Low Arousal Emotions Research Articles

Analysis of constant-Q filterbank based representations for speech emotion recognition

This work analyzes the constant-Q filterbank-based time-frequency representations for speech emotion recognition (SER). Constant-Q filterbank provides non-linear spectro-temporal representation with higher frequency resolution at low frequencies. Our investigation reveals how the increased low-frequency resolution benefits SER. The time-domain comparative analysis between short-term mel-frequency spectral coefficients (MFSCs) and constant-Q filterbank-based features, namely constant-Q transform (CQT) and continuous wavelet transform (CWT), reveals that constant-Q representations provide higher time-invariance at low-frequencies. This provides increased robustness against emotion irrelevant temporal variations in pitch, especially for low-arousal emotions. The corresponding frequency-domain analysis over different emotion classes shows better resolution of pitch harmonics in constant-Q-based time-frequency representations than MFSC. These advantages of constant-Q representations are further consolidated by SER performance in the extensive evaluation of features over four publicly available databases with six advanced deep neural network architectures as the back-end classifiers. Our inferences in this study hint toward the suitability and potentiality of constant-Q features for SER.

EmotionBox: A music-element-driven emotional music generation system based on music psychology.

With the development of deep neural networks, automatic music composition has made great progress. Although emotional music can evoke listeners' different auditory perceptions, only few research studies have focused on generating emotional music. This paper presents EmotionBox -a music-element-driven emotional music generator based on music psychology that is capable of composing music given a specific emotion, while this model does not require a music dataset labeled with emotions as previous methods. In this work, pitch histogram and note density are extracted as features that represent mode and tempo, respectively, to control music emotions. The specific emotions are mapped from these features through Russell's psychology model. The subjective listening tests show that the Emotionbox has a competitive performance in generating different emotional music and significantly better performance in generating music with low arousal emotions, especially peaceful emotion, compared with the emotion-label-based method.

Timing and Emotions in Learning Practice Adoption

Reflecting on past performance is perceived as the core activity enhancing organizational learning because it helps organization members improve their cognitive understandings. Yet, reflection could also trigger emotional reactions that may influence organization members’ subsequent actions. In this paper, we integrate such emotional mechanisms into current theories of organizational learning, building on a five-year qualitative study of a management consulting firm. Our model shows how reflection influences organization members’ appraisals that generate emotions. Reflection changes organization members’ thinking about their skills and actions, which triggers emotional reactions that may either support or inhibit subsequent actions. The timing of reflection, in particular, influences their appraisals of controllability. When reflection is performed after a project, appraisals of low controllability lead to low-arousal emotions that inhibit future action and undermine future learning. In contrast, reflection performed during or before a project generates appraisals of high controllability that lead to high-arousal emotions and benefit future actions and learning. Hence, the timing of reflection substantially shapes the emotional effects of reflection and influences whether reflection benefits organizational learning.

CURRENT SITUATION, INFLUENCING FACTORS AND PATH OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS CLUBS BASED ON CONSUMER EMOTION REGULATION

