Differences In Emotional Responses Research Articles

A systematic review of psychosocial factors associated with emotional adjustment in in vitro fertilization patients

IVF treatment is usually stressful for patients, but individual differences in emotional response do exist. Differences in the stress response may be related to reproductive outcomes as well as to the development of psychiatric problems. This review collates research exploring which psychosocial factors (e.g. personality traits and coping strategies) are associated with the emotional adjustment of IVF patients. The aim is to reveal what is currently known about risk and protective factors for coping with the stress of IVF treatment and where further enquiry would be most beneficial. The databases, MEDLINE/PUBMED (US National Library of Medicine), PsycINFO (American Psychological Association), Web of Science (Social Sciences Citation Index) and EMbase, were searched from 1978 to September 2012 using relevant key words. All published peer-reviewed studies exploring associations between psychosocial factors and emotional adjustment outcomes were considered for inclusion. There were 23 studies identified for review. One-third of the psychosocial factors explored were found to be significantly related to emotional adjustment outcome measures. Neuroticism and the use of escapist coping strategies were positively associated with distress by multiple studies. Social support was negatively associated with distress by several studies. A number of other psychosocial variables appear to be associated with distress, including self-criticism, dependency, situation appraisals and attachment style, but these have only been explored by one or two studies at most. There is a paucity of research using positive emotional outcome measures (e.g. well-being, positive affect, happiness or life satisfaction) to quantify emotional adjustment. Whilst some psychosocial variables appear to be consistently associated with distress for IVF patients, two-thirds of the variables tested to date do not appear to be associated with emotional adjustment. This review highlights key psychosocial factors to assist the identification of patients at high risk of psychological distress. These findings highlight at least two psychological factors that may be amenable to alteration with psychological or educational interventions. Future work should explore whether experimental manipulation of such psychosocial factors can provide effective stress reduction in this clinical context.

Age differences in emotional responses to daily stress: The role of timing, severity, and global perceived stress.

Research on age differences in emotional responses to daily stress has produced inconsistent findings. Guided by recent theoretical advances in aging theory (S. T. Charles, 2010, Strength and vulnerability integration: A model of emotional well-being across adulthood, Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 136, pp. 1068-1091) that emphasize the importance of context for predicting when and how age is related to affective well-being, the current study examined age differences in emotional responses to everyday stressors. The present study examined how three contextual features (e.g., timing of exposure, stressor severity, global perceived stress [GPS]) moderate age differences in emotional experience in an ecological momentary assessment study of adults (N = 190) aged 18-81 years. Results indicated that older adults' negative affect (NA) was less affected by exposure to recent stressors than younger adults, but that there were no age differences in the effects of stressor exposure 3-6 hr afterward. Higher levels of GPS predicted amplified NA responses to daily stress, and controlling for GPS eliminated age differences in NA responses to stressors. No age differences in NA responses as a function of stressor severity were observed. In contrast, older age was associated with less of a decrease in PA when exposed to recent stressors or with more severe recent stressors. There were no age differences in the effect of previous stressor exposure or severity on PA, or any interactions between momentary or previous stress and GPS on PA. Together, these results support the notion that chronic stress plays a central role in emotional experience in daily life. We discuss the implications of these results for emotion theories of aging.

1899 – Fear of pain and chronic low back pain: differences between greek men and women patients

Chronic pain can lead the subjective emotional pain response of an individual and has the potential to play a very decisive role in determination of pain intensity and pain duration. This study examined the effect of fear of pain on chronic pain. The present study aimed the relationship of fear of pain with chronic low back pain (CLBP) and the differences between genders of patients with CLBP. Two hundred and one patients with CLBP participated in the present study (53 men - 148 women, mean age±SD 37,4 ± 13,7). The measures used were: Fear of Pain Questionnaire - FPQ-III (McNeil & Rainwater, 1998) and another questionnaire with socio-demographics, attitudes and self-reported questions data on the impact of the chronic pain in their life. The mean scores (±SD) for men and women with CLBP and the p values from the T-tests were respectively: for total FPQ-III, 67,92 ± 17,46 and 78,48 ± 18,88, (P=0,000), for minor pain 16,06 ± 5,02 and 19,56 ± 6,19, (P=0,000), for severe pain 30,74 ± 8,42 and 34,82± 7,57, (P=0,001), and for medical pain 21,13 ± 7,66 and 23,91 ± 8,54, (P=0,038), The results of the present study revealed the high levels of fear of pain in patients with CLBP. Furthermore, the gender was established as another potential variable that is related to isolated differences in emotional responses to pain.

