Influence of emotional valence on perceived psychological distance depends on emotional intensity

The regularity of musical beat makes it a powerful stimulus promoting movement synchrony among people. Synchrony can increase interpersonal trust, affiliation, and cooperation. Musical pieces can be classified according to the quality of groove; the higher the groove, the more it induces the desire to move. We investigated questions related to collective music-listening among 33 participants in an experiment conducted in a naturalistic yet acoustically controlled setting of a research concert hall with motion tracking. First, does higher groove music induce (1) movement with more energy and (2) higher interpersonal movement coordination? Second, does visual social information manipulated by having eyes open or eyes closed also affect energy and coordination? Participants listened to pieces from four categories formed by crossing groove (high, low) with tempo (higher, lower). Their upper body movement was recorded via head markers. Self-reported ratings of grooviness, emotional valence, emotional intensity, and familiarity were collected after each song. A biomechanically motivated measure of movement energy increased with high-groove songs and was positively correlated with grooviness ratings, confirming the theoretically implied but less tested motor response to groove. Participants’ ratings of emotional valence and emotional intensity correlated positively with movement energy, suggesting that movement energy relates to emotional engagement with music. Movement energy was higher in eyes-open trials, suggesting that seeing each other enhanced participants’ responses, consistent with social facilitation or contagion. Furthermore, interpersonal coordination was higher both for the high-groove and eyes-open conditions, indicating that the social situation of collective music listening affects how music is experienced.

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Feeling Close: Emotional Intensity Reduces Perceived Psychological Distance

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.1531661 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Leaf Van Boven ◽

Joanne Kane ◽

A. Peter McGraw ◽

Jeannette Dale

Keyword(s):

Psychological Distance ◽

Emotional Intensity

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Danger, Sex, and Everything Else

Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications ◽

10.1027/1864-1105/a000295 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Lucía Cores-Sarría ◽

Brent J. Hale ◽

Annie Lang

Keyword(s):

Emotional Response ◽

Opposite Effect ◽

Emotional Valence ◽

Emotional Intensity ◽

Message Content ◽

Large Database ◽

Content Category ◽

Camera Angle ◽

Dependent Variables ◽

Future Work

Abstract. This study tests the effects of camera distance and camera angle on emotional response across four categories of pictures covering a large emotional range (positive and negative miscellanea, erotica, and threat), using the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) –a large database of emotionally evocative photographs. We content analyzed 722 images for the content category and camera framing (distance and angle), employing these as independent factors in analyses, and used the IAPS’ pre-existing normative average ratings of emotional valence, arousal, and dominance as dependent variables. As hypothesized, affective responses were generally increased by closer framing and high and low angles (compared to straight angles), but the content of the picture played an important role in determining effect strength and direction. In particular, closeness increased arousal for all picture groups but had the opposite effect on positive miscellaneous pictures, straight angles decreased the emotional response for the two miscellanea groups, and low angles increased the emotional response for threatening pictures. This study is the first to show that previously found camera framing effects apply to pictures of high emotional intensity (e.g., erotica and threat). We suggest that future work should consider formal manipulations alongside message content.

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Spatializing Emotions Besides Magnitudes: Is There a Left-to-Right Valence or Intensity Mapping?

Symmetry ◽

10.3390/sym12050775 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (5) ◽

pp. 775

Author(s):

Giulia Prete

Keyword(s):

Emotional Processing ◽

Emotional Valence ◽

Number Line ◽

Judgment Task ◽

Snarc Effect ◽

Emotional Intensity ◽

Left Hand ◽

Intensity Mapping ◽

The Right ◽

Parity Judgment

The Spatial–Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC), namely the automatic association between smaller numbers and left space and between larger numbers and right space, is often attributed to a Mental Number Line (MNL), in which magnitudes would be placed left-to-right. Previous studies have suggested that the MNL could be extended to emotional processing. In this study, participants were asked to carry out a parity judgment task (categorizing one to five digits as even or odd) and an emotional judgment task, in which emotional smilies were presented with four emotional expressions (very sad, sad, happy, very happy). Half of the sample was asked to categorize the emotional valence (positive or negative valence), the other half was asked to categorize the emotional intensity (lower or higher intensity). The results of the parity judgment task confirmed the expected SNARC effect. In the emotional judgment task, the performance of both subgroups was better for happy than for sad expressions. Importantly, a better performance was found only in the valence task for lower intensity stimuli categorized with the left hand and for higher intensity stimuli categorized with the right hand, but only for happy smilies. The present results show that neither emotional valence nor emotional intensity alone are spatialized left-to-right, suggesting that magnitudes and emotions are processed independently from one another, and that the mental representation of emotions could be more complex than the bi-dimentional left-to-right spatialization found for numbers.

