Emotional Coherence Research Articles

Social Equality: Cognitive Modeling Based on Emotional Coherence Explains Attitude Change

Why do people have conflicting views of equality concerning the distribution of income, wealth, and satisfaction of vital needs? How do people form and sometimes change their views of equality and related issues, such as gender identity? Answers to such questions can benefit from cognitive science—the interdisciplinary field that includes neuroscience and computer modeling as well as psychology. According to principles of emotional coherence, attitudes develop and change because of connections among the values attached to systems of concepts, beliefs, and goals. People attach a positive value to concepts such as equality, if the concept fits with other positive concepts such as human needs, and opposes negative concepts such as poverty. Emotional coherence balances positive and negative values to yield an overall conclusion. Computer models based on emotional coherence explain people’s differing attitudes about equality and issues such as transgender rights. They also model how people sometimes change their minds.

Illness Perception and Quality of Life in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients in Lampung, Indonesia

AIMS: The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between illness perception and QoL in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) patients.MATERIAL & METHODS: We used cross-sectional design. The subjects were recruited from the Pringsewu Government Hospital in Lampung, Indonesia, and underwent T2DM treatment from May-July 2016. The subjects have met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria were patients age 15-65 with a diagnosis of T2DM with complications for more than 3 months prior and who consented to participate in the study. Participants used the self-reported questionnaire BIPQ (Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire) to measure illness perception and the SF-36 (Short Form-36) questionnaire to measure QoL. Statistical analysis used in this study were Pearson correlation and multivariate linear regression to test between illness perception and quality of life (QoL) domains. The correlation between variable were statistically significant if p value < 0.05.RESULTS: The domain of treatment management had the highest score among all BIPQ domains (mean: 8.55; SD: 1.99). Emotional well-being had the highest scores among the SF-36 domains (mean: 72.69; SD: 17.33). The energy domain in QoL was significantly predicted by consequence, personal management, and identity in the BIPQ illness perception components (p <0.0001). Moreover, the role limitation component was significantly predicted by emotional response, coherence and random blood glucose levels (p <0.0001).CONCLUSIONS: This study significantly showed weak positive correlations between illness perception and QoL in T2DM patients. An education strategy aimed at changing these negative emotional responses to improve patients’ role limitations due to emotional function should be considered.

Rethinking Autism, Theism, and Atheism

This anthropologically informed study explores descriptions of communication with invisible, superhuman agents in high functioning young adults on the autism spectrum. Based on material from interviews, two hypotheses are formulated. First, autistic individuals may experience communication with bodiless agents (e.g., gods, angels, and spirits) as less complex than interaction with peers, since it is unrestricted by multisensory input, such as body language, facial expressions, and intonation. Second, descriptions of how participants absorb into “imaginary realities” suggest that such mental states are desirable due to qualities that facilitate social cognition: While the empirical world comes through as fragmented and incoherent, imaginary worlds offer predictability, emotional coherence, and benevolent minds. These results do not conform to popular expectations that autistic minds are less adapted to experience supernatural agents, and it is instead argued that imaginative, autistic individuals may embrace religious and fictive agents in search for socially and emotionally comprehensible interaction.

The timely expression of coherence helps cause the right impression

<p>An analysis was conducted on the modulating role that the emotional coherence between verbal and non-verbal information plays on the formation of impressions. The study involved 301 subjects who made inferences on a woman’s personality based on verbal information on her life (positive, negative), the emotional coherence between verbal and non-verbal information (coherent, neutral, incoherent), and the type of coding, referring to the moment when the verbal and non-verbal information was presented to them (simultaneously, separately). The results showed that when the information is positive, coherent and the coding has been made separately, the person is perceived to be more stable, pleasant and sociable. The results are discussed, along with their implications for the adaptive processes present in natural contexts.</p>

Expressive Incoherence and Alexithymia in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Expressive incoherence can be implicated in socio-emotional communicative problems in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined expressive incoherence in 37 children with ASD and 41 typically developing (TD) children aged 3-13 years old during a frustration task. The role of alexithymia in expressive incoherence was also assessed. Compared to TD children, children with ASD had higher expressive incoherence, such as more neutral and positive emotion expressions during negative behaviors, but not in the expression of negative emotions during positive behaviors. Further analyses revealed that alexithymia moderated the expressions of positive emotions during negative behaviors. These results suggest that children with ASD may benefit from interventions targeting alexithymia to increase emotional coherence, which may improve socio-emotional communication.

