Specificity of empathy-induced helping: Evidence for altruistic motivation.

This experiment investigated altruistic vs. egoistic interpretations of the effect of empathic concern on helping. The empathy–altruism hypothesis posits that empathic concern arouses an altruistic motivation to relieve the distress of another person; the negative state relief interpretation proposes that the effect of empathic concern is mediated by sadness, which produces an egoistic motivation to reduce one's own unpleasant state. 96 male and 96 female Ss first listened with an imagine or observe set to another person's problem and then were given an opportunity to help that person with the same problem or with a different problem. Consistent with the empathy–altruism hypothesis, imagine-set Ss helped more often than did observe-set Ss for the same problem but not for a different one. In addition, only empathic concern associated with the specific problem related to helping. Although sadness was related to helping, it did not account for the effect of empathic concern. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

More evidence that empathy is a source of altruistic motivation.

84 female undergraduates were exposed to a person in distress and instructed either to observe the victim's reactions (low empathy) or to imagine the victim's feelings (high empathy). This empathy manipulation was crossed with a manipulation of ease of escape without helping (easy vs difficult) to form a 2?×?2 design. As predicted by the empathy-altruism hypothesis, Ss in the low-empathy condition helped less when escape was easy than when it was difficult. This suggests that their helping was directed toward the egoistic goal of reducing their own distress. Ss in the high-empathy condition, however, displayed a high rate of helping, even when escape was easy. This suggests that their helping was directed toward the altruistic goal of reducing the distress of the person in need. Analyses of Ss' self-reported emotional response provided additional support for the hypothesis that feeling a predominance of empathy rather than distress on witnessing someone in need can evoke altruistic motivation. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A neuropsychological theory of positive affect and its influence on cognition.

Positive affect systematically influences performance on many cognitive tasks. A new neuropsychological theory is proposed that accounts for many of these effects by assuming that positive affect is associated with increased brain dopamine levels. The theory predicts or accounts for influences of positive affect on olfaction, the consolidation of long-term (i.e., episodic) memories, working memory, and creative problem solving. For example, the theory assumes that creative problem solving is improved, in part, because increased dopamine release in the anterior cingulate improves cognitive flexibility and facilitates the selection of cognitive perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is empathic emotion a source of altruistic motivation?

Tested the hypothesis that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help. 44 female college students watched another female undergraduate receive electric shocks and were then given a chance to help her by taking the remaining shocks themselves. In each of 2 experiments, Ss' empathic emotion (low vs high) and their ease of escape from continuing to watch the victim suffer if they did not help (easy vs difficult) were manipulated in a 2?×?2 design. It was reasoned that if empathy led to altruistic motivation, Ss feeling a high degree of empathy for the victim should be as ready to help when escape without helping was easy as when it was difficult. But if empathy led to egoistic motivation, Ss feeling empathy should be more ready to help when escape was difficult than when it was easy. Results followed the former pattern when empathy was high and the latter pattern when empathy was low, supporting the hypothesis that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of self-reported distress and empathy on egoistic versus altruistic motivation to help.

Proposed that a distinction be made between 2 emotional responses to seeing another person suffer—personal distress and empathy—and that these 2 emotions lead to 2 different kinds of motivation to help: Personal distress leads to egoistic motivation; empathy, to altruistic motivation. These distinctions were tested in 3 studies, each using 10 male and 10 female undergraduates. Across the 3 studies, factor analysis of Ss' self-reported emotional response indicated that feelings of personal distress and empathy, although positively correlated, were experienced as qualitatively distinct. The pattern of helping in Studies 1 and 2 indicated that a predominance of personal distress led to egoistic motivation, whereas a predominance of empathy led to altruistic motivation. In Study 3, the cost of helping was made especially high. Results suggest an important qualification on the link between empathic emotion and altruistic motivation: Ss reporting a predominance of empathy displayed an egoistic pattern of helping. Apparently, making helping costly evoked self-concern, which overrode any altruistic impulse produced by feeling empathy. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A new therapeutic model for integrating affect and cognition.

