Positive Emotional Content Research Articles

“Bouncing Back” from a Loss: Entrepreneurial Orientation, Emotions, and Failure Narratives

In this study, we explore how failure in the form of the first lost game of the college football season for a team influences specific content within the narratives constructed regarding that loss and how those narratives are associated with subsequent performance. Building on theoretical perspectives regarding sports management, entrepreneurial orientation (EO), emotions, and the use of narratives for sensemaking, we develop and test an EO–related sports management model of failure narratives. Using computer–aided text analysis of transcripts from head coaches’ press conferences directly following their team's first loss of the season as well as regression analysis, we found that the narrative's EO content has a U–shaped relationship with subsequent (i.e., next game) performance. Additionally, negative emotional content had a similar U–shaped relationship with subsequent performance. Finally, positive emotional content exhibited an inverse U–shaped relationship with subsequent performance. We discuss the implications of these results on the literatures regarding EO, emotions, and sports management as well as possible avenues for future research.

Gender Differences in Emotional Content of EFL Written Narratives

Gender’s trace in the use of language, although not evidently, is commonly present in all classroom situations. It is commonly believed that women are expressive and emotional, while men are self-asserting and power-oriented in the use of language. The present study, in adopting an empirically-supported approach to the negative and positive emotional content of the narrative autobiographical reports, concentrated on 103 female and 82 male graduate EFL students' writing. The collected written data were then analyzed by on-line language processing programs for emotional linguistic content. Although statistical analysis did not offer significant differences across genders, the data do show a slight tendency on the females' part to use a higher rate of emotional words. The results, while not very revealing in statistical terms, can point to a growing trend of equality, especially among the academically educated population in contexts like Iran as a Middle Eastern country. Implications of the study are discussed in the light of the literature, and theoretical background.

Emotion matters: Implications for distracted driving

Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. Roadside billboards containing negative and positive emotional content have been shown to influence driving behaviour by modulating attention; however, the impact of emotion-related auditory distraction on driving is relatively unknown. In the present study, we explored the behavioural and event-related potential (ERP) effects elicited by auditorily presented words of different emotional valence during driving (dual-task) and non-driving (single-task) conditions. The results demonstrate that emotion-related auditory distraction can differentially affect driving performance depending on the valence of the emotional content. Negative distractions reduced lateral control and slowed driving speeds compared to positive and neutral distractions. On the other hand, the results revealed an arousal effect on memory and decision-making during driving as performance improved with both negative and positive distractions. Finally, ERPs elicited by the auditory distractions were reduced in amplitude during driving compared to non-driving, revealing a division of cognitive resources under dual-task demands. These findings have important implications for road safety and bring to light the detrimental effects of negative emotional auditory content on driving performance. Furthermore, these findings show that emotional valence and arousal can differentially influence behaviour.

The effects of taboo-related distraction on driving performance

Driver distraction is an important risk factor in motor vehicle crashes. Roadside billboards containing negative and positive emotional content have been shown to have differential effects on driving, however, little is known about the impact of taboo information. Taboo information more reliably evokes emotional arousal than other emotional information and can lead to greater attentional capture due to its inherent ‘shock value.’ We examined the potential for driver distraction from four different types of information presented on roadside billboards: highly arousing taboo words, moderately arousing positive and negative words, and non-arousing neutral words. Results showed that taboo words were associated with better lane control and memory recall compared to the other word types. Our findings suggest that taboo words captured the most attention, but also led to a more careful driving style. One possible explanation is that drivers may be narrowing their attention to the driving task when highly aroused.

Learning to decode human emotions from event-related potentials

Reported works on electroencephalogram (EEG)-based emotion recognition systems generally employ the principles of supervised learning to build subject-dependent (single/intra-subject) models. Building subject-independent (multiple/inter-subject) models is a harder problem due to the EEG data variability between subjects. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we provide a framework for selection of a small number of basic temporal features, event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes, and latencies that are sufficiently robust to discriminate emotion states across multiple subjects. Second, we test comparatively the feasibility of six standard unsupervised (clustering) techniques to build intra-subject and inter-subject models to discriminate emotion valence in the ERPs collected while subjects were viewing high arousal images with positive or negative emotional content.

