Levels Of Pleasure Research Articles

身体活動のタイプの違いはどのように気分に影響するのか？

Generally, typical physical activities (e.g. walking and cycling) increase positive affect and decrease negative affect. However, few studies have investigated the effects on mood of activities that are frequently pursued during leisure time (e.g. dynamic stretching and video games). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the influences of different types of physical activity on mood. We selected 16 activities (kendama, active video games [“Wii Sports” tennis, baseball, boxing], static and dynamic stretching, jumping rope, step exercise, table tennis, darts, ball juggling, cycling, balance ball exercise, golf putting, walking, and dumbbell exercise) for investigation and divided them into 4 protocols. The duration of each activity was 10 min, except for dynamic stretching and step exercise (3 min). Fifteen young adults (8 males and 7 females) participated in at least 2 protocols (8 activities). Before and after each activity, levels of arousal and pleasure were measured using a two-dimensional mood scale. Metabolic equivalent (MET) as an index of exercise intensity was monitored throughout all activities using a portable indirect calorimeter (MetaMax 3B). The changes in arousal and pleasure levels were tested by paired t test. The influence of activity type on changes in arousal and pleasure levels was analyzed by ANCOVA (factor: activity type 16 levels; covariate: METs) using a Mixed model. In ANCOVA models, the influence of each activity was evaluated in comparison with walking. All activities except static stretching (p=0.199) significantly increased the arousal level (p<0.010). The pleasure level was significantly increased after 3 sessions of active video games, static stretching, table tennis, and balance ball exercise (p<0.044). The results of the ANCOVA models revealed that the main effect of activity type on changes in arousal and pleasure levels was significant (p≤0.007), while MET showed no significant regression coefficient (p≥0.075). Increases in pleasure level during an active video game (baseball) and table tennis were significantly higher than during walking (p≤0.025), whereas the influence of step exercise was significantly lower than during walking. These findings suggest that physical activity generally increases arousal level independently of exercise intensity, and that performing activities with another person such as conducting active video games or table tennis, significantly increases pleasure level in comparison to walking.

Living Together in an Ecological Community

There is perhaps no area of ethical thinking that pushes us to examine the foundations of ethical thought more than environmental ethics. Should we think of the ethical demands placed upon our behavior in terms of the maximization of pleasure over pain? If so, should it be human pleasure and pain or the pleasure and pain of all sentient beings? Should we think of those demands in terms of the maximization of human happiness or of some other notion of human well-being? Should we think of those demands in terms of the promotion of certain types of virtue? Should we think of those demands in terms of rules governing some sort of moral community, perhaps a Kantian kingdom of ends or a Jamesian Ethical Republic? The practical question, of course, is how we are to live our lives. In particular, how are we to conduct ourselves when what is involved is our behavior as it affects the environment in which we and our children, grandchildren, and later descendants will live well into the future? The philosophical question is what kind of analytical framework can help us to think more clearly about how we are to live. To address the philosophical question adequately it is important to keep clear focus on the range of practical problems that arise in our interaction with our environment. Suppose that we adopt an ethical framework according to which we judge our behavior on the balance of pleasure over pain that we produce. As Peter Singer has rightly noted in a large body of work, if pleasure and pain are the key moral criteria, it seems arbitrary to privilege human pleasure and pain over pleasure and pain in other forms of sentient life. At the same time, if we adopt a principle of determining our behavior so as to promote pleasure over pain in whatever forms of sentient life they may arise, we find some seriously counter-intuitive consequences. Suppose that we find ourselves in the wilderness needing food, confronted with a choice of killing a common white-tailed deer or an endangered caribou. If our ethical principle is simply promoting the highest level of pleasure over pain it would seem that we could equally well kill the deer or the caribou. Either would likely experience roughly the same level of pain in its death, and, if we kill efficiently, less pain that either would likely experience later in starvation, as road-kill, or as prey to some hungry wolf. We find ourselves with an ethical principle that has no place for consideration of species membership. Such an ethical approach is unable to support the broadly shared view that preservation of species is a good. A number of philosophers have attempted to frame environmental ethics in terms of the alleged intrinsic goodness of various natural objects. Quite apart from the inadequacy of most of the popular arguments for the position, it also fails to provide an analytic framework for addressing species problems. Perhaps worse yet, it would fail to provide any principled distinction between caribou and broccoli. The species problem would seem to arise with any approach that takes individual entities in the environment, whether human individuals or individuals of other sorts, as the starting point of ethical analysis without understanding those individuals as, in some sense, parts of a larger whole. These considerations lead me to the view that the pressing ethical problems that arise in our interaction with the environment in which we live provide important support for understanding ethical agents centrally as parts of some sort of community of interrelated parts. For reasons that will become clear over the course of this paper, the kind of community in terms of which ethical life should be framed is best rooted in William James's Ethical Republic rather than Immanuel Kant's Kingdom of Ends. In current thinking about the environment, sustainability has become a very fashionable topic of conversation. We are, for example, presently well into what UNESCO has declared as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. …

