Emotional Content Research Articles

Emotional dampening in hypertension: Impaired recognition of implicit emotional content in auditory and cross-modal stimuli.

Research shows a reduced responsivity to implicit as well as explicit facial emotion recognition (emotional dampening) in prehypertensives and hypertensives. This study explored auditory and audiovisual emotion recognition in prehypertensives and hypertensives. Participants (N = 175) who were normotensives, prehypertensives, and hypertensives (n = 57, 58, and 60, respectively) completed an auditory implicit task (matching auditory target with auditory distractors) and two cross-modal implicit tasks (matching visual target with auditory distractors, and vice-versa), and an auditory explicit task (labelling emotions in audio-clips). Findings showed an aberrant speed-accuracy trade-off, where prehypertensives focused more on accuracy at the cost of speed while hypertensives showed the opposite. Discriminant function analysis revealed that blood pressure (BP)-associated emotional dampening is a highly specific but moderately sensitive correlate of hypertension. Our study highlights that prehypertensives and hypertensives demonstrate emotional dampening in implicit (but not explicit) auditory emotion recognition and a greater deficit for auditory than visual recognition of implicit emotions. Findings show emotional dampening as an observable correlate of elevated BP and hypertension.

Affective agenda dynamics on social media: interactions of emotional content posted by the public, government, and media during the COVID-19 pandemic

Emotions shared by posters on social media can have a profound impact on individuals and society. This was particularly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine the types, trends, and dynamics of emotions communicated by the public, government, and media, this study collected 67,689 public posts, 36,740 government posts, and 126,988 media posts on Sina Weibo during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The vector autoregression model and Granger causality analysis were used to measure affective agenda networks and examine affective agenda dynamics. The findings show that the public, government, and media predominantly expressed positive emotions on Sina Weibo. The findings also reveal the significant influence of government emotions on media emotions, which subsequently affects public emotions. This study extends agenda-setting theory by integrating the dimension of emotional contagion. It underscores the potential for government and media to shape public emotions during health crises in order to maintain social order and increase compliance with emergency policies.

Acoustic Methods in Identifying Symptoms of Emotional States

The study investigates the use of speech signal to recognise speakers’ emotional states. The introduction includes the definition and categorization of emotions, including facial expressions, speech and physiological signals. For the purpose of this work, a proprietary resource of emotionally-marked speech recordings was created. The collected recordings come from the media, including live journalistic broadcasts, which show spontaneous emotional reactions to real-time stimuli. For the purpose of signal speech analysis, a specific script was written in Python. Its algorithm includes the parameterization of speech recordings and determination of features correlated with emotional content in speech. After the parametrization process, data clustering was performed to allows for the grouping of feature vectors for speakers into greater collections which imitate specific emotional states. Using the t-Student test for dependent samples, some descriptors were distinguished, which identified significant differences in the values of features between emotional states. Some potential applications for this research were proposed, as well as other development directions for future studies of the topic.

Presence and consequences of positive words in scientific abstracts

s are the showcase of scientific studies, crafted to make an impression on the reader within a limited space and to determine the amount of attention each study receives. Systemic conditions in the sciences may change the expressive norm and incentive scientists to hype abstracts to promote their work and career. Previous studies found that terms such as “unprecedented”, “novel” and “unique” have been used increasingly in recent history, to describe one’s own research findings. The present study investigates the use of valence-loaded scientific jargon in the abstracts of scientific articles. Sentiment analysis with dictionaries specifically attuned to detect valence-loaded scientific jargon was employed to analyze more than 2,300,000 MEDLINE abstracts from the fields of psychology, biology, and physics. Results show that over the last four decades, abstracts have contained an increasing amount of valence-loaded scientific jargon, as previously observed in earlier studies. Moreover, our results reveal that the positive emotional content of abstracts is increasing in a way that cannot be accounted for by the increase in text length, which has also been observed in the same time period. There were small differences between scientific disciplines. A detailed analysis of the distribution of valence-loaded scientific jargon within abstracts reveals a strong concentration towards the end of the text. We discuss these results in light of psychological evidence relating positive emotions with the propensity to overestimate the value of information to inform judgment and the increase in the competition for attention due to a pressure to publish.

