The “connection generation” craves interaction with and connection to vast social networks through the sharing of information, photos, opinions, entertainment and news. This sharing comes in the form of electronic word-of-mouth or eWOM, and provides marketing and communication managers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach a large number of consumers quickly. With the ever increasing growth of the internet and the rise of social media and social network sites, viral marketing has cemented itself in the marketing and corporate agenda. However, while there has been a shift in marketing budgets towards online and social media, little is known about how to successfully leverage viral marketing. Consequently, understanding why some videos go viral and others do not is becoming an increasingly popular focus of academic research. This study aimed to answer the following research question: What are the factors that drive the virality of online content?   In an attempt to answer this exploratory research question, four papers were used to look at its constituent parts. In the first paper, the role of emotion in the sharing of online content was investigated. Rime’s social sharing of emotion theory was used to explain why emotion could drive the spread of content online. We suggested that people’s propensity to share viral content was a function of the intensity, sociality and complexity of the emotion elicited by the viral content.   The following two papers further investigated the role of emotion in viral marketing by looking at the relationship between content and emotion. Paper 2 used interviews in a qualitative research design to propose a decision-tree of the interplay between content and emotion in viral marketing. This paper showed that the relevance of the content has an influence on viewers’ emotional response. Paper 3 took a closer look at the relationship between content and emotion by using a two-stage design: First, content analysis was done on the comments of selected YouTube videos. Second, an experiment was used to test the emotions that these videos elicited in respondents, the valence of those emotions, the intensity with which they were felt, as well as various content-related factors (e.g. the creativity and humor used in the videos). This paper looked specifically at the use of political communication in viral marketing and showed that creativity, valence and the intensity of the emotions elicited by the content are key drivers of viral success.   The final and fourth paper culminates in a model for the sharing of content online. This paper built on the findings from the previous papers, but also made use of interviews, and the analysis of a longitudinal dataset to propose a comprehensive model for the spread of content online. The longitudinal dataset was compiled using the top 10 posts from Reddit.com, a viral aggregator website, over the period of 25 days. The comprehensive model shows that there are external, intrapersonal and interpersonal drivers of viral content. The external drivers of viral content are the viral videos themselves (content) and its popularity. The content construct refers to various aspects related to the content itself, for example how informative, creative, humorous etc. the content is. Its popularity, on the other hand, was driven by both WOM and mainstream media reports. The intrapersonal drivers of viral content refer to the emotions that the content elicited in viewers. Viewers’ emotional response to the content was influenced by its relevance, but also by the valence and intensity of the emotion that they felt. Even though some content elicited intense emotions in viewers, some viewers did not share the content and interpersonal drivers of viral content was introduced to the model. These drivers recognise the social aspect of social media, and that content gets shared with large social networks. The model contends that people share viral content with their social networks as a form of online gift giving, out of altruism, or simply to build their own reputation. Finally, we contend that, in this content à emotion à social sharing chain, people share viral content both online and offline, as many respondents simply told their friends about the content (thus prompting them to go and watch the content themselves) or showed them the content themselves. This online and offline sharing of content increased the popularity of the content and a self-reinforcing chain was created, increasing the exponential growth typically associated with viral content.   As consumers are exposed to an increasing amount of marketing messages, and marketing budgets shrink, marketing managers could greatly benefit from better understanding how to more effectively make social media part of their marketing strategy. Viral marketing allows for a low-cost way of communicating marketing messages with great potential for impacting the market. This study ultimately shows what marketing managers can do to increase their chances of viral success, and ends off with a list of managerial recommendations to leverage the external, intrapersonal and interpersonal factors present in viral campaigns. / <p>QC 20140911</p>

<p>Effective emotion regulation plays an important role in psychological health. Two commonly-researched emotion regulation strategies are reappraisal, a cognitive change-based strategy, and mindfulness, an acceptance-based strategy. Although their potential in facilitating adaptive emotion regulation has been empirically demonstrated, little work has directly compared their cognitive and emotion regulatory effects, particularly in a symptomatic population. Using an analogue depressed sample, this study examined the relative effects of mindfulness and reappraisal in reducing sad mood and whether individual differences in trait mindfulness and habitual use of reappraisal moderated the effects. The study also compared the extent to which implementation of these strategies incurred cognitive resources and affected attitudes towards negative experiences. One hundred and twenty-nine participants were randomly assigned to receive training in mindfulness, reappraisal, or no training prior to undergoing an autobiographical sad mood induction. Following mood induction, participants rated their sadness on a visual analog scale before completing a Stroop test. Results showed that mindfulness and reappraisal were superior to no training, and equivalent in their effects in lowering sad moods. Compared to the mindfulness group, the reappraisal group reported significantly higher Stroop interference scores, reflecting greater depletion of cognitive resources. Higher trait mindfulness predicted greater reductions in sadness in the reappraisal group, but not in the mindfulness group. Habitual reappraisal did not moderate the effects of either mindfulness or reappraisal. Mindfulness, relative to reappraisal or no training, resulted in significant increases in acceptance of negative experiences and decreases in maladaptive beliefs about rumination. Overall, the study suggests that although mindfulness and reappraisal are equally effective in down-regulating sad mood, they incur different levels of cognitive costs and lead to differential changes in attitudes towards negative experiences.</p> / Dissertation