Reviews a model developed from social psychological research by I. Roseman et al (1990) that links appraisals and emotions, and discusses the model's therapeutic implications. The Roseman et al's model links the way in which individuals appraise a situation and their emotional reactions. The model can be easily used by therapists to intervene with clients to help them to understand how their emotions and their appraisals are interrelated. A 4-stage model for utilizing this appraisal model to work with individuals and couples on understanding and changing their appraisal patterns and their emotions is provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction between affect and cognition in word perception.

Investigated the hypothesis that the accuracy with which a briefly shown word is perceived depends on both the affective tone of the word and the activation of the corresponding memory code. To increase activation, expectation and word frequency were manipulated. Ss were exposed to a 25-ms flash of a target word. They then chose, from a word pair, the target word. In half the trials, this word pair was given before the flash to create an expectation. Consistent with the hypothesis, when the words were infrequent, accuracy in perception was lower for affective than for neutral words regardless of expectation. When the words were frequent, there was no effect of affective tone in the absence of expectation; in the presence of expectation, accuracy was higher for affective than for neutral words. The valence of the affective words had no effect. Results are interpreted in terms of attentional mechanisms implicated in conscious perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The interplay of affect and cognition in attitude formation and change.

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that the sequence of affect and cognition in an attitude's formation is an important determinant of its subsequent resistance to affective and cognitive means of persuasion. Affect-based and cognition-based attitudes were induced and subsequently challenged by either affective or cognitive means of persuasion. As predicted, affect-based attitudes exhibited more change under affective means of persuasion than under cognitive means of persuasion. Cognition-based attitudes, on the other hand, exhibited equal change under both forms of persuasion. The interaction between attitude type and means of persuasion emerged both when affect was manipulated subliminally (Exp 1) and when affect was manipulated supraliminally (Exp 2). In the 2nd experiment, affect-based attitudes were expressed with greater confidence than their cognition-based counterparts. Findings underscore the theoretical as well as practical importance of distinguishing between affect- and cognition-based attitudes and the need for influence attempts to make contact with an attitude's origin. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion and cognition in psychotherapy: The transforming power of affect.

Theory and research on emotion in both psychology and psychotherapy are reviewed to demonstrate the importance of emotion in human functioning and psychotherapeutic change. A proposal is made for the importance of integrating empirically supported emotion-focused change processes into psychotherapeutic work. Five principles of change in the emotion domain-emotion awareness; expression; regulation; reflection on emotion; and the more novel principle of emotion transformation, by which emotion is changed by emotion-are offered as processes of change that are rapidly gathering empirical support. The result of emotion coming of age will be the expansion of theories of dysfunction and of treatment to include emotion-focused coping and emotional processes of change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect.

The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Students' reports of motivation and negative affect: A theoretical and empirical analysis.

The authors investigated the self-reported relationships among 5th- and 6th-grade students' achievement goals in mathematics, their negative affect about making mistakes, and their self-regulatory beliefs and behaviors. Cluster analysis revealed 4 motivational-affective patterns. Two groups were characterized by positive motivational-affective patterns and 2 suggested more problematic patterns related to different goal patterns, negative affect, and less positive self-regulatory behaviors and beliefs. Path analyses showed that negative affect after failure mediated performance goals and self-regulatory beliefs and behaviors. The authors propose a theory of achievement goals and affect that explains why students differ in their ability to tolerate error during learning. They also discuss practical and theoretical implications of the role of negative affect in achievement motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of positive affect on the components of expectancy motivation.

The influence of positive affect on expectancy motivation was investigated in 2 studies. The results of Study 1 indicated that positive affect improved people's performance and affected their perceptions of expectancy and valence. In Study 1, in which outcomes depended on chance, positive affect did not influence people's perceptions of instrumentality. In Study 2, in which the link between performance and outcomes was specified, positive affect influenced all 3 components of expectancy motivation. Together, the results of Studies 1 and 2 indicated that positive affect interacts with task conditions in influencing motivation and that its influence on motivation occurs not through general effects, such as response bias or general activation, but rather through its influence on the cognitive processes involved in motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition.

