Emotional Attributes Research Articles

My computer is more thoughtful than you: Loneliness, anthropomorphism and dehumanization

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions and intentions to non-human entities. The inverse process of anthropomorphism is dehumanization in which individuals treat humans like animals or objects. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether there are relationships between loneliness, anthropomorphism, and dehumanization. Study 1 (N = 91) employed the UCLA loneliness scale in order to examine the extent to which subjective experiences of loneliness related to the tendency to describe nonhuman agents (i.e., animal, computer) with humanlike characteristics. Participants attributed more humanlike capacities to nonhuman agents with increasing levels of self-rated loneliness. Study 2 (N = 70) induced the emotion of loneliness using an experimental writing task and examined whether there were significant differences in anthropomorphism and dehumanization between the experimental condition of loneliness and the control condition. Results found participants tended to perceive nonhuman agents to be more humanlike in the condition of loneliness than in the control condition. In addition, there was a stronger tendency of dehumanization toward other humans in the condition of loneliness than in the control condition. This implies that anthropomorphism is related to sociality motivation, which is the need for social connection through establishing bonds with nonhumans, and may result in the dehumanization of other humans.

Music of brain and music on brain: a novel EEG sonification approach.

Can we hear the sound of our brain? Is there any technique which can enable us to hear the neuro-electrical impulses originating from the different lobes of brain? The answer to all these questions is YES. In this paper we present a novel method with which we can sonify the electroencephalogram (EEG) data recorded in"control" state as well as under the influence of a simple acoustical stimuli-a tanpura drone. The tanpura has a very simple construction yet the tanpura drone exhibitsvery complex acoustic features, which is generally used for creation of an ambience during a musical performance. Hence, for this pilot project we chose to study the nonlinear correlations between musical stimulus (tanpura drone as well as music clips) and sonified EEG data. Till date, there have been no study which deals with the direct correlation between a bio-signal and its acoustic counterpart and also tries to see how that correlation varies under the influence of different types of stimuli. This study tries to bridge this gap and looks for a direct correlation between music signal and EEG data using a robust mathematical microscope called Multifractal Detrended Cross Correlation Analysis (MFDXA). For this, we took EEG data of 10 participants in 2min "control condition" (i.e. with white noise) and in 2min 'tanpura drone' (musical stimulus) listening condition. The same experimental paradigm was repeated for two emotional music, "Chayanat" and "Darbari Kanada". These are well known Hindustani classical ragas which conventionally portray contrast emotional attributes, also verified from human response data. Next, the EEG signals from different electrodes were sonified and MFDXA technique was used to assess the degree of correlation (or the cross correlation coefficient γx) between the EEG signals and the music clips. The variation of γx for different lobes of brain during the course of the experiment provides interesting new information regarding the extraordinary ability of music stimuli to engage several areas of the brain significantly unlike anyother stimuli (which engages specific domains only).

Images that Matter: Online Protests and the Mobilizing Role of Pictures

Do images affect online political mobilization? If so, how? These questions are of fundamental importance to scholars of social movements, contentious politics, and political behavior generally. However, little prior work has systematically addressed the role of images in mobilizing online participation in social movements. We first confirm that images have a positive mobilizing effect in the context of online protest activity. We then argue that images are mobilizing because they trigger stronger emotional reactions than text. Building on existing political psychology models, we theorize that images evoking enthusiasm, anger, and fear should be particularly mobilizing, while sadness should be demobilizing. We test the argument through a study of Twitter activity related to a Black Lives Matter protest. We find that both images in general and some of the proposed emotional attributes (enthusiasm and fear) contribute to online participation. The results hold when controlling for alternative theoretical mechanisms for why images should be mobilizing, and for the presence of frequent image features. Our paper provides evidence supporting the broad argument that images increase the likelihood of a protest to spread online while teasing out the mechanisms at play in a new media environment.

Measuring dynamics of emotions evoked by the packaging colour of hamburgers using Temporal Dominance of Emotions (TDE).

