Relations of shyness and low sociability to regulation and emotionality.

The relations of shyness and low sociability (i.e., the nonfearful preference to be alone) to measures of regulation and emotionality were examined. College students and (for some variables) friends reported on their relevant dispositional characteristics. In general, shyness was associated with low regulation and high negative emotionality (including intensity, negative affectivity, and personal distress), low positive affect, and low constructive coping. In contrast, low sociability was unrelated to negative emotionality; associated with low positive emotional intensity, low physiological reactivity, and high inhibition control; and correlated with low seeking of social support as a means of coping. The findings are considered within a heuristic model in which emotional reactivity and regulation are proposed as predictors of social responding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prediction of Children's Empathy-Related Responding From Their Effortful Control and Parents' Expressivity.

In this study, the linear and interactive relations of children's effortful control and parents' emotional expressivity to children's empathy-related responses were examined. Participants were 214 children, 4.5 to 8 years old. Children's effortful control was negatively related to their personal distress and was positively related to their sympathy. Parents' positive expressivity was marginally negatively related to children's personal distress and was marginally positively related to children's dispositional sympathy. Parents' negative expressivity was positively related to children's personal distress, but primarily at high levels of children's effortful control. Moreover, parents' negative expressivity was negatively related to children's situational sympathy at low levels of effortful control but was positively related to children's dispositional sympathy at high levels of effortful control. There were also quadratic relations between the measures of parents' expressivity and children's empathy-related responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relations of children's dispositional empathy-related responding to their emotionality, regulation, and social functioning.

The relations of kindergartners' to 2nd graders' dispositional sympathy to individual differences in emotionality, regulation, and social functioning were examined. Sympathy was assessed with teacher- and self-reports; contemporaneously and 2 years earlier, parents and teachers reported on children's emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. Social functioning also was assessed with peer evaluations and children's enacted puppet behavior, and negative arousability-personal distress was assessed with physiological responses. In general, sympathy was associated with relatively high levels of regulation, teacher-reported positive emotionality and general emotional intensity, and especially for boys, high social functioning and low levels of negative emotionality, including physiological reactivity to a distress stimulus. Vagal tone was positively related to boys' self-reported sympathy, whereas the pattern was reversed for girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contemporaneous and longitudinal prediction of children's sympathy from dispositional regulation and emotionality.

The relation of 8- to 10-year-olds' teacher-reported dispositional sympathy to regulation and emotionality was examined with a longitudinal sample. In general, sympathy was correlated with adults' reports of regulation and low negative emotionality contemporaneously and, to some degree, 2 and 4 years prior. General emotional intensity interacted with some aspects of regulation in predicting sympathy; for example, attention focusing predicted sympathy but only for children low in general emotional intensity. In general, the pattern of correlations changed little from age 6-8 to age 8-10 years, although parent-reported negative emotionality was more highly negatively related to sympathy at the older age. Dispositional sympathy was associated with verbal or physiological markers of sympathy in a laboratory setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An index of self-regulation of emotion and the study of repression in social contexts that threaten or do not threaten self-concept.

This research tests a model of repression (M. Mendolia, 1999; M. Mendolia, J. Moore, & A. Tesser, 1996) which specifies that the interaction of individual differences in emotional responsiveness and situational threats to self-concept contributes to one's tendency to regulate emotional responsiveness. This research demonstrates that (a) individuals regulate their autonomic activity, facial muscle activity, cognitive attention, and subjective experience during isolated and repeated exposures to self-threatening negative and positive emotional events and (b) repressive behavior can be predicted by the Index of Self-Regulation of Emotion, which complements and extends conventional categorical measures of dispositional repression. This model provides a more detailed understanding of basic mechanisms in emotion by identifying how individual differences in emotionality and particular social contexts contribute to self-regulation of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in empathy and related capacities.