Civic Jazz

Civic Jazz

The affective sublime in Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life

This paper provides a comparative analysis of Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011), two recent films that engage with the sublime aesthetic. Bringing together Brian Massumi's writing on affect with Jean-François Lyotard's understanding of the sublime, we develop the notion of the ‘affective sublime’, a theoretical methodology that locates the sublime experience at the threshold between the cognitive and the corporeal. Drawing upon Lyotard's distinction between the modern and postmodern sublime, we suggest that while The Tree of Life establishes the sublime as a central absence within a nostalgic narrative, Melancholia forces a direct collision with the unpresentable. Consequently, in accordance with Massumi's delineation between emotion and affect, we suggest that the two films produce different affective responses. The Tree of Life provides absent content with formal and emotional coherence, quelling the feelings of pain and anxiety evoked by the sublime. In contrast, Melancholia refuses correct forms and actualises the potential of affective intensity through an encounter with sublime annihilation. We conclude that the affective sublime opens up new understandings of the interaction between the sublime object and spectator, one in which the visible object is less important than the sublime instant of affective experience.

Psychophysiological Research of Borderline Personality Disorder: Review and Implications for Biosocial Theory

According to the Biosocial theory, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is developed by a biological predisposition to hyperarousal and hyperreactivity combined with an invalidating environment. Although widely supported by subjective measures, the impaired insight present in BPD may skew results, and thus psychophysiological measures have been suggested as an alternative method of examining possible biological differences in BPD. The current review aimed to critically assess psychophysiological research of BPD by electronic searching of relevant databases, with 22 articles meeting inclusion criteria. Results showed that in contrast to the hyperarousal proposed in the Biosocial theory, BPD was associated with hypoarousal and hyporeactivity to non-emotionally valenced stimuli. However, there was also evidence of BPD hyperreactivity towards negatively valenced stimuli, and impaired habituation during stressor tasks. As current psychophysiological results were inconsistent, it has been postulated that there may be possible subtypes of BPD. Further, evolutionary-based theories do not appear to adequately explain the complexity of emotion dysregulation in BPD, thus the Emotional Coherence theory has been proposed as an alternate method of conceptualising the role of psychophysiology in BPD. From the lack of clear or consistent findings, further research in the area appears necessary to determine the role of psychophysiology in BPD.

Methodological Advances for Detecting Physiological Synchrony During Dyadic Interactions

A defining feature of many physiological systems is their synchrony and reciprocal influence. An important challenge, however, is how to measure such features. This paper presents two new approaches for identifying synchrony between the physiological signals of individuals in dyads. The approaches are adaptations of two recently-developed techniques, depending on the nature of the physiological time series. For respiration and thoracic impedance, signals that are measured continuously, we use Empirical Mode Decomposition to extract the low-frequency components of a nonstationary signal, which carry the signal’s trend. We then compute the maximum cross-correlation between the trends of two signals within consecutive overlapping time windows of fixed width throughout each of a number of experimental tasks, and identify the proportion of large values of this measure occurring during each task. For heart rate, which is output discretely, we use a structural linear model that takes into account heteroscedastic measurement error on both series. The results of this study indicate that these methods are effective in detecting synchrony between physiological measures and can be used to examine emotional coherence in dyadic interactions.

