Nonpharmacological biological interventions for emotional and cognitive dysfunction

Nonpharmacological biological interventions for emotional and cognitive dysfunction extensively reviews the effects of stimulation-based therapies including electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and transcranial direct current stimulation on affective cognition. Several types and protocols of neurostimulation interventions can influence affective information-processing in patients with depression. For example, there is some evidence to suggest that electroconvulsive therapy increases the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and therefore induces neuroplasticity. The chapter identifies several types and protocols of neurostimulation interventions with the ability to influence affective information-processing in patients with major depressive disorder. It discusses current research on stimulation-based therapies and highlights the need for further research on whether these protocol variations can counterbalance negative biases and whether they are causally involved in the clinical effects of the different treatments.

Cognition and Emotion in Extreme Political Action: Individual Differences and Dynamic Interactions

Who is most likely to join and engage in extreme political action? Although traditional theories have focused on situational factors or group identity, an emerging science illustrates that tendencies for extreme political action may also be rooted in individuals’ idiosyncratic cognitive and affective dispositions. This article synthesizes cutting-edge evidence demonstrating that individuals’ cognitive and affective architecture shapes their willingness to support ideological violence. In the cognitive domain, traits such as cognitive rigidity, slow perceptual strategies, and poor executive functions are linked to heightened endorsement for ideological violence. In the emotion domain, characteristics associated with emotional reactivity and impaired emotional regulation, such as sensation seeking and impulsivity, can facilitate readiness for extreme political action. The review homes in on the roles of cognitive rigidity and sensation seeking as traits heightening proclivities for extreme pro-group behavior and recommends that future research should assess cognition-emotion interactions to reveal different subprofiles of political actors. A theoretical framework focused on cognitive and affective information-processing traits—and their interactions—opens up tractable empirical questions and a future research agenda. Identifying subsets of ideologues is an endeavor with potential to inform the design of evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing ideological extremism and fostering social understanding.

Cognition and Emotion in Extreme Political Action

Who is most likely to join and engage in extreme political action? While traditional theories have focused on situational factors or group identity attributes, an emerging science illustrates that tendencies for extreme political action may also be rooted in individuals’ idiosyncratic cognitive and affective dispositions. This paper synthesizes cutting-edge evidence demonstrating that an individual’s cognitive and affective architecture shape their willingness to support ideological violence. From a cognitive perspective, traits such as cognitive rigidity, slower perceptual strategies, and poorer executive functions are linked to heightened endorsement for ideological violence. From an emotional standpoint, characteristics associated with emotional reactivity and impaired emotional regulation, such as sensation-seeking and impulsivity, can facilitate readiness for extreme political action. The review hones in on the roles of cognitive rigidity and sensation-seeking as traits heightening proclivities for extreme pro-group behavior, and recommends that future research should aim to assess cognition-emotion interactions to reveal different sub-profiles of political actors. A theoretical framework focused on cognitive and affective information-processing traits – and their interactions – opens up tractable empirical questions and a future research agenda. Identifying subsets of ideologues is an endeavor with potential to inform the design of evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing ideological extremism and fostering social understanding.

Assessment Of Psychological Advertising Along Consumer Rights And The Rule On Section 5 Of The Federal Trade Commission, Part 1 Of 2: Unfairness Doctrine

Over a century of research and empirical findings have linked advertising with consumer choice based on affective information processing, which many researchers emphasized as unconscious brain processing. This paper examines a variety of empirical findings and historical data on psychological or affective processing which provides evidence that psychological advertising affects consumer behavior and choice. Thereafter, building on existing research and literature, we analyze the legal implications of psychological advertising to stimulate affective or unconscious decisions that impairs rational choice and thus harmful. Based on this argument, we analyze the current federal consumer protection law regulating advertising under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) which bans unfair and deceptive practices, then present rationales for change followed by a framework for revision. The objectives of such change is to ensure that this regulation upholds consumer rights and provide a consumercentric process that respects free choice. One outcome of this proposal will be a ban on advertising practices that utilize psychological stimuli. The framework will focus on expanding the “unfairness” doctrine of the FTC Act. The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) states that “unfair acts or practices injure both consumers and competitors because consumers who would otherwise have selected a competitor’s product are wrongly diverted by the unfair act or practice,” thus an effective customer-centric regulation could postulate a healthier economy.

The role of intuition in vaccination attitudes

This study tested the idea that faith in intuition (people’s reliance on their intuition when making judgments or decisions) is negatively associated with vaccination attitudes in the U.S. populace. Intuition is an implicit, affective information processing mode based on prior experiences. U.S. citizens have few threatening experiences with vaccines because vaccination coverage for common vaccine-preventable diseases is high in the United States. Experiences with vaccination-side effects, however, are more prevalent. This is likely to shape an intuition that favors refusal over vaccination. Results of multiple regression analyses support this supposition. With increasing faith in intuition, people’s vaccination attitudes become less favorable.

Can Non-Pharmacological Antidepressant Treatments Influence the Processing of Affective Information?

Depressive disorders are commonly associated with abnormalities in affective cognition. When processing information with emotional content, the depressed brain typically exhibits mood-congruent negative biases; that is, an abnormal preference for negative relative to positive information. In turn, recent psychopharmacological research has revealed that antidepressant drug treatments have the ability to push affective information processing more towards a preferential processing of positive information. These observations have led to the postulation of a cognitive neuropsychological model of antidepressant treatment action. This model suggests that negative biases play an important causal (rather than just epiphenomenal) role in the development of depressed mood and efficacious antidepressant interventions exert their clinical effects by acutely counterbalancing these cognitive abnormalities. In this chapter, we extend the focus to non-pharmacological treatments for depression and ask whether they too can influence affective cognition, and, if so, what these effects look like. We highlight recent studies investigating how cognitive behavioural therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial direct current stimulation, and environmental therapeutics impact on affective information processing in patients with depression. We show that, for each of these treatments, at least some evidence exists that suggests an influence on affective cognition and that in some cases the observed effects are directly in line with the cognitive neuropsychological model. However, as will become clear, the currently available evidence is rather sparse and, in many regards, incomplete. We therefore conclude that—similar to antidepressant drugs—non-pharmacological treatments can also influence affective information processing in patients with depression. However, whether these changes can counterbalance negative biases, and whether they are causally involved in the clinical effects of the different treatments, remains to be elucidated by future research.

Affective Information Processing in Self-Managing Teams: The Role of Emotional Intelligence

Based on a multilevel data set collected from 599 individuals working in 102 self-managing teams, we examined the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and team member performance, focusing on the dimensions of teamwork and leadership performance. Furthermore, we explored the moderating role of team-level characteristics, such as noninformational diversity, size, and collective EI on the EI–performance relationship. As predicted, team members with higher EI were better at facilitating teamwork and playing the role of an informal leader than those with lower EI. The positive contribution of EI on team member performance was stronger for teams with greater diversity, larger sizes, and with lower average levels of team member EI. The study suggests that managers of self-managing teams should emphasize EI in their selection, training, and evaluation systems.