P2-28: An Amplification of Feedback from Facial Muscles Strengthened Sympathetic Activations to Emotional Facial Cues

The facial feedback hypothesis suggests that feedback from cutaneous and muscular afferents influences our emotions during the control of facial expressions. Enhanced facial expressiveness is correlated with an increase in autonomic arousal, and self-reported emotional experience, while limited facial expression attenuates these responses. The present study was aimed at investigating the difference in emotional response in imitated versus observed facial expressions. For this, we measured the facial electromyogram of the corrugator muscle as well as the skin conductance response (SCR) while participants were either imitating or simply observing emotional facial expressions. We found that participants produced significantly greater facial electromyogram activation during imitations compared to observations of angry faces. Similarly, they exhibited significantly greater SCR during imitations to angry faces compared to observations. An amplification of feedback from face muscles during imitation strengthened...

Human emotional response to energy visualisations

Past research has found that frequent energy usage feedback is an important factor in reducing home energy consumption, and that the sensory appeal and cognitive relevance of the feedback are key components of user engagement with energy systems. The visual design of the information interface is important not just due to its role in communicating data of cognitive relevance, but also because the choice of information type and format is important towards achieving interactive Hebbian learning. The objective of the current research study was to investigate the possible effect of image format on the human emotional response to scenes of energy systems, and to evaluate whether any gender related differences in emotional response occurred. An automated PC-based test was developed which utilised five visual image formats (Optical Gray-Scale, Optical Coloured, Optical Augmented, Infrared Gray-Scale and Infrared Blue-Red) and nine home energy scenes (hot water boiler, radiator, water faucet, kitchen oven, tea kettle, toaster, electrical connector, laptop computer and tea mug). The emotional response of the participant was measured in the automated test by means of a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) which provided symbolic graphical representations of the human body under various degrees of emotional response, and associated Likert format rating scales for the valence and activation level of the emotional response. Comparison of the results obtained for the different visual scenes suggests that the greatest level of human emotional activation was achieved by the Infrared Blue-Red (thermal image) format, and that, generally, coloured images provided higher levels of emotional activation than gray-scale images. The increased activation achieved by the infrared images suggests attention capturing potential due to novelty, or due to the direct link to heat and energy, or both. Significant differences in emotional response (both activation and valence) were found to occur as a function of gender. The current results provide first guidance which a designer can use when choosing image spectrum and colours to represent energy systems on the displays of thermostats, smart meters and the energy devices. Relevance to industryThe current results provide first guidance which a designer can use when choosing image spectrum and colours to represent energy systems on the displays of thermostats, smart meters and the energy devices. Such design guidance is currently lacking internationally but is of increasing importance due to the expansion of digital devices, internet services and the upcoming internet-of-things.

Sex differences in brain activation to emotional stimuli: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies

Substantial sex differences in emotional responses and perception have been reported in previous psychological and psychophysiological studies. For example, women have been found to respond more strongly to negative emotional stimuli, a sex difference that has been linked to an increased risk of depression and anxiety disorders. The extent to which such sex differences are reflected in corresponding differences in regional brain activation remains a largely unresolved issue, however, in part because relatively few neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue. Here, by conducting a quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies, we were able to substantially increase statistical power to detect sex differences relative to prior studies, by combining emotion studies which explicitly examined sex differences with the much larger number of studies that examined only women or men. We used an activation likelihood estimation approach to characterize sex differences in the likelihood of regional brain activation elicited by emotional stimuli relative to non-emotional stimuli. We examined sex differences separately for negative and positive emotions, in addition to examining all emotions combined. Sex differences varied markedly between negative and positive emotion studies. The majority of sex differences favoring women were observed for negative emotion, whereas the majority of the sex differences favoring men were observed for positive emotion. This valence-specificity was particularly evident for the amygdala. For negative emotion, women exhibited greater activation than men in the left amygdala, as well as in other regions including the left thalamus, hypothalamus, mammillary bodies, left caudate, and medial prefrontal cortex. In contrast, for positive emotion, men exhibited greater activation than women in the left amygdala, as well as greater activation in other regions including the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right fusiform gyrus. These meta-analysis findings indicate that the amygdala, a key region for emotion processing, exhibits valence-dependent sex differences in activation to emotional stimuli. The greater left amygdala response to negative emotion for women accords with previous reports that women respond more strongly to negative emotional stimuli, as well as with hypothesized links between increased neurobiological reactivity to negative emotion and increased prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders in women. The finding of greater left amygdala activation for positive emotional stimuli in men suggests that greater amygdala responses reported previously for men for specific types of positive stimuli may also extend to positive stimuli more generally. In summary, this study extends efforts to characterize sex differences in brain activation during emotion processing by providing the largest and most comprehensive quantitative meta-analysis to date, and for the first time examining sex differences as a function of positive vs. negative emotional valence. The current findings highlight the importance of considering sex as a potential factor modulating emotional processing and its underlying neural mechanisms, and more broadly, the need to consider individual differences in understanding the neurobiology of emotion.

