience of positive emotions functions to assist high-resilient individuals in their ability to recover effectively from daily stress. Implications for research into protective factors that serve to inhibit the scope, severity, and diffusion of daily stressors in later adulthood are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-compassion and reactions to unpleasant self-relevant events: The implications of treating oneself kindly.

Five studies investigated the cognitive and emotional processes by which self-compassionate people deal with unpleasant life events. In the various studies, participants reported on negative events in their daily lives, responded to hypothetical scenarios, reacted to interpersonal feedback, rated their or others' videotaped performances in an awkward situation, and reflected on negative personal experiences. Results from Study 1 showed that self-compassion predicted emotional and cognitive reactions to negative events in everyday life, and Study 2 found that self-compassion buffered people against negative self-feelings when imagining distressing social events. In Study 3, self-compassion moderated negative emotions after receiving ambivalent feedback, particularly for participants who were low in self-esteem. Study 4 found that low-self-compassionate people undervalued their videotaped performances relative to observers. Study 5 experimentally induced a self-compassionate perspective and found that self-compassion leads people to acknowledge their role in negative events without feeling overwhelmed with negative emotions. In general, these studies suggest that self-compassion attenuates people's reactions to negative events in ways that are distinct from and, in some cases, more beneficial than self-esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional style, depression, and perceptions of consensus for events.

This study examined the differences between depressed and nondepressed individuals' implicit perceptions of consensus, which may contribute to differences in their attributional styles. Subjects rated the extent to which positive, negative, and neutral events happen to themselves and to the average college student and completed measures of depth of depression and attributional style. Perceptions of consensus were highly correlated with all components of attributional style for negative and positive events. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that ratings of others explained variance in attributional style beyond that explained by ratings of the self for positive but not for negative events. Path analyses, however, indicated that the indirect path from perceptions of consensus to depression mediated through attributional style was nonsignificant for positive events, although it was significant for negative events. These findings are discussed in terms of the role of perceptions of others as precursors of attributional style and depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and emotional experience during mutual reminiscing.

In the present article, the authors examined age differences in the emotional experiences involved in talking about past events. In Study 1, 129 adults in an experience-sampling study reported whether they were engaged in mutual reminiscing and their concurrent positive and negative emotion. Their experiences of positive and negative emotion during mutual reminiscing were compared with emotional experience during other social activities. Age was associated with increasing positive emotion during mutual reminiscing. In Study 2 (n=132), the authors examined emotions during reminiscing for specific positive and negative events. In this case, age was associated with improved emotional experiences but only during reminiscing about positive experiences. Findings are discussed in terms of socioemotional selectivity theory and the literature on reminiscence and life review. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond valence in the perception of likelihood: The role of emotion specificity.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 78(4) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2007-17405-001). The graph in the upper panel, "Low NC Participants," was incorrect. The corrected figure in its entirety appears in this erratum.] Positive and negative moods have been shown to increase likelihood estimates of future events matching these states in valence (e.g., E. J. Johnson and A. Tversky, 1983). In the present article, 4 studies provide evidence that this congruency bias (1) is not limited to valence but functions in an emotion-specific manner, (2) derives from the informational value of emotions, and (3) is not the inevitable outcome of likelihood assessment under heightened emotion. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrates that sadness and anger, 2 distinct, negative emotions, differentially bias likelihood estimates of sad and angering events. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this finding in addition to supporting an emotion-as-information (cf. N. Schwarz and G. L. Clore, 1983), as opposed to a memory-based, mediating process for the bias. Finally, Study 4 shows that when the source of the emotion is salient, a reversal of the bias can occur given greater cognitive effort aimed at accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in the memory representation of emotional episodes: Exploring the cognitive processes in repression.

Two studies investigated the influence of a repressive coping style on the availability and accessibility of emotion memories. In Study 1 participants rated the presence and intensity of emotions in several scenarios and then estimated the frequency of emotions in the scenarios. Repressors did not process the scenarios more superficially. Repressors indicated the presence of unpleasant emotions in the scenarios less frequently, but not less intensely. The frequency differences accounted for most of the repression effects in the latter frequency judgments. In Study 2 participants judged the frequency of emotions twice a day for 2 weeks and then judged the frequency of emotions for the 1st and 2nd week. Repression effects in the frequency judgments did not increase with longer retention intervals. The results indicate that a repressive coping style influences mainly the experience of emotions but not so much the accessibility of emotion memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of subliminal anger and sadness primes on agency appraisals.

Two studies examined whether appraisals can be differentially affected by subliminal anger and sadness primes. Participants from Singapore (Experiment 1) and China (Experiment 2) were exposed to either subliminal angry faces or subliminal sad faces. Supporting appraisal theories of emotions, participants exposed to subliminal angry faces were more likely to appraise negative events as caused by other people and those exposed to subliminal sad faces were more likely to appraise the same events as caused by situational factors. The results provide the first evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects. They show that cognitive functions such as appraisals can be affected by subliminal emotional stimuli of the same valence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional reminiscing and the development of an autobiographical self.

According to autobiographical memory theorists, past event conversations provide children with a framework for evaluating and connecting past events into a coherent autobiography (R. Fivush, 1994; K. Nelson, 1993; M. K. Welch-Ross, 1995). Two studies were conducted to empirically examine the association between past event conversation style and an independent measure of children's self-concept consistency. In Study 1, 50 New Zealand mothers discussed everyday past events with their children at 51 and 65 months of age. In Study 2, 51 New Zealand parents discussed 1 positive and 3 negative past events with their 5- and 6-year-old children. The consistency of children's self-views was assessed in both studies using the Children's Self-View Questionnaire (R. Eder, 1990). Children's self-concept consistency was moderately associated with greater explanation of the causes and consequences of children's negative emotions, resolution through social contact, and evaluation of positive events but not with simple attributions of emotion. These findings implicate parent-child conversations as a medium through which children can begin to understand the personal meaning of past experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to DeSteno et al (2000).