Need for cognition in contemporary literature refers to an individual's tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors. Individual differences in need for cognition have been the focus of investigation in over 100 empirical studies. This literature is reviewed, covering the theory and history of this variable, measures of interindividual variations in it, and empirical relationships between it and personality variables, as well as individuals' tendencies to seek and engage in effortful cognitive activity and enjoy cognitively effortful circumstances. The article concludes with discussions of an elaborated theory of the variable, including antecedent conditions; interindividual variations in it related to the manner information is acquired or processed to guide perceptions, judgments, and behavior; and the relationship between it and the 5-factor model of personality structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retraining attitudes and stereotypes to affect motivation and cognitive capacity under stereotype threat.

In a series of experiments, a retraining paradigm was used to test the effects of attitudes and stereotypes on individuals' motivation and cognitive capacity in stereotype-threatening contexts. Women trained to have a more positive math attitude exhibited increased math motivation (Study 1). This effect was not observed for men but was magnified among women when negative stereotypes were either primed subtly (Study 2) or indirectly reinforced (Study 3). Although attitudes had no effect on working memory capacity, women retrained to associate their gender with being good at math exhibited increased working memory capacity (Studies 3 and 4), which in turn mediated increased math performance (Study 4) in a stereotype-threatening context. Results suggest that although positive attitudes can motivate stigmatized individuals to engage with threatening domains, stereotypes need to be retrained to give them the cognitive capacity critical for success. Implications for interventions to reduce stereotype threat are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of adoption: Developmental and clinical implications.

Because adopted children are overrepresented in mental health settings, their parents often consult psychologists to help them understand and manage some of the unique developmental and childrearing challenges they commonly face. One of the most frequent issues raised by these parents is talking with their children about adoption. This article provides a developmental framework for helping psychologists understand the way children comprehend adoption and the implications of their adoption knowledge for psychological adjustment. It also provides psychologists with useful guidelines for supporting parents to meet the challenges of discussing adoption with their children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further issues in the psychology of affect and motivation: A developmental perspective.

Affect has always occupied a place of central importance in psychoanalysis, from Freud's early writings and revisions, to more recent contributions of many others, and into the current era of theoretical pluralism. Following Darwin and Freud, Silvan Tomkins (1911-1991) explored clinical and theoretical aspects of affect and motivation for over four decades; however, Tomkins' work is often misunderstood and rarely discussed comprehensively, particularly his more recent and posthumous elaborations. Tomkins is best viewed as presenting a developmental psychology of affect, and the theoretical and clinical aspects of Tomkins' work relevant to psychoanalysis are examined here with particular emphasis on his more recent revisions and additions. Tomkins and his colleagues described in detail the nature of affects and their triggering mechanisms; the development and transformations of the affect system; the potential for virtually unlimited ideo-affective structures resulting from this system; the relationships between affects, motivation, and other mental functions (e.g., drives and cognition); and various clinical implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goal orientation and task demand effects on motivation, affect, and performance.

Two studies tested the joint effects of goal orientation and task demands on motivation, affect, and performance, examining different factors affecting task demands. In Study 1 (N?=?199), task difficulty was found to moderate the effect of goal orientation on performance and affect (i.e., satisfaction with performance). In Study 2 (N?≠&189), task consistency was found to moderate the effect of goal orientation on self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Results are discussed in relation to self-regulatory processes cued by goal orientations, attentional resource demands, and the need to match goal orientations to the nature of the task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of cognition and affect in the depressive experiences of normal men.

Administered the Depression Adjective Check List and a projective story completion test as measures of depression to 30 male undergraduates 5 times over a 2-mo period. Data demonstrate the existence of a unified, negative content that is associated with depressed mood among normal Ss and suggest a similarity in the depressive processes of pathological depression and depressed mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Socialization and the altruistic behavior of children.

Reviews recent research into altruistic behavior by children, utilizing 4 major sections. The 1st concerns the generality of children's social altruism across behavioral situations. The 2nd concerns person variables with particular emphasis on age and the cognitive/developmental variables of moral judgment and role taking. The 3rd discusses environmental variables and involves more or less direct attempts to demonstrate socializing processes at work. Items dealt with are reinforcement, the role of models, training in role taking, and verbal socialization procedures such as preaching and induction. Finally, theory is considered with particular emphasis on social learning and cognitive development. (2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)