Effects of placement point of background music on shopping website

Consumer on-line behaviors are more important than ever due to highly growth of on-line shopping. The purposes of this study were to design placement methods of background music for shopping website and examine the effect on browsers' emotional and cognitive response. Three placement points of background music during the browsing, i.e. 2 min., 4 min., and 6 min. from the start of browsing were considered for entry points. Both browsing without music (no music) and browsing with constant music volume (full music) were treated as control groups. Participants' emotional state, approach-avoidance behavior intention, and action to adjust music volume were collected. Results showed that participants had a higher level of pleasure, arousal and approach behavior intention for the three placement points than for no music and full music. Most of the participants for full music (5/6) adjusted the background music. Only 16.7% (3/18) participants for other levels turn off the background music. The results indicate that playing background music after the start of browsing is benefit for on-line shopping atmosphere. It is inappropriate to place background music at the start of browsing shopping website. The marketer must manipulated placement methods of background music for a web store carefully.

Rasch-Built Measure of Pleasant Touch through Active Fingertip Exploration.

Background: Evidence suggests that somatic sensation has a modality for pleasant touch. Objective: To investigate pleasant touch at the fingertip level (i.e., glabrous skin site) through the elaboration of a linear unidimensional scale that measures (i) various materials according to the level of pleasantness they elicit through active fingertip explorations and (ii) subjects according to their pleasantness leniency levels. Subjects: We enrolled 198 healthy subjects without any neurological disease. Methods: Blindfolded subjects actively explored 48 materials with their index fingertips and reported the perceived pleasantness of each on a 4-level scale. The fingertip moisture levels on each subject were measured before the experimental session. Data were analyzed using the Rasch model. Results: We elaborated unidimensional linear scale that included 37 materials according to their pleasantness of touch. The pleasantness level of 21 materials was perceived differently, depending on the fingertip moisture levels of the subjects. Conclusion: Based on our findings, we formulated a Pleasant Touch Scale. Fingertip moisture levels appeared to be a major factor for (un)pleasant feelings during active exploration.

What affects pleasure in persons with advanced stage dementia?

We examined the impact of environmental, person, and stimulus characteristics on pleasure in persons with dementia. Study participants were 193 residents of 7 Maryland nursing homes who were presented with 25 stimuli from these categories: live human social stimuli, live pet social stimuli, simulated social stimuli, inanimate social stimuli, a reading stimulus, manipulative stimuli, a music stimulus, task and work-related stimuli, and two different self-identity stimuli. Systematic observations of pleasure in the natural environment were conducted using Lawton's Modified Behavior Stream. Analysis showed that pleasure is related to stimulus category, personal attributes and environmental conditions. In the multivariate analyses, all types of social stimuli (live and simulated, human and nonhuman), self-identity stimuli, and music were related to significantly higher levels of pleasure than the control condition. Females and persons with higher ADL and communication functional status exhibited more pleasure. Pleasure was most likely to occur in environments with moderate noise levels. These results demonstrate that these nursing home residents are indeed capable of showing pleasure. Caregivers of nursing home residents with dementia should incorporate social, self-identity, and music stimuli into their residents' care plans so that eliciting pleasure from each resident becomes the norm rather than a random occurrence.

