High trait self-control predicts a successful, healthy, and happy life. Nonetheless, how people with high trait self-control succeed at self-control and attain these outcomes remains unclear. To date, a few studies have linked high trait self-control with effective emotion regulation, and others have linked emotion regulation with enhanced self-control. Building on these insights, along with insights from instrumental emotion regulation, which holds that people regulate emotions to attain goals, this programme of research tests whether people higher in trait self-control use their emotions and emotion regulation to succeed at self-control. Two studies (Study 1: N = 253; Study 2: N = 306) first examined the relations between trait self-control and beliefs about the utility of emotions in everyday situations that varied in self-control type required. Three studies (Study 1: N = 415; Study 2: N = 140; Study 3: N = 210) then explored the links between trait self-control, beliefs about the utility of emotions, and emotion regulation in performance contexts that varied in self-control demand, and how these factors influenced emotions and self-control performance. Convincing evidence was found that people higher, relative to lower, in trait self-control considered positive emotions more useful and negative emotions less useful across situations, although these beliefs did not translate into preferences or choice to regulate emotions. Modest evidence was found that people higher in trait self-control experienced more positive and less negative emotion following a regulatory task, and that more positive and less negative emotion helped people higher in trait self-control to succeed at self-control. Thus, trait self-control predicts beliefs about the utility of emotions, but whether these beliefs translate into behavior depend on context. This research contributes to our understanding of how emotions and emotion regulation might shape self-control success and has the potential to inform the design of interventions to improve people's self-control and help them to attain positive outcomes.

Thesis (M.A. (African Languages)) -- University of Limpopo, 2003 / Refer to document

High elaborative parent-child reminiscing plays a significant role in preschoolers??? development of autobiographical memory, and, given the emotional salience of many past events, may also contribute to the development of emotion knowledge and other socio-cognitive skills. Additionally, whilst research has traditionally focused on reminiscing style, emotional content may also be important for child outcomes. In Study 1, a naturalistic paradigm was employed to examine associations of parents??? reminiscing style and emotion references with children???s emotion knowledge. Twenty-five parent-child dyads each discussed four emotionally salient past events. It was found that high elaborative parents more often discussed emotions causes than did other parents; in turn, a high elaborative style and discussion of emotion causes were each uniquely associated with children???s emotion knowledge. In Study 2 an experimental paradigm was used to examine the impact of emotion-oriented reminiscing on 88 children???s memory for a staged, emotion-rich event. Two days after participating in the event, children reminisced with an experimenter in one of four ways. Emotion-cause, emotion-expression, and no-emotion reminiscing were all high elaborative but differed in emotion content. Minimal reminiscing was low elaborative. Children who participated in emotion-cause reminiscing and, to a lesser extent, emotion-expression reminiscing, recalled significantly more emotional and non-emotional information about the event than did children who participated in no-emotion or minimal reminiscing. Study 3 aimed to extend the findings of Studies 1 and 2 by training mothers to reminisce using a high elaborative style and emotion content. 80 dyads initially participated; 44 completed all stages. After training, mothers and children in the reminiscing condition each used a more elaborative style and discussed emotions more than did their counterparts in a powerful ???child directed play??? control condition. These differences were sustained across six months, at which time children in the reminiscing condition also showed better emotion cause knowledge than did children in the control condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that children???s autobiographical memory and emotion knowledge may each develop via shared reminiscing interactions in the preschool years. In each case, the role of high-elaborative, emotion-rich reminiscing is highlighted.