The packaging colour is one of the main extrinsic factors related to sensory perception as it can alter the emotions evoked by the product and, therefore, influence the moment of purchasing a product. There are several methods used to analyse emotions, but the Temporal Dominance of Emotions (TDE) approach stands out. This method allows the study of the temporality of dominant emotions until eating a portion of the hamburger. The aim of this work was to use TDE and overall acceptance to study the dynamic of the emotions evoked by the packaging colour of hamburgers, from first sight of the packaging until eating of a portion of hamburger. The twelve attributes of emotion, determined previously via a focus group, were presented to the consumers to evaluate three different stimuli formed by three different coloured packaging (green, white and red) and the same hamburger. The results showed that acceptance alone is not sufficient to understand the choice of a product, most likely because it does not capture the emotions involved in the consumption of a hamburger. Significant differences were found in the dynamic perception of emotions influenced by the packaging colour along time, mainly during the first "packaging - consumer" contact. Finally, the study of the dynamics of emotions provided valuable and complementary information to overall acceptance.

Using temporal dominance of emotions at home. Impact of coffee advertisements on consumers’ behavior and methodological perspectives

During the last decade, Temporal Dominance of Sensations (TDS) has been used successfully to describe food products dynamically in a large set of studies (Schlich, 2017). Recently, Temporal Dominance of Emotions (TDE; Jager et al., 2014) was proposed as an extension of TDS, replacing sensory attributes with emotions. Until now, TDE methodology has been applied only to evaluate food products with uncontrolled underlying stimuli and intrinsic complexity.The present paper reports a new application of TDE in which perceived emotions are evaluated during video advertisements. By working on such a controlled stimulus, the objective of this study is to provide insights about the way the subjects dynamically relate their emotions during the viewing using a TDE-like protocol. Indeed, the dominance curves can be directly related to the scenes from the video signal.Two hundred and eighty-two naïve French subjects watched 3 video advertisements for coffees at home. They had to indicate the emotion they felt (among 9) at each moment of the advertisement and then score their brand image improvement (BII) and purchase intent (PI) of the product.On average, 3 distinct emotions were selected for a given subject during one viewing, meaning that a sequential selection of emotional attributes was possible for untrained subjects. Based on their temporal emotional profiles, the 3 advertisements were discriminated and TDE curves highlighted specific profiles closely related to BII and PI. Different emotional profiles were observed between consumers and non-consumers for one of the advertisement. Emotional drivers of BII and PI were also identified. Finally, this innovative TDE application on a video signal suggests methodological perspectives for sensory scientists interested in TDS-like protocols.

Personality assimilation across species: enfacing an ape reduces own intelligence and increases emotion attribution to apes

Seeing another person’s face while that face and one’s own face are stroked synchronously or controlling a virtual face by moving one’s own induces the illusion that the other face has become a part of oneself—the enfacement effect. Here, we demonstrate that humans can enface even members of another species and that this enfacement promotes “feature migration” in terms of intelligence and emotional attribution from the representation of other to the representation of oneself, and vice versa. We presented participants with a virtual human face moving in or out of sync with their own face, and then morphed it into an ape face. Participants tended to perceive the ape face as their own in the sync condition, as indicated by body-ownership and inclusion-of-others-in-the-self ratings. More interestingly, synchrony also reduced performance in a fluid-intelligence task and increased the willingness to attribute emotions to apes. These observations, which fully replicated in another experiment, fit with the idea that self and other are represented in terms of feature codes, just like non-social events (as implied by the Theory of Event Coding), so that representational self–other overlap invites illusory conjunctions of features from one representation to the other.

