No description available.

No description available.

Blushing is a universal phenomenon in humans, and unique to them. Its effects range from minor discomfort, to significant psychological distress. Within psychological research, blushing has been studied in order to find out why we blush (i.e. unwanted attention), what the associated emotion is (i.e. shame), and which pathology it can be ascribed to (i.e. social anxiety). However, the individualised and subjective meanings of blushing have not been researched. This study sought to investigate these meanings from a phenomenological perspective, using IPA, but with a newly developed, back to the founding philosophy, inspired approach. This led to unique findings that highlighted the subjective variations in the blusher. The meanings of blushing were different for each participant, but followed a general rule: Blushing was the bodily sensation of a gap in knowledge. An imagined judging onlooker was imputed to have knowledge about the subject, and the gap itself was experienced as puzzling and difficult to describe. It is thus the relationship to blushing, rather than the universal meaning of blushing, that was discovered. Useful for counselling psychology research and practice alike, the study manifests a new understanding of investigating and interpreting results by revisiting the philosophy that gave us phenomenological research. Counselling psychology will benefit from this novel study in that it demonstrates an interpretative stance that leaves room for each individual client to express their experiences, and for the counselling psychologist to utilise ‘unifying principles’ for understanding, and not a preconceived universal explanation. Clinical applications are relevant to cases where a client seeks help for “pathological or excessive blushing” leading to distress or social anxiety, and aid the counselling psychologist in achieving with his or her client a comprehensive formulation of this clinical problem. This study shows that individual meanings have a common structure that can be applied to how a particular client relates to their difficulty, thus their relationship to it, not only to blushing, but to other clinical presentations.

The purpose of this review is to identify and summarise qualitative research focusing on the subjective experience of worry. The majority of research to date has focussed on quantitative measures of worry which limit participants’ responses to ratings on pre-defined questionnaire items. In summarising open ended subjective studies about the experience of worry, this review aims to identify phenomenological aspects of the experience of worry that may further advance theory development. Findings are summarised. The following key qualitative themes were identified, a) control over worry, b) value assessments of worry, c) perceived causes of worry and d) cognitive features of worry. However, all qualitative studies identified by the review were lacking in quality, transparency and/or richness. It is recommended that further research be conducted which utilise qualitative methodologies involving rigorous and transparent processes.

Regulation of positive emotions is under-researched, despite evidence linking dysregulation to mental health problems. Furthermore, studies often use clinical populations, with limited data from healthy volunteers. The current thesis investigated individual differences in the regulation of positive emotions, and developed and validated tools for the study of emotion regulation. The State/Trait Emotion Regulation Questionnaires (STERQ) were created and validated, showing good reliability, model fit and convergent validity. The project also examined the feasibility of online emotion regulation experiments, showing these can be conducted via the internet, with comparable results to those obtained within the laboratory, albeit eliciting smaller effect sizes. Two studies investigated spontaneous and instructed regulation of positive emotions in healthy participants, focusing on associations between emotion regulation and risk for hypomania and depression. Emotional intrusion was positively associated with both increased hypomania and depression traits. Additionally, hypomanic personality traits were associated with use of more strategies to regulate positive emotions. Individuals with higher depression scores showed some lowering of baseline positive emotions and increased dampening in response to positive emotions. Finally, the thesis assessed the impact of positive emotions on subsequent emotion regulation responses to negative stimuli, testing the hypothesis that positive emotions may have a protective impact on the experience of negative emotion. Elicitation of positive emotions did not affect the regulation strategies, emotional or physiological response to subsequent negative stimuli. Various future directions arise from the current work. The creation of the STERQ provides additional measures for investigating the temporal and contextual dynamics of emotion regulation. Research into regulating positive emotions could be extended through the manipulation of emotional intensity and types of emotion examined. Finally, studying how emotion regulation changes in response to mixed valence states may better reflect real life, leading to a more nuanced understanding of emotion regulation and its relationship with psychopathology.

No description available.

Etiological models of anxiety have increasingly emphasized the role of information processing biases, and there is evidence that children, as well as adults exhibit these biases. However, to date, little is known about the origins of these biases. This thesis aims to explore whether interpretation bias and fear beliefs might be acquired from significant others in close relationships (i.e., parents, friends and romantic partners). It also considers a range of developmental stages to identify potential sources of influence that may play a role in the acquisition and/or maintenance of information processing biases across development. The thesis aims are realised across four studies that explore shared anxiety-related cognitions in distinct close relationships. The main findings of this thesis are summarized as follows. First, there is some evidence that individuals in close relationships exhibit similar patterns of anxiety-related cognitions, namely in close friends in middle childhood, as well as in parents and their young adult children. Second, there is some indication that anxietyrelated cognitions might be acquired via the verbal information pathway from significant others in close relationships, such as from parents, close friends, and romantic partners. Third, factors such as the difference in anxiety levels between individuals in close relationships, relationship closeness, and attachment do not appear to moderate the transmission of anxiety-related cognitions in close relationships. Finally, results showed a significant relationship between anxiety-related cognitions and anxiety in middle childhood and young adulthood, but not in early childhood, indicating that interpretation bias may initially develop during the preschool years and may not show an association with anxiety until middle childhood. Taken together, these results indicate that anxiety-related cognitions can be transmitted within close relationships, and that verbal information appears to be a viable pathway in which such cognitions may be transmitted.

