Synergy of Effectuation and Causation: An Emotional Complexity Perspective

This study enriches the literature on entrepreneurial decisions by investigating the antecedents of the synergetic use of causal and effectual logic. Based on entrepreneurial metacognition and emotional complexity theories, we argued that the emotional complexity of an entrepreneur, referred to as the granular experience of, or variety in, experienced emotions during the entrepreneurial task, would contribute to the synergetic use of decision logic. With survey data gathered from 218 Chinese entrepreneurs, we found that entrepreneurs with higher emotional complexity are more likely to adopt two types of entrepreneurial logic in tandem, and cognitive flexibility mediates this positive relationship. Thereby, this study helps to unravel some of the complexities behind the choice of decision logic of entrepreneurs.

The “100,000+ Clicks” Dream Comes True: A Study on the Click-and-Read Behavior of WeChat Tweets From the Perspective of Emotional Expression

An in-depth and refined empirical study on the emotional expression of information and the information processing mechanism of audiences is carried out to provide enterprises and other organizations with insights and references as regard to the effective utilization of WeChat Tweets for information dissemination and marketing purposes. Based on 1,465 actual tweets from two different types of WeChat public accounts (knowledge communication and information releasing), this paper applies the limited attention capacity model and the signaling theory to analyze the influence of emotional presence, emotional complexity, emotional intensity, and emotional polarity of tweet titles on the click-and-read behavior of the audience. The results show that for WeChat public accounts serving the purpose of knowledge communication, emotional presence and emotional complexity of tweet titles, as well as the emotional intensity of positive tweet titles, has no significant effect on the click-and-read behaviors of the audience. Besides, the emotional intensity of negative tweet titles has a significant negative impact on the audience’s click-and-read behaviors. While for WeChat public accounts serving the purpose of information releasing, tweet titles with emotional presence and lower level of emotional complexity are more likely to trigger click-and-read behaviors of audiences; emotional intensity of negative tweet titles has no significant effect on the click-and-read behaviors of audiences, and emotional intensity of positive tweet titles has a significant negative impact on the audience’s click-and-read behaviors. Thus, this study further analyzes the influence of emotional factors, such as emotional existence, emotional complexity, emotional intensity, and emotional polarity of tweet titles on the click-and-read behavior of consumers and further explores the emotional information processing mechanism of WeChat tweet readers.

Feminist theory and the problem of misogyny

Feminist theory, broadly construed, lacks a comprehensive theory of misogyny. While there has been a great deal of feminist work dedicated to analysing the social, cultural, political, and institutional effects of misogyny, the ancillary theories of misogyny these analyses produce are only ever partial, fragmented, vague or conceptually inconsistent. This article engages and critiques these theories by focusing on three separate but related issues within existing feminist scholarship on misogyny: the conflation of misogyny with sexism, the elision of misogyny's affective elements and the supplanting of misogyny with gendered violence. Through my identification and critique of these issues, I argue that misogyny should be understood as a profoundly complicated and emotional social dynamic. Moreover, I argue that to attempt to cleanse misogyny of its affective/emotional complexity or conflate misogyny with sexism and/or violence is to rob theorists of possible loci of apprehension and intervention. My hope is that this article will stimulate feminist theorists to work collectively towards a more comprehensive feminist understanding of misogyny – one that grapples with the interpersonal and affective complexities of how misogyny emerges, circulates and self-perpetuates.

Grieving Our Way Back to Meaningfulness

The deaths of those on whom our practical identities rely generate a sense of disorientation or alienation from the world seemingly at odds with life being meaningful. In the terms put forth in Cheshire Calhoun's recent account of meaningfulness in life, because their existence serves as a metaphysical presupposition of our practical identities, their deaths threaten to upend a background frame of agency against which much of our choice and deliberation takes place. Here I argue for a dual role for grief in addressing this threat to life's meaningfulness. Inasmuch as grief's object is the loss of our relationship with the deceased as it was prior to their death, grief serves to alert us to the threat to our practical identities that their deaths pose to us and motivates us to defuse this threat by revising our practical identities to reflect the modification in our relationship necessitated by their deaths. Simultaneously, the emotional complexity and richness of grief episodes provides an abundance of normative evidence regarding our relationship with the deceased and our practical identities, evidence that can enable us to re-establish our practical identities and thereby recover a sense of our lives as meaningful.

