Watching emotional movies: affective reactions and gender differences

The mediating effects of school bullying victimization in the relationship between childhood trauma and NSSI among adolescents with mood disorders

BACKGROUND

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a serious problem in the adolescent population worldwide. Childhood trauma and bullying have been identified as risk factors for NSSI. We explored the relationships among Childhood trauma, Bullying victimization and the severity of NSSI behaviours, and test the effect of Bullying victimization in mediating the association between Childhood trauma and the NSSI behaviours.

METHODS

A total of 123 adolescents were recruited. They were diagnosed with depression or depressive episodes of bipolar disorder and had experienced NSSI in the last year. They were assessed using the Chinese version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-C), the Revised Olweus Bullying Victimization Questionnaire (OBVQ-R), and the Adolescent Self-Harm Questionnaire (ASHQ).

RESULTS

Females presented a significantly greater prevalence of sexual abuse and relationship bullying than boys. Individuals in the younger age group (10-14 years) presented a greater incidence of emotional neglect, verbal bullying, relationship bullying, and total bullying, and their NSSI score was also higher than that of those in the older age group (15-19 years). Only children show a greater prevalence of sexual abuse than nononly children. Single-parent families scored higher on emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect and physical bullying than two-parent families. There was a significant positive correlation between each dimension of childhood trauma and all the dimensions of bullying, between childhood trauma and NSSI, and between bullying and NSSI. Childhood trauma can not only directly affect the severity of NSSI but also indirectly aggravate the severity of NSSI through bullying victimization. The mediating effects of bullying victimization on emotional abuse, physical abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect were 14%, 21%, 20%, 13% and 20%, respectively.

CONCLUSION

There was a significant positive correlation between childhood trauma and bullying, between childhood trauma and NSSI, and between bullying and NSSI. Childhood trauma can not only directly affect the severity of NSSI but also indirectly aggravate the severity of NSSI through bullying victimization. Bullying victimization played the partial mediating effects between Childhood trauma and NSSI.

Gender effect in affective processing: Alpha EEG source analysis on emotional slides and film-clips

Past research on gender-related brain asymmetries in emotions was limited and not univocal. The present study analyzed EEG alpha activity (indexing cortical de-activation) from 64 scalp sites in 20 women and 20 men during a counterbalanced block presentation of emotional slides and short video-clips. Stimuli consisted of 45 brief clips of 13 s, divided into 15 erotic (pleasant), 15 neutral and 15 fear (unpleasant) contents. Slides consisted in 45 photo shots (presented for 13 s each) extracted from the videos. As expected, women perceived fear stimuli as more arousing and more unpleasant compared to men. Alpha EEG source analysis revealed gender effects depending on stimulus. Emotional film-clips elicited in both groups a pattern of greater right than left occipital activation. Instead, emotional pictures activated opposite occipital regions, as women showed greater activation in the left, men in the right hemisphere. Men also showed greater activation to Erotic compared to Fear stimuli (i.e., pictures/clips) in the posterior parietal complex. Results point to the relevance of emotional stimulus type to reveal gender effects: clips are ecological, dynamic and engaging, and forced a unified pattern of emotional responses that reset individual differences. Emotional pictures, less engaging, allowed individual differences to emerge and interact with the stimulus category.

Moving toward reality: Electrocortical reactivity to naturalistic multimodal emotional videos

While previous research has investigated the effects of emotional videos on peripheral physiological measures and conscious experience, this study extends the research to include electrocortical measures, specifically the steady-state visual-evoked potential (ssVEP). A carefully curated set of 45 videos, designed to represent a wide range of emotional and neutral content, were presented with a flickering border. The videos featured a continuous single-shot perspective, natural soundtrack, and excluded elements associated with professional films, to enhance realism. The results demonstrate a consistent reduction in ssVEP amplitude during emotional videos which strongly correlates with the rated emotional intensity of the clips. This suggests that narrative audiovisual stimuli have the potential to track dynamic emotional processing in the cortex, providing new avenues for research in affective neuroscience. The findings highlight the potential of using realistic video stimuli to investigate how the human brain processes emotional events in a paradigm that increases ecological validity. Future studies can further develop this paradigm by expanding the video set, targeting specific cortical networks, and manipulating narrative predictability. Overall, this study establishes a foundation for investigating emotional perception using realistic video stimuli and has the potential to expand our understanding of real-world emotional processing in the human brain.

Temporal dynamics of positive emotion regulation: insights from facial electromyography

Introduction

Emotion regulation (ER) is a complex process that manifests gradually over time. This study investigated the temporal dynamics of ER in modifying positive emotions in terms of both negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) dimensions.

Methods

After participants had been exposed to pleasant pictures for 8,000 ms, they received instructions to either continue viewing the picture (no regulation) or reappraise it with a neutral meaning (neutralize goal) or negative meaning (transform goal) for another 8,000 ms. We obtained corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major electromyography (EMG) as objective measures of NA and PA.

Results

For the no-regulation condition, upon instruction onset, we observed maintained low levels of corrugator and high levels of zygomaticus EMG reactivity, indicating sustained PA activation. Compared to the no-regulation condition, for the neutralize goal, we observed no change in corrugator reactivity, which remained at a low level, while zygomaticus reduction started at 1,000 ms after instruction onset, indicating decreased PA and generation of a neutral emotional state. For the transform goal, we observed corrugator increase and zygomaticus decrease both starting at 1,500 ms after instruction onset and co-existing throughout the regulation period. These results indicate increased NA and decreased PA, relating to generation of a negative emotional state. The transform goal differed from the neutralize goal in terms of corrugator increase starting at 2,500 ms after instruction onset. Albeit simultaneous onset of changes on corrugator and zygomaticus reactivity under the transform goal, model-fitting analyses indicated that the best-fitting trajectory was one that first emphasized PA reduction until, at 3,000 ms, it turned into primary NA increase.

Discussion

These distinct temporal patterns highlight the possibility of effecting one-dimensional PA change with the neutralize goal and sequential two-dimensional change (first decreasing PA, then increasing NA) with the transform goal. This research sheds light on the time course of emotional change brought about by different regulatory goals.