Impairment of odor recognition and odor-induced emotions in type 1 myotonic dystrophy

This study aimed to test whether type 1 myotonic dystrophy (DM1) patients who have a lower sensitivity to emotional facial expressions have an abnormal olfactory threshold or recognition level. We measured DM1 patients’ performances in an olfactory acuity test and respiratory responses to odor stimuli, and compared their results to those of healthy controls (HCs). We found that DM1 patients exhibited a significantly reduced odor detection sensitivity compared with that in HCs. Three out of seven DM1 patients exhibited impaired odor recognition, while other four patients had significantly lower odor recognition compared with HCs. Even when patients were able to identify the type of odor, the levels of pleasantness they reported experiencing in response to a pleasant odor were significantly lower than those reported by HCs. These subjective data in DM1 patients were reflected in the respiratory responses (RRs). In the current study, one patient showed impairments in both odor detection and odor recognition. Abnormalities of the olfactory limbic areas might have been the cause of the olfactory impairments observed in the DM1 patients.

Using the Affect Grid to Measure Emotions in Software Requirements Engineering

Computer systems are designed and used by humans. And human being is characterized, among other things, by emotions. Giving this fact, the process of designing and developing computer systems is, like any other facet in our lives, driven by emotions. Requirements engineering is one of the main phases in software development. In Requirements engineering, several tasks include acceptance and negotiation activities in which the emotional factor represents a key role. This paper presents a study based on the application of affect grid by Russell in requirements engineering main stakeholders: developers and users. Results show that high arousal and low pleasure levels in the process are predictors of conflictive requirements.

The Impact of Stimuli on Affect in Persons With Dementia

To examine how presentation of different stimuli impacts affect in nursing home residents with dementia. Participants were 193 residents aged 60 to 101 years from 7 Maryland nursing homes who had a diagnosis of dementia (derived from the medical chart or obtained from the attending physician). Cognitive functioning was assessed via the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and data pertaining to activities of daily living were obtained through the Minimum Data Set. Affect was assessed using observations of the 5 moods from Lawton's Modified Behavior Stream. Baseline observations of affect were performed for comparisons. During the study, each participant was presented with 25 predetermined engagement stimuli in random order over a period of 3 weeks. Stimuli were categorized as live social, simulated social, manipulative, work/task-related, music, reading, or individualized to the participant's self-identity. The dates of data collection were 2005-2007. Differences between stimulus categories were significant for pleasure (F(6,144) = 25.137, P < .001) and interest (F(6,144) = 18.792, P < .001) but not for negative affect. Pleasure and interest were highest for the live social category, followed by self-identity and simulated social stimuli for pleasure, and for manipulative stimuli in terms of the effect on interest. The lowest levels of pleasure and interest were observed for music. Participants with higher cognitive function had significantly higher pleasure (F(1,97) = 6.27, P < .05). Although the general trend of the impact of the different categories was similar for different levels of cognitive function, there were significant differences in pleasure in response to specific stimuli (interaction effect: F(6,92) = 2.31, P < .05). Overall, social stimuli have the highest impact on affect in persons with dementia. The findings of the present study are important, as affect is a major indicator of quality of life and this study is the first to systematically examine the impact of specific types of stimuli on affect. As live social stimuli are not always readily available, particularly in busy nursing home environments, simulated social stimuli can serve as an effective substitute, and other stimuli should have a role in the activity tool kit in the nursing home. The relative ranking of stimuli was different for interest and pleasure. The findings demonstrate the differential effect of presentation of different types of stimuli on the affect of persons with dementia, and that, while the impact is greater on persons with higher levels of cognitive function, there is a different effect of varying stimuli even in persons with MMSE scores of 3 or lower. Future research should attempt to ascertain a person's degree of interest in stimuli prior to developing an intervention.

Differential associations between schizotypy facets and emotion traits

Although emotional deficits in schizotypy have been reported, the exact nature of these deficits is not well understood. The goal of the current research was to further differentiate possible emotion deficits in schizotypy. In the current study, individuals with elevated social anhedonia (SocAnh; n = 54) and elevated perceptual aberration/magical ideation (PerMag; n = 27) were compared to control participants ( n = 304) on measures of attention to either positive or negative affect, level of anticipatory versus consummatory pleasure, and on the influence of negative mood on judgment of future risk. SocAnh was associated with decreased attention to positive emotions. At the same time, SocAnh was associated with both decreased anticipatory and decreased consummatory pleasure. In addition, in contrast to the other groups, there was no association in the SocAnh group between current negative mood and performance on a judgment task. In contrast to SocAnh, PerMag was associated with increased attention to negative emotions. Overall, these results suggest that SocAnh is associated with decreased attention to and experience of positive emotions and that PerMag is associated with increased attention to negative emotions.

