In this thesis I argue that emotion is integral to practical rationality, contrary to the dominant tradition that has held that emotions are irrational and dangerous disruptive influences that we’d be better off without. In Chapter 1 I argue that practical rationality consists in doing what one has most normative reason to do, and in Chapter 2 that an agent is practically rational to the extent that she responds to her reasons; this is how she guides her actions in line with the norm of doing what she has most reason to do. This can be done in ways other than by the employment of practical reasoning. In Chapter 3 I argue for a picture of practical reasoning that stands against the division of emotion and rationality. This account makes room for the overwhelming evidence that challenges the traditional view of emotions as the enemy of practical rationality. Chapter 4 gives a brief overview of the philosophical literature of emotions, and their place in practical rationality. In Chapter 5 I argue that emotions provide us with the necessary access to our reasons for action which we need in order to be able to respond to them, and thereby to be practically rational. Further, as I argue in Chapter 6, emotions play vital roles in the process of practical reasoning itself. Thus practical rationality would not be better off without emotion. In Chapter 7 I argue that we should distinguish between two types of incontinent action (acting against ones all things considered judgement about what one has most reason to do) and that one of these – weakness of will – is necessarily irrational, but the other – akrasia – is not. In Chapter 8 I apply my thesis to the question in the practical domain of what it means to ‘lose self-control’ in the context of killing in response to a provocation, which is a defence to murder. I argue that the ‘control’ that is lost is the regulative guiding control characteristic of the reason-responder. Understanding practical agency as reason-responsiveness, and understanding the role that emotions play within it as per my thesis, enables this coherent understanding. Thus I am arguing for neither a pro-emotion nor anti-emotion view of the role of emotion in practical rationality. Emotions should not be seen as either ‘for’ rationality nor ‘against’ rationality: they are simply part of rationality.

Emotion Regulation Group Therapy (ERGT) är en transdiagnostisk gruppbehandling för personer med svårigheter med känsloreglering och självskadebeteende. Nationella självskadeprojektet, som fört behandlingsmetoden till Sverige, rekommenderar att genusspecifika förhållningssätt utvecklas för att göra vården mer jämlik. Syftet med denna studie var att beskriva behandlarnas kliniska erfarenhet av ERGT och manliga patienter. Sex behandlare blev intervjuade. Metod för analys av intervjuerna var systematisk textkondensering. Resultat visade att behov av genusperspektiv i ERGT var störst i början av vårdkontakten då bedömning av svårigheter med känsloreglering och bedömning av förekomst av självskada sker. Det som kräver särskild medvetenhet är att män kan ha svårt att beskriva känslor och hur självskadebeteendet ofta är mer indirekt. Erfarenheten hos behandlare var att upplevelsen av olikheter minskade med tiden, då gruppen kunnat se bortom föreställningar och normer, att det svårighet med känsloreglering och självskadebeteendets funktion istället var det gemensamma.

How individuals process different affective cues, as well as how intensely they experience different emotions, may influence how efficient they are at engaging inhibitory control. To date, it is unclear if these influences differ among young adults with and without ADHD. The current study tested the variation in young adults’ inhibitory control to three affective cues (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral) in an Emotion Go/Nogo task. Results suggest better inhibitory control in response to more distinct cues (i.e., fear Nogo/happy Go). The order in which cues were presented also mattered, such that participants displayed enhanced inhibitory control when first presented with expressions that had similar valence. This task order was particularly helpful for inhibitory control engagement among young adults with ADHD. Furthermore, self-report measures suggest that young adults with ADHD were associated with higher levels of affect intensity. However, no additional relations were found in the processing of affective cues, affect intensity, and inhibitory control between young adults with and without ADHD. Results provide evidence for how affective cues and contexts differentially influence behavioral responses in young adults. Individuals with and without ADHD also appear to differ in the intensity with which they experience different emotions. Overall, the current study provides a framework for how to further explore how emotional cues and affect intensity influence inhibitory control.

