Don't look down: Emotional arousal elevates height perception.

In a series of experiments, it was found that emotional arousal can influence height perception. In Experiment 1, participants viewed either arousing or nonarousing images before estimating the height of a 2-story balcony and the size of a target on the ground below the balcony. People who viewed arousing images overestimated height and target size more than did those who viewed nonarousing images. However, in Experiment 2, estimates of horizontal distances were not influenced by emotional arousal. In Experiment 3, both valence and arousal cues were manipulated, and it was found that arousal, but not valence, moderated height perception. In Experiment 4, participants either up-regulated or down-regulated their emotional experience while viewing emotionally arousing images, and a control group simply viewed the arousing images. Those participants who up-regulated their emotional experience overestimated height more than did the control or down-regulated participants. In sum, emotional arousal influences estimates of height, and this influence can be moderated by emotion regulation strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heightened sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion in borderline personality disorder.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have been hypothesized to exhibit significant problems associated with emotional sensitivity. The current study examined emotional sensitivity (i.e., low threshold for recognition of emotional stimuli) in BPD by comparing 20 individuals with BPD and 20 normal controls on their accuracy in identifying emotional expressions. Results demonstrated that, as facial expressions morphed from neutral to maximum intensity, participants with BPD correctly identified facial affect at an earlier stage than did healthy controls. Participants with BPD were more sensitive than healthy controls in identifying emotional expressions in general, regardless of valence. These findings could not be explained by participants with BPD responding faster with more errors. Overall, results appear to support the contention that heightened emotional sensitivity may be a core feature of BPD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neural systems subserving valence and arousal during the experience of induced emotions.

The circumplex model of affect construes all emotions as linear combinations of 2 independent neurophysiological dimensions, valence and arousal. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural networks subserving valence and arousal, and we assessed, in 10 participants, the associations of the BOLD (blood oxygen level-dependent) response, an indirect index of neural activity, with ratings of valence and arousal during the emotional experiences induced by the presentation of evocative sentences. Unpleasant emotional experience was associated with increased BOLD signal intensities in the supplementary motor, anterior midcingulate, right dorsolateral prefrontal, occipito-temporal, inferior parietal, and cerebellar cortices. Highly arousing emotions were associated with increased BOLD signal intensities in the left thalamus, globus pallidus, caudate, parahippocampal gyrus, amygdala, premotor cortex, and cerebellar vermis. Separate analyses using a finite impulse response model confirmed these results and revealed that pleasant emotions engaged an additional network that included the midbrain, ventral striatum, and caudate nucleus, all portions of a reward circuit. These findings suggest the existence of distinct networks subserving the valence and arousal dimensions of emotions, with midline and medial temporal lobe structures mediating arousal and dorsal cortical areas and mesolimbic pathways mediating valence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Loss of emotional experience after traumatic brain injury: Findings with the startle probe procedure.

The authors used affective modulation of the eyeblink startle response to examine the impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on emotional reactions to pictures. Participants were 13 individuals with severe TBI and 24 controls. Participants were presented with pictures that differed in affective valence (e.g., mutilated bodies, erotic couples, and household objects) while the eyeblink startle response to an acoustic probe was measured. Startle amplitude was used to assess valence of emotional response, and startle latency was used to index interest in the pictures. Subjective ratings of the affect and arousal elicited by the various pictures were also obtained. TBI impaired startle potentiation to unpleasant pictures but not startle attenuation to pleasant pictures. Further, subjective ratings indicated that TBI participants found unpleasant pictures less arousing than did controls. The results are consistent with recent evidence of differential impairment in negative versus positive emotions after TBI and are discussed in relation to 2 competing explanations of startle modulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discourse-based emotional consistency modulates early and middle components of event-related potentials.

In this study, participants read stories describing emotional episodes with either a positive or negative valence (Experiment 1). Following each story, participants were exposed to short sentences referring to the protagonist, and the event-related potential (ERP) for each sentence's last word was recorded. Some sentences described the protagonist's emotion, either consistent or inconsistent with the story; others were neutral; and others involved a semantically anomalous word. Inconsistent emotions were found to elicit larger N100/P200 and N400 than consistent emotions. However, when participants were exposed to the same critical sentences in a control experiment (Experiment 2) in which the stories had been removed, emotional consistency effects disappeared in all ERP components, demonstrating that these effects were discourse-level phenomena. By contrast, the ordinary N400 effect for locally anomalous words in the sentence was obtained both with and without story context. In conclusion, reading stories describing events with emotional significance determines strong and very early anticipations of an emotional word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disentangling emotion processes in borderline personality disorder: Physiological and self-reported assessment of biological vulnerability, baseline intensity, and reactivity to emotionally evocative stimuli.