TELL (Technology-enhanced Language Learning) in Iranian High Schools: A Panacea for Emotional and Motivational Detriments

Recent expansions in technological tools are shifting the direction of foreign-language education. A plethora of EFL research studies suggested that the benefits of TELL (technology-enhanced language learning) embrace a wide array of cognitive, motivational, and emotional attributes. English language teaching in Iran has recently undergone a host of rapid changes. The most apparent change was that the traditional grammar-based instruction left its place to communicative-oriented approaches. As a result, teachers needed extra aids to provide learners with the desired environments and foster exposure to authentic materials. In this regard, multimedia techniques (MTs) offer wide range of facilities in high speed and effective information processing. The purpose of this study was to examine the possible impact of MTs in high schools on students’ L2 learning attitudes, anxiety, and language proficiency. To do so, the researchers adopted a mixed-methods design integrating experimental and interview analyses. The sample of the study consisted of 124 female students from Motahhareh high school in Mashhad, a city in Northeast of Iran. Twelve items out of Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self- system scale were picked to measure attitudes to L2 learning and L2 anxiety. The Babel test was employed for gauging participants’ language proficiency. The sample was divided into two experimental and two control groups. The participants in experimental and control groups were provided with the same materials and instruction. The point of difference lay in the mode of presenting the materials in experimental group, i.e. via multimedia techniques. In the second phase, a semi-structured interview was conducted with a number of students in experimental groups to delve into their attitudes and feedbacks concerning MT-based instruction. The results indicated that there were statistically significant differences in students’ L2 learning attitudes, anxiety, and language proficiency in favor of the experimental group. In the light of the obtained results, the study presented a number of practical and accessible recommendations for implementing multimedia in teaching English.

Attributional style of emotions and its relationship with users’ search behaviour

This study aimed to assess the users’ style of attribution of emotions in information retrieval process based on Weiner’s attribution theory of emotion. The research method in the present research is descriptive and the type of study is practical. The population of this study consisted of MA students of different humanistic science branches studying at Imam-Reza International University. A sample of 72 students was selected. The required information were collected through a questionnaire of attribution style and two researcher-made questionnaires. Results showed that the majority of the users attributed their failure and success in information retrieval to internal causes. Also according to Weiner’s theory, they mentioned ‘effort’ as a factor in their success and ‘inability’ and ‘inadequate effort’ as their main failure factors. Research showed that individuals who attribute their emotions to internal factors are more satisfied with their search. On the other hand, it was found that there is a significant relationship between the overall style of user’s attribution and their style of attribution in information retrieval.

Descrição de um Caso Envolvendo Marketing de Experiência Através de Patrocínio Esportivo no Segmento B2B

The objective of this paper is to describe the experiential marketing through sports sponsorship strategy used by a sporting goods trade company that act in a business-to-business relationship (B2B) context. This paper is based on authors who argue that in the relationships of the B2B segment, can be influenced by emotional attributes and the evidence that sports sponsorship is a way to communicate these attributes. From the Content Analysis of semistructured interviews, four categories were identified: 1) Organizational Culture of the Company; 2) Context and History of Sponsorship actions, 3) Sports Sponsorship; 4) Returns with Experiential Marketing, where the considerations point out that Experiential Marketing through a sport sponsorship in the B2B context must count on professionalism, consistency between the corporate culture and sponsored object, as well as establishing action plans so that the desired return is won.

Comunicação e Escuta

Este é um estudo teórico e empírico sobre a escuta, uma habilidade que implica em atributos cognitivos e emocionais do ouvinte. A resenha teórica mostra seus principais elementos e desafios. Eles dizem respeito a todo tipo de interlocução, como a conversação e a sintonia à mídia, por exemplo. Aplica-se aqui o questionário Hurier Listening Profile a 80 universitários. Os dados levantados mostram que a escuta enfrenta as maiores dificuldades entre os seis atributos cognitivos envolvidos na escuta. O estudo destaca também o papel das emoções na estimulação da atenção da audiência.

