Affective Arousal Research Articles

The Primary Process as a Transitional Concept: New Perspectives from Cognitive Psychology and Affective Neuroscience

ABSTRACTThe initial defining framework of the primary process based on flow of psychic energy has been largely rejected by contemporary psychoanalytic theorists, but the concept remains in use clinically, particularly in application to the flow of associations and the interpretation of dreams. Some researchers have attempted to characterize primary process thought in terms of contents and formal properties of thought without reference to the energy framework, but this approach fails to account for the role of emotional intensity in mental life. The integration of affective arousal with particular properties of thought that is central to the primary process concept can be understood today in the context of current research in cognitive psychology, emotion theory, and neuroscience. The version of multiple code theory outlined here provides a framework for the involvement of affect in productive and complex mental operations in areas from sports and the arts to scientific discovery, as well as therapy, and also provides a basis for empirical research.

Psychological and Psychophysiological Effects of Recuperative Music Postexercise.

Few studies have examined the psychological and psychophysiological effects of recuperative music after exhaustive exercise. The main purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of two music conditions compared with a no-music control on psychological and psychophysiological recovery processes after exercise. A randomized, fully counterbalanced, crossover design was used. Core affect, salivary cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure were measured before exhaustive exercise, immediately after, and in 10-, 20-, and 30-min intervals during passive recovery (21 women and 21 men; 20.9 ± 1.7 yr) over three separate trials (slow, sedative music; fast, stimulative music; no-music control). The exercise task entailed incremental cycle ergometry performed at 75 rpm with an increase in intensity of 22.5 W·min at the end of each minute until exhaustion. Data were analyzed using mixed-model 3 (condition) × 4 (time) × 2 (gender) MANOVA/ANCOVA. The largest decline in affective arousal between active and passive recovery phases was evident in the slow, sedative condition (ηp = 0.50). Women had a more pronounced reduction in arousal than did men in the slow, sedative music condition. Heart rate measures showed that fast, stimulative music inhibited the return of heart rate toward resting levels (ηp = 0.06). Similarly, salivary cortisol levels tended to be lower in response to slow, sedative music (ηp = 0.11). There was a main effect of condition for affective valence indicating that the slow, sedative condition elicited more positive affective responses compared with the control and fast, stimulative conditions (ηp = 0.12). The present findings support the notion that slow, sedative music can expedite the recovery process immediately after strenuous exercise.

Music Communicates Affects, Not Basic Emotions - A Constructionist Account of Attribution of Emotional Meanings to Music.

Basic Emotion theory has had a tremendous influence on the affective sciences, including music psychology, where most researchers have assumed that music expressivity is constrained to a limited set of basic emotions. Several scholars suggested that these constrains to musical expressivity are explained by the existence of a shared acoustic code to the expression of emotions in music and speech prosody. In this article we advocate for a shift from this focus on basic emotions to a constructionist account. This approach proposes that the phenomenon of perception of emotions in music arises from the interaction of music’s ability to express core affects and the influence of top-down and contextual information in the listener’s mind. We start by reviewing the problems with the concept of Basic Emotions, and the inconsistent evidence that supports it. We also demonstrate how decades of developmental and cross-cultural research on music and emotional speech have failed to produce convincing findings to conclude that music expressivity is built upon a set of biologically pre-determined basic emotions. We then examine the cue-emotion consistencies between music and speech, and show how they support a parsimonious explanation, where musical expressivity is grounded on two dimensions of core affect (arousal and valence). Next, we explain how the fact that listeners reliably identify basic emotions in music does not arise from the existence of categorical boundaries in the stimuli, but from processes that facilitate categorical perception, such as using stereotyped stimuli and close-ended response formats, psychological processes of construction of mental prototypes, and contextual information. Finally, we outline our proposal of a constructionist account of perception of emotions in music, and spell out the ways in which this approach is able to make solve past conflicting findings. We conclude by providing explicit pointers about the methodological choices that will be vital to move beyond the popular Basic Emotion paradigm and start untangling the emergence of emotional experiences with music in the actual contexts in which they occur.

