Context is Everything (in Emotion Research)

The experience of stuttering in everyday life among adults who stutter: The impact of trait social anxiety and the social situations

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the emotional and stuttering experience of adults who stutter (AWS) in everyday life, and how that experience may be shaped by personal (i.e., trait social anxiety) and situational factors (i.e., social partner reaction, communication channel type, social closeness, stuttering knowledge).

METHOD

AWS completed ecological momentary assessments on their smartphones multiple times a day for up to three weeks. Data (n = 62) were analyzed with multilevel models to determine how situational factors and trait social anxiety influence the Negative Affect (NA), Positive Affect (PA), and self-reported stuttering severity of AWS.

RESULTS

Results indicated that having high (vs. low) trait social anxiety was associated with a tendency to experience high NA, low PA, and high self-reported stuttering severity among AWS. A range of situational factors significantly influenced the within-person variation of NA, PA, and self-reported stuttering severity in everyday life. In addition, interacting with distant social partners relative to being alone heightened NA, and the effect was more prominent among AWS with high (vs. low) trait social anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the findings suggest that the variation of affects and stuttering severity among AWS can be partly accounted for by factors from both the situational and personal levels. Clinicians should be aware of the low PA experienced by AWS who have high (vs low) trait social anxiety in everyday life.

Designing for Improved Patient Experiences in Home Dialysis: Usability and User Experience Findings From User-Based Evaluation Study With Patients With Chronic Conditions

BACKGROUND

Chronic kidney disease affects 10% of the population worldwide, and the number of patients receiving treatment for end-stage kidney disease is forecasted to increase. Therefore, there is a pressing need for innovative digital solutions that increase the efficiency of care and improve patients' quality of life. The aim of the eHealth in Home Dialysis project is to create a novel eHealth solution, called eC4Me, to facilitate predialysis and home dialysis care for patients with chronic kidney disease.

OBJECTIVE

Our study aimed to evaluate the usability, user experience (UX), and patient experience (PX) of the first version of the eC4Me solution.

METHODS

We used a user-based evaluation approach involving usability testing, questionnaire, and interview methods. The test sessions were conducted remotely with 10 patients with chronic kidney disease, 5 of whom had used the solution in their home environment before the tests, while the rest were using it for the first time. Thematic analysis was used to analyze user test and questionnaire data, and descriptive statistics were calculated for the UMUX (Usability Metric for User Experience) scores.

RESULTS

Most usability problems were related to navigation, the use of terminology, and the presentation of health-related data. Despite usability challenges, UMUX ratings of the solution were positive overall. The results showed noteworthy variation in the expected benefits and perceived effort of using the solution. From a PX perspective, it is important that the solution supports patients' own health-related goals and fits with the needs of their everyday lives with the disease.

CONCLUSIONS

A user-based evaluation is a useful and necessary part of the eHealth solution development process. Our study findings can be used to improve the usability and UX of the evaluated eC4Me solution. Patients should be actively involved in the solution development process when specifying what information is relevant for them. Traditional usability tests complemented with questionnaire and interview methods can serve as a meaningful methodological approach for gaining insight not only into usability but also into UX- and PX-related aspects of digital health solutions.

Contexts Matter in 'a Distress Shared Is a Distress Halved': A Meta-Analysis of Distress Sharing-Psychological Distress Relations

Can 'a distress shared is a distress halved' be universally applied? The relationship between sharing distress with others and individuals' psychological health may oscillate depending on how and where it is shared. This meta-analysis aimed to examine (1) whether the relationship between sharing distress and psychological distress is moderated by the manner of sharing (i.e. general tendency to share distress with others [general distress sharing] vs. ruminatively fixating on the negatives during the sharing [co-rumination]) and (2) cultural context (Eastern vs. Western). A total of 110 effect sizes from 105 studies (91 articles on general distress sharing and 84 articles on co-rumination) were included in the analysis with sharing manner as a moderator. For the cross-cultural analyses, 61 studies were included with 47 studies conducted in Western cultures and 15 studies conducted in Eastern cultures. Whereas generally sharing distress was negatively related to psychological distress, co-rumination showed a positive correlation with psychological distress. Culture significantly moderated co-rumination but not general distress sharing in relation to psychological distress. General distress sharing was consistently associated with decreased psychological distress across cultures. In contrast, co-rumination was related to deleterious psychological health only among Westerners, while Easterners showed a non-significant association with psychological distress. Our results align with the increasing importance of taking contextual factors into account in the field of emotion regulation literature.

Distinguishing Emotion Regulation Success in Daily Life From Maladaptive Regulation and Dysregulation

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT

This paper aims to motivate research on emotion regulation success in naturalistic settings. We define emotion regulation success as achieving one's emotion regulation goal and differentiate it from related concepts (i.e., maladaptive regulation and dysregulation). As goals vary across individuals and situations, it is insufficient to conceptualize emotion regulation success as maximizing positive affect and minimizing negative affect. Instead, emotion regulation success can be measured through novel approaches targeting the achievement of emotion regulation goals. In addition to utilizing novel data analytic tools (e.g., response surface analyses), future research can make use of informant reports and observing ambulatory behavior or physiology. Considering emotion regulation goals when measuring daily emotion regulation success has the potential to answer key questions about personality, development, and mental health.