Reviews the literature on sex differences in empathy (defined as vicarious affective responding to the emotional state of another) and related capacities (affective role taking and decoding of nonverbal cues). The literature is discussed according to method used to assess empathy and affective role taking. Where appropriate, meta-analyses were also computed. In general, sex differences in empathy were found to be a function of the methods used to assess empathy. There was a large sex difference favoring women when the measure of empathy was self-report scales; moderate differences (favoring females) were found for reflexive crying and self-report measures in laboratory situations; and no sex differences were evident when the measure of empathy was either physiological or unobtrusive observations of nonverbal reactions to another's emotional state. Moreover, few sex differences were found for children's affective role taking and decoding abilities. (156 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations of moral reasoning and vicarious emotion to young children's prosocial behavior toward peers and adults.

Four- and 5-year-old (primarily) Euro-American children (40 girls, 34 boys) participated in a study of moral reasoning, vicarious emotional responding, and prosocial behavior. Children's prosocial behavior and self-reported and facial reactions of vicarious emotion were obtained in response to 2 peer distress films and 2 adult distress simulations. Moral reasoning was assessed with prosocial moral dilemmas. Children's emotional responses were found to be related to analogous types of moral reasoning and were associated in expected ways with helping of peers and adults. Higher levels of moral reasoning were positively related to prosocial behavior. Children high in both other-oriented moral cognitions and sympathy were most helpful toward peers. The pattern of findings suggested that linkages are being formed in the preschool years not only between other-oriented affect and cognitions but also between those that are self-focused in nature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's responses to mothers' and fathers' emotionality and tactics in marital conflict in the home.

Addressing a gap in methodological approaches to the study of links between marital conflict and children, 51 couples were trained to complete home diary reports on everyday marital conflicts and children's responses. Parental negative emotionality and destructive conflict tactics related to children's insecure emotional and behavioral responses. Parental positive emotionality and constructive conflict tactics were linked with children's secure emotional responding. When parents' emotions and tactics were considered in the same model, negative emotionality was more consistently related to children's negative reactions than were destructive conflict tactics, whereas constructive conflict tactics were more consistently related to children's positive reactions than parents' positive emotionality. Differences in children's responding as a function of specific parental negative emotions (anger, sadness, fear) and parent gender were identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in emotionality in infancy

In this multimethod investigation of early emotionality, we observed 112 8- to 10-month-olds' responses to standard procedures consisting of multiple brief episodes that elicited joy, fear, anger, and discomfort to aversive stimulation. We obtained parental reports about the infants' temperament and observed their emotional tone during naturalistic interactions with their mothers. Parameters of emotional response to the standard procedures (latency, discrete behaviors, and average and peak intensity across facial, vocal, and bodily channels) cohered strongly within each episode. To a lesser extent and with the exception of anger, they also cohered across episodes targeting the same emotion. The four emotions appeared orthogonal, except for the peak intensity of response, which cohered modestly across the 3 negative emotions. The emotionality measures converged to some extent: responses to the standard procedures and father-reported temperament related meaningfully to the infant's emotional tone in mother-child interactions. As predicted, infants' capacity for focused or effortful attention was modestly associated with better modulated negative emotionality.     

Vicarious instigation and conditioning of facial expressive and autonomic responses to a model's expressive display of pain.

In 2 experiments, 35 undergraduates participated in the application of a long-interstimulus-interval differential conditioning paradigm with a confederate's videotaped expression of pain serving as the UCS. Facial EMG signals and skin conductance were recorded. Clear evidence of vicarious autonomic instigation and some evidence of facial excitation were obtained in Exp I, but vicarious autonomic and facial muscle conditioning were obtained only for the 50% of the Ss who were aware of the contingency between the CS+ and the model's pain. In Exp II, steps were taken to increase awareness of the contingency, and significant autonomic and facial muscle instigation and conditioning occurred. Both the vicariously instigated and conditioned autonomic responses involved skin conductance increases, but facial responses to the model's pain were different from conditioned facial responses. Autonomic and facial muscle data suggest that Ss were behaving as though they were anticipating shock when the CS+ was displayed to the model, and as though they were in pain when the model was being shocked. Vicariously aroused emotional reactions thus appear to be similar to those that would be elicited if the S were directly anticipating and receiving shock. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectations of cooperation and competition and their effects on observers' vicarious emotional responses.