The Socio-Moral Image Database (SMID): A novel stimulus set for the study of social, moral and affective processes.

A major obstacle for the design of rigorous, reproducible studies in moral psychology is the lack of suitable stimulus sets. Here, we present the Socio-Moral Image Database (SMID), the largest standardized moral stimulus set assembled to date, containing 2,941 freely available photographic images, representing a wide range of morally (and affectively) positive, negative and neutral content. The SMID was validated with over 820,525 individual judgments from 2,716 participants, with normative ratings currently available for all images on affective valence and arousal, moral wrongness, and relevance to each of the five moral values posited by Moral Foundations Theory. We present a thorough analysis of the SMID regarding (1) inter-rater consensus, (2) rating precision, and (3) breadth and variability of moral content. Additionally, we provide recommendations for use aimed at efficient study design and reproducibility, and outline planned extensions to the database. We anticipate that the SMID will serve as a useful resource for psychological, neuroscientific and computational (e.g., natural language processing or computer vision) investigations of social, moral and affective processes. The SMID images, along with associated normative data and additional resources are available at https://osf.io/2rqad/.

The relationships between exercise and affective states: a naturalistic, longitudinal study of recreational runners.

BackgroundAlthough people generally feel more positive and more energetic in the aftermath of exercise than before, longitudinal research on how exercise relates to within-person fluctuations in affect over the course of everyday life is still relatively limited. One constraint on doing such research is the need to provide participants with accelerometers to objectively record their exercise, and pagers to capture affective reports.AimsWe aimed to develop a methodology for studying affect and exercise using only technology that participants already possess, namely GPS running watches and smartphones. Using this methodology, we aimed to characterize within-individual fluctuations in affective valence and arousal in relation to bouts of exercise, and explore possible moderators of these fluctuations.MethodsWe recruited a sample of 38 recreational runners. Participants provided daily affective reports for six weeks using their smartphones. Information on their runs was harvested from their own GPS devices via an online platform for athletes.ResultsAverage valence and arousal were higher on days when the person had run than on the next day, and higher the day after a run than on the days after that. Over the course of the day of a run, valence and arousal declined significantly as the time since the run increased. Physically fitter participants had more positive valence overall, and this was particularly true when they had not run recently. There was some evidence of higher-dose (i.e., longer and faster) runs being associated with lower arousal on the next and subsequent days. Gender did not moderate associations between running and valence or arousal.DiscussionOur study demonstrated the potential for studying the associations between affect and exercise in a way that is precise, undemanding for participants, and convenient for researchers, using technologies that participants already own and use.

Effects of acute aerobic exercise or meditation on emotional regulation

Effective emotional regulation is critical for overall psychological well-being; as such, it is important to investigate potential methods to optimize emotion regulation abilities. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an acute bout of aerobic exercise and meditation on emotional regulation among young adults. Participants (N=63, mean age=21.3yrs) were randomly assigned to stretch (control group, n=21), walk (n=21), or meditate (n=21) for 10-min, after which they were exposed to a film clip (3min) intended to elicit a negative emotional state (e.g., sadness, anger). Participants then viewed 12 International Affective Picture System images validated to elicit a negative valence. Participants' affect (valence and arousal) states were monitored before, during, and after the stretching, walking, and meditation bouts using the Feeling Scale (FS) and Felt Arousal Scale (FAS). Distinct affect was assessed utilizing an affective circumplex measure before and after the stretch/walk/meditation bout, as well as following the film clip and image viewing. A significant group×time interaction effect was present when evaluating circumplex excited: P=0.001 (η2=0.21). Additionally, an interaction effect of meditation and emotional regulation was observed (P=0.009) among those with varying degrees of meditation experience. A 10-min bout of brisk walking and meditation, prior to exposure to a negative emotion cue, did not differentially effect the ability to regulate sadness, anger, or anxiousness when compared to an active stretching control group. Future replicative work addressing this paradigm, which is in support of positive psychology theory, is warranted.