BackgroundWith the rapid development of the sports industry and the increasingly mature market environment, many sports organizations in Europe and the United States have gradually realized the importance of social responsibility. They often use holidays to carry out social responsibility activities and improve the brand image by performing social responsibility. China's sports industry has developed rapidly in recent years, but professional sports still need to learn from European and American countries in fulfilling their social responsibilities. At present, the contradiction between the growing spiritual and cultural needs of the people and the insufficient and unbalanced supply is becoming increasingly prominent. Professional sports is an important industry to meet people's spiritual and cultural needs. Professional sports clubs are responsible for training excellent athletes for the country, seeking economic benefits for the club, providing public services for cities and communities, disseminating urban sports culture, promoting sports development, protecting the environment, engaging in philanthropy and other important responsibilities. They are the core of professional sports. Whether professional sports clubs can actively fulfill their corporate social responsibility will have an important impact on the development of professional sports. Therefore, it is of great significance to understand the current situation of social responsibility of professional sports clubs and the influencing factors of consumers' emotion, and to explore the ways for professional sports clubs to fulfill their social responsibility.Research Objects and MethodsTaking CBA club as the research object, this study investigates the implementation status and influencing factors of CBA club's social responsibility from the perspective of the psychological perception of sports experts and spectators by using the combination of quantitative questionnaire survey and qualitative content analysis. In order to improve the impact of sports club rules on consumers' emotion, this study first revised the emotion questionnaire compiled by Dong Yan and Yu Guoliang (2007) according to the basic characteristics of the environment, and then measured the subjects' emotion with the revised scale. Among them, positive emotion (30 items in total) includes two dimensions: positive high arousal emotion and positive low arousal emotion, and negative emotion (42 items in total) includes two dimensions: negative high arousal emotion and negative low arousal emotion. The questionnaire adopts Likert's 5-level continuous evaluation, “1” means “completely unqualified” and “5” means “fully qualified”. Statistics show that the internal consistency reliability of the two subscales of positive emotion and negative emotion is 0.5% 75 ~ 0. Four factor validity: 245 21,x2 / df = 1. 96, CFI = 0. 94, TLI = 0. 91, RMSEA = 0. 050, SRMR = 0. 067.ResultsThe survey results show that sports experts and ordinary audiences are not satisfied with the current implementation of corporate social responsibility in CBA clubs. It is generally believed that the lack of corporate social responsibility in CBA clubs is serious. Sports experts believe that the most important factors affecting the performance of social responsibility by CBA clubs are unclear property rights, vague relationship between responsibilities and rights in the business process, lack of perfect social responsibility supervision and evaluation mechanism, while ordinary audiences believe that there is a lack of perfect corporate social responsibility supervision and evaluation mechanism, backward system and imperfect relevant laws and regulations. The results showed that the effect of interpersonal emotion regulation on implicit positive emotion decreased with the increase of regulation difficulty level; And expression inhibition is the mediating variable of regulatory effect, which has some mediating effect. With the enhancement of expression inhibition, the mediating effect has an increasing trend. Because interpersonal interaction can more activate psychological processing processes such as empathy, viewpoint selection and attention conversion, it will help interpersonal emotion regulation to positively predict implicit positive emotions at the level of automatic processing. The result of the negative regulation effect of regulation difficulty is consistent with the theoretical viewpoint proposed by the dual resource model of interpersonal emotional interaction. The dual resource model holds that the emotional regulation of interpersonal interaction is based on the resources of two nervous systems. Self regulated public resources can realize top-down cognitive control, and the work of this system needs to be realized at the level of consciousness.ConclusionThis paper puts forward the ways to promote the implementation of social responsibility of professional sports clubs: clarify the legal subject status of professional sports clubs, legalize the social responsibility connotation of professional sports clubs, comprehensively build the social responsibility awareness of professional sports clubs and stakeholders, strengthen the social responsibility consciousness of professional sports clubs, and establish a scientific social responsibility evaluation system of professional sports clubs, Improve the social responsibility supervision system of professional sports clubs.AcknowledgmentsNational Social Science Foundation of China 20BTY051: Research on competitive balance driving high-quality development of Professional sports in China.

Networks of happiness: applying a Network Approach to Well-Being in the General Population

Even though well-being can be seen as a multidimensional construct, made up of a variety of interacting aspects, most studies examine total scores on well-being measures, treating well-being as a latent variable. This so-called common cause perspective assumes that aspects of well-being are mere effects of a common cause, namely well-being itself. The network approach moves away from this approach by suggesting that research should no longer focus only on the mean level of psychological constructs, but on the relations between the different aspects of a construct over time. Instead of a static, common cause approach to well-being, the network perspective views thoughts and feelings not as reflections but as constituents of well-being, treating them as agents in a causal system instead of passive indicators. In this paper, we applied the network approach to investigate how fluctuations in specific symptoms of well-being are associated with fluctuations in other symptoms of well-being. Based on a sample of 151 working adults with on average 32.66 data points collected over a five-day period, we found that in general, the low arousal emotion of feeling satisfied played a central role in the dynamics between various aspects of well-being in the momentary context of daily life. This means that feeling satisfied cannot just be seen as a passive indicator of well-being, but also as an active agent in a causal system that brings about other aspects of well-being. These results provide insight into daily dynamic processes related to the development of well-being over time and contribute to our understanding of well-being and how to improve it.