Electrodermal and respiratory synchrony in couple therapy in distinct therapeutic subsystems and reflection periods

Objective Synchrony in the multi-person context of systemic therapy is a complex and understudied phenomenon. We analyzed respiratory and electrodermal synchronies within a couple therapy system with two therapists to determine whether dyadic subsystems between each client and therapist synchronized differently. We also studied synchrony in reflection periods, in which the therapists discussed the therapy process with clients listening. Finally, we examined the association of synchronies with alliance and outcome.Method: A sample of 22 therapy sessions in which electrodermal activity (EDA) and respiration were recorded were analyzed. Self-report measures of session alliance and outcome were obtained. Synchrony computation was based on windowed cross-correlation using surrogate synchrony and segment-wise shuffling of physiological time series.Results: The results supported the presence of EDA synchrony for the client-therapist and therapist-therapist dyads but not client-client dyads across entire sessions. No significant synchronies were found for respiration behavior. A similar picture was found in reflection periods. Clients' well-being as well as therapists' alliance ratings were significant predictors of client-client EDA synchrony.Conclusion: Our results point to the relational meaning of synchrony and its importance for understanding couple psychotherapy, particularly the reflection periods. Challenges involved in extending synchrony computation to multi-person settings were highlighted.

Gender Differences in Facial Emotion Recognition Among Adolescents Depression with Non-Suicidal Self-Injury

Objective

Despite the perception that healthy female are superior at emotional identification, it remains unclear whether gender-specific differences exist in adolescent depression and whether such specific differences in emotional recognition are associated with the most salient feature of adolescent depression---non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI).

Methods

In this study, 1428 adolescents (1136 females and 292 males) with depression and NSSI were examined using the Facial Emotion Recognition Task, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and Functional Assessment of Self-mutilation questionnaire (FASM). This study was grouped by gender. Data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, chi-square test, non-parametric test (Mann-Whitney U-test), Spearman correlation and Multiple linear regression analysis.

Results

Depressed females reported a significantly greater frequency of self-injurious behaviour and more severe depressive symptoms than males. Face emotion recognition was also significantly more accurate in females and was positively correlated with levels of self-injury and depression, whereas no such correlations were found in males. Among depressed adolescents, face emotion recognition is better in females and is associated with self-injurious behaviour.

Conclusion

This study found that the greater susceptibility to depression and NSSI among adolescent females may stem in part from superior recognition and sensitivity to the negative emotions of others.

"I am feeling tension in my whole body": An experimental phenomenological study of empathy for pain

Introduction

Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on the enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others' emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation.

Objective

This study aims to enrich the knowledge of the empathic experience of pain using an experimental phenomenological method.

Materials and methods

Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories.

Results

Experiential access to the other person's painful experience involves four main themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations in coordination with the sportsperson's bodily actions. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. The temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant's own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them.

Discussion

We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of an embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory of non-interactive social experience.

Native and non-native language contexts differently modulate mood-driven electrodermal activity

Bilingual speakers have been consistently observed to experience reduced emotional sensitivity to their non-native (L2) relative to native (L1) language, particularly to the negatively-valenced L2 content. Yet, little is known about how the L1 and L2 contexts physiologically influence bilinguals' affective states, such as moods. Here, we show that bilinguals may be less physiologically sensitive to mood changes in the L2 compared to the L1 context. Polish-English bilinguals operating in either the L1 or the L2 mode (elicited via reading L1 and L2 sentences) watched positive and negative mood-inducing films while their electrodermal activity was measured. We observed a greater number of skin conductance responses in the negative compared to positive mood condition in the L1 context only, indexing decreased sensitivity to mood changes in the L2 relative to the L1 mode in bilinguals. Also, skin conductance amplitudes were overall increased in the L2 compared to the L1 context, pointing to increased cognitive load when operating in L2. These findings together suggest that bilinguals experience decreased sensitivity to mood changes in their less dominant language due to L2 processing requiring greater cognitive engagement.

Well under control: Control demand changes are sufficient for metacontrol

Metacontrol arises from the efficient retrieval of cognitive control by environmental cues that are predictive of the upcoming control demands. Previous studies have demonstrated that proactive and reactive metacontrol can be indexed by a list-wide switch probability (LWSP) and an item-specific switch probability (ISSP) effect, respectively. However, what triggers metacontrol in the first place has not been clearly articulated. While a "mere-experience" hypothesis attributes metacontrol to changes in control demands, an "affective-signaling" hypothesis suggests that high control demands are aversive and aversiveness drives metacontrol. In two experiments, we adjudicated between these hypotheses by considering the modes of metacontrol (proactive vs. reactive) and temporal dynamics of background valence (sustained vs. transient and positive vs. negative). We induced metacontrol (proactive or reactive) in a task-switching paradigm and created background valence by using positive and negative images as stimuli. With valence being an irrelevant aspect of the task, the design allows us to test whether (task-irrelevant) background valence would modulate metacontrol. While we were able to replicate the LWSP effect in Experiment 1 and the ISSP effect in Experiment 2, we did not find valence modulating either effect, regardless of the background valence being a sustained (Experiment 1) or a transient one (Experiment 2). These findings together suggest that negative valence (i.e., aversiveness) does not necessarily benefit metacontrol, and control demand variations are sufficient to induce metacontrol.

"Katerina gets mad": Infants' physiological and behavioral responses to co-viewing educational, self-regulatory media

A growing body of research has focused on the physiological impact of media on older children and adolescents. Less research has been focused on the potential physiological impact of media on infants and younger children, especially media designed to be age appropriate and educational in content. In this study, we examined respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in infants (N = 269, M_age  = 17.13 months) while they co-viewed an educational video clip that modeled emotion regulation and contrasted their physiological response to an unoccupied baseline and a frustration paradigm (arm-restraint). Given parent reports showing the calming effect of educational media viewing in young children, we anticipated that a similar pattern of calming would be observed physiologically in infants. Results showed that relative to baseline, most infants demonstrated an increase in RSA while co-viewing, suggesting greater parasympathetic (regulatory) activation consistent with behavioral calming. However, infants who demonstrated vagal withdrawal during co-viewing (decrease in RSA) were more likely to have parents who used a tablet to help infants go to sleep at night. Vagal withdrawal was also associated with increased levels of negative affect observed during the co-viewing task. Findings are discussed in relation to the contextual effect of co-viewing age-appropriate, educational media on children's physiological responses.

