It is well documented that the communication patterns of distressed couples are characterized by more negative and fewer positive behaviors. It has also been postulated that there is an association between physiological arousal and negative behaviors. According to this theory, as individuals become increasingly aroused, the number of negative behaviors also increases. This study explored the relationship between physiological arousal and marital communication. The three couples participating in the study received intensive biofeedback training with the hypothesis that an ability to control physiological arousal would result in improved marital communications. The Rapid Couples Interaction Scoring System was employed as a measurement of overt behavior, and physiological arousal was measured by electromyographic levels. The findings of this study suggest that, for some, biofeedback training is an effective intervention to improve marital communications.

<p>Syftet med studien var att få en djupare förståelse för vad som ger upphov till anxiety hos erfarna klättrare och hur de hanterar (coping) somatisk såväl som kognitiv anxiety vid traditionell klättring. Skiljer sig copingstrategierna mellan män och kvinnor samt är det sökandet efter arousal som motiverar till traditionell klippklättring. En kvalitativ undersökning genomfördes med en semistrukturerad intervjuguide som underlag. Nio stycken erfarna klättrare (män = 6, kvinnor = 3) mellan 23 och 46 år (M = 33.4 år) inom traditionell klättring intervjuades. Resultatet visade att alla klättrarna använde sig av positiv self-talk, medan visualisering endast användes av ett fåtal som ett sätt att återfå fokus och att samla sig. Viktiga faktorer bakom hanteringen av anxiety var erfarenhet och kunskap.</p>

Active Surveillance (AS) for the clinical management of prostate cancer (PC) is a treatment option for men with low-risk PC. Screening procedures have led to the overdetection of PCs that would have never caused problems. Active treatment (e.g., surgery or radiation) for these non-aggressive tumors may not be necessary given the slow-growing nature of PC. AS provides a way to monitor the disease and delay treatment-related compromises on quality of life until clinically indicated (e.g., rising PSA level). However, the intensive monitoring in AS may be a stressful experience and lead to greater anxiety, an emotional state that has been associated with undergoing active treatment despite physician recommendation for AS. The current study aimed to identify psychosocial correlates of anxiety in men undergoing AS. Using Mishel’s Reconceptualized Uncertainty in Illness Model as a framework, the proposed study aimed to examine the relationships between perceived stress management skills, PC psychosocial concerns, and anxiety/arousal. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted on a sample of 71 men undergoing AS, who were on average 65.40 years old (SD=7.85) and ethnically diverse (52% non-Hispanic White; 31% Hispanic; 17% African American). Results indicated that greater PSMS were significantly associated with less IES-R anxiety (β=-.28, p<.04). PSMS were not significantly associated with PC concerns (β=-.02, p>.05), but greater PC concerns were significantly associated with greater IES-R anxiety (β=.61, p<.01) and PSA anxiety (β=.42, p<.01). These associations held after controlling for relevant covariates. The results suggest a possible role for stress management skills as perceived ability to manage stress was related to less anxiety in the AS experience. Future studies should examine the relationship among these factors in longitudinal designs and whether greater stress is associated with unnecessary active treatment in low-risk PC.

Syftet med studien var att få en djupare förståelse för vad som ger upphov till anxiety hos erfarna klättrare och hur de hanterar (coping) somatisk såväl som kognitiv anxiety vid traditionell klättring. Skiljer sig copingstrategierna mellan män och kvinnor samt är det sökandet efter arousal som motiverar till traditionell klippklättring. En kvalitativ undersökning genomfördes med en semistrukturerad intervjuguide som underlag. Nio stycken erfarna klättrare (män = 6, kvinnor = 3) mellan 23 och 46 år (M = 33.4 år) inom traditionell klättring intervjuades. Resultatet visade att alla klättrarna använde sig av positiv self-talk, medan visualisering endast användes av ett fåtal som ett sätt att återfå fokus och att samla sig. Viktiga faktorer bakom hanteringen av anxiety var erfarenhet och kunskap.

Arousal-biased competition (ABC; Mather & Sutherland, 2011) theory predicts that emotional arousal increases both the activation of relevant items and the suppression of irrelevant items in working memory. Study 1 tested ABC theory’s prediction in young and older adults. Suppression was measured with the Healey et al. (2010) paradigm and arousal was manipulated during interference resolution. Item accessibility was measured by comparing naming times of target and competitor words to baseline naming times. Young adults showed suppression of competitors while older adults did not. Arousal did not affect young adults’ naming times, but a mild suppression effect was seen in older adults whose arousal increased after the manipulation. A follow-up study showed that older and younger adults generally agreed on the arousing quality of the stimuli in Study 1. These studies partially support ABC theory and suggest that older adults may retain the ability to suppress irrelevant information when aroused.

Dutton och Aron visade 1974 hur arousal genom felattribution kanleda till sexuell attraktion. Syftet med studien var att utifrån dessa upptäckter undersöka singelaktiviteter och nätdejting. Med hjälp av en webenkät innehållande delar om nätdejting, singelaktiviteter och personlighet har detta fenomen testats i ett dejtningsammanhang. Försökspersonerna bestod av 253 män och 389 kvinnor mellan 18 och77 år. Resultatet visade att de som deltagit i en singelaktivitet som gav upphov till hög arousal hade större chans att få kontakt med någon och att fortsätta träffa denna efteråt än de som inte blivit uppe ivarv av aktiviteten. Nätdejting och singelaktiviteter fungerade lika braför att träffa en dejt, men nätdejting var den metod som visade sigfungera bäst för att träffa någon för ett längre förhållande.

