Affect Intensity Research Articles

Joyful encounters: Dance, touch, and embodied ethics in times of COVID‐19

AbstractThis article explores the practice of Contact Improvisation during the COVID‐19 pandemic, focusing on how dance serves as a means of repair. Drawing on Erin Manning's posthumanist philosophy, woven into both the theoretical and embodied practice of dance, it envisions touch as a social‐relational bond capable of opening pathways to affective intensities, particularly the experience of joy. Employing and experimenting with affective ethnography, I explore the ethico‐political aspects of touch, extending ongoing discussions of ethics as deeply embodied. Specifically, I show how this exploration could lead to theorizing an “embodied ethic of repair”, enabling future‐oriented response‐ability and reclaiming joy as an affective force for navigating forthcoming bio‐political, social, and environmental challenges in and for organizations.

The Mechanisms Underlying Religious Coping and Hopelessness: Role of Meaning in Life and Affectivity

AbstractReligion can fulfill both positive and negative functions in coping with stress. There is a lack of research regarding the mechanism underlying the link between religious coping and mental health. The purpose of this study was to verify how religious coping is related to mental health. Two indirect mechanisms were tested for finding meaning in life and emotional regulation. The study was conducted with 115 students from Poland. According to the results, both positive and negative religious coping were indirectly related to hopelessness through finding meaning in life and affectivity. More frequent use of negative religious coping was positively related to the intensity of negative affect and problems with finding meaning in life, which, in turn, led to a higher level of hopelessness. Meanwhile, more frequent use of positive religious coping was correlated with a greater intensity of positive effect and supported individuals in finding meaning in life. Finding meaning in life was related to a lower level of hopelessness, but positive affect was not correlated with hopelessness. The research confirmed the role played by finding meaning in life and affectivity within the mechanism underlying the link between religious coping and hopelessness. In conclusion, theoretical and practical implications are presented.

The Relationship Between Avatar Identification Factors and Vicarious Pleasure: The Moderating Role of Affect Intensity in the Metaverse

This study investigated the connection between avatar identification factors, sharing intentions, and the influence of vicarious pleasure. Additionally, it explored the moderating effect of affect intensity on this relationship. For this, data was collected from 228 college students in South Korea through a survey. This study used hierarchical regression. The findings revealed several key points. Firstly, participants who perceived greater similarity identification, wishful identification, and embodied presence in their avatars within the metaverse platform reported higher satisfaction with their avatars. Secondly, participants who experienced a higher sense of embodied presence in their avatars were more inclined to share their avatars due to the vicarious pleasure they derived from it. Lastly, the positive correlation between perceived embodied presence and vicarious pleasure was stronger for participants with higher affect intensity in the metaverse platform. This study is the first to examine the integral model of avatar identification factors in the metaverse platform.

Exploring metacompetence in child welfare simulation training: toward a holistic model

ABSTRACT Holistic competence involves two distinct constructs: procedural competencies and metacompetencies A framework developed by Tufford and colleagues (2017), suggests four domains of metacompetence: skills in action, deepened perspectives on diversity, managing affective intensity in the moment, and openness to learning. This exploratory evaluation study was guided by the research question, in what ways does Illinois child welfare simulation training address the four domains of metacompetence? Findings indicted that relevant knowledge and skill development for each domain are supported in the training. More nuanced evaluation could better assess procedural and metacompetence and more fully operationalize holistic competence for child welfare professionals.