Altered psychobiological reactivity but no impairment of emotion recognition following stress in adolescents with non-suicidal self-injury

Impairments in both stress regulation and emotion recognition have been associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Although it has been proposed that emotion recognition deficits particularly emerge during stress, this hypothesis has not been fully investigated. Adolescents with and without NSSI performed emotion recognition tasks before and after the employment of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). The psychobiological stress response was captured with psychological self-reports (affect, stress and dissociation), physiological recordings (heart rate, HR, and heart rate variability, HRV) and endocrinological sampling of saliva (cortisol and alpha-amylase). Mixed-linear models were applied to analyze stress-induced changes in emotion recognition performance and respective stress response measures. The TSST elicited altered psychobiological stress responses in adolescents with NSSI: A more pronounced decrease in positive affect, a more pronounced increase in negative affect, a less pronounced increase in HR, a less pronounced decrease in HRV and a more pronounced increase in alpha-amylase throughout the stress induction than adolescents without NSSI. Stress responses (dissociation, negative affect, cortisol and HR) differed as a function of BPD severity on a continuum, illustrating greater reactivity on self-reports but decreased biological responsiveness in those with greater BPD severity. Stress induction had similar effects on emotion recognition in adolescents with and without NSSI. Recognition sensitivity and recognition speed equally increased, in the absence of any differences in recognition accuracy. In contrast to prominent propositions, psychosocial stress does not appear to account for impaired emotion recognition across the BPD spectrum.

Anxiety Status of Female Chinese Ph.D. Candidates and Its Association with Sports

Given that stress leads to more anxiety among female Ph.D. candidates, more attention should be paid to their healthy lifestyle options. Several studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between sports and anxiety. This study took female Chinese Ph.D. candidates’ anxiety and sports participation as the research objects. A questionnaire entitled “Investigation on anxiety and sports of Ph.D. candidates” was used to explore the characteristics of anxiety in female Chinese Ph.D. candidates and to investigate the association between anxiety and sports in female Chinese Ph.D. candidates. A total of 588 Ph.D. candidates participated in the questionnaire survey. Some 21 invalid questionnaires were eliminated through the standard deviation of the items of the scale, and 567 valid questionnaires were finally obtained. The questionnaire survey was conducted online from 26 February to 15 March 2022, using the convenience sampling method. The results show that the anxiety level of female Chinese Ph.D. candidates is higher than that of male Ph.D. candidates and that the anxiety level of female Ph.D. candidates in a non-sports discipline is the highest. Weekly sports participation significantly lowers female Ph.D. candidates’ anxiety level (p < 0.01). Physical fatigue caused by study and work hinders female Ph.D. candidates from participating in sports (p < 0.05). Some female Chinese Ph.D. candidates in a negative emotional state are unwilling to participate in sports (p < 0.01). Future research should formulate different types of sports intervention programs suitable for alleviating the anxiety of female Ph.D. candidates.

The Avatar's Gist: How to Transfer Affective Components From Dynamic Walking to Static Body Postures

Dynamic virtual representations of the human being can communicate a broad range of affective states through body movements, thus effectively studying emotion perception. However, the possibility of modeling static body postures preserving affective information is still fundamental in a broad spectrum of experimental settings exploring time-locked cognitive processes. We propose a novel automatic method for creating virtual affective body postures starting from kinematics data. Exploiting body features related to postural cues and movement velocity, we transferred the affective components from dynamic walking to static body postures of male and female virtual avatars. Results of two online experiments showed that participants coherently judged different valence and arousal levels in the avatar's body posture, highlighting the reliability of the proposed methodology. In addition, esthetic and postural cues made women more emotionally expressive than men. Overall, we provided a valid methodology to create affective body postures of virtual avatars, which can be used within different virtual scenarios to understand better the way we perceive the affective state of others.

Individual differences in pupil dilation to others' emotional and neutral eyes with varying pupil sizes

Sensitivity to others' emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers' pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential outcomes. In the current study, adults' (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals.

Autonomic Nervous System Activity During Positive Emotions: A Meta-Analytic Review

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles (686 effect sizes, total N = 6,546), measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate.

Where is emotional feeling felt in the body? An integrative review

Contemporary research on "embodied emotion" emphasizes the role of the body in emotional feeling. The evidence base on interoception, arguably the most prominent strand of embodied emotion research, places emphasis on the cardiac, respiratory and gastrointestinal systems. In turn, interoception has evidence-based links with improved emotion regulation. Despite the focus on separate bodily systems, it is unclear whether particular interoceptive locations play a greater role in emotional feeling and emotion regulation. Further, according to Gross' "process model", the sooner that regulation of an emotion occurs, the better; hence, it is additionally important to identify the first body areas to activate. These issues are investigated in a two-stage integrative review. The first stage was preliminary, giving an overview of the evidence base to highlight the distribution of measured body areas. This indicated that 86% of publications (n = 88) measured cardiac activity, 26% measured the respiratory system, and six percent the gastrointestinal system. Given the emphasis placed on all three systems in interoception theory and research on emotion, this suggests a dearth of comprehensive findings pertaining to feeling locations. The second stage investigated the core issues of where emotional feelings are felt in the body and time-related implications for regulation. This was based on ten texts, which together suggested that the head, throat and chest are the most consistently detected locations across and within numerous emotional contexts. Caution is required, however, since-among other reasons discussed-measurement was not time-restricted in these latter publications, and direct physiological measurement was found in only a minority of cases.

The effects of written catharsis on anger relief

Previous studies have found that "general catharsis", such as hitting sandbags, does not reduce but increases an individual's anger feeling and aggressive behavior. Although the "goal catharsis" that is directed at attacking targets can temporarily relieve anger, there is a risk of increasing the tendency of aggressive personality if it is used for a long time. These findings raise serious doubts and challenges to the traditional view that "anger must be released" held by the classic catharsis theory that many people still trust. The present study compared the effects of "general catharsis" and "goal catharsis" on anger-related responses among Chinese people, and the Chinese written form of catharsis was used in this study. The results showed that after participants were provoked, the aggressive behavior of participants who wrote down their dissatisfaction (general catharsis condition) was significantly higher than that of participants who wrote to attack someone who irritated them (goal catharsis condition) as well as that of participants who completed a simple recall task (control condition), and there was no significant difference in the aggressive behavior level between the latter two cases. These results suggest that the catharsis effect is no better than a simple recall task similar to attention distraction, that is, aggressive catharsis is not an effective way for anger relief.