Nonsmokers’ Responses to Online E-Cigarette Commercials: Effects of Argument Quantity and Celebrity Endorsement

Objectives: With mounting evidence on health risks caused by e-cigarette consumption, it is of great necessity to explore not only smokers’ but also nonsmokers’ responses to e-cigarette marketing messages, such as online commercials. Employing both psychophysiological and self-report measures, this study examined nonsmoking young adults’ cognitive, emotional, and attitudinal reactions to two major message features used in e-cigarette commercials: argument quantity and endorsement type. Method: The experiment used a 2 (endorsement type: celebrity and average citizen) × 2 (argument quantity: low and high) × 2 (message repetition) within-subjects design. Continuous heart rate (indicative of attention) and skin conductance activity (indicative of emotional arousal) were measured during ads viewing. Self-reported ad liking and vaping urge were assessed immediately after participants finished watching each commercial. Results: Results showed that compared to high argument quantity, low argument quantity elicited more attention, evoked higher emotional arousal, and generated stronger ad liking and vaping urge. Additionally, compared to average-citizen endorsement, the presence of celebrity endorsement elicited higher attention and lower emotional arousal in nonsmoking young adults. There was a significant interaction effect of endorsement type and argument quantity on ad liking. Conclusions: For nonsmoking young adults, low argument quantity commercials might have the greatest impact in initiating vaping behavior, which has implications for regulatory policies regarding e-cigarette. Celebrity endorsement was effective in catching nonsmokers’ attention but had limited effects on emotional involvement and product adoption. The implications of the findings were finally discussed in more details in the manuscript.

Momentary Emotion Goals and Spontaneous Emotion Regulation in Daily Life: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study of Desire for High Versus Low Arousal Positive Emotion

Recent research has highlighted that emotion regulation strategy use varies both between and within people, and specific individual and contextual differences shape strategy use. Further, use of specific emotion regulation strategies relates to a wide array of differential outcomes, including mental health and behavior. Emotion goals (desire for a given emotion state) are thought to play a particularly important role in shaping people’s use of emotion regulation strategies; yet, surprisingly little is known about whether and how momentary emotion goals predict spontaneous strategy use in daily life. In the present investigation, we examined whether ideal desire for high versus low arousal positive affect was associated with subsequent use of specific emotion regulation strategies. Undergraduate participants (final N = 101) completed ecological momentary assessments (final ks = 1,932 for contemporaneous analyses, 1,386 for time-lagged analyses) of their momentary experienced affect, momentary desire for high versus low arousal positive affect, and emotion regulation. Desire for higher arousal predicted greater use of three disengagement strategies: distraction, expressive suppression, and experiential suppression. None of these strategies, though, were associated with sustained enhancement of high arousal (or low arousal) positive affect. These findings point to a possible disconnect between the strategies that people tend to use when they want to feel more arousal and the affective outcomes associated with use of those strategies.

Gender Differences in Callous Unemotional Trait Profiles in an Undergraduate Sample

ABSTRACT A wealth of research has consistently identified two distinct callous unemotional (CU) variants that differ on etiological mechanisms. While the first variant has been posited to represent a genetically predisposed difference in lower emotional arousal, the secondary variant demonstrates overlap with trauma-related symptomatology. Limited research has examined whether these CU variants differ based on child maltreatment subtypes or whether symptom profiles for CU variants differ by male-identified and female-identified participants. We aimed to replicate findings that individuals in the secondary CU group demonstrate higher PTSS. In an undergraduate sample of youth ages 18 to 24 (N = 546; 55.5% female), the present study examined whether CU variants could be identified utilizing latent profile analysis including CU trait clusters (i.e., callousness, uncaring, unemotional), anxiety, and child maltreatment subtypes. We identified unique symptom profiles by male-identified and female-identified gender. CU variant groups were differentiated based on the severity of child maltreatment experiences and anxiety symptoms. The manifestation of CU symptoms differed by variant group and by gender. Additionally, PTSS was highest in secondary CU variant groups. The findings support the conceptualization of the secondary CU variant group as a trauma-based reaction and suggest potential differences in symptom profiles by gender.

Psychophysiological effects of slow-paced breathing at six cycles per minute with or without heart rate variability biofeedback.

Heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback, referring to slow-paced breathing (SPB) realized while visualizing a heart rate, HRV, and/or respiratory signal, has become an adjunct treatment for a large range of psychologic and medical conditions. However, the underlying mechanisms explaining the effectiveness of HRV biofeedback still need to be uncovered. This study aimed to disentangle the specific effects of HRV biofeedback from the effects of SPB realized alone. In total, 112 participants took part in the study. The parameters assessed were emotional (valence, arousal, and control) and perceived stress intensity as self-report variables and the root mean square of the successive differences (RMSSD) as a physiologic variable. A main effect of condition was found for emotional valence only, valence being more positive overall in the SPB-HRVB condition. A main effect of time was observed for all dependent variables. However, no main effects for the condition or time x condition interaction effects were observed. Results showed that for PRE and POST comparisons (referring, respectively, to before and after SPB), both SPB-HRVB and SPB-NoHRVB conditions resulted in a more negative emotional valence, lower emotional arousal, higher emotional control, and higher RMSSD. Future research might investigate psychophysiological differences between SPB-HRVB and SPB-NoHRVB across different time periods (e.g., long-term interventions), and in response to diverse psychophysiological stressors.

