scholarly journals When dark humor and moral judgment meet in sacrificial dilemmas: Preliminary evidence with females

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 276-287
Author(s):  
Emmanuelle Brigaud ◽  
Nathalie Blanc
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Dark Humor ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Context Dependent

The influence of dark humor on moral judgment has never been explored, even though this form of humor is well-known to push the boundaries of social norms. In the present study, we examined whether the presence of dark humor leads female participants to approve a utilitarian response (i.e., to kill one to save many) in sacrificial dilemmas. The effects of two types of humorous contexts were compared (i.e., dark vs. nondark) on dilemmas, which differed according to whom benefits from the crime (i.e., oneself and others vs. others only). In addition to collecting moral responses, individuals’ emotional states were assessed at three critical steps: Before and after reading the jokes and also after performing the moral judgment task. Our results revealed that dark and nondark humor similarly elicited a positive emotional state. However, dark humor increased the permissiveness of the moral violation when this violation created benefits for oneself. In self and other beneficial dilemmas, female participants in the dark humorous condition judged the utilitarian response more appropriate than those in the nondark condition. This study represents a first attempt in deepening our understanding of the context-dependent nature of moral judgment usually assessed in sacrificial dilemmas.

Effect of Emotions in a Lexical Decision Task

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Maire ◽  
Renaud Brochard ◽  
Jean-Luc Kop ◽  
Vivien Dioux ◽  
Daniel Zagar
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Attentional Orienting ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Sequence Effect ◽  
Emotion Induction ◽  
Before And After

Abstract. This study measured the effect of emotional states on lexical decision task performance and investigated which underlying components (physiological, attentional orienting, executive, lexical, and/or strategic) are affected. We did this by assessing participants’ performance on a lexical decision task, which they completed before and after an emotional state induction task. The sequence effect, usually produced when participants repeat a task, was significantly smaller in participants who had received one of the three emotion inductions (happiness, sadness, embarrassment) than in control group participants (neutral induction). Using the diffusion model ( Ratcliff, 1978 ) to resolve the data into meaningful parameters that correspond to specific psychological components, we found that emotion induction only modulated the parameter reflecting the physiological and/or attentional orienting components, whereas the executive, lexical, and strategic components were not altered. These results suggest that emotional states have an impact on the low-level mechanisms underlying mental chronometric tasks.

The Influence of Emotional State on Learning From Reward and Punishment in Borderline Personality Disorder

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine L. Dixon-Gordon ◽  
Matthew T. Tull ◽  
Leor M. Hackel ◽  
Kim L. Gratz
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Corrective Feedback ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Emotion Induction ◽  
Before And After

Despite preliminary evidence that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) demonstrate deficits in learning from corrective feedback, no studies have examined the influence of emotional state on these learning deficits in BPD. This laboratory study examined the influence of negative emotions on learning among participants with BPD (n = 17), compared with clinical (past-year mood/anxiety disorder; n = 20) and healthy (n = 23) controls. Participants completed a reinforcement learning task before and after a negative emotion induction. The learning task involved presenting pairs of stimuli with probabilistic feedback in the training phase, and subsequently assessing accuracy for choosing previously rewarded stimuli or avoiding previously punished stimuli. ANOVAs and ANCOVAs revealed no significant between-group differences in overall learning accuracy. However, there was an effect of group in the ANCOVA for postemotion induction high-conflict punishment learning accuracy, with the BPD group showing greater decrements in learning accuracy than controls following the negative emotion induction.

scholarly journals Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Argus J Athanas ◽  
Jamison M McCorrison ◽  
Susan Smalley ◽  
Jamie Price ◽  
Jim Grady ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
User Input ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Emotional Transition

