People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants.

This study is an attempt to conceptually replicate a study by Ramakers, Stevens and Morris (2005) using a measure of electrodermal activity skin conductance (EDA) to evaluate the possibility of telepathy occurring between biologically and/or emotionally related senders and receivers. Ten negatively valenced and highly arousing target pictures were mixed with 10 blank control pictures in 10 blocks, with one of each kind in each block. The order of presentation of the target and control pictures within the block was determined randomly by a computer program. The series of 20 pictures were shown for the sender on a computer screen. Relaxation for the receiver was facilitated by soft music. It was hypothesized that there would be significantly more variance in the receiver EDA when the sender was exposed to negative arousing pictures, than to blank pictures. The results failed to show a significant difference in EDA variance between negative arousing and blank pictures, and did thus not support the telepathy hypothesis. It was recommended that future replications allocate more time for relaxation for the receiver.

No description available.

Perceptually-seductive technology (PST) is introduced as a way of designing IT environments that can help support everyday creativity. This is done in part by using sensory stimulation, seclusion and other perceptual components to seduce an individual towards creative insights that would not occur on the basis of conceptual thought alone. Everyday creativity is characterised as the combination of novel solutions in addressing everyday problems, and learning, indicating endurance over time. Everyday creativity is sometimes referred to as personal creativity, since it concerns what is novel to an individual, not to society as a whole. As in exceptional or historical creativity, in everyday creativity the novelty arises from the individual concerned, not from outside. Literature reviews of learning and memory, emotion and creativity set the scene and provide the basis for introducing PST. The relation of the individual to the technology, and with the world through the technology, is also considered. A model of the design space for PST is proposed and related to a proposed view of the creative process. It is suggested that to stimulate and support the creative process, IT environments should encourage both presence (perceptual or experiential mental activity) and absence (conceptual or reflective mental activity), which are seen as end points of a continuum comprising the Focus dimension. Similarly, the importance of both conscious and unconscious activity (the Sensus dimension) is emphasised, as is the role of emotion in mediating the balance between the two. The Locus dimension refers to the real-virtual distinction. In PST, virtual realisations are used to represent real world things and events and in so doing support the memorisation and reflection that are essential to everyday creativity. Four different examples of designing and implementing PST are presented. The first is a media production within a novel environment called the Interactive Tent, and is a demonstration and validation of theoretical ideas behind the PST concept. Three educational PST environments and their formative evaluations are then presented. These are first steps towards designing PST for particular kinds of application, in this case as environments for memorisation. Taken together, these examples lead to design recommendations and suggestions for future work, including the application of PST in education, stress management and for the elderly and disabled. / digitalisering@umu

Emotion processing involves specialised brain regions allowing for effective evaluation of the social environment and for the acquisition of social skills that emerge over childhood. In humans, an important aspect of normal development is the ability to understand the facial expressions of others that signal the nature and safety of the environment. Existing functional data, however, have not characterised the developmental trajectories associated with the differing neural and cognitive-behavioural development. The current thesis investigates the functional specialisation and development of the spatial and temporal patterns in neural activities during implicit processing of facial emotions from early childhood through adulthood. The first study identified brain regions engaged in implicit processing of emotional expressions using a simple emotion-processing paradigm (target detection task) with fourteen healthy adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. Participants responded to a non-face target (a scrambled pattern) while ignoring the emotional face presented in a different hemifield. Results showed ACC and right-lateralised amygdala activations in early latencies in response to the unattended emotional faces related to rapid and implicit attention to the task-irrelevant facial emotions, specifically during the processing of the fearful emotion. Based on the findings in the first study, the second study investigated the developmental patterns and age-related differences in brain activities associated with the rapid and automatic processing of the emotional expressions in MEG with twelve children 7 – 10 years old, twelve adolescents 12 – 15 years old and twelve young adults (mean age 24.4 years) using the same paradigm. The results showed that emotion processing developed early in childhood in the amygdalae, whereas the processing of fear had later maturation engaging the ACC. The results further demonstrated an age-correlated increase in development in ACC activity and an age-related laterality shift in the amygdalae related to fear processing. The present thesis provides new evidence contributing to the understanding of the protracted but differing normal development in the emotional brain over the childhood into adulthood, and offers critical insights into understanding possible dysfunctions of these brain regions during development.