Testing Whether Suicide Capability Has a Dynamic Propensity: The Role of Affect and Arousal on Momentary Fluctuations in Suicide Capability.

To prevent suicidal behaviors, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms and processes that enable an individual to act on suicidal thoughts. Suicide capability, which involves an increased pain tolerance and fearlessness of death, is a critical factor that enables an individual to endure the physical pain necessary to make a lethal suicide attempt. Extant research has largely conceptualized suicide capability as developing linearly in response to painful and provocative experiences, but the emerging literature on the temporal dynamics of suicide has been challenging the notion of linearity in suicide risk. Few studies have directly measured and compared changes in suicide capability in response to rumination on different affective states. We sought to experimentally test if rumination in the context of low vs. high arousal emotions will prompt distinct changes in two core components of suicide capability: pain tolerance and fearlessness of death on two undergraduate student samples. In both studies, participants provided measures of subjective emotional state as well as pain threshold, tolerance, and persistence before and after completing experimental manipulations which included both emotion and rumination induction procedures. In the second study, measures of fearlessness about death and physiological arousal (heart rate) were added to the experimental procedures. We found significant decreases in pain threshold, tolerance, and persistence following the experimental manipulations but found no main effects of rumination or suicide risk. These findings suggest that suicide capability can fluctuate but these changes may occur through a different mechanism and/or differ between individuals at varying levels of suicide risk.

The interpersonal effects of distinct emotions in online reviews

ABSTRACT Emotional expressions in online reviews affect reviews’ informative value. By comparing high and low arousal emotions with a negative and positive valence, the current research demonstrates that the effects of emotional expressions in online reviews are determined not by the level of arousal, but by the perceived rationality of the reviewer and the perceived appropriateness of the emotional expression. In a lab experiment (N = 242) among university students, and an online experiment (N = 252) on Prolific Academic involving native English speakers, participants read an online restaurant review with the negative emotions anger, disappointment, or disgust, or with the positive emotions happiness, excitement, or contentment. Results showed that readers of online reviews considered expressions of anger more inappropriate than expressions of disappointment or disgust; this led them to judge the reviewer as more irrational, which decreased the informative value of the review. As a consequence, angry reviews led to less negative restaurant evaluations and stronger intentions to visit the restaurant than reviews expressing disappointment or disgust. We found no differences between contentment and happiness (Study 1), or between contentment and excitement (Study 2). Our findings underscore the importance of studying the effects of discrete emotions in online reviews.

The temperature of emotions.

Emotions and temperature are closely related through embodied processes, and people seem to associate temperature concepts with emotions. While this relationship is often evidenced by everyday language (e.g., cold and warm feelings), what remains missing to date is a systematic study that holistically analyzes how and why people associate specific temperatures with emotions. The present research aimed to investigate the associations between temperature concepts and emotion adjectives on both explicit and implicit levels. In Experiment 1, we evaluated explicit associations between twelve pairs of emotion adjectives derived from the circumplex model of affect, and five different temperature concepts ranging from 0°C to 40°C, based on responses from 403 native speakers of four different languages (English, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese). The results of Experiment 1 revealed that, across languages, the temperatures were associated with different regions of the circumplex model. The 0°C and 10°C were associated with negative-valanced, low-arousal emotions, while 20°C was associated with positive-valanced, low-to-medium-arousal emotions. Moreover, 30°C was associated with positive-valanced, high-arousal emotions; and 40°C was associated with high-arousal and either positive- or negative-valanced emotions. In Experiment 2 (N = 102), we explored whether these temperature-emotion associations were also present at the implicit level, by conducting Implicit Association Tests (IATs) with temperature words (cold and hot) and opposing pairs of emotional adjectives for each dimension of valence (Unhappy/Dissatisfied vs. Happy/Satisfied) and arousal (Passive/Quiet vs. Active/Alert) on native English speakers. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that participants held implicit associations between the word hot and positive-valanced and high-arousal emotions. Additionally, the word cold was associated with negative-valanced and low-arousal emotions. These findings provide evidence for the existence of temperature-emotion associations at both explicit and implicit levels across languages.

