Emotional Episodes Research Articles

Network analyses of emotion components: an exploratory application to the component process model of emotion

Emotion is an episode involving changes in multiple components, specifically subjective feelings, physiological arousal, expressivity, and action tendencies, all these driven by appraisal processes. However, very few attempts have been made to comprehensively model emotion episodes from this full componential perspective, given the statistical and methodological complexity involved. Recently, network analyses have been proposed in the field of emotion and cognition as an innovative theoretical and statistical framework able to integrate several properties of emotions. We therefore addressed the call for more multi-componential evidence by modeling the network of a comprehensive list of emotion components drawn from the Component Process Model of Emotion. Five-hundred students were confronted with mildly ambiguous scenarios from everyday life, and reported on their situational appraisals and emotion responses. Network analyses were applied to the emotion components related to a positive and a negative scenario to explore 1) how the components organize themselves into networks and dimensions; 2) which components are the most central within networks and dimensions; and 3) the patterns of components relation between and within dimensions. A three-dimensional solution emerged in both scenarios. Additionally, some appraisals and responses appeared to be differentially relevant and related to each other in both scenarios, highlighting the importance of context in shaping the strength of emotion component relations. Overall, we enriched the field of affective science by exploring the connections between emotion components in three novel ways: by using network analyses, by integrating them into a multi-componential framework, and by providing context to our emotion components. Our results can also potentially inform applied research, where understanding the interconnections and the centrality of components could aid the personalization of interventions.

Bitcoin returns and YouTube news: a behavioural time series analysis

ABSTRACT This study investigates whether investor’s sentiment and attention information collected via YouTube can improve bitcoin return forecasts. Accordingly, we collected daily data over the period 2017–2023, covering calm and turbulent periods marked by different types and episodes of emotions. Unlike previous studies, we used YouTube videos to propose two sentiment proxies: investor attention to YouTube (daily number of YouTube video views) and investor sentiment on YouTube (number of positive and negative videos on YouTube). Interestingly, we break down both attention and sentiment per subject. Econometrically, we assess lead-lag effects between sentiment/attention and bitcoin return using causality tests and Vector Auto-regressive (VAR) model. We also evaluate the forecasting power of YouTube attention/sentiment data using a deep learning LSTM model. Our study shows two main results. First, we find lead-lag effects between bitcoin returns and per subject investor’s attention and sentiment proxies. Second, we show that our deep learning LSTM model relying on the information provided by attention and sentiment supplants benchmark Buy and Hold Strategy to forecast future bitcoin returns.

Blame as participant anger: extending moral claimant competence to young children and nonhuman animals

ABSTRACT Following the social conception of moral agency, this paper claims that many agents commonly exempted from moral responsibility, like young children, adults with late-stage dementia, and nonhuman animals, may nevertheless qualify as participants in moral responsibility practices. Blame and other moral responsibility responses are understood according to the communicative emotion account of the reactive attitudes. To blame someone means having an emotion episode that acts as a vehicle for conveying a particular moral content. Therefore, moral agency is argued to be manifested in communicative exchanges between a claimant and a defendant. While many human and nonhuman agents are justifiably exempted from ascriptions of moral responsibility, this does not necessarily exclude such agents from the community of moral agents altogether. Toddlers and dogs, for instance, seem capable of other-directed reactive attitudes, like resentment, and could, therefore, qualify as participants in moral responsibility practices with respect to the claimant position. Therefore, we may have reason to adopt a distinct claimant-directed participant stance to some beings, even if they fail to qualify as apt targets of blame. This expanded theoretical room for moral agency is argued to make explicit further normative considerations.