Functional Significance of Central D1 Receptors in Cognition: Beyond Working Memory

The role of dopamine D1 receptors in prefrontal cortex function, including working memory, is well acknowledged. However, relatively little is known about their role in other cognitive or emotional functions. We measured both D1 and D2 receptors in the brain using positron emission tomography in healthy subjects, with the aim of elucidating how regional D1 and D2 receptors are differentially involved in cognitive and emotional functions beyond working memory. We found an inverted U-shaped relation between prefrontal D1 receptor availability and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance, indicating that too little or too much D1 receptor stimulation impairs working memory or set shifting. In addition, variability of D1 receptor availability in the amygdala and striatum was related to individual differences in emotional responses and decision-making processes, respectively. These observations suggest that the variability of available D1 receptors might be associated with individual differences in brain functions that require phasic dopamine release. An interdisciplinary approach combining molecular imaging of dopamine neurotransmission with cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychiatry will provide new perspectives for understanding the neurobiology of neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, addiction and Parkinson's disease, as well as novel therapeutics for cognitive impairments observed in them.

Gender differences in emotional responses: A psychophysiological study

Gender differences in emotional responses have been investigated in two groups of students, 22 males and 21 females. Participants watched a set of sixty emotional standardized slides divided into pleasant, neutral and unpleasant, while Startle reflex, Evoked Potentials, Heart Rate, facial EMG and Skin Conductance were recorded. Startle reflex amplitude, an index modulated by amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex and sensitive to aversive emotional stimuli, was overall larger in women. In addition, startle emotion modulation was greater in women with respect to men. Slow Evoked Potentials (400–800ms), a measure representing the cognitive component of the emotional response, revealed gender differences in the left prefrontal site, with women showing greater positivity to unpleasant compared with pleasant slides while men had greater positivity to pleasant vs. neutral slides. Women, compared with men, perceived all slides as less pleasant and reported greater arousal to unpleasant condition. Results are in line with known functional brain differences, at level of limbic and paralimbic structures, between men and women, and point to biologically grounded greater sensitivity and vulnerability of women to adverse/stressful events.

Absorption in music: Development of a scale to identify individuals with strong emotional responses to music

Despite the rise in research investigating music and emotion over the last decade, there are no validated measures of individual differences in emotional responses to music. We created the Absorption in Music Scale (AIMS), a 34-item measure of individuals’ ability and willingness to allow music to draw them into an emotional experience. It was evaluated with a sample of 166 participants, and exhibits good psychometric properties. The scale converges well with measures of similar constructs, and shows reliability over time. Importantly, in a test of criterion validity, emotional responses to music were correlated with the AIMS scale but not correlated with measures of empathy or music training.

Status and inclusion, anger and sadness: Gendered responses to disrespect

AbstractSelf‐image is deeply affected by social evaluations. One source of evaluation is respect, individuals' perceptions of their inclusion within, and value to, the group. Despite the importance of respect to the self‐concept, the study of affective responses to disrespectful experiences has been largely neglected. A series of three studies focused on the following questions: (1) which emotions accompany the experience of disrespect? (2) how does gender influence emotional responses? and (3) how does disrespect differ emotionally from other interpersonal evaluations (i.e., disliking)? Results shed light on gender differences in emotional responses to disrespect, with men appearing to be more concerned with respect and responding to disrespect with more anger, whereas women were more likely to be sad. Implications for the study of respect and disrespect as social evaluations, and sex differences in reactions to these evaluations, are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Emotional Processing in Categorization: Understanding the Cognitive Structure of the Self

The present study examines the cognitive-affective processes underlying compartmentalized and integrative self-structures by assessing the tendency to use emotional qualities of stimuli as a basis for categorization in a concept triad task (Niedenthal, Halberstadt, Innes-Ker, 1999). As predicted, individuals with evaluatively compartmentalized self-structures judged concepts sharing the same emotional quality (i.e., sadness, happiness, or fear) as more similar than did individuals with evaluatively integrative selves, suggesting that compartmentalization is associated with heightened emotional responses to affective stimuli. Compartmentalized self-structures may reflect underlying differences in emotional responses (or attention to them), not only to information that is explicitly self-relevant, but to a broad range of affective stimuli.