Early childhood memories of individuals convicted of sexual offences

ABSTRACT This study used innovative transdisciplinary methods to describe the nature and extent of early childhood memories recalled by 84 adults convicted of sexual offences. The timing of the memories, level of detail recalled and way memories were recollected were largely consistent with extant memory research. One important finding, however, was that more than 30% of our participants recalled particularly traumatic and distressing childhood experiences – a much higher proportion than previously observed in nonoffending samples. The extent to which these memories laid the foundation for subsequent emotional content and feature in the evolution of cognitive schemata is not yet well understood. With that in mind, we consider the implications of our findings for the event centrality in self-narratives. We recommend the inclusion of treatment modalities that maximise as yet unrecognised and undervalued narrative inclinations and story-telling abilities of a complicated population of individuals with rich lived experience that stands to benefit greatly from such approaches.

Clinical high risk for psychosis syndrome is associated with reduced neural responding to unpleasant images.

Deficits in emotion processing are core features of psychotic disorders. Electrophysiology research in schizophrenia suggests deficits in sustained engagement with emotional content (indexed by the late positive potential [LPP]) may contribute to emotion processing impairments. Despite similar behavioral emotion processing dysfunction in those at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis, limited research has examined neural mechanisms of impaired emotion processing in the high-risk period, where research can inform risk models. To examine mechanisms of emotion processing deficits in those at CHR for psychosis, the present study used a passive viewing task to elicit the LPP in response to emotionally engaging and neutral stimuli in 28 CHR and 32 control participants (60% female). Relative to controls, CHR participants showed reduced LPP amplitude when viewing unpleasant images (d = 0.75, p = .005) but similar LPP amplitude in response to both neutral (d = 0.35, p = .19) and pleasant images (d = 0.31, p = .24). This pattern suggests that individuals at CHR for psychosis exhibit a deficit in sustained engagement with unpleasant stimuli. Clinical and trait questionnaires were administered to examine potential exploratory explanations for group differences in LPP amplitude. Consistent with evidence suggesting LPP amplitude reflects engagement of approach/avoidance motivational systems, greater LPP amplitude was associated with greater trait-level behavioral avoidance in control participants (r = .42, p = .032) but not CHR participants (r = -.21, p = .40). Together, the present research is consistent with LPP studies in psychosis and implicates reduced sustained engagement with emotional content in the high-risk period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Estradiol effects on an emotional interference task in adolescents with current and remitted depression

Attentional biases to emotional stimuli are thought to reflect vulnerability for mood disorder onset and maintenance. This study examined the association between the endogenous sex hormone estradiol and emotional attentional biases in adolescent females with either current or remitted depression. Three groups of participants (mean age ± SD) completed the Emotional Interrupt Task: 1) 20 adolescent females (15.1 ± 1.83 years) currently diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), 2) 16 adolescent females (16.4 ± 1.31 years) who had experienced at least one episode of MDD in their lifetime but currently met criteria for MDD in remission, and 3) 30 adolescent female (15.4 ± 1.83 years) healthy controls. Attentional interference (AI) scores were calculated as differences in target response reaction time between trials with emotional facial expressions versus neutral facial expressions. Estradiol levels were assayed by Salimetrics LLC using saliva samples collected within 30 min of waking on assessment days. Robust multiple regression with product terms evaluated estradiol's main effect on AI scores, as well as hypothesized estradiol × diagnostic group interactions. Although neither mean estradiol levels nor mean AI scores in the current-MDD and remitted-MDD groups differed from controls, the relationship between estradiol and overall AI score differed between control adolescents and the remitted-MDD group. Specifically, the remitted-MDD adolescents performed worse (i.e., showed greater attentional interference) when they had higher estradiol; no significant relationship existed in the current-MDD group. Because this finding was driven by angry and not happy stimuli, it appears higher estradiol levels were associated with greater susceptibility to the attention-capturing effects of negatively-valenced emotional content in girls at risk for MDD from prior history.

