In diagramming the recent, global proliferation in quotidian cartographic technologies and practices, this thesis is concerned with the re-imagining of durable geographic motifs and refrains; those of maps and mappings. Conceptually, the thesis works to explore and interrogate the underplayed non-representational registers of cartography. Specifically, this entails unsettling the assumed ontological security of maps as representational artefacts, at the same time accentuating their affective and virtual vectors through an attentiveness to their spatial emergence and performance. In doing so, maps are rendered here not as mimetic, static grids of existence, but as intensive performances, productive of an unqualified geographic and political potential; that is to say, spaces of the virtual. Empirically, these conceptual concerns are worked through a series of fieldwork traces that animate and narrate a number of quite distinct yet resonant cartographic performances; namely geographic encounters with a counter-cartography group in North Carolina; a digital, open-source mapping organisation in both the UK and Peru and finally with two examples of an institutional cartography: Google and Ordnance Survey. Through these mappings, these fieldwork traces, what the thesis works towards is a micropolitical diagramming of contemporary cartographic practices, a diagramming that complicates deliberately the representational certitude of maps, but moreover, one that affirms the (im)material, anticipatory and minor geopolitics of mapping; a mapping of and for the everyday; a mapping of and for the vernacular.

Two contrasting forms of advice for decision-makers are to either follow one’s heart (emotions) or one’s head (reason). This is a false dichotomy – but how should decision-makers combine heart and head? Decisions can be fruitfully analysed as a set of components: a decision-problem embedded within an on-going situation, with values-at-stake, possible options-with-consequences, choice, action and review. Structured decision-making models (head theories) approach this multifaceted nature of decisions by a divide-and-conquer strategy with thinking tasks provided to help decision-makers clarify the decision-problem, identify important values-at-stake, find credible options, choose the most credible option, act effectively and fairly review the outcomes of the choice. Emotions are complex and can also fruitfully be analysed as a set of components: an appraisal of a situation’s implication for the actor’s goals and values, bodily and cognitive changes, phenomenological experience and desires. Emotions can both help and hinder decision making, so wise decision-makers should neither ignore nor rely upon emotions, but instead treat emotions as fallible resources. The complex nature of emotions implies that different emotion-enabled tasks might assist decision-makers for different components of the decision. On the basis of this analysis an emotion-enabled, structured, decision-making procedure was developed and investigated by taking ten participants with decision dilemmas through the procedure. This investigation, based on repeated use of the Hermeneutic Single-Case Efficacy Design, provided some initial support for the effectiveness of the model: participants found the procedure generally helpful (p < 0.005), had increased confidence in their final choice (p < 0.005), which at follow-up they were satisfied with (p < 0.005). The use of emotions as fallible resources was also investigated through tracing emotion-enabled changes in participants’ decision making. Suggestions for further development and investigation of integrating emotions into structured approaches are offered.

Considerable research supports an association between negative psychosocial functioning and adverse health outcomes. The biobehavioral model is well supported and posits that these effects occur via alterations in physiological response and health damaging behaviors. Evidence is accumulating about potential benefits of positive psychosocial functioning; however, less is known about the mechanisms of these effects. The broaden-and-build model of positive emotions holds that positive emotions can undo the physiological and behavioral restrictions associated with negative emotions and promote resource development. The present correlational study sought to explore whether cortisol, medication adherence, and health behaviors (smoking, alcohol use, physical activity, and nutrition) mediated relations between trait positive affect and negative affect and health status in persons living with HIV infection. A moderating role of trait positive affect on the relation between negative affect and mediating variables was also hypothesized, yet an unexpectedly high correlation between trait positive and negative affect precluded the evaluation of this hypothesis. HIV-infected participants (N = 53) collected salivary cortisol five times over the course of one day at home and completed interview the following day. Clinical staff provided HIV symptom ratings, and virologic and immunologic indicators were collected by chart review. Results showed that high trait positive affect was associated with lower total cortisol concentration, and total cortisol mediated the relation between trait positive affect and CD4+ percent. High trait negative affect was associated with poorer medication adherence, and percent adherence mediated the relation between trait negative affect and CD4+ percent and viral load. Mediation hypotheses for health behaviors were not confirmed. Trait positive affect was, however, associated with decreased alcohol intake, increased physical activity, and better nutrition habits. Because this study used cross-sectional design, causation cannot be determined. However, findings provide preliminary evidence on mechanisms by which trait positive affect could be related to HIV disease markers, and findings support existing evidence on mechanisms of trait negative affect in HIV disease. Results also support use of the biobehavioral model and the broaden-and-build model of positive emotions as theoretical frameworks in studying the relation between psychosocial functioning and health outcomes in persons with HIV.