Effectiveness of tobacco control television advertisements with different types of emotional content on tobacco use in England, 2004–2010

AimTo examine the effects of tobacco control television advertisements with positive and negative emotional content on adult smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption.DesignAnalysis of monthly cross-sectional surveys using generalised additive models.SettingEngland.Participants60...

Pilot study of the effect of religious symbols on brain function: Association with measures of religiosity.

Religious symbols are used throughout the world to evoke specific meaning in adherents. However, it is unclear if the impact of symbols is based upon their meaning or the inherent effect of the visual symbols on the brain. There has never been a study that has assessed the impact of religious symbols, of both positive and negative emotional content, on the brain. In addition, it would also be important to correlate the neurophysiological effect of various religious symbols to specific measures of a person’s perspective on religion. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to study 20 healthy subjects from different religious backgrounds, we found that neural activation in the primary visual cortex was significantly suppressed in response to religious negative symbols compared with neutral and nonreligious negative symbols. No such deactivation was observed for religious positive symbols. Subjects’ scores on the Quest scale, an index of religious and spiritual orientation and belief, correlated significantly with activity in the primary visual cortex for negative symbols, but not for positive symbols. In addition, scores on the Beliefs About God Assessment Form (BAGAF), that measures the adaptability of a person’s religious beliefs, correlated significantly with activity in the amygdala and insula when observing religious symbols. These findings suggest an early stage visual mecha

What Do You Have to Say About That? Performance Events and Narratives' Positive and Negative Emotional Content

The current study explores how the failure of innovative projects and positive organizational performance influence specific content within narratives. Building on theoretical perspectives regardin...

The effectiveness of mass media campaigns in reducing smoking in England: an observational study

BackgroundLittle evidence exists for the effectiveness of mass media campaigns in the UK despite campaigns running regularly since 1999. In 2010, the UK Government ceased spending on national public health mass media campaigns in England. Tobacco control (TC) campaigns were reintroduced in 2011, but at a lower level of funding. We need to know whether campaigns are effective to ensure continued funding. We aimed to assess the effect of government-funded televised campaigns for TC shown in England during the 2000s on adult smoking behaviours. MethodsWe measured exposure to government-funded television advertisements for TC using television ratings (TVRs) and coded the advertisements for emotional content using a theoretically based framework. Recall of advertisements from 2005 to 2009 was ascertained from participants of the International Tobacco Four Country Survey and analysed with generalised estimating equations, comparing recall between advertisements with positive and negative emotional content. Data for smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption from 2002 to 2010 were obtained from Opinions and Lifestyle surveys. Measures of smoking cessation behaviour (calls to the NHS quitline 2005–11, text requests for quit support packs 2007–10, smoking cessation website hits 2009–11, attendance and 4-week quitters at NHS Stop Smoking Services [SSS] 2001–11) were obtained from the Department of Health and NHS Information Centre. Data were analysed with generalised additive models with adjustments for seasonality, time trends, and other tobacco policies. FindingsBetween 2002 and April, 2010, 35 282 TVRs for TC were broadcast (mean 42 advertisements per year). An increase in TVRs was associated with a significant increase in recall and a reduction in mean cigarette consumption in the following month and smoking prevalence 2 months later (appendix). 45% of advertisements screened between 2004 and 2010 were coded as having positive emotional content. Negative, but not positive, emotive campaigns resulted in significantly increased and longer durations of recall (appendix). There was a significant decrease in text requests for quit support packs, quitline calls, and web hits after April, 2010, but no effect on the use of the NHS SSS (appendix). We studied recall and tobacco use at the individual level; however, TVRs measure mean potential exposure, and individual-level exposure can vary dependent on frequency of television viewing and attention to advertisements. We cannot completely rule out that other unmeasured variables confound the association with TVRs or the timing of the freeze. InterpretationTelevised campaigns are effective in changing smoking behaviours in adults. We are now exploring whether the stronger effect of negative emotive campaigns on recall translates to effects on quitting behaviour. FundingUniversities of Bath, Nottingham, and King's College London, received funding from the National Prevention Research Initiative (www.mrc.ac.uk/npr). Funding partners relevant to this award are: Alzheimer's Research Trust; Alzheimer's Society; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council; British Heart Foundation (BHF); Cancer Research UK (CRUK); Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Government Health Directorate; Department of Health; Diabetes UK; Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); Health and Social Care Research and Development Division of the Public Health Agency; MRC; The Stroke Association; Wellcome Trust; and Welsh Assembly Government. All authors are members of the UK Centre for TC Studies. Funding from the BHF, CRUK, ESRC, MRC, and the NIHR, under the auspices of the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledged. TC-4 was supported by the US National Cancer Institute; Canadian Institutes of Health Research; National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia; CRUK; Ontario Institute for Cancer Research; and Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute through awards to Geoffrey T Fong.

