Can Masked Emotion-Laden Words Prime Emotion-Label Words? An ERP Test on the Mediated Account

The present event-related potential (ERP) study explored whether masked emotion-laden words could facilitate the processing of both emotion-label words and emotion-laden words in a valence judgment task. The results revealed that emotion-laden words as primes failed to influence target emotion-label word processing, whereas emotion-laden words facilitated target emotion-laden words in the congruent condition. Specifically, decreased late positivity complex (LPC) was elicited by emotion-laden words primed by emotion-laden words of the same valence than those primed by emotion-laden words of different valence. Nevertheless, no difference was observed for emotion-label words as targets. These findings supported the mediated account that claimed emotion-laden words engendered emotion via the mediation of emotion-label words and hypothesized that emotion-laden words could not prime emotion-label words in the masked priming paradigm. Moreover, this study provided additional evidence showing the distinction between emotion-laden words and emotion-label words.

The role of emotion regulation in eating disorders: a network meta-analysis approach

Background: Previous theoretical models and reviews have documented a strong connection between emotion dysregulation eating disorder (ED) psychopathology among the general and clinical populations. The aim of this review was to build on this previous work by conducting a network meta-analysis to explore associations between specific emotion regulation strategies and ED psychopathology trans-diagnostically across the ED spectrum to identify areas of emotion dysregulation that have the strongest association with symptomatology.Methodology: A total of 105 studies were included in the meta-analysis and correlation coefficient representing the associations between specific emotion regulation strategies and ED symptomatology were extracted. We ran a Bayesian random effects network meta-analysis and the initial network was well connected with each emotion regulation strategy being linked to at least one other strategy. We also conducted a network meta-regression to explore whether between-study differences in body mass index (BMI), age, and whether the sample consisted of solely female participants explained any possible network inconsistency. Results: The network meta-analysis revealed that ruminations and non-acceptance of emotions were most closely associated with ED psychopathology. There was no significant network inconsistency but two comparisons approached significance and thus meta-regressions were conducted. The meta-regressions revealed a significant effect of BMI such that the associations between different emotion regulation strategies and ED symptomatology were weaker among those with low BMI. Discussion: The present findings build on previous work and highlight the role of rumination and difficulties with accepting emotions as key emotion regulation difficulties in EDs. Additionally, the finding that the associations were weaker among ED patients with low BMI may point towards a complex relationship between ED behaviours and emotion regulation. Taken together, our findings call for interventions that target emotion regulation, specifically rumination and difficulties accepting emotions, in the treatment of EDs.

Fear Emotion Decelerates Outcomes of Climate Change Education

Emotion mediating educational outcomes has been recognized for decades. However, empirical experiments to test these predictions, particularly for climate change education, which is often mixed with various emotions, are rare. In this study, we conducted a two-week climate change education program with specific video clips designed to induce fear or hope in students to explore how emotions affect educational outcomes. The study involved 1,730 students from nine middle schools in three coastal cities (Xiamen, Shenzhen, and Ningbo) in China. The results demonstrated that emotional video clips are a successful stimulus for the target emotion. In the hope treatment group, emotion did not significantly affect the educational outcomes, as indicated by the limited change in students’ climate change involvement, self-efficiency, and mitigation behavior. However, in the fear treatment group, emotion significantly decelerated students’ change in mitigation behavior compared to the lecture-only group. These decelerated behaviors are mostly located at the behavior change of low carbon life. Based on the mediation analysis, both the hope group and lecture-only group had direct effects on climate change mitigation behavior, while the fear group only had an indirect effect on climate change behavior, mediated primarily by climate change involvement. The study thus highlighted that both negative and positive emotions should not indiscriminately used in climate change education programs to safeguard significant educational outcomes.

Wearing N95, Surgical and Cloth Face Masks Compromises the Communication of Emotion

According to the familiar axiom, the eyes are the window to the soul. However, wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 involves occluding a large portion of the face. Do the eyes carry all of the information we need to perceive each other’s emotions? We addressed this question in two studies. In the first, 162 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers saw videos of human faces displaying expressions of happiness, disgust, anger, and surprise that were fully visible or covered by N95, surgical, or cloth masks and rated the extent to which the expressions conveyed each of the four emotions. Across mask conditions, participants perceived significantly lower levels of the expressed (target) emotion and this was particularly true for expressions composed of greater facial action in the lower part of the faces. Furthermore, higher levels of other (non-target) emotions were perceived in masked compared to visible faces. In the second study, 60 MTurk workers rated the extent to which three types of smiles (reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles), either visible or masked, conveyed positive feelings, reassurance, and superiority. They reported that masked smiles communicated less of the target signal than visible faces, but not more of other possible signals. Political attitudes were not systematically associated with disruptions in the processing of facial expression caused by masking the face.

Introducing a Face Sort Paradigm to Evaluate Age Differences in Emotion Perception

Objectives Previous research has uncovered age-related differences in emotion perception. To date, studies have relied heavily on forced-choice methods that stipulate possible responses. These constrained methods limit discovery of variation in emotion perception, which may be due to subtle differences in underlying concepts for emotion. Method We employed a face sort paradigm in which young (N = 42) and older adult (N = 43) participants were given 120 photographs portraying six target emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) and were instructed to create and label piles, such that individuals in each pile were feeling the same way. Results There were no age differences in number of piles created, nor in how well labels mapped onto the target emotion categories. However, older adults demonstrated lower consistency in sorting, such that fewer photographs in a given pile belonged to the same target emotion category. At the same time, older adults labeled piles using emotion words that were acquired later in development, and thus are considered more semantically complex. Discussion These findings partially support the hypothesis that older adults’ concepts for emotions and emotional expressions are more complex than those of young adults, demonstrate the utility of incorporating less constrained experimental methods into the investigation of age-related differences in emotion perception, and are consistent with existing evidence of increased cognitive and emotional complexity in adulthood.

