Emotivational psychology: How distinct emotions facilitate fundamental motives

Bullying victimization and internalizing and externalizing problems in school-aged children: The mediating role of sleep disturbance and the moderating role of parental attachment

BACKGROUND

Studies have shown that bullying victimization may be related to internalizing and externalizing problems; however, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains unknown. This study explored the mediating role of sleep disturbance and the moderating role of parental attachment.

METHODS

A total of 1543 Chinese primary school students (M age = 8.92 years, SD1.7 years; range, 6-12) completed bullying victimization, sleep disturbance, and parental attachment measures, and provided information on their parents' occupations. The parents or guardians (n = 1995) also completed ratings on their children's internalizing and externalizing problems.

RESULTS

It was found that bullying victimization directly affected internalizing and externalizing problems and also influenced sleep disturbance. Regardless of the parent's socioeconomic status, parental attachment was found to moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and internalizing problems.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings contribute to understanding the partial mediating mechanism of sleep disturbance in the association between bullying victimization and internalizing and externalizing problems. The protective role of parental attachment proved central to preventing internalizing problems in bullied children. Intervention programs that enhance parental attachment and improve sleep quality could assist in mitigating the impact of bullying victimization on internalizing or externalizing problems.

What Motives Do People Most Want to Know About When Meeting Another Person? An Investigation Into Prioritization of Information About Seven Fundamental Motives

What information about a person's personality do people want to know? Prior research has focused on behavioral traits, but personality is also characterized in terms of motives. Four studies (N = 1,502) assessed participants' interest in information about seven fundamental social motives (self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate seeking, mate retention, kin care) across 12 experimental conditions that presented details about the person or situation. In the absence of details about specific situations, participants most highly prioritized learning about kin care and mate retention motives. There was some variability across conditions, but the kin care motive was consistently highly prioritized. Additional results from Studies 1 to 4 and Study 5 (N = 174) showed the most highly prioritized motives were perceived to be stable across time and to be especially diagnostic of a person's trustworthiness, warmth, competence, and dependability. Findings are discussed in relation to research on fundamental social motives and pragmatic perspectives on person perception.

Negative Emotion Differentiation Predicts Psychotherapy Outcome: Preliminary Findings

Emotion differentiation (ED), the extent to which same-valenced emotions are experienced as distinct, is considered a valuable ability in various contexts owing to the essential affect-related information it provides. This information can help individuals understand and regulate their emotional and motivational states. In this study, we sought to examine the extent to which ED can be beneficial in psychotherapy context and specifically for predicting treatment response. Thirty-two prospective patients with mood and anxiety disorders completed four daily assessments of negative and positive emotions for 30 days before receiving cognitive-behavioral treatment. Depression, stress, and anxiety symptoms severity were assessed pre- and post-treatment using self-reports and clinical interviews. We conducted a series of hierarchical regression models in which symptoms change scores were predicted by ED while adjusting for the mean and variability. We found that negative ED was associated with greater self-reported treatment response (except for anxiety) when negative emotional variability (EV) was included in the models. Probing negative ED and EV's interactive effects suggested that negative ED was associated with greater treatment response (except for anxiety) for individuals with lower EV levels. Results were obtained while controlling for mean negative affect. Our findings suggest that negative ED can benefit psychotherapy patients whose negative emotions are relatively less variable. We discuss the meaning of suppression and interactive effects between affect dynamics and consider possible clinical implications.

A Systems View of Emotion in Socio-political Context

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

The thermodynamics of cognition: A mathematical treatment

There is a general expectation that the laws of classical physics must apply to biology, particularly the neural system. The evoked cycle represents the brain's energy/information exchange with the physical environment through stimulus. Therefore, the thermodynamics of emotions might elucidate the neurological origin of intellectual evolution, and explain the psychological and health consequences of positive and negative emotional states based on their energy profiles. We utilized the Carnot cycle and Landauer's principle to analyze the energetic consequences of the brain's resting and evoked states during and after various cognitive states. Namely, positive emotional states can be represented by the reversed Carnot cycle, whereas negative emotional reactions trigger the Carnot cycle. The two conditions have contrasting energetic and entropic aftereffects with consequences for mental energy. The mathematics of the Carnot and reversed Carnot cycles, which can explain recent findings in human psychology, might be constructive in the scientific endeavor in turning psychology into hard science.