This study investigated M. Linehan’s (1993) theory that individuals meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) have high biological vulnerability to emotion dysregulation, including high baseline emotional intensity and high reactivity to emotionally evocative stimuli. Twenty individuals with BPD, 20 age-matched individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (SAD), and 20 age-matched normal controls (NCs) participated in 2 separate emotion induction conditions, a standardized condition, and a personally relevant condition. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), skin conductance response (SCR), and self-report measures were collected throughout the experiment. BPD participants displayed heightened biological vulnerability compared with NCs as indicated by reduced basal RSA. BPD participants also exhibited high baseline emotional intensity, characterized by heightened SCR and heightened self-reported negative emotions at baseline. However, the BPD group did not display heightened reactivity, as their physiological and self-reported changes from baseline to the emotion inductions tasks were not greater than the other 2 groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of emotion on associative recognition: Valence and retention interval matter.

In two experiments, we examined the effects of emotional valence and arousal on associative binding. Participants studied negative, positive, and neutral word pairs, followed by an associative recognition test. In Experiment 1, with a short-delayed test, accuracy for intact pairs was equivalent across valences, whereas accuracy for rearranged pairs was lower for negative than for positive and neutral pairs. In Experiment 2, we tested participants after a one-week delay and found that accuracy was greater for intact negative than for intact neutral pairs, whereas rearranged pair accuracy was equivalent across valences. These results suggest that, although negative emotional valence impairs associative binding after a short delay, it may improve binding after a longer delay. The results also suggest that valence, as well as arousal, needs to be considered when examining the effects of emotion on associative memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional Interference Effects of Emotional Pictures: Threat, Negativity, or Arousal?

Attentional interference arising from emotional pictures was examined. Participants had to ignore emotional pictures while solving math problems (Study 1, N = 126) or detecting the location of a line (Study 2, N = 60). Data analyses tested predictions of 3 theories. Evolutionary threat theory predicts interference by snake pictures. Categorical negativity theory predicts interference by negative pictures regardless of their intensity. According to arousal theory, arousal level predicts interference effects. The results supported arousal theory, with the most arousing pictures (strong unpleasant pictures, oppositesex models) producing the strongest interference. The findings are interpreted in the context of process models of emotions that postulate an initial relevance check before further processing of valence and other appraisal dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Patterns of emotion-specific appraisal, coping, and cardiovascular reactivity during an ongoing emotional episode.

The authors examined emotion-specific patterns of appraisal, coping, and cardiovascular reactivity during real ongoing emotional episodes. In this study, 109 participants performed a neutral opinion-expression task, where a confederate elicited anger, shame, or pride using verbal and nonverbal behavior. The authors assessed cognitive appraisals, emotional reactions, coping, outcomes (state self-esteem and outcome satisfaction), and cardiovascular reactivity. Results indicated substantial and theoretically consistent differences between the 3 emotions (and differences from a nonemotion condition) for cognitive appraisals, self-reported coping, behavioral coping, self-esteem, and cardiovascular reactivity. The results are discussed in relation to their implications for emotion theory and for psychological and physical health. Overall, the results suggest that researchers can study emotion-related issues using authentic emotional reactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential subjective and psychophysiological responses to socially and nonsocially generated emotional stimuli.

Sociality may determine the subjective experience and physiological response to emotional stimuli. Film segments induced socially and nonsocially generated emotions. Comedy (social positive), bereavement (social negative), pizza scenes (nonsocial positive), and wounded bodies (nonsocial negative) elicited four distinct emotional patterns. Per subjective report, joy, sadness, appetite, and disgust were elicited by the targeted stimulus condition. The social/nonsocial dimension influenced which emotional valence(s) elicited a skin conductance response, a finding that could not be explained by differences in subjective arousal. Heart rate deceleration was more responsive to nonsocially generated emotions. Taken together, these findings suggest that sociality affects the physiological profile of responses to emotional valence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of changes in spatial distance on emotional responses.

Drawing on motivational approaches to emotion, the authors propose that the perceived change in spatial distance to pictures that arouse negative emotions exerts an influence on the significance of these pictures. Two experiments induced the illusion that affective pictures approach toward the observer, recede from the observer, or remain static. To determine the motivational significance of the pictures, emotional valence and arousal ratings as well as startle responses were assessed. Approaching unpleasant pictures were found to exert an influence on both the valence and the arousal elicited by the pictures. Furthermore, movement of pleasant or neutral pictures did not influence startle responses, while the second experiment showed that approaching unpleasant pictures elicited enhanced startle responses compared to receding unpleasant pictures. These findings support the view that a change of spatial distance influences motivational significance and thereby shapes emotional responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing yourself as an emotional eater: Mission impossible?