Victim impact statements (VISs) are written or oral statements detailing the effects a crime has had on a victim. While the practice of having victims present VISs at sentencing hearings has generated much debate for over 25 years, the effects of this practice on victims, defendants, and legal decision-makers remain poorly understood. Prior research suggests that a victim’s emotional expression can affect how victims are perceived, and the legal judgments made in response to their statements. The current research considers how the effects of victims’ emotional displays on sentencing decisions might be conditioned by victim gender. Using audio-recorded VIS stimuli, the present research investigated the influence of victim gender (male vs. female) and emotional expression (Study 1: anger vs. sadness; Study 2: anger vs. sadness vs. flat affect) on legal judgments and punishment decisions. The results across Study 1 and Study 2 are inconsistent, though findings from the study (Study 2) with the substantially larger sample size suggest that individuals make legal judgments that are more favorable towards female victims, regardless of the victim’s emotion expression in a VIS. However, hostile sexism and gender-emotion stereotype endorsement moderated the effects of victim emotion expression and gender on sentence severity and empathy for a defendant.

There has recently been increased interest in the study of transdiagnostic mechanisms and therapies. Targeting transdiagnostic mechanisms rather than using a single disorder approach should increase efficiency of therapeutic interventions, but only if the proper mechanisms can be identified. Low distress tolerance and difficulties with emotion regulation are hypothesized as transdiagnostic mechanisms associated with anxiety disorders and worry. Due to the high comorbidity and prevalence of anxiety disorders and their shared symptoms of pathological worry, understanding these transdiagnostic mechanisms is important to the development of more effective and efficient treatments. This study used a multiple baseline, single-case experimental design to evaluate the efficacy of emotion regulation skills training for pathological worry and low distress tolerance in outpatients with anxiety disorders. Eight participants (6 women, 2 men) with at least one diagnosed anxiety disorder were randomized into a 2- or 4-week baseline period. The average age of participants was 29.1 (SD = 8.2; range 19 to 42). Participants completed weekly and daily assessments throughout the study, attended 7 sessions of treatment, and underwent a final diagnostic assessment 4 weeks after completing treatment. Emotion regulation skills training was hypothesized to increase distress tolerance, reduce worry, and lead to a remission in anxiety disorder diagnoses. Overall, the hypotheses were partially supported. Six participants displayed a reliable reduction in worry and 5 experienced an increase in distress tolerance at the follow-up assessment. Most participants still met criteria for at least one anxiety disorder after completing the study, indicating continued functional impairment from symptoms. Only 2 participants experienced complete remission of all clinical diagnoses. The results failed to show a consistent pattern of improvement, indicating that emotion regulation skills training alone may not be sufficient for robust, sustained reductions in anxiety disorder symptoms. However, results do support that worry and emotional distress tolerance can be changed through emotion regulation skills training. The small sample size limits the test of hypotheses. Suggestions for future research based on this study include incorporating interpersonal emotion regulation strategies with this treatment approach, repeating the treatment module to facilitate mastery of skills, or utilizing a group format for skills development.

<p>The affective revolution in the organizational sciences, along with methodological advances in experience sampling, has led to a greater theoretical interest in the temporal dynamics of affect (e.g., variability, inertia, instability). Related research in health and personality psychology suggests that temporal parameters of affect are predictive of well-being. However, despite the theoretical and methodological appeal, recent work suggests that affective dynamic features are not predictive of broad well-being outcomes beyond the mean level. Given the practical and methodological costs of examining affective dynamic features in organizational research, I seek to determine (a) the predictive validity of these different types of dynamic features on job performance (task performance, organizational citizenship behavior [OCB], and counterproductive work behavior [CWB]); and (b) the incremental value of dynamic features over mean levels of affect. To do so, I assess three key temporal parameters of affect (variability, inertia, instability) from daily diary assessments of affect from 597 workers (mean days = 51, total assessments = 30,565), looking at both weekly and overall levels. The findings suggest that affective dynamic features measured at the overall level were predictive of within-person variability in task performance and counterproductive work behavior (as well as mean CWB), even after controlling for the mean. Therefore, empirical and theoretical looks at affective dynamic features of employees may inform our understanding of their short-term performance variability. </p>