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

People differ in how they want to feel in daily situations (e.g., excited) and why they want to feel that way (e.g., to make others feel better), depending on factors such as culture or age. Although people manage their emotions to reach these goals, most research assessing emotion regulation success has not taken individual goals into account. When assessing if people successfully regulate their emotions, most research in daily life has been focused on whether people feel more positive or less negative. To help study emotion regulation success in a more thoughtful and inclusive way, we propose a new approach to conceptualizing emotion regulation success that incorporates individual differences in what motivates people to regulate and discuss future research directions and applications.

Who expresses their pride when? The regulation of pride expressions as a function of self-monitoring and social context

Pride expressions draw attention to one's achievement, and therefore can enhance one's status. However, such attention has been linked to negative interpersonal consequences (i.e. envy). Fortunately, people have been found to regulate their pride expressions accordingly. Specifically, pride expressions are lower when the domain of the achievement is of high relevance to observers. We set out to replicate this effect in a non-Western sample. Additionally, we extended the current finding by investigating the moderating role of self-monitoring, an individual's ability and willingness to adjust their behaviours under different social contexts to cultivate status. This allows us to explore the previously assumed underlying status motive in regulating pride expressions. Data from two preregistered studies (N1 = 913; N2 = 1081) replicated the effect that pride expressions are inhibited when the achievement domain is relevant. A significant main effect of self-monitoring was found, such that high self-monitors express more pride than low self-monitors, consistent with the conceptualisation of self-monitoring as rooted within a status-enhancement motive. The assumed interaction effect between domain relevance and self-monitoring was not significant. Our findings suggest that the effect of domain relevance on pride expression is robust and status driven.

Secrecy in Everyday Life

Secrecy is common, yet we know little about how it plays out in daily life. Most existing research on secrecy is based on methods involving retrospection over long periods of time, failing to capture secrecy "in the wild." Filling this gap, we conducted two studies using intensive longitudinal designs to present the first picture of secrecy in everyday life. We investigated momentary contextual factors and individual differences as predictors of mind-wandering to and concealing secrets. Contextual factors more consistently predicted secrecy experiences than person-level factors. Feeling more negative about a secret predicted a greater likelihood of mind-wandering to the secret. Interacting with the secret target was linked with a greater likelihood of secret concealment. Individual differences were not consistently associated with mind-wandering to secrets. We conclude that daily experiences with secrets may be better predicted by momentary feelings rather than individual differences such as personality traits.

Habitual Expressive Suppression of Positive, but not Negative, Emotions Consistently Predicts Lower Well-being across Two Culturally Distinct Regions

Habitual expressive suppression (i.e., a tendency to inhibit the outward display of one's emotions; hereafter suppression) is often conceptualized as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. Yet, is this equally true for suppression of positive and of negative emotions? Across three studies and seven samples (total N > 1300 people) collected in two culturally distinct regions (i.e., Taiwan and the US), we examined the separability and distinct well-being effects of suppressing positive vs. negative emotions. Results consistently showed that (a) people suppressed their positive (vs. negative) emotions less, (b) the construct of suppression of positive (vs. negative) emotions was conceptually farther away from that of suppression of emotions in general, (c) suppression of positive and of negative emotions were only moderately correlated, and (d) only suppression of positive, but not negative, emotions, predicted lower well-being. An internal meta-analysis (k = 52 effect sizes) showed that these associations were robust to the inclusion of age, gender, and region as covariates. Future research may further probe the respective links between suppression of positive and of negative emotions and well-being across more cultural regions and across the life-span.

Cooperative Learning for Personalized Context-Aware Pain Assessment From Wearable Data

Despite the promising performance of automated pain assessment methods, current methods suffer from performance generalization due to the lack of relatively large, diverse, and annotated pain datasets. Further, the majority of current methods do not allow responsible interaction between the model and user, and do not take different internal and external factors into consideration during the model's design and development. This article aims to provide an efficient cooperative learning framework for the lack of annotated data while facilitating responsible user communication and taking individual differences into consideration during the development of pain assessment models. Our results using body and muscle movement data, collected from wearable devices, demonstrate that the proposed framework is effective in leveraging both the human and the machine to efficiently learn and predict pain.

Advancing Naturalistic Affective Science with Deep Learning

People express their own emotions and perceive others' emotions via a variety of channels, including facial movements, body gestures, vocal prosody, and language. Studying these channels of affective behavior offers insight into both the experience and perception of emotion. Prior research has predominantly focused on studying individual channels of affective behavior in isolation using tightly controlled, non-naturalistic experiments. This approach limits our understanding of emotion in more naturalistic contexts where different channels of information tend to interact. Traditional methods struggle to address this limitation: manually annotating behavior is time-consuming, making it infeasible to do at large scale; manually selecting and manipulating stimuli based on hypotheses may neglect unanticipated features, potentially generating biased conclusions; and common linear modeling approaches cannot fully capture the complex, nonlinear, and interactive nature of real-life affective processes. In this methodology review, we describe how deep learning can be applied to address these challenges to advance a more naturalistic affective science. First, we describe current practices in affective research and explain why existing methods face challenges in revealing a more naturalistic understanding of emotion. Second, we introduce deep learning approaches and explain how they can be applied to tackle three main challenges: quantifying naturalistic behaviors, selecting and manipulating naturalistic stimuli, and modeling naturalistic affective processes. Finally, we describe the limitations of these deep learning methods, and how these limitations might be avoided or mitigated. By detailing the promise and the peril of deep learning, this review aims to pave the way for a more naturalistic affective science.