NeuroDante: Poetry Mentally Engages More Experts but Moves More Non-Experts, and for Both the Cerebral Approach Tendency Goes Hand in Hand with the Cerebral Effort

Neuroaesthetics, the science studying the biological underpinnings of aesthetic experience, recently extended its area of investigation to literary art; this was the humus where neurocognitive poetics blossomed. Divina Commedia represents one of the most important, famous and studied poems worldwide. Poetry stimuli are characterized by elements (meter and rhyme) promoting the processing fluency, a core aspect of neuroaesthetics theories. In addition, given the evidence of different neurophysiological reactions between experts and non-experts in response to artistic stimuli, the aim of the present study was to investigate, in poetry, a different neurophysiological cognitive and emotional reaction between Literature (L) and Non-Literature (NL) students. A further aim was to investigate whether neurophysiological underpinnings would support explanation of behavioral data. Investigation methods employed: self-report assessments (recognition, appreciation, content recall) and neurophysiological indexes (approach/withdrawal (AW), cerebral effort (CE) and galvanic skin response (GSR)). The main behavioral results, according to fluency theories in aesthetics, suggested in the NL but not in the L group that the appreciation/liking went hand by hand with the self-declared recognition and with the content recall. The main neurophysiological results were: (i) higher galvanic skin response in NL, whilst higher CE values in L; (ii) a positive correlation between AW and CE indexes in both groups. The present results extended previous evidence relative to figurative art also to auditory poetry stimuli, suggesting an emotional attenuation “expertise-specific” showed by experts, but increased cognitive processing in response to the stimuli.

Re-Living Suspense: Emotional and Cognitive Responses During Repeated Exposure to Suspenseful Film

Arguments about the effects of repeated exposure to a suspenseful narrative raise controversial disputes over the paradox of suspense. The lexical meaning and the theoretical analyses of suspense imply that suspense cannot be experienced repeatedly because, in such cases, the knowledge from prior viewings and the resolution of outcome will eliminate tension and suspense. However, previous studies have argued that suspense can be re-experienced even when the participants know the outcome or repeatedly confront a suspenseful narrative. This study investigated the effects of repeated exposure to a suspenseful film by collecting self-reported questionnaires and measuring psychophysiological responses. The participants (N = 50) watched clips of a suspenseful film three times and answered self-reported items regarding suspense, arousal, and enjoyment. Psychophysiological data, including skin conductance level (SCL) and electrocardiogram (ECG), were collected while the participants watched the video clips. It was hypothesized that self-reported suspense, arousal, and enjoyment as well as the physiological indices of arousal (SCL) and attention (ECG) would decrease upon repeated viewing of suspenseful clips. Furthermore, it was postulated that there would be inter-group differences depending on the awareness of potential or definite change in outcome at the end of repeatedly shown suspenseful events. The results showed that self-reported suspense and arousal, as well as the physiological measures of SCL, declined with repeated exposure, although there were no significant differences on self-reported enjoyment. No group difference was found in self-reported items, but meaningful significant changes were observed in the group comparison of SCL and ECG. The findings suggest that repeated exposure to suspenseful films could result in affective habituation or desensitization to repeated stimuli. The implications and the limitations of the current study and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Emotion Elicitation Under Audiovisual Stimuli Reception: Should Artificial Intelligence Consider the Gender Perspective?

Identification of emotions triggered by different sourced stimuli can be applied to automatic systems that help, relieve or protect vulnerable groups of population. The selection of the best stimuli allows to train these artificial intelligence-based systems in a more efficient and precise manner in order to discern different risky situations, characterized either by panic or fear emotions, in a clear and accurate way. The presented research study has produced a dataset of audiovisual stimuli (UC3M4Safety database) that triggers a complete range of emotions, with a high level of agreement and with a discrete emotional categorization, as well as quantitative categorization in the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance Affective space. This database is adequate for the machine learning algorithms contained in these automatic systems. Furthermore, this work analyses the effects of gender in the emotion elicitation under audiovisual stimuli, which can help to better design the final solution. Particularly, the focus is set on emotional responses to audiovisual stimuli reproducing situations experienced by women, such as gender-based violence. A statistical study of gender differences in emotional response was carried out on 1332 participants (811 women and 521 men). The average responses per video is around 84 (SD = 22). Data analysis was carried out with RStudio^®.

Effects of joy and sorrow on pulse-graph parameters in healthy female college students based on emotion-evoked experiments

OBJECTIVE

To explore the effects of joy and sorrow on pulse-graph parameters in healthy subjects and analyze their potential effect to provide preliminary evidence that pulse diagnosis can identify human emotional changes.

DESIGN AND INTERVENTION

Forty healthy female college students from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine were recruited. The emotion-evoking experiment was conducted to observe the effects of joy and sorrow on pulse-graph parameters, taking neutral emotion as a control. The experiment included the following criteria. (1) Emotions evoked and evaluated: the same subjects watched three emotional videos which were, respectively, neutral, joyful and sorrowful to evoke the corresponding emotions. They completed the "subjective emotion evaluation form" (SEEF) before watching each video (T₀), immediately after watching the video (T₁) and 15 min after watching the video (T₂) to conduct subjective emotion evaluation. Simultaneously, their heart rate, galvanic skin response and heart rate variability were collected with a 16-lead physiological recorder to conduct an objective evaluation of emotional arousal. (2) Collection of pulse-graph parameters: pulse-graph parameters of the subjects at T₀, T₁ and T₂ were collected with a pulse condition analyzer.

RESULTS

When watching the joy video, the rapid ejection phase extended significantly, both the left ventricular diastole and the cardiac cycle shortened significantly. When watching the sorrow video, the left ventricular diastole extended significantly, the cardiac cycle showed an upward trend, and heart rate showed a downward trend.

CONCLUSION

Joy and sorrow have a certain effect on pulse-graph parameters of the subjects. The mechanisms may be that joy contributes to rapid ejection phase extension and a shortening of the left ventricular diastole and the cardiac cycle, while sorrow extends the left ventricular diastole. According to the theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the visceral functions can be mediated through human qi flow. Moderate joy and sorrow can promote, respectively, the smooth qi flow of the heart and the lung. However, excessive or long-term joy and sorrow can lead to disharmonious qi flow of the two viscera. Therefore, maintaining moderate emotions is beneficial to the physiological functions of the viscera. Great emotional fluctuations may damage the visceral functions. Future studies with effects of other emotions on pulse-graph parameters are warranted to determine the reliability of the association of emotions and pulse diagnosis.