The influence of classroom width on attention and memory: virtual-reality-based task performance and neurophysiological effects

ABSTRACT Classroom design influences the cognitive processes that determine learning. However, the effects of classroom geometry have been little studied, in part due to the difficulty of modifying physical spaces for experimental purposes. Today, virtual reality allows researchers to very closely control many environmental conditions while collecting psychological and neurophysiological metrics of the user experience. The objective of the present study is to analyse the influence of classroom width on the attention and memory performance of university students. The performance of 90 subjects in three classroom width settings (8.80, 8.20, and 7.60 m), implemented in virtual reality, was evaluated through measures of their attention- and memory-related psychological and neurophysiological responses. The results showed that wider classrooms are associated with poorer performance and lower emotional arousal. This demonstrates a link between the geometric variables of classrooms and the cognitive and physiological responses of students. In general, the present study and its methodology can help architects and researchers develop design guidelines that can improve students’ cognitive processes.

Comparing Emotion Recognition and Word Recognition in Background Noise.

Purpose Word recognition in quiet and in background noise has been thoroughly investigated in previous research to establish segmental speech recognition performance as a function of stimulus characteristics (e.g., audibility). Similar methods to investigate recognition performance for suprasegmental information (e.g., acoustic cues used to make judgments of talker age, sex, or emotional state) have not been performed. In this work, we directly compared emotion and word recognition performance in different levels of background noise to identify psychoacoustic properties of emotion recognition (globally and for specific emotion categories) relative to word recognition. Method Twenty young adult listeners with normal hearing listened to sentences and either reported a target word in each sentence or selected the emotion of the talker from a list of options (angry, calm, happy, and sad) at four signal-to-noise ratios in a background of white noise. Psychometric functions were fit to the recognition data and used to estimate thresholds (midway points on the function) and slopes for word and emotion recognition. Results Thresholds for emotion recognition were approximately 10 dB better than word recognition thresholds, and slopes for emotion recognition were half of those measured for word recognition. Low-arousal emotions had poorer thresholds and shallower slopes than high-arousal emotions, suggesting greater confusion when distinguishing low-arousal emotional speech content. Conclusions Communication of a talker's emotional state continues to be perceptible to listeners in competitive listening environments, even after words are rendered inaudible. The arousal of emotional speech affects listeners' ability to discriminate between emotion categories.

Right and left inferior frontal opercula are involved in discriminating angry and sad facial expressions

BackgroundNeuroimaging studies suggest that the inferior frontal operculum (IFO) is part of a neuronal network involved in facial expression processing, but the causal role of this region in emotional face discrimination remains elusive. ObjectiveWe used cathodal (inhibitory) tDCS to test whether right (r-IFO) and left (l-IFO) IFO play a role in discriminating basic facial emotions in healthy volunteers. Specifically, we tested if the two sites are selectively involved in the processing of facial expressions conveying high or low arousal emotions. Based on the Arousal Hypothesis we expected to find a modulation of high and low arousal emotions by cathodal tDCS of the r-IFO and the l-IFO, respectively. MethodsFirst, we validated an Emotional Faces Discrimination Task (EFDT). Then, we targeted the r-IFO and the l-IFO with cathodal tDCS (i.e. the cathode was placed over the right or left IFO, while the anode was placed over the contralateral supraorbital area) during facial emotions discrimination on the EFDT. Non-active (i.e. sham) tDCS was a control condition. ResultsOverall, participants manifested the “happy face advantage”. Interestingly, tDCS to r-IFO enhanced discrimination of faces expressing anger (a high arousal emotion), whereas, tDCS to l-IFO decreased discrimination of faces expressing sadness (a low arousal emotion). ConclusionsOur findings revealed a differential causal role of r-IFO and l-IFO in the discrimination of specific high and low arousal emotions. Crucially, these results suggest that cathodal tDCS might reduce the neural noise triggered by facial emotions, improving discrimination of high arousal emotions but disrupting discrimination of low arousal emotions. These findings offer new insights for treating clinical population with deficits in processing facial expressions.

Exploring the drivers of customers’ brand attitudes of online travel agency services: A text-mining based approach

This paper aims to explore the important qualitative aspects of online user-generated-content that reflects customers’ brand-attitudes. Additionally, the qualitative aspects can help service-providers understand customers’ brand-attitudes by focusing on the important aspects rather than reading the entire review, which will save both their time and effort. We have utilised a total of 10,000 reviews from TripAdvisor (an online-travel-agency provider). This study has analysed the data using statistical-technique (logistic regression), predictive-model (artificial-neural-networks) and structural-modelling technique to understand the most important aspects (i.e. sentiment, emotion or parts-of-speech) that can help to predict customers’ brand-attitudes. Results show that sentiment is the most important aspect in predicting brand-attitudes. While total sentiment content and content polarity have significant positive association, negative high-arousal emotions and low-arousal emotions have significant negative association with customers’ brand attitudes. However, parts-of-speech aspects have no significant impact on brand attitude. The paper concludes with implications, limitations and future research directions.