The Future of Affective Science: Introduction to the Special Issue

Modern affective science-the empirical study of emotional responding and affective experience-has been active for a half-century. The Future of Affective Science special issue considers the history of this field and proposes new directions for the decades ahead. Contributors represent diverse theoretical perspectives, methodological expertise, and domains of study, and the special issue includes both literature reviews and new empirical studies as illustrations. This introductory article synthesizes the contributions, articulating the broader context of the current status of our field and highlighting common themes across articles as well as gaps notable even in this special issue. Sections of the article address theoretical and conceptual issues, research methodology, the questions we ask, and translation of basic affective science to applied domains. We conclude that much has been learned from the first 50 years of affective science, and it is now time for new theories, new research questions, and innovative methods for the decades ahead.

Testing, explaining, and exploring models of facial expressions of emotions

Models are the hallmark of mature scientific inquiry. In psychology, this maturity has been reached in a pervasive question-what models best represent facial expressions of emotion? Several hypotheses propose different combinations of facial movements [action units (AUs)] as best representing the six basic emotions and four conversational signals across cultures. We developed a new framework to formalize such hypotheses as predictive models, compare their ability to predict human emotion categorizations in Western and East Asian cultures, explain the causal role of individual AUs, and explore updated, culture-accented models that improve performance by reducing a prevalent Western bias. Our predictive models also provide a noise ceiling to inform the explanatory power and limitations of different factors (e.g., AUs and individual differences). Thus, our framework provides a new approach to test models of social signals, explain their predictive power, and explore their optimization, with direct implications for theory development.

Are you really smiling? Display rules for emojis and the relationship between emotion management and psychological well-being

Display rules specify socially appropriate facial expressions in a given situation. However, managing emotions for such a social adaption sometimes leads to deleterious psychological outcomes. Given that people nowadays rely on emojis to express emotions online, the present study investigated (1) whether display rules exist in emoji communications and (2) how emotion management using emojis is associated with psychological well-being. Prior studies have demonstrated the effects of context on the frequency of emoji use. However, the intensity and type of expression may differ, even if emojis are used at the same frequency. The current study thus investigated whether emotional expressions and the types of emojis used are adjusted to contexts similar to facial displays. As many as 1,289 Japanese participants typed emojis in response to Internet chats and reported the intensity of their emotional expressions. The contexts of the chats varied depending on the target of use, the emotional value of contexts, and private or public settings. The results showed that, similar to facial displays, individuals expressed emotions through emojis more with those closely related, more in positive contexts than in negative contexts, and more in private than in public contexts. When the expressions were intense, individuals used emojis consistent with the emotional value of the context. Upon attenuating the expressions, this study found that individuals tended to use euphemistic emojis and sent smiling emojis in negative contexts to manage the expressions. Moreover, expressing emotions with emojis was associated with subjective well-being, whereas managing emotions with emojis was weakly associated with depressive symptoms. Together, this study indicates the existence of display rules for emojis, calling for future research on the psychological impact of online emotion norms.

Adolescents suppress emotional expression more with peers compared to parents and less when they feel close to others

Adolescence is characterized by frequent emotional challenges, intense emotions, and higher levels of expressive suppression use than found in older populations. While evidence suggests that contingent expressive suppression use based on context is the most functional, it remains unclear whether adolescents use expressive suppression differentially based on social context. Because the peer relationship is highly salient in adolescence, the current study was designed to assess whether adolescents use expressive suppression differentially based on their social context. Adolescents (N = 179, M_age  = 13.94, 49.2% female) reported emotional events using experience sampling via a smartphone application for 14 days. Multilevel modeling revealed that adolescents used less expressive suppression when they were alone compared with when they were with people, and used more expressive suppression when they were with their peers compared with when they were with family. In addition, more closeness with family predicted less overall expressive suppression use, while closeness with peers did not influence the level of expressive suppression use within the peer context. We discuss the importance of peer relations in adolescence and the relationship between closeness and emotional expression.

Evaluation of film stimuli for the assessment of social-emotional processing: a pilot study

Background

Difficulties in top-down and bottom-up emotion generation have been proposed to play a key role in the progression of psychiatric disorders. The aim of the current study was to develop more ecologically valid measures of top-down interpretation biases and bottom-up evoked emotional responses.

Methods

A total of 124 healthy female participants aged 18-25 took part in the study. We evaluated two sets of 18 brief film clips. The first set of film clips presented ambiguous social situations designed to examine interpretation biases. Participants provided written interpretations of each ambiguous film clip which were subjected to sentiment analysis. We compared the films in terms of the valence of participants interpretations. The second set of film clips presented neutral and emotionally provoking social scenarios designed to elicit subjective and facial emotional responses. While viewing these film clips participants mood ratings and facial affect were recorded and analysed using exploratory factor analyses.

Results

Most of the 18 ambiguous film clips were interpreted in the expected manner while still retaining some ambiguity. However, participants were more attuned to the negative cues in the ambiguous film clips and three film clips were identified as unambiguous. These films clips were deemed unsuitable for assessing interpretation bias. The exploratory factor analyses of participants' mood ratings and evoked facial affect showed that the positive and negative emotionally provoking film clips formed their own factors as expected. However, there was substantial cross-loading of the neutral film clips when participants' facial expression data was analysed.

Discussion

A subset of the film clips from the two tasks could be used to assess top-down interpretation biases and bottom-up evoked emotional responses. Ambiguous negatively valenced film clips should have more subtle negative cues to avoid ceiling effects and to ensure there is enough room for interpretation.