Development and validation of the short parent–child emotion communication questionnaire

ABSTRACT How parents value and address emotions with their children is essential for children’s emotion socialization. This study developed and validated the short Parent–Child Emotion Communication questionnaire (PEC), which measures the extent to which parents appreciate emotions, consciously discuss their own and their child’s emotions with their children, reflecting on both positive and negative emotions, and address the impact of emotion expression on social relationships. Parents of 316 preschoolers (Mage = 3.86 years) participated. Factor structure, measurement invariance across sex, and internal consistency of the PEC were assessed. Four indices for parents’ talk about a child’s emotional episode, and children’s social-emotional skills are tested for criterion and concurrent validity. The results confirmed the one-factor structure of the 8-item PEC, measurement invariance across boys and girls, and seemed to support the criterion/concurrent validity. The PEC thus may provide a tool to examine parent–child emotion communication in early childhood. Clinical implications of using the PEC are discussed.

Emotion socialization in early childhood education and care – How preschool teachers support children's emotion regulation

Children’s emotional experiences during early childhood education and care (ECEC) are important for children’s emotional development and the socialization of this development by teachers. One central goal of emotion socialization is that it should help children acquire reflective regulation of their emotions, resulting in socially acceptable and age-appropriate experience and behavior. The current study is based on emotionally challenging situations of children in ECEC and aims at investigating, first, associations of teachers’ emotion coaching and co-regulation with children’s self-regulation, and, second, how teachers’ emotion coaching and co-regulation are linked with characteristics of the specific emotion episode and the involved child. Based on extensive video observations in the preschool setting (N = 19 groups), this study analyzed episodes with teacher interventions (N = 48 teachers) following a negative emotion expression by one or two children (N = 213 children aged 2–6 years old). Multilevel results show, first, that teachers’ initial emotion coaching and co-regulation through meta-cognitive prompts were associated with children’s independent self-regulation. Second, teachers’ emotion coaching and co-regulation were systematically associated with characteristics of the emotion episode, especially emotion quality and intensity. The findings support the assumption that emotion coaching and co-regulation are especially valuable tools to support self-regulation. However, emotion coaching and the different co-regulation levels and strategies do not turn out to be universal strategies that are used indiscriminately, but teachers use them depending on individual child and situational characteristics.

Comment: Injuries that Hurt – A Comment to “Embitterment – Conception of a Potential Moderator to Dysfunctional and Aggressive Behaviour in Children and Adolescents”

AbstractThis comment discusses the article of Balder and Linden (2022), who debate the existence and role of embitterment in child and adolescent psychopathology. This topic appears highly relevant, but broader literature should be integrated when talking about embitterment. First, we question the conceptualization of embitterment as an emotion. We conceptualize it as a long-term emotion episode that stems from events involving severe and unresolved hurt feelings, also referred to as attachment injuries and narcissistic injuries. When overly intense, they might lead to PTED. In contrast to Balder and Linden (2022), we argue that specific psychotherapeutic treatments exist. Nonetheless, we join Balder and Linden (2022) in calling for more attention for embitterment and hurt feelings and their role in developmental psychopathology.

Contextual variations in emotion polyregulation: How do regulatory goals shape the use and success of emotion regulation strategies in everyday life?

Emotion regulation strategies are frequently combined within one emotional episode, a phenomenon labeled emotion polyregulation. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of studies examining which regulatory strategies are commonly combined across different contexts and how effective these combinations are in everyday life. Targeting this research gap, the present ecological momentary assessment study modeled emotion polyregulation and its success for contexts of (a) downregulation, (b) upregulation, and (c) maintenance goals in N = 321 adults. The endorsement and success of 15 different emotion regulation strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation were measured 5 times a day for 7 days. Multilevel factor analyses revealed that individuals tend to combine different regulatory strategies depending on the activated regulatory goal: When examining downregulation, four factors best described the combined use of regulatory strategies: Situation Modification, Repetitive Processing, Emotional Avoidance, and Interpersonal Regulation. In contrast, three-factor models characterized emotion polyregulation for upregulation (Emotional Acceptance, Repetitive Processing, and Interpersonal Regulation) and maintenance goals (Unspecific Regulation, Emotional Acceptance, and Interpersonal Regulation). Moreover, multilevel structural equation modeling revealed that the success of emotion polyregulation is goal-dependent. While combining interpersonal and situation modification strategies was related to beneficial outcomes for downregulation goals, acceptance-based strategies were most strongly associated with emotion regulation success in situations of upregulation and maintenance. These results add to a more complex understanding of emotion regulation in daily life and highlight the necessity of broadening the focus of emotion regulation research to examine emotion polyregulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Influence of transient emotional episodes on affective and cognitive theory of mind.

