Beyond simple pessimism: Effects of sadness and anger on social perception.

In keeping with cognitive appraisal models of emotion, it was hypothesized that sadness and anger would exert different influences on causal judgments. Two experiments provided initial support for this hypothesis. Sad Ss perceived situationally-caused events as more likely (Exp 1) and situational forces more responsible for an ambiguous event (Exp 2) than angry Ss, who, in contrast, perceived events caused by humans as more likely and other people as more responsible. Exps 3, 4, and 5 showed that the experience of these emotions, rather than their cognitive constituents, mediates these effects. The nonemotional exposure to situational or human agency information did not influence causal judgments (Exp 3), whereas the induction of sadness and anger without explicit agency information did (Exps 4 and 5). Discussion is focused on the influence of emotion on social judgment. (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)     

Effects of justice conditions on discrete emotions.

Research on organizational justice typically focuses on attitudinal, cognitive, or behavioral outcomes. Emotional reactions to justice have been suggested but not studied. The emotional appraisal literature provides a framework within which to analyze emotional reactions to just and unjust events. Undergraduates (67 females and 55 males) were randomly assigned to conditions crossing either a positive or negative outcome and a procedure which was either fair, biased in the participant's favor, or biased in favor of another, after which their emotional responses were assessed by self report. Results support predictions about discrete emotional reactions. As predicted by emotional-appraisal theories, reports of happiness were influenced only by outcome, whereas reports of guilt, anger, and to a lesser extent pride, were influenced by specific combinations of outcome and procedure. Results are discussed within an emotional appraisal framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unpleasant situations elicit different emotional responses in younger and older adults.

Older adults report less distress in response to interpersonal conflicts than do younger adults, yet few researchers have examined factors that may contribute to these age differences. Emotion regulation is partially determined by the initial cognitive and emotional reactions that events elicit. The authors examined reported thoughts and emotions of younger and older adults (N = 195) while they listened to 3 different audiotaped conversations in which people were ostensibly making disparaging remarks about them. At 4 points during each scenario, the tape paused and participants engaged in a talk-aloud procedure and rated their level of anger and sadness. Findings reveal that older adults reported less anger but equal levels of sadness compared to younger adults, and their comments were judged by coders as less negative. Older adults made fewer appraisals about the people speaking on the tape and expressed less interest in learning more about their motives. Together, findings are consistent with age-related increases in processes that promote disengagement from offending situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 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)     

Remember children's emotions: Sources of concordant and discordant accounts between parents and children.

Parents were asked to recall recent events that had evoked happiness, sadness, anger, and fear in their children. Children (N?=?77, 2 years 3 months to 6 years 6 months) indicated whether they remembered each event, and if so, they described the event and how it had made them feel. Agreement between parent and child concerning how the child felt varied as a function of emotion. Children agreed with their parents' emotion attributions most often for events that parents recalled as having evoked happiness and sadness, less often for fear, and least often for anger. Children disagreed with parents' attributions of happiness and sadness most often when parents and children differed concerning the attribution of children's goals. Discordant reports about children's anger were most frequent when parents and children reported conflicting goals. Discordant reports about fear were most frequent when parents and children focused on different parts of the temporal sequence surrounding the event. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 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)     

Associative and spontaneous appraisal processes independently contribute to anger elicitation in daily life.

There has been a great deal of debate concerning the antecedents of anger, with appraisal theorists emphasizing the role of hostile interpretations and cognitive neo-associationistic theorists emphasizing the role of more basic associative processes. Recently, theorists have sought to reconcile these views by acknowledging the role of both associative and inferential processes, and the current investigation drew upon recent social–cognitive research to test this compromise. Individual differences in hostile inferences and associations were assessed in an implicit cognitive paradigm, and relevant outcomes were assessed in a daily diary protocol. Implicit hostile inferences predicted both anger and aggression in daily life, and such relationships were mediated by propensities toward hostile interpretations in daily life. Hostile associations also predicted anger in daily life, but this relationship proved to be independent of daily hostile interpretations. Results therefore support a model that acknowledges the role of both associative and appraisal processes in anger elicitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of mother–child emotion regulation strategies on children's expression of anger and sadness.