Emotion Dynamics and Emotion Regulation in Anorexia Nervosa: A Systematic Review of Ecological Momentary Assessment Studies

Altered emotion dynamics and emotion regulation (ER) have been indicated in theoretical descriptions of abnormal emotional functioning, which contributes to the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has recently become popular in research on eating disorders. It is a source of new insights into the psychopathology of AN as it enables intensive long-term tracking of everyday experiences and behaviours of individuals through repeated self-reports. The following systematic review aims to synthesize research on the use of EMA when evaluating emotion dynamics and ER in AN. Specific studies were identified with the use of MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Scopus databases. A supplemental search was performed in reference lists of the relevant publications. As a result, 27 publications were identified and included in the systematic review. The findings from the reviewed studies point to various disturbed components of emotion dynamics as well as to unique associations of maladaptive ER strategies with specific abnormalities in emotion dynamics in AN. Limitations of the studies were discussed as well. An outlook for further research in the field was provided in the last section of the paper.

Social Support Predicts Differential Use, but not Differential Effectiveness, of Expressive Suppression and Social Sharing in Daily Life

While emotion regulation often happens in the presence of others, little is known about how social context shapes regulatory efforts and outcomes. One key element of the social context is social support. In two experience sampling studies (Ns = 179 and 123), we examined how the use and affective consequences of two fundamentally social emotion-regulation strategies-social sharing and expressive suppression-vary as a function of perceived social support. Across both studies, we found evidence that social support was associated with variation in people's use of these strategies, such that when people perceived their environments as being higher (vs. lower) in social support, they engaged in more sharing and less suppression. However, we found only limited and inconsistent support for context-dependent affective outcomes of suppression and sharing: suppression was associated with better affective consequences in the context of higher perceived social support in Study 1, but this effect did not replicate in Study 2. Taken together, these findings suggest that the use of social emotion-regulation strategies may depend on contextual variability in social support, whereas their effectiveness does not. Future research is needed to better understand the circumstances in which context-dependent use of emotion regulation may have emotional benefits, accounting for personal, situational, and cultural factors.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00123-8.

When and Where Do People Regulate Their Emotions? Patterns of Emotion Regulation in Unselected and Socially Anxious Young Adults

Introduction: The current studies examined how smartphone-assessed contextual features (i.e., location, time-of-day, social situation, and affect) contribute to the relative likelihood of emotion regulation strategy endorsement in daily life. Methods: Emotion regulation strategy endorsement and concurrent contextual features were assessed either passively (e.g., via GPS coordinates) or via self-report among unselected (Study 1: N = 112; duration = 2 weeks) and socially anxious (Study 2: N = 106; duration = 5 weeks) young adults. Results: An analysis of 2,891 (Study 1) and 12,289 (Study 2) mobile phone survey responses indicated small differences in rates of emotion regulation strategy endorsement across location (e.g., home vs. work/education settings), time-of-day (e.g., afternoon vs. evening), time-of-week (i.e., weekdays vs. weekends) and social context (e.g., with others vs. alone). However, emotion regulation patterns differed markedly depending on the set of emotion regulation strategies examined, which likely partly explains some inconsistent results across the studies. Also, many observed effects were no longer significant after accounting for state affect in the models. Discussion: Results demonstrate how contextual information collected with relatively low (or no) participant burden can add to our understanding of emotion regulation in daily life, yet it is important to consider state affect alongside other contextual features when drawing conclusions about how people regulate their emotions.

Stress, anxiety, emotion regulation and social support in parent‐child dyads prior to and during the onset of the COVID‐19 pandemic

In March 2020, and in order to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on stress and mental health in parent-child dyads using pre-pandemic measures, we recontacted participants from a 2019 study. A total of 136 dyads of Canadian parents (77% mothers, mean age = 44.48 years/old) and children (63% girls, 77% aged 10-12 years/old and 23% aged 15-17 years/old) completed self-report measures of perceived stress, anxiety (state/sensitivity) and emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal/expressive suppression). Children additionally completed measures of co-rumination and perceived social support from friends, parents, and teachers. Results revealed a significant increase in parents' stress and state anxiety during the pandemic compared to before, but not in their children. Dyads' anxiety sensitivity remained unchanged, as well as parents' use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Children showed similar use of cognitive reappraisal, but less expressive suppression and co-rumination during the pandemic compared to before. Children reported similar perceived social support from all sources over time. Finally, parental and children scores were not significantly correlated at either time. These results suggest that during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, parents and children responded differently in terms of stress, anxiety, and emotion regulation strategies.

Some Recommendations on the Use of Daily Life Methods in Affective Science

Real-world emotions are often more vivid, personally meaningful, and consequential than those evoked in the lab. Therefore, studying emotions in daily life is essential to test theories, discover new phenomena, and understand healthy emotional functioning; in short, to move affective science forward. The past decades have seen a surge of research using daily diary, experience sampling, or ecological momentary assessment methods to study emotional phenomena in daily life. In this paper, we will share some of the insights we have gained from our collective experience applying such daily life methods to study everyday affective processes. We highlight what we see as important considerations and caveats involved in using these methods and formulate recommendations to improve their use in future research. These insights focus on the importance of (i) theory and hypothesis-testing; (ii) measurement; (iii) timescale; and (iv) context, when studying emotions in their natural habitat.