Patterns of emotional experience in schizophrenia: Differences in emotional response to visual stimuli are associated with clinical presentation and functional outcome

The current study examined whether patterns of emotional response are differentially associated with symptom presentation and functional outcome in individuals with schizophrenia. Participants included 49 outpatients with schizophrenia and 50 demographically matched controls. All participants rated their emotional response to 131 images from the International Affective Picture Systems (IAPS) library on both arousal and valence scales. Stimuli were split into categories of positive versus negatively valenced stimuli based on control subject ratings. Cluster analysis was used to assess whether there were reliably distinct patterns of emotional response within the patient sample. Follow-up discriminant function analysis indicated that these groups were adequately separated. Sixty percent of the individuals with schizophrenia rated valence and arousal similarly to healthy subjects, while 40% displayed an atypical profile. Schizophrenia sub-groups classified by these two emotional response styles significantly differed on measures of functional outcome, severity of negative symptoms, and self-reported anhedonia. Findings are discussed in relation to current theories of emotional experience in schizophrenia.

Support-vector-based emergent self-organising approach for emotional understanding

This study discusses the computational analysis of general emotion understanding from questionnaires methodology. The questionnaires method approaches the subject by investigating the real experience that accompanied the emotions, whereas the other laboratory approaches are generally associated with exaggerated elements. We adopted a connectionist model called support-vector-based emergent self-organising map (SVESOM) to analyse the emotion profiling from the questionnaires method. The SVESOM first identifies the important variables by giving discriminative features with high ranking. The classifier then performs the classification based on the selected features. Experimental results show that the top rank features are in line with the work of Scherer and Wallbott [(1994), ‘Evidence for Universality and Cultural Variation of Differential Emotion Response Patterning’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 310–328], which approached the emotions physiologically. While the performance measures show that using the full features for classifications can degrade the performance, the selected features provide superior results in terms of accuracy and generalisation.

Emotion control values and responding to an anger provocation in Asian-American and European-American individuals

The present research examined whether Asian-American (AA) versus European-American (EA) women differed in experiential, expressive, or autonomic physiological responding to a laboratory anger provocation and assessed the mediating role of values about emotional control. Results indicate that AA participants reported and behaviourally displayed less anger than EA participants, while there were no group differences in physiological responses. Observed differences in emotional responses were partially mediated by emotion control values, suggesting a potential mechanism for effects of cultural background on anger responding.

Decreased self-reported arousal in schizophrenia during aversive picture viewing compared to bipolar disorder and healthy controls

Both schizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) are associated with disturbances in emotion processing. Previous studies suggest that patients with SCZ assess unpleasant pictures as less arousing than healthy controls (HC), while patients with BD assess neutral pictures as more arousing than HC. No previous studies have investigated whether there is a difference in emotional response across all three groups. Our aim was to explore whether there was a difference in the evaluation of valence and in arousal between SCZ, BD and HC for aversive and neutral pictures. We showed 72 pictures (neutral, non-socially aversive and socially aversive) from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) to 347 subjects. There was a clear interaction effect between the diagnostic group and increasing picture aversiveness for both valence and arousal. There were no significant differences in valence ratings between the different groups or in arousal ratings on any type of stimuli between BD patients and HC. However, SCZ patients reported significantly lower arousal for aversive stimuli, particularly with a social content, when compared to BD patients and HC. This was more pronounced in females. The presence of lifetime psychotic symptoms did not influence emotional responses.