Thesis advisor: Lisa Feldman Barrett / A current debate ensues between the bivalent and the bipolar views of affect. This study has attempted to further support the side of bipolarity. The bipolar model of affective experience explains that affect is experienced along a single continuum and therefore a person processes only one feeling of affect at a time and cannot experience opposite states of affect simultaneously. I predicted that, in accordance with the bipolar model, participants would be unable to process semantic information from both positive and negative narratives at the same time in a dichotic listening. This inability would cause the participants to make shadowing errors when their attention shifted to the unattended channel as well as causing a vocal delay when the narratives switched auditory channels midway through the experiment. They would rate themselves in bipolar space throughout the experiment, but to then rate themselves in bivalent space when they made a summary judgment at the end of the experiment, since they are asked to combine their entire experience into a discreet rating. Twenty-one undergraduate students participated in a dichotic listening task while using the CTVG to continuously record their current state of affect in real time. The percent of errors made in shadowing, vocal delay, position on the grid for the summary judgments and the placement on the grid surrounding attention shifts were all measured. Results suggest that the structure of the affective experience follows the bipolar model. Implications of this research are discussed. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Abstract Finding something disgusting involves a particular sensuous experience and an evaluation that the thing is of little or no value. Sensuous properties such as digustingness are constituted by these two aspects, the sensuous and the evaluative. In “The Authority of Affect” (2001a), Mark Johnston argues for a detectivist account where our affective states detect mind-independent properties of sensuous value, like disgustingness. He argues that the other two standard positions, projectivism and dispositionalism, do not account for the authority of affect or are incoherent. In this paper, I argue that he is wrong to rule out dispositionalism for being incoherent and that it does account for the authority of affect. In addition, I argue that it is best able to capture the nature of sensuous properties and that it should be the default account of the relation between sensuous properties and affect.

The car is the most popular travel mode in the UK, but reliance on the car has numerous negative effects on health, the economy, and the environment. Encouraging sustainable travel mode choices (modal choice) can minimise these problems. To promote behaviour change, psychologists have an interest in understanding modal choice. Historically, modal choice has been understood as a reasoned and rational decision that requires a conscious assessment of thoughts and attitudes: but evidence suggests this approach has limitations when promoting behaviour change. Alternatively, processes that are automatically enacted, without conscious effort, can have an influence on thought and behaviour. Two automatic processes in particular have been proposed as useful factors when considering modal choice: habit and affect. Habits are behaviours that are learned over time in stable contexts, have become automatic, and moderate the link between intentions and behaviour. Affect is an automatically positive or negative sensation, which can influence consciously accessed attitudes and perceptions. This thesis explores these two automatic concepts in travel mode choice, with the aim of applying the concepts to promote sustainable travel. Using a mixed-methods approach, initial exploratory work used qualitative and quantitative methods to define how people construct affective responses to modal choice, and whether certain travel modes are more automatic than others. The exploratory work inspired three investigations: modelling the influence of automatic and reasoned decisions to use a travel mode, measuring automatic and implicit environmental preferences, and illustrating how changing the context of routines can increase use of available information. Exploratory and investigative results are then applied in the creation of the UK’s first Walking Network, a series of walking routes designed to deliver targeted information and knowledge to promote walking. This thesis concludes that automatic influences are beneficial factors when considering modal change interventions.

