Phubber’s Emotional Activations: The Association between PANAS and Phubbing Behavior

Currently, mobile phones are widely used worldwide. Thus, phubbing rapidly became a common phenomenon in our social life. Phubbing is considered by the literature as a new form of technology-related addiction that may undermine interpersonal relationships and mental health. Our study contributed to exploring phubbers’ emotional activation as no other work has investigated it so far. Indeed, researchers have only explored phubbees’ but not phubbers’ emotional correlates. A sample of 419 Italian individuals (143 males) participated in our data collection on a voluntary basis. The results showed that phubbing is related to negative affects, but not to positive affects. Moreover, phubbing in both its components (i.e., communication disturbance, phone obsession) appeared to elicit an emotional activation similar to that of social media addiction. These findings may help in strengthening the discussion around the emotional consequences of virtual environment design, as well as the awareness about what happens at a relational level during phubbing.

Development of Teachers’ Emotional Adjustment Performance Regarding Their Perception of Emotional Experience and Job Satisfaction During Regular School Operations, the First and the Second School Lockdown in Austria

Starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, research intensively investigated the effects of school lockdowns on involved stakeholders, such as teachers, students and parents. However, as research projects had to be hurriedly conducted, in-depth and longitudinal studies are lacking. Therefore, the current study uses data from a longitudinal study to investigate the well-being of Austrian in-service teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In total 256 teachers took part at both measurement waves and participated in an online survey. Standardized questionnaires were used to assess teachers’ perception of emotional experiences and job satisfaction before COVID-19 (retrospective, t1), during the first (in situ, t2) and during the second school lockdown (in situ, t3). The results indicated that the vast majority of teachers generally felt a high level of job satisfaction. However, teachers’ satisfaction decreased between regular teaching and school lockdowns. Similarly, positive emotional activation was reduced and negative activation increased. Further, results from a positive activation cross-lagged path model indicated that the lack of positive activation led to lower job satisfaction. For negative emotional activation, job satisfaction during the first school lockdown predicted negative activation at the second lockdown.

Cognitive Reserve and Anxiety Interactions Play a Fundamental Role in the Response to the Stress

The aims of the present study were to assess the possible interaction between Cognitive Reserve (CR) and State Anxiety (SA) on adrenocortical and physiological responses in coping situations. Forty healthy, middle-aged men completed the Cognitive Reserve Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. We used an Observational Fear Conditioning (OFC) paradigm in order to assess emotional learning and to induce stress. Electrodermal activity (EDA) and salivary cortisol concentrations were measured throughout the conditions. Our results indicate that those who indicated having higher state anxiety showed a lower capacity for learning the contingency, along with presenting higher salivary cortisol peak response following the observational fear-conditioning paradigm. The most prominent finding was the interaction between cognitive reserve and state anxiety on cortisol response to the post observational fear-conditioning paradigm. Thus, those who showed a high anxiety-state and, at the same time, a high cognitive reserve did not present an increased salivary cortisol response following the observational fear-conditioning paradigm. Given these results, we postulate that the state anxiety reported by participants, reflects emotional activation that hinders the attention needed to process and associate emotional stimuli. However, cognitive reserve has an indirect relation with conditioning, enabling better emotional learning. In this context, cognitive reserve demonstrated a protective effect on hormonal response in coping situations, when reported anxiety or emotional activation were high. These findings suggest that cognitive reserve could be used as a tool to deal with the effects of stressors in life situations, limiting development of the allostatic load.

The Impact Of Exposure On Generalized Anxiety Disorder-Related Symptoms And Cognitive Processes: The Role Of Stimulus Variation

Theories indicate that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) avoid imagining threatening scenarios that have not occurred. Cognitive exposure to these images is a component of treatment; however, few studies have examined its efficacy. The current study assessed the impact of cognitive exposure and varying exposure content on GAD symptoms and cognitive processes. Forty-eight individuals with GAD were assigned to three sessions of : (1) variable exposure (VE), (2) consistent exposure (CE), or (3) neutral control writing (NC). Emotional activation was assessed during each session. Outcome measures were administered at pretest and 1-week follow-up. The CE condition showed improvements in GAD symptoms and cognitive processes, the VE condition showed less belief that their worse worry would occur, and the NC condition showed reduced GAD symptoms and interpretation bias. Emotional activation decreased across session in the CE condition; however, this did not predict outcomes. The theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

The Impact Of Exposure On Generalized Anxiety Disorder-Related Symptoms And Cognitive Processes: The Role Of Stimulus Variation