The Alba Method and the Science of Emotions

The Alba Method, also known as Alba Emoting™, is a way to work with emotions by using specific respiratory, postural, and facial behaviors. The Alba Method is based on psychophysiological research. This article reviews the original research that gave rise to the method. Criticisms and limitations of that research are noted. The article then presents relevant recent theory and research. Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that anger, fear, sadness, joy/laughter, eroticism, and tenderness are distinct emotions and that each includes a specific respiratory, postural, and/or facial pattern. Recent research also shows that somatic feedback can induce anger, fear, sadness, and joy. Of note, there is a lack of studies on the breathing and postural patterns of eroticism. More studies will be needed to solve discrepancies in the description of the breathing patterns of tenderness, laughter, and sadness.

Family Matters: Rethinking the Psychology of Human Social Motivation

What motives do people prioritize in their social lives? Historically, social psychologists, especially those adopting an evolutionary perspective, have devoted a great deal of research attention to sexual attraction and romantic-partner choice (mate seeking). Research on long-term familial bonds (mate retention and kin care) has been less thoroughly connected to relevant comparative and evolutionary work on other species, and in the case of kin care, these bonds have been less well researched. Examining varied sources of data from 27 societies around the world, we found that people generally view familial motives as primary in importance and mate-seeking motives as relatively low in importance. Compared with other groups, college students, single people, and men place relatively higher emphasis on mate seeking, but even those samples rated kin-care motives as more important. Furthermore, motives linked to long-term familial bonds are positively associated with psychological well-being, but mate-seeking motives are associated with anxiety and depression. We address theoretical and empirical reasons why there has been extensive research on mate seeking and why people prioritize goals related to long-term familial bonds over mating goals. Reallocating relatively greater research effort toward long-term familial relationships would likely yield many interesting new findings relevant to everyday people’s highest social priorities.

Does incidental pride increase competency evaluation of others who appear careless? Discrete positive emotions and impression formation

Emotion plays important and diverse roles across various social relations. Although the social functions of emotion have attracted increased attention, the effects of positive emotions such as pride on impression formation remain poorly understood. Drawing on social projection theory, this study examined how incidental experiences of pride influenced the impressions of those who made a blunder, along with two other characteristics: the person’s warmth and competence. Participants were designated randomly to receive inductions of pride, awe, or a neutral emotion. Subsequently, they were asked to indicate their own impression of a person who had made a blunder and to rate their overall sense of that individual’s warmth and competence. A laboratory experiment recruiting university students (Study 1, N = 79) demonstrated that pride, a positive emotion elicited by a self-relevant achievement, led to higher competency evaluations of others. However, a pre-registered online experiment in middle-aged adults (Study 2, N = 108) failed to replicate the effects of pride on competency evaluations of others. Furthermore, another pre-registered online experiment in younger adults (Study 3, N = 290) did not show successful manipulation of incidental emotions. These results suggest that strictly controlled experimental settings that induce robust incidental emotions might be better for demonstrating a strong pride effect on the evaluation of others.

The Parental Care Motivational System and Why It Matters (for Everyone)

Although it is easy to assume that the psychology of parental care pertains only to parents and their children, this is not so. An emerging body of research on the parental care motivational system reveals implications for everyone. All normally developing human beings are characterized by evolved psychological mechanisms that regulate parental caregiving. These mechanisms are responsive to superficial cues and so (among nonparents as well as parents) can be triggered by the perception of young children or other childlike things. Once activated, these mechanisms precipitate protective and nurturant responses. These responses manifest in many different ways, with implications for a wide range of psychological phenomena (many of which might appear, superficially, to be unrelated to caregiving)—including risk-averse attitudes, aggression, intergroup prejudice, moral judgment, impression formation, and mate preferences. This article provides an illustrative overview of empirical research documenting these implications and identifies new directions for future research on the motivational psychology of parental care.