Emotional Amplification Research Articles

Other ethnicity effects in ensemble coding of facial expressions.

Cultural difference in ensemble emotion perception is an important research question, providing insights into the complexity of human cognition and social interaction. Here, we conducted two experiments to investigate how emotion perception would be affected by other ethnicity effects and ensemble coding. In Experiment 1, two groups of Asian and Caucasian participants were tasked with assessing the average emotion of faces from their ethnic group, other ethnic group, and mixed ethnicity groups. Results revealed that participants exhibited relatively accurate yet amplified emotion perception of their group faces, with a tendency to overestimate the weight of the faces from the other ethnic group. In Experiment 2, Asian participants were instructed to discern the emotion of a target face surrounded by faces from Caucasian and Asian faces. Results corroborated earlier findings, indicating that while participants accurately perceived emotions in faces of their ethnicity, their perception of Caucasian faces was noticeably influenced by the presence of surrounding Asian faces. These findings collectively support the notion that the other ethnicity effect stems from differential emotional amplification inherent in ensemble coding of emotion perception.

A theory of the neural mechanisms underlying negative cognitive bias in major depression.

The widely acknowledged cognitive theory of depression, developed by Aaron Beck, focused on biased information processing that emphasizes the negative aspects of affective and conceptual information. Current attempts to discover the neurological mechanism underlying such cognitive and affective bias have successfully identified various brain regions associated with severally biased functions such as emotion, attention, rumination, and inhibition control. However, the neurobiological mechanisms of how individuals in depression develop this selective processing toward negative is still under question. This paper introduces a neurological framework centered around the frontal-limbic circuit, specifically analyzing and synthesizing the activity and functional connectivity within the amygdala, hippocampus, and medial prefrontal cortex. Firstly, a possible explanation of how the positive feedback loop contributes to the persistent hyperactivity of the amygdala in depression at an automatic level is established. Building upon this, two hypotheses are presented: hypothesis 1 revolves around the bidirectional amygdalohippocampal projection facilitating the amplification of negative emotions and memories while concurrently contributing to the impediment of the retrieval of opposing information in the hippocampus attractor network. Hypothesis 2 highlights the involvement of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in the establishment of a negative cognitive framework through the generalization of conceptual and emotional information in conjunction with the amygdala and hippocampus. The primary objective of this study is to improve and complement existing pathological models of depression, pushing the frontiers of current understanding in neuroscience of affective disorders, and eventually contributing to successful recovery from the debilitating affective disorders.

Emotions on Twitter as crisis imprint in high-trust societies: Do ambient affiliations affect emotional expression during the pandemic?

During the Covid-19 crisis, citizens turned to Twitter for information seeking, emotional outlet and sense-making of the crisis, creating ad hoc social communities using crisis-specific hashtags. The theory of ambient affiliation posits that the use of hashtags upscales the call to affiliate with the values expressed in the tweet. Given the deep functional tie between values and emotions, hashtag use might further amplify certain emotions. While emotions in crises-hashtagged communities have been previously investigated, the hypothesis of amplification of emotions through hashtag use has not yet been tested. We investigate such effect during the Covid-19 crisis in a scenario of high-trust Nordic societies, focusing on non-hashtagged, crisis hashtagged (e.g., '#Covid-19') and threat hashtagged (e.g., '#misinformation') tweets. To do so we apply XLM-RoBERTa to estimate Anger, Fear, Sadness, Disgust, Joy and Optimism. Our results revealed that crisis-hashtagged (#Covid-19) tweets expressed more negative emotions (Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness) and less positive emotions (Optimism and Joy) than non-hashtagged Covid-19 tweets for all countries except Finland. Threat tweets (#misinformation) expressed even more negative emotions (Anger, Fear, Disgust) and less positive emotions (Optimism and Joy) than #Covid-19 tweets, with a particularly large effect for Anger. Our findings provide useful context for previous research on collective emotions during crises, as most Twitter content is not hashtagged, and given the faster spread of emotionally charged content, further support the special focus on specific ad hoc communities for crisis and threat management and monitoring.

"Good," "Hopeless," and "Alright": People with Aphasia Expressing Their Opinions on Their Rehabilitation Experiences.