Theories indicate that individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) avoid imagining threatening scenarios that have not occurred. Cognitive exposure to these images is a component of treatment; however, few studies have examined its efficacy. The current study assessed the impact of cognitive exposure and varying exposure content on GAD symptoms and cognitive processes. Forty-eight individuals with GAD were assigned to three sessions of : (1) variable exposure (VE), (2) consistent exposure (CE), or (3) neutral control writing (NC). Emotional activation was assessed during each session. Outcome measures were administered at pretest and 1-week follow-up. The CE condition showed improvements in GAD symptoms and cognitive processes, the VE condition showed less belief that their worse worry would occur, and the NC condition showed reduced GAD symptoms and interpretation bias. Emotional activation decreased across session in the CE condition; however, this did not predict outcomes. The theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Visual art inspired by climate change—An analysis of audience reactions to 37 artworks presented during 21st UN climate summit in Paris

This paper suggests and tests a psychological model of environmental art perception and subsequent support for climate change policies. The model is based on findings from art perception and environmental psychology, which indicate that the response of the viewer to the artwork is (1) first an emotional reaction, which can be positive and/or negative. The emotional activation leads to (2) evaluation of the perceived quality of the artwork. This forms the first impression of the artwork the viewer gets, which then triggers (3) reflections on the artwork that are finally related to support for climate policies. The model test uses data collected at the ArtCOP21 that accompanied the 21st UN climate summit in Paris. At 37 connected events, the research team collected 883 audience responses with a brief quantitative paper-pencil questionnaire. The data were analyzed using a multilevel-structural equation modeling approach. Results support the suggested theoretical model. Moreover, the effect of reflections on the artwork on support for climate policies is moderated by environmental attitudes, meaning the lower the environmental attitudes, the higher the effect of reflections on policy support. Finally, artwork features like color, size, displaying something personal, etc., could be identified that had a significant relation to differences on the artwork level regarding the first impression of the artwork and the reflections elicited. The study shows that being confronted with climate change-related artwork relates at least in the short run to increased climate policy support, which is mostly channeled through an emotional activation with following cognitive processing. Features of the artwork relate to how strongly and which emotions are activated.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ITS COGNITIVE AND MENTAL SIGNS AND FUNCTIONS

An attempt has been made in this paper to single out the cognitive and mental signs of emotional intelligence and their functions in this process. It has been shown that a significant part of specialists, despite the declarative correspondence of this phenomenon to the sphere of emotions and intelligence, analyzes the social intelligence as the subject of its study and its communicative signs, emotional maturity and its components, self-regulation, empathy, expressiveness of emotions, etc. It can be assumed that in this case, the signs of emotional intelligence are replaced by those that relate to the subject of the study of other psychological phenomena. It should be also agreed that all mental phenomena are closely related, especially since emotions are actually integrated into every process. But when the emotional intelligence is chosen as a subject of study, then this should refer to those signs which should be more reflected certain specific features of emotions in the intelligence. It has been proposed to consider emotional intelligence as a psychological property of individual, characterized by the manifestation of complex as though integrated, emotionalcognitive and mental features, due to which it achieves its goal in certain tasks/problems solving in different activities. It can be argued that emotions are more integrated with cognitive activity in emotional intelligence, and intelligence – with mental activity. That is, the features of the functioning of basic (simple) emotions in higher cognitive, integrated with mental activity are probably what can characterize the psychological essence of the content of emotional intelligence. Such higher emotional and cognitive features that accompany this process include surprise, curiosity, inquisitiveness, interest, enthusiasm, inspiration, guess, disappointment, doubt, insight experience, eureka, and others. The manifestation of these signs may be accompanied by certain functions at the level of comfort emotional coloring of the problem-solving process, emotional guidance on how to solve the problem, emotional activation in the form of strengthening or weakening the manifestation of this process, emotional regulation as dynamics of change of movement of the signs in the problemsolving process. A complex of three methods has been created: investigation of signs of emotional intelligence; study of the manifestation of simple emotions in the content of higher emotions attributed to the signs of emotional intelligence; study of the selected functions of signs of emotional intelligence. It has been shown that there is a certain tendency in the manifestation of signs of emotional intelligence, and its integral components of simple emotions in the problem-solving process. It has been revealed that the emotionally positive orientation of the content of such signs of emotional intelligence as curiosity, insight experience, eureka, their connection with joy and comfort functions of emotional guidance, emotional activation and regulation, form the first complex of emotional intelligence. The second complex is formed on the basis of such signs of emotional intelligence as inquisitiveness, guess and doubt. The third one includes curiosity, enthusiasm and disappointment. These complexes can be those specific determinants of the manifestation of emotional intelligence, as well as the psychological characteristics of its typical manifestations in humans.