BACKGROUND The use of smartphone apps to monitor and deliver health care guidance and interventions has received considerable attention recently, particularly with regard to behavioral disorders, stress relief, negative emotional state, and poor mood in general. Unfortunately, there is little research investigating the long-term and repeated effects of apps meant to impact mood and emotional state. OBJECTIVE We aimed to investigate the effects of both immediate point-of-intervention and long-term use (ie, at least 10 engagements) of a guided meditation and mindfulness smartphone app on users’ emotional states. Data were collected from users of a mobile phone app developed by the company Stop, Breathe & Think (SBT) for achieving emotional wellness. To explore the long-term effects, we assessed changes in the users’ basal emotional state before they completed an activity (eg, a guided meditation). We also assessed the immediate effects of the app on users’ emotional states from preactivity to postactivity. METHODS The SBT app collects information on the emotional state of the user before and after engagement in one or several mediation and mindfulness activities. These activities are recommended and provided by the app based on user input. We considered data on over 120,000 users of the app who collectively engaged in over 5.5 million sessions with the app during an approximate 2-year period. We focused our analysis on users who had at least 10 engagements with the app over an average of 6 months. We explored the changes in the emotional well-being of individuals with different emotional states at the time of their initial engagement with the app using mixed-effects models. In the process, we compared 2 different methods of classifying emotional states: (1) an expert-defined a priori mood classification and (2) an empirically driven cluster-based classification. RESULTS We found that among long-term users of the app, there was an association between the length of use and a positive change in basal emotional state (4% positive mood increase on a 2-point scale every 10 sessions). We also found that individuals who were anxious or depressed tended to have a favorable long-term emotional transition (eg, from a sad emotional state to a happier emotional state) after using the app for an extended period (the odds ratio for achieving a positive emotional state was 3.2 and 6.2 for anxious and depressed individuals, respectively, compared with users with fewer sessions). CONCLUSIONS Our analyses provide evidence for an association between both immediate and long-term use of an app providing guided meditations and improvements in the emotional state.

scholarly journals Taking the pulse of social cognition: cardiac afferent activity and interoceptive accuracy modulate emotional egocentricity bias

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Von Mohr ◽  
Gianluca Finotti ◽  
Valerio Villani ◽  
Manos Tsakiris
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cardiac Cycle ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Afferent Activity ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
Interoceptive Accuracy

At the heart of social cognition is our ability to distinguish between self and other and correctly attribute mental and affective states to their origin. Emotional egocentricity bias (EEB) reflects the tendency to use one’s own emotional state when relating to others. Although interoception underpins our emotional experience, little is known about its role on how we affectively relate to others. Here, we assessed how cardiac interoceptive impact, manipulated by presenting affective stimuli across different phases of the cardiac cycle coupled with trait-like levels of interoceptive accuracy, modulate the EEB. Individuals with higher interoceptive accuracy displayed an increased EEB when the other’s emotional state was presented at the point of maximum interoceptive impact (i.e., at systole), whereas the reverse was observed for individuals with lower interoceptive accuracy. These findings show how interoceptive activity provides the physiological context within which we process other’s emotional states in parallel to ours.

scholarly journals Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study

10.2196/12617 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. e12617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Argus J Athanas ◽  
Jamison M McCorrison ◽  
Susan Smalley ◽  
Jamie Price ◽  
Jim Grady ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
User Input ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Emotional Transition