Hypothesized that cooperative situations involve shared, or empathetic, emotional experiences and that competitive situations involve mutually exclusive, or counterempathetic, emotional experiences. Study provided Ss with expectations of cooperation or competition and examined emotional responses to a coactor's displays of pleasure (smiles) and distress (grimaces). Skin conductance and heart rate measures of autonomic arousal and EMG data from 4 facial muscle regions showed that expectations of cooperation promoted empathy and expectations of competition promoted counterempathy. Expectancy effects were present when Ss were not exposed to direct outcomes. One unanticipated consequence of competition may be the development of counterempathy. Implications of counterempathetic emotions in understanding vicarious learning and aggression are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dispositional emotionality and regulation: Their role in predicting quality of social functioning.

Individual differences in emotionality and regulation are central to conceptions of temperament and personality. In this article, conceptions of emotionality and regulation and ways in which they predict social functioning are examined. Linear (including additive) and nonlinear effects are reviewed. In addition, data on mediational and moderational relations from a longitudinal study are presented. The effects of attention regulation on social functioning were mediated by resiliency, and this relation was moderated by negative emotionality at the first, but not second, assessment. Negative emotionality moderated the relation of behavior regulation to socially appropriate/prosocial behavior. These results highlight the importance of examining different types of regulation and the ways in which dispositional characteristics interact in predicting social outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing coping strategies: A theoretically based approach.

We developed a multidimensional coping inventory to assess the different ways in which people respond to stress. Five scales (of four items each) measure conceptually distinct aspects of problem-focused coping (active coping, planning, suppression of competing activities, restraint coping, seeking of instrumental social support); five scales measure aspects of what might be viewed as emotion-focused coping (seeking of emotional social support, positive reinterpretation, acceptance, denial, turning to religion); and three scales measuring coping responses that arguably are less useful (focus on and venting of emotions, behavioral disengagement, mental disengagement). Study 1 reports the development of scale items. Study 2 reports correlations between the various coping scales and several theoretically relevant personality measures in an effort to provide preliminary information about the inventory's convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 uses the inventory to assess coping responses among a group of undergraduates who were attempting to cope with a specific stressful episode. This study also allowed an initial examination of associations between dispositional and situational coping tendencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coping through emotional approach: Scale construction and validation.

Four studies demonstrate the psychometric adequacy and validity of scales designed to assess coping through emotional approach. In separate undergraduate samples, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of dispositional (Study 1) and situational (Study 3) coping item sets yielded 2 distinct emotional approach coping factors: emotional processing (i.e., active attempts to acknowledge and understand emotions) and emotional expression. The 2 scales yielded high internal consistency and test-retest reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. A study (Study 2) of young adults and their parents established the scales' interjudge reliabilities. Longitudinal (Study 3) and experimental (Study 4) research supported the predictive validity of the emotional approach coping scales with regard to adjustment to stressful encounters. Findings highlight the utility of functionalist theories of emotion as applied to coping theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Infants' responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm

The independent effects of facial and vocal emotional signals and of positive and negative signals on infant behavior were investigated in a novel toy social referencing paradigm. 90 12-month-old infants and their mothers were assigned to an expression condition (neutral, happy, or fear) nested within a modality condition (face-only or voice-only). Each infant participated in 3 trials: a baseline trial, an expression trial, and a final positive trial. We found that fearful vocal emotional signals, when presented without facial signals, were sufficient to elicit appropriate behavior regulation. Infants in the fear-voice condition looked at their mothers longer, showed less toy proximity, and tended to show more negative affect than infants in the neutral-voice condition. Happy vocal signals did not elicit differential responding. The infants' sex was a factor in the few effects that were found for infants' responses to facial emotional signals.     

Differentiation of vicariously induced emotional reactions in children.