音乐对辨别力的影响&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;Effects of Music on the Recognition

目的本实验探讨了情绪状态和先验概率对无意义数字串辨别的影响。方法由剪辑的3首轻音乐诱导产生愉快、中性和悲怆不同水平的情绪状态，采用信号检测论的方法进行分析。结果（1）情绪状态对个体感受性d’和主观判断标准β的影响均不显著；（2）先验概率对d’和β均无显著性影响。结论（1）个体作决策时倾向于依据个案具体信息而忽视统计信息；（2）音乐诱导情绪的效果与个体对音乐的理解程度有关，本实验并未发现音乐诱导范式的情绪效应。 Purposes: The experiment explored how the emotional state and prior probability affected the recognition of meaningless number strings. Methods: 3 music experts aroused different emotional states, including pleasure, neutrality and sadness levels. The results were analyzed using Signal Detection Theory. Results: (1) The effects of emotional state on individual sensitivity d’ and subjective judgment criterion β were not significant; (2) Prior probability had no significant effect on individual sensitivity d’ and subjective judgment criterion β. Conclusions: (1) An individual made decisions according to objective information, ignoring statistic information; (2) The emotional effect was relevant to the understanding of the individual. Under this paradigm, no emotional effect was aroused by music.

Daily recovery from work: The role of activities, effort and pleasure

Knowledge of the cycle of work and recovery is crucial for protecting employee health and well-being and preserving working capabilities. However, the daily process of effort and recovery is not well understood. This study investigated how the time spent on activities in the work and off-job domains, and the pleasure and effort experienced while engaging in these activities, affect the daily recovery process. We expected higher levels of effort at work and during off-job time to be negatively related to recovery, and higher levels of pleasure at work and during off-job time to be positively related to recovery. We also hypothesized that pleasure would act as a buffer against the negative effects of effort. Data were collected by means of a five-day diary study (three measurements daily, before and immediately after work, and at bedtime) among 120 university academic staff. Fatigue and (low) vigour were used as indicators of (lack of) recovery. Multilevel analyses showed that pleasure in the work and off-job domains had beneficial effects on recovery. An adverse association between effort expenditure and recovery was lacking. However, in the work domain, a combination of unpleasant and effortful work activities was negatively related to recovery. These findings stress the importance of engaging in pleasant activities during work and off-job time.

Visual art in hospitals: case studies and review of the evidence

In 2006 a Department of Health Working Group on Arts and Health reported that the arts have 'a clear contribution to make and offer major opportunities in the delivery of better health, wellbeing and improved experience for patients, service users and staff alike'. In this review we examine the evidence underpinning this statement and evaluate the visual art of three of Scotland's newest hospitals: the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, the new Stobhill Hospital, and the new Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow. We conclude that art in hospitals is generally viewed positively by both patients and staff, but that the quality of the evidence is not uniformly high. Effects may be mediated by psychological responses to colour hue, brightness and saturation. Colours that elicit high levels of pleasure with low levels of arousal are most likely to induce a state of calm, while those causing displeasure and high levels of arousal may provoke anxiety. The fact that patients frequently express a preference for landscape and nature scenes is consistent with this observation and with evolutionary psychological theories which predict positive emotional responses to flourishing natural environments. Contrary to a view which may prevail among some contemporary artists, patients who are ill or stressed about their health may not always be comforted by abstract art, preferring the positive distraction and state of calm created by the blues and greens of landscape and nature scenes instead.