"My Anger is Many-Layered": Affective intensities & the Assault on Narrativity in Experimental (Meta)fiction

"My Anger is Many-Layered": Affective intensities & the Assault on Narrativity in Experimental (Meta)fiction

Calling the Ancestors to Dance

The Abakuá are an all-male ceremonial association founded in Cuba in the 1830s which persist to this day as exponents of a form of Afrocuban folklore. Legally recognized on the island for the first time in 2005, the Abakuá community has asserted its autonomy and criticized state uses of folklore through public performance events. One such event on August 23, 2011, mobilizes members of the community-at-large alongside professional folkloric performers. The participation of Abakuá community members transforms the event from an official-style folkloric show to a community-centered event through changes in performance practice and the intense affect that catalyzes. This changes not only the structure of performance but the significance of the event, as it no longer centers on official messages, but rather becomes a vehicle for mobilizing the community and demonstrating their autonomy. Examining the event in terms of affective politics, this article proposes the concept of feelings of coherence to understand how collaborative agency of performance intersects with intensity of affect and meaning in performance. Using evidence from interviews and observation, the analysis of the event shows how the community successfully re-frame the event and motivate participation through processes experienced by the individual but operating at the level of the collective.

Guiding the Pious Self: Morality and Affect in Muslim Instructional YouTube Videos

Abstract Based on a discourse analysis of German-language YouTube videos that attempt to instruct their audiences in Islamic practice, the article examines the interplay of moral statements and audiovisual elements in religious web videos. YouTube constitutes an affective space for the promotion of normative Islamic models of gendered subjectivity that instruct how to understand and guide oneself. Considering the tensions in the lives of young Muslims in the German context, the videos offer clear notions of gendered Muslim morality within an arrangement of discursive and affective elements that draw on both Islamic oratory and elements of secular popular culture. On a linguistic level, producers address their audiences as immoral subjects alienated from a divine order and call for a self-transformation towards piety. At the audiovisual level, discursive statements are entangled with a fluctuating stream of affective intensities that have the potential to charge moral codes with aesthetic legitimacy and attach viewers to gender norms.

Examining the association among adolescents' emotional clarity, emotion differentiation, and the regulation of negative and positive affect using a daily diary approach.

Emotional clarity and emotion differentiation (ED) are two core aspects of the application of emotional knowledge. During adolescence, novel emotional experiences result in temporary decreases of differentiation and clarity. These temporary difficulties might profoundly impact choices of regulatory strategies. And indeed, prior research has shown that lower emotional clarity and emotion differentiation are each associated with higher use of putatively maladaptive emotion regulation strategies in youth. The two constructs, however, are rarely examined together, and it remains unclear how they are associated in daily life, particularly in children and adolescents. In addition, previous studies have focused on the regulation of negative but not positive affect. To address these gaps, the present study used an intensive longitudinal design in youth. Between June 2021 and March 2022, 172 children and adolescents (M = 12.99 years) completed a 28-day diary (> 3,500 entries in total) reporting daily affect, emotional clarity, and the use of five emotion regulation strategies in response to negative and positive affect (i.e., rumination, dampening, behavioral avoidance, negative and positive suppression). As predicted, on both between- and within-person levels, higher emotional clarity was associated with decreased use of all maladaptive emotion regulation strategies after adjusting for mean affect intensity. Results for emotion differentiation were mostly nonsignificant. Only higher daily positive emotion differentiation was associated with decreased rumination. In sum, this innovative study explores multiple aspects of emotional knowledge usage and regulation during a critical developmental stage and emphasizes the role of emotional clarity in the regulation of negative and positive affect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Mobilising Affect for Public Art: Affective practices in voluntary organising.

Voluntary organising frequently relies on affective intensities to direct organisational efforts. However, it is not well understood how these intensities are cultivated across time and different contexts to engage and coordinate heterogeneous actors. By applying a practice approach to affect, this paper proposes the concept of affective practices to theorise how affect is mobilised in materially driven (inter)actions to shape actions and relationalities around organisational goals. The analysis of ethnographic data from a long-term public art project reveals that four affective practices - enticing, envisioning, attending and asserting - are pivotal to sustaining the distributed process of voluntary organising. The sense of fascination, enthusiasm, care and discomfort that these affective practices mobilise instigates participation, support, acceptance and compliance from diverse partners, volunteers and the local public. Contributing to the affective turn in practice theory, the paper theorises how affective processes are cultivated as situative accomplishments in an ongoing and translocal organisational process, highlighting the important role played by the vibrant presence of matter in affective practices. Additionally, the study expands our understanding of how an interplay of affective intensities engages and aligns diverse individuals and groups in voluntary organising by fostering coalitional moments in the organisational process.