Characterizing anger-related affect in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder using ecological momentary assessment

This study employed secondary analyses of existing ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data to characterize hostile and irritable affect in the day-to-day experience of 52 smokers with, and 65 smokers without, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). EMA monitoring occurred over a mean of 8.2 days, and participants responded to an average of 2.8 random prompts/day. Analyses included Wilcoxon rank sum tests of group differences, and path analyses of cross-lagged multilevel models. Participants with PTSD endorsed a significantly higher proportion of total EMA entries indicating hostile affect and irritable affect than did individuals without PTSD. Cross-lagged analyses indicated that over a period of hours, PTSD symptoms significantly predicted subsequent hostile and irritable affect, but hostile and irritable affect did not predict subsequent PTSD symptoms. Findings suggest that day-to-day exposure to PTSD-related trauma cues may contribute to chronically elevated levels of anger-related affect. Such heightened affective arousal may, in turn, underlie an increased risk for verbal or physical aggression, as well as other health and quality-of-life related impairments associated with PTSD. Clinical implications include conceptualizing anger treatment in the broader context of trauma history and symptoms, and specifically targeting physiological arousal and maladaptive hostile cognitions triggered by trauma reminders in patients with PTSD.

Interactive effects of music tempi and intensities on grip strength and subjective affect.

Pretask music is widely used by athletes albeit there is scant empirical evidence to support its use. The present study extended a line of work into pretask music by examining the interactive effects of music tempo and intensity (volume) on the performance of a simple motor skill and subjective affect. A 2×2 within-subjects factorial design was employed with an additional no-music control, the scores from which were used as a covariate. A sample of 52 male athletes (Mage =26.1±4.8years) was exposed to five conditions: fast/loud (126bpm/80dBA), fast/quiet (126bpm/70dBA), slow/loud (87bpm/80dBA), slow/quiet (87bpm/70dBA) music, and a no-music control. Dependent variables were grip strength, measured with a handgrip dynamometer, and subjective affect, assessed by use of the Affect Grid. The tempo and intensity components of music had interactive effects for grip strength but only main effects for subjective affect. Fast-tempo music played at a high intensity yielded the highest grip strength, while fast-tempo music played at a low-intensity resulted in much lower grip strength (Mdiff. =-1.11 Force kg). For affective valence, there were main effects of tempo and intensity, with fast and loud music yielding the highest scores. For affective arousal, there was no difference between tempi although there was between intensities, with the high-intensity condition yielding higher scores. The present findings indicate the utility of fast/loud pretask music in enhancing affective valence and arousal in preparation for a simple or gross motor task.

Unique effects and moderators of effects of sources on self-efficacy: A model-based meta-analysis.

Self-efficacy beliefs are strong predictors of academic pursuits, performance, and persistence, and in theory are developed and maintained by 4 classes of experiences Bandura (1986) referred to as sources: performance accomplishments (PA), vicarious learning (VL), social persuasion (SP), and affective arousal (AA). The effects of sources on self-efficacy vary by performance domain and individual difference factors. In this meta-analysis (k = 61 studies of academic self-efficacy; N = 8,965), we employed B. J. Becker's (2009) model-based approach to examine cumulative effects of the sources as a set and unique effects of each source, controlling for the others. Following Becker's recommendations, we used available data to create a correlation matrix for the 4 sources and self-efficacy, then used these meta-analytically derived correlations to test our path model. We further examined moderation of these associations by subject area (STEM vs. non-STEM), grade, sex, and ethnicity. PA showed by far the strongest unique association with self-efficacy beliefs. Subject area was a significant moderator, with sources collectively predicting self-efficacy more strongly in non-STEM (k = 14) compared with STEM (k = 47) subjects (R2 = .37 and .22, respectively). Within studies of STEM subjects, grade level was a significant moderator of the coefficients in our path model, as were 2 continuous study characteristics (percent non-White and percent female). Practical implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Dose-related negative affect arousal following intravenous endotoxin in humans: An evaluation of a new Clinical Center Reference Endotoxin (CCRE) of Escherichia coli (E. coli group O 113:H10:K negative) in healthy volunteers