Our emotions may influence how we interact with others. Previous studies have shown an important role of emotion induction in generating empathic reactions towards others' affect. However, it remains unclear whether (and to which extent) our own emotions can influence the ability to infer people's mental states, a process associated with Theory of Mind (ToM) and implicated in the representation of both cognitive (e.g. beliefs and intentions) and affective conditions. We engaged 59 participants in two emotion-induction experiments where they saw joyful, neutral and fearful clips. Subsequently, they were asked to infer other individuals' joy, fear (affective ToM) or beliefs (cognitive ToM) from verbal scenarios. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found that brain activity in the superior temporal gyrus, precuneus and sensorimotor cortices were modulated by the preceding emotional induction, with lower response when the to-be-inferred emotion was incongruent with the one induced in the observer (affective ToM). Instead, we found no effect of emotion induction on the appraisal of people's beliefs (cognitive ToM). These findings are consistent with embodied accounts of affective ToM, whereby our own emotions alter the engagement of key brain regions for social cognition, depending on the compatibility between one's own and others' affect.

How Do Praxis-Oriented Themes Inform the Unity of Language Teachers’ Beliefs, Practices, and Identities? A Narrative Inquiry

Abstract Praxis, according to the Vygotskian thoughts and tenets, entails the unity of and dialectical relationship between theory and practice. As a vital concept grounded in sociocultural theory, praxis has received increasing attention among language teacher education scholars, typically over recent years (e. g., Johnson et al., 2020, 2022). Yet, there remains scant research through the lens, thus requiring extended efforts from researchers. To join the existing literature and bridge the gap, we explored how praxis- oriented themes may inform the development of professional beliefs and practices between mentor-mentee duos through TESOL-related programs. In addition, we investigated how the development of beliefs and practices may, in turn, inform the mentorships and contribute to the identity development of these duos. We adopted the narrative inquiry method and captured the participants’ experiences and emotional episodes over their mentoring journeys. We reported a common developmental path along the two duos’ mentoring journeys, while they differed in a few places. These journeys were found to unfold through a 3E pattern with three distinct stages, each contributing to the evolution of their beliefs and practices. These stages were identified as enhancing learning, embodying the mentor, and embracing heritage and identity. Accordingly, three different types of identities, including learner and apprentice, mentee and novice researcher, and language teacher and Chinese culture embodiment, were identified in the stages. Our study provides valuable insights for language teachers and teacher educators by shedding light on praxis-oriented themes that can enhance teacher professional development programs.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Studying Portuguese Ethnic Media in Montreal: ‘Autosiociobiographie,’ Sibling Relations, Brotherly Love and ‘Emotional Episodes’ in Research

How does the dynamic of sibling relations affect researching and dissemination of research findings? How can we best capture the unfolding of this dimension in researching? We discuss these questions via the description of a community event where the siblings were directly implicated and an “emotional episode” arose leading to humor in one sense but also stress on the other as the younger sibling struggled to intervene and interrupt his older brother’s presentation. We discuss and analyze this “key emotional episode” by placing it in the cultural upbringing of the siblings involved in the study as well as co-authors’ reactions to the same episode. We conclude by stating the necessity to know your audience and the approach most conducive to fit the culture of community engagement. Further, we argue that in this time when so much emphasis is placed on team research, we know so much about the academic credentials and skills of our project team members, but little about their personal upbringing and how this can influence relationships and interpretations of findings.

Developmental dynamics of positive and negative emotion in infancy.