Older and younger adult definitions of emotion terms: a mixed-method content analysis

Objectives Conceptualizations of emotions might evolve over the course of adult development as motivations shift, but there are gaps in knowledge regarding these changes. This mixed-methods study tested theoretical predictions pertaining to age group differences in conceptualizations of emotions. Method University students (N = 210, M age = 20.1 years) and community-dwelling older adults (N = 90, M age = 72.5 years) participated in three survey studies (2016-2018) conducted in person, online, or via mail and provided written narrative definitions for 11 emotion words. Responses were coded for valence, arousal, time frame, reference to self, reference to social contacts, and nature of response (i.e. example or definition). Code frequencies were compared for younger and older adults via odds ratio and logistic regression analyses. Results Younger and older adults used many of the same words in definitions of emotion terms. Older participants more often referenced situational examples in their definitions than younger participants. As expected, older adults used more low arousal language, referenced the ‘self,’ and included other persons more in their emotion descriptions than younger persons. Unexpectedly, younger participants used more positive language in descriptions of some positive emotions. Conclusions Descriptions of emotion terms might serve a self-regulatory function, such as to facilitate low arousal emotion experiences for older adults or to illustrate important values, such as the greater importance of other persons to emotion experiences for older than younger adults.

More is Not Better: The Emotional Dynamics of an Excellent Experience

Emotions embody the value in tourism experiences and drive essential outcomes such as intent to recommend. Current models do not explain how the ebb and flow of emotional arousal during an experience relate to outcomes, however. We analyzed 15 participants’ experiences at the Vincentre museum and guided village tour in Nuenen, the Netherlands. This Vincent van Gogh-themed experience led to a wide range of intent to recommend and emotional arousal, measured as continuous phasic skin conductance, across participants and exhibits. Mixed-effects analyses modeled emotional arousal as a function of proximity to exhibits and intent to recommend. Experiences with the best outcomes featured moments of both high and low emotional arousal, not one continuous “high,” with more emotion during the middle of the experience. Tourist experience models should account for a complex relationship between emotions experienced and outcomes such as intent to recommend. Simply put, more emotion is not always better.

Unraveling Moral Reasoning in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: How Emotional Detachment Modifies Moral Judgment.

In the last decade, scientific literature provided solid evidence of cognitive deficits in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and their effects on end-life choices. However, moral cognition and judgment are still poorly investigated in this population. Here we aimed at evaluating both socio-cognitive and socio-affective components of moral reasoning in a sample of 28 ALS patients. Patients underwent clinical and neuropsychological evaluation including basic cognitive and social cognition measures. Additionally, we administered an experimental task including moral dilemmas, with instrumental and incidental conditions. Patients’ performances were compared with a control group [healthy control (HC)], including 36 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy subjects. Despite that the judgment pattern was comparable in ALS and HC, patients resulted less prone to carry out a moral transgression compared to HC. Additionally, ALS patients displayed higher levels of moral permissibility and lower emotional arousal, with similar levels of engagement in both instrumental and incidental conditions. Our findings expanded the current literature about cognitive deficits in ALS, showing that in judging moral actions, patients may present non-utilitarian choices and emotion flattening. Such a decision-making profile may have relevant implications in applying moral principles in real-life situations and for the judgment of end-of-life treatments and care in clinical settings.

“I want to break free!” How experiences of freedom foster consumer happiness

This research investigates the relevance, characteristics, and influence of experiences of freedom as a source of consumer happiness. A qualitative study (Study 1) underscores the existence of two types of experiences of freedom in consumption that bring happiness to consumers: “freedom from” worries, stress, or everyday life and “freedom to” explore, decide, and enact who they are or want to become. A content analysis (Study 2) and an experiment (Study 3) show how these two types of experiences of freedom have different characteristics and are related to happiness in different ways: “freedom from” experiences are related to low positive emotional arousal (calm) and are more likely to foster hedonic, pleasure-based happiness, while “freedom to” experiences are more frequently associated with high positive emotional arousal (excitement) and are more likely to foster eudaimonic, meaning-based happiness. The results are discussed in terms of research, consumer and managerial implications.