Thesis--Ph. D., University of Hong Kong. / Includes reprints of 4 papers by the author and others in the appendices.

This dissertation consists of four manuscripts on the emotion of disgust, all of which are published or in press. These papers report studies linking the emotion of disgust with areas of psychology to which it has seldom been connected. Paper 1 reports findings linking disgust with stress and satiation, providing support for an a priori hypothesis generated on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis of how these inputs should affect disease avoidance behavior. Paper 2 reports the first findings linking disgust with mating strategy, two important areas of psychology that have theoretical relevance for one another but whose connection has yet to be explored. Paper 3 presents the first solid empirical evidence that disgust sensitivity predicts food neophobia. This work also found a theoretically interesting, but unpredicted, connection between food neophobia and mating strategy. Paper 4 pans back, presenting a broader evolutionary framework on the emotions and providing a variety of novel empirical hypotheses for both disgust and sexual arousal. The dissertation then concludes by presenting important questions for future research and describing experiments currently underway to answer questions emerging from this line of research. As a whole, this dissertation and research program aim to a) build bridges between disgust and other domains of psychology such as stress and human mating, b) make methodological contributions to research on disgust, and c) present an evolutionary framework that carries conceptual and empirical implications for disgust and for a broad array of other emotions. / text

Women with chronic vulvar pain report reduced sexual function in comparison to non-affected women, including decreased sexual arousal. Experimentally induced sexual arousal has been examined in women with and without chronic vulvar pain, with contradictory results: some studies have found that only subjective arousal is affected in women with versus without vulvar pain, while other research has suggested that only genital responsiveness is affected in women with pain. As a result of these inconsistent findings, the role of arousal mechanisms in the causation and maintenance of provoked vestibulodynia (PVD) remains unclear. Thirty women with (n = 15) and without PVD (n = 15) were recruited to examine the relationship among physiological and subjective arousal, pain sensitivity and psychological/sexual function. Laser Doppler imaging (LDI) directly measured blood flow to the external genitals in response to an erotic film, and pain sensitivity was assessed before and after imaging. The PVD group had significantly lower blood flow than the control group during the erotic film when baseline blood flow levels were controlled; there were, however, no group differences in ratings of subjective arousal during the erotic film. Vestibular pain thresholds were significantly lower in the PVD group before and after the erotic film compared to the control group. In contrast, pain intensity ratings were significantly higher pre-erotic film in the PVD group, but there was no group difference post-erotic film. Pain thresholds did not significantly change in either group following exposure to the erotic film. Lastly, the PVD group had significantly lower sexual and psychological function in comparison to the control group, and intercourse frequency and pain catastrophizing significantly predicted genital responsiveness in the PVD group. The results suggest that women with PVD show an attenuated physiological response to erotic stimuli in an experimental setting, in the absence of differences in subjective arousal. The findings thus support the role of arousal in the maintenance of PVD, potentially in interaction with other physical and psychological factors. The study also has implications for the assessment and treatment of PVD, whereby arousal processes should be explicitly and separately managed in women with this condition. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-10 12:17:44.952

Adolescence is a developmental period marked by heightened emotional intensity, negative emotions, and self-consciousness. Problems with emotion regulation during adolescence have been linked to the development of internalizing and externalizing disorders (Hastings et al., 2009). Emotion regulation involves changes across several integrated emotion domains: (1) Experience, (2) Arousal, and (3) Expression (Ekman, 1992; Gross, 2007; Lang, 1994; Lazarus, 1991; Levenson, 1994). Emotion is not necessarily regulated equally across these three domains, in fact discordant responses are more common than concordant ones (Mauss & Robinson, 2009). Discordance represents how emotion is being regulated during a specific event, but it has not been directly linked with habitual emotion regulation strategies. Different patterns among these emotional domains have been linked to internalizing and externalizing problems and coping skills (Hastings et al., 2009; Mauss et al, 2005; Zalewski et al., 2009a, b). The current study expands on previous research by (1) simultaneously measuring and analyzing experience, arousal, and expression, and (2) understanding how patterns of concordance and discordance relate to individual difference factors such as gender, habitual emotion regulation strategies, and internalizing and externalizing problems in a typically developing adolescent sample. This study involved measuring the experience, arousal, and expression of self-conscious emotion in 138 adolescents (55% female) during a video-recorded social stressor speech task. Participants rated their emotional experience via questionnaire after the speech task. Physiological data were reduced from recordings during the speech and observational coders rated the emotional expression of participants from video files of the speeches. Patterns of responses across experience, arousal, and expression were grouped using cluster analysis. The different patterns of response were related to different profiles of habitual emotion regulation strategies and problematic internalizing and externalizing behaviour. Adolescents classified as “Experience-Expressive” (high experience, moderate arousal, high expression) or “Suppressive” (high experience, high arousal, low expression) had more problematic socioemotional functioning than those classified as “Expressive” (low experience, moderate arousal, high expression) or “Low-Reactive” (low experience, low arousal, low expression). There was not strong evidence for differences across gender. The current study contributes to the understanding of adolescent emotional regulation and the development of psychopathology in adolescence. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2011-08-31 15:21:33.479