The distinction between positive and negative emotions is fundamental in emotion models. Intriguingly, neurobiological work suggests shared mechanisms across positive and negative emotions. We tested ...whether similar overlap occurs in real-life facial expressions. During peak intensities of emotion, positive and negative situations were successfully discriminated from isolated bodies but not faces. Nevertheless, viewers perceived illusory positivity or negativity in the nondiagnostic faces when seen with bodies. To reveal the underlying mechanisms, we created compounds of intense negative faces combined with positive bodies, and vice versa. Perceived affect and mimicry of the faces shifted systematically as a function of their contextual body emotion. These findings challenge standard models of emotion expression and highlight the role of the body in expressing and perceiving emotions.
Cultural Variation in Affect Valuation Tsai, Jeanne L; Knutson, Brian; Fung, Helene H
Journal of personality and social psychology,
02/2006, Volume:
90, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The authors propose that how people want to feel ("ideal affect") differs from how they actually feel ("actual affect") and that cultural factors influence ideal more than actual affect. In 2 ...studies, controlling for actual affect, the authors found that European American (EA) and Asian American (AA) individuals value high-arousal positive affect (e.g., excitement) more than do Hong Kong Chinese (CH). On the other hand, CH and AA individuals value low-arousal positive affect (e.g., calm) more than do EA individuals. For all groups, the discrepancy between ideal and actual affect correlates with depression. These findings illustrate the distinctiveness of ideal and actual affect, show that culture influences ideal affect more than actual affect, and indicate that both play a role in mental health.
Context in Emotion Perception Barrett, Lisa Feldman; Mesquita, Batja; Gendron, Maria
Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society,
10/2011, Volume:
20, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
We review recent work demonstrating consistent context effects during emotion perception. Visual scenes, voices, bodies, other faces, cultural orientation, and even words shape how emotion is ...perceived in a face, calling into question the still-common assumption that the emotional state of a person is written on and can be read from the face like words on a page. Incorporating context during emotion perception appears to be routine, efficient, and, to some degree, automatic. This evidence challenges the standard view of emotion perception represented in psychology texts, in the cognitive neuroscience literature, and in the popular media and points to a necessary change in the basic paradigm used in the scientific study of emotion perception.
Previous
research has shown that major life events can have short- and long-term effects
on subjective well-being (SWB). The present meta-analysis examines (a) whether
life events have different ...effects on affective and cognitive well-being and (b)
how the rate of adaptation varies across different life events. Longitudinal
data from 188 publications (313 samples, N = 65,911) were
integrated to describe the reaction and adaptation to 4 family events (marriage,
divorce, bereavement, childbirth) and 4 work events (unemployment, reemployment,
retirement, relocation/migration). The findings show that life events have very
different effects on affective and cognitive well-being and that for most events
the effects of life events on cognitive well-being are stronger and more
consistent across samples. Different life events differ in their effects on SWB,
but these effects are not a function of the alleged desirability of events. The
results are discussed with respect to their theoretical implications, and
recommendations for future studies on adaptation are given.
It is widely believed that certain emotions are universally recognized in facial expressions. Recent evidence indicates that Western perceptions (e.g., scowls as anger) depend on cues to U.S. emotion ...concepts embedded in experiments. Because such cues are standard features in methods used in cross-cultural experiments, we hypothesized that evidence of universality depends on this conceptual context. In our study, participants from the United States and the Himba ethnic group from the Keunene region of northwestern Namibia sorted images of posed facial expressions into piles by emotion type. Without cues to emotion concepts, Himba participants did not show the presumed "universal" pattern, whereas U.S. participants produced a pattern with presumed universal features. With cues to emotion concepts, participants in both cultures produced sorts that were closer to the presumed "universal" pattern, although substantial cultural variation persisted. Our findings indicate that perceptions of emotion are not universal, but depend on cultural and conceptual contexts.
Childhood poverty has pervasive negative physical and psychological health sequelae in adulthood. Exposure to chronic stressors may be one underlying mechanism for childhood poverty−health relations ...by influencing emotion regulatory systems. Animal work and human cross-sectional studies both suggest that chronic stressor exposure is associated with amygdala and prefrontal cortex regions important for emotion regulation. In this longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging study of 49 participants, we examined associations between childhood poverty at age 9 and adult neural circuitry activation during emotion regulation at age 24. To test developmental timing, concurrent, adult income was included as a covariate. Adults with lower family income at age 9 exhibited reduced ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity and failure to suppress amygdala activation during effortful regulation of negative emotion at age 24. In contrast to childhood income, concurrent adult income was not associated with neural activity during emotion regulation. Furthermore, chronic stressor exposure across childhood (at age 9, 13, and 17) mediated the relations between family income at age 9 and ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity at age 24. The findings demonstrate the significance of childhood chronic stress exposures in predicting neural outcomes during emotion regulation in adults who grew up in poverty.
Research over the last 5 decades has suggested that negative affective states narrow cognitive scope, whereas positive affective states broaden cognitive scope. An examination of this past research, ...however, reveals that only negative affects of high motivational intensity (e.g., fear, stress) and positive affects of low motivational intensity (e.g., gratitude, amusement) may have been examined. Consequently, over the last 5 years, research has examined positive and negative affects that are low (e.g., sadness) versus high (e.g., desire) in motivational intensity. This research has found that affects of low motivational intensity broaden cognitive scope whereas affects of high motivational intensity narrow cognitive scope, regardless of the positivity or negativity of the affective state.
Recent findings on subjective well-being (SWB) are presented, and I describe the important questions for future research that these raise. Worldwide predictors of SWB such as social support and ...fulfillment of basic needs have been uncovered, and there are large differences in SWB between societies. A number of culture-specific predictors of SWB have also been found. Research on social comparison suggests that a world standard for a desirable income has developed. New findings on adaptation indicate that habituation to conditions is not always complete and that circumstances in some cases can have a large and lasting effect on SWB. An important finding is that high SWB benefits health, longevity, citizenship, and social relationships. Because of the benefits of SWB as well as the strong effects societal conditions can have on it, I proposed national accounts of SWB, which are now being seriously considered by nations. Finally, I review advances in methodology that are needed to move beyond conclusions based on simple cross-sectional correlations based on global self-report scales. Each of the findings raises new and important questions for future research.
Affect is basic to many if not all psychological phenomena. This article examines 2 of the most fundamental properties of affective experience-valence and arousal-asking how they are related to each ...other on a moment to moment basis. Over the past century, 6 distinct types of relations have been suggested or implicitly presupposed in the literature. We critically review the available evidence for each proposal and argue that the evidence does not provide a conclusive answer. Next, we use statistical modeling to verify the different proposals in 8 data sets (with Ns ranging from 80 to 1,417) where participants reported their affective experiences in response to experimental stimuli in laboratory settings or as momentary or remembered in natural settings. We formulate 3 key conclusions about the relation between valence and arousal: (a) on average, there is a weak but consistent V-shaped relation of arousal as a function of valence, but (b) there is large variation at the individual level, so that (c) valence and arousal can in principle show a variety of relations depending on person or circumstances. This casts doubt on the existence of a static, lawful relation between valence and arousal. The meaningfulness of the observed individual differences is supported by their personality and cultural correlates. The malleability and individual differences found in the structure of affect must be taken into account when studying affect and its role in other psychological phenomena.
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