Cardiac–Brain Dynamics Depend on Context Familiarity and Their Interaction Predicts Experience of Emotional Arousal

Our brain continuously interacts with the body as we engage with the world. Although we are mostly unaware of internal bodily processes, such as our heartbeats, they may be influenced by and in turn influence our perception and emotional feelings. Although there is a recent focus on understanding cardiac interoceptive activity and interaction with brain activity during emotion processing, the investigation of cardiac–brain interactions with more ecologically valid naturalistic emotional stimuli is still very limited. We also do not understand how an essential aspect of emotions, such as context familiarity, influences affective feelings and is linked to statistical interaction between cardiac and brain activity. Hence, to answer these questions, we designed an exploratory study by recording ECG and EEG signals for the emotional events while participants were watching emotional movie clips. Participants also rated their familiarity with the stimulus on the familiarity scale. Linear mixed effect modelling was performed in which the ECG power and familiarity were considered as predictors of EEG power. We focused on three brain regions, including prefrontal (PF), frontocentral (FC) and parietooccipital (PO). The analyses showed that the interaction between the power of cardiac activity in the mid-frequency range and the power in specific EEG bands is dependent on familiarity, such that the interaction is stronger with high familiarity. In addition, the results indicate that arousal is predicted by cardiac–brain interaction, which also depends on familiarity. The results support emotional theories that emphasize context dependency and interoception. Multimodal studies with more realistic stimuli would further enable us to understand and predict different aspects of emotional experience.

Datasets for Automated Affect and Emotion Recognition from Cardiovascular Signals Using Artificial Intelligence- A Systematic Review

Simple Summary

We reviewed the literature on the publicly available datasets used to automatically recognise emotion and affect using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. We were particularly interested in databases with cardiovascular (CV) data. Additionally, we assessed the quality of the included papers. We searched the sources until 31 August 2020. Each step of identification was carried out independently by two reviewers to maintain the credibility of our review. In case of disagreement, we discussed them. Each action was first planned and described in a protocol that we posted on the Open Science Framework (OSF) platform. We selected 18 works focused on providing datasets of CV signals for automated affect and emotion recognition. In total, data for 812 participants aged 17 to 47 were analysed. The most frequently recorded signal was electrocardiography. The authors most often used video stimulation. Noticeably, we did not find much necessary information in many of the works, resulting in mainly low quality among included papers. Researchers in this field should focus more on how they carry out experiments.

Abstract

Our review aimed to assess the current state and quality of publicly available datasets used for automated affect and emotion recognition (AAER) with artificial intelligence (AI), and emphasising cardiovascular (CV) signals. The quality of such datasets is essential to create replicable systems for future work to grow. We investigated nine sources up to 31 August 2020, using a developed search strategy, including studies considering the use of AI in AAER based on CV signals. Two independent reviewers performed the screening of identified records, full-text assessment, data extraction, and credibility. All discrepancies were resolved by discussion. We descriptively synthesised the results and assessed their credibility. The protocol was registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF) platform. Eighteen records out of 195 were selected from 4649 records, focusing on datasets containing CV signals for AAER. Included papers analysed and shared data of 812 participants aged 17 to 47. Electrocardiography was the most explored signal (83.33% of datasets). Authors utilised video stimulation most frequently (52.38% of experiments). Despite these results, much information was not reported by researchers. The quality of the analysed papers was mainly low. Researchers in the field should concentrate more on methodology.

The upside: coping and psychological resilience in Australian adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, few studies have investigated the positive psychological consequences on young people. This study examined resilience, positive experiences, and coping strategies reported by Australian adolescents during COVID-19.

METHODS

Self-report surveys were administered online to a sample of 760 Australian adolescents aged 12-18 years. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to assess resilience, positive experiences, and coping strategies. Exploratory regression analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between resilience and demographics and mental illness history, as well as between resilience and positive experiences.

RESULTS

Overall, adolescents were somewhat resilient (M = 20.93, SD = 8.29). They reported positive experiences during COVID-19, including increased empathy, compassion, gratitude, and connection with others, and reported using a range of active coping strategies. Having a mental illness history and identification as female or non-binary gender were associated with lower resilience (Bs > 2.82, ps < 0.001). Further, resilience was associated with decreased psychological distress (OR = 0.89, p < 0.001) and with increased positive experiences (ORs > 1.03, ps < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

Our results indicate that Australian adolescents commonly reported positive experiences and used active coping strategies during COVID-19. Some young people demonstrated higher levels of resilience and were able to make the most out of an unpredictable situation that severely disrupted their daily routine. However, further prospective research using longitudinal methods is necessary to examine causal relationships between variables. An implication of our findings is that resilience-building programs for adolescents may be effective in increasing adaptability after adversity (e.g., climate change, bushfires, pandemics).

COVID-19 Lockdown and Creativity: Exploring the Role of Emotions and Motivation on Creative Activities From the Chinese and German Perspectives

For much of 2020, countries around the world fought against the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries went into lockdown to control the fast spread of the virus. The unusual restrictions and confinement of the lockdown brought about new challenges for people's everyday lives. With flexibility, adaptability, and problem-solving at the core of its nature, creativity has the potential to help people cope with harsh and uncertain circumstances. Were people more, the same, or less creative in their everyday life during the period of lockdown, and in which ways? What are the emotions and motivations underlying their creative or non-creative behaviors? The current study aims to explore these questions from a cross-cultural perspective. A total of 754 comparable employee samples from three Chinese and three German cities were asked about their moods during the lockdown period, their self-rated level of creativity in daily lives before and during the lockdown, and their motivations behind their creative activities. Significant increases in creativity were observed in all everyday activities in both countries with only two exceptions in the German sample. Despite minor differences, a common pattern was found across cultures: whereas the activating positive mood could directly lead to the increase in creativity in some everyday activities, such a direct Mood-Creativity link was limited in the activating negative mood circumstances. In such circumstances, motivation intervened to enable the link to creativity. It was also found that this indirect effect of motivation between mood and creativity was more pronounced with the German participants.

