Signs of appeasement: Evidence for the distinct displays of embarrassment, amusement, and shame.

According to appeasement hypotheses, embarrassment should have a distinct nonverbal display that is more readily perceived when displayed by individuals from lower status groups. The evidence from 5 studies supported these two claims. The nonverbal behavior of embarrassment was distinct from a related emotion (amusement), resembled the temporal pattern of facial expressions of emotion, was uniquely related to self-reports of embarrassment, and was accurately identified by observers who judged the spontaneous displays of various emotions. Across the judgment studies, observers were more accurate and attributed more emotion to the embarrassment displays of female and African-American targets than those of male and Caucasian targets. Discussion focused on the universality and appeasement function of the embarrassment display. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

Smile intensity and warm touch as thin slices of child and family affective style.

The authors investigate the claim that thin slices of expressive behavior serve as reliable indicators of affective style in children and their families. Using photographs, the authors assessed smile intensity and tactile contact in kindergartners and their families. Consistent with claims that smiling and touch communicate positive emotion, measures of children’s smile intensity and warm family touch were correlated across classroom and family contexts. Consistent with studies of parent–child personality associations, parents’ warm smiles and negative facial displays resembled those of their children. Finally, consistent with observed relations between adult personality and positive display, children’s smiling behavior in the classroom correlated with parent ratings of children’s Extraversion/Surgency. These results highlight the utility of thin slices of smiling and touch as indicators of child and family affective style. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disgust and the moralization of purity.

Guided by appraisal-based models of the influence of emotion upon judgment, we propose that disgust moralizes—that is, amplifies the moral significance of—protecting the purity of the body and soul. Three studies documented that state and trait disgust, but not other negative emotions, moralize the purity moral domain but not the moral domains of justice or harm/care. In Study 1, integral feelings of disgust, but not integral anger, predicted stronger moral condemnation of behaviors violating purity. In Study 2, experimentally induced disgust, compared with induced sadness, increased condemnation of behaviors violating purity and increased approval of behaviors upholding purity. In Study 3, trait disgust, but not trait anger or trait fear, predicted stronger condemnation of purity violations and greater approval of behaviors upholding purity. We found that, confirming the domain specificity of the disgust–purity association, disgust was unrelated to moral judgments about justice (Studies 1 and 2) or harm/care (Study 3). Finally, across studies, individuals of lower socioeconomic status (SES) were more likely than individuals of higher SES to moralize purity but not justice or harm/care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior.

Lower social class (or socioeconomic status) is associated with fewer resources, greater exposure to threat, and a reduced sense of personal control. Given these life circumstances, one might expect lower class individuals to engage in less prosocial behavior, prioritizing self-interest over the welfare of others. The authors hypothesized, by contrast, that lower class individuals orient to the welfare of others as a means to adapt to their more hostile environments and that this orientation gives rise to greater prosocial behavior. Across 4 studies, lower class individuals proved to be more generous (Study 1), charitable (Study 2), trusting (Study 3), and helpful (Study 4) compared with their upper class counterparts. Mediator and moderator data showed that lower class individuals acted in a more prosocial fashion because of a greater commitment to egalitarian values and feelings of compassion. Implications for social class, prosocial behavior, and economic inequality are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The communication of emotion via touch.

The study of emotional communication has focused predominantly on the facial and vocal channels but has ignored the tactile channel. Participants in the current study were allowed to touch an unacquainted partner on the whole body to communicate distinct emotions. Of interest was how accurately the person being touched decoded the intended emotions without seeing the tactile stimulation. The data indicated that anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy were decoded at greater than chance levels, as well as happiness and sadness, 2 emotions that have not been shown to be communicated by touch to date. Moreover, fine-grained coding documented specific touch behaviors associated with different emotions. The findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to the study of emotion-related communication. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Graph cut segmentation with a statistical shape model in cardiac MRI

Segmenting the right ventricle (RV) in magnetic resonance (MR) images is required for cardiac function assessment. The segmentation of the RV is a difficult task due to low contrast with surrounding tissues and high shape variability. To overcome these problems, we introduce a segmentation method based on a statistical shape model obtained with a principal component analysis (PCA) on a set of representative shapes of the RV. Shapes are not represented by a set of points, but by distance maps to their contour, relaxing the need for a costly landmark detection and matching process. A shape model is thus obtained by computing a PCA on the shape variations. This prior is registered onto the image via a very simple user interaction and then incorporated into the well-known graph cut framework in order to guide the segmentation. Our semi-automatic segmentation method has been applied on 248 MR images of a publicly available dataset (from MICCAI’12 Right Ventricle Segmentation Challenge). We show that encouraging results can be obtained for this challenging application.     

Love and the commitment problem in romantic relations and friendship.

On the basis of the proposition that love promotes commitment, the authors predicted that love would motivate approach, have a distinct signal, and correlate with commitment-enhancing processes when relationships are threatened. The authors studied romantic partners and adolescent opposite-sex friends during interactions that elicited love and threatened the bond. As expected, the experience of love correlated with approach-related states (desire, sympathy). Providing evidence for a nonverbal display of love, four affiliation cues (head nods, Duchenne smiles, gesticulation, forward leans) correlated with self-reports and partner estimates of love. Finally, the experience and display of love correlated with commitment-enhancing processes (e.g., constructive conflict resolution, perceived trust) when the relationship was threatened. Discussion focused on love, positive emotion, and relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective indications of skull radiography after head injury in children

The Permanent Working Group of European Junior Hospital Doctors (PWG) conducted a survey among surgical trainees in member countries with the aim of describing postgraduate training in surgery throughout Europe. In each country, 10 trainees with surgical training of 2-5 years and 10 trainees with surgical training of 6-9 years answered a questionnaire, completed a diary and kept a log book of operations for 1 week. A total of 165 surgeons from 12 countries completed the survey. A trainee had to care for an average patient load varying from 30 to 80 patients at any one time. The average number of working hours ranged from 52 to 88 h per week, including up to 18 h of unpaid work. The different tasks carried out within these working hours varied considerably, as did the proportion of tasks with educational value. Trainees participated in four to 11 major operations each week, but the number of operations a week did not reflect the number of operations conducted under supervision. In some countries, the majority of the trainees stated that they received their training mainly through unsupervised experience. The average number of days spent on courses and congresses varied from 4 to 15 days per year, with great variation in the percentage of expenses paid. Countries with favourable working conditions, such as fewer working hours, shorter shifts and a day off after being on duty, seemed to have gained these advantages by a reduction in working hours with educational value, rather than by a reduction in routine work. It is concluded that conditions of surgical training vary greatly between the European countries in relation to duration, working hours, tasks undertaken, and resources used on training. Every country is capable of improving its surgical training.     

Contribution of vascular ultrasonic studies for the study of kidney diseases in children. Société francophone de recherche en pédiatrie

The proximity of child's kidneys from the cutaneous surface allows a particularly sensitive exploration by doppler sonography, which in addition has the major advantage of being a non-invasive, non-irradiating and painless technique. However there are two limitations to this technique: the lack of cooperation of some children and the still limited availability of high quality equipment in intensive care units. Indeed most of the applications described in this paper (i.e., pyelonephritis, renovascular hypertension, tumors, acute renal insufficiency and renal vein thrombosis) require, besides an experienced operator, expensive power doppler equipment including high frequency and high resolution probes.