Les « maladies de l’âme » ont existé de tout temps et l’homme s’est employé à les nommer, à en rechercher les causes dans un déséquilibre organique, ou encore un mauvais usage de la raison qui le priverait de la félicité, celle-ci étant reconnue comme tranquillitas animi ou salut éternel. L’aspect le plus fécond de ce mal de vivre, d’un point de vue artistique et littéraire, repose sur le concept de mélancolie, tandis qu’aujourd’hui, sa forme diffuse en est la dépression. Lacan dans Télévision, décrivant cette dernière comme « une faute morale, comme s’exprimait Dante, voire Spinoza : un péché, ce qui veut dire une lâcheté morale », place la question sur un plan décidément éthique et incite à reconsidérer la subtile réflexion des Pères de l’Eglise et de Saint Thomas, concernant la relation entre péché et « maladie de l’âme », soit encore l’acédie dans ce contexte. Dante, cité explicitement par Lacan, et puis Pétrarque vivent et écrivent durant une période cruciale, qui voit coexister diverses conceptions médicales, philosophiques et artistiques de l’acédie, la mélancolie, l’aegritudo, toutes présentes dans leurs œuvres. Si Dante semble s’appuyer sur la conception médiévale de la maladie de l’âme, essentiellement engendrée par un usage incorrect de la raison et donc une perversion de l’amore di natura, Pétrarque reste, bien que de manière non déclarée, un poète « mélancolique », de fait : il souligne en premier lieu l’irréductible antagonisme entre savoir et félicité et puise dans l’ignorance et l’insatiable désir sa définition de l’essence de la nature humaine. Il fait de ce désir, incarné par la figure éternelle et inaccessible de Laura, la matière même de son chant. / “Maladies of the soul” have always existed, and so humanity seeks to define them and to find their cause and a cure. Over the course of time they have been given many names and their origin has been identified, at different times, in an organic imbalance or in a faulty use of reason, one that drives away happiness, identified in turn as tranquillitas animi or eternal salvation. The most fertile aspect of this malaise from the artistic and literary viewpoint consists in the concept of melancholy, while the form it most commonly takes today is depression. Lacan, defining the latter in Television as a moral failing, as Dante, and even Spinoza, said: a sin, which means a moral weakness, places the question on a declaredly ethical plane and prompts us to re-examine the penetrating reflection of the Fathers of the Church and St Thomas on the relationship between sin and ‘malady of the soul’, embodied, in this context, by sloth. Dante, cited explicitly by Lacan, and Petrarch both lived and wrote in a crucial era, in which different medical, philosophical and artistic conceptions of sloth, acedia, melancholy and aegritudo coexisted, and figured in their works. If Dante still appears bound to the mediaeval conception of the malady of the soul, stemming essentially from the faulty use of reason and thus from a perversion of the ‘love of nature’, Petrarch is, not declaredly, but in effect, a ‘melancholic’ poet: he was the first to point out the rift between knowledge and happiness, and to grasp that the essence of human nature lies in ignorance and in insatiable desire. And he makes this desire, embodied in the eternal and unattainable image of Laura, the subject of his poetry.

Research suggests that older adults have enhanced emotional outcomes and use different emotion regulation strategies (e.g., more distraction and positive reappraisal) relative to young adults. The present study investigated the mood and memory-related effects of these strategies in young and older adults. Participants watched a sad film clip while being instructed to use specific emotion regulation strategies (i.e., avoiding negativity, focusing on positivity, focusing on negativity, or no instructions). Young adults who were instructed to avoid focusing on negativity showed better mood outcomes and more positive memory for the film compared to non-instructed young adults. Instructions to down-regulate emotions did not affect older adults, possibly because they used such strategies spontaneously. Older adults increased dispositional tendency to focus on positive stimuli in their everyday lives partially explained older adults greater mood improvement. The results have implications for the effectiveness of particular emotion regulation strategies and for the generalizability of the positivity effect.

The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine receiver variables involved in strategic communications and to look specifically at the use of graphic images in strategic communication materials. It argues that any complete, general model of persuasion effects will include both goal compatibility and emotional determinants. It argues that some influential theories used in strategic communications scholarship, including the situational theory of publics and the elaboration likelihood model, are incomplete because they have omitted these variables. This study also tests variables related to willingness to communicate, behavioral intention, and attitude towards the organization. These variables are drawn from prominent, well-tested theories in strategic communications, and used to begin building a new model of the effects of messages featuring graphic images.