Do People Agree on How Positive Emotions Are Expressed? A Survey of Four Emotions and Five Modalities Across 11 Cultures

While much is known about how negative emotions are expressed in different modalities, our understanding of the nonverbal expressions of positive emotions remains limited. In the present research, we draw upon disparate lines of theoretical and empirical work on positive emotions, and systematically examine which channels are thought to be used for expressing four positive emotions: feeling moved, gratitude, interest, and triumph. Employing the intersubjective approach, an established method in cross-cultural psychology, we first explored how the four positive emotions were reported to be expressed in two North American community samples (Studies 1a and 1b: n = 1466). We next confirmed the cross-cultural generalizability of our findings by surveying respondents from ten countries that diverged on cultural values (Study 2: n = 1826). Feeling moved was thought to be signaled with facial expressions, gratitude with the use of words, interest with words, face and voice, and triumph with body posture, vocal cues, facial expressions, and words. These findings provide cross-culturally consistent findings of differential expressions across positive emotions. Notably, positive emotions were thought to be expressed via modalities that go beyond the face.

A Systems View of Emotion in Socio-political Context

Most work to date in psychology and related sciences has examined simple, unidirectional causal processes of emotion affecting socio-political context or vice versa. In this classic, mechanistic view of science, each empirical observation stands on its own as a piece of some grander, not yet understandable, puzzle of nature. There have been repeated calls to eschew classic approaches in favor of systems meta-theory in psychology and related sciences. In this paper, we join these calls by arguing that systems meta-theory can better enable the study of emotions in socio-political contexts. We offer a brief primer on systems meta-theory, delineating three key beneficial features: multi-leveled, complex, and dynamic. Viewing emotion as a system of systems-within the person, their relationships (to others), and within the world (locally and globally)-enables fresh theory, method, and statistical analysis well suited to the study of emotion in a socio-political context.

Dominance, reward, and affiliation smiles modulate the meaning of uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour

We investigated the effects of different types of smiles on the perception of uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour. In five studies, participants assigned to one group played an economic game with a representative of another group. In an initial round, the representative acted uncooperatively by favouring their group and then displayed a dominance, reward, or affiliation smile. Participants rated the motives of the representative and played a second round of the game with a different member of the same outgroup. Following uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour, affiliation smiles communicated less positivity and superiority, and a greater desire to both repair the relationship between groups and change the uncooperative decision than reward or dominance smiles. Perceptions of a desire to repair the relationship and to change the decision were associated with trust and cooperation in a subsequent round of the game. Together, these findings show that smiles that are subtly different in their morphology can convey different messages and highlight the importance of these expressions in influencing the perceptions of others' intentions.

Identifying the determinants of emotion regulation choice: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Day-to-day life is inundated with attempts to control emotions and a wealth of research has examined what strategies people use and how effective these strategies are. However, until more recently, research has often neglected more basic questions such as whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e. emotion regulation choice). In an effort to identify what we know and what we need to know, we systematically reviewed studies that examined potential determinants of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Eighteen determinants were identified across 219 studies and were categorised as being affective, cognitive, motivational, individual or social-cultural in nature. Where there were sufficient primary studies, meta-analysis was used to quantify the size of the associations between potential determinants and measures of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Based on the findings, we propose that people's decisions about whether and how to regulate their emotions are determined by factors relating to the individual doing the regulating, the emotion that is being regulated, and both the immediate situation and the broader social context in which the regulation is taking place.

Reading emotions, reading people: Emotion perception and inferences drawn from perceived emotions

Emotional expressions play an important role in coordinating social interaction. We review research on two critical processes that underlie such coordination: (1) perceiving emotions from emotion expressions and (2) drawing inferences from perceived emotions. Broad evidence indicates that (a) observers can accurately perceive emotions from a person's facial, bodily, vocal, verbal, and symbolic expressions and that such emotion perception is further informed by contextual information. Moreover, (b) observers draw consequential and contextualized inferences from these perceived emotions about the expresser, the situation, and the self. Thus, emotion expressions enable coordinated action by providing information that facilitates adaptive behavioral responses. We recommend that future studies investigate how people integrate information from different expressive modalities and how this affects consequential inferences.

Human and machine validation of 14 databases of dynamic facial expressions

With a shift in interest toward dynamic expressions, numerous corpora of dynamic facial stimuli have been developed over the past two decades. The present research aimed to test existing sets of dynamic facial expressions (published between 2000 and 2015) in a cross-corpus validation effort. For this, 14 dynamic databases were selected that featured facial expressions of the basic six emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) in posed or spontaneous form. In Study 1, a subset of stimuli from each database (N = 162) were presented to human observers and machine analysis, yielding considerable variance in emotion recognition performance across the databases. Classification accuracy further varied with perceived intensity and naturalness of the displays, with posed expressions being judged more accurately and as intense, but less natural compared to spontaneous ones. Study 2 aimed for a full validation of the 14 databases by subjecting the entire stimulus set (N = 3812) to machine analysis. A FACS-based Action Unit (AU) analysis revealed that facial AU configurations were more prototypical in posed than spontaneous expressions. The prototypicality of an expression in turn predicted emotion classification accuracy, with higher performance observed for more prototypical facial behavior. Furthermore, technical features of each database (i.e., duration, face box size, head rotation, and motion) had a significant impact on recognition accuracy. Together, the findings suggest that existing databases vary in their ability to signal specific emotions, thereby facing a trade-off between realism and ecological validity on the one end, and expression uniformity and comparability on the other.