20 Using Automated Sentiment Analysis to Examine Self-Evaluation in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Objective:Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience negative self-evaluation, indicated by low levels of self-esteem and describing themselves more negatively to others. Variations in reading comprehension, difficulty identifying emotions, and masking (camouflaging of autistic traits) make it difficult to accurately measure self-evaluation of individuals with ASD using subjective self-report scales such as the Rosenburg Self-Esteem Scale. Therefore, it is important to explore more objective methods of measuring self-evaluation in ASD. Sentiment analysis is a popular Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique used to quantify the emotional content of language programmatically by automatically transforming text into a data frame of words represented as individual values or tokens. Each token can then be categorized as positive or negative with a sentiment dictionary. The current study aims to investigate an automated sentiment analysis approach to evaluate self-evaluation by quantifying implicit linguistic affective valence of ASD participants' verbal self-describing statements in a naturalistic setting. Specifically, we evaluated the frequency of positive or negative words used during a mock job interview in which individuals with ASD were asked to describe themselves. We then examined the relationship between positive and negative word usage and standard self-report measures of self-evaluation.Participants and Methods:Twenty-four young adults with ASD were included in this study with an age range of 15-24 and a mean age of 19.2 years. Participants completed a battery of assessments including a mock job interview in which they were asked to describe themselves as a measure of implicit self-esteem. Self-esteem and knowledge of personal strengths was assessed using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Strengths Knowledge Scale, respectively. Interview transcripts were automatically transformed into word token data frames using the tidytext package in Rstudio. Frequencies of positive and negative words were calculated and their ratio to total word count was used to measure the implicit positivity and negativity of transcripts.Results:There was a significant negative correlation between the frequency of negative sentiment in transcripts and measure on the Rosenburg Self-Esteem Scale (r = -.376, p = .035) and the Strengths Knowledge Scale (r = -.387, p = .031) indicating that individuals with higher self-esteem and knowledge of their strengths used fewer negative words when talking during a mock interview.Conclusions:While our results are preliminary, this pilot study represents the first to use automated sentiment analysis to study self-evaluation in individuals with ASD. The use of this technique on natural linguistic data collected through a mock job interview allows researchers to quantitatively analyze the emotionality of transcriptions and create insights that would otherwise be unavailable using more subjective qualitative techniques. Limited research into self-evaluation in this population has yielded inconsistent results, relying too heavily upon qualitative or self-report measures. The ability to programmatically quantify affective valence in transcripts is a time and cost-effective technique for improving validity of future measures of self-evaluation.

CentralBankRoBERTa: A fine-tuned large language model for central bank communications

Central bank communications are an important tool for guiding the economy and fulfilling monetary policy goals. Natural language processing (NLP) algorithms have been used to analyze central bank communications. These outdated bag-of-words methods often ignore context and cannot distinguish who these sentiments are addressing. Recent research has introduced deep-learning-based NLP algorithms, also known as large language models (LLMs), which take context into account. This study applies LLMs to central bank communications and constructs CentralBankRoBERTa, a state-of-the-art economic agent classifier that distinguishes five basic macroeconomic agents and binary sentiment classifier that identifies the emotional content of sentences in central bank communications. The absence of large-language models in the central bank communications literature may be attributed to a lack of appropriately labeled datasets. To address this gap, we introduce our model, CentralBankRoBERTa, offering an easy-to-use and standardized tool for scholars of central bank communications.

Satisfaction with School Life: Capturing Malaysian Pupils’ Voice from a Multiethnic Perspective

This qualitative study aimed at gaining an in-depth understanding of the aspects that shaped pupils’ satisfaction with school life in a multiethnic Malaysian context. The multiple case study design was employed to understand and elicit pupils’ experiences, feelings, beliefs, thoughts and perceptions of their satisfaction with school life in three different types of Malaysian primary schools, namely national primary school (Malay-dominated), national type Chinese primary school (Chinese-dominated) and national type Tamil primary school (Indian-dominated). A total of 18 pupils with six members from each type of Malaysian primary school participated in three focus group discussions. Four themes emerged from the thematic analysis of the interview data: (1) emotional contentment; (2) curricular achievement and co-curricular achievements; (3) safe, conducive and comfortable learning environment; and (4) development of 21st-century skills. These emerging four themes from the participants’ views and experiences provided a holistic perspective on satisfaction with school life in Malaysian primary schools. Practical implications that could be beneficial in leveraging life satisfying experiences of the pupils in the school were discussed. This study has contributed to the body of knowledge with regard to satisfaction with school life from a multiethnic perspective.