The eerie feeling attributed to human-looking robots and animated characters may be a key factor in our perceptual and cognitive discrimination between the human and the merely humanlike. This study applies factor analysis, correlation, the generalized linear model (GLM), multidimensional scaling (MDS), and kernel isometric mapping (ISOMAP) to analyze ratings of 27 emotions of 16 moving figures whose appearance varies along a human likeness continuum. The results indicate (1) Attributions of eerie and creepy better capture human visceral reaction to an uncanny robot than strange. (2) Eeriness and creepiness are mainly associated with fear but also shocked, disgusted, and nervous. Strange and humanlike are less strongly associated with emotion. (3) Thus, strange and humanlike may be more cognitive, while eerie and creepy are more perceptual and emotional. (4) Human and facial features increase ratings of human likeness. (5) Women are slightly more sensitive to eerie and creepy than men; and older people may be more willing to attribute human likeness to a robot despite its eeriness.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka emotionella dilemman som kan uppstå för personer med ADHD och ett tidigare missbruk. Undersökningens resultat skall sedan bidra till att tydliggöra vilka emotioner som upplevs och hur olika känslomässiga mönster uppstår för individerna. Studiens resultat tar avstamp i svaren från de formulerade frågeställningarna i intervjuguiden. Studien omfamnar vilka minnen individerna har kring tiden för diagnostisering, hur ADHD:n har påverkat deras liv, för- och nackdelar med diagnosen samt uppväxt. Den andra delen av studien innefattar vilka känslor som kan kopplas till ADHD, hur ADHD har påverkar personerna känslomässigt, vilka känslor som kan kopplas till missbruk samt hur emotionella dilemman kan uppstå i nutid. Studien belyser sambanden mellan emotioner och ADHD, hur känslor kan sammanbindas med hjälp av deras flexibla funktioner, emotionell dränering, skam. Missbruksdelen tas med i bakgrunden då även den är viktig. I studien har jag använt mig av fyra personer med ADHD och ett tidigare missbruk. Personerna har varit fria från aktivt beroende under en längre period. Resultatet i min studie visar de emotionella svårigheter och dilemman som kan upplevas hos personer med ADHD. De emotionella svårigheterna uppstår genom en rad emotioner som oftast utlöser- och samspelar med varandra. Sorg, skam, ilska, rädsla, låg självkänsla, rastlöshet är exempel på sådana emotioner som samspelar och bidrar till svårigheter.

Emotion regulation is processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express those emotions. In the field of developmental psychology, there is a large literature on affect regulation focused almost exclusively on infants and young children with a focus on temperamental differences in reactivity, both affective and physiological, and accompanying regulatory strategies. The purpose of the current study was to examine the role of two dimensions of temperament, negative affect (NA) and effortful control (EC), and how these dimensions relate to physiology, self-report of emotion, and behavior during resting and stressor tasks (Stroop, video game, hand cold pressor, and delayed gratification), the latter in which emotion suppression instructions were given. Using the Adult Temperament Questionnaire (ATQ) to screen 656 subjects, 24 males and 53 females were recruited to take part in the second phase of the study, creating four groups with their screening ATQ scores: high NA/high EC, low NA/low EC, high NA/low EC, low NA/high EC. Physiological measures derived from electrocardiogram (ECG) and impedance cardiography were recorded during each task and behaviors were coded using the Emotion Expressive Behavior Coding System. EC Group and NA Group were not significant for the majority of the physiological, self-report, and behavioral variables. However, the EC subscale inhibitory control was predictive of lower resting HRV for females only, and the Extraversion/Surgency subscale Sociability was a significant predictor of cardiac sympathetic activity during the tasks, with low sociability subjects showing a stronger sympathetic response. Neither self-report of emotion nor behavioral variables show a clear group difference in response to the tasks. Future studies will examine the use of other types of regulatory tasks, such as social interactions, as well as the need for a balance between emotion expressivity and emotion regulation. / Ph. D.

The relationship between children's emotion decoding ability and their social acceptance was examined, with a major focus on potential nonlinear components. Based on the display rules literature, the prediction was tested that social acceptance and emotion decoding skills can be best described as an inverted U-shaped function. Children in kindergarten through fifth grade (113 girls and 123 boys) completed measures of postural and facial decoding accuracy (FACES and TALK) and their social acceptance was assessed using child and teacher reports (SPPC or PSPC). The results showed only a statistically significant quadratic relationship for girls and a statistically significant linear relationship for boys in the link between postural decoding and teacher-rated social acceptance.