We evaluated dose-related negative affect (NA) responses to a new reference lot of endotoxin E. coli (LPS) administered as an IV bolus in 23 healthy subjects (age 18–40 yr., 23% female, 50% minorities). Subjects were randomly assigned to one of 4-dose groups with each group comprised of 6 subjects [4 receiving endotoxin, 2 receiving normal saline]. Group 1 received 0.6 ng/kg; Group 2-1 ng/kg; Group 3-2 ng/kg; and Group 4-4 ng/kg doses of LPS. NA was assessed prior to dosing, at 90- and 180-min after dosing. We used the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) to assess depressive symptoms prior to dosing. Adjusting for potential confounders, results revealed a significant Dose X Period interaction (F = 2.53, adjusted p

Neuroticism and Emotion Regulation Predict Attention Performance during Positive Affect

Most studies of personality and attention have focused on negative affect and psychopathology. We predicted that to the extent that personality characteristics involve the ability to control emotion and attention, the same principles would apply whether the circumstances involved negative or positive affect. Participants completed a dual-task attention experiment under conditions of positive affect, involving both low and high arousal. It was found that self-reported poorer attentional control, higher levels of neuroticism, and more difficulties in emotion regulation predicted greater differences in performance between low and high arousal conditions. Rumination styles did not predict differences in performance among these conditions. The demonstration of disruptions in attention by arousal during positive affect raises important questions about the interactions among individual differences, arousal, and mechanisms of attention.

Does Time Fly 20 m above the Ground? Exploring the Role of Affective Response on Time Perception in a High‐risk Sport

SummaryA field study (n = 61) was performed in a Via Ferrata to explore how affective response influences time perception during an arousing activity in a real‐life setting (passing through a 69‐m‐long, 20‐m‐high, two‐rope bridge). Two questionnaires were administered (i) at the end point of the bridge (high‐arousing condition) and (ii) close to the end of the Via Ferrata (low‐arousing condition). Participants assessed their affect (arousal, valence, and dominance) and provided retrospective (duration estimation and passage of time judgments) and prospective (to produce a subjective minute using a stopwatch) temporal judgments. The results showed that the actual performance mediated the relationship between affect and retrospective time perception measures, with the exception of dominance, which directly predicted passage of time judgments. Regarding prospective measures, an increase in arousal was parallel to shorter temporal productions. The results are discussed in terms of the emotional factors underlying time perception in ecological contexts.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Distributed Neural Processing Predictors of Multi-dimensional Properties of Affect.

Recent evidence suggests that emotions have a distributed neural representation, which has significant implications for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying emotion regulation and dysregulation as well as the potential targets available for neuromodulation-based emotion therapeutics. This work adds to this evidence by testing the distribution of neural representations underlying the affective dimensions of valence and arousal using representational models that vary in both the degree and the nature of their distribution. We used multi-voxel pattern classification (MVPC) to identify whole-brain patterns of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-derived neural activations that reliably predicted dimensional properties of affect (valence and arousal) for visual stimuli viewed by a normative sample (n = 32) of demographically diverse, healthy adults. Inter-subject leave-one-out cross-validation showed whole-brain MVPC significantly predicted (p < 0.001) binarized normative ratings of valence (positive vs. negative, 59% accuracy) and arousal (high vs. low, 56% accuracy). We also conducted group-level univariate general linear modeling (GLM) analyses to identify brain regions whose response significantly differed for the contrasts of positive versus negative valence or high versus low arousal. Multivoxel pattern classifiers using voxels drawn from all identified regions of interest (all-ROIs) exhibited mixed performance; arousal was predicted significantly better than chance but worse than the whole-brain classifier, whereas valence was not predicted significantly better than chance. Multivoxel classifiers derived using individual ROIs generally performed no better than chance. Although performance of the all-ROI classifier improved with larger ROIs (generated by relaxing the clustering threshold), performance was still poorer than the whole-brain classifier. These findings support a highly distributed model of neural processing for the affective dimensions of valence and arousal. Finally, joint error analyses of the MVPC hyperplanes encoding valence and arousal identified regions within the dimensional affect space where multivoxel classifiers exhibited the greatest difficulty encoding brain states – specifically, stimuli of moderate arousal and high or low valence. In conclusion, we highlight new directions for characterizing affective processing for mechanistic and therapeutic applications in affective neuroscience.