Reports an error in "Beyond valence in the perception of likelihood: The role of emotion specificity" by David DeSteno, Richard E. Petty, Duane T. Wegener and Derek D. Rucker (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000[Mar], Vol 78[3], 397-416). In Figure 5 (p. 410), the graph in the upper panel, "Low NC Participants," was incorrect. The corrected figure in its entirety appears in this erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2000-07236-001.) Positive and negative moods have been shown to increase likelihood estimates of future events matching these states in valence (e.g., E. J. Johnson and A. Tversky, 1983). In the present article, 4 studies provide evidence that this congruency bias (1) is not limited to valence but functions in an emotion-specific manner, (2) derives from the informational value of emotions, and (3) is not the inevitable outcome of likelihood assessment under heightened emotion. Specifically, Study 1 demonstrates that sadness and anger, 2 distinct, negative emotions, differentially bias likelihood estimates of sad and angering events. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this finding in addition to supporting an emotion-as-information (cf. N. Schwarz and G. L. Clore, 1983), as opposed to a memory-based, mediating process for the bias. Finally, Study 4 shows that when the source of the emotion is salient, a reversal of the bias can occur given greater cognitive effort aimed at accuracy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-situational consistency in causal attributions: Does attributional style exist?

Two studies evaluated the concept of an attributional style, as operationalized by the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). Study 1, with 1,333 undergraduates, examined the reliability and validity of the ASQ and analyzed the factor structure of the measure. Only weak evidence of a cross-situationally consistent attributional style was found. An attempt to identify Ss who tended to be very consistent in their causal attributions on the ASQ similarly did not provide strong support for the attibutional style concept. In Study 2, the relation between scores on the ASQ and causal attributions for actual negative events, as assessed by the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, were examined among 85 pregnant women. Attributional Style scores were poor predictors of actual causal attributions, and selecting highly consistent Ss did not improve the ASQ's predictive validity. Implications for the attributional style concept and an attributional analysis of depression are discussed. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Passion for an activity and quality of interpersonal relationships: The mediating role of emotions.

Our purpose in this research was to investigate the role of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) for a given activity in the quality of interpersonal relationships experienced within the context of that activity in 4 studies. Study 1 demonstrated that a harmonious passion was positively associated with the quality of interpersonal relationships within the context of the passionate activity, whereas an obsessive passion was unrelated to it. Furthermore, in line with the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001), results also showed that positive emotions experienced at work fully mediated the relation between harmonious passion and quality of interpersonal relationships. Obsessive passion was not associated with positive emotions. Study 2 replicated the results from Study 1 while controlling for trait extraversion. Also, in Study 2, we examined the negative mediating role of negative emotions between obsessive passion and quality of interpersonal relationships. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 replicated the results of Study 2 with prospective designs and with objective ratings of interpersonal relationships quality. Implications for the dualistic model of passion and the broaden-and-build theory are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Components and recognition of facial expression in the communication of emotion by actors.

Addresses the issue of the communication of emotion by actors. In Study 1, the facial behavior of 6 actors portraying emotions as felt or unfelt were analyzed with the Facial Action Coding System. Results indicated that the portrayals of felt emotions were closer to the expression of genuine emotion than the portrayals of unfelt emotions for 3 of the 6 emotions under investigation. Study 2 examined the decoding of actors' portrayals from facial behavior. Decoders were found to be very accurate in recognizing the emotional category but not in judging the encoding condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-consciousness, self-attention, and social interaction.

Conducted 2 experiments with a total of 128 female undergraduates to test the effects of self-focused attention on positive and negative social interactions. In Study 1 the behavior of dispositionally high and low publicly self-conscious women (as measured by the Self-Consciousness Scale) was examined in an interpersonal situation involving rejection by a group. It was hypothesized that persons high in self-consciousness, being more aware of how they are perceived by others, would be more sensitive and react more negatively to the rejection than those low in self-consciousness. The predictions were confirmed. In Study 2, female Ss were presented with favorable or unfavorable feedback in the context of an interview, and self-attention was experimentally manipulated by exposing half the Ss to their images in a mirror. Self-awareness increases the negative response to the negative evaluation and tended to increase the positivity of the positive evaluation. The implications of self-awareness theory for the social self and social interaction are discussed. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trait reappraisal amplifies subjective defeat, sadness, and negative affect in response to failure versus success in nonclinical and psychosis populations.

Perceptions of defeat have been linked to a range of clinical disorders including psychosis. Perceived defeat sometimes increases in response to failure, but the strength of this association varies between individuals. The present research investigated whether trait reappraisal, a thought-focused coping style, amplified response to stressful events. Two studies (Study 1, n = 120 nonclinical participants; Study 2, n = 77 participants with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders) investigated whether trait reappraisal amplified feelings of defeat following an experience of failure versus success. Frequent reappraisers showed the largest increases in subjective defeat after failure versus success in both studies, with nonclinical participants with greater habitual reappraisal also showing larger increases in sadness and general negative affect. Frequent use of reappraisal may confer vulnerability to subjective defeat in response to stressful life events among nonclinical and clinical populations and could be an area for relapse prevention interventions to target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)