Dominant Emotion Research Articles

‘What is to be Done When the Motherland Has Died?’ The Moods and Attitudes of Poles After the Third Partition, 1795–1806

Literary scholars who have examined the reactions of Polish writers to the third and final partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795 have concluded that the dominant emotion of the first twelve years was despair, producing a moral desert, ruled by violence and treason. Most historians, in contrast, have emphasized cases of Polish resistance to foreign rule during the first years of statelessness. This article draws on a wide range of sources to present a more nuanced picture of Polish moods and attitudes in this period, especially in the lands annexed by the Russian Empire. A range of motivations emerges from the oaths of loyalty taken by the nobility to their new rulers. Military service in the service of one of the partitioning powers was at the time widely considered to be one of the more acceptable paths taken by those Poles who did not continue the struggle for national independence in exile. The article concludes that, by the time Napoleonic victories had changed the political outlook in 1806, the initial crisis of national consciousness had already been overcome, and that the existence of a Polish state was no longer the conditio sine qua non of the nation’s survival.

Micro and Macro Causes of Violence

The dominant emotion in violence-threatening situations is confrontational tension/fear (ct/f), which causes most violence to abort, or to be carried out inaccurately and incompetently. For violence to be successful, there must be a pathway around the barrier of ct/f. These pathways include: attacking the weak; audience-oriented staged and controlled fair fights; confrontation-avoiding remote violence; confrontation-avoiding by deception; confrontation-avoiding by absorption in technique. Successfully violent persons, on both sides of the law, are those who have developed these skilled interactional techniques. Since successful violence involves dominating the emotional attention space, only a small proportion of persons can belong to the elite which does most of each type of violence. Macro-violence, including victory and defeat in war, and in struggles of paramilitaries and social movements, is shaped by both material resources and social/emotional resources for maintaining violent organizations and forcing their opponents into organizational breakdown. Social and emotional destruction generally precedes physical destruction.

Facial Expression Processing Varies with Political Affiliation

AbstractConservative political beliefs have been linked to heightened stress reactivity and protective cognitive biases. Using a facial discrimination task designed to measure perceptions of threat (vs. non threat) and dominance (vs. submissiveness), I show that Republicans demonstrate a greater tendency to interpret ambiguous facial stimuli as expressing more threatening and more dominant emotions than do Democrats. The findings suggest the political ideology may be associated with basic social perceptual sensitivities.

Relations among mothers' expressivity, children's effortful control, and their problem behaviors: a four-year longitudinal study.

Longitudinal relations between mothers' expressivity, children's effortful control, and their problem behaviors were examined when children (N = 181) were 6.5-10 years old (T2) and again 2 (T3) and 4 (T4) years later. Mothers reported on their expression of positive and negative dominant emotion. Mothers and teachers reported on children's effortful control and externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. In structural equation models, variables exhibited consistency over time. Further, the relation between mothers' expressivity (positive minus negative dominant emotion) at T2 and children's externalizing problems at T4 was mediated by T3 effortful control. The same process of mediation was significant for teacher- but not mother-reported internalizing problems. The results provide one explanation for how emotion-related socializing behaviors influence children's problem behaviors.

The role of emotions in employees' explanations for failure in the workplace

PurposeThe paper aims to study how shame, guilt and fear experienced by failing employees determine their explanation of the failure.Design/methodology/approachEmployees participated in two studies, one assessing actual personal examples of failures and another used imaginary vignettes. To manipulate the extent to which guilt or shame was the dominant emotion experienced by the failing employee, participants were asked to generate counterfactual thoughts typical of each of these feelings. Fear was manipulated by describing a threatening atmosphere in the organization. Measured was the likelihood that the employee took responsibility for what happened and provided a valid explanation. Likelihood of explaining the event by using excuses, justifications, concessions or denials was also measured.FindingsFindings indicate guilt was associated with explanations that help the organization learn from the failure and assist employees in restoring their relationships with the organization and co‐workers. Heightened levels of fear, however, decreased this desirable effect of guilt. Shame had no unique contribution to an employee's choice of explanations.Research limitations/implicationsThe use of self‐reports and vignettes limits the ecological validity of the present findings. Nevertheless, it provides preliminary evidence for the importance of the factors under study.Practical implicationsThese findings contribute to an understanding of the ways organizations can provide emotional settings conductive to constructive failure inquiries both for organizations and employees.Originality/valueThe role emotions play in explanation of failures is an understudied issue both in social psychology and organizational research. The present study opens an avenue for more studies in this direction.

The relations of parental expressivity and support to children's coping with daily stress.