The Body-Threat Assessment Battery (BTAB): A new instrument for the quantification of threat-related autonomic affective responses induced via dynamic movie clips

We present a new instrument for the assessment of responses to threat-related imagery directed towards a human body - the Body-Threat Assessment Battery (BTAB). The BTAB consists of a series of high-definition dynamic clips depicting body-threats and matched non-threat baseline behaviours. For body-threat stimuli a perspective manipulation was included to assess the effects of viewing threats from the point-of-view of the observer (POV) or from an external/exocentric perspective (EXO). Green-screen technology was used so that extraneous background information could be removed and standardised in post-production. Categorical normative data for psychological ratings (valence, arousal and pain), psychophysiological, phasic skin conductance responses (SCRs) and tonic skin conductance levels (SCLs) were obtained for all stimuli. Body-threat stimuli evoked significantly higher psychological ratings of arousal and pain, with more negative ratings of valence, relative to baseline stimuli. In addition, threat stimuli also had an increased efficacy at evoking SCRs, and these were significantly stronger relative to baseline stimuli. There were no effects of perspective on psychophysiological or psychological responses to threat imagery. The findings are discussed in the context of the utility and scope of the BTAB for supporting neurocognitive investigations of aversive imagery and body-threats specifically in the study of embodiment, body-processing and self-consciousness.

E-MOVIE - Experimental MOVies for Induction of Emotions in neuroscience: An innovative film database with normative data and sex differences

The need for a validated set of emotional clips to elicit emotions in more ecological experiments is increasing. Here we present the validation of a new database of emotional films, named E-MOVIE, which includes, in this first validation phase, 39 excerpts arranged in six categories, three negative (Fear, Sadness and Compassion), two positive (Erotic and Scenery) and a Neutral category. Notably, Compassion and Scenery are new in the field as they were not included in other databases. The clips in E-MOVIE are characterized by homogenous durations of approximately two minutes, which make them suitable for psychophysiological research. In order to study the affective profile prompted by each category 174 participants (112 women) rated the movies on multiple dimensions, namely valence and arousal, intensity and discreteness of the induction of one of the six basic emotions and, finally, intensity of the experience of the emotional states defined by a series of emotional adjectives. Erotic clips were effective in the elicitation of a positive emotional state, characterized by high levels of arousal and excitement. On the other hand, Fear clips (selected without blood to avoid disgust reaction) prompted an affect characterized by high arousal, low valence and high levels of reported fear and anxiety. Women reported greater unpleasantness, distress, anxiety and jittery than men to the three negative categories. Compassion clips, characterized by the depiction of crying characters, were able to induce an affective state dominated by sadness and feeling touched, consistent with an empathic reaction to emotional sufferance. Sadness clips, instead, elicited an affective state characterized by sadness together with distress and angst. We also demonstrated that clips depicting natural environments (i.e. Scenery) prompted in the viewer a surprised, inspired affective state, characterized by high valence and arousal (especially in males), a result which suggests that their past categorization as neutral stimuli was inaccurate and problematic.

Reward sensitivity and electrodermal responses to actions and outcomes in a go/no-go task

Skin conductance response (SCR) is used in psychophysiological research to measure the reactions of the autonomic nervous system to reward and punishment. While there is consistent evidence that SCR increases to both aversive and appetitive stimuli, it remains unclear whether SCR simply represents a general index of arousal to motivationally significant outcomes or may also differentiate action or inhibition of action that lead to such outcomes. Furthermore, individual differences in trait sensitivity to reward and punishment can influence physiological arousal during approach and avoidance behaviors. Yet, their inter-relationships have not been examined. To address these gaps, we employed a reward go/no-go task with ⅔ go and ⅓ no-go trials and an individually titrated go response window. Correct go and no-go responses were rewarded while incorrect responses were penalized. We examined whether SCR varied with outcome (win vs. loss), action (go vs. no-go), and individual differences in reward sensitivity (SR) and sex. The results showed greater SCRs to loss vs. win, to go vs. no-go success, and to go success in positive correlation with SR. Further, SCR mediated the relationship between SR and go success rate. In sex differences, men exhibited greater SCR which was more predictive of go success rate relative to women. In contrast, SCR was more predictive of no-go success rate in women. Thus, SCR varies according to behavioral contingency, outcome, sex, and reward sensitivity. These findings add to the literature by characterizing the individual and behavioral factors that may influence physiological arousal in response to salient events.

Dynamics and diversity of heart rate responses to a disaster motion picture

Emotions are dynamic neuropsychophysiological processes that guide behavior and serve as crucial signals during social interactions. Measuring their highly individual temporal dynamics is an unresolved challenge, but the coupling of autonomic and central nervous processes offers a promising approach. We present a feasible approach to study changes in heart rate during emotions and demonstrate a link to empathy. We investigated the interindividual similarity and temporal dynamics of heart rate responses to an emotive motion picture. Forty healthy participants watched "The Impossible" (109 min; Hermida Muñiz et al., 2012) while their heart rate was recorded. Interindividual concordance of heart rate responses was analysed using agglomerative hierarchical clustering analyses to distinguish response patterns throughout the movie and during six highly emotive scenes. This revealed multiple response patterns during emotive scenes. Second, we analysed how changes in heart rate are linked to self-reported empathy. We found that the extent of changes in heart rate is positively linked to trait and state empathy. During specific scenes, this relationship was only visible when individuals with homogeneous heart rate response patterns were observed, but not across discordant response patterns. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that heart rate responses to complex social stimuli are not uniform. Therefore, research should favour statistical procedures with the potential to detect interindividual differences. The approach presented in our study allows us to depict interindividual similarity and diversity in emotional autonomic responses and emphasizes the key role of empathy in emotional experiences.