Improvement of Aroma in Transgenic Potato As a Consequence of Impairing Tuber Browning

Sensory analysis studies are critical in the development of quality enhanced crops, and may be an important component in the public acceptance of genetically modified foods. It has recently been established that odor preferences are shared between humans and mice, suggesting that odor exploration behavior in mice may be used to predict the effect of odors in humans. We have previously found that mice fed diets supplemented with engineered nonbrowning potatoes (-PPO) consumed more potato than mice fed diets supplemented with wild-type potatoes (WT). This prompted us to explore a possible role of potato odor in mice preference for nonbrowning potatoes. Taking advantage of two well established neuroscience paradigms, the “open field test” and the “nose-poking preference test”, we performed experiments where mice exploration behavior was monitored in preference assays on the basis of olfaction alone. No obvious preference was observed towards -PPO or WT lines when fresh potato samples were tested. However, when oxidized samples were tested, mice consistently investigated -PPO potatoes more times and for longer periods than WT potatoes. Congruently, humans discriminated WT from -PPO samples with a considerably better performance when oxidized samples were tested than when fresh samples were tested in blind olfactory experiments. Notably, even though participants ranked all samples with an intermediate level of pleasantness, there was a general consensus that the -PPO samples had a more intense odor and also evoked the sense-impression of a familiar vegetable more often than the WT samples. Taken together, these findings suggest that our previous observations might be influenced, at least in part, by differential odors that are accentuated among the lines once oxidative deterioration takes place. Additionally, our results suggest that nonbrowning potatoes, in addition to their extended shelf life, maintain their odor quality for longer periods of time than WT potatoes. To our knowledge this is the first report on the use of an animal model applied to the sensory analysis of a transgenic crop.

The Development of a Sensory Substitution System for the Sexual Rehabilitation of Men with Chronic Spinal Cord Injury

Sexual health is often severely impacted after spinal cord injury (SCI). Current research has primarily addressed male erection and fertility, when in fact pleasure and orgasm are top priorities for functional recovery. Sensory substitution technology operates by communicating input from a lost sensory pathway to another intact sensory modality. It was hypothesized that through training and neuroplasticity, mapped tongue sensations would be interpreted as sensory perceptions arising from insensate genitalia, and improve the sexual experience. To report the development of a sensory substitution system for the sexual rehabilitation of men with chronic SCI. Subjects performed sexual self-stimulation while using a novel sensory substitution device that mapped the stroking motion of the hand to a congruous flow of electrocutaneous sensations on the tongue. Three questionnaires, along with structured interviews, were used to rate the perceived sexual sensations following each training session. Subjects completed 20 sessions over approximately 8 weeks of training. Each subject reported an increased level of sexual pleasure soon after training with the device. Each subject also reported specific perceptions of cutaneous-like sensations below their lesion that matched their hand motion. Later sessions, while remaining pleasurable and interesting, were inconsistent, and no subject reported an orgasmic feeling during a session. The subjects were all interested in continuing training with the device at home, if possible, in the future. This study is the first to show that sensory substitution is a possible therapeutic avenue for sexual rehabilitation in people lacking normal genital sexual sensations. However more research, for instance on frequency and duration of training, is needed in order to induce functional lasting neuroplasticity. In the near term, SCI rehabilitation should more fully address sexuality and the role of neuroplasticity for promoting the maximal potential for sexual pleasure and orgasm.

Restaurant Servicescape, Service Encounter, and Perceived Congruency on Customers' Emotions and Satisfaction

This study examines the relative impact of physical surroundings and customer-employee interactions on customers' emotions and satisfaction. A field study was conducted in an actual restaurant setting. Subjects were interviewed at the end of the meal and asked to complete a survey instrument. Results indicate that both the servicescape and the service encounter influence pleasure and satisfaction. In addition, perceived congruency (i.e., matching the restaurant theme with food served, and matching the exterior look with the interior décor) had a positive impact on pleasure level, while such impact on arousal was minimal. Further, perceived congruency and pleasure had a joint impact on satisfaction. Managerial and future research implications are reported and discussed.