Background The use of smartphone apps to monitor and deliver health care guidance and interventions has received considerable attention recently, particularly with regard to behavioral disorders, stress relief, negative emotional state, and poor mood in general. Unfortunately, there is little research investigating the long-term and repeated effects of apps meant to impact mood and emotional state. Objective We aimed to investigate the effects of both immediate point-of-intervention and long-term use (ie, at least 10 engagements) of a guided meditation and mindfulness smartphone app on users’ emotional states. Data were collected from users of a mobile phone app developed by the company Stop, Breathe & Think (SBT) for achieving emotional wellness. To explore the long-term effects, we assessed changes in the users’ basal emotional state before they completed an activity (eg, a guided meditation). We also assessed the immediate effects of the app on users’ emotional states from preactivity to postactivity. Methods The SBT app collects information on the emotional state of the user before and after engagement in one or several mediation and mindfulness activities. These activities are recommended and provided by the app based on user input. We considered data on over 120,000 users of the app who collectively engaged in over 5.5 million sessions with the app during an approximate 2-year period. We focused our analysis on users who had at least 10 engagements with the app over an average of 6 months. We explored the changes in the emotional well-being of individuals with different emotional states at the time of their initial engagement with the app using mixed-effects models. In the process, we compared 2 different methods of classifying emotional states: (1) an expert-defined a priori mood classification and (2) an empirically driven cluster-based classification. Results We found that among long-term users of the app, there was an association between the length of use and a positive change in basal emotional state (4% positive mood increase on a 2-point scale every 10 sessions). We also found that individuals who were anxious or depressed tended to have a favorable long-term emotional transition (eg, from a sad emotional state to a happier emotional state) after using the app for an extended period (the odds ratio for achieving a positive emotional state was 3.2 and 6.2 for anxious and depressed individuals, respectively, compared with users with fewer sessions). Conclusions Our analyses provide evidence for an association between both immediate and long-term use of an app providing guided meditations and improvements in the emotional state.

scholarly journals Taking the pulse of social cognition: cardiac afferent activity and interoceptive accuracy modulate emotional egocentricity bias

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariana Von Mohr ◽  
Gianluca Finotti ◽  
Valerio Villani ◽  
Manos Tsakiris
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cardiac Cycle ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Affective States ◽  
Afferent Activity ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
Interoceptive Accuracy

At the heart of social cognition is our ability to distinguish between self and other and correctly attribute mental and affective states to their origin. Emotional egocentricity bias (EEB) reflects the tendency to use one’s own emotional state when relating to others. Although interoception underpins our emotional experience, little is known about its role on how we affectively relate to others. Here, we assessed how cardiac interoceptive impact, manipulated by presenting affective stimuli across different phases of the cardiac cycle coupled with trait-like levels of interoceptive accuracy, modulate the EEB. Individuals with higher interoceptive accuracy displayed an increased EEB when the other’s emotional state was presented at the point of maximum interoceptive impact (i.e., at systole), whereas the reverse was observed for individuals with lower interoceptive accuracy. These findings show how interoceptive activity provides the physiological context within which we process other’s emotional states in parallel to ours.

Reflecting upon Feelings: An fMRI Study of Neural Systems Supporting the Attribution of Emotion to Self and Other

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 1746-1772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin N. Ochsner ◽  
Kyle Knierim ◽  
David H. Ludlow ◽  
Josh Hanelin ◽  
Tara Ramachandran ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Mixed Valence ◽  
Temporal Cortex ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Self And Other

Understanding one's own and other individual's emotional states is essential for maintaining emotional equilibrium and strong social bonds. Although the neural substrates supporting reflection upon one's own feelings have been investigated, no studies have directly examined attributions about the internal emotional states of others to determine whether common or distinct neural systems support these abilities. The present study sought to directly compare brain regions involved in judging one's own, as compared to another individual's, emotional state. Thirteen participants viewed mixed valence blocks of photos drawn from the International Affective Picture System while whole-brain fMRI data were collected. Preblock cues instructed participants to evaluate either their emotional response to each photo, the emotional state of the central figure in each photo, or (in a baseline condition) whether the photo was taken indoors or outdoors. Contrasts indicated (1) that both self and other judgments activated the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the superior temporal gyrus, and the posterior cingulate/precuneus, (2) that self judgments selectively activated subregions of the MPFC and the left temporal cortex, whereas (3) other judgments selectively activated the left lateral prefrontal cortex (including Broca's area) and the medial occipital cortex. These results suggest (1) that self and other evaluation of emotion rely on a network of common mechanisms centered on the MPFC, which has been hypothesized to support mental state attributions in general, and (2) that medial and lateral PFC regions selectively recruited by self or other judgments may be involved in attention to, and elaboration of, internally as opposed to externally generated information.