Temporal precedence of emotion over attention modulations in the lateral amygdala: Intracranial ERP evidence from a patient with temporal lobe epilepsy

Previous fMRI studies have reported mixed evidence for the influence of selective attention on amygdala responses to emotional stimuli, with some studies showing "automatic" emotional effects to threat-related stimuli without attention (or even without awareness), but other studies showing a gating of amygdala activity by selective attention with no response to unattended stimuli. We recorded intracranial local field potentials from the intact left lateral amygdala in a human patient prior to surgery for epilepsy and tested, with a millisecond time resolution, for neural responses to fearful faces appearing at either task-relevant or task-irrelevant locations. Our results revealed an early emotional effect in the amygdala arising prior to, and independently of, attentional modulation. However, at a later latency, we found a significant modulation of the differential emotional response when attention was directed toward or away from fearful faces. These results suggest separate influences of emotion and attention on amygdala activation and may help reconcile previous discrepancies concerning the relative responsiveness of the human amygdala to emotional and attentional factors.

Commentary

The study was to determine the emotional response among autism and typically developing children in Malaysia. 50 autism and 50 typically developing children with age ranged 8 to 12 years old were participated in this study. The emotional response measured by Mood and Feelings Questionnaire Short (MFQS) - parent version. The descriptive data and Independent T-Test had shown that there was a significant difference in emotional response between autism and typically. The study concluded emotional response shown a difference between autism and typically developing children. Future research needs to develop the intervention on an emotional response to enhancing the quality of life among autism.

Cultural differences in emotional responses to success and failure

The emotional responses to achievement contexts of 149 preschool children from three cultural groups were observed. The children were Japanese (N = 32), African American (N = 63) and White American of mixed European ancestry (N = 54). The results showed that Japanese children differed from American children in expressing less shame, pride, and sadness, but more of both exposure and evaluative embarrassment. African American and White American children did not differ from one another. American children however showed more evaluative as opposed to exposure embarrassment. This finding supports the idea that success and failure are interpreted differently by Japanese children during the preschool years. The low amount of sadness and shame expression, and the limited range of number of different expressions observed in the Japanese children agree with the general finding that East Asian infants and young children differ from Western infants and children primarily in the display of negative expressions. These results demonstrate that cultural differences, whether due to temperament or direct socialization of cultural values, influence how children respond to achievement situations.

Differential Emotional Responses of Varsity Athletes to Concussion and Musculoskeletal Injuries

To determine if athletes with concussion and those with minor musculoskeletal injuries experienced differential emotional response to injury. A prospective longitudinal cohort study. University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Thirty-four injured athletes from Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) and 19 healthy, physically active undergraduate students participated in the study. All participants completed the Profile of Mood States (POMS; short version) on 3 nonconsecutive days during a 2-week period after a baseline test. Emotional responses were assessed using the POMS. The 7 main outcome measures assessed by POMS were tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, confusion, and total mood disturbance. After injury, concussion produced an emotional profile characterized by significantly elevated fatigue and decreased vigor. In contrast, athletes with musculoskeletal injuries displayed a significant increase in anger that resolved to a pre-injury level within 2 weeks. The results revealed that both injured groups experienced emotional disturbance after injury. More importantly, the findings strongly suggest that the emotional reaction after concussion is different from that of musculoskeletal injury. Therefore, we concluded that assessing emotional reactions to concussion is particularly important and recommend that sports medicine professionals assess and monitor emotional functioning as well as somatic complaints and neurocognitive changes during recovery.

Birth spacing in the mouse communal nest shapes adult emotional and social behavior

The interactions with the mother and with peers are among the most relevant early environmental factors shaping adult brain function and behavior. In order to investigate the role of these factors, we exploited a novel early manipulation, the Communal Nest (CN), consisting in a single nest where three mothers give birth, keep their pups and share care-giving behavior from birth to weaning. In particular, we reared CD-1 swiss mice in three different CN conditions, each one characterized by a different interval between the three deliveries (Birth Spacing) of 3, 5 or 7 days (respectively, CN ± 3, CN ± 5, CN ± 7). Length of birth spacing affected maternal behavior, CN ± 7 pups receiving the highest levels. At adulthood, mice reared in the different conditions showed differences in emotional response and social skills. In the plus maze test, short birth spacing was found to be associated with enhanced emotionality, CN ± 3 mice showing highest levels of anxiety-like responses in the plus maze compared to the other two CN groups. In the social interaction test, the strategies to achieve dominance differed among the three groups. While CN ± 3 mice appeared to have a more aggressive strategy, displaying high levels of attack behavior in the first encounter, CN ± 5 and CN ± 7 mice displayed a more affiliative strategy based on social investigation. Overall, these findings show that birth spacing shapes the early mouse social environment and, in turn, affects the development of social skills and emotional responses.