The relations of parents' emotional expressivity, mothers' support, and children's daily stress to children's constructive coping were examined in a sample of ninety-four 7- to 12-year-old children. For 2 weeks, children, together with their mothers, completed daily diaries of their stressful events. Mothers and fathers reported on their expression of positive, negative submissive, and negative dominant emotion. Although fathers' expressivity was not related to children's constructive coping, mothers' expression of negative emotion, particularly negative dominant emotion, was negatively related to children's constructive coping. Children's stress was negatively related to their constructive coping, and this relation was stronger for children exposed to low levels of parents' positive emotion and mothers' expression of negative submissive emotion. Children's constructive coping was positively related to mothers' supportive strategies.

The significant dream as emblem of uniqueness: The fertilizer does not explain the flower.

Recent, renewed attention to “big” or significant dreams calls into question many widely held assumptions about dreams. This essay focuses on the assumption that dreams can be accounted for in terms of the dominant emotions and concerns of the dreamer at the time of the dream. That assumption is found to be inadequate to account for at least some significant dream experiences. Archetypal psychology's aesthetic, phenomenological approach to dreams is presented as providing an instructive, illuminating alternative for understanding the on-going significance of significant dreams.

Psychopathological correlates of contextualized images in dreams.

A contextualized image is a powerful central image in a dream which provides a picture context for the dominant emotion of the dreamer. This study examined the psychopathological correlates of both dream and nightmare contextualized images in a community-based sample of 378. As predicted, mean nightmare contextualized image scores were significantly higher than mean dream scores. In addition, while dream contextualized images were unrelated to psychopathology, nightmare contextualized images were significantly associated with elevated scores on three SCL-90-R subscales and the General Symptom Distress Index.

Predicting Emotions in Groups: Some Lessons from September 11

First, this chapter examines the emotional responses of 10 different publics to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Through the application of power/status theory (Kemper, 1978), different publics are hypothesized to have different emotions. In all, six emotions—anger, sadness, fear, joy, guilt and shame—are differentially attributed to the ten publics. Second, this chapter inquires into the efficacy of predicting emotions for both individuals and groups. Predictions for individuals may have somewhat greater utility, given that they provide for enlightenment and control, but for both individuals and groups, emotions may be seen as intervening variables of relatively low sociological value. It would be more important sociologically to know the coping responses the emotions lead to. Here theory is relatively scant. Four structural conditions are proposed that may advance understanding of how, under certain conditions, emotions may lead to sociologically relevant coping. Finally, this chapter considers some differences between individual emotions and what may be called ‘group’ emotions. The principle difference is that individuals, even when emotionally conflicted, experience emotions in their entirety, while groups usually experience a division of labour of the emotion, with different members differentially invested in what can be seen as the dominant emotion of the group. Unlike in individuals, where conflicting emotions are likely to be resolved by a coping response that attempts to accommodate the competing emotions, group coping responses unfold in a social process that is sometimes violent, as different factions compete to establish their emotions and preferred coping responses as conclusive for the entire group.

Contextualizing images in dreams: More intense after abuse and trauma.

A contextualizing image (CI) is a powerful central image in a dream which can be seen as picturing, or providing a picture-context for, the dominant emotion of the dreamer. Thus the paradigmatic dream, “I was overwhelmed by a tidal wave,” contextualizes the dominant emotion of fear/terror or helplessness. This study examined the question of whether CIs, scored on a blind basis, are especially frequent and intense in persons who have suffered abuse, and in persons who have suffered a recent acute trauma.

Trauma Stories: Violence, Emotion and Politics in Somali Ethiopia

This article draws on ethnographic material from Ethiopia to address two ways of making sense of violence and death: individual psychological trauma, in one society’s domain of psychological medicine, and personal and collective injury, in another society’s domain of politics. Both approaches entail theories of emotion and human nature. Both are embedded in social relations and have implications at individual, social and political levels. Among Somalis in Ethiopia, war-related distress is not interpreted in a medical framework aimed at healing. Rather, such violence is predominantly assimilated into the framework of Somali politics, in which individual injuries are considered injuries to a lineage or other defined group. The dominant emotion in this context is not sadness or fear, but anger, which has emotional, political and material importance in validating individuals as members of a group sharing mutual rights and obligations. Before advocating trauma-based models of war-related distress, researchers and practitioners should consider whether a medical framework would do better at helping individuals and communities to deal with distress and reconstruct meaningful lives and relationships in circumstances of longstanding collective violence.