Emotion processing involves specialised brain regions allowing for effective evaluation of the social environment and for the acquisition of social skills that emerge over childhood. In humans, an important aspect of normal development is the ability to understand the facial expressions of others that signal the nature and safety of the environment. Existing functional data, however, have not characterised the developmental trajectories associated with the differing neural and cognitive-behavioural development. The current thesis investigates the functional specialisation and development of the spatial and temporal patterns in neural activities during implicit processing of facial emotions from early childhood through adulthood. The first study identified brain regions engaged in implicit processing of emotional expressions using a simple emotion-processing paradigm (target detection task) with fourteen healthy adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings. Participants responded to a non-face target (a scrambled pattern) while ignoring the emotional face presented in a different hemifield. Results showed ACC and right-lateralised amygdala activations in early latencies in response to the unattended emotional faces related to rapid and implicit attention to the task-irrelevant facial emotions, specifically during the processing of the fearful emotion. Based on the findings in the first study, the second study investigated the developmental patterns and age-related differences in brain activities associated with the rapid and automatic processing of the emotional expressions in MEG with twelve children 7 – 10 years old, twelve adolescents 12 – 15 years old and twelve young adults (mean age 24.4 years) using the same paradigm. The results showed that emotion processing developed early in childhood in the amygdalae, whereas the processing of fear had later maturation engaging the ACC. The results further demonstrated an age-correlated increase in development in ACC activity and an age-related laterality shift in the amygdalae related to fear processing. The present thesis provides new evidence contributing to the understanding of the protracted but differing normal development in the emotional brain over the childhood into adulthood, and offers critical insights into understanding possible dysfunctions of these brain regions during development.

The present study examines differences in political perspectives and moral identity as facilitators of retaliation of workplace incivility. It is proposed that following uncivil treatment, emotional appraisals of uncivil treatment will influence targets' retaliatory behavior; individuals who feel angry or demoralized after being treated uncivilly will be more likely to retaliate than individuals who do not negatively appraise incivility. In addition, political affiliation and moral identity are posited as moderators of the relationship between experiencing incivility and emotionally appraising the experience, as well as the relationship between emotional appraisal and retaliation. This study utilized a sample of 355 participants who completed an online survey regarding their experiences with incivility three weeks before and one week after the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Results indicate that Democrats most frequently retaliated against Republicans at high levels of received incivility from Republicans, yet Republicans engaged in the most retaliatory incivility against Democrats at low levels of incivility from Democrats. Furthermore, internalization buffered the likelihood of retaliation, while symbolization enhanced it. In three-way interactions predicting retaliatory incivility, low internalization and high symbolization Democrats most frequently retaliated against Republicans; unexpectedly, high symbolization Democrats also most frequently retaliated against Democrats. Predicting emotional appraisals from received incivility, symbolization enhanced relationships between incivility and appraisals. High internalization Republicans reported the greatest increase in anger when treated uncivilly by Democrats. Predicting retaliation from appraisals, Republicans retaliated against Democrats most frequently when angered or demoralized, but Democrats did not report retaliating against Republicans. Additionally, high symbolization Republicans reported retaliating against other Republicans when angered or demoralized. Results were not completely aligned with past theory and research, but they generally indicate that morality plays a large role in the prediction of emotional appraisals and retaliation in response to uncivil treatment. Furthermore, morality seems to be a more important predictor of retaliation than social identity processes. Finally, it is clear that emotions relate to the receipt and retaliation of incivility, and future research should clarify these relationships. This study contributes to the literature by examining how social issues that are seemingly unrelated to the workplace can negatively affect interpersonal interactions at work.

No description available.

Resultat från tidigare studier visade att långtidsskador inom idrott har en stor inverkan på det psykiska välbefinnandet och fann ett behov av mer forskning kring de psykosociala aspekterna vid skador i idrott. Studiens syfte var att studera emotionella omställningar vid elithandbollsspelares långtidsskador och dess samspel med emotioner, självbild och socialt stöd. Deltagare var 7 kvinnor och 3 män inom nordisk elithandboll. Intervjuer utfördes, transkriberades och tematiserades med avseende på mening utifrån ett hermeneutiskt perspektiv. I resultatet redovisades 33 centrala emotioner som t.ex. känslor av chock vid besked av skadans allvar, ångest över att inte prestera och deppighet över skadan. Resultat för självbild och socialt stöd visade på en stor identifikation med handbollsrollen, minskat egenvärde och betydelsen av det handbollsrelaterade stödet. Det verkade råda ett hårt klimat inom elithandbollen och vår studie skulle kunna användas till att skapa mer förståelse och bättre behandlingsalternativ för skadade individer inom elithandbollen.

The goal of this project is to apply system identification techniques to model people's perception of emotion in music as a function of time. Emotional appraisals of six selections of classical music are measured from volunteers who continuously quantify emotion using the dimensions valence and arousal. Also, features that communicate emotion are extracted from the music as a function of time. By treating the features as inputs to a system and the emotional appraisals as outputs of that system, linear models of the emotional appraisals are created. The models are validated by predicting a listener's emotional appraisals of a musical selection (song) unfamiliar to the system. The results of this project show that system identification provides a means to improve previous models for individual songs by allowing them to generalize emotional appraisals for a genre of music. The average <i>R</i>² statistic of the best model structure in this project is 7. 7% for valence and 75. 1% for arousal, which is comparable to the <i>R</i>² statistics for models of individual songs.