A Leadership Development Kōan: Vulnerability as Change Capacity

How are organizations embracing the emotional complexity of the emerging organizational landscape? More specifically, how do leaders develop the capacity necessary to infuse the organization's emotional circuitry with renewed energy at a time of transformation? In this essay, I posit that vulnerability can be the threshold for change capacity in institutional work, fortifying leaders' developmental trajectories and transforming organizing and organizations. While paradoxical, the regenerative nature of vulnerability yields change capacity requisite of navigating the emotional complexity leaders encounter on their developmental journeys.

Bridging the divide: The effect of humanizing information on attitudes toward political outgroup members

Liberals and conservatives in the United States dislike and dehumanize those on the other side. This divide leads to political stalemates, destroyed relationships, and even violence. We examined the benefits of humanizing members of the political outgroup by providing people with humanizing information—cues that signal a person’s cognitive and emotional complexity. We examined the effectiveness of humanizing information in three preregistered experiments (N = 1389). Study 1 tested whether learning humanizing information about an outgroup member would reduce bias towards them, relative to a control containing only political information. Study 2 sought to replicate this effect by comparing the humanizing information to a control that contained non-humanizing individuating information. Study 3 tested this effect in the timely context of social media feeds, while also testing whether the benefits of learning humanizing information extended to additional members of the outgroup. Each methodology revealed that, compared to those who read non-humanizing controls, participants who learned humanizing information about a political outgroup member were less hostile and more empathic toward that outgroup member. All three studies also provided evidence that judging the outgroup member as more human contributed to this reduction in bias. Further, Study 3 revealed that the benefits of humanizing information extended to members of the outgroup that were connected to the humanized member. The current studies thus identify a promising avenue for reducing interparty hostility.

The Process of Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is a developmental skill that everyone must learn. It is the ability for you to tune into, make sense of and control your own strong feelings. It affectively influences how well you can adapt to situations and events in your life, as well as how you navigate and adapt to the world. A lack of healthy emotional regulation can lead one to become dysregulated. Two important phenomenon underpin our ability to regulate: emotional complexity and splitting. The more acknowledgment and understanding that we give to our emotions (not just the thoughts in our mind but the feelings in our better), the more control and problem solving skills we can harness to sustain a good standard of personal well-being.

Emotional Complexity In Daily Life: On The Role Of Emotional Dynamics, Age, & Culture

Emotional complexity is a construct that has attracted significant interest in the aging literature. It often refers to two aspects — the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions and emotion differentiation (experiencing emotions with specificity). Emotional complexity is thought to increase with aging. However, recent research points to inconsistent results showing a positive relationship between age and emotional complexity, non-significant associations and even negative relationships. The present study seeks to address this inconsistency in findings by examining three possible sources: 1) different indicators of emotional complexity, 2) age differences in emotional dynamics (individual differences in means & variability of momentary positive & negative emotions), and 3) differences in cultural backgrounds. Community-dwelling adults from Vancouver (96 older adults, 51 young adults; 56% of Asian heritage, 30% of Caucasian heritage, and others 14%) and in Hong Kong (56 older adults, 59 young adults; 100% Asian heritage) completed approximately 30 ecological momentary assessments over a 10-day period assessing their current emotional experiences. When the mean and variability of emotional experiences were controlled for, most emotional complexity measures showed a negative relationship with age indicating that older adults displayed lower emotional complexity compared to young adults. This pattern was consistent across participants of Asian and Caucasian heritage. Additional analyses will explore the link between different emotional complexity measures and well-being indicators. Our findings point to the need to provide a more nuanced perspective on the correlates and consequences of emotional complexity in old age.

Discrete Emotion Networks Across the Lifespan: Implications for Well-Being

Research examining the age-related trajectories and consequences of emotional complexity has largely lumped emotions into broad categories. The present study utilized network analyses to quantify the co-occurrence of discrete emotions and their associations with well-being across the lifespan in a sample of 156 females (aged 23-79). Participants completed assessments of 8 emotions (i.e., sad, angry, anxious, lonely, happy, excited, proud, and calm) for 16 days, and completed measures of psychological and physical well-being at a 4-month follow-up. While certain emotions were found to co-occur at similar rates across the lifespan (e.g. sad-anxious), other emotion pairs become more (e.g. sad-calm) or less (e.g. sad-angry) frequent with age. Additionally, specific emotion pairs were differentially associated with indicators of well-being across the lifespan, while controlling for mean levels of these emotions. These findings point to the importance of considering the co-occurrence of distinct emotions and potential pathways towards successful aging.