Interpersonal Duty as a Tool for Managing Uncertainty: Uncertainty Threat Changes Negative Affect Reaction Toward Duty Adherence/Violation

We investigated changes in negative affect reactions toward interpersonal duty violation/adherence under uncertainty which we refer to as uncertainty threat. One’s feelings of duty and obligation toward the partner may induce him/her to act in accordance to the partner’s expectations, and this functions to free the relationship of uncertainty. However, if the partner fails to conform to his/her duty, we may become uncertain about the future of the relationship, and consequently, experience negative affect, including anger, contempt, and disappointment. We hypothesized that uncertainty threat leads to such negative affective arousal. Uncertainty threat motivates individuals to reduce uncertainty, and hence make them more sensitive toward the source of uncertainty, above and beyond the specific context in which it poses a threat. A series of three experiments were conducted, in which we manipulated uncertainty threat through priming and a distractor task. Participants then read a short scenario in which duty violation or adherence were described, and rated negative affect toward it. Results generally indicated significant interaction effects across the experiments. The effects of scenario manipulation on negative affect reaction were more acute under uncertainty threat than when no threat was present. The present study indicated that duty was not only beneficial for social coordination, but also vital to mask uncertainty and insecurity regarding relationships.

Age-Conditional Effects in the Affective Arousal, Empathy, and Emotional Labor Linkage: Within-Person Evidence from an Experience Sampling Study

Age-Conditional Effects in the Affective Arousal, Empathy, and Emotional Labor Linkage: Within-Person Evidence from an Experience Sampling Study

Modeling valuation and core affect in a cognitive architecture: The impact of valence and arousal on memory and decision-making

A novel approach to adding primitive evaluative capabilities to a cognitive architecture is proposed. Two sub-symbolic quantities called valuation and arousal are learned for each declarative memory element based on usage statistics and the reward it generates. As a result, each memory element can be characterized as positive or negative and having a certain degree of affective intensity. In turn, these characteristics affect the latency and probability of retrieval for that memory element. Two global accumulators called core-affect-valuation and core-affect-arousal are computed as weighted sums of all retrievable valuations and arousals, respectively. The weights reflect usage history, context relevance, and reward accrual for all retrievable memory elements. These accumulators describe the general disposition or mood of the system. Core affect dynamics are used as reward signals to learn valuation and arousal values for new objects or events. The new architectural mechanism is used to develop two models that demonstrate the impact of affective valence and arousal on memory and decision-making. The models are fit to datasets from the literature and make novel predictions. The value of including valuation and core affect mechanisms in a cognitive architecture is discussed.

Emotional processes in risky and multiattribute health decisions

Objective: Here, we develop an integrative account of the roles of emotion in decision-making. In Part I, we illustrate how emotional inputs into decisions may rely on physiological signals from emotions experienced while making the decision, and we review evidence suggesting that the failure to represent the emotional meaning of options can often reduce decision quality. We propose that health-related decrements in the ability to generate emotional reactions lead people to inaccurately represent emotional responses and compromise decisions, particularly about risk. Part II explores complex decisions in which choice options involve trade-offs between positive and negative attributes. We first review evidence showing that difficult trade-off decisions generate negative affect and physiological arousal. Next, we propose that medical decision-making will be linked to short- and long-term stress and health outcomes.Conclusion: In sum, this article proposes and reviews initial evidence supporting the effective use and management of emotional inputs as important to both clinical and non-clinical populations. Our approach will contribute to the understanding of patient-centred emotional decision-making and will inform medical decision aids.