The dynamic features of emotion-intensity, speed of response, rise time, persistence, recovery-are important to emotion development, but there remains limited understanding of early developmental changes in these dynamics and how they are organized. In this exploratory study, 58 White infants were observed at ages 6, 9, and 12 months in four social episodes designed to elicit positive emotion (two games with mother) and negative emotion (stranger approach and separation from mother). Continuous time-sampled ratings and summary assessments of facial and vocal responding yielded measures of onset intensity, peak intensity, onset latency, time to peak intensity, rise time, persistence, and recovery for each episode and expressive modality. Central findings indicated significant developmental increases in the intensity and speed of response for positive and negative episodes, but across age and expressive modality the organization of positive and negative responses differed consistently. Specifically, responses to negative emotion episodes reflected characteristics of a preemptory response to perceived threat (e.g., intensity positively correlated with persistence), while intense positive emotion involved quicker onset and longer rise time, consistent with establishing and maintaining social engagement. Implications of these findings and directions for further study are outlined. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Pleasant emotional feelings follow one of the most basic psychophysical laws (weber's law) as most sensations do.

Emotion episodes may include a conscious aspect of the emotion, namely being aware of our own emotional experience. Despite explosion in research over previous years, it remains unclear how emotions reach awareness and become feelings. Already in 1884, William James argued that emotional feelings resemble ordinary sensations in this respect. Here, using a novel model-based ratio scale of emotion intensity, we provide one of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting James' perceptual theory by showing that emotion awareness obeys one of the most fundamental laws of perception, Weber's law. According to this law, stimulus encoding accuracy decreases with intensity. In this work, we asked participants to provide binary pleasant-versus-unpleasant reports of their experience when watching normed emotion-eliciting pictures (NAPS; Marchewka et al., 2014). The results validate our model's measure of emotion intensity by showing its monotonous relation to picture norms. Most importantly, they show, for the first time, that in humans, pleasant emotion experiences follow Weber's classical psychophysical law-indicating decreased encoding precision with increasing pleasantness. This result supports James' theory, suggesting that (pleasant) emotions reach awareness just as ordinary sensations do. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Measuring service quality based on customer emotion: An explainable AI approach

This paper develops an explainable artificial intelligence (AI) approach to measuring service quality in voice-based service encounters. Drawing from the psychology and computer science literature, we construct features of a customer's emotion dynamics during a service encounter. Using real-world call center data from a large insurance company, we train an ensemble model with these emotion dynamics features to predict service quality. The model has higher prediction performance than the two benchmark approaches using quality-assurance evaluation and operational indices. Our method for emotion dynamics classification outperforms a host of state-of-the-art time series classification algorithms. We further apply explainable AI methods to identify the most important features of emotion dynamics and show how they are related to service quality. For example, the location where the last emotion episode appears in a service call has a U-shaped relationship to low quality. Finally, to demonstrate utility, we design an IT artifact to automatically measure service quality after service encounters in the call center and use the measure to predict a customer's referral intention.

Emotions as emergent properties

In recent decades, affective scientists have begun using concepts and tools from dynamical systems theory (DST) to characterise emotional processes. This article considers how the concept of emergence might be used to develop this approach. Emotions are explicated as ‘emergent products’ that diachronically constrain the operations of their parts in virtue of feedback loops (a classical feature of nonlinear dynamical systems). The explication is shown to be broadly consistent with what is sometimes called ‘pattern’ emergence. Casting emotions as emergent patterns is shown to shed light on a major conceptual and empirical challenge emotion theorists have faced over the past century: identifying and measuring the presence of emotional episodes (Lindquist et al., 2012; Hollenstein & Lanteigne, 2014), dubbed here the ‘boundary problem’ (following Colombetti, 2014). In particular, the explication suggests seeing the emotional ‘signatures’ thought to accompany emotional episodes as fragile and context-bound: likely to hold under a relevant class of interventions (Woodward, 2005), but not without exception beyond that class. This in turn may suggest a need to significantly revise the statistical methods currently used to measure the presence of emotional ‘signatures’. The casting of emotions as emergent patterns also functions as a further case study supporting the value of ‘pattern emergence’ (Winning & Bechtel, 2019) as a powerful vehicle for characterising the objects of investigation — compound and context-sensitive — ubiquitous in the biological sciences.