According to the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST), the normal aging process is associated with a greater emphasis on self-regulation of emotional states, and this fosters a bias in cognitive processing for information that is positively valenced (e.g., pleasant images and autobiographical events, happy faces), such that older adults have better memory for, and pay greater attention to, positive relative to negative valenced information (a ???positivity effect???). Two hypotheses have recently emerged which differ in the cognitive mechanism proposed to account for the emergence of aging-related positivity effects. The first, termed the ???cognitive control??? hypothesis, suggests that positivity effects arise from older adults' directed application of cognitive efforts to preferentially process positive information, essentially a top-down explanation. The second is a bottom-up hypothesis, suggesting that positive information is relatively easier (more fluent) for older adults to detect and process, compared to negative information, due to changes in amygdala reactivity to negative stimuli, and is termed the "processing fluency" hypothesis. To evaluate these hypotheses, I conducted a suite of memory and attention experiments and compared performance of younger and older adults. I used five different tasks (three different memory tasks, and two different attention tasks) which varied with respect to the degree to which each allowed for the use of cognitive control, and was reflective in nature, or emphasized fluency (i.e., speed of processing and output). In Experiments 1 and 2, I examined the effect of age on two different types of memory task that differed with respect to the degree to which participants must rely on cognitive control/reflective processing or processing fluency to successfully complete the task. Clear positivity effects were found on the task that was reflective in nature (autobiographical memory task) but not on the task that relied more heavily on fluency (phonemic fluency task). In Experiment 3, I examined whether older adults strategically select positive information to later remember (i.e., use cognitive control to regulate encoding of positive material), by asking participants to judge the likelihood of remembering positive, negative, and neutral pictures for a later memory test. In line with a strategic bias, older, but not younger, adults showed a positivity effect in terms of the number of pictures selected as particularly memorable, though both age groups showed a positivity effect in picture recall. Within the domain of attention-based tasks, in Experiments 4a and 4b I used a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) paradigm to examine whether older adults were more likely to detect (or have attention captured by) rapidly presented positive, than negative or neutral, pictures compared to younger adults. Given the rapid rate of presentation in this paradigm, it is unlikely that participants would be able to use cognitive control to strategically direct attention to positive stimuli, thus performance was taken to measure fluency-mediated biases for the pictures of different valence. Results showed little evidence for a positivity effect. In Experiments 5a and 5b, again within the domain of attention, I examined whether older adults preferentially oriented attention toward positive, and/or away from negative, relative to neutral stimuli, on a dot probe task in which trial timings were long enough to allow for strategic control. Experiment 5a used faces whereas Experiment 5b used pictures as stimuli, in an effort to determine whether findings could generalize across different types of stimuli. Some evidence of positivity effects were found, as older adults were less biased to attend to negative (angry) faces compared to younger adults. Results across this series of experiments are consistent with the hypothesis that positivity effects in older adults' memory and attention stem from the strategic application of effortful, reflective, cognitive processing, rather than a bottom-up difference in processing fluency.

In this dissertation, the intersection between emotion and motivation was explored. Participants in this study were given a survey at two time points during the semester. Using this data, the factor structure for the motivation construct as described by Elliot and colleagues were explored using a MTMM model. Leading from the measurement model from the CFA, results indicated that emotion and motivation are highly related, but in different ways depending on if the students have had academic feedback. The academic feedback also may change some students’ motivational orientations, based on their emotional reaction.

Mindful attention is qualitatively receptive and non-reactive, and is thought to facilitate adaptive emotional responding. Using a multi-method approach, I studied the relationship between individual differences in self-reported trait mindfulness and electrocortical, electromyographic, electrodermal, and self-reported responses to emotional pictures. Specifically, while subjects passively viewed IAPS pictures, electrocortical data, skin conductance, and also electromyographic data were recorded. Afterwards, subjects rated their subjective valence and arousal while viewing the pictures again. If trait mindfulness reduces general emotional responding, then responses from individuals with high mindfulness would be associated with decreased late positive potential amplitudes, decreased skin conductance response, and decreased subjective ratings of valence and arousal to emotional pictures. High mindfulness would also be associated with a decreased emotional modulation of startle eyeblink amplitudes and of startle P3 amplitudes during emotional pictures. Although analysis showed clear effects of emotion on dependent measures, in general, mindfulness did not moderate these effects.