On the Origins of Disorganized Attachment and Internal Working Models: Paper II. An Empirical Microanalysis of 4-Month Mother–Infant Interaction

A microanalysis of 4-month mother–infant face-to-face communication predicted 12-month infant disorganized (vs. secure) attachment outcomes in an urban community sample. We documented a dyadic systems view of the roles of both partners; the roles of both self- and interactive contingency; and the importance of attention, orientation, and touch, as well as facial and vocal affect, in the co-construction of attachment disorganization. The analysis of different communication modalities identified striking intrapersonal and interpersonal intermodal discordance or conflict, in the context of intensely distressed infants, as the central feature of future disorganized dyads at 4 months. Lowered maternal contingent coordination, and failures of maternal affective correspondence, constituted maternal emotional withdrawal from distressed infants. This maternal withdrawal compromises infant interactive agency and emotional coherence. We characterize of the nature of emerging internal working models of future disorganized infants as follows: Future disorganized infants represent states of not being sensed and known by their mothers, particularly in moments of distress; they represent confusion about both their own and their mothers' basic emotional organization, and about their mothers' response to their distress. This internal working model sets a trajectory in development which may disturb the fundamental integration of the person. The remarkable specificity of our findings has the potential to lead to more finely focused clinical interventions.

The origins of 12-month attachment: A microanalysis of 4-month mother–infant interaction

A microanalysis of 4-month mother-infant face-to-face communication revealed a fine-grained specification of communication processes that predicted 12-month insecure attachment outcomes, particularly resistant and disorganized classifications. An urban community sample of 84 dyads were videotaped at 4 months during a face-to-face interaction, and at 12 months during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Four-month mother and infant communication modalities of attention, affect, touch, and spatial orientation were coded from split-screen videotape on a 1 s time base; mother and infant facial-visual “engagement” variables were constructed. We used contingency measures (multi-level time-series modeling) to examine the dyadic temporal process over time, and specific rates of qualitative features of behavior to examine the content of behavior. Self-contingency (auto-correlation) measured the degree of stability/lability within an individual's own rhythms of behavior; interactive contingency (lagged cross-correlation) measured adjustments of the individual's behavior that were correlated with the partner's previous behavior. We documented that both self- and interactive contingency, as well as specific qualitative features, of mother and infant behavior were mechanisms of attachment formation by 4 months, distinguishing 12-month insecure, resistant, and disorganized attachment classifications from secure; avoidant were too few to test. All communication modalities made unique contributions. The separate analysis of different communication modalities identified intermodal discrepancies or conflict, both intrapersonal and interpersonal, that characterized insecure dyads. Contrary to dominant theories in the literature on face-to-face interaction, measures of maternal contingent coordination with infant yielded the fewest associations with 12-month attachment, whereas mother and infant self-contingency, and infant contingent coordination with mother, yielded comparable numbers of findings. Rather than the more usual hypothesis that more contingency is “better,” we partially supported our hypothesis that 12-month insecurity is associated with both higher and lower 4-month self- and interactive contingency values than secure, as a function of mother vs. infant and communication modality. Thus, in the origins of attachment security, more contingency is not necessarily better. A remarkable degree of differentiation was identified in the 4-month patterns of “future” C and D infants, classified as resistant and disorganized, respectively, at 12 months. The central feature of future C dyads was dysregulated tactile and spatial exchanges, generating approach-withdrawal patterns. The intact maternal contingent coordination overall safeguards the future C infant's interactive agency. However, future C infants likely come to expect maternal spatial/tactile impingement, and to expect to “dodge” as mothers “chase.” They managed maternal touch by tuning it out, sacrificing their ability to communicate about maternal touch. They “approached” by vigilantly coordinating their facial-visual engagement with maternal facial-visual engagement, but they “withdrew” by inhibiting their facial-visual engagement coordination with maternal touch. We proposed that future C infants will have difficulty feeling sensed and known during maternal spatial/tactile impingements. The central feature of future D dyads is intrapersonal and interpersonal discordance or conflict in the context of intensely distressed infants. Lowered maternal contingent coordination, and failures of maternal affective correspondence, constituted maternal emotional withdrawal from distressed infants, compromising infant interactive agency and emotional coherence. The level of dysregulation in future D dyads was thus of an entirely different order than that of future C dyads. We proposed that the future D infant represents not being sensed and known by the mother, particularly in states of distress. We proposed that the emerging internal working model of future D infants includes confusion about their own basic emotional organization, about their mothers' emotional organization, and about their mothers' response to their distress, setting a trajectory in development which may disturb the fundamental integration of the person. The findings have rich implications for clinical intervention, with remarkable specificity for different kinds of mother and infant distress. Heightened and lowered self- and interactive contingency, in different modalities, as well as the specific behavioral qualities identified, provide a more differentiated set of concepts to guide clinical intervention.