Treatment for people with aphasia mainly concentrates on facilitating the communication of needs or providing facts. This focus is in danger of downplaying the significance of the expression of attitudes and emotion. Evaluative expression is critical for recreating identity and social interaction. However, the linguistic expression of emotions following aphasia has been insufficiently explored. This study aimed to determine which semantic-lexical devices people with aphasia used to express their opinions and views about their clinicians and rehabilitation. In-depth interviews with 50 people with aphasia describing their emotions during their rehabilitation were analyzed using the appraisal framework comprising appreciation, affect, and judgment. Speakers also graded their attitudes toward people, things, or events. Almost half of instances expressed appreciation, over one-third expressed judgment, and about 16% expressed affect. Amplification of emotions was used frequently, in over 40% of instances. Affective difficulties following aphasia and other brain injuries are among the most important factors for rehabilitation, social reintegration, and the burden on family members. To ameliorate these issues, the focus of rehabilitation in aphasia needs to shift from expressing needs toward facilitating the expression of opinions and feelings and providing people with aphasia with the opportunities and means to express their views on their healthcare.

Attuning to Emotions in the History of Border-Making: The Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission in 1920

Borders are key sites for the amplification of emotions, yet historians have rarely made emotions into a focal point for studies of boundary-making processes. This article sets out fragmentary evidence for how to read across a fuller array of sources that move us beyond technocratic understandings of boundary commissions to highlight the range of emotional interactions which occurred between boundary commissioners and local populations. It draws on evidence from the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, established in the summer of 1919 to demarcate the international border between the newly independent states of Estonia and Latvia. Petitions sent to the Boundary Commission by the border region inhabitants expressed fear, trepidation or anger about the border proposal and professed feelings of patriotic loyalty to the Estonian or Latvian state. The press derided the Boundary Commission, using humour to convey frustration and shock at the absurdity of the border proposal and tarnish the reputation of the commissioners by portraying them as hot-headed. The accumulating emotional toll of these public sentiments left the boundary commissioners feeling weary and disheartened. By attuning to moods and sentiments surrounding the work of the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, this exploratory article calls for historians to consider emotions methodologically as part of a broader toolkit of approaches for studying histories of boundary-making and to reflect on the insights such perspectives can bring to the field.

“This is not what I imagined motherhood would look like”: pregnancy, postpartum, and parenting during COVID-19 – a qualitative analysis of the first year since birth

BackgroundChildbearing is one of the most emotional and transformative events in a woman’s life. This study aims to explore the impact COVID-19 had on childbirth, postpartum, and the first year since giving birth.MethodsThis was a qualitative study using data previously collected for a larger study of women who had given birth during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The findings presented here are from an analysis of a subset of open-ended questions. Sixty-six participants completed questions about how COVID-19 affected childbearing and postpartum experiences. Data was analyzed using inductive thematic analysis.ResultsThematic analysis of the data identified five major themes and several subthemes, including: (1) amplification of new mother typical emotions (positive emotions and negative emotions), (2) financial impact on mothers and their families, (3) persistent impact of COVID-19, (4) new mom paradigm crash (first time mothers and experienced mothers faced different issues such as lack of education and support, adding a layer to the day-to-day, and negotiating time with others) and (5) validating the importance of maternal health. On the whole, participants were overwhelmed, isolated, and did not have enough physical and emotional support. There was a lack of supportive maternal healthcare both in the short-term and long-term, with an emphasis on poor postpartum support.ConclusionsThis study supports previous findings that women who gave birth and entered motherhood during the COVID-19 pandemic were impacted in many ways. These findings contribute to the understanding of women’s experiences not just in the immediate postpartum period, but in their daily lives one year after childbirth. The results highlight that our nation’s traditional maternal healthcare model may be insufficient, especially when facing a national crisis. Strain placed on the healthcare system by COVID-19 impacted both the physical and mental health of mothers who were often left with inadequate care, education, and support. Our findings point to the need for more supportive maternal health both during childbirth and postpartum.

Amplification of emotion on social media.

Amplification of emotion on social media.

Emotional labor as emotional regulation: Italian adaptation and longitudinal validation of the scale among undergraduate nursing students

AimThe aim of the present study is to perform a longitudinal Italian validation of the scale and to adapt it to the nursing education contest. Background: Research on emotional labor has shown that the roles played by surface acting and deep acting are still uncertain. To overcome this gap, scholars suggest observing emotional labor through the lens of the emotional regulation theory. Andela and her colleagues developed a fine grained instrument, which differentiates attentional deployment, cognitive re-evaluation and expressive suppression, emotional amplification and emotional dissonance. Design. To fulfill our aim, a longitudinal study was performed in an Italian University. Method. The adapted scale was administered to 168 nursing students across the three years of attendance in the course. Results. Our results confirm the five-factor structure, and the instrument shows good psychometrical properties. Conclusion. Having shown satisfactory psychometric properties, this scale can be considered a useful instrument to assess those emotional elements of clinical practice, which are important for the assurance of education quality to the under graduated nursing students.