Acute stress response patterns to accidental injuries

We examined, by means of clinical interviews and several self-report measures (IES, STAI), 110 accident victims’ primary appraisal of injury during five different timepoints before, during, and immediately after the accident. The appraisals were combined with the corresponding most dominant emotion in a matrix, revealing six different acute stress response patterns: ordinary (O: 64 subjects—58%); emotional (E: 19 subjects—17%); controlled (C: 9 subjects—8%); derealization (D: 15 subjects—14%); and denial–elation (DE: 3 subjects—3%). The E response pattern was associated with being female (RR 3.31). Psychopathology at the time of the injury or risk of death during the accident increased the risk for a D or E response (RR 1.61 and RR 1.92, respectively). The presence of psychophysiological symptoms or reduced appetite during the hospital stay was associated with E, C, or D response patterns compared with an O pattern (RR 1.76 and RR 2.18, respectively). A DE response was associated with severe brain injury partly undetected by the surgeons. We conclude that the identification of different clinical response patterns may be a meaningful approach to better tailor response-specific interventions for trauma victims.

Professional Conferences and the American Visual Arts

Katherine E. Manthorne Meetings and conferences: they have become fixtures of modern professional life. Contemporary fiction writers David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury, and James Hynes make conferences the improbable setting for highly comical and deeply troubling stories. Sometimes we return from conventions greatly stimulated; other times we complain of being conferenced out.' We swear that we'll never attend another one. And yet next year we're right back again, name tags firmly affixed to our chests, throwing back plastic cups of bad white wine, and arguing the fine points of the papers presented. These events obviously stir deep responses. Given the central role that the annual conference plays in the life of an organization, it is little wonder that its members are so deeply invested in its success. We expect them to fulfill such a variety of needs: a pilgrimage site in a secular world, a rite of passage for newcomers to the field, an instrument of career advancement, an ego booster, an opportunity for travel and new contacts, and the testing ground for current research and publications. It seems worthwhile then to stop and consider the relation between conference opportunities and the study of American visual culture. Attending one's first professional conclave is one of those times in life indelibly inscribed-for better or for worse-in one's memory. I recall making the short pilgrimage from Morningside Heights to a midtown Manhattan hotel for my initiation into the College Art Association (hereafter CAA) annual conference. As a novice, I was very much an observer, seemingly invisible to the participants who rushed back and forth along the corridors between sessions or lingered after hours in the lobby, trying to catch some eyes and to avoid others. But in some ways the outsider status only added to the intensity of the experience. One paper struck me as more stimulating and wittily delivered than the next; attendees appeared so stylish and confident; and the legendary figures in the field were even more impressive than I had imagined. These recollections may sound more like those of a rock-star groupie than of a serious art historian, but colleagues assure me that-however much we may have tried to hide it-awe mixed with anxiety were the dominant emotions of this rite of passage. All too soon, however, that rosy glow fades. With the first academic post comes the pressure to publish and its corollary, to deliver papers at major conferences, and so they become first and foremost tools of job advancement. More savvy to the intellectual and social politics of our area of specialization, we analyze the program sessions more critically. We moan, we complain, we boycott meetings; we are now full-grown professionals, with different stakes in the field. This progression, it seems, represents the natural order of things.

The effect of disgust‐eliciting visuals on attitudes toward animal experimentation

Despite its obvious intersection with classic fear‐inducing stimuli, like rotting teeth and diseased lungs, disgust as a discrete emotion has been all but ignored in the persuasion literature. This study marks an initial effort to explore the effect of disgust as the dominant emotion evoked by a persuasive appeal on attitude change. 134 college students viewed one of four versions of a two‐sided refutational video message arguing in favor of animal experimentation. Visuals in the video's counterargument section were manipulated to show more or less disgusting images of animal experimentation. Visuals in the video's rebuttal section were manipulated to show more or less emotional images defending the medical research position. Results suggest that disgust can be the most dominant emotion elicited by a persuasive message and that disgust may either enhance or inhibit attitude change, depending on the context in which the emotion is used. Further research should consider more specifically the conditions under which disgust may induce persuasion and the cognitive processes through which such effects might occur.

Nightmare after Trauma as Paradigm for All Dreams: A New Approach to the Nature and Functions of Dreaming

Nightmares, far from being unsuccessful dreams or exceptions to rules about dreams, can be considered paradigms for all dreaming. They allow us to follow exactly how a disturbance or perturbation is handled by the processing systems in our minds. The data considered here consists of dream series in the weeks and months immediately following trauma in adults--in other words, nightmares and dreams occurring as the trauma resolves. It appears the traumatized person may dream first about the actual trauma (though not always), then, very quickly, the dreams appear to deal with the dominant emotion. Dreams of being overwhelmed by a tidal wave or being swept up by a whirlwind are common after almost any trauma. Clearly, such dreams are not about the sensory input from the actual trauma. Rather, the dreams are about the dominant emotion. The dreams contextualize (find a picture context for) the emotional concern. After trauma, the dominant emotion is usually first terror and fear, then often followed by guilt (such as survivor guilt). This too is pictured in the dream series. The same pattern of contextualizing an emotional concern can be seen in stressful situations, in pregnancy, or in patients whose lives are dominated by one emotion. This pattern is paradigmatic for all dreams, but it may be difficult to detect in "ordinary" dreams, because there may be a number of other relatively smaller emotional concerns present, as opposed to the one clear-cut dominant one (as after trauma). A theory of dreaming is sketched out based on these data which suggests that overall dreaming makes connections more broadly than waking in the nets of the mind, and that the connections are not made randomly but guided by the dreamer's emotional concerns. It is also suggested that the making of connections may be functional for the organism in the sense of "weaving in," or integrating, new material.