The programme of research described in this dissertation examines the potential prejudicial impact of gruesome evidence on mock juror decision making. The dissertation provides a model of the cognitive and emotional processes by which gruesome evidence can influence mock juror judgments. Five studies will be presented which have examined the influence of gruesome verbal (written) and visual evidence. Four studies utilised mock trial or simulation methodology utilising written trial transcripts and undergraduate students as mock jurors. Results suggest that gruesome evidence can cause emotional reactions in mock jurors and that mock jurors who are exposed to gruesome evidence are more likely to find the defendant culpable (in criminal cases) and liable (in civil cases). The studies evaluated a model which outlines the cognitive and affective processes by which gruesome evidence might influence juror emotion and decision making. Gruesome evidence presented verbally, such as verbal descriptions of the victim??s injuries, may bias juror decisions toward conviction. Increased estimates of the guilt of the defendant may result when gruesome information is present, especially when the inculpatory evidence is weak overall. Photographic evidence, irrespective of whether this evidence is neutral or gruesome, can increase the likelihood of conviction. Admitting gruesome photographic evidence, rather than excluding this evidence, may increase the inculpatory value that jurors ascribe to prosecutorial evidence via the influence of gruesome evidence on the emotional state of jurors. Further, although exposure to any photographs had similar effects on mock juror affect, emotional reactions to gruesome photographic evidence appeared to lead to changes in the assessment of evidence and to an increased likelihood of conviction or liability when compared with neutral and no photographs. The implications of the results for policy, practice and research are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis investigates the role of colour in the cognitive processesing of emotional information. The research is guided by the effect of colour diagnosticity which has been shown previously to influence recognition performance of several types of objects as well as natural scenes. The research presented in Experiment 1 examined whether colour information is considered a diagnostic perceptual feature of seven emotional categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise and neutral. Participants (N = 119), who were naïve to the specific purpose and expectations of the experiment, chose colour more than any other perceptual quality (e.g. shape and tactile information) as a feature that describes the seven emotional categories. The specific colour features given for the six basic emotions were consistently different from those given to the non-emotional neutral category. While emotional categories were often described by chromatic colour features (e.g. red, blue, orange) the neutral category was often ascribed achromatic colour features (e.g. white, grey, transparent) as the most symptomatic perceptual qualities for its description. The emotion 'anger' was unique in being the only emotion showing an agreement higher that 50% of the total given colour features for one particular colour - red. Confirming that colour is a diagnostic feature of emotions led to the examination of the effect of diagnostic colours of emotion on recognition memory for emotional words and faces: the effect, if any, of appropriate and inappropriate colours (matched with emotion) on the strength of memory for later recognition of faces and words (Experiments 2 & 3). The two experiments used retention intervals of 15 minutes and one week respectively and the colour-emotion associations were determined for each individual participant. Results showed that regardless of the subject’s consistency level in associating colours with emotions, and compared with the individual inappropriate or random colours, individual appropriate colours of emotions significantly enhance recognition memory for six basic emotional faces and words. This difference between the individual inappropriate colours or random colours and the individual appropriate colours of emotions was not found to be significant for non-emotional neutral stimuli. Post hoc findings from both experiments further show that appropriate colours of emotion are associated more consistently than inappropriate colours of emotions. This suggests that appropriate colour-emotion associations are unique both in their strength of association and in the form of their representation. Experiment 4 therefore aimed to investigate whether appropriate colour-emotion associations also trigger an implicit automatic cognitive system that allows faster naming times for appropriate versus inappropriate colours of emotional word carriers. Results from the combined Emotional-Semantic Stroop task confirm the above hypothesis and therefore imply that colour plays a substantial role not only in our conceptual representations of objects but also in our conceptual representations of basic emotions. The resemblance of the present findings collectively to those found previously for objects and natural scenes suggests a common cognitive mechanism for the processing of emotional diagnostic colours and the processing of diagnostic colours of objects or natural scenes. Overall, this thesis provides the foundation for many future directions of research in the area of colour and emotion as well as a few possible immediate practical implications.

Resilience implies the ability to quickly recover from a negative life event and adapt to changing situations. The goal of the current study was to explore the mechanisms underlying resilience, including the roles of cognitive emotion regulation (reappraisal) and cognitive flexibility. Although all aforementioned mechanisms were investigated, there was a particular focus on the relationship between resilience and "affective flexibility," a term used to describe cognitive flexibility in processing affective stimuli. In the current study, participants completed several self-report personality and behavioral scales, including measures of trait-resilience and cognitive reappraisal, a cognitive flexibility task, a working memory task and two novel affective flexibility tasks. Results showed that one of the two affective flexibility tasks was a valid measure of the affective flexibility construct; affective flexibility significantly predicted level of resilience above and beyond cognitive flexibility and working memory. Cognitive flexibility was also a unique predictor of resilience when controlling for affective flexibility and working memory. Cognitive reappraisal was positively correlated with resilience but it did not appear to mediate the relationship between affective flexibility and resilience. This study was the first to demonstrate that resilience is related to specific cognitive abilities rather than general executive functioning. It is also the first to introduce and operationalize the construct of affective flexibility and show that it is a distinct process from cognitive flexibility. Research limitations and future directions are discussed.