Resting connectivity between salience nodes predicts recognition memory.

The resting connectivity of the brain’s salience network, particularly the ventral subsystem of the salience network, has been previously associated with various measures of affective reactivity. Numerous studies have demonstrated that increased affective arousal leads to enhanced consolidation of memory. This suggests that individuals with greater ventral salience network connectivity will exhibit greater responses to affective experience, leading to a greater enhancement of memory by affect. To test this hypothesis, resting ventral salience connectivity was measured in 41 young adults, who were then exposed to neutral and negative affect inductions during a paired associate memory test. Memory performance for material learned under both negative and neutral induction was tested for correlation with resting connectivity between major ventral salience nodes. The results showed a significant interaction between mood induction (negative vs neutral) and connectivity between ventral anterior insula and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, indicating that salience node connectivity predicted memory for material encoded under negative, but not neutral induction. These findings suggest that the network state of the perceiver, measured prior to affective experience, meaningfully influences the extent to which affect modulates memory. Implications of these findings for individuals with affective disorder, who show alterations in both connectivity and memory, are considered.

Misfortune may be a blessing in disguise: Fairness perception and emotion modulate decision making.

Fairness perception and equality during social interactions frequently elicit affective arousal and affect decision making. By integrating the dictator game and a probabilistic gambling task, this study aimed to investigate the effects of a negative experience induced by perceived unfairness on decision making using behavioral, model fitting, and electrophysiological approaches. Participants were randomly assigned to the neutral, harsh, or kind groups, which consisted of various asset allocation scenarios to induce different levels of perceived unfairness. The monetary gain was subsequently considered the initial asset in a negatively rewarded, probabilistic gambling task in which the participants were instructed to maintain as much asset as possible. Our behavioral results indicated that the participants in the harsh group exhibited increased levels of negative emotions but retained greater total game scores than the participants in the other two groups. Parameter estimation of a reinforcement learning model using a Bayesian approach indicated that these participants were more loss aversive and consistent in decision making. Data from simultaneous ERP recordings further demonstrated that these participants exhibited larger feedback-related negativity to unexpected outcomes in the gambling task, which suggests enhanced reward sensitivity and signaling of reward prediction error. Collectively, our study suggests that a negative experience may be an advantage in the modulation of reward-based decision making.

Physical Activity Increases after an Affectively Arousing Daily Life Event

Evidence that structured physical activity can help to regulate affective state has spurred interest in identifying associations between unstructured physical activity and affective states during daily life. The present study examined whether stressful daily life situations that elicit affective arousal also elicit increased physical activity in the form of restless movement. The study compared the physical activity of professors (n = 25) after presenting a classroom lecture to their physical activity at the same time of day on a non-lecture workday. The expectation was that lecturing would increase affective arousal, leading to greater restless movement following the lecture compared to the non-lecture control day. The study assessed subjective arousal to confirm that arousal was higher during the lecture. The primary outcome measures were actigraphy-measured standing and stepping times and number of steps and posture transitions. Results indicate that energetic and tense arousal were higher during the lecture than during the control period. Mean (±SE) up time (standing and stepping) for the 1st minute of the 20 minute post-lecture period was double that of the last minute (32.8 ± 5.73 s to 16.5 ± 5.41 s), while it remained low throughout the comparison period on the control day (p = 0.01). Subjects also took more steps (p = 0.006) and engaged in more transitions between sitting and standing (p = 0.02) after the lecture than after the control period. These results support the conclusion that stressful daily life situations that elicit affective arousal also elicit increased physical activity in the form of restless movement and suggest that affective responses to stressful situations may be important determinants of physical activity during daily life.