Anger is a universal emotion, existing in both state and trait dimensions, that is experienced by most people several times per day to several times per week. Anger is thought to have evolved as a means to recalibrate situations to more align with an individual’s goals or motivations. However, inappropriate or excessive anger is related to a host of severe intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences. The current thesis addresses gaps in the empirical literature and investigates how anger and the closely related constructs of hostility and aggression associate with individual differences across multiple domains. Firstly, using data from a nationally-representative US sample, the current thesis presents evidence of both direct effects of and interactions amongst core personality traits on the pathway towards trait anger and anger expression styles. Specifically, results reveal that conscientiousness moderates neuroticism’s effect on an individual’s ability to control their anger, and, in a three-way interaction, conscientiousness and agreeableness moderate neuroticism’s effect on an individual’s level of trait anger, the likelihood that anger is expressed outwardly, and the likelihood of aggression. Secondly, the current thesis presents evidence of associations between core personality traits and judgments of hostile intent, and the mediating effect of higher-order personality characteristics. Notably, results indicate that an inflated sense of self-entitlement and the social projection of one’s own traits onto others mediated honesty-humility’s relationship with a factor underlying judgments of hostile intent. Thirdly, using voxel-based morphometry the thesis presents evidence, albeit at the uncorrected level, of correlations between cortical regions’ gray matter and trait anger and anger expression style. Finally, the thesis concludes by embedding these results in the context of prior research investigating the experience of anger and contemporary models of anger and its expression.

The aim of this study was to investigate the experience of romantic jealousy in a group of men who have committed a serious offence against an intimate partner. The study drew on evolutionary theory, specifically looking at attachment theory and social comparison processes to account for individual differences in the experience and violent expression of romantic jealousy. This study was primarily an unrelated between groups comparison study, correlations of the dependent variables were also made to investigate the associations between these factors. The participants included "domestically violent" men (men with a conviction of violence against their partner), "extra-domestically violent" men (men with a conviction of violence but not against their partner) and "non-violent" men. The dependent variables were interpersonal jealousy, attachment style, anger, abusiveness, internalised shame, and social comparison in adulthood and in adolescence. The results found predominantly insecure attachment styles within the sample of violent men, with "domestically violent" men reporting significantly higher attachment anxiety than either of the other two groups. Attachment anxiety was found to be associated with jealousy, anger and abusiveness in intimate relationships. Mixed support was provided for the role of social comparison processes, with the results highlighting the perception of feeling different to and unaccepted by ones peer group in both adolescence and adulthood as being associated with jealousy, anger, abusiveness and internalised shame. It is suggested that the internal working model of the self, characteristic of attachment anxiety is a "shame-based" model, involving global attacks on the self, revealing the intricate connection with feelings of alienation and rejection. Clinical limitations of the results of this study are discussed and areas for further research are highlighted.

The science of emotional expression was opened up by Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). It proposes three principles to explain the mechanisms of expressive behaviours through six research methods. This thesis offers the first detailed examination of three of the new methods of data collection that Darwin introduced in the book, and uses that examination to explore the relations between Darwin’s theories and data as well as the afterlives of his methods in American psychology in the first half of the twentieth century. The three methods are the questionnaire, the recognition experiments on photographed expressions and the newly discovered literary approach. The original data of the questionnaire avails the first discussion of Darwin’s publication bias, finding that in order to produce the conclusion on racial unity, Darwin had silently dropped one of the questions from the original questionnaire and hidden a significant body of data about racial distinctions. Apart from this pursuit of racial universality, another ultimate conclusion & presumed hypothesis in the book is discovered: the evolution of expression from animals to human, concerned with the recognition experiments. With the last method, we find that when there lacked observational evidence for some expressions, Darwin often quoted works of fiction as supplementary data. The use of these Darwinian methods in the field of psychology is then historically tracked. Two American psychologists – Antoinette Feleky and Otto Klineberg – are cited as the prominent users of recognition experiments and the literary approach respectively. With historical and sometimes quantitative analysis of their original data, the research uncovers reasons for the prosperity of the recognition experiments and the decline of the literary approach in that period; and demonstrates the ideological transition in the expressional science: from physiological doctrine to the purely psychological approach with more cultural concerns.