Thirty-two infants and their parents were observed at 6 months in the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. Attachment security was assessed in the Strange Situation Paradigm (SSP) at 15 months. Eighteen of these infants had an older sibling with a clinically diagnosed ASD (ASD-siblings) and 14 had older siblings with no ASD (comparison-siblings). Results suggested that at fifteen months, before diagnostic outcomes are available, ASD-sibs are no more likely to evidence insecurity in attachment, or attachment disorganization, than are COMP-sibs. Additionally, 15-month secure and insecure infants differed with respect to 6-month gazing at their parent's face during the still-face (SF) and reunion (RE) episodes as well as the amount they were tickled by their parent in the RE episode. Parent tickling in the RE episode appeared to be differentially associated with later attachment security between ASD and COMP-sibs. For COMP-sibs insecurity in attachment at 15-months was associated with more parent tickling in the RE episode. For ASD-sibs it was not. Results suggest that infant and parent emotional behaviors at 6 months of age in a standardized emotion-eliciting paradigm provide a window into the processes of developing attachment security.

Creating a sense of identity is constructed through communicative processes allowing us to participate in interpersonal relationships, and understand who we are. "Much of our emotional life is bound up with the way we narrate experiences..." (Kerby, 1991, p. 48). Because experiences are told from our own perspective, what we tell is significant. It reflects our feelings regarding a situation, and in the telling of the story, we reinterpret the way we understand our life and how we know ourselves. The purpose of this study is to examine the content and structure of the narratives contained within a diary, in order to learn how an individual interprets emotional experiences and constructs identities. It is a unique opportunity to explore how individuals can cope with ambiguity and uncertainty by constructing multiple identities to functionally enact within a variety of environments.

I två studier undersöktes skillnader I empati beroende på målpersons kön. I studie 1 fick 72 psykologistudenter läsa fyra berättelser där målpersonerna befann sig i besvärliga situationer och upplevde känslorna ilska, skam, rädsla och sorg. Därefter fick deltagarna skatta sin empati. Resultatet öppnade för möjligheten att sorg medförde mer empati för männen och ilska mer empati för kvinnorna. I studie 2 fick därför 101 psykologistudenter läsa en berättelse där målpersonen upplevde ilska eller sorg i en svår situation och därefter skatta sin empati. Resultatet visade en stark tendens att män som känner sorg väcker mer empati än kvinnor och att kvinnor som känner ilska väcker mer empati än kvinnor som känner sorg. Majoriteten av deltagarna var kvinnor. Målpersonens kön, känsloupplevelse och grad av empati verkar ha ett samband då en känsla kan medföra skillnader i empati mellan kön och olika känslor medföra skillnader i empati för kvinnor. / In two studies differences in empathy depending on target person’s gender was examined. In study 1 72 psychology students read four stories describing target persons in troublesome situations who experienced anger, shame, fear and sadness. Thereafter participants estimate their empathy. The results opened for the possibilities that sadness evoke more empathy for men and anger more empathy for women. Therefore in study 2 101 psychology students read a story where a target person experienced sadness or anger in a difficult situation and thereafter estimate their empathy. The result showed strong tendency that men who experiencing sadness evoke more empathy than women and women experiencing anger evoke more empathy than women experiencing sadness. The majority of participants where female. Target persons, gender, emotion and degree of empathy seem to be related when an emotion can bring difference in empathy between gender and different emotions can bring difference in empathy for women.

My dissertation examines a fundamental but poorly understood aspect of emotional intelligence: its potential cultural-relativity. Significant differences in emotional intelligence test scores have been found between different cultural groups. To explain these past findings, I develop a theory of how and why different cultural groups—specifically, Westerners and East Asians—hold different conceptions of emotional intelligence. In effect, I argue that what is considered emotionally intelligent behaviour by members of one ethnic group may not be considered emotionally intelligent behaviour by members of another group due to contrasting cultural values and beliefs. Empirically, I test this theory through a two-part investigation. In Study 1, I measure cultural values and show that they mediate the relation between ethnicity and emotional intelligence test scores. In Study 2, I experimentally manipulate (prime) cultural beliefs to test whether they cause different judgments of what is considered emotionally intelligent behaviour. Some evidence for the hypothesis that culture helps account for ethnic differences in emotional intelligence was found through Study 1’s measurement-of-mediation design, however, not through Study 2’s experimental-causal-chain design. Theoretically, my dissertation helps challenge the implicit assumption that emotional intelligence is universal by explaining how and why it is culturally-relative. Practically, my dissertation provides some evidence that current tests of emotional intelligence may be culturally-biased and hence adversely impact non-Western candidates when used as part of selection and promotion decisions.