Feedback processing and emotion regulation in nursing students during internship

IntroductionAs feedback that nursing students receive during internships triggers emotional episodes, it results in changes in self-esteem, motivation, and learning behaviors. The adaptive or maladaptive nature of emotions is modulated via emotion regulation strategies. MethodTo understand how the students experienced and acted upon these emotional episodes, we applied an existential phenomenological approach. ResultsStudents experience a wide range of emotions in feedback situations. These emotions regularly require the use of emotion regulation strategies. We have described three kinds of such strategies. Based on the results of this and previous studies, we have developed a comprehensive model of feedback processing by students in the context of nursing internships, in which emotions and their regulation are central. DiscussionEmotion regulation strategies are often unconscious and should be developed by students during their training, especially in consciously designed feedback conditions of teachers and instructors, in which students should feel understood, respected, and invited to actively involve themselves in the processing of feedback. Finally, we make a few recommendations to education professionals. ConclusionsFeedback processing by future nurses during internships involves a complex emotional process that affects their behavior, either conducive to learning or not. Emotion regulation strategies may be required in these situations. Moreover, students' emotions are influenced by various determinants, which evolve in a circular dynamic as feedback occurs over time.

Are Self-transcendent Emotions One Big Family? An Empirical Taxonomy of Positive Self-transcendent Emotion Labels

In the past decade, there has been a growing amount of research on so-called self-transcendent emotions, mainly in the domain of positive emotions. However, most candidate self-transcendent emotions (e.g., Awe, Gratitude, Being Moved, Wonder) have been studied in isolation, leaving the commonalities and the differences of their phenomenology unknown. In the present paper, we sought to identify the phenomenological nature of main families of self-transcendent emotions. We drew on two large datasets (N1 = 3,113; N2 = 1,443) in which participants had to recall an emotional episode or to watch emotional videos and had to report their emotions through a list of 40 emotion labels. Participants were also presented with a large list of items probing their cognitive appraisals, bodily feelings, and action tendencies. Using a principal component analysis, we identified three main dimensions of positive emotions: hedonic, social, and epistemic states. Candidate self-transcendent emotions were distributed across two dimensions, suggesting that at least two main different families of self-transcendent emotions should be distinguished. Our results also allowed us to identify self-reported cognitive appraisals, bodily feelings, and action tendencies characteristic of each family.

Dysregulated Emotion and Trying Substances in Childhood: Insights from a Large Nationally Representative Cohort Study

Objective Transdiagnostic perspectives on the shared origins of mental illness posit that dysregulated emotion may represent a key driving force behind multiple forms of psychopathology, including substance use disorders. The present study examined whether a link between dysregulated emotion and trying illicit substances could be observed in childhood. Method In a large (N = 7,418) nationally representative sample of children (Mage = 9.9), individual differences in emotion dysregulation were indexed using child and parent reports of frequency of children’s emotional outbursts, as well as children’s performance on the emotional N-Back task. Two latent variables, derived from either parental/child-report or performance-based indicators, were evaluated as predictors of having ever tried alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Results Results showed that reports of dysregulated emotion were linked to a greater likelihood of trying both alcohol and tobacco products. These findings were also present when controlling for individual differences in executive control and socioeconomic status. Conclusions These results suggest that well-established links between dysregulated negative emotion and substance use may emerge as early as in childhood and also suggest that children who experience excessive episodes of uncontrollable negative emotion may be at greater risk for trying substances early in life.

Testing emotional response coherence assumptions: Comparing emotional versus non-emotional states.