Neural Correlates of Preference: A Transmodal Validation Study

Liking is one of the most important psychological processes associated with the reward system, being involved in affective processing and pleasure/displeasure encoding. Currently, there is no consensus regarding the combination of physiological indicators which best predict liking, especially when applied to dynamic stimuli such as videos. There is a lack of a standard methodology to assess likeability over time and therefore in assessing narrative and semantic aspects of the stimulus. We developed a time-dependent method to evaluate the physiological correlates of likeability for three different thematic categories, namely: adventure (AV), comedy (CM), and nature landscape (LS). Twenty-eight healthy adults with ages ranging from 18 to 35 years (average: 23.85 years) were enrolled in the study. The participants were asked to provide likeability ratings for videos as they watched them, using a response box. Three 60-s videos were presented, one for each category, in randomized order while the participant’s physiological data [electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG) and eye tracking (ET)] was recorded. The comedy video (CM) presented the smallest minimum accumulated normalized rating (ANR; p = 0.013) and the LS video presented the highest maximum ANR (p = 0.039). The LS video presented the longest time for first response (p < 0.001) and the AV video presented the shortest time for maximum response (p = 0.016). The LS video had the highest mean likeability rating with 1.43 ± 2.31 points; and the CM video had the lowest with 0.57 ± 1.77. Multiple linear regression models were created to predict the likeability of each video using the following physiological indicators; AV: power in beta band at C4 and P4 (p = 0.004, adj. R² = 0.301); CM: alpha power in Fp2 (p = 0.001, adj. R² = 0.326) and LS: alpha power in P4, F8, and Fp2; beta power in C4 and P4 and pupil size, (p = 0.002, adj. R² = 0.489). Despite its limitations (e.g., using one 1-min video per category) our findings suggest that there is a considerable difference in the psychophysiological correlates of stimuli with different contextual properties and that the use of time-dependent methods to assess videos should be considered as best practices.

The Late Positive Potentials Evoked by Cigarette-Related and Emotional Images Show no Gender Differences in Smokers

When trying to quit, women are less likely than men to achieve long-term smoking abstinence. Identifying the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying women's higher relapse vulnerability will help clinicians to develop effective tailored smoking cessation interventions. Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs), a direct measure of brain activity, to evaluate the extent to which neurophysiological responses to cigarette-related and other emotional stimuli differ between female and male smokers. Both women and men showed similar patterns of brain reactivity across all picture categories; pleasant and unpleasant images prompted larger Late Positive Potentials (LPPs, a robust measure of motivational relevance) than neutral images in both groups, and cigarette-related images prompted lower LPPs than high arousing emotional images in both groups. Unlike previous studies, there were no differences between male and female smokers with regard to LPP responses to cigarette-related images. This suggests that the LPP may not be ideally suited to discriminate neurophysiological gender differences or that there are simply no gender differences in the neurophysiological responses to cigarette-related stimuli. We collected ERPs from 222 non-nicotine-deprived smokers (101 women) while they watched a slideshow that included high and low emotionally arousing pleasant and unpleasant pictures, cigarette-related, and neutral pictures. We used the mean amplitude of the LPP to assess the affective significance that participants attributed to these pictures.

Psychophysiological Indicators for Modeling User Experience in Interactive Digital Entertainment

Analyses of user experience in the electronic entertainment industry currently rely on self-reporting methods, such as surveys, ratings, focus group interviews, etc. We argue that self-reporting alone carries inherent problems—mainly the misinterpretation and temporal delay during longer experiments—and therefore, should not be used as a sole metric. To tackle this problem, we propose the possibility of modeling consumer experience using psychophysiological measures and demonstrate how such models can be trained using machine learning methods. We use a machine learning approach to model user experience using real-time data produced by the autonomic nervous system and involuntary psychophysiological responses. Multiple psychophysiological measures, such as heart rate, electrodermal activity, and respiratory activity, have been used in combination with self-reporting to prepare training sets for machine learning algorithms. The training data was collected from 31 participants during hour-long experiment sessions, where they played multiple video-games. Afterwards, we trained and compared the results of four different machine learning models, out of which the best one produced ∼96% accuracy. The results suggest that psychophysiological measures can indeed be used to assess the enjoyment of digital entertainment consumers.

Detecting Happiness Using Hyperspectral Imaging Technology

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology can be used to detect human emotions based on the power of material discrimination from their faces. In this paper, HSI is used to remotely sense and distinguish blood chromophores in facial tissues and acquire an evaluation indicator (tissue oxygen saturation, StO₂) using an optical absorption model. This study explored facial analysis while people were showing spontaneous expressions of happiness during social interaction. Happiness, as a psychological emotion, has been shown to be strongly linked to other activities such as physiological reaction and facial expression. Moreover, facial expression as a communicative motor behavior likely arises from musculoskeletal anatomy, neuromuscular activity, and individual personality. This paper quantified the neuromotor movements of tissues surrounding some regions of interest (ROIs) on smiling happily. Next, we selected six regions—the forehead, eye, nose, cheek, mouth, and chin—according to a facial action coding system (FACS). Nineteen segments were subsequently partitioned from the above ROIs. The affective data (StO₂) of 23 young adults were acquired by HSI while the participants expressed emotions (calm or happy), and these were used to compare the significant differences in the variations of StO₂ between the different ROIs through repeated measures analysis of variance. Results demonstrate that happiness causes different distributions in the variations of StO₂ for the above ROIs; these are explained in depth in the article. This study establishes that facial tissue oxygen saturation is a valid and reliable physiological indicator of happiness and merits further research.

Effect of congruence between sound and video on heart rate and self-reported measures of emotion

Most studies of emotional responses have used unimodal stimuli (e.g., pictures or sounds) or congruent bimodal stimuli (e.g., video clips with sound), but little is known about the emotional response to incongruent bimodal stimuli. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of congruence between auditory and visual bimodal stimuli on heart rate and self-reported measures of emotional dimension, valence and arousal. Subjects listened to pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant sounds, accompanied by videos with and without content congruence, and heart rate was recorded. Dimensions of valence and arousal of each bimodal stimulus were then self-reported. The results showed that heart rate depends of the valence of the sounds but not of the congruence of the bimodal stimuli. The valence and arousal scores changed depending on the congruence of the bimodal stimuli. These results suggest that the congruence of bimodal stimuli affects the subjective perception of emotion.