In a sample of 153 children from preschool through second grade, relations between the use of emotion regulation strategy and children's expression of anger and sadness were coded during an observational task in which children were intentionally disappointed in the presence of the mother. Multilevel modeling was used to examine strategy use and current and subsequent expressions of anger and sadness. Results indicate that mothers' use of attention refocusing and joint mother–child cognitive reframing lead to lower intensity of expressed anger and sadness. Younger children expressed more sadness than older children, and maternal attention refocusing was less successful among older children than younger ones. Implications of these results for assessing the socialization of emotion regulation in preschool and school-age children are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the formation and regulation of anger and aggression: A cognitive-neoassociationistic analysis.

Noting that a wide variety of unpleasant feelings, including sadness and depression, apparently can give rise to anger and aggression, I propose a cognitive–neoassociationistic model to account for the effects of negative affect on the development of angry feelings and the display of emotional aggression. Negative affect tends to activate ideas, memories, and expressive–motor reactions associated with anger and aggression as well as rudimentary angry feelings. Subsequent thought involving attributions, appraisals, and schematic conceptions can then intensify, suppress, enrich, or differentiate the initial reactions. Bodily reactions as well as emotion-relevant thoughts can activate the other components of the particular emotion network to which they are linked. Research findings consistent with the model are summarized. Experimental findings are also reported indicating that attention to one's negative feelings can lead to a regulation of the overt effects of the negative affect. I argue that the model can integrate the core aspect of the James-Lange theory with the newer cognitive theories of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a cognitive theory of catharsis.

Reviews 4 counseling analog studies which conclude that (1) expression of anger, either verbally or physically, does not automatically reduce anger, and (2) a cognitive process needs to accompany emotional expression. Results contradict the "hydraulic model" (J. Breuer and S. Freud, 1937) of emotions. An alternate model is proposed suggesting that anger expression will lead to anger reduction if it leads to coping with the anger-instigating event. Coping is achieved through dealing with the environment or through changing one's self-perceptions and attitudes. The model is extended to the emotion of sadness, and it is suggested that the experience and expression of emotions in general are therapeutic only if they facilitate a cognitive assimilation or working through process. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unresolved anger and sadness: Identifying vocal acoustical correlates.

The authors conducted 2 studies to identify the vocal acoustical correlates of unresolved anger and sadness among women reporting unresolved anger toward an attachment figure. In Study 1, participants (N = 17) were induced to experience and express anger then sadness or sadness then anger. In Study 2, a 2nd group of participants (N = 22) underwent a relationship-oriented, emotion-focused analogue therapy session. Results from both studies showed that, relative to emotionally neutral speech, anger evoked an increase in articulation rate and in mean fundamental frequency (F0) and F0-range, whereas sadness evoked an increase in F0-perturbation. Both F0 and F0-range were larger for anger than for sadness. In addition, results from the mood-induction-procedure study revealed 2 Emotion×Order interactions. Whereas variations in amplitude range suggested that anger evoked less physiological activation when induced after sadness, variations in F0-perturbation suggested that sadness evoked more physiological activation when induced after anger. These findings illustrate the feasibility of using acoustical measures to identify clients' personally and clinically meaningful emotional experiences, and shifts between such emotional experiences, in the context of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anger and advancement versus sadness and subjugation: The effect of negative emotion expressions on social status conferral.

Four studies examined status conferral (decisions about who should be granted status). The studies show that people confer more status to targets who express anger than to targets who express sadness. In the 1st study, participants supported President Clinton more when they viewed him expressing anger about the Monica Lewinsky scandal than when they saw him expressing sadness about the scandal. This effect was replicated with an unknown politician in Study 2. The 3rd study showed that status conferral in a company was correlated with peers' ratings of the workers' anger. In the final study, participants assigned a higher status position and a higher salary to a job candidate who described himself as angry as opposed to sad. Furthermore, Studies 2–4 showed that anger expressions created the impression that the expresser was competent and that these perceptions mediated the relationship between emotional expressions and status conferral. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of discrete emotions on young children's suggestibility.

Two experiments investigated the effects of sadness, anger, and happiness on 4- to 6-year-old children's memory and suggestibility concerning story events. In Experiment 1, children were presented with 3 interactive stories on a video monitor. The stories included protagonists who wanted to give the child a prize. After each story, the child completed a task to try to win the prize. The outcome of the child's effort was manipulated in order to elicit sadness, anger, or happiness. Children's emotions did not affect story recall, but children were more vulnerable to misleading questions about the stories when sad than when angry or happy. In Experiment 2, a story was presented and emotions were elicited using an autobiographical recall task. Children responded to misleading questions and then recalled the story for a different interviewer. Again, children's emotions did not affect the amount of story information recalled correctly, but sad children incorporated more information from misleading questions during recall than did angry or happy children. Sad children's greater suggestibility is discussed in terms of the differing problem-solving strategies associated with discrete emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective encoding and retrieval of affectively valent information: Two cognitive consequences of children's mood states.

