Among some haplorhine primates, including humans, relaxed yawns spread contagiously. Such contagious yawning has been linked to social bonds and empathy in some species. However, no studies have investigated contagious yawning in strepsirhines. We conducted an experimental study of contagious yawning in strepsirhines, testing ring-tailed and ruffed lemurs (n = 24) in a paradigm similar to one that has induced contagious yawning in haplorhines. First, in a control experiment, we investigated whether lemurs responded to projected video content in general (experiment 1). We showed them two videos to which we expected differential responses: one featured a terrestrial predator and the other a caretaker holding food. Next, to test for yawn contagion, we showed individual lemurs life-size video projections of groupmates and conspecific strangers yawning, and control footage of the same individuals at rest (experiment 2). Then, to examine whether a group context might enhance or allow for contagion, we exposed subjects to the same videos in a group setting (experiment 3). Lemurs produced alarm vocalizations and moved upward while viewing the predator, but not the caretaker, demonstrating that they do perceive video content meaningfully. However, lemurs did not yawn in response to yawning stimuli when tested alone, or with their groupmates. This study provides preliminary evidence that lemurs do not respond to yawning stimuli similarly to haplorhines, and suggests that this behavior may have evolved or become more exaggerated in haplorhines after the two major primate lineages split.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Sara M. Moorman / There is much prior research on the benefits of marriage for adults, including for mental and physical health (Carr and Springer 2010). Further research has demonstrated that the quality of one’s marriage provides benefits, and not merely the status itself (see Carr and Springer 2010; Proulx, Helms, and Buehler 2007). A close, salient relationship such as marriage is not experienced in isolation, but is rather an interpersonal system, where the characteristics, feelings, and opinions of each partner can influence the other (Berscheid and Ammazzalorso 2001; Carr et al. 2014; Moorman 2016). However, less research has been performed that takes advantage of dyadic data to determine whether and how a partner’s marital quality may affect one’s own well-being (Carr et al. 2014; Kenny 1996). Moreover, emotional experiences rarely remain truly private; individuals unconsciously signal and express their feelings to others, and can even transmit these emotional experiences to close social partners (Christakis and Fowler 2013; Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson 1994). The present dissertation examines the associations among older husbands’ and wives’ marital quality and well-being, using two sources of dyadic data, a range of measures of marital quality and well-being, and advanced analytic strategies appropriate for longitudinal and cross-sectional data. Older couples can differ from their younger and midlife counterparts, as both men and women trim their broader social networks in later life and increasingly focus on their closest and most rewarding relationships, such as marriage (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, and Charles 1999; Mancini and Bonanno 2006). Gendered roles may shift in later life, as well, as older adults cease activities such as child-rearing and full-time employment (Bookwala 2012). Thus, potential differences according to gender are also explicitly tested. The results of this dissertation will shed greater light on how older couples’ perceptions of marital quality influence various aspects of spouses’ well-being, cross-sectionally and over time. Mutual Influence and Older Married Adults’ Anxiety Symptoms: Results from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing analyzes cross-sectional dyadic data from 1,114 married older couples surveyed in the initial wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA; Kenny 2014), 2009-2011. Dyadic structural equation models (SEM) examined the direct and indirect associations between husbands’ and wives’ reports of marital strain and generalized anxiety symptoms in later life. Findings revealed that perceptions of marital strain were related with husbands’ and wives’ own generalized anxiety symptoms. Further, husbands’ anxiety symptoms were significantly related with wives’ anxiety symptoms, and vice versa, illustrating bi-directional feedback. Lastly, husbands’ and wives’ perceptions of marital strain were significantly indirectly related with their partners’ anxiety symptoms, with these associations being mediated by spouses’ own anxiety symptoms. These results suggest that emotional contagion may be the pathway for partner effects of marital strain on spouses’ well-being. Findings also suggest that efforts to reduce anxiety symptoms may be most effective when taking marital context and quality into account. Two-Wave Dyadic Analysis of Marital Quality and Loneliness in Later Life: Results From The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing analyzes dyadic reports of marital quality and loneliness over a two-year period, using longitudinal dyadic data collected from 932 older married couples who participated in both of the first two waves of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), collected from 2009-2013. Two-wave lagged dependent variable (LDV) models tested the cognitive perspective on loneliness, emotional contagion theory, and actor-partner interdependence by examining whether husbands’ and wives’ reports of marital quality and loneliness at baseline predicted both spouses’ loneliness two years later. Results indicated that one’s own perceptions of negative marital quality at baseline were related with greater loneliness after two years, supporting the cognitive perspective on loneliness. Further, both spouses’ reports of loneliness at baseline were related with loneliness two years later, supporting emotional contagion theory. Partners’ reports of marital quality were not related with future loneliness, failing to support actor-partner interdependence. Do “His” and “Her” Marriage Influence One Another? Older Spouses’ Marital Quality Over Four Years uses two-wave longitudinal data from the Disability and Use of Time (DUST) supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to examine associations between husbands’ and wives’ reports of marital quality over a four-year period. The sample consisted of 209 older married couples who participated in both the 2009 and 2013 waves of DUST. Lagged dependent variable (LDV) models tested whether older husbands’ and wives’ perceptions of marital quality are themselves subject to emotional contagion, by examining whether baseline reports of marital quality were related with one’s own and a partner’s marital quality after four years. Results indicated that (a) husbands reported better marital quality than their wives in both 2009 and 2013, (b) for both husbands and wives, baseline marital quality was significantly related with both one’s own and one’s partner’s marital quality four years later, and (c) there were no differences in effects according to gender. These findings offer support for the framework of “his” and “her” marriage, as well as emotional contagion theory. Together, these papers examine whether and how older spouses’ reports of marital quality and well-being are associated with one another, with a particular emphasis on assessing emotional contagion as a potential explanation and mechanism for dyadic partner effects. The results of these articles contribute empirically and theoretically to the literature(s) on marital quality and well-being; spousal interdependence; and emotional contagion. I discuss the implications of these articles for theory and future research concerning marriage and well-being in later life.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xiii, 126 p.; also includes graphics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-126). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