Contextual effects on smile perception and recognition memory

Most past research has focused on the role played by social context information in emotion classification, such as whether a display is perceived as belonging to one emotion category or another. The current study aims to investigate whether the effect of context extends to the interpretation of emotion displays, i.e. smiles that could be judged either as posed or spontaneous readouts of underlying positive emotion. A between-subjects design (N = 93) was used to investigate the perception and recall of posed smiles, presented together with a happy or polite social context scenario. Results showed that smiles seen in a happy context were judged as more spontaneous than the same smiles presented in a polite context. Also, smiles were misremembered as having more of the physical attributes (i.e., Duchenne marker) associated with spontaneous enjoyment when they appeared in the happy than polite context condition. Together, these findings indicate that social context information is routinely encoded during emotion perception, thereby shaping the interpretation and recognition memory of facial expressions.

Motivations for Relationships as Sources of Meaning: Ghanaian and South African Experiences

Afrocentric paradigms reflect assumptions of the overarching importance of interconnectedness and social bonds in meaningful experiences. It is, however, not known if types of relatedness vary in importance as meaning sources in the subjective experiences of laypeople, or what the reasons are that they ascribe to the importance of relationships. The empirical and theoretical substantiation of philosophical assumptions is needed to provide a scientific basis for appropriate well-being interventions in African contexts. Therefore, this study aimed to empirically explore the relative importance of various types of relationships as sources of meaning and in particular why relationships are important to laypeople in relatively collectivist African contexts. Using a bottom-up qualitative approach with quantification of responses, this study explored how prominently relationships featured as meaning sources compared to other domains of life and then, in particular, the motivations for the importance of various types of relationships as found in four African samples: a Ghanaian urban group (n = 389), a South African multicultural, English-speaking urban group (n = 585), and two South African Setswana-speaking groups (n = 512 rural, n = 380 urban). Findings showed that the relational domains of life, namely, family, interpersonal relations, spirituality/religion, and community/society, made up a large proportion of responses on what provides meaning in life−in particular family and spirituality/religion with community/society occurring the least. The reasons for meaning experienced in various relationship types included domain-typical relational descriptors, such as contributions made or rewards received. However, many intrapersonal motives also emerged: inner well-being, happiness, joy, a sense of competence, and own growth. Material needs and harmony also surfaced as motivations for relational importance. Findings are aligned with African philosophical perspectives as far as the importance of relationships and the value attached to spirituality/religion are concerned, but contributed additionally by showing that different types of relationships vary in importance: close relationships are more important than community/societal relationships. Unearthing the reasons for the importance of relationships points toward a dialectic pattern of African individualism–collectivism in which independent and interdependent orientations flow together. Such knowledge is vital for the promotion of mental health and well-being in these contexts.

Social context and culture influence judgments of non-Duchenne smiles

Extant evidence points toward the role of contextual information and related cross-cultural variations in emotion perception, but most of the work to date has focused on judgments of basic emotions. The current research examines how culture and situational context affect the interpretation of emotion displays, i.e. judgments of the extent to which ambiguous smiles communicate happiness versus polite intentions. We hypothesized that smiles associated with contexts implying happiness would be judged as conveying more positive feelings compared to smiles paired with contexts implying politeness or smiles presented without context. In line with existing research on cross-cultural variation in contextual influences, we also expected these effects to be larger in Japan than in the UK. In Study 1, British participants viewed non-Duchenne smiles presented on their own or paired with background scenes implying happiness or the need to be polite. Compared to face-only stimuli, happy contexts made smiles appear more genuine, whereas polite contexts led smiles to be seen as less genuine. Study 2 replicated this result using verbal vignettes, showing a similar pattern of contextual effects among British and Japanese participants. However, while the effects of vignettes describing happy situations was comparable in both cultures, the influence of vignettes describing polite situations was stronger in Japan than the UK. Together, the findings document the importance of context information in judging smile expressions and highlight the need to investigate how culture moderates such influences.

Feel Good or Do Good? A Valence–Function Framework for Understanding Emotions

Previous thinking has often categorized emotions as either pleasant or unpleasant or examined to what extent they are functional or dysfunctional. We suggest that researchers should consider the positivity or negativity of discrete emotions on both dimensions: subjective feelings and constructiveness of outcomes. We discuss how, across contexts, a specific emotion can potentially be categorized differently within the framework. We further suggest that this approach is particularly useful in unique, complex contexts that involve clashes among goals, interests, or values, such as violent intergroup conflicts. Using this context, we demonstrate how emotions that feel good to people can lead to behaviors and attitudes that sustain violence and thwart conflict resolution, whereas emotions that promote conflict resolution are often unpleasant. Such clashes may depend on the presence of embedded contextual factors, such as group membership and relative power. Thus, this framework will be useful for examining specific emotions while taking contextual factors into consideration. Finally, we examine several important questions stemming from our framework and suggest directions for future research.