A film set for the elicitation of emotion in research: A comprehensive catalog derived from four decades of investigation

Emotions are highly influential to many psychological processes. Indeed, research employing emotional stimuli is rapidly escalating across the field of psychology. However, challenges remain regarding discrete evocation of frequently co-elicited emotions such as amusement and happiness, or anger and disgust. Further, as much contemporary work in emotion employs college students, we sought to additionally evaluate the efficacy of film clips to discretely elicit these more challenging emotions in a young adult population using an online medium. The internet is an important tool for investigating responses to emotional stimuli, but validations of emotionally evocative film clips across laboratory and web-based settings are limited in the literature. An additional obstacle is identifying stimuli amidst the numerous film clip validation studies. During our investigation, we recognized the lack of a categorical database to facilitate rapid identification of useful film clips for individual researchers' unique investigations. Consequently, here we also sought to produce the first compilation of such stimuli into an accessible and comprehensive catalog. We based our catalog upon prior work as well as our own, and identified 24 articles and 295 film clips from four decades of research. We present information on the validation of these clips in addition to our own research validating six clips using online administration settings. The results of our search in the literature and our own study are presented in tables designed to facilitate and improve a selection of highly valid film stimuli for future research.

Mindfulness Dampens Cardiac Responses to Motion Scenes of Violence

Mindfulness is linked with improved regulatory processes of attention and emotion. The potential benefits of mindfulness are vast, including more positive emotional states and diminished arousal in response to emotional stimuli. This study aims to expand of the current knowledge of the mechanisms of mindfulness by relating the latter to cardiovascular processes. The paper describes two studies which investigated the relationship of trait mindfulness to self-report measures of emotions elicited during a violent video clip and cardiovascular responses to the clip. Both studies recruited male and female participants, mainly university undergraduate students. The clip was 5-min-long and evoked mainly feelings of tension and disgust. In study 1, we found that higher scores for trait mindfulness were associated with increased scores for valence (r = .370, p = .009), indicating a more positive interpretation of the clip. In study 2, the average heart rate during the clip was lower than during the preceding (p < .05) and following (p < .01) non-exposure conditions. Higher trait mindfulness was related to diminished heart rate reactivity (r = −.364, p = .044) and recovery (r = −.415, p = .020). This latter effect was obtained only when trait anxiety was used as a statistical covariate. Additionally, increased trait mindfulness was accompanied by higher resting heart rate (r = .390, p = .027). These outcomes suggest that mindfulness is linked with reductions in negative feelings evoked by violent motion stimuli.

Coverage of Emotion Recognition for Common Wearable Biosensors

The present research proposes a novel emotion recognition framework for the computer prediction of human emotions using common wearable biosensors. Emotional perception promotes specific patterns of biological responses in the human body, and this can be sensed and used to predict emotions using only biomedical measurements. Based on theoretical and empirical psychophysiological research, the foundation of autonomic specificity facilitates the establishment of a strong background for recognising human emotions using machine learning on physiological patterning. However, a systematic way of choosing the physiological data covering the elicited emotional responses for recognising the target emotions is not obvious. The current study demonstrates through experimental measurements the coverage of emotion recognition using common off-the-shelf wearable biosensors based on the synchronisation between audiovisual stimuli and the corresponding physiological responses. The work forms the basis of validating the hypothesis for emotional state recognition in the literature and presents coverage of the use of common wearable biosensors coupled with a novel preprocessing algorithm to demonstrate the practical prediction of the emotional states of wearers.

Sparse coding reveals greater functional connectivity in female brains during naturalistic emotional experience

Functional neuroimaging is widely used to examine changes in brain function associated with age, gender or neuropsychiatric conditions. FMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) studies employ either laboratory-designed tasks that engage the brain with abstracted and repeated stimuli, or resting state paradigms with little behavioral constraint. Recently, novel neuroimaging paradigms using naturalistic stimuli are gaining increasing attraction, as they offer an ecologically-valid condition to approximate brain function in real life. Wider application of naturalistic paradigms in exploring individual differences in brain function, however, awaits further advances in statistical methods for modeling dynamic and complex dataset. Here, we developed a novel data-driven strategy that employs group sparse representation to assess gender differences in brain responses during naturalistic emotional experience. Comparing to independent component analysis (ICA), sparse coding algorithm considers the intrinsic sparsity of neural coding and thus could be more suitable in modeling dynamic whole-brain fMRI signals. An online dictionary learning and sparse coding algorithm was applied to the aggregated fMRI signals from both groups, which was subsequently factorized into a common time series signal dictionary matrix and the associated weight coefficient matrix. Our results demonstrate that group sparse representation can effectively identify gender differences in functional brain network during natural viewing, with improved sensitivity and reliability over ICA-based method. Group sparse representation hence offers a superior data-driven strategy for examining brain function during naturalistic conditions, with great potential for clinical application in neuropsychiatric disorders.

A New Standardized Emotional Film Database for Asian Culture

Researchers interested in emotions have endeavored to elicit emotional responses in the laboratory and have determined that films were one of the most effective ways to elicit emotions. The present study presented the development of a new standardized emotional film database for Asian culture. There were eight kinds of emotion: fear, disgust, anger, sadness, neutrality, surprise, amusement, and pleasure. Each kind included eight film clips, and a total of 64 emotional films were viewed by 110 participants. We analyzed both the subjective experience (valence, arousal, motivation, and dominance) and physiological response (heart rate and respiration rate) to the presentation of each film. The results of the subjective ratings indicated that our set of 64 films successfully elicited the target emotions. Heart rate declined while watching high-arousal films compared to neutral ones. Films that expressed amusement elicited the lowest respiration rate, whereas fear elicited the highest. The amount and category of emotional films in this database were considerable. This database may help researchers choose applicable emotional films for study according to their own purposes and help in studies of cultural differences in emotion.

Dissociating the physiological components of unconscious emotional responses

Conscious emotional processing is characterized by a coordinated set of responses across multiple physiological systems. Although emotional stimuli can evoke certain physiological responses even when they are suppressed from awareness, it is not known whether unconscious emotional responses comprise a similar constellation or are confined to specific systems. To compare physiological responses to emotional stimuli with and without awareness, we measured a range of responses while participants viewed positive, negative and neutral images that were accompanied by noise bursts to elicit startle reflexes. We measured four responses simultaneously - skin conductance and heart rate changes in response to the images themselves; and startle eye-blink and post-auricular reflexes in response to the noise bursts that occurred during image presentation. For half of the participants, the images were masked from awareness using continuous flash suppression. The aware group showed the expected pattern of response across physiological systems: emotional images (regardless of valence) evoked larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) and greater heart rate deceleration than neutral images, negative images enhanced eye-blink reflexes and positive images enhanced post-auricular reflexes. In contrast, we found a striking dissociation between measures for the unaware group: typical modulation of SCRs and post-auricular reflexes, but no modulation of heart rate deceleration or eye-blink reflexes. Our findings suggest that although some physiological systems respond to emotional stimuli presented outside of awareness, conscious emotional processing may be characterized by a broad and coordinated set of responses across systems.