abstract: Internet sites that support user-generated content, so-called Web 2.0, have become part of the fabric of everyday life in technologically advanced nations. Users collectively spend billions of hours consuming and creating content on social networking sites, weblogs (blogs), and various other types of sites in the United States and around the world. Given the fundamentally emotional nature of humans and the amount of emotional content that appears in Web 2.0 content, it is important to understand how such websites can affect the emotions of users. This work attempts to determine whether emotion spreads through an online social network (OSN). To this end, a method is devised that employs a model based on a general threshold diffusion model as a classifier to predict the propagation of emotion between users and their friends in an OSN by way of mood-labeled blog entries. The model generalizes existing information diffusion models in that the state machine representation of a node is generalized from being binary to having n-states in order to support n class labels necessary to model emotional contagion. In the absence of ground truth, the prediction accuracy of the model is benchmarked with a baseline method that predicts the majority label of a user's emotion label distribution. The model significantly outperforms the baseline method in terms of prediction accuracy. The experimental results make a strong case for the existence of emotional contagion in OSNs in spite of possible alternative arguments such confounding influence and homophily, since these alternatives are likely to have negligible effect in a large dataset or simply do not apply to the domain of human emotions. A hybrid manual/automated method to map mood-labeled blog entries to a set of emotion labels is also presented, which enables the application of the model to a large set (approximately 900K) of blog entries from LiveJournal. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2011