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abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine whether dispositional sadness predicted children's prosocial behavior, and whether empathy-related responding (i.e., sympathy, personal distress) mediated this relation. It was hypothesized that children who were dispositionally sad, but well-regulated (i.e., moderate to high in effortful control), would experience sympathy versus personal distress, and thus would engage in more prosocial behaviors than children who were not well-regulated. Constructs were measured across three time points, when children were 18-, 30-, and 42-months old. In addition, early effortful control (at 18 months) was investigated as a potential moderator of the relation between dispositional sadness and empathy-related responding. Separate path models were computed for sadness predicting prosocial behavior with (1) sympathy and (2) personal distress as the mediator. In path analysis, sadness was found to be a positive predictor of sympathy across time. There was not a significant mediated effect of sympathy on the relation between sadness and prosocial behavior (both reported and observed). In path models with personal distress, sadness was not a significant predictor of personal distress, and personal distress was not a significant predictor of prosocial behavior (therefore, mediation analyses were not pursued). The moderated effect of effortful control was significant for the relation between 18-month sadness and 30-month sympathy; contrary to expectation, sadness was a significant, positive predictor of sympathy only for children who had average and low levels of effortful control (children high in effortful control were high in sympathy regardless of level of sadness). There was no significant moderated effect of effortful control on the path from sadness to personal distress. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of sadness in empathy-related responding and prosocial behavior as well as the dual role of effortful control and sadness in predicting empathy-related responding. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Psychology 2012

In my thesis I focus on the issue of death in relation to helping the bereaved, especial when they are children. I would like to show how children perceive the death of a loved one and how does this crisis situation project into their school life. As a College of Education student I am interested in how does this matter penetrate inside the school environment, whether it is included in the content of classwork and how is it accepted by the pupils. From my position of a starting teacher I would like to find out, by means of this thesis, whether there are any practices on how to treat a pupil who finds himself in this uneasy situation. This is a very timely topic, however it is often concealed and tabooed. From my point of view we should talk about death more, the topic of death should get more into the awareness of the pupils, because not only happy moment are a part of our lives, unfortunately there are also misery and sadness.

L’élégie chez Rousseau rassemble les époques, elle rend le sens étymologique [l’élégie thrène], celui de l’époque romaine [l’élégie d’amour] et le sens moderne [l’élégie tendre de l’amitié] où on parle plutôt de tonalité élégiaque. Elle rappelle à plusieurs égards le genre classique illustré principalement par Tibulle, Properce et Ovide. Rousseau semble emprunter des motifs à l’héritage antique sans pour autant s’y assujettir. Le ton de la plainte ou du chant est dicté par des personnages vertueux. L’élégie chez Rousseau échappe au stéréotype et à la « spécialisation » : elle n’est pas dans le sillage du modèle pour lequel elle fut réputée, et dont la matière est purement funèbre ; elle n’est pas, également, un paradigme de l’élégie romaine qui s’est associée presque exclusivement à l’expression de la passion amoureuse, elle n’est pas limitée à l’expression tendre de l’amitié. Elle n’est pas seulement une esthétique. L’élégie chez Rousseau est l’ensemble de toutes ses manifestations. C’est l’expression d’une attitude. / Rousseau’s elegy deals with the themes of the lament for the death, of the absence and of the loss of one beloved. Rousseau seems to be influenced by the latin poets such as Tibulle, Propers and Ovide. Nevertheless, he is distinguished from them by the way, with which he treats the motifs. These are submitted to the nature of the characters in the novel of Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse. In addition, Rousseau uses these motifs in different other contexts. Then, elegy becomes a source of "tools" to say an idea or a point of view. Rousseau’s elegy is more than a statement of complaints or a sad love story: it is an art of writing.

This paper researches the use of conceptual metaphors in rap and country song lyrics. It looks specifically at conceptual metaphors for the concepts of LOVE and SADNESS, focusing on what source domains are proposed in each genre, what similarities there are in source domains between the genres and the style of language found in the linguistic expressions in the two genres. Song lists and lyrics were obtained from internet sites and then, using the Metaphor Identification Procedure (MIP), linguistic expressions were identified which were then subjected to a qualitative analysis. Those relating to SADNESS and LOVE were grouped according to proposed source domains for comparison. The results show that there are similarities, and some differences in the source domains identified within the genres and that they have a wide variety of sub-domains. Concrete concepts common to both genres do not exhibit the same mapping of correspondences to the target domains. There is no discernible difference in the style of language used in the linguistic expressions of the two genres. Nevertheless, the rap expressions tend to be more in the present, dynamic and at times sexually provocative whereas in country expressions they tend to be more reflective, virtuous and at times, depressing.

Orientador: Sandro Caramaschi / Resumo: Aspectos influenciadores no desenvolvimento humano incluem a interação de fatores ambientais e inatos, como a constituição histórica e biológica do indivíduo, envolvendo compartilhamento de experiências e características individuais nas quais estabelecem e modificam pensamentos, emoções e comportamentos de pessoas e grupos de forma dinâmica. Nesse sentido, as emoções pertenceriam a condições biológicas inatas universais, equivalentes a uma comunicação passível de ser compreendida em qualquer cultura, tendo funções importantes no processo evolutivo. A tristeza, enquanto emