Judging Facial Emotion Expressions in Context: The Influence of Culture and Self-Construal Orientation

We assessed the impact of social context on the judgment of emotional facial expressions as a function of self-construal and decoding rules. German and Greek participants rated spontaneous emotional faces shown either alone or surrounded by other faces with congruent or incongruent facial expressions. Greek participants were higher in interdependence than German participants. In line with cultural decoding rules, Greek participants rated anger expressions less intensely and sad and disgust expressions more intensely. Social context affected the ratings by both groups in different ways. In the more interdependent culture (Greece) participants perceived anger least intensely when the group showed neutral expressions, whereas sadness expressions were rated as most intense in the absence of social context. In the independent culture (Germany) a group context (others expressing anger or happiness) additionally amplified the perception of angry and happy expressions. In line with the notion that these effects are mediated by more holistic processing linked to higher interdependence, this difference disappeared when we controlled for interdependence on the individual level. The findings confirm the usefulness of considering both country level and individual level factors when studying cultural differences.     

Emotional Empathy as Related to Mimicry Reactions at Different Levels of Information Processing

The hypotheses of this investigation were based on conceiving of facial mimicry reactions in face-to-face interactions as an early automatic component in the process of emotional empathy. Differences between individuals high and low in emotional empathy were investigated. The parameters compared were facial mimicry reactions, as represented by electromyographic (EMG) activity, when individuals were exposed to pictures of angry or happy faces. The present study distinguished between spontaneous facial reactions and facial expressions associated with more controlled or modulated emotions at different information processing levels, first at a preattentive level and then consecutively at more consciously controlled levels: 61 participants were exposed to pictures at three different exposure times (17, 56, and 2350 ms). A significant difference in facial mimicry reactions between high- and low-empathy participants emerged at short exposure times (56 ms), representing automatic, spontaneous reactions, with high-empathy participants showing a significant mimicking reaction. The low-empathy participants did not display mimicking at any exposure time. On the contrary, the low-empathy participants showed, in response to angry faces, a tendency to an elevated activation in the cheek region, which often is associated with smiling.     

Wilderness adventure therapy effects on the mental health of youth participants

Adventure therapy offers a prevention, early intervention, and treatment modality for people with behavioural, psychological, and psychosocial issues. It can appeal to youth-at-risk who are often less responsive to traditional psychotherapeutic interventions. This study evaluated Wilderness Adventure Therapy (WAT) outcomes based on participants’ pre-program, post-program, and follow-up responses to self-report questionnaires. The sample consisted of 36 adolescent out-patients with mixed mental health issues who completed a 10-week, manualised WAT intervention. The overall short-term standardised mean effect size was small, positive, and statistically significant (0.26), with moderate, statistically significant improvements in psychological resilience and social self-esteem. Total short-term effects were within age-based adventure therapy meta-analytic benchmark 90% confidence intervals, except for the change in suicidality which was lower than the comparable benchmark. The short-term changes were retained at the three-month follow-up, except for family functioning (significant reduction) and suicidality (significant improvement). For participants in clinical ranges pre-program, there was a large, statistically significant reduction in depressive symptomology, and large to very large, statistically significant improvements in behavioural and emotional functioning. These changes were retained at the three-month follow-up. These findings indicate that WAT is as effective as traditional psychotherapy techniques for clinically symptomatic people. Future research utilising a comparison or wait-list control group, multiple sources of data, and a larger sample, could help to qualify and extend these findings.     

Emotional response in a disjunction condition

This study investigated the emotional response in a disjunction condition. Participants were presented with a hypothetical three-condition scenario in which they imagined that they had submitted their application for admission to two universities. In the two conditions of certainty, the participants imagined that they were either accepted by University A or rejected by University A. In the uncertain condition, the participants imagined that they did not know whether they had been accepted or rejected by University A. These three conditions formed a disjunction condition. The results suggested that the participants felt less happy under the uncertain condition than under the two conditions of certainty, regardless of whether the information presentation was non-transparent (Experiment 1A) or transparent (Experiment 1B) and regardless of whether the options in the two conditions of certainty were similar (Experiment 2A) or substantially discrepant (Experiment 2B and Experiment 3). Experiment 3 further demonstrated that, consistent with the hedonic hypothesis, preferential choices (which constitutes a disjunction effect) are based on emotional responses in the disjunction condition. The underlying processes of the emotional response in the disjunction condition and its relation to the literature on risk and uncertainty aversion are discussed.     

CHARITABLE GIVING,EMOTIONS, AND THE DEFAULT EFFECT

We report an experiment to study the effect of defaults on charitable giving. In three different treatments, participants face varying default levels of donation. In three other treatments that are paired with the first three, they receive the same defaults, but are informed that defaults are thought to have an effect on their donation decisions. The emotional state of all individuals is monitored throughout the sessions using Facereading software, and some participants are required to report their emotional state after the donation decision. We find that the level at which a default is set has no effect on donations, and informing individuals of the possible impact of defaults also has no effect. Individuals who are happier and in a more positive overall emotional state donate more. Donors experience a negative change in the valence of their emotional state subsequent to donating, when valence is measured with Facereading software. This contrasts with the self‐report data, in which donating correlates with a more positive reported subsequent emotional state. (JEL C91)     

Assessing emotional and social health using photographs: An innovative research method for rural studies and its applicability in a care-farming program for youth

A framework for assessing photographs for the emotional and social health of young people (SHAPE) is described and tested, within the context of a rural program. Two independent raters assessed the photographs of participants. To assess inter-rater reliability, Cohen’ K and Kendall’s W were calculated. The two reviewers’ assessments of photographs were in agreement. The assessment of emotional/behavioural display showed 82% agreement. Agreement between reviewers’ judgements of proxemics (W = .866), interaction (W = .722), engagement (W = .932) and overall impression (W = .804) were all significant (p < .005). The method yielded results indicating that participants found gardening immediately engaging but their approach to equines exhibited a change from fascination to confidence during the program. The visual-diary method is a useful and sensitive method for research: where resources are limited; to complement traditional measures; for use with people who lack appropriate verbal communication or literacy skills to complete questionnaires; young children; other underrepresented groups.     

Participatory ergonomics for psychological factors evaluation in work system design

It is a well recognized understanding that workers whose voice needs to be heard should be actively encouraged as full participants and involved in the early design stages of new ergonomic work system which encompass the development and implementation of new tools, workplaces, technologies or organizations. This paper presents a novel participatory strategy to evaluate three key psychological factors which are respectively mental fatigue, spiritual stress, and emotional satisfaction in work system design based on a modified version of Participatory Ergonomics (PE). In specific, it integrates a PE technique with a formulation view by combining the parallel development of PE strategies, frameworks and functions throughout the coverage of the entire work system design process, so as to bridge the gap between qualitative and quantitative analysis of psychological factors which can cause adverse or advantageous effects on worker's physiological and behavioral performance.     

Parents' Perceptions of Services for Children and Youth with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Increased concern about the pervasive problems children and youth with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) experience has led to the planning and development of alternative approaches to serving these individuals and their families. One alternative approach includes the development of a comprehensive, community- based system of care. This study encouraged parent participation in a county-wide needs assessment designed to facilitate the development of a system of care. Parents were surveyed to gather their views regarding their experiences with various service agencies as well as their input into how comprehensive services could best be developed and implemented. The survey focused on (a) family needs, (b) existing barriers to comprehensive individualized care, and (c) specific service priorities for system development. Suggestions for future research and implications for developing such services are discussed.     

When do we see that others misrepresent how they feel? detecting deception from emotional faces with direct and indirect measures

Nonverbally-expressed emotions are not always linked to people’s true emotions. We investigated whether observers’ ability to distinguish trues from lies differs for positive and negative emotional expressions. Participants judged targets either simulating or truly experiencing positive or negative emotions. Deception detection was measured by participants’ inference of the targets’ emotions and their direct judgments of deception. Results of the direct measure showed that participants could not accurately distinguish between truth tellers and liars, regardless which emotion was expressed. As anticipated, the effects emerged on the indirect emotion measure: participants distinguished liars from truth tellers when inferring experienced emotions from negative emotional expressions, but not positive emotional expressions.     

A place for marriage and family services in employee assistance programs (EAPs): a survey of EAP client problems and needs

Marriage and family services have not been widely recognized as part of employee assistance programs (EAP), although family and relational problems are widely cited as sources of problems on the job. EAP clients (N = 800, 97% self-referred) indicated how much family, psychological/emotional, drug, alcohol, employment-related, legal, and medical problems troubled them and the need for services in each area. Psychological/emotional (66%) and family (65%) problem areas frequently were rated "considerable" or "extreme." Both areas were rated as "considerable" or "extreme" by 48.6% of participants. In view of the evidence that marriage and family services can be effective with both family and psychological/emotional problems, professionals who are competent to provide such services have much to offer EAP programs.     

“I Know That You Know How I Feel”: Behavioral and Physiological Signals Demonstrate Emotional Attunement While Interacting with a Computer Simulating Emotional Intelligence

Human–human communication studies have suggested that within communicative interactions, individuals acknowledge each other as intentional agents and adjust their emotion nonverbal behavior according to the other. This process has been defined as emotional attunement. In this study, we examine the emotional attunement process in the context of affective human–computer interactions. To this purpose, participants were exposed to one of two conditions. In one case, they played with a computer that simulated understanding of their emotional reactions while guiding them across four different game-like activities; in the other, the computer guided participants across the activities without mentioning any ability to understand emotional responses. Face movements, gaze direction, posture, vocal behavior, electrocardiogram and electrodermal activity were simultaneously recorded during the experimental sessions. Results showed that if participants were aware of interacting with an agent able to recognize their emotions, they reported that the computer was able to “understand” them and showed a higher number of nonverbal behaviors during the most interactive activity. The implications are discussed.     

Effects of Social Anxiety on Emotional Mimicry and Contagion: Feeling Negative,but Smiling Politely

Socially anxiety may be related to a different pattern of facial mimicry and contagion of others’ emotions. We report two studies in which participants with different levels of social anxiety reacted to others’ emotional displays, either shown on a computer screen (Study 1) or in an actual social interaction (Study 2). Study 1 examined facial mimicry and emotional contagion in response to displays of happiness, anger, fear, and contempt. Participants mimicked negative and positive emotions to some extent, but we found no relation between mimicry and the social anxiety level of the participants. Furthermore, socially anxious individuals were more prone to experience negative emotions and felt more irritated in response to negative emotion displays. In Study 2, we found that social anxiety was related to enhanced mimicry of smiling, but this was only the case for polite smiles and not for enjoyment smiles. These results suggest that socially anxious individuals tend to catch negative emotions from others, but suppress their expression by mimicking positive displays. This may be explained by the tendency of socially anxious individuals to avoid conflict or rejection.     

Same- and Other-Sex Aversion and Attraction as Important Correlates of Quality and Outcomes of Mormon Mixed-Orientation Marriages

Many studies have assessed characteristics of mixed-orientation marriages (MOM), unions between a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or queer/questioning (GLBQ) partner and a heterosexual spouse. In this study, experiences of physical and emotional other-sex attraction versus aversion were posited as important factors with implications for relationship outcomes. One-hundred-sixty-five GLBQ identifying individuals who were currently or formerly in MOMs and were currently or formerly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS, Mormon) completed a measure of physical and emotional same- and other-sex attraction and aversion, as well as the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Divorced or separated participants reported more other-sex physical aversion, physical aversion to the spouse, other-sex emotional aversion, same-sex emotional attraction, and less emotional attraction to the spouse. Higher other-sex attraction and attraction to the spouse were associated with better relationship quality for both men and women in intact marriages. For men only, same-sex attraction was related to worse marital relationship quality, and religiosity was moderately to strongly related to most indices of attraction/aversion. Interview data obtained from a subsample of participants further explored the unique challenges experienced by partners in their efforts to develop and maintain intimacy in MOMs.     

Changing emotion: the use of therapeutic storytelling

Even though using metaphors in a therapeutic context is common, there are very few studies that address their effects. This study examines the effects of storytelling in therapy. After discussing a problem in a current relationship, 42 female participants were randomly assigned to receive either a story or psychoeducational information. Results indicated that both treatments were equally successful in reducing amounts of negative affect and negative feelings toward the relationship. In addition, each story was able to facilitate a change in emotional valence. Finally, participants saw no difference between the depth and smoothness of each session. Examples on using storytelling within different models of marriage and family therapy are provided.     

Emotional Facial Expression Recognition and Expressivity in Type I and Type II Alcohol Dependent Patients

Alcohol dependent patients (ADs) are known to encounter severe interpersonal problems. Nonverbal communication skills are important for the development of healthy relationships. The present study aimed to explore emotional facial expression (EFE) recognition and posed and spontaneous EFE expressivity in male ADs divided into two groups according to Cloninger’s typology and the impact of their interpersonal relationship quality on the potential nonverbal deficits. Twenty type I ADs, twenty-one type II ADs, and twenty control participants took part in an EFE recognition task and an EFE expressivity task that considered personal emotional events (spontaneous expressivity) and EFE in response to a photo or word cue (posed expressivity). Coding was based on judges’ ratings of participants’ emotional facial expressions. Participants additionally completed a questionnaire on interpersonal relationship quality. No difference between the three groups emerged in the EFE recognition task. Type II ADs showed heightened deficits compared with type I ADs in EFE expressivity: Judges perceived less accurate posed EFE in response to a cue word and less intense and positive spontaneous EFE in type II ADs compared to control participants. In addition, type II ADs reported more relationship difficulties compared to both type I ADs and control participants. These interpersonal relationship difficulties were related to some of the EFE expressivity deficits of AD-IIs. This study underlines the important differences between the interpersonal functioning of AD subtypes.     

Recognition of Emotions in Gait Patterns by Means of Artificial Neural Nets

This paper describes an application of emotion recognition in human gait by means of kinetic and kinematic data using artificial neural nets. Two experiments were undertaken, one attempting to identify participants’ emotional states from gait patterns, and the second analyzing effects on gait patterns of listening to music while walking. In the first experiment gait was analyzed as participants attempted to simulate four distinct emotional states (normal, happy, sad, angry). In the second experiment, participants were asked to listen to different types of music (excitatory, calming, no music) before and during gait analysis. Derived data were fed into different types of artificial neural nets. Results showed not only a clear distinction between individuals, but also revealed clear indications of emotion recognition in nets.     

Lay persons' emotional reactions toward an abused elderly person

This study examined lay persons' emotional reactions to abuse, with special attention to two types of disease: Alzheimer's disease and osteoporosis. A total of 169 adults (mean age = 60) were interviewed face-to-face using a vignette methodology. Although the majority of the participants found the vignette to describe a situation of abuse, one-quarter did not consider it an abusive situation. The person described in the vignette elicited more positive than negative emotions, with a high percentage of participants expressing sympathy, desire to help, and concern. The various emotional reactions to abuse are associated with different correlates.     

Cross‐Cultural Validity of Bowen Theory in Southern European Countries

We present a comparison between Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal to test the cross‐cultural validity of the Differentiation of Self Inventory Revised (DSI‐R) Scales of emotional cut‐off (EC) and emotional reactivity (ER). Our study focuses on the importance of in‐depth analyses of the differentiation of self‐constructs from a cross‐cultural perspective and reflects on the possibility of conceptualising the universality of Bowen theory in southern European countries. The study involved 1,807 healthy individuals. All participants completed the DSI‐R (Skowron & Schmitt, 2003). It was found that the measurement models had a suitable fit for each country group. Nevertheless, in our study, the two DSI‐R subscales, ER and EC, highlighted a weak invariance, specifically demonstrating only the invariance of the pattern factor loadings and the magnitude of factor loadings in the four samples. The empirical and clinical implications of these data are discussed.     

Internet alternative media,movement experience,and radicalism: the case of post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong

This article examines the relationship between online alternative media consumption and public support for radical social movement goals and tactics. Theoretically, online alternative media use could relate to the holding of more radical views either because such views are propagated by the alternative media or because of the breeding of extreme views through communications among like-minded people. At the same time, this relationship is expected to be particularly strong when online alternative media use is coupled with specific types of movement experiences. Analysis of a representative survey (N = 1012) in Hong Kong shows that both online alternative media use and participation in the Umbrella Movement in 2014 related positively to the attitude toward violent protests and toward Hong Kong independence, and the relationship between online alternative media use and radical views was particularly strong among the Umbrella Movement participants. The analysis also shows a distinction between the implications of consumption of alternative media belonging to different political factions.