Heterogeneous Knowledge Transfer in Video Emotion Recognition, Attribution and Summarization

Emotion is a key element in user-generated videos. However, it is difficult to understand emotions conveyed in such videos due to the complex and unstructured nature of user-generated content and the sparsity of video frames expressing emotion. In this paper, for the first time, we study the problem of transferring knowledge from heterogeneous external sources, including image and textual data, to facilitate three related tasks in understanding video emotion: emotion recognition, emotion attribution and emotion-oriented summarization. Specifically, our framework (1) learns a video encoding from an auxiliary emotional image dataset in order to improve supervised video emotion recognition, and (2) transfers knowledge from an auxiliary textual corpora for zero-shot recognition of emotion classes unseen during training. The proposed technique for knowledge transfer facilitates novel applications of emotion attribution and emotion-oriented summarization. A comprehensive set of experiments on multiple datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework.

Descrição de um Caso Envolvendo Marketing de Experiência Através de Patrocínio Esportivo no Segmento B2B

The objective of this paper is to describe the experiential marketing through sports sponsorship strategy used by a sporting goods trade company that act in a business-to-business relationship (B2B) context. This paper is based on authors who argue that in the relationships of the B2B segment, can be influenced by emotional attributes and the evidence that sports sponsorship is a way to communicate these attributes. From the Content Analysis of semistructured interviews, four categories were identified: 1) Organizational Culture of the Company; 2) Context and History of Sponsorship actions, 3) Sports Sponsorship; 4) Returns with Experiential Marketing, where the considerations point out that Experiential Marketing through a sport sponsorship in the B2B context must count on professionalism, consistency between the corporate culture and sponsored object, as well as establishing action plans so that the desired return is won.

Children’s Act Evaluation and Emotion Attribution Reasoning Regarding Different Moral Transgressions

This study investigated patterns of reasoning regarding different types of moral transgressions and different measures of moral development in children 6–8 years of age (N = 130). The findings documented different patterns of reasoning for each measure and for transgressions including different moral principles. Children distinguished between their understanding of their emotional response to a transgression and the moral violation that has occurred, using much more moral reasoning when justifying act evaluations and much more self-interest reasoning when justifying emotion attributions. Children also differentiated between different types of moral violations—that is, transgressions including different moral principles. Stories about others’ welfare elicited reasoning related to others’ welfare, stories about fairness elicited reasoning related to equality/rights/fairness, and a multifaceted story elicited both types of moral reasoning.

S143. NEURAL CORRELATES OF INTENTION AND BELIEF INFERENCE RELATIVE TO EMOTION ATTRIBUTION TO OTHERS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND PSYCHOSIS PRONENESS: ACTIVATION LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION META-ANALYSIS

BackgroundSocial cognition can be briefly defined as the ability to interact with and understand others. It involves several cognitive processes that are considered as critical for an adapted social functioning. In patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and subjects prone to psychosis (PP), a number of studies have revealed impairments in the abilities to infer beliefs, intentions or emotions of others. Cognitive tasks specifically addressing these abilities have also revealed abnormal neural processing in these subjects. However, these studies have not yet been compared in order to identify shared or distinct functional brain networks underlying these processes in the two subject groups.Therefore, we aimed to determine whether the neurofunctional correlates of intention/belief attribution are distinct from those of emotional inference in SCZ and PP compared to healthy controls (HC). We further attempted to identify neuroimaging markers of psychosis endophenotype in mentalizing tasks. Finally, we examined shared and distinct brain regions involved in intention/belief attribution relative to emotional inference in SCZ.MethodsUsing a neural coordinate-based Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analysis, we investigated differences in activation patterns between intention/belief and emotion attributions to others in SCZ and PP relative to HC.ResultsWe selected 33 studies after a systematic review of the literature. Inferring intentions/beliefs in SCZ patients correlated with decreased functional activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and left posterior temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In PP subjects, precuneus, posterior cingulate gyrus, middle and superior temporal gyri displayed additional under-activation pattern, while posterior cingulate, right TPJ, left lateral PFC and insula were over-activated. In patients with SCZ thalamus and striatum, right dorsolateral PFC, right insula, and right transverse temporal gyrus were under-activated during emotion attribution to others, while left ventrolateral PFC, left insula, right lingual gyrus and areas in the cerebellum were over-activated. Finally, in PP subjects, right TPJ was under-activated while left parahippocampal, middle and superior temporal gyri, were over-activated during affective mentalizing. Conjunction analyses demonstrated under-activation in left rostral mPFC and left fusiform gyri in both SCZ and PP relative to HC during intention/belief inference tasks.DiscussionOur results suggest abnormal neural functioning in fast emotional appraisal and subsequent cognitive modulation during emotion perspective taking in SCZ. In PP, abnormal activation was observed only in cortical regions well known as recruited in emotional top-down regulation. When there is no emotional content in perspective taking like in intention/belief attribution to others, two core regions appeared as under-activated in SCZ and PP, namely left rostral portion of mPFC and, to a lesser extent, the left fusiform gyrus, suggesting that these two regions play a role in top-down modulation of cognitive mentalizing and could be neuroimaging markers of psychosis endophenotype. Thus, abnormal functioning in these specific brain areas could be a valuable predictor for developing schizophrenia in at-risk subjects. Moreover, these brain regions could be targeted by non-invasive neuromodulation techniques in order to restore cognitive function.