A habitually open mouth posture leads to less affect strength during joy in childhood

AimCompared with children without orofacial disorders, children with a habitual lack of mouth closure and mouth breathing show less frequent and reduced or absent facial expressions. The facial feedback hypothesis states that affective sensation is enhanced by mimic involvement. In this randomized cross-sectional study with and without orofacially disordered children, we investigated the effect of lack of mouth closure on the strength of emotions related to joy, sadness and fear in children. We aimed to determine whether kindergarten and primary school-age children with a lack of mouth closure are less emotionally involved.Materials and MethodWe used facial feedback as an indicator to measure affect intensity in children with and without orofacial disorders. For this purpose, we modified the experimental design of Strack et al. (Strack et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 54:768–777, 1988), in which the subjects were asked to hold a pencil exclusively with their teeth (experimental group 1, “joy”), with their lips (experimental group 2, “sadness” and “fear”) or with their nondominant hand (control group). Instead of cartoons, ten medium-funny animal pictures were presented individually in a predefined order to be judged on a Likert scale. The allocation to the groups was implemented using a randomized procedure, independent of the diagnosis, age and sex of the children. The only exclusion criteria were the presence of surgical scars in the orofacial area and cerebral palsy.ResultsA total of 414 children aged 4 to 17 years were studied for facial feedback, with orofacial disorders such as open mouth posture, tongue thrust, myofunctional disorder, craniomandibular dysfunction (CMD) and speech motor disorders diagnosed in 223 subjects. The significance tests showed that in all age groups, children with orofacial disorders rated the joke content of the animal pictures significantly lower than did children without orofacial disorders (4- to 6-year-olds: p value = 0.01, T value = 2.33, confidence = 99%; 7- to 8-year-olds: p value = 0, T value = 4.98, 100% confidence; 9- to 17-year-olds: p value = 0, T value = 2.87, 100% confidence). This finding indicates that children with a lack of mouth closure and other orofacial disorders not only express less pleasure with the help of facial expressions but also feel less pleasure. Moreover, the experimental setup used in this work, which has been modified for children, can be used to test facial feedback in young subjects.ConclusionIn our study, we focused on the interplay between physical and emotional development in children. If left untreated, children with a lack of oral closure may not only show deviations in the orofacial area later on, but also in their emotionality. We endeavored to highlight the importance of treating children with orofacial disorders at an early age.

Reframing Relationality as Cultural Work in the Global South: Moving History into the Present, and the Future.

The Global South was popularised during the 1970s in recognition of the greater economic and political power of the ‘Third World’ and as a reaction to pejorative expressions. Nevertheless, as a terminology it is formed within the colonial/modern world-system imagery and manifests multiple subaltern subjectivities and different articulations of power and resistances. In this chapter, we use the practice of talanoa as a decolonizing community arts-based methodology which is an integral part of Pacific dialogic engagement to re-narrate histories and experiences of oppression as we draw on the colonizing experiences of (hetero) gender and Whiteness shaped how these coloured our agencies. In this paper we put to work the practice and potential of talanoa as a heterodox decolonizing methodology that challenges the orthodoxies of the Global North who habitually rewards normative methodological processes. This paper located in part in the 1970s considers questions of how positionality, power and relationships are experienced and re-negotiated through the talanoa and also explores the relationship between voice and participation. Our experiences of participation articulated in this chapter take the form of narratives with an intent to interrupt, subvert and counter the orthodoxic use of analytical tools and theoretical frameworks habitually deployed and modelled across the academy in the Global North. We consider the power the talanoa has for re-negotiating cultural differences and histories situating affective intensities to guide, dis/connect, excite, divert, inspire, distract, startle, surprise, and re-orient thinking to move history into the present, and the future.