Sex differences in dreaming during short propofol sedation for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy

Previous reports suggest that sex differences may exist in dreaming under anesthesia, but their results were inconclusive. The current study explored sex differences in the incidence and content of dreams during short propofol sedation for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy and investigated whether sex differences or dream content affect patient satisfaction with sedation. A total of 200 patients (100 men and 100 women) undergoing upper gastrointestinal endoscopy participated in this study. Patients were interviewed with the modified Brice questionnaire about the incidence and the content of dreams, and satisfaction with sedation was assessed. The results showed that the incidence of dreaming was significantly higher in men (31%) than in women (17%) (P=0.02), but recovery time was similar. In men, 45% (14/31) of dreamers reported positive emotional content and only 6% (2/31) reported negative emotional content. In contrast, in women, 18% (3/17) reported positive and 29% (5/17) reported negative content (P=0.04). Men reported dreams that were more vivid, meaningful, familiar, and memorable (P<0.01). No significant sex differences were observed in the emotional intensity of dreams, and emotional content did not influence patients' satisfaction. In sum, sex differences existed in dreaming during short propofol sedation despite similar recovery time and matching in terms of age. Men reported dreaming more frequently and had a higher incidence of recall for their dream narratives. In particular, men reported significantly more positive emotional content, less negative emotional content, and more meaningful content. Dreamer satisfaction with sedation was not influenced by sex or dream content.

The endocannabinoid system and emotional processing: A pharmacological fMRI study with ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol

Various psychiatric disorders such as major depression are associated with abnormalities in emotional processing. Evidence indicating involvement of the endocannabinoid system in emotional processing, and thus potentially in related abnormalities, is increasing. In the present study, we examined the role of the endocannabinoid system in processing of stimuli with a positive and negative emotional content in healthy volunteers. A pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was conducted with a placebo-controlled, cross-over design, investigating effects of the endocannabinoid agonist ∆9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) on brain function related to emotional processing in 11 healthy subjects. Performance and brain activity during matching of stimuli with a negative (‘fearful faces’) or a positive content (‘happy faces’) were assessed after placebo and THC administration. After THC administration, performance accuracy was decreased for stimuli with a negative but not for stimuli with a positive emotional content. Our task activated a network of brain regions including amygdala, orbital frontal gyrus, hippocampus, parietal gyrus, prefrontal cortex, and regions in the occipital cortex. THC interacted with emotional content, as activity in this network was reduced for negative content, while activity for positive content was increased. These results indicate that THC administration reduces the negative bias in emotional processing. This adds human evidence to support the hypothesis that the endocannabinoid system is involved in modulation of emotional processing. Our findings also suggest a possible role for the endocannabinoid system in abnormal emotional processing, and may thus be relevant for psychiatric disorders such as major depression.

