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- Creators: Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics
- Creators: Neuberg, Steven L.
Description
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
Description
Over the past few years, the issue of childhood trauma in the United States has become significant. A growing number of children are experiencing abuse, neglect, or some other form of maltreatment each year. Considering the stressful home lives of maltreated children, the one sure sanctuary is school. However, this idea requires teachers to be actively involved in identifying and caring for the children who need it most. Traumatic childhood experiences leave lasting scars on its victims, so it is helpful if teachers learn how to identify and support children who have lived through them. It is unfortunate that teachers will most likely encounter children throughout their career who have experienced horrendous things, but it is a reality. With this being said, teachers need to develop an understanding of what traumatized children live with, and learn how to address these issues with skilled sensitivity. Schools are not just a place where children learn how to read and write; they build the foundation for a successful life. This project was designed to provide teachers with a necessary resource for helping children who have suffered traumatic experiences. The methodology of this project began with interviews with organizations specializing in working with traumatized children such as Arizonans for Children, Free Arts for Abused Children, The Sojourner Center, and UMOM. The next step was a review of the current literature on the subject of childhood trauma. The findings have all been compiled into one, convenient document for teacher use and distribution. Upon completion of this document, an interactive video presentation will be made available through an online education website, so that distribution will be made simpler. Hopefully, teachers will share the information with people in their networks and create a chain reaction. The goal is to make it available to as many teachers as possible, so that more children will receive the support they need.
ContributorsHanrahan, Katelyn Ann (Author) / Dahlstrom, Margo (Thesis director) / Kelley, Michael (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Climate change presents a significant threat to human health, both mental and physical; as a result, it has become one of the most commonly discussed phenomena of the 21st century. As many people are aware, a wide range of social and physical factors affects mental health. However, many people fail to realize that these increases global temperatures also have a significant impact on mental health as a result of increased vulnerability that is often manifested through one's emotions. By analyzing perceptions of people across the globe, in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Fiji, we were able to pinpoint these emotions and trace them individual's feelings of worry, distress, and hope that resulted from their perceived impacts on climate change. Overall, we found that people tend to have overall more negative emotional reaction when it comes to the perceived effects of climate change. Of the respondents, more men than women expressed concern regarding the various negative implications. Finally, those in the United Kingdom exhibited a stronger emotional response, followed by those in New Zealand and Fiji, respectively.
ContributorsSmith, Austin Lee (Author) / Wutich, Amber (Thesis director) / du Bray, Margaret (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Emotions have been defined as coordinated and functional changes in subjective experience, motivation, physiological activation, instrumental behavior, expressive behavior, and cognition that are evoked by important threats or opportunities in the environment. The proposed study looks at cognitive changes associated with the experience of several positive emotions, with a specific focus on awe. Prior research shows that positive emotions tend to increase people's use of cognitive heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts used to simplify information we intake from the environment) and changes how they apply rules of thumb from stored knowledge to make decisions. Stereotypes, or assumptions about the characteristics held by individual members of a group, are one such heuristic. Awe, in contrast to other positive emotions, has been found to reduce people's tendency to rely on heuristics, rather than increasing its use. Thus, awe should tend to reduce stereotyping specifically. Participants made judgments on three characteristics and two types of theoretically valuable true/false statements. However, for both our measures, awe had no significant effect on stereotyping. Participants in the enthusiasm condition were significantly more likely than those in the awe condition to correctly identify stereotype-inconsistent statements present in the biography, which is the opposite of the predicted direction. Patterns for all four emotion conditions trended similarly to our predictions for stereotype-consistent statements correctly marked as being absent in the biography. There were no significant differences in ratings of three traits. Implications for enthusiasm and awe are discussed in the context of stereotypes of social objects and schemas of nonsocial objects.
ContributorsMurwin, Paige Elizabeth (Co-author) / O'Neil, Makenzie (Co-author) / Shiota, Michelle (Thesis director) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Psychological theories often reduce descriptions of people’s emotional experiences to a small number of underlying dimensions that capture most of the variation in their responses. These underlying dimensions are typically uncovered by comparing the self-reported emotions of many individuals at one specific time point, to infer a single underlying structure of emotion for all people. However, theoretical work suggests that underlying dimensions uncovered in this way may not hold when modeling how people change over time. Individuals may differ not just in their typical score on a given dimension of emotion, but in what dimensions best characterize their patterns of emotional experience over time. In this study, participants described two emotional events per day for 35 days, and analyses compared individualized structures of emotion to those generated from many people at one point in time. Analyses using R-technique factor analysis, which compares many people at one time point, most often uncovered a two-factor solution corresponding to positivity and negativity dimensions - a solution well-established in the literature. However, analyses using P-technique factor analysis, which compares many emotional events for one person, uncovered a broader diversity of underlying dimensions. Individuals needed anywhere from one to five factors to best capture their self-reported emotions. Further, dimensions specifically related to romantic relationships were much more common when examining the experiences of individuals over time. This suggests that external factors, such as pursuing or being in a romantic relationship, might lead to a qualitative shift in how emotions are experienced. Research attempting to characterize emotion dynamics, including those attempting to help people shift or regulate their emotions, cannot assume that typical two dimensional structures of emotional experience apply to all people. Instead we must account for how individuals describe their own emotional experiences.
ContributorsDanvers, Alexander F (Author) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Committee member) / Amazeen, Polemnia G (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Previous research demonstrated the overall efficacy of an embodied language intervention (EMBRACE) that taught pre-school children how to simulate (imagine) language in a heard narrative. However, EMBRACE was not effective for every child. To try to explain this variable response to the intervention, the video recordings made during the four-day intervention sessions were assessed and emotion was coded. Each session was emotion-coded for child emotions and for child-researcher emotions. The child specific emotions were 1) engagement in the task, this included level of participation in the activity, 2) motivation/attention to persist and complete the task, as well as stay focused, and 3) positive affect throughout the session. The child-researcher specific emotions were 1) engagement with each other, this involved how the child interacted with the researcher and under what context, and 2) researcher’s positive affect, this incorporated how enthusiastic and encouraging the researcher was throughout the session. It was hypothesized that effectiveness of the intervention would be directly correlated with the degree that the child displayed positive emotions during the intervention. Thus, the analysis of these emotions should highlight differences between the control and EMBRACE group and help to explain variability in effectiveness of the intervention. The results did indicate that children in the EMBRACE group generally had a significantly higher positive affect compared to the control group, but these results did not influence the ability for the child to effectively recall or moderate the EEG variables in the post-test. The results also showed that children who interacted with the researcher more tended to be in the EMBRACE group, whereas children who did not interact with the researcher more frequently were in the control group, showing that the EMBRACE intervention ended up being a more collaborative task.
ContributorsOtt, Lauren Ruth (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05