“If you don’t have rapport, you haven’t got anything really”: affective intensities, relationality and rapport building in the work of CVE Intervention Practitioners

ABSTRACT Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) continues to be a topic of national and international concern; however, within the field of research, there has been limited engagement with the daily work of CVE intervention. The article presents findings from a study which aimed to better understand the strategies CVE Intervention Practitioners employ, specifically rapport building and the fostering of mutual trust. Drawing upon the accounts of 12 practitioners currently working in Australia, we focus on the complex affective negotiations underpinning the client–practitioner relationship. Our analysis foregrounds relationality, a sense of connectedness and explores the affective labour involved in this work. In theorizing the work of CVE intervention, as a form of affective labour, the paper presents three key themes present in the data 1) rapport building to leverage; 2) transparency to build trust and change mindset; 3) versatility/adaptability.

Citrus and Surfaces: Print Media and the Appetite for the Other

ABSTRACT Racial stereotypes circulate between print media, accruing affective intensities as they do so. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story “The Offshore Pirate” provides a case study in the affective networks that connect advertising ephemera with magazine fiction. Racialized southern archetypes found on citrus crate labels—the Southern belle, the swarthy pirate, and the minstrel caricature—come to life in Fitzgerald’s story set off the coast of Florida. The racial icons of consumer culture magnify oral pleasure and tropical escape. Tapping into this racial imaginary, “The Offshore Pirate” celebrates orality, liminality, and intermixture even as its plot seems to curtail these possibilities.

“This will keep me happy for weeks”: care objects, affect and graphic medicine

Looking beyond anthropocentric care relationships reveals nuanced levels of interdependence among human and non-human entities. Attention to these heterogeneous inter-relationships illuminates the subtle and visceral affective intensities among diverse participants,...

The mind wanders to dark places: Mind-wandering catalyzes rumination in the context of negative affect and impulsivity.

Spontaneous mind-wandering has been theorized to increase susceptibility for rumination, contributing to risk for major depressive disorder (MDD). Clarifying whether-and under what circumstances-mind-wandering leads to rumination could inform the development of targeted interventions to reduce risk for ruminative sequelae. Using intensively sampled data in 44 young adults with remitted MDD and 38 healthy volunteers with 1,558 total observations collected from 2018 to 2022, we conducted multilevel models to investigate temporal relationships between mind-wandering and rumination. Contextual factors (e.g., intensity of negative affect; momentary impulsivity) and individual factors (e.g., MDD history) were examined as moderators of these relationships. Mind-wandering predicted increased rumination, whereas rumination did not predict increased mind-wandering. When individuals experienced greater negative affect or acted more impulsively compared to their usual levels, they showed a stronger relationship between mind-wandering and subsequent rumination. Depression history did not significantly moderate temporal relationships between mind-wandering and rumination. Spontaneous mind-wandering may transition into rumination, particularly during moments when people experience more negative affect or impulsivity compared to usual. Delivering interventions in these moments could reduce risk for ruminative sequelae. The tendency to ruminate in response to mind-wandering is suggested to be consistent regardless of depression history, suggesting the transdiagnostic and dimensional nature of rumination as a possible consequence of mind-wandering. Future work is needed to determine whether these associations are generalizable across the lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Online Disinhibition, Normative Hostility, and Banal Toxicity: Young People’s Negative Online Gaming Conduct

In this study, we examine young people’s self-reported negative (“toxic”) online gaming conduct via a qualitative survey ( N = 95) of active game players aged 15–25 in Finland. Drawing from young people’s lived experiences, we present negative gaming conduct as a complex whole, stemming from a combination of online disinhibition, affective intensity, game cultural conduct norms, and individual preferences. We explore online gaming environments as spaces with different technological and communicative affordances. In this study, we demonstrate how not all negative gaming conduct is equal in intent or outcome and introduce the concept of banal toxicity: outwardly hostile but routine conduct that lacks emotional intensity and serves little strategic purpose yet is conducive to an overall social landscape of negativity.