I believe; therefore, I work harder: The significance of reflective thinking on effort-making in academic failure in a Confucian-heritage cultural context

According to research, East Asian students tend to persist after academic failure. However, little research has explored the underlying mechanism of such persistence from the perspective of reflective thinking. Effort-related beliefs may play a key role in the reflection process. This study examined how effort beliefs affect attribution and affect, thereby contributing to students’ persistence in academic failure in the Confucian-heritage cultural context. A sample of 281 Taiwanese 10th graders was assessed concerning their effort beliefs, attribution of academic failure, negative emotions, and effortful behavior. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results indicated that those holding different effort beliefs experience different types of attribution and emotions. Improvement-oriented beliefs about effort were found to be associated with a lack of effort and induce participants’ indebtedness towards parents and self, which in turn motivates them to persist after academic failure. Obligation-oriented beliefs about effort trigger two paths, one through a sense of indebtedness that prompts subsequent effort-making and the other directly impacting such effortful actions without feelings of indebtedness. Theoretically, this study uncovered the psychological mechanism of reflective thinking after academic failure in a Confucian society such as Taiwan. Practically, the findings highlighted that constructive reflection after failure may provide students with strong motivation to persist and an opportunity for building character in the process of achieving future academic success.

Happier than thou? A self-enhancement bias in emotion attribution.

People tend to judge themselves as exhibiting above average levels of desirable traits-including competence, kindness, and life satisfaction-but does this self-enhancement extend to emotional responses? Here, we explore this question by having people attribute emotions to themselves and others following simple gambles. We demonstrate that people display an emotional self-enhancement bias that varies with the context of the emotion-eliciting situation. People judge themselves as experiencing more positive emotional reactions on average, and they also believed that others' emotions are more sensitive to gamble outcomes, such that people judge others to experience stronger negative affect in response to negative outcomes (Study 1). This self-enhancement bias further tracks social distance, such that people attribute less positive and more negative emotion to more dissimilar, as compared with more similar others (Study 2). People also predict less favorable emotional states for themselves and others experiencing events in the future, as compared with the present (Study 3), suggesting that this attribution bias extends across multiple dimensions of psychological distance. Broadly, these data suggest that people exhibit self-enhancement in emotion attribution, but do so in subtle ways that depend on situational and social factors. (PsycINFO Database Record

Neuropsychological correlates of cognitive, emotional-affective and auto-activation apathy in Alzheimer's disease