Research on Interpersonal Conflict Between Family Generation --Take the TV Series A Little Reunion as an Example

Interpersonal conflict is a universal phenomenon in our daily life, especially the family conflict. Conflicts between our family members run counter to the desire for family harmony, so its worth taking into account the conflict, particularly between parents and children. This paper takes the TV series A Little Reunion as an example, chooses one of the three families in the series as a representative, studies the interpersonal conflict between parents and children in the family, organizes the dialogue patterns by recording the conversations and classifying the sentences through emotional characteristics and content, namely used the methods of corpus organization and corpus classification. After that, literature reading is used in this paper to analyze the reasons for the family conflicts. At the end of this paper shows the patterns of interpersonal conflicts are triggered by four actions, namely questioning, accusation, assertion and request, and the reasons can be related to the concept of how personal values are realized, as well as perspectives on conflict.

Putting the Past into Perspective. Remembering, Reappraising, and Forgiving

The process of forgiving seems to require that a person can remember a specific moment in their personal past in which they were harmed in some way. Forgiving, then, often requires episodic memory, which may be understood as memory of events or experiences in one’s personal past. What is it that grounds acts of forgiveness? One of the most prominent ideas is that, fundamentally, forgiveness involves a change in emotion; it requires that negative emotions associated with the event are abandoned, withdrawn or overcome. In this paper, we outline one way in which the emotion and meaning of past events may be modulated. In particular, we suggest that by thinking more abstractly about an event we can shift our emotional response to it. We outline one way in which this form of more abstract thinking, which can help us distance ourselves from the negative emotion associated with a past wrongdoing, can show up in memory. We propose that emotionally distant memories, or memories in which the emotional content has undergone some change, may often be recalled from an observer perspective, in which the individual recalls the event from an external or detached point of view. Recalling a past wrongdoing from an observer memory may help put it into perspective and afford the emotional distancing required to facilitate forgiveness.

Pleasure before business: emotions and age effects on daily activity scheduling

Activity scheduling represents a key process in daily life, involving the evaluation of the costs and benefits of the resources to be invested, but also a preference for when to engage in pleasant or unpleasant activities. Aging affects the evaluation processes and individual preferences due to changes in cognitive functioning and life perspectives. The present study investigated the differences between younger adults (age range 19–33) and older adults (age range 65–87) in a task assessing preferential scheduling of activities. Participants were asked to schedule thirty emotional activities (positive, negative, or neutral) within a 30-day time window, assigning one activity for each day. Results indicated that older adults, but not younger adults, planned positive activities closer in time, supporting the “positivity effect”. Also, both younger and older adults tended to postpone negative activities, scheduling them in the last days. Finally, for older adults only, negative affect was associated with the tendency to put positive activities closer in time. Present findings showed age-specific effects of emotional content on daily activity scheduling.

The Stories We Tell Influence the Support We Receive: Examining the Reception of Support-Seeking Messages on Reddit.

Although social support facilitates coping and recovering from stressful life events, people do not always get the support that they need. Prior research suggests that the way one talks about stressful events to others may influence the support they receive. Given that people are increasingly relying on online communities for social support, this study adopted a person-centered approach (latent profile analysis) to examine how narrative variables related to the motivational themes, emotional content, and organizational structure of randomly sampled support-seeking messages (N = 495) posted on Reddit (r/Anxiety and r/Depression) influenced the quantity (number of comments and post score) and quality (type of support in comments) of support that they received. We identified five distinct narrative profiles of support-seeking posts, which in turn differentially predicted the quality, but not quantity, of social support people received. While commenters provided high levels of emotional support to all forms of posts, we found that coherence was an important determinant of esteem support. A combination of coherence, as well as agency and affective tone, were important determinants of instrumental, informational, and network support. The ways in which one talks about their problems influence the way others support them.