Employee psychological well-being, transformational leadership and the future of hospitality jobs

ABSTRACT Employee psychological well-being is a central concern for hospitality establishments as it impacts talent retention. This empirical research explores the relationship between transformational leadership and employee psychological well-being. This relationship is tested through a mediation model where transformational leadership is proposed to explain the effect on the psychological well-being of hospitality employees (hedonic and eudaemonic well-being) through the affective mediators thriving at work and employees’ amplification of pleasant emotions and employee engagement. The cross-sectional data came from 133 5-star hotel employees in the Netherlands. Analysing the responses showed that eudaemonic well-being had to be split into four new variables: growing and giving, liveliness, self-esteem and managing oneself. Furthermore, thriving at work and employee engagement fully mediated between transformational leadership and hedonic well-being, thriving at work fully mediated between transformational leadership and growing and giving, while thriving at work and employees’ amplification of pleasant emotions fully mediated between transformational leadership and self-esteem. A direct relationship was found between transformational leadership and managing oneself. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed in detail.

Тактика эмоционального усиления аргументации в письменном научно-гуманитарном дискурсе

The aim of the article is to reveal the specifics of the implementation of the tactic of emotional amplification of argumentation in the written discourse of the humanities. The research is carried out on the material of Russian-language articles on sociology, psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, journalism, published in peer-reviewed academic journals for 2001-2019. Methodologically, the work is related to convergent theory, which ensures the integration of descriptive and normative dimensions of argumentation using qualitative analytical methods: description, functional-semantic, contextual and propositional analysis. The tactic of emotional amplification of argumentation involves the choice of communicative speech actions that actualize the emotional dominant of message perception. According to the results obtained, in the written discourse of the humanities, this cognitive attitude is realized at three levels: structural, verbal, and metatextual. Structural amplification of argumentation is associated with conceptual amplification and provides for a special construction of reasoning using the techniques of manipulating with concepts: emphasizing key concepts; creating a certain emotional evaluating background of the discourse; contrasting concepts. At the verbal level, emotional amplification of argumentation is embodied in two subtactics: psychological accentuation and para-argumentation. The techniques of psychological accentuation include the following: use of expressions with the meaning of evidence, reliability of a fact (knowledge) that convey categorical confidence; use of quantifiers with meaning of “general” and intensive words; expansion of standard argumentative verbalizers by intensifying lexemes; activation of language forms of negation; contact use of modal predicates, as well as semantically close or equivalent verbs in different temporal modes; selection of pragmatically strong verbs with argumentative semantics; use of authorized constructions that include various means of verbal amplification. The methods of paraargumentation are speech actions using rhetorical means, primarily metaphors (especially conceptual ones), as well as irony/sarcasm. Metatextual amplification of argumentation is achieved with graphic accentuation, which are typographic means (font emphasis) and techniques of expressive graphics (as a rule, exclamation constructions with appropriate punctuation). The maximum amplification of argumentation is provided by the syncretic use of structural, verbal, and metatextual means. The author concludes that the effectiveness of the tactics of emotional amplification of argumentation in the written discourse of the humanities depends on how much the speech actions that implement this tactic are consistent with rational criteria for evaluating the quality of scholarly justification and comply with the institutional norms of scholarly communication.

The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion: insights from fear-based imagery and aphantasia.

One proposed function of imagery is to make thoughts more emotionally evocative through sensory simulation, which can be helpful both in planning for future events and in remembering the past, but also a hindrance when thoughts become overwhelming and maladaptive, such as in anxiety disorders. Here, we report a novel test of this theory using a special population with no visual imagery: aphantasia. After using multi-method verification of aphantasia, we show that this condition, but not the general population, is associated with a flat-line physiological response (skin conductance levels) to reading and imagining frightening stories. Importantly, we show in a second experiment that this difference in physiological responses to fear-inducing stimuli is not found when perceptually viewing fearful images. These data demonstrate that the aphantasic individuals' lack of a physiological response when imaging scenarios is likely to be driven by their inability to visualize and is not due to a general emotional or physiological dampening. This work provides evidence that a lack of visual imagery results in a dampened emotional response when reading fearful scenarios, providing evidence for the emotional amplification theory of visual imagery.

Positive Emotion Amplification by Representing Excitement Scene with TV Chat Agents.