The purposes of this study were threefold: (a) to determine whether physiological (heart rate), facial, and self-report indices could be used to differentiate between different vicariously induced negative emotional states (i.e., those related conceptually to the study of empathy), (b) to examine developmental differences in the degree of differentiation in the aforementioned indices of emotional response, and (c) to assess the pattern of interrelations among heart rate (HR), facial, and self-report indices of response to emotion-eliciting stimuli. Preschoolers and second graders viewed three films that portrayed situations related to others' emotions of anxiety or apprehension, empathic sadness, and cognitively induced sympathy. Children's HR accelerated during the anxiety film and decelerated during the cognitive-sympathy and sad films. Children's nonphysiological reactions also were highly consistent with the film content. The interrelations among modes of responses were generally consistent with the view that the various indices were positively rather than inversely related. There were also some positive relations between the indices of emotion and a questionnaire measure of empathy. The results are discussed in terms of current work concerning empathy and other emotional responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's social sensitivity: Inferring emotions from conflicting cues.

48 preschoolers, 48 1st graders, and 48 6th graders answered questions and told stories about pictures containing (a) situational or facial cues alone, (b) situational and facial cues with congruent emotional implications, or (c) situational and facial cues with conflicting emotional implications. In a 4th condition, a narrative accompanied conflicting-cues pictures. The youngest Ss preferred to base inferences about emotions on facial expressions. This preference decreased with age. Explanations for this finding based on differential comprehension of cues and on the biasing effect of a narrative were ruled out. At all ages, Ss encoded both cues. They preserved in memory the emotional implications of situational cues but tended to reinterpret facial cues when there were conflicting situational cues. There were also developmental changes in the degree to which and the methods by which Ss reconciled the conflicting cues to emotion. Results are discussed in light of previous hypotheses about the development of social sensitivity, and an alternate view is advanced. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional orientations and the prediction of behavior: The attribution–prediction bias.

Consistent with the proposal that people rely on implicit causal theories that relate different types of attributions to behaviors that differ in valence, 3 studies showed that in addition to predicting more positive than negative behavior in the target, participants produced an attribution–prediction bias. This bias indicated that persons with a dispositional orientation predicted more negative and less positive behavior from the target than persons with a situational orientation. The authors produced these findings in Studies 1 and 2 by manipulating the perceived characteristic motives of a target (dispositional, situational). In Study 3 the authors used a cultural operationalization of attributional orientations by examining the responses of Western students (dispositionalists) and East Asian students (situationalists). Finally, in support of the underlying mechanism, Study 4 showed that activating dispositional or situational knowledge facilitated the encoding of negative and positive behaviors, respectively. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Relations of Problem Behavior Status to Children's Negative Emotionality, Effortful Control, and Impulsivity: Concurrent Relations and Prediction of Change.

The relations of children's internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors to their concurrent regulation, impulsivity (reactive undercontrol), anger, sadness, and fearfulness and these aspects of functioning 2 years prior were examined. Parents and teachers completed measures of children's (N = 185; ages 6 through 9 years) adjustment, negative emotionality, regulation, and behavior control; behavioral measures of regulation also were obtained. In general, both internalizing and externalizing problems were associated with negative emotionality. Externalizers were low in effortful regulation and high in impulsivity, whereas internalizers, compared with nondisordered children, were low in impulsivity but not effortful control. Moreover, indices of negative emotionality, regulation, and impulsivity with the level of the same variables 2 years before controlled predicted stability versus change in problem behavior status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

She’s emotional. He’s having a bad day: Attributional explanations for emotion stereotypes.

People believe that women are the more emotional sex. This belief stems less from what men and women actually do than from the explanations given for their behaviors. In 2 studies, participants who were given situational information about the causes of emotional expression in target faces nonetheless more frequently judged feminine targets depicting emotions as “emotional” (i.e., a dispositional attribution for the emotional behavior), whereas they more frequently judged masculine targets as “having a bad day” (i.e., a situational attribution for the emotional behavior). These findings help explain the pervasive belief that women are more emotional when compared with men, even when the scientific veracity of this belief is questionable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)