Speak up! brands’ responsiveness matters: consumer reactions to brand communications in the early stages of a crisis

PurposeIn an effort to provide insights that nurture the future of brand relationships, this paper aims to examine the impact of brand communications on consumption behavior during critical events that significantly impact the marketplace. Specifically, this research focuses on external crises (i.e. global health crises, natural disasters and regional conflicts) beyond the control of the corporations that govern brands. It does so by exploring the most effective brand communication strategies at the onset of a crisis when brands may shift promotional content to more sensitive, crisis-related content as a means to connect with consumers. Furthermore, this paper seeks to understand which consumer segment will benefit most from brands’ crisis-related content.Design/methodology/approachThis research introduces two empirical studies (combined sample = 490), using student and online participant samples.FindingsResults from this work demonstrate that at the onset of a crisis, consumers’ attitudes, brand engagement, and self-brand connections significantly increase after visualizing crisis-related versus noncrisis-related brand messages. Results also reveal that consumers who feel less socially connected will react more favorably to brand communications that contain crisis-related content (i.e. informative or emotional content related to the crisis) than non-crisis-related content (i.e. marketing content aimed to promote and advertise the brand, product and/or services).Research limitations/implicationsWhile the effect of crisis communications on consumption behavior and the moderating effect of social connections is explored, the underlying mechanism of these effects is not investigated in this study. Therefore, future research might consider evaluating the mechanisms that drive these effects.Practical implicationsThis work builds on past research to help establish that during early critical times, marketing managers should include crisis-related content in their communications, which will increase consumers’ positive reactions toward the brand.Social implicationsAnother implication of this work is that it underscores the significance of crisis-related brand communications as an inclusive practice because these are particularly well-received among vulnerable consumer segments, such as those who feel less socially connected during critical times.Originality/valueProactive communication strategies allow brands to better manage external critical challenges. As brands navigate a postpandemic marketplace, this research highlights the adaptations that managers can make to their communication strategies at peak uncertain times, such as the earlier stages of an external crisis.

Fenomenologi Konten Kreator Dalam Mengedukasi Masyarakat Melalui Media Sosial Tiktok

TikTok social media has become an important platform for content creators to disseminate variousinformation, including education for the community. Related to the dissemination of educationalinformation, this study aims to find out the experiences and motivations of content creators in presentingeducational content on Tik Tok media, as well as how they interpret it. The research approach is qualitativewith a phenomenological study, to explore the experiences, motivations and meanings of content creators ineducating the public on TikTok. Through the analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews andobservations with several education-focused content creators, this study identifies essential patterns in theexperiences and the ways content creators make meaning of them. The informants are purposively selectedcontent creators who have experience in their field, especially in educational content. The results of thestudy reveal that some of the informants' experiences in creating and presenting their content are veryinteresting because they involve the emotional content of the creators and the audience. This is alsosupported by their motivation in providing educational information. Meanwhile, the meaning of educationthrough TikTok media for content creators is that TikTok is seen as an effective tool for conveyinginformation in a creative way and is able to attract the attention of a wider audience. The implications ofthese findings explain a deeper understanding of the role of TikTok content creators in educating, where TikTok is not only considered a medium of entertainment, but also beneficial for society, especially ineducating the public.

The Social Psychology of Framing: The Emotional Content of Finnish Anti-Wind Power Frames

Protests against wind power have become increasingly common in Western countries and in Finland. This article explores various anti-wind farm frames and their emotional dynamics and content. The framing approach highlights cognitive and constructive rather than emotional aspects. However, social-psychological understanding of emotions enables us to recognise those types of emotions that give content to a specific frame and are essential to understanding individual motivations for building frames and joining protests. This article points out three anti-wind farm frames: Nimby (love, feelings of security, fear of disruption, and anger); populist (experience of helplessness, fear, grief and anger); and environmentalist (concern and respect). The frames reveal how online activisms oriented towards the same cause and goal arise from multiple emotional contents, indicating the actors’ concerns over the effects of wind turbines on their own well-being and reflecting their own different positions.