Midbrain-Driven Emotion and Reward Processing in Alcoholism

Alcohol dependence is associated with impaired control over emotionally motivated actions, possibly associated with abnormalities in the frontoparietal executive control network and midbrain nodes of the reward network associated with automatic attention. To identify differences in the neural response to alcohol-related word stimuli, 26 chronic alcoholics (ALC) and 26 healthy controls (CTL) performed an alcohol-emotion Stroop Match-to-Sample task during functional MR imaging. Stroop contrasts were modeled for color-word incongruency (eg, word RED printed in green) and for alcohol (eg, BEER), positive (eg, HAPPY) and negative (eg, MAD) emotional word content relative to congruent word conditions (eg, word RED printed in red). During color-Stroop processing, ALC and CTL showed similar left dorsolateral prefrontal activation, and CTL, but not ALC, deactivated posterior cingulate cortex/cuneus. An interaction revealed a dissociation between alcohol-word and color-word Stroop processing: ALC activated midbrain and parahippocampal regions more than CTL when processing alcohol-word relative to color-word conditions. In ALC, the midbrain region was also invoked by negative emotional Stroop words thereby showing significant overlap of this midbrain activation for alcohol-related and negative emotional processing. Enhanced midbrain activation to alcohol-related words suggests neuroadaptation of dopaminergic midbrain systems. We speculate that such tuning is normally associated with behavioral conditioning to optimize responses but here contributed to automatic bias to alcohol-related stimuli.

The diagnosticity of color for emotional objects

Object classification can be facilitated if simple diagnostic features can be used to determine class membership. Previous studies have found that simple shapes may be diagnostic for emotional content and automatically alter the allocation of visual attention. In the present study, we analyzed whether color is diagnostic of emotional content and tested whether emotionally diagnostic hues alter the allocation of visual attention. Reddish-yellow hues are more common in (i.e., diagnostic of) emotional images, particularly images with positive emotional content. An exogenous cueing paradigm was employed to test whether these diagnostic hues orient attention differently from other hues due to the emotional diagnosticity. In two experiments, we found that participants allocated attention differently to diagnostic hues than to non-diagnostic hues, in a pattern indicating a broadening of spatial attention when cued with diagnostic hues. Moreover, the attentional broadening effect was predicted by self-reported measures of affective style, linking the behavioral effect to emotional processes. These results confirm the existence and use of diagnostic features for the rapid detection of emotional content.

Effects of Emotion on Writing Processes in Children

The aim of this study was to analyze the consequences of emotion during narrative writing in accordance with Hayes’s model. In this model, motivation and affect have an important role during the writing process. Moreover, according to the emotion-cognition literature, emotions are thought to create interferences in working memory, resulting in an increase of cognitive load. Following Cuisinier and colleagues, fourth and fifth graders were instructed to write autobiographical narratives with neutral emotional content, positive emotional content, and negative emotional content. The results did not indicate an effect of emotional instructions on the proportion of spelling errors, but they did reveal an effect on the text length. However, a simple regression analysis showed a correlation between working memory capacity and the number of spelling errors in the neutral condition only. The potential influence of cognitive load created by emotion on the writing process is discussed.

Positive words carry less information than negative words

We show that the frequency of word use is not only determined by the word length \cite{Zipf1935} and the average information content \cite{Piantadosi2011}, but also by its emotional content. We have analyzed three established lexica of affective word usage in English, German, and Spanish, to verify that these lexica have a neutral, unbiased, emotional content. Taking into account the frequency of word usage, we find that words with a positive emotional content are more frequently used. This lends support to Pollyanna hypothesis \cite{Boucher1969} that there should be a positive bias in human expression. We also find that negative words contain more information than positive words, as the informativeness of a word increases uniformly with its valence decrease. Our findings support earlier conjectures about (i) the relation between word frequency and information content, and (ii) the impact of positive emotions on communication and social links.

Dreaming during Sevoflurane or Propofol Short-Term Sedation: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Prior reports suggest that dreaming during anaesthesia is dependent on recovery time. Dreaming during sedation may impact patient satisfaction. The current study explores the incidence and content of dreaming during short-term sedation with sevoflurane or propofol and investigates whether dreaming is affected by recovery time. A total of 200 women undergoing first trimester abortion (American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status I) participated in the study. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either sevoflurane or propofol for short-term sedation. Patients were interviewed upon emergence with the modified Brice questionnaire. The results showed the incidence of dreaming was significantly different between anaesthesia groups with 60% (60/100) of the sevoflurane group and 33% (33/100) of the propofol group (P=0.000). However, recovery time did not significantly differ between groups. In the sevoflurane group, a greater number of dreamers could not recall what they had dreamed about (P=0.02) and more patients reported dreams that had no sound (P=0.03) or movement (P=0.001) compared with dreamers in the propofol group. Most participants reported dreams with positive emotional content and this did not significantly differ between groups. Anaesthesia administered had no effect on patient satisfaction. The results suggest that the incidence of dreaming was not affected by recovery time. Patient satisfaction was not influenced by choice of sedative and/or by the occurrence of dreaming during sevoflurane or propofol short-term sedation.