This paper proposes emotion amplification for TV chat agents allowing users to get more excited in TV sports programs, and a model that estimates the excitement level of TV programs based on the number of social comment posts. The proposed model extracts the exciting intervals from social comments to the program scenes. By synchronizing recorded video streams and the intervals, the agents may talk with the user dynamically changing the frequency and volume of upbeat utterances, increasing the excitement of the user. To test these agents, participants watched TV content under three conditions: without an agent, with four agents that utter with a flat voice, and with four agents with emotion amplification. Results from 24 young adult Japanese individuals showed that their arousal of participants’ subjective and physiological emotional responses were boosted because of the agents, enhancing their motivation to interact with the agent in the future. With empirical evidence, this paper supports these expectations and demonstrates that these agents can amplify the positive emotions of TV watchers, enhancing their motivation to interact with the agent in the future.

Positive emotion and motivational dynamics in anorexia nervosa: A positive emotion amplification model (PE-AMP).

The role of positive emotion in anorexia nervosa (AN) has been underappreciated in both theory and treatment. Yet, people with AN demonstrate high motivation for and sustained effort toward weight loss, achieving success to an extreme beyond the capability of most people. Positive emotion dysregulation may facilitate and reinforce such efforts. The positive emotion amplification (PE-AMP) model of AN describes a dynamic interplay between biologically based enhanced reward responding and cognitive-behavioral factors that amplify positive emotion, resulting in positive feedback cycles that motivate and reinforce weight loss behavior during the AN onset phase. These experiences subvert the pursuit of happiness by providing artificial senses of autonomy, competency, and relatedness to others (self-determination theory; Ryan & Deci, 2000) that provide a stark contrast to an otherwise negative emotional environment, resulting in the emergence and persistence of AN psychopathology as a self-sustaining sense of purpose. Ultimately, negative emotion, PE dysregulation, and artificial self-determination threats continue to drive AN behavior during the AN maintenance phase, pushing patients toward a genuine self-determination breakdown that can lead to hospitalization, health crises, relational strife and diminished quality of life, or even manifest in suicidal behavior. Future research directions and novel methodological approaches inspired by the PE-AMP model are discussed, as are important treatment implications for addressing this highly treatment-resistant disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional Amplification During Live-Streaming: Evidence from Comments During and After News Events

Live streaming services allow people to concurrently consume and comment on media events with other people in real time. Durkheim's theory of "collective effervescence" suggests that face-to-face encounters in ritual events conjure emotional arousal, so people often feel happier and more excited while watching events like the Super Bowl with family and friends through the television than if they were alone. Does a stronger emotional intensity also occur in live streaming? Using a large-scale dataset of comments posted to news and media events on YouTube, we address this question by examining emotional intensity in live comments versus those produced retrospectively. Results reveal that live comments are overall more emotionally intense than retrospective comments across all temporal periods and all event types examined. Findings support the emotional amplification hypothesis and provide preliminary evidence for shared attention theory in explaining the amplification effect. These findings have important implications for live streaming platforms to optimize resources for content moderation and to improve psychological well-being for content moderators, and more broadly as society grapples with using technology to stay connected during social distancing required by the COVID-19 pandemic.

CONCEPTS OF "LOVE" AND "MARRIAGE" IN THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE PICTURE OF THE WORLD

The article is devoted to the analysis of the concepts of "love" and "marriage" originally as manifestations of the social organization of a society that connects individuals with one another, and its implementation in the Ukrainian language picture of the world. The author analyzes these concepts on the material of the works of Lina Kostenko. It is proved that the verbalized concepts of "love" and "marriage" produce the conceptual information contained in the verbal means of expression. It is stated that the means of expression of the above concepts are multilevel linguistic units, such as: separate tokens, terminological conjunctions, conventional metaphors, established linguistic expressions, paremia, linguistic cliches, etc. It has been determined that the culture of love and family relations in the Ukrainian language picture of the world is closely linked to verbal (literary and everyday) expressions. In the speech of love, the law of speech amplification of emotion works: the statement of emotion enhances the emotion itself, and sometimes even creates it. The linguistic representation of love is embodied in the culturally deterministic means of their verbal expression and is the main explicators of the ideas that have formed in Ukrainian culture regarding this feeling. It has been traced that one of the spheres of human activity that is clearly reflected in phraseology is love, marriage, family, family relations. This is why universal concepts include concepts such as love, betrothal, marriage, marriage, family, family relationships, which form a broad semantic field, or a semantic group consisting of smaller phrase-groups according to the name of the concepts.