Female Affective Perception of Mainstream and Paraphilic Pornography: Associations with Sexual and Psychological Intrapersonal Variables

Understanding affective perceptual processes can further contribute to the explanation of motivation and actions, as well as sexual risk behaviors. Pornography can be considered salient emotional content and is popular, also among females. Yet, the female perspective on pornography has often been overlooked and it remains unclear how individual variables may be associated with the affective perception of pornography and could provide a risk profile. Possible associations between several sexual and psychological intrapersonal variables and the affective perception of various forms of pornography were analyzed from the female perspective. A sample of 231 females (M = 21.87 years; SD = 3.9 years) provided ratings of affective valence, arousal, disgust, and moral and ethical acceptance for mainstream pornographic and paraphilic images of dominance, submission, or sexual violence. Paraphilic pornography was perceived as less pleasant, arousing, and moral and ethically acceptable, but more disgusting compared to mainstream pornography. This was more pronounced among females who had never consumed pornography. Results further suggest that the female affective perception of pornography was associated with the following sexual intrapersonal variables: sexual sensation seeking for physical sensations, erotophilia, lack of sexual control, problematic pornography consumption, and sexual disgust sensitivity. Of the assessed psychological intrapersonal variables, only anxiety was negatively associated with disgust for paraphilic pornography. It is important to further analyze the female affective perception of pornography and associated variables to include them in strategies for prevention and for addressing problematic consequences of the acceptance of specific sexual content and behaviors, especially related to sexualized violence.

Competition and Constituents’ Polarization Online

Society is becoming increasingly polarized. This affects how constituents with conflicting identities engage with organizations online. A strong catalyst of polarization is events that affirm or threaten constituents’ identities and exacerbate in-group versus out-group distinctions. Using a mixed method approach, we theorize that competitive contests between organizations are identity-relevant events that affect online engagement by identifying and disidentifying constituents in different ways. Specifically, we hypothesize that identity-affirming contest outcomes lead to a higher likelihood of online engagement than identity-threatening ones. Therefore, identifying constituents are more likely to engage online after their organization's competitive victories, whereas disidentifying constituents do so after losses. We further hypothesize that close calls or unexpected outcomes amplify these effects. In the context of online engagement by college football followers, we find that victories lead to higher online engagement than losses by team fans but lower engagement by team opponents. We also find that whereas fans are more likely to engage online after unexpected contest outcomes and, in some robustness tests, marginally after close calls, opponents are not affected by either outcome characteristic. To explore how competition and (dis)identification affect the emotional content of online comments, we supplement these findings with content analysis of online posts and a physiological laboratory experiment. Our study demonstrates that polarized constituents react to organizational events through identity-based mechanisms rather than objective evaluations of performance signals. Failure to account for the polarization of constituents therefore conceals important differences in how they engage with organizations online.

Emotional Responses to Religious Conversion: Insights from Machine Learning

This study aims to understand the feelings of newly converted Muslims when they narrated their pre- and post-conversion using the Machine Learning model and qualitative approach. The data set analyzed in this paper comes from in-depth interviews with 12 mualaf/ newly converted Muslims from various backgrounds. All recorded interviews were transcribed and filtered to remove any unnecessary or misaligned data to ensure that the data was fully aligned with the interview questions. To analyze emotional changes, we utilize natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which enable us to extract and interpret emotional content from textual data sources, such as personal narratives. The analysis was performed in Google Colab and utilizing XLM-EMO, a fine-tuned multilingual emotion detection model that detects joy, anger, fear, and sadness emotions from text. The model was chosen because it supports Bahasa, as our interview was conducted in Bahasa. Furthermore, the model also has the best accuracy amongst its competitors, namely LS-EMO and UJ-Combi. The model also has great performance, with the overall average Macro-F1s for XLM-RoBERTa-large, XLM-RoBERTa-base, and XLM-Twitter-base are .86, .81, and .84. Furthermore, two psychologists compared emotion detection results from the XLM-EMO model to the raw input data, and an inductive content analysis was performed. This approach allowed us to identify the reasoning behind the emotions deemed pertinent and intriguing for our investigation. This study showed that Sadness is the most dominant emotion, constituting 46.67% of the total emotions in the pre-conversion context. On the other hand, joy emerges as the most dominant, constituting a substantial proportion of 57.73% among the emotions analyzed from post-conversion emotions data. Understanding the positive impact of religious conversion on emotions may inform mental health interventions and incorporate spiritual or religious elements into therapeutic approaches for individuals struggling with emotional issues, guiding individuals undergoing religious conversion and emphasizing the potential emotional benefits.