Congruence or coherence? Emotional and physiological responses to colours in synaesthesia

Lexical–chromatic synaesthesia is a condition in which letters and/or words elicit percepts of synaesthetic colours, termed photisms. Anecdotal data suggest that synaesthetes are particularly sensitive to inconsistencies between their synaesthetic percepts and the real world, e.g., it can be annoying and unpleasant for them to see a letter printed in a colour different than the respective photism colour. For R, a synaesthete subject who participated in the present study, the photisms possess specific emotional values (a red photism is pleasing and attractive, green is repulsive and unpleasant, etc.). In contrast to the anecdotal data, R does not always find the colour–photism incongruence to be disturbing. More importantly, he states that it is the emotional coherence between the stimulus and the corresponding photism that matters. In a series of experiments, we studied this new concept of emotional coherence on three levels—subjective (self-report), behavioural, and physiological, corroborating R's introspective statements. Besides the implications of the concept of coherence itself, the results presented here suggest that even highly subjective cognitive constructs can be approached and measured experimentally, uncovering the workings of the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms.

Impact of a Breast Cancer Diagnosis on Adult Children's Cognitive and Emotional Coherence

The current study examined whether adult children of recently diagnosed breast cancer patients experience heightened general and major stressor-related distress, and identified a potential mediator between these two forms of distress. Unique from other stress studies, the current study proposed a novel intrapsychic construct, the extent to which one understands and recognizes his or her thoughts and feelings related to a major stressor, for which we coined the term cognitive and emotional coherence. Albeit preliminary, findings supported study hypotheses and argue that this construct may represent an important mediator of distress as well as a pivotal target for psychosocial intervention.

Sense of Coherence and Physical Health. A “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Antonovsky's SOC Concept

According to Antonovsky's (Aaron Antonovsky, 1923–1994) sense of coherence (SOC) model, persons with a high SOC have the ability to benefit from their general defense mechanisms in order to overcome stressful situations. In a health-disease continuum, this leads to the development towards health. However, Antonovsky's global hypothesis that the strength of the SOC may influence the physical health status of a person could not be proven.Flensborg-Madsen et al. from Copenhagen were able to provide a new access regarding SOC and health. They investigated the mixture of emotional aspects and mental constructions as a possible cause for fairly low correlation between SOC and physical health. Thus, in an empirical way, they described “emotional coherence” in relation to physical health, while “mental coherence” was linked to psychological health. These authors introduced the idea of applying a shortened version of the original 29-item SOC questionnaire, but have not yet developed or tested the shortened questionnaire. Backed by their important findings, it appears to be promising to consider the use of the SOC questionnaire as standardized by Antonovsky, but cleared of the items regarding “predictability”, i.e., Flensborg-Madsen et al. suggested that the items on “predictability” be excluded from the SOC scale when a correlation to physical health is to be investigated. Further investigations in this area of research will be of high impact, not only for health sciences, but also for medical practice.

Emotional Coherence in Primary School Headship

This article reflects on emotion and leadership. It views emotions as the language of relationships, because it is through the language and experience of emotion that we contextualize not only our individuality but also our sense of belonging in a group. The article argues that emotion is inherent to the practice of leadership rather than separate from it, and all organizing actions are inseparable from and influenced by emotion. It is not enough for a leader to acknowledge the inherent emotions in the culture of an organization; s/he has to make them explicit through their own leadership. The article argues that the headteacher needs to understand the interconnectedness between their emotions and the affective relationships in the school. Finally, it introduces the idea of emotional coherence as a means of conceptualising emotion in primary schools.