This thesis approaches hopelessness through the work of Deleuze and Guattari, situating their thought in relation to Baruch Spinoza and Brian Massumi. Drawing on Massumi’s theorizing of fear, and Spinoza’s theorizing the link between hope and fear, I argue that hope keeps bodies and politics bound to a future that comes to organize the present. From this perspective, I argue that hopelessness can become an important element of not only undoing the ways that future forces come to organize the present, but can open immanent ways of participating in the organization of emergent forces. The thesis also clarifies the differences between affect and emotion, and the body and the subject. This supports an understanding of politics as the undoing and warding off of hope through attending to hopelessness, and an increase in bodies’ capacities to experiment and participate in the organization of their own desires and situations. / Graduate

Sensory-processing sensitivity, or neurosensitivity, is a biologically-based personality dimension with implications for personality, creativity and cognition. This thesis focuses on sensitivity and its cognitive implications using recent state-of-the-art sensitivity and creativity assessments with an aim to identify objective cognitive tests of sensitivity that can supplement self-report measures, whilst providing insight into the brain basis for creativity. In Chapter 1, we review literature on creativity and sensitivity. Chapter 2 presents new evidence that positive-affect-related dimensions of sensitivity benefit creativity independently and/or interactively with Big-Five openness. Factor analysis in Chapter 3 provides important evidence that multiple dimensions of sensitivity are distinct from Big-Five personality traits. Chapter 4 and 5 explore sensitivity-related attention components in relation to endogenous and exogenous attention tasks, revealing that positive-affect-related sensitivity is characterized by differences in exogenous inhibition-of-return, and defocused, disinhibited attention states that facilitate creative potential. Chapter 6 shows sensitivity has positive implications for learning and memory processes, demonstrating that neurosensitivity affects neuroplasticity favourably. Chapter 7 explores how individual differences in unconscious cognitive mechanisms of latent inhibition (LI) may underlie higher creative potential and achievement in sensitive, open creators, as theory and evidence suggest low LI in high sensitivity and creative achievement. No evidence was found to support the hypothesis that LI differs in sensitivity, or underlies the sensitive creator. All findings are interpreted in light of a new sensitivity framework that is consistent with cognitive disinhibition and hemispheric asymmetry hypotheses of creativity and models of the creative process suggesting an important role for conscious and unconscious cognition.

Breakfast intake is associated with numerous positive physical and mental health outcomes, yet breakfast skipping remains common in adults. Chronotype and sleep show potential as predictors of breakfast intake; however the existing literature has methodological limitations and fails to examine how psychological mechanisms might explain the relation between sleep and breakfast. The current investigation explored the association of means and variability of sleep behaviors (bedtime, midsleep, sleep duration) as predictors of breakfast intake frequency and high-protein breakfast intake frequency. Additionally, the role of positive and negative affect as mediators in the sleep—breakfast association was examined. Hierarchical regressions and PROCESS parallel mediation models were conducted to assess direct and indirect associations. Variability in bedtime was a significant predictor of breakfast intake frequency, with greater variability associated with less frequent intake. Future work is necessary to examine further the association of sleep and breakfast behaviors, and psychological mechanisms in this relation.

Multiple studies investigating the validity of the tripartite model of affect in youth have been supportive of the model; however, few studies have examined the model in narrow age bands or large clinical samples. The current study examined the structure of affect in a sample of psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. Structural equation modeling was used to examine two-factor (negative affectivity [NA] and positive affectivity [PA]) and three-factor models (NA, PA, and physiological hyperarousal [PH]) with item level data from the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS) and Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS), and from the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI), RADS, and RCMAS. Analyses were completed for the overall sample and for depressive, anxiety, comorbid depression, and anxiety, and other diagnostic groups. With data from the RADS and RCMAS, both the two- and three-factor models provided an equally good fit to the data for the overall sample. However, when tested for invariance across diagnostic groups, the two-factor model was invariant across groups, while the three-factor model yielded inadmissible solutions for the comorbid group, suggesting the two-factor solution provided the best fit to the data. For the data from the MACI, RADS, and RCMAS, one-, two-, and three-factor models were tested, but it was not possible to identify a model of acceptable fit. The t tests were used to examine the patterns of construct scores across diagnostic groups to determine if they were consistent with the tripartite model. Using data from the RCMAS and the RADS, the depressive and anxious diagnostic groups demonstrated similarly high levels of NA, while the anxious group demonstrated significantly higher levels of PA than the depressive group. Similar analyses could not be completed for the data from the MACI, RADS, and RCMAS because of the small sample size for the anxious diagnostic group. While the results of SEM and t-test analyses demonstrate support for the tripartite model and the associated constructs of NA and PA, support was not demonstrated for PH. Results suggest that the tripartite model may be dependent on the instruments used to assess it. Limitations of this study and implications and directions for future research are discussed.