Two experiments investigated the selective influences of experimentally induced mood states on 156 5th graders' encoding and retrieval of affectively valent information. Exp I revealed that a happy, compared to a neutral, mood during encoding facilitated recall of positive information; a sad encoding mood disrupted recall of positive material. A happy mood during retrieval also facilitated recall of positive information, but no other selective effects of retrieval mood occurred. Exp II indicated that the negative mood of anger, like that of sadness, disrupted the encoding of positive information; unlike sadness, however, anger facilitated the encoding of negative material. Again, no selective effects of retrieval mood occurred. Findings indicate that selective encoding and retrieval may contribute to children's cognitive ability to regulate mood states as well as other aspects of social learning and development. (48 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations among categorization, induction, recognition, and similarity: Comment on Sloutsky and Fisher (2004).

V. M. Sloutsky and A. V. Fisher (see record 2004-14313-002) reported 5 experiments documenting relations among categorization, induction, recognition, and similarity in children as well as adults and proposed a new model of induction, SINC (similarity, induction, categorization). Those authors concluded that induction depends on perceptual similarity rather than conceptual knowledge. Despite the useful contributions of this work, there are some important limitations. The experimental designs examined a limited range of phenomena that are not the most revealing about the use of nonperceptual information. The main results involved a simple triad task, for which the SINC model's predictions are equivalent to the predictions of previous models of inductive reasoning. It is also unclear whether the SINC model can account for the observed relations between similarity and recognition. Implications for future work on induction and related cognitive activities are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From unresolved anger to sadness: Identifying physiological correlates.

This study was designed to identify physiological correlates of unresolved anger and sadness, and the shift between these emotions, in a context similar to that of emotion-focused, experiential psychotherapy. Twenty-seven university students reporting unresolved anger toward an attachment figure were induced to experience and express unresolved anger and sadness. Simultaneously, their heart rate variability, finger temperature, and skin conductance levels were monitored. The sequence of emotion induction was counterbalanced. Sympathetic activation, as reflected by finger temperature, increased significantly from anger to sadness, but not from sadness to anger. A follow-up study (N=36) of participants induced to experience and express either anger or sadness in both the 1st and 2nd inductions ruled out an Anger×Time interaction and a sadness-sadness effect, suggesting that the increase in sympathetic activation from anger to sadness was a function of the unique sequence of emotions. These findings represent a first step toward using physiological measures to capture shifts from unresolved anger to vulnerable primary emotions during a therapy-like task and provide evidence for the purported mechanism underlying unresolved anger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Appraisal as a Pervasive Determinant of Anger.

L. Berkowitz and E. Harmon-Jones (see record 2004-15096-001) challenge appraisal theories of emotion by describing 2 sets of conditions (physical discomfort and anger-related muscle actions) in which anger appears to be elicited in the absence of theoretically predicted appraisals. In response, the authors discuss the ability of the specific appraisal model they have developed (e.g., C. A. Smith & L. D. Kirby, 2000, 2001; C. A. Smith & R. S. Lazarus, 1990) to account for such instances of anger. First, a number of issues are clarified relevant to the authors' model, including the nature of both the cognitive operations underlying appraisal and the specific appraisals hypothesized to evoke anger. The authors then describe how their model can account for the instances of anger described by L. Berkowitz and E. Harmon-Jones and how both accounts might be tested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What does it mean to be angry at yourself? Categories, appraisals, and the problem of language.

According to appraisal theorists, anger involves a negative event, usually blocking a goal, caused by another person. Critics argue that other-agency is unnecessary, since people can be angry at themselves, and thus that appraisal theory is wrong about anger. In two studies, we compared anger, self-anger, shame, and guilt, and found that self-anger shared some appraisals, action tendencies, and associated emotions with anger, others with shame and guilt. Self-anger was not simply anger with a different agency appraisal. Anger, shame, and guilt almost always involved other people, but almost half of the occurrences of self-anger were solitary. We discuss the incompatibility of appraisal theories with any strict categorical view of emotions, and the inadequacy of emotion words to capture emotional experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)