Effects of Frontal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Emotional State and Processing in Healthy Humans

The prefrontal cortex is involved in mood and emotional processing. In patients suffering from depression, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is hypoactive, while activity of the right DLPFC is enhanced. Counterbalancing these pathological excitability alterations by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) or transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) improves mood in these patients. In healthy subjects, however, rTMS of the same areas has no major effect, and the effects of tDCS are mixed. We aimed to evaluate the effects of prefrontal tDCS on emotion and emotion-related cognitive processing in healthy humans. In a first study, we administered excitability-enhancing anodal, excitability-diminishing cathodal, and placebo tDCS to the left DLPFC, combined with antagonistic stimulation of the right frontopolar cortex, and tested acute emotional changes by an adjective checklist. Subjective emotions were not influenced by tDCS. Emotional face identification, however, which was explored in a second experiment, was subtly improved by a tDCS-driven excitability modulation of the prefrontal cortex, markedly by anodal tDCS of the left DLPFC for positive emotional content. We conclude that tDCS of the prefrontal cortex improves emotion processing in healthy subjects, but does not influence subjective emotional state.

Siblings of military servicemembers: A qualitative exploration of individual and family systems reactions.

How does having a sibling in the military affect young adults? Despite increasing attention to the challenges faced by spouses and children of servicemembers, the siblings of servicemembers have been largely ignored. This qualitative investigation uses unstructured narratives to explore siblings' perceptions of changes in their lives and changes in the family of origin associated with having a family member enlist in the United States military. Thematic analyses revealed an acute period of conflict followed by reorganization, awareness of the parents' distress, changes in the emotional climate of the family, shifts in family roles, admiration for the military sibling, and increased meaning and purpose for the family following the servicemember's enlistment. Computer-assisted text analyses revealed both positive and negative emotional content associated with the siblings' military service. For professional psychologists who come into contact with siblings of servicemembers, it is important to recognize that military enlistment can have ripple effects and complicate other common individual and family stresses. More generally, it is important to provide siblings and the family of origin with information about what to expect during and after the servicemember's enlistment, especially since these families may lack support and contact from others going through similar transitions.

Race and Emotion in Computer-Based HIV Prevention Videos for Emergency Department Patients

Computer-based video provides a valuable tool for HIV prevention in hospital emergency departments. However, the type of video content and protocol that will be most effective remain underexplored and the subject of debate. This study employs a new and highly replicable methodology that enables comparisons of multiple video segments, each based on conflicting theories of multimedia learning. Patients in the main treatment areas of a large urban hospital's emergency department used handheld computers running custom-designed software to view video segments and respond to pre-intervention and postintervention data collection items. The videos examine whether participants learn more depending on the race of the person who appears onscreen and whether positive or negative emotional content better facilitates learning. The results indicate important differences by participant race. African American participants responded better to video segments depicting White people. White participants responded better to positive emotional content.

Linguistic analysis of interpersonal forgiveness: Process trajectories

Expressive writing benefits with clinical treatment protocols have been shown in a variety of mental health and medical settings, though the unfolding processes involved in interpersonal forgiveness is undetermined. Using linguistic analysis methodology, this study determined the trajectories of positive and negative emotions and time orientation associated with forgiveness. Over five weeks, 123 participants showed quadratic effects for positive emotional responses, linear decreases of negative emotional responses, and expected changes in time orientation. Additional analyses revealed forgiveness change differences based on contact status, including more positive and negative emotional content, and anger. Linguistic analysis in forgiveness research has significant potential to determine interpersonal forgiveness change processes.