Dominance, sexual activity, and sexual emotions

Men's interest in sex partners' status traits and commitment (investment thoughts) declines with number of sex partners and permissiveness of attitudes; women's investment thoughts do not seem to decline. Testosterone, dominance, sexual attractiveness, and number of sex partners are correlated in men but not in women. It is plausible that these sex differences are part of sexually dimorphic feedback systems. This type of feedback is consistent with both reciprocal and basal models of testosterone.

The Teacher as Bag Lady

At the end of what Walker Percy (1983) calls the Century of the Self, we are painfully aware of a diminishment, what Wesley Kort has called the shriven self and Christopher Lasch has called the minimal self.1 dominant emotion of such a being is dis appointment. For Percy, we are in the Cosmos because of our fundamental predicament as self-conscious sign-mak ers who are unintelligible to ourselves. He writes, The self of the sign-user can never be grasped, because, once the self locates itself at the dead center of its world, there is no signified to which a signifier can be joined to make a sign. self has no sign of itself. No signifier applies. All signifiers apply equally (107). Indeed, in a postmodern world, there may not even be any self left?only an empty self to be filled by the endless con sumption of the products of the culture industry. Accordingly, we occupy sub ject positions rather than maintain a coherent self. In some discourses, we are described as linguistically constituted and disseminated human subjects. Is that reassuring? I am not sure. In any event, here are one lost and homeless teacher's meditations upon teaching and learning, a quester for helpful images or metaphors for teaching in a time of bewilderment and challenge. Joyful melancholy indeed!

The Relations of Maternal Practices and Characteristics to Children's Vicarious Emotional Responsiveness

This study examined the relations of maternal vicarious emotional responding and child-rearing practices, as well as familial emotional environment, to 5-6 and 8-9-year-old children's vicarious emotional responding. There were some correspondences between mothers' and children's heart rate, facial, and self-reported reactions to a sympathy-inducing film. Maternal sympathy/perspective taking and reinforcement of sympathy/prosocial behavior, as well as negative subordinate emotion in the home, were associated with markers of girls' sympathy; mothers' personal distress (for girls), restrictiveness regarding displays of hurtful negative emotions (particularly for young girls), and negative dominant emotion in the home (for both sexes) were associated with markers of personal distress. Mothers' linking of the film character's experience to children's own experience was associated with children's responsiveness to the film, and mother's verbalizations during the film concerning her own emotional state and role taking were associated with boys' self-reported sympathy.

Repression at encoding: discrete appraisals of emotional stimuli.

In previous research, the emotions associated with repressors' memorial representations were found to be more discrete than those associated with nonrepressors'. In each of the 3 experiments reported here, repressive discreteness was apparent in repressors' appraisals of emotional stimuli at the time they were encoded. In 1 experiment, Ss appraised individual facial expressions of emotion. Repressors judged the dominant emotions in these faces as no less intense than did nonrepressors, but they appraised the blend of nondominant emotions as less intense than did nonrepressors. In the remaining 2 experiments, Ss appraised crowds of emotional faces as well as crowds of geometric shapes. In both crowd experiments, the repressive discreteness was evident in appraisals of crowds of emotional faces but not in appraisals of crowds of geometric shapes. The repressive discreteness effect did not appear to reflect a general repressor-nonrepressor difference in the appraisal of stimulus features. Rather, the results suggested that repressive discreteness may be constrained to appraisals of emotions.

Interactive perceptions of suppliers and corporate clients in the marketing of professional services: A comparison of accounting and legal services in the UK, Canada and Sweden

Any service offering depends, for its long‐term success, on the dyadic relationship which exists between a supplier and a client. For corporate clients, a positive and proactive approach by a supplier can enhance a relationship both in the initial stages and later, as the relationship develops. Professional services are no exception, perhaps because, in the longer term, both parties can contribute to a situation where “peace of mind” is the dominant emotion. However, such a generalisation may not be true for all professional services nor over a range of countries where currently, many changing environmental factors such as regulations, image and technology, are creating a climate which may result in different perceptions within a relationship. This article attempts to measure and compare these differences using suppliers and corporate clients of two specific categories of professional services, namely, legal and accounting services, in each of three countries, Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It att...