Objective: The extent to which individuals are emotional eaters has typically been assessed by people’s self-reported desire to eat when they experience negative emotions. Elevated scores on these emotional eater scales have been associated with eating pathology and obesity. However, evidence that individuals scoring high on these scales truly increase their food intake during emotional encounters is inconclusive. The current studies tested whether emotional eater scales capture the proposed tendency to eat when feeling emotional. Design: In four experiments with different emotion induction procedures, female participants were randomly assigned to negative emotion or control conditions. In the control conditions positive or no emotions were induced. Next, food consumption was assessed by bogus taste tests. Main Outcome Measures: Emotional eater status, emotional experience, and actual consumption of different food types. Results: Individuals describing themselves as emotional eaters did not increase food intake during emotional encounters as compared to control conditions or individuals not judging themselves as emotional eaters. Conclusion: The results suggest that self-reported emotional eaters do not increase food intake during emotional encounters in the laboratory. Implications of these findings are discussed, including the idea that it may be complex to adequately assess one’s own emotional eating behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Categorical and Dimensional Reports of Experienced Affect to Emotion-Inducing Pictures in Depression.

Self-reported affect to positive and negative emotional pictures was contrasted in people with major depressive disorder (MDD) and never-depressed control participants (n = 25 in each group). The results revealed significant differences in response to positive images (reduced arousal, less pleasant valence, decreased happiness, increased sadness) in MDD but no clear group differences in response to negative stimuli. Extending earlier findings of reduced responsiveness to positive, but not negative, stimuli in MDD (D. M. Sloan, M. E. Strauss, S. W. Quirk, & M. Satajovik, 1997; D. M. Sloan, M. E. Strauss, & K. L. Wisner, 2001), the data indicate that blunted response to positive stimuli is found when both categorical and dimensional ratings are elicited. Further, the data replicate earlier findings of elevated sadness reports to positive stimuli (J. Rottenberg, K. L. Kasch, J. J. Gross, & I. H. Gotlib, 2002), which may reflect broader difficulties in regulating emotions in MDD. (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.     

The decoding of emotional concepts in patients with focal cerebral lesions

The effects of focal brain lesions on the decoding of emotional concepts in facial expressions were investigated. Facial emotions are hierarchically organized patterns comprising (1) structural surface features, (2) discrete (primary) emotional categories and (3) secondary dimensions, such as valence and arousal. Categorical decoding was measured using (1) selection of category labels and selection of the named emotion category; (2) matching one facial expression with two choice expressions. Dimensional decoding was assessed by matching one face with two different expressions with regard to valence or arousal. 70 patients with well documented cerebral lesions and 15 matched hospital controls participated in the study. 27 had left brain damage (LBD; 10 frontal, 10 temporal, 7 parietal); 37 had right brain damage (RBD; 15 frontal, 11 temporal, 11 parietal). Six additional patients had lesions involving both frontal lobes. Right temporal and parietal lesioned patients were markedly impaired in the decoding of primary emotions. The same patients also showed a reduced arousal decoding. In contrast to several patients with frontal and left hemisphere lesions, emotional conceptualization and face discrimination was not independent in these groups. No group differences were observed in valence decoding. However, right frontal lesions appeared to interfere with the discrimination of negative valence. Moreover, a distraction by structural features was noted in RBD when facial identities were varied across stimulus and response pictures in matching tasks with differing conceptual load. Our results suggest that focal brain lesions differentially affect the comprehension of emotional meaning in faces depending on the level of conceptual load and interference of structural surface features.     

Emotional perception and memory in amnesia.

The authors examined whether perception of emotional stimuli is normal in amnesia and whether emotional arousal has the same enhancing effect on memory in amnesic patients as it has in healthy controls. Forty standardized color pictures were presented while participants rated each picture according to emotional intensity (arousal) and pleasantness (valence). An immediate free-recall test was given for the pictures, followed by a yes-no recognition test. Arousal and valence ratings were highly similar among the amnesic patients and controls. Emotional arousal (regardless of valence) enhanced both recall and recognition of the pictures, and this enhancement was proportional for amnesic patients and controls. Results suggest that emotional perception and the enhancing effect of emotional arousal on memory are intact in amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional self-disclosure and emotional avoidance: Relations with symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Research suggests that individuals with heightened symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders engage in diminished emotional disclosure. On the basis of emotion regulation theories, the authors hypothesized that this symptom–disclosure relationship would be mediated by the avoidance of emotional experience and expression. In Study 1, college students (N = 831) completed measures of depression and anxiety symptoms, measures of tendencies to avoid emotional expression, and measures of tendencies to self-disclose distress. Structural equation modeling revealed that anhedonic depression and anxious arousal were associated with lessened emotional self-disclosure tendencies as mediated by avoidance of emotional expression. In Study 2, participants (N = 153) completed new measures of depression and anxiety symptoms, reflected on the most significant emotional event experienced during the past week, and rated their avoidance of emotion about the event and their self-disclosure of the event. Depression (but not anxiety) symptoms were negatively related to the disclosure of a specific event, but avoidance of emotional experience did not mediate this depression–disclosure relationship. These findings extend emotion dysregulation theory and suggest that depressive symptoms in particular are associated with reduced emotional disclosure. (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)