Although central to theories of emotion, emotional response coherence, that is, coordination among various emotion response systems, has received inconsistent empirical support. This study tests a basic assumption of response coherence, that is, that it characterizes emotional states defining their beginning and end. To do so, we (a) compare response coherence between emotional versus non-emotional states and (b) examine how emotional coherence changes over time, before, during, and after an emotional episode. Seventy-nine participants viewed neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant film clips and rated continuously how pleasant they felt (experience) before (anticipation), during, and after (recovery) each clip. Autonomic physiological arousal responses (skin conductance level, heart rate; physiology) and facial expressions (corrugator, zygomatic activity; expression) were recorded. Within-person cross-correlations between all emotional response pairs were calculated for each phase. Analyses comparing coherence during emotional versus neutral film viewing showed that only experience-expression coherence was higher for emotional versus neutral films, indicating specificity for emotional states. Examining coherence across phases indicated that coherence increased from anticipation to emotional film viewing, as expected, for experience-expression and experience-physiology pairs (SCL only). Of those pairs, increased coherence returned to baseline during recovery, as theoretically assumed, only for experience-corrugator activity coherence. Current findings provide empirical support for theoretical views of response coherence as a defining feature of emotional episodes, but mostly for the coherence between experience and facial expressions. Further research needs to investigate the role of sympathetic arousal indices, as well as the role of response coherence in emotional recovery.

Individual Emotions Describing Continuity and Engagement in Religion: Charismatic Communality in the Light of Interaction Ritual Theory

The emotionality of modern times is evident in the ways in which people are religious. Among the Christian denominations, the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement, in all its diversity, is the most successful in spreading globally. It has been argued that charismatic communities are successful venues of interaction and are powerful in offering emotional experiences. However, in order for such religious experiences to lead to a continuity of religious interaction, a long-term tone of emotional energy and the presence of a stable social bond between participants is needed. The aim of this article is to analyze emotional energy as an outcome of successful interaction rituals in charismatic communities. Emotional energy is a concept that Randal Collins has formed, building on Durkheim, to analyze emotions in interaction by viewing them as “the main motivating force in social life”. This was studied by interviewing individuals on their emotions about their charismatic communities and daily life. When utilizing a self-report focus on subjective feelings, individuals may report information using different wordings relevant to any component of emotion. Special importance is placed on the cognitive processing of emotional episodes, which allows individuals to detect the relevance of each emotion, understand its causes and consequences, and communicate the emotional knowledge to others, including the researcher. The results show that, most of all, the emotions that cause some sort of pleasure, e.g., happiness and surprise, are the leading lights in narrating engagement in charismatic communities and faith. Faith also has a fear-regulating effect. Happiness as a mood is built both on experiences of God’s help and even more on one’s responsible way of life and the feeling of abandoning moral hesitation in favor of doing what is ethically right in life, which also regulates negative emotions. Collins’ theory focuses on emotional energy that is positive, but emotional experiences can also be negative, which do not contribute to the solidarity of a group.

Time-dependent emotional memory transformation: Divergent pathways of item memory and contextual dependency.

Emotional memory can persist strikingly long, but it is believed that not all its elements are protected against the fading effects of time. So far, studies of emotional episodic memory have mostly investigated retention up to 24h postencoding and revealed that central emotional features (items) are usually strengthened, while contextual binding of the event is reduced. However, even though it is known for neutral memories that central versus contextual elements evolve differently with longer passage of time, the time-dependent evolution of emotional memories remains unclear. Hypothetically, compared to neutral memories, emotional item memory becomes increasingly stronger, accompanied by accelerated decay of-already fragile-links with their original encoding contexts, resulting in progressive reductions in contextual dependency. Here, we tested these predictions in a large-scale study. Participants encoded emotional and neutral episodes, and were assessed 30 minutes (N = 40), 1 day (N = 40), 1 week (N = 39), or 2 weeks (N = 39) later on item memory, contextual dependency, and subjective quality of memory. The results show that, with the passage of time, emotional memories were indeed characterized by increasingly stronger item memory and weaker contextual dependency. Interestingly, analyses of the subjective quality of memories revealed that stronger memory for emotional items with time was expressed in familiarity, whereas increasingly smaller contextual dependency for emotional episodes was reflected in recollection. Together, these findings uncover the time-dependent transformation of emotional episodic memories, thereby shedding light on the ways healthy and maladaptive human memories may develop. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).