archives@tulane.edu / Psychology and neuroscience research shows that individuals with negative emotions (e.g., fear) are more sensitive to negative signals and exhibit a higher degree of risk aversion. Using local terrorist attacks as exogenous shocks that cause auditors to experience more negative emotions in the audit period, I empirically study the impact of negative emotions on audit practice. I find that accounting misstatements are less likely to occur for firms when there is a local terrorist attack in the audit period. The reduction in misstatements is stronger for auditors who are located closer to the terrorist attacks. Further evidence suggests that affected auditors are more likely to issue going concern opinions, spend more time on the audit, and charge higher audit fees. I obtain a similar set of results using airplane crashes as an alternative source of emotional shocks. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the idea that auditors with more negative emotions exert greater effort to lower misstatement risks. My findings provide large-scale archival causal evidence that emotions can affect audit outcomes. / 1 / Pengkai Lin

Positive affect, which has been broken down into four lower-level facets (i.e., joviality, attentiveness, self-assurance, serenity), has demonstrated numerous ties to physical and mental health. The experience of positive affect can be regulated by emotion regulation strategies. However, few studies have assessed their relationship, and no studies have examined the relationship using the lower level facets of positive affect. The link between positive affect and emotion regulation may be of particular importance for individuals at increased risk for bipolar disorder, as both are disrupted in individuals with the condition. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between positive affect and emotion regulation while also exploring whether risk for bipolar disorder moderated their relationship. Undergraduates (N = 155) completed measures of emotion regulation, affect, and bipolar disorder risk at baseline. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), participants completed surveys 3 times a day for 7 days. Hierarchical linear models were estimated and revealed significant effects between certain baseline emotion regulation tendencies (experiential avoidance/ psychological inflexibility, rumination, behavioral social avoidance) and daily positive affect facets as well as between daily emotion regulation use (i.e., reappraisal, acceptance, reflection, savoring, mindfulness social support, suppression, rumination, procrastination) and daily positive affect facets. Bipolar disorder risk was not found to moderate the relationship. Findings support the use of strategies emphasized in evidence-based treatments and highlight the importance of daily practice of emotion regulation skills.

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The primary goal of this thesis was to characterize the parameters under which faulty emotion-cognition interactions emerge in Schizophrenia (SCZ). Its theoretical basis rests on neurobiological models specifying two related, yet independent, brain systems that govern how cognitive versus emotional processing impacts behaviour, and related research indicating differential impairment of the cognitive system in SCZ. These models predict that the disruptive impact of emotional information may be greatest when it is actionable and signals a competing response. However, most previous research on patients with SCZ has focused on the influence of extraneous emotional interference on primary cognitive processing. Thus, the central hypothesis guiding these experiments was that patients with SCZ will have the most difficulty prioritizing goal-directed, cognitive response cues in the face of countermanding emotional cues which impel an alternative response. Several different experimental tasks were used to interrogate this hypothesis, at both the behavioural and neural level. Overall, the results confirm that SCZ patients have difficulty prioritizing cognitive determinants of behaviour when emotion-laden information serves as an actionable and opposing response cue. However, the data are not conclusive; effect sizes were generally modest and results were not entirely consistent across studies. Therefore, while these experiments support dual-system neurobiological models of SCZ-related brain pathology, and provide interesting tentative suggestions for novel clinical approaches to treatment and remediation, further research is needed to fully understand dysregulated emotion-cognition antagonism in this clinical population. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis investigated how different groups of people process the emotionality of linguistic stimuli. Recently, individual and group differences have become topics of interest in psychology, but very few studies have investigated how behavioural responses to emotional stimuli vary as a function of participant demographics. The first study focused on the contrast between how native and non-native speakers of English process the emotional content of English words. The study of emotional processing in non-native speakers is a highly contested issue in the field of bilingualism and experimental psychology. Chapter 2 reports the largest collection of emotion ratings of English words from non-native speakers and provides a theoretical perspective on how bilingual speakers process emotion. In order to facilitate the investigation of individual differences in emotional processing, the field needs a reliable method that allows for the measurement of subtle differences between individuals. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate that a novel ‘slider’ method of measuring valence, proposed by Warriner et al. (2018), is a reliable tool for measuring affective responses to words along a fine-grained sliding scale. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate the use of the sliding scale with the aim of capturing affective differences between those with and without depressive symptoms. This chapter reports that compared to those without depressive symptoms, those with depressive symptoms i) exhibit attenuated responses to emotionally laden stimuli, and ii) are unable to take on the perspective of someone without depression. Overall, this thesis reports on the emotional responses in two hotly debated groups, as well as providing a new method of measuring emotional responses to linguistic stimuli. These findings underscore the importance of studying emotional processing beyond normative populations. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

A conceptual model was originally proposed that linked the vestibular modality with executive domains by means of a functional cerebral systems framework. The claim was that frontal regions exert regulatory control over posterior systems for sensation and autonomic functions in a dense, interconnected network with right hemisphere specialization. As a preponderance of evidence demonstrates that a design fluency task is often associated with right frontal functioning, it was hypothesized that proficiency on a design fluency task would yield differences in QEEG and skin conductance after vestibular activation. Fifty-eight total (29 high- and 29 low-fluent performers on the Ruff Figural Fluency Test were subjected to 20 whole-body passive rotations about the neuroaxis at a constant rate of approximately 120 degrees per second. EEG and skin conductance levels were recorded prior to and post-rotation. Analyses were conducted on delta (1-4 Hz.) and beta (13-21 Hz.) frequencies. Overall, delta activity increased from baseline to post-rotation with higher levels at frontal sites, however no group differences were found across conditions. Regarding beta activation, high design fluency was associated with increased beta activation at the right temporal site (T6). In contrast to expectations, beta activity diminished from baseline to post-stress over both groups. Skin conductance levels increased from baseline to post-stress. Methodological considerations are discussed regarding gender issues and procedures of the experiment. The results indicate that vestibular disorientation yields systematic delta changes in the frontal regions, but that future refinements to the vestibular stressor may elicit QEEG and skin conductance differences in fluency groups. / Ph. D.