scholarly journals Dogs can infer implicit information from human emotional expressions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Albuquerque ◽  
Daniel S. Mills ◽  
Kun Guo ◽  
Anna Wilkinson ◽  
Briseida Resende
Keyword(s):  
Emotional State ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Implicit Information ◽  
Emotional Display ◽  
Affective Information ◽  
Social Decision Making ◽  
Current Behaviour

AbstractThe ability to infer emotional states and their wider consequences requires the establishment of relationships between the emotional display and subsequent actions. These abilities, together with the use of emotional information from others in social decision making, are cognitively demanding and require inferential skills that extend beyond the immediate perception of the current behaviour of another individual. They may include predictions of the significance of the emotional states being expressed. These abilities were previously believed to be exclusive to primates. In this study, we presented adult domestic dogs with a social interaction between two unfamiliar people, which could be positive, negative or neutral. After passively witnessing the actors engaging silently with each other and with the environment, dogs were given the opportunity to approach a food resource that varied in accessibility. We found that the available emotional information was more relevant than the motivation of the actors (i.e. giving something or receiving something) in predicting the dogs’ responses. Thus, dogs were able to access implicit information from the actors’ emotional states and appropriately use the affective information to make context-dependent decisions. The findings demonstrate that a non-human animal can actively acquire information from emotional expressions, infer some form of emotional state and use this functionally to make decisions.

The behavior of managers handling digital business transformations: theoretical issues and preliminary evidence from firms in the manufacturing industry

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Matricano ◽  
Laura Castaldi ◽  
Mario Sorrentino ◽  
Elena Candelo
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Digital Innovation ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Textual Data ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Theoretical Issues

PurposeOrganizational culture plays a central role when dealing with the issue of digital business transformation (DBT). Managers handling a DBT and involved in digital strateging are expected to modify the organizational culture of firms to make it more fitting with the paradigm of digital economy and having more chance of success. Thus, it is noteworthy to inspect the role they can have over DBTs. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the behavior that managers assume when they approach DBTs by investigating whether they act as mentors/facilitators or entrepreneurs/innovators, as coordinators or decision makers.Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the above purpose, ten case studies about manufacturing firms have been selected. Case studies, retrieved by the Digital Innovation Observatories of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, are studied and analyzed by means of a qualitative content analysis on textual data. This allows getting specific insights into organizational culture before and after DBT and about the role played by managers.FindingsAchieved results disclose that managers need to modify the organizational culture of their firms to handle a successful DBT. However, firms can assume different organizational culture and thus the role assumed by managers handling a DBT can change as well.Originality/valueTo the authors knowledge, this paper is among the first that aim to investigate the role that mangers assume when handling DBTs. In particular, originality lies in the fact that assumed roles are rebuilt in reference to their ability to modify organizational culture.

An experimental study on the effect of emotion lines in comics

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amitash Ojha ◽  
Charles Forceville ◽  
Bipin Indurkhya
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Emotional State ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
One To One

Abstract Both mainstream and art comics often use various flourishes surrounding characters’ heads. These so-called “pictorial runes” (also called “emanata”) help convey the emotional states of the characters. In this paper, using (manipulated) panels from Western and Indian comic albums as well as neutral emoticons and basic shapes in different colors, we focus on the following two issues: (a) whether runes increase the awareness in comics readers about the emotional state of the character; and (b) whether a correspondence can be found between the types of runes (twirls, spirals, droplets, and spikes) and specific emotions. Our results show that runes help communicate emotion. Although no one-to-one correspondence was found between the tested runes and specific emotions, it was found that droplets and spikes indicate generic emotions, spirals indicate negative emotions, and twirls indicate confusion and dizziness.

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