Apathy symptoms include different dimensions: cognitive (C), emotional-affective (E-Aff) and auto-activation; they have been related to dysfunctions of the dorsolateral, orbito-basal prefrontal cortex and the subcortical frontal connections to the basal ganglia, respectively. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), an association has been found between apathy severity and both executive deficits and atrophy of the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex; however, it is not clear whether these associations concern only the cognitive aspects of apathy. Furthermore, whether there is an association in AD between E-aff apathy and theory of mind (ToM),the cognitive functions subsumed by the orbito-basal prefrontal cortex, has not been investigated.Aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between C, E-Aff and auto-activation apathy and performance on tasks investigating executive and ToM cognitive functions in AD. For this purpose, 20 AD patients with apathy and 20 matched controls were submitted to an executive and ToM neuropsychological assessment. Apathy was assessed with a weekly diary (ApD) created specifically to assist caregivers in quantifying the C, E-Aff and auto-activation symptomatology of apathy. Correlational analyses showed that AD patients’ scores on the Modified Card Sorting Test (MCST) and Emotion Attribution tasks were correlated with most ApD scores. However, regression analyses showed that C diary scores were predicted by MCST performance, E-Aff diary scores by performance on the E-Attribution task and ApD scores measuring auto-activation apathy were predicted by both the MCST and the Emotion Attribution scores. These results confirm the co-occurrence of apathy and executive-function deficits in AD and suggest a specific association between AD patients’ executive deficits and the cognitive component of apathy. Furthermore, they document, for the first time, an association between poor performance on tests assessing ToM abilities and the emotional-affective component of apathy in AD patients. Finally, these results are in line with the view that auto-activation apathy reflects the sum of emotional and cognitive processing deficits.

Investigating antecedents and outcome of telepresence on a hotel’s website

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationships among sensory, emotional and cognitive attributes on a hotel’s website, customers’ telepresence, their attitudes toward the hotel’s website, brand attitudes and their behavioral intentions, based on telepresence and parasocial interaction theories as theoretical backgrounds.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional, online, self-administered survey was conducted to examine the proposed framework from previous hotel guests in the USA, who booked the hotel via its website within the previous 12 months.FindingsResults identified sensory and emotional attributes influenced customers’ telepresence; however, cognitive attributes did not affect telepresence on the hotel’s website. Telepresence then influenced customers’ attitudes toward the hotel’s website and their behavioral intentions. Both attitudes toward the hotel’s website and brand attitudes influenced customers’ behavioral intentions.Originality/valueThis study was the first study to propose the telepresence model in the hotel website context, investigating antecedents and outcomes of the telepresence.

How Japanese companion dog and cat owners' degree of attachment relates to the attribution of emotions to their animals.

Recently, studies in the United States and European countries have shown that the degree of attachment is associated with the attribution of emotions to companion animals. These studies imply that investigating the degree of attachment to companion animals is a good way for researchers to explore animal emotions and then improve animal welfare. Although a promising area of study, in Japan, no empirical studies have examined the correlation between the degree of attachment and the attribution of emotions to companion animals. In this research, we aimed to assess companion animal owners’ attribution of six primary (anger, joy, sadness, disgust, fear and surprise) and four secondary (shame, jealousy, disappointment and compassion) emotions to their dogs and cats, as well as how the degree of attachment related to such attribution of emotions from a Japanese cultural perspective. The “Pet Bonding Scale” (PBS), which is used to determine the level of bonding between humans and animals, was introduced to measure respondents’ degree of attachment to their companion animals. The results of a questionnaire (N = 546) distributed throughout Japan showed that respondents attributed a wide range of emotions to their animals. Companion animals’ primary emotions, compared to secondary emotions, were more commonly attributed by their owners. The attribution of compassion and jealousy was reported at a high level (73.1% and 56.2%, respectively), which was surprising as compassion and jealousy are generally defined as secondary emotions. All participants were highly attached to their companion animals, and this attachment was positively associated with the attribution of emotions (9/10) to companion animals (all p < 0.05). This study is one of the first to investigate animal emotions by analyzing the bonding between companion animals and owners in Japan, and it can therefore provide knowledge to increase Japanese people’s awareness of animal welfare.

Children's Act Evaluation and Emotion Attribution Reasoning Regarding Different Moral Transgressions

Children's Act Evaluation and Emotion Attribution Reasoning Regarding Different Moral Transgressions