Wearable Emotion Recognition Using Heart Rate Data from a Smart Bracelet

Emotion recognition and monitoring based on commonly used wearable devices can play an important role in psychological health monitoring and human-computer interaction. However, the existing methods cannot rely on the common smart bracelets or watches for emotion monitoring in daily life. To address this issue, our study proposes a method for emotional recognition using heart rate data from a wearable smart bracelet. A ‘neutral + target’ pair emotion stimulation experimental paradigm was presented, and a dataset of heart rate from 25 subjects was established, where neutral plus target emotion (neutral, happy, and sad) stimulation video pairs from China’s standard Emotional Video Stimuli materials (CEVS) were applied to the recruited subjects. Normalized features from the data of target emotions normalized by the baseline data of neutral mood were adopted. Emotion recognition experiment results approved the effectiveness of ‘neutral + target’ video pair simulation experimental paradigm, the baseline setting using neutral mood data, and the normalized features, as well as the classifiers of Adaboost and GBDT on this dataset. This method will promote the development of wearable consumer electronic devices for monitoring human emotional moods.

Individual differences in acted emotions: An exploratory study into the role of interoceptive awareness in feelings prompted by emotion eliciting acting techniques

A significant part of the creative art of acting consists of arousing emotions appropriate to the character’s fictional circumstances and communicating them to an audience. This article describes a novel exploratory study which is a joint investigation of acted emotion from the perspectives of both psychology and acting pedagogy. We compare the impact on subjective emotional experience of two contrasting actor training techniques designed to enable performers to elicit and express emotion in aesthetic contexts: Emotion Memory versus Alba Emoting. We further explore how interoceptive awareness as an individual difference (sensitivity to bodily signals) influences an actor’s emotional response to the two techniques. Trainee actors (N = 8) attempted to arouse three target emotions (anger, sadness and joy) using each of the two techniques and recorded the level of subjective emotion experienced. Although both techniques were successful in eliciting the target emotion, reported emotional intensity was higher for Emotion Memory exercises. Further, high interoceptive awareness resulted in greater emotional intensity generated by Emotion Memory compared to Alba Emoting exercises, but vice versa for low levels of interoceptive awareness. Our results have implications for acting pedagogy in terms of the relationship between individual differences in interoceptive awareness and the effectiveness of selected acting exercises and have the potential to contribute to both psychological and artistic theories of emotion generation.

Future Directions in Research and Treatment of Emotion Dysregulation

This chapter discusses themes that emerged while editing the Oxford Handbook of Emotion Dysregulation and outlines directions for future research. Although the term emotion dysregulation has at times been used amorphously in the literature, most authors now define the phenomenon as experiences and expressions of emotion that interfere with situationally appropriate, goal-directed behavior. Situational embedding of emotion dysregulation is important given very different expectations of appropriate emotional expression across contexts and cultures. Despite emerging consensus regarding emotion dysregulation as a construct, several challenges lie ahead. Major tasks for the field are to (1) abandon implicit notions of emotion dysregulation in favor of formally operationalized definitions, such as that provided earlier; (2) maintain a clear distinction between emotion dysregulation versus mood dysregulation; (3) map transdiagnostic features of emotion dysregulation across functional domains of behavior such as those instantiated in the Research Domain Criteria matrix and, where appropriate, syndromes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; (4) further develop prevention and treatment programs that systematically target emotion dysregulation across development; and (5) extend emotion dysregulation research to stigmatized groups in an effort to identify mechanisms of mental health disparities. Chapters in this volume address these issues and advance the science of emotion dysregulation in new and exciting ways.

The Interactive Effect of Happiness Emotion Goals and Emotion Regulation Self-Efficacy on Anxiety and Depression

Overvaluation of happiness might be a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. However, emotion regulation self-efficacy may influence the association between happiness emotion goals and psychopathology. The purpose of the present study was twofold. First, we sought to replicate prior findings showing that happiness emotion goals and depressive symptoms are positively related, but only among those with lower emotion regulation self-efficacy. Second, we examined whether the noted interaction effect would relate to generalized anxiety symptoms in a sample of general population adults (N = 504). Results from regression analyses were consistent with our predictions suggesting that individuals with unrealistic happiness emotion goals and low emotion regulation self-efficacy may be particularly prone to experiencing negative emotional states and psychological distress. Further, study findings suggest the possibility that the noted interaction has transdiagnostic value and it may be important to target emotion regulation self-efficacy in the service of alleviating internalizing psychopathology.

Sensor Information Fusion by Integrated AI to Control Public Emotion in a Cyber-Physical Environment

The cyber-physical system (CPS) is a next-generation smart system that combines computing with physical space. It has been applied in various fields because the uncertainty of the physical world can be ideally controlled using cyber technology. In terms of environmental control, studies have been conducted to enhance the effectiveness of the service by inducing ideal emotions in the service space. This paper proposes a CPS control system for inducing emotion based on multiple sensors. The CPS can expand the constrained environmental sensors of the physical space variously by combining the virtual space with the physical space. The cyber space is constructed in a Unity 3D space that can be experienced through virtual reality devices. We collect the temperature, humidity, dust concentration, and current emotion in the physical space as an environmental control elements, and the control illumination, color temperature, video, sound and volume in the cyber space. The proposed system consists of an emotion prediction module using modular Bayesian networks and an optimal stimulus decision module for deriving the predicted emotion to the target emotion based on utility theory and reinforcement learning. To verify the system, the performance is evaluated using the data collected from real situations.