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Neurocognitive Effects of Preceding Facial Expressions on Perception of Subsequent Emotions

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnbeh.2021.683833 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Shin Ah Kim ◽

Sang Hee Kim

Keyword(s):

Prefrontal Cortex ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Emotional Processing ◽

Emotional Experience ◽

Emotional Valence ◽

Emotional Intensity ◽

Neural Responses ◽

Intensity Rating ◽

The Right

In everyday life, individuals successively and simultaneously encounter multiple stimuli that are emotionally incongruent. Emotional incongruence elicited by preceding stimuli may alter emotional experience with ongoing stimuli. However, the underlying neural mechanisms of the modulatory influence of preceding emotional stimuli on subsequent emotional processing remain unclear. In this study, we examined self-reported and neural responses to negative and neutral pictures whose emotional valence was incongruent with that of preceding images of facial expressions. Twenty-five healthy participants performed an emotional intensity rating task inside a brain scanner. Pictures of negative and neutral scenes appeared, each of which was preceded by a pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant facial expression to elicit a degree of emotional incongruence. Behavioral results showed that emotional incongruence based on preceding facial expressions did not influence ratings of subsequent pictures’ emotional intensity. On the other hand, neuroimaging results revealed greater activation of the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in response to pictures that were more emotionally incongruent with preceding facial expressions. The dmPFC had stronger functional connectivity with the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) during the presentation of negative pictures that followed pleasant facial expressions compared to those that followed unpleasant facial expressions. Interestingly, increased functional connectivity of the dmPFC was associated with the reduced modulatory influence of emotional incongruence on the experienced intensity of negative emotions. These results indicate that functional connectivity of the dmPFC contributes to the resolution of emotional incongruence, reducing the emotion modulation effect of preceding information on subsequent emotional processes.

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Extraverts Have Larger Social Network Layers

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000048 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 32 (3) ◽

pp. 161-169 ◽

Cited By ~ 74

Author(s):

Thomas V. Pollet ◽

Sam G. B. Roberts ◽

Robin I. M. Dunbar

Keyword(s):

Social Network ◽

Social Relationships ◽

Outer Layer ◽

Network Size ◽

Emotional Intensity ◽

Emotional Closeness ◽

Network Layer ◽

Network Layers ◽

Social Network Size

Previous studies showed that extraversion influences social network size. However, it is unclear how extraversion affects the size of different layers of the network, and how extraversion relates to the emotional intensity of social relationships. We examined the relationships between extraversion, network size, and emotional closeness for 117 individuals. The results demonstrated that extraverts had larger networks at every layer (support clique, sympathy group, outer layer). The results were robust and were not attributable to potential confounds such as sex, though they were modest in size (raw correlations between extraversion and size of network layer, .20 < r < .23). However, extraverts were not emotionally closer to individuals in their network, even after controlling for network size. These results highlight the importance of considering not just social network size in relation to personality, but also the quality of relationships with network members.

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Commentaries and Rejoinder on

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000206 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (4) ◽

pp. 327-334 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Han Gong ◽

Douglas L. Medin ◽

Tal Eyal ◽

Nira Liberman ◽

Yaacov Trope ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Moral Judgment ◽

Psychological Distance ◽

Temporal Distance ◽

Moral Cognition ◽

Cultural Systems ◽

Moral Condemnation ◽

Construal Levels

In the hope to resolve the two sets of opposing results concerning the effects of psychological distance and construal levels on moral judgment, Žeželj and Jokić (2014) conducted a series of four direct replications, which yielded divergent patterns of results. In our commentary, we first revisit the consistent findings that lower-level construals induced by How/Why manipulation lead to harsher moral condemnation than higher-level construals. We then speculate on the puzzling patterns of results regarding the role of temporal distance in shaping moral judgment. And we conclude by discussing the complexity of morality and propose that it may be important to incorporate cultural systems into the study of moral cognition.

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