Wanting without enjoying: The social value of sharing experiences.

Social connection can be a rich source of happiness. Humans routinely go out of their way to seek out social connection and avoid social isolation. What are the proximal forces that motivate people to share experiences with others? Here we used a novel experience-sharing and decision-making paradigm to understand the value of shared experiences. In seven experiments across Studies 1 and 2, participants demonstrated a strong motivation to engage in shared experiences. At the same time, participants did not report a commensurate increase in hedonic value or emotional amplification, suggesting that the motivation to share experiences need not derive from their immediate hedonic value. In Study 3, participants reported their explicit beliefs about the reasons people engage in shared experiences: Participants reported being motivated by the desire to forge a social connection. Together, these findings suggest that the desire to share an experience may be distinct from the subjective experience of achieving that state. People may be so driven to connect with each other that social experiences remain valuable even in the most minimalistic contexts.

Action in tranquillity: Sketching martial ideation in The Grandmaster

Abstract This article argues that the concept of wuyi 武意 (‘martial ideation’) forms the aesthetic core of kung fu cinema. Rather than focusing on the expressive amplification of emotion, martial ideation negotiates action and stasis through stabilization and eventually reaches a state of tranquillity. In The Grandmaster (Wong, 2013), such an ideational experience is sketched through the Buddhist notion of guan 觀 (‘perspicaciousness’). Perspicaciousness is embodied by three ways of ‘seeing’ in the mise-en-scène, including ‘listening bridge’ in martial arts performance, ‘looking back’ in narrative structure and ‘visioning’ in theme. In this light, Wong’s kung fu debut treats the southern hand-to-hand combat tradition not as a spectacle, but as an embodied knowledge that links kung fu practice with Chinese aesthetics and philosophy.

Learning through the ages: How the brain adapts to the social world across development

In a number of ways development can be understood as a specialized form of learning. As new neuronal circuits are maturing they are molded by environmental experiences much in the way that experience molds synaptic strength in traditional learning models. Furthermore, many of the same mechanisms that underlie synaptic changes in learning also mediate changes that occur across development. This is true at both the molecular level in remodeling of dendritic spines and at the systems level via emotional amplification of associations. A key difference between the two however is that while learning can occur within virtually any circuit at any time, developmental plasticity is much more restrictive in both domain and time window. In this manuscript I review some of the mechanisms associated with developmental neuroplasticity and then provide specific examples from the development of social cognition.

The Social Amplification of Haze-Related Risks on the Internet

abstractThis study explores the implications of the digital network society for public health communication and management through an empirical study on communication related to the transboundary haze crisis in Singapore. Using the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF), the authors applied sentiment and thematic analysis on haze-related posts on an online discussion forum (HardwareZone) and a social networking site (Facebook), and to haze-related articles in The Straits Times (a newspaper). The study shows that the medium matters in social amplification of risk: Facebook had an effect on the amplification of emotions, while HardwareZone and The Straits Times did not. In addition, the results show that spikes in online risk amplification were strongly influenced by unprecedented events. They also suggest that anger expressed online may be linked to a sense of futility. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research are provided in the conclusion.

The “trance dance” of the Ju/’hoan Bushmen (San) of Southern Africa: implications for hypnotic means of healing

Within the perspective of the history of hypnosis, the healing dance of the Kalahari Bushmen (San) is regarded as special kind of kinetic trance that uses focused emotional intensity inside music and dance to initiate movement automatisms for healing. We demonstrate how the Bushman way of healing introduces new distinctions, metaphors, and strategies for the understanding and practice of hypnotically oriented forms of therapy. We propose that the Bushman form of trance, one that utilizes the arousal and amplification of emotions, improvised sounds, and spontaneous movement, suggests a unique form of healing trance and hypnotic induction. The Bushman dance relies less on purposeful induction through direct or indirect verbal and nonverbal suggestion and entrainment, and more on the amplification of emotion and song. These help awaken spontaneous movement that goes past choreographed dance. In short, the so-called trance dance of the Ju’/hoan Bushmen of southern Africa is primarily concerned with waking up strong positive feelings through rhythm and song, bringing forth a spontaneous vibration in the body, and sharing or passing this vibration to others. We discuss how this brings forth the experience of crossing over from the everyday reality of distinguishing, languaging mind (what the Bushmen call second creation) into the highly charged, ecstatic experience of transformation in which all of creation is experientially felt rather than named (called first creation).