‘Where are you from?’ The affective and emotional dimensions of an ambiguous event of everyday racism

This article discusses the various affective and emotional dimensions of how racialised individuals understand and cope with the ambiguous question of ‘Where are you (really) from?’ Theoretically, the article argues that people do not necessarily ‘comprehend’ racism but sense it, and that it is through affects and being affected that they understand the nature of an encounter. Empirically, the article is based on 21 in-depth interviews conducted with Black Germans, and it analyses respondents’ reflections on and ‘emotion memories’ of being asked the question of ‘Where are you from?’ Only a few respondents said that they had consciously decided to always regard the question as ‘normal’ and thus to ‘switch off their sensitivity’. Overall, when asked this question, interviewees relied on ‘affective thinking-feeling’ to determine whether there was racism to be sensed. By analysing respondents’ narratives of particular episodes in which they were asked the question, the article proposes that a specific assemblage and affective intensities are the main conditions for immediately sensing racism in and through the question. In addition, the article discusses interviewees’ range of response options and why and when respondents may engage in ‘emotion work’ when responding to the question. The article concludes by highlighting different types of emotions associated with sensing racism through the question, particularly the emotions of unease, discomfort, and disappointment that can lead to feelings of non-belonging.

Investigating impulse purchases in live streaming e-commerce: A perspective of match-ups

Enabled by live streaming technologies, live streaming e-commerce (LSE) is becoming an increasingly promising marketing channel. Due to high entertainment and immersion, LSE greatly telescopes consumer decision journeys from awareness to purchase, thereby more readily stimulating consumer impulse purchase desire. This study reveals the influence of product-based fit on impulse purchases through affective and cognitive systems from the match-up perspective. The results indicate that both streamer-product fit and self-product fit enhance affective intensity and reduce perceived product risk. Unexpectedly, live content-product fit increases perceived product risk but has no significant impact on affective intensity. In addition, both streamer-product fit and live content-product fit enhance consumer perception of self-product fit, which, in turn, influences perceived product risks and affective intensity. However, emotion but not cognition breeds impulse purchase intention. Our findings can offer guidance for online retailers on how to utilize live streaming technology to increase sales.

Leaving post-anything urban studies behind?

Luger and Schwarze's critical unsettling of postindustrial is a presciently welcome one. For some years now, I—and others—have become increasingly uncomfortable with referring to and describing the locations of our research as “postindustrial.” The main focus of this commentary is on the facets of Luger and Schwarze's (2024) arguments as they relate to nonmetropolitan deindustrializing urbanisms in the North Atlantic in an attempt to develop how we better conceptualize, understand and do justice to and with such spaces. The main thrust of the contribution is for the affective intensities and traumas of deindustrialization to be brought into closer analytical dialog with the profusion of processes associated with, in particular, “organized abandonment” and “neoliberal urbanism.” If classed experiences and knowledge shape these dialogs, there remains hope for urban studies to contribute to an emergent multiethnic class politics around commonalities of contemporary as well as historical class violence.

Intense impressions: Joseph R. Biden toward a 2020 national grief

By mid-May of 2020, the United States surpassed 100,000 lives lost to COVID-19. The nation was scrambling to make sense of the global pandemic amid the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Focusing on Biden’s pandemic-related speaking moments throughout the 2020 election, I attend to the way Biden lingers in the felt intensities of grief. With this, I illustrate how Biden’s articulations of grief rely on affective intensities which situate a personal grief in open relation to an invisible other, a reaching out, the towardness of which moves away from the particular and toward the singular collective—national grief. Utilizing affect theory, public feelings scholarship, and precedential expectations for presidential speech, I argue that Biden’s grief rhetoric, against the absence of any similar grief-related public address from Trump during this time, defines the emergence of an affective national body—a grieving public. This analysis weaves between notions of individual and collective loss and prompts wider questions of presidential responsibility in response to shared trauma.