In this doctoral thesis, a culturally-sensitive couple therapy model was developed and empirically investigated. In particular, a Western-based couple therapy, Emotionally-Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), was modified to enhance the cultural relevancy of this model to the Japanese population. An extensive literature review was conducted to examine the status of psychotherapy and couple research in Japan, and cultural differences between Western and Japanese couples, with a particular emphasis on important couple variables, including emotional expression, communication, conflict resolution, and attachment. Study objectives included an empirical investigation into cultural differences on key relationship variables of trust, attachment, communication, and conflict resolution, and the use of these findings to guide adaptations of EFT to enhance cultural relevance, and an exploration of the adapted EFT model with three Japanese couples. This study is significant in that it is the first to empirically evaluate the cross-cultural validity of EFT. This dissertation consists of two studies that have been combined in one article for the purpose of publishing the document in a Japanese journal. Both studies were combined in one article for various reasons. First, study one findings are integral to the development of the culturally-sensitive EFT model that is empirically investigated in the second study. Second, the article included in this dissertation will be translated and prepared for publication in a Japanese journal. Including both studies in one article is important given the lack of familiarity in the Japanese research community about key relationship variables, and particularly their applicability to a couple therapy system (i.e., EFT), and their use to measure change in a couple therapy outcome study.

Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the capacity to recognize that individuals have mental states such as beliefs, perspectives, and emotions that guide their behaviour. The measures that are currently used to assess ToM are highly dependent upon linguistic skill, and typically ignore affective ToM. In the present study, two non-verbal affective ToM tasks were created. The Affective Visual Theory of Mind Task (AVToM) assessed the perception of emotions such as happy or sad, while the Emotional Narrative Task (ENT) assessed the ability to recognize the more complicated emotion of embarrassment. Participants also completed two established ToM assessments, thus allowing us to examine the relationships between the various ToM tasks. Positive correlations were found between some of the different ToM measures; importantly, these relationships were not mediated by verbal skill. However, the correlations between the measures were weak, suggesting that each task may be assessing different, but overlapping, components of ToM.

The dominant theory in facial expression research is the dual mode hypothesis. After reviewing the literature pertaining to the dual mode hypothesis within the recognition of facial identities and emotional expressions, seven experiments are reported testing the role of configural processing within the recognition of emotional expressions of faces. The main findings were that the dual mode hypothesis can be supported within the facial recognition of emotional expression. This and other more specific findings are then reviewed within the context of extant literature. Implications for future research and applications within applied psychology are then considered.

Lifespan theories of emotion suggest that the ability to regulate emotion improves with age. The supporting evidence, however, is indirect: older adults pay less attention to negative events, remember less negative information, and report fewer experiences of negative emotion. Few studies directly measure emotion regulation by explicitly instructing older adults to modulate their feelings while exposed to emotion-evoking stimuli. The purpose of this thesis was to directly compare younger and older adults in their ability to modulate feelings to investigate whether aging results in decline, stability, or improvement in emotion regulation and also to examine potential mechanisms underlying regulation skills. The study employed a startle modulation paradigm to measure both emotional reactivity and regulation. Two experimental tasks (Stroop colour-word interference, reversal learning) were also administered to explore the relationship between emotion regulation and two theoretically-relevant processes: (a) cognitive control and (b) modification of learned emotional associations. There were three main findings: (1) emotional reactivity was preserved in older adults. Both age groups showed emotion-modulated startle (negative > neutral) during the pre-regulation viewing period; (2) age-related decline in emotion regulation was evident on an objective measure of emotion regulation (startle eyeblink reflex) but not on a subjective measure (self-ratings). Specifically, for older adults, startle eyeblink was not enhanced or attenuated following increase and decrease instructions, respectively. In contrast, both groups showed similar modulation of valence and arousal ratings by regulation instruction (increase > look > decrease); (3) for older adults, reversal learning performance correlated positively with the degree of reappraisal-related startle attenuation in the decrease condition, suggesting a possible mechanism for impaired down-regulation. These findings suggest that even when emotional reactivity is similar, older adults are less effective at modulating their physiological responses.

Spoken language conveys two forms of information: transactional (content, what is said) and interactional (how it is said). The transactional message shared during spoken communication has been studied extensively in different listening conditions and in people of all ages using standardized tests of speech intelligibility. However, research into interactional aspects of speech has been more limited. One specific aspect of interactional communication that warrants further investigation is the communication of emotion in speech, also called affective prosody. A series of experiments examined how younger and older adults produce affective prosody, recognize emotion in speech, and understand emotional speech in noise. The emotional valence and arousal properties of target words from an existing speech intelligibility test were rated by younger and older adults. New stimuli based on those words were recorded by a younger female and an older female using affective prosody to portray seven emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, pleasant surprise, sadness, neutral). Similar to previous studies, the acoustical parameter that best differentiated the emotions was fundamental frequency (F0). Specifically, discriminant analysis indicated that emotional category membership was best predicted by the mean and range of F0. Overall, recognition of emotion and intelligibility were high. While older listeners made more recognition errors and had poorer intelligibility overall, their patterns of responding did not differ significantly from those of the younger listeners on either measure. Of note, angry and sad emotions were recognized with the highest degree of accuracy, but intelligibility was highest for items spoken to portray fear or pleasant surprise. These results may suggest that there is a complementarity between the acoustic cues used to recognize emotions (how words are said) and those used to understand words (what is said). Alternatively, the effect of emotion on intelligibility may be modulated primarily by attentional rather than acoustical factors, with higher performance associated with alerting emotions.