Emotion Regulation Flexibility

Abstract. Emotion regulation (ER) flexibility, defined as shifting regulatory efforts based on contextual demands, has been proposed as central to well-being. However, it remains an elusive construct to capture. In this article, we highlight the promise and challenges of using ambulatory assessment to examine ER flexibility. We consider difficulties in assessing relevant contextual features and ER dynamics using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The solutions offered include drawing on existing taxonomies of situational characteristics and ER strategies, adopting methods that passively track contextual features and enhance reliability, and leveraging the advantages of various sampling schemes based on target ER dynamics. Studying ER flexibility in vivo, as it naturally unfolds in daily life, is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of the contextual, dynamic nature of ER. Further work is needed developing theories to guide research on how and why specific aspects of the context might call for shifts in regulatory efforts.

The Pacified Face: Early Embodiment Processes and the Use of Dummies

Few things affect us as much as facial expressions, as they inform us about others' feelings and intentions, thereby influencing our own emotions and behaviors. A substantial body of literature links the critical abilities of recognizing and understanding emotion displays with facial mimicry, a sensorimotor process involving rapid imitation of perceived expressions. For example, blocking or altering facial mimicry in adults leads to disruptions in judgments in emotion recognition or emotional language processing. The present review focuses on pacifier use in infancy, a common practice that has the potential to interfere with infants' facial movements in ways identical to laboratory paradigms designed to block facial mimicry. Despite this similarity and the widespread use of infant soothers, little is known about their long-term effects. Here we review studies exploring the psychological correlates and implications of pacifier use. In particular, we discuss how soothers may interfere with the development of social skills in infants and present evidence linking pacifier use with disrupted adults' mimicry of facial expressions displayed by infants. Other preliminary findings reveal negative correlations between the use of soothers and children's spontaneous facial mimicry as well as emotional competence of young adults. Such studies, although correlational, suggest that this widespread parenting practice may affect the development of social skills by influencing emotional coordination. We discuss the implications of these findings and propose avenues for future research that can provide insights into the role of embodied processes in the development of emotional competence and adult functioning.

Coping in context: The effects of long-term relations between interparental conflict and coping on the development of child psychopathology following parental divorce

Exposure to high levels of postdivorce interparental conflict is a well-documented risk factor for the development of psychopathology, and there is strong evidence of a subpopulation of families for which conflict persists for many years after divorce. However, existing studies have not elucidated differential trajectories of conflict within families over time, nor have they assessed the risk posed by conflict trajectories for development of psychopathology or evaluated potential protective effects of children's coping to mitigate such risk. We used growth mixture modeling to identify longitudinal trajectories of child-reported conflict over a period of six to eight years following divorce in a sample of 240 children. We related the trajectories to children's mental health problems, substance use, and risky sexual behaviors and assessed how children's coping prospectively predicted psychopathology in the different conflict trajectories. We identified three distinct trajectories of conflict; youth in two high-conflict trajectories showed deleterious effects on measures of psychopathology at baseline and the six-year follow-up. We found both main effects of coping and coping by conflict trajectory interaction effects in predicting problem outcomes at the six-year follow-up. The study supports the notion that improving youth's general capacity to cope adaptively is a potentially modifiable protective factor for all children facing parental divorce and that children in families with high levels of postdivorce conflict are a particularly appropriate group to target for coping-focused preventive interventions.

Is it dangerous? The role of an emotional visual search strategy and threat-relevant training in the detection of guns and knives

Counter-terrorism strategies rely on the assumption that it is possible to increase threat detection by providing explicit verbal instructions to orient people's attention to dangerous objects and hostile behaviours in their environment. Nevertheless, whether verbal cues can be used to enhance threat detection performance under laboratory conditions is currently unclear. In Experiment 1, student participants were required to detect a picture of a dangerous or neutral object embedded within a visual search display on the basis of an emotional strategy 'is it dangerous?' or a semantic strategy 'is it an object?'. The results showed a threat superiority effect that was enhanced by the emotional visual search strategy. In Experiment 2, whilst trainee police officers displayed a greater threat superiority effect than student controls, both groups benefitted from performing the task under the emotional than semantic visual search strategy. Manipulating situational threat levels (high vs. low) in the experimental instructions had no effect on visual search performance. The current findings provide new support for the language-as-context hypothesis. They are also consistent with a dual-processing account of threat detection involving a verbally mediated route in working memory and the deployment of a visual template developed as a function of training.

Contextual factors influence the selection of specific and broad types of emotion regulation strategies

An emerging focus in the emotion regulation (ER) literature is to consider the importance of context for people's ER strategy choice, given that ER responses that adapt to situational demands have been found to be highly beneficial. However, it remains unclear what (and in what way) contextual factors impact people's ER strategy selections. Also, only a limited number of ER strategies have been extensively studied and little is known about people's selection of broad ER strategy categories (we focus on covert vs. overt ER strategies based on Aldao & Dixon-Gordon's [2014] conceptualization). In the current study, 203 participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk to imagine experiencing either positive or negative emotion in various contextual settings (location: home, social, vs. professional setting × social context: alone vs. with others) and to identify from 16 ER strategies the ones that they would in general deem applicable for each context. Results showed that the aforementioned factors, in various ways, uniquely or interactively predicted the selection of specific and broad ER strategies. Furthermore, personality (neuroticism and extraversion) also influenced participants' ER strategy selection. Overall, this study underscores the importance of including diverse strategies and considering context in the study of ER strategy choices.