Sense of Coherence and Physical Health. The Emotional Sense of Coherence (SOC-E) was Found to be the Best-Known Predictor of Physical Health

In this study, we created a measure for emotionality named the emotional sense of coherence (SOC-E). We found that SOC-E was significantly associated with physical health (r = 0.266; p < 0.05), while it was not significantly associated with psychological health (r = 0.006; NS). Based on a correlation matrix, we constructed a new scale, the SOC-E II, which was even better associated with physical health (r = 0.362) and also associated with psychological health (r = 0.259; p < 0.01). Our results showed that SOC-E and SOC-E II were better predictors of physical health than the SOC scales developed by Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994) (SOC-29 and SOC-13). We conclude that emotional coherence is important for physical health, but it is not important in the same way for psychological health. In a previous study, we found that a mental operationalization of Antonovsky's sense of coherence was highly associated with psychological health and not associated with physical health. Based on these two studies, we conclude that physical health is primarily associated with emotions, while psychological health is primarily associated with mentality.

Shame, Humiliation, and Childhood Sexual Abuse: Distinct Contributions and Emotional Coherence

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may produce powerful and enduring emotion reactions, including intense shame, anger, and humiliation. Whereas shame and anger have received considerable interest from researchers, less attention has been paid to humiliation or associated coherence among these emotions as it relates to the psychological adjustment in CSA survivors. In the current investigation, the authors coded shame, anger, and humiliation from narrative transcripts of CSA survivors as they either voluntarily disclosed an abuse experience or described a distressing nonabuse experience and from nonabused individuals as they described a distressing experience. Verbal humiliation was found to be significantly associated with nonverbal displays of shame. Coherence between verbal humiliation and facial shame among CSA nondisclosers was associated with increased symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.

The Emotional Coherence of Religion

AbstractThis paper uses a psychological/computational theory of emotional coherence to explain several aspects of religious belief and practice. After reviewing evidence for the importance of emotion to religious thought and cognition in general, it describes psychological and social mechanisms of emotional cognition. These mechanisms are relevant to explaining the acquisition and maintenance of religious belief, and also shed light on such practices as prayer and other rituals. These psychological explanations are contrasted with ones based on biological evolution.

Der Einfluß sanfter Frühgeborenenpflege auf die Bindung und emotionale Entwicklung des Kindes. Nachuntersuchung der Frühgeborenen von Dr. Marina Marcovich

The study was set out to investigate whether the Marcovich model of a "soft treatment" of premature infants encourages the parent-infant-relationship to such an extent that, at school age, the Marcovich-children would be found to differ significantly from children treated with standard care with regard to the quality of their attachment and the prevalence of emotional and behavioural disorders. The Marcovich-children of the present sample had been discharged from hospital much earlier than the standard group, they were less frequently treated with artificial respiration, infant-parent body contact was encouraged significantly earlier, and, although they were less frequently breast-fed, those who were breast-fed were allowed to do so at a much earlier stage. The Marcovich-children were found to display higher social competence, more emotional openness, more emotional coherence, less dismissal of attachment and less preoccupied anger. The two samples did not differ with regard to their total attachment quality as well as their emotional and behavioural problems. The fact that no significant differences could be established with regard to the quality of the attachment suggests that the complex life-saving attachment system is not irreversibly affected by the early separation and distress and that the months and years after the hospital stay have the power to make up with any experienced trauma. It seems, however, that special aspects of the attachment system, such as the communication and interaction, are positively encouraged and enhanced by the soft treatment of the premature infant, which leads to greater emotional openness and social competence, as well as less preoccupied anger against the attachment figures.

Why wasn't O.J. convicted? Emotional coherence in legal inference

This paper evaluates four competing psychological explanations for why the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial reached the verdict they did: explanatory coherence, Bayesian probability theory, wishful thinking, and emotional coherence. It describes computational models that provide detailed simulations of juror reasoning for explanatory coherence, Bayesian networks, and emotional coherence, and argues that the latter account provides the most plausible explanation of the jury's decision.