In the Mood for Adaptation

Cognitive conflict plays an important role in tuning cognitive control to the situation at hand. On the basis of earlier findings demonstrating emotional modulations of conflict processing, we predicted that affective states may adaptively regulate goal-directed behavior that is driven by conflict. We tested this hypothesis by measuring conflict-driven control adaptations following experimental induction of four different mood states that could be differentiated along the dimensions of arousal and pleasure. After mood states were induced, 91 subjects performed a flanker task, which provided a measure of conflict adaptation. As predicted, pleasure level affected conflict adaptation: Less pleasure was associated with more conflict-driven control. Arousal level did not influence conflict adaptation. This study suggests that affect adaptively regulates cognitive control. Implications for future research and psychopathology are discussed.

Fertility history and quality of life in older women and men

ABSTRACTIn this paper we examine associations between the fertility histories of older British women and men and their quality of life using data on a sample of 6,374 men and women born between 1923 and 1949 drawn from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Quality of life in 2001 was measured using scores from the four subscales of the CASP-19 questionnaire: control, autonomy, pleasure and self-realisation. Fertility histories were derived using information on the births of children collected in all waves of the BHPS. The aspects of fertility history investigated were number of children born and parents' ages at birth of first and last child. Age, education, marital status, tenure status, smoking, co-residence with one or more children, perceived social support and health limitations were included as covariates. The results suggested that early entry to parenthood and to some extent high parity were related to poorer quality of life. These associations were mostly mediated by socio-economic, social support and health factors. Compared to women with two children, nulliparous women expressed a higher level of autonomy, and both nulliparous women and those with four or more children a higher level of self-realisation. Low parity was related to a lower level of pleasure, especially among men, but this relationship appeared weaker and among women was not significant when background factors were controlled.

Studying cross-cultural differences in temperament in the first year of life: United States and Italy

An Italian translation of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) was developed and evaluated with 110 infants, demonstrating satisfactory internal consistency, discriminant validity, and construct validity in the form of gender and age differences, as well as factorial integrity. Cross-cultural differences were subsequently evaluated for matched samples of Italian and United States (US) (N = 110) 3—12-month-olds. Across infancy, parents of US infants reported higher levels of activity, high and low intensity pleasure, and vocal reactivity, whereas Italian infants, particularly males, were rated higher on cuddliness. In early infancy only, US infants were viewed as higher on high intensity pleasure and perceptual sensitivity.

In-store music and aroma influences on shopper behavior and satisfaction

Retail markets are increasingly competitive and retailers continuously look to differentiate their retail offering. One way to differentiate is by providing a pleasant and exciting shopping ambience. This paper experimentally tests the effects of music (volume high or low) and aroma (vanilla scent present/absent) on young fashion shoppers in a real retail setting. Results show that volume of music and the presence of a vanilla aroma both have a significant impact on shoppers' emotions and satisfaction levels. Additional analysis reveals that the arousal induced by music and aroma results in increased pleasure levels, which in turn positively influences shopper behaviors, including time and money spend, approach behavior, and satisfaction with the shopping experience. Direct effects of arousal on behaviors as well as an interaction effect between music and aroma on pleasure and time spent in the store are also present. The paper contributes to the better understanding of shoppers' emotions and shopper behaviors in response to in-store atmospherics and offers retailers practical insights into how to create competitive advantage by customizing the atmosphere in their stores.

The dark side of sniffing: Paint colour affects intoxication experiences among adolescent inhalant users

Inhalant abuse among adolescents is a significant health concern in many countries; however, limited research has explored whether the intoxication experience differs between commonly used inhalants. The aim of the present study was to examine how exposure to different types of paints (chrome vs. non-chrome) were experienced by adolescent users. Sixteen adolescent (aged 15-19 years) regular inhalant users completed a semistructured questionnaire enquiring about their inhalant use. Participants were divided into two groups based on paint colour preference [chrome paints (n = 10) and non-chrome paints (n = 6)] and were compared using appropriate statistical tests. Relative to non-chrome users, the chrome-using group were more likely to report deliberately inhaling to experience altered perceptions (such as visual and auditory hallucinations). In addition, a significantly greater proportion of chrome users reported that the perceptual alterations they experienced after sniffing paint differed between paint colours, with chrome colours being associated with more vivid hallucinations. While both chrome and non-chrome users reported a comparable level of pleasure from paint sniffing, chrome paint users were more likely to be motivated by the potential to hallucinate. Our findings suggest that the type of inhalant used is an important consideration that may have relevance to clinical treatment.