At work and in the family, people do emotional work to meet other people's emotional needs, improve their wellbeing, and maintain social harmony. Emotional work is unique and skilled work - it involves handling emotions and social relationships and its product is the change of feeling in others. ¶ The thesis extends the work of Erickson and Wharton (1993, 1997) and England (1992, England & Farkas, 1986) by adding a psychological perspective. Emotional work is defined in terms of behaviours. Three dimensions, companionship, help and regulation, distinguish whether positive or negative emotions in other people are the target of emotional work. Companionship builds positive emotions, whereas help and regulation repairs and regulates negative emotions. ¶ Two studies, the Public Service Study (n=448) and the Health Care Study (n=261), sample different work and family role contexts (spouse, parent, kinkeeper and friendship, manager, workmate and service roles). The Integrative Emotional Work (IEW) Inventory was developed to assess emotional work in these roles. ¶ Emotional work is not just women's work. Younger people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds also do more emotional work. In contexts where it is not rewarded, emotional work is done by those with lower status. Emotional work is responsive and increases when other people are distressed. It is an aspect of the domestic division of labour, and influenced by workplace climate. Although personality is a factor, some determinants are modifiable. People do more emotional work when they have the skills, when it is saliently prescribed, and when it is rewarded and recognised. ¶ Emotional work is costly to those who do it and combines in its effects across work and family roles. When people do emotional work they 'catch' emotions from others (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). Handling positive emotions in others improves wellbeing. However, handling negative emotions in others relates to a wide range of psychological health problems. These health costs are mitigated when emotional work is rewarded. Emotional work's devaluation sets in train social group differences in its performance, and confers both material (England & Folbre, 1999) and health disadvantages on those who do it.

<p>Under de senaste åren har det blivit allt tydligare och fler resultat pekar på att kroppsliga tillstånd, såsom ansiktsuttryck, och människans informationsbearbetning är sammankopplade. Det har även visat sig att människor härmar varandras ansiktsuttryck och därigenom förändrar sina emotionella tillstånd. På senare år har det även börjat dyka upp allt fler animerade agenter som ska hjälpa användaren med datorprogram, hemsidor och lärande datorspel. Härmar en användare då även en animerad agents ansiktsuttryck precis som en verklig människa? Den här studien ska undersöka huruvida användaren till ett datorspel härmar den animerade agentens ansiktsuttryck och om det i sin tur påverkar dennes informationsbearbetning. I studien användes ett datorspel där en agent som hade antingen ett glatt, neutralt eller ledset ansiktsuttryck presenterade negativa, neutrala och positiva ord i en pratbubbla. Användarna fick sedan skriva ner så många ord som de kom ihåg. Resultaten visade att deltagarna inte härmade agentens ansiktsuttryck och att agenten inte hade påverkat deras informationsbearbetning.</p>

Today’s organizations struggle to remain competitive within the contemporary turbulent business environment and are therefore demanded to develop and implement new working processes. Organizations, although striving for innovation, frequently fail to fully benefit from them due to implementation failures. An often-disregarded issue is the entanglement of emotions during this phase. Thus, this thesis aims to investigate how innovation implementation is related to emotions, addressing it towards the team’s working climate and leader’s emotional intelligence. For this purpose, we employ a conceptual research approach to build an integrated conceptual model that, by proposing hypotheses and propositions, may serve as a starting point for future empirical studies. With this model, we suggest that leaders with higher levels of emotional intelligence, by the mindful management of emotions, can consciously influence the emotional contagion process and therefore affect the team climate. By establishing a climate for innovation characterized by a team vision, participative safety, task orientation and support for innovation, emotionally intelligent leaders can thus positively influence innovation implementation. The thesis does thereby contribute to an understanding of the factors that affect innovation implementation within teams.

Under de senaste åren har det blivit allt tydligare och fler resultat pekar på att kroppsliga tillstånd, såsom ansiktsuttryck, och människans informationsbearbetning är sammankopplade. Det har även visat sig att människor härmar varandras ansiktsuttryck och därigenom förändrar sina emotionella tillstånd. På senare år har det även börjat dyka upp allt fler animerade agenter som ska hjälpa användaren med datorprogram, hemsidor och lärande datorspel. Härmar en användare då även en animerad agents ansiktsuttryck precis som en verklig människa? Den här studien ska undersöka huruvida användaren till ett datorspel härmar den animerade agentens ansiktsuttryck och om det i sin tur påverkar dennes informationsbearbetning. I studien användes ett datorspel där en agent som hade antingen ett glatt, neutralt eller ledset ansiktsuttryck presenterade negativa, neutrala och positiva ord i en pratbubbla. Användarna fick sedan skriva ner så många ord som de kom ihåg. Resultaten visade att deltagarna inte härmade agentens ansiktsuttryck och att agenten inte hade påverkat deras informationsbearbetning.