Cardiac vagal control as a marker of emotion regulation in healthy adults: A review

In the last two decades, a growing body of theory and research has targeted the role of cardiac vagal control (CVC) in emotional responding. This research has either focused on resting CVC (also denoted as cardiac vagal tone) or phasic changes in CVC (also denoted as vagal reactivity) in response to affective stimuli. The present paper is aimed at reporting a review of the papers published between 1996 and 2016, and focused on the results of 135 papers examining cardiac vagal control as a physiological marker of emotion regulation in healthy adults. The review shows that studies have employed a wide array of methodologies and measures, often leading to conflicting results. High resting CVC has been associated with better down-regulation of negative affect, use of adaptive regulatory strategies, and more flexible emotional responding. Concerning phasic changes, research has consistently found decreased CVC in response to stress, while CVC increases have been shown to reflect either self-regulatory efforts or recovery from stress. Despite conflicting results, we conclude that existing literature supports the use of CVC as a noninvasive, objective marker of emotion regulation.

Emotional Empathic Responses to Dynamic Negative Affective Stimuli Is Gender-Dependent

Empathy entails the ability to recognize emotional states in others and feel for them. Since empathy does not take place in a static setting, paradigms utilizing more naturalistic, dynamic stimuli instead of static stimuli are perhaps more suited to grasp the origin of this highly complex social skill. The study was set up to test the effect of stimulus dynamics and gender on empathic responses. Participants were 80 healthy volunteers (N = 40 males) aged 22.5 years on average. Behavioral empathy was tested with the multifaceted empathy test, including static emotional stimuli, and the multidimensional movie empathy test (MMET), including dynamic stimuli. Findings showed emotional empathy (EE) responses were higher to negative emotional stimuli in both tasks, i.e., using static as well as dynamic stimuli. Interestingly a gender-dependent response was only seen in the MMET using dynamic stimuli. It was shown that females felt more aroused and were more concerned with people in negative affective states. It was concluded that the MMET is suited to study gender differences in EE.

Psychophysiological Reactivity in Couples During a Marital Interaction Task

The ability to regulate our own physiological arousal when dealing with the emotional expression of our partner is crucial for satisfactory and stable intimate relationships. In previous physiological studies of marital interactions, researchers have found greater levels of psychophysiological arousal for members of the couple in conflictual interactions in comparison with positive interactions. Past researchers have established that intense and prolonged autonomic and neuroendocrine arousal during marital conflict can have negative consequences for mental and physical health. In this study we examined the physiological reactivity, as measured by skin conductance level, heart rate and cortisol levels, from both partners during a couple's interaction task consisting of a structured conversation about positive and negative aspects of their relationship. Participants were thirty-two heterosexual couples (N = 64) in a committed monogamous relationship with a minimum duration of one year. We found higher heart rate and cortisol levels during negative interaction condition when compared with the positive condition. Skin conductance was higher in the positive interaction condition, when compared with the negative interaction condition. In addition, we found a significant negative association between heart rate variability and autonomic arousal evoked by the interaction task. The implications of these findings for the effects of marital strain on health as well as for the design of risk-reducing interventions, namely biofeedback are discussed.

Psychological and Biological Validation of a Novel Digital Social Peer Evaluation Experiment (digi-SPEE)

INTRODUCTION

Negative social evaluation is associated with psychopathology. Given the frequency of evaluation through increasingly prevalent virtual social networks, increased understanding of the effects of this social evaluation is urgently required.

METHODS

A new digital social peer evaluation experiment (digi-SPEE) was developed to mimic everyday online social interactions between peers. Participants received mildly negative feedback on their appearance, intelligence, and congeniality. Two hundred and forty-one young people [58.9% female, aged 18.9 years (15 to 34)] from an ongoing novel general population twin study participated in this study. Positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), implicit self-esteem, and cortisol were assessed before and after exposure to the social evaluation experiment.

RESULTS

The social evaluation experiment decreased PA (B=-5.25, p<.001) and implicit self-esteem (B=-.19; p<.001), whereas it increased NA (B=5.99; p<.001) and cortisol levels (B=.07; p<.001). Females (PA: B=-7.62; p<.001; NA: B=8.28; p<.001) and participants with higher levels of general psychological distress (PA: B=-.04, p=.035; NA: B=.06; p=.028) showed stronger affective responses. Stressor-induced cortisol increase was stronger in adolescents under the age of 18 than in participants 18 years and older (B=-.06, p=.002).

CONCLUSION

The digi-SPEE represents a social evaluation stressor that elicits biological and implicit and explicit mental changes that are relevant to mechanisms of psychopathology.

As Far as the Eye Can See: Relationship between Psychopathic Traits and Pupil Response to Affective Stimuli

Psychopathic individuals show a range of affective processing deficits, typically associated with the interpersonal/affective component of psychopathy. However, previous research has been inconsistent as to whether psychopathy, within both offender and community populations, is associated with deficient autonomic responses to the simple presentation of affective stimuli. Changes in pupil diameter occur in response to emotionally arousing stimuli and can be used as an objective indicator of physiological reactivity to emotion. This study used pupillometry to explore whether psychopathic traits within a community sample were associated with hypo-responsivity to the affective content of stimuli. Pupil activity was recorded for 102 adult (52 female) community participants in response to affective (both negative and positive affect) and affectively neutral stimuli, that included images of scenes, static facial expressions, dynamic facial expressions and sound-clips. Psychopathic traits were measured using the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure. Pupil diameter was larger in response to negative stimuli, but comparable pupil size was demonstrated across pleasant and neutral stimuli. A linear relationship between subjective arousal and pupil diameter was found in response to sound-clips, but was not evident in response to scenes. Contrary to predictions, psychopathy was unrelated to emotional modulation of pupil diameter across all stimuli. The findings were the same when participant gender was considered. This suggests that psychopathy within a community sample is not associated with autonomic hypo-responsivity to affective stimuli, and this effect is discussed in relation to later defensive/appetitive mobilisation deficits.