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Getting to know you: effects of positive emotions on naturalistic conversation and social coordination

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The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion suggests that positive emotions should broaden thought and behavior repertoires in order to develop lasting resources. In the social domain, this means deploying a variety of affiliative strategies in order to build cooperative relationships. A functionalist perspective on positive emotion suggests that different positive…

The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion suggests that positive emotions should broaden thought and behavior repertoires in order to develop lasting resources. In the social domain, this means deploying a variety of affiliative strategies in order to build cooperative relationships. A functionalist perspective on positive emotion suggests that different positive emotions should have distinct effects on these affiliative mechanisms. This study elicited awe, amusement, pride or a neutral control in pairs of same sex strangers. They then completed an open-ended "getting to know you" conversation, which were recorded and coded for affiliative behaviors—smiling, laughter, mimicry, and asking questions. After, they rated their perception of the other as complex and how much they liked each other. Then they played the prisoner's dilemma game. Results indicate that there was a significant mediated effect such that being in the pride condition predicted greater smiling, and smiling predicted cooperation on the prisoner's dilemma. This was true both when an individual's own smiling was predicting their cooperative behavior and when their partner's smiling was predicting their cooperative behavior. However, these effects were only seen in female dyads, not male dyads. There was also a significant mediated effect such that pride led women to ask more questions, which led partners to like each other more. Additionally, awe led to greater mimicry in men, which in turn led to greater cooperation. In women, awe led to greater perception of the other as complex. Overall, these results indicate that there are broaden and build effects of positive emotions, but these are specific to both the emotion and the sex of the interaction members. This is also the first study to demonstrate both an actor and a partner effect of smiling on cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma. An important area for further inquiry will be the interaction of emotion and sex in predicting social behavior. While sex differences in responding to threats have been characterized by the “tend and befriend” versus “fight or flight” action patterns, a similar approach may also need to be developed for sex differences in response to opportunities.
ContributorsDanvers, Alexander (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Committee member) / Kwan, Virginia S.Y. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
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Feelin' Good...And Then Some: A Functional Evolutionary Approach to Positive Emotions in Sport

Description
Sport is a widespread phenomenon across human cultures and history. Unfortunately, positive emotions in sport have been long vaguely characterized as happy or pleasant, or ignored altogether. Recent emotion research has taken a differentiated approach, however, suggesting there are distinct positive emotions with diverse implications for behavior. The present study…

Sport is a widespread phenomenon across human cultures and history. Unfortunately, positive emotions in sport have been long vaguely characterized as happy or pleasant, or ignored altogether. Recent emotion research has taken a differentiated approach, however, suggesting there are distinct positive emotions with diverse implications for behavior. The present study applied this evolutionarily informed approach in the context of sport to examine which positive emotions are associated with play. It was hypothesized that pride, amusement, and enthusiasm, but not contentment or awe, would increase in Ultimate Frisbee players during a practice scrimmage. Further, it was hypothesized that increases in pride and amusement during practice would be differentially associated with sport outcomes, including performance (scores, assists, and defenses), subjective social connectedness, attributions of success, and attitudes toward the importance of practice. It was found that all positive emotions decreased during practice. It was also found that increases in pride were associated with more scores and greater social connectedness, whereas increases in amusement were associated with more assists. The present study was one of the first to examine change in positive emotions during play and to relate them to specific performance outcomes. Future studies should expand to determine which came first: emotion or performance.
ContributorsKuna, Jacob Anthony (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Danvers, Alexander (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
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Personal Memories and Social Associations: How Positive Emotions Influence the Activation of Implicit Prejudices

Description
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two positive discrete emotions, awe and nurturant love, on implicit prejudices. After completing an emotion induction task, participants completed Implicit Association Test blocks where they paired photos of Arab and White individuals with "good" and "bad" evaluations. We hypothesized…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two positive discrete emotions, awe and nurturant love, on implicit prejudices. After completing an emotion induction task, participants completed Implicit Association Test blocks where they paired photos of Arab and White individuals with "good" and "bad" evaluations. We hypothesized that nurturant love would increase the strength of negative evaluations of Arab individuals and positive evaluations of White individuals, whereas awe would decrease the strength of these negative evaluations when compared to a neutral condition. However, we found that both awe and nurturant love increased negative implicit prejudices toward Arab individuals when compared to the neutral condition.
ContributorsCarrasco, Mia Annette (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / O'Neil, Makenzie (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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Dynamical Analysis of Heart Rate Variability and Personality

Description

A dynamical approach is used to avoid isolating systems and instead view systems as interacting together. The current study applied a dynamical approach to heart rate variability and personality. There were two main research questions that this study sought to answer with a dynamical analysis of heart rate variability and…

A dynamical approach is used to avoid isolating systems and instead view systems as interacting together. The current study applied a dynamical approach to heart rate variability and personality. There were two main research questions that this study sought to answer with a dynamical analysis of heart rate variability and personality: “Can we listen to a heartbeat and draw connections to behavior and personality?” and “Is dynamical analysis more effective than traditional analysis at finding correlations between heart rate variability and personality?” To answer these questions a dynamical analysis of heart rate variability was conducted (detrended fluctuation analysis; DFA) along with traditional analysis (standard deviations of NN intervals, SDNN, and root mean squared of successive deviations, RMSSD) and then correlations between heart rate variability measures and personality traits from the Big Five Inventory, Positive and Negative Affect schedule, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were examined. Data for this study came from the Rapid Automatic & Adaptive Model for Performance Prediction (RAAMP2) Dataset that was part of The Multimodal Objective Sensing to Assess Individuals with Context (MOSAIC) project. There were no statistically significant correlations between heart rate variability and personality. However, there were notable correlations between extraversion and SDNN and RMSSD and between positive affect and SDNN and RMSSD. We found that SDNN and RMSSD were more closely correlated to each other compared to DFA to either measure. This suggests that DFA can provide information that SDNN and RMSSD do not. Future research can explore dynamic analysis of heart rate variability and other nested systems.
ContributorsBrown, Brent (Author) / Amazeen, Polemnia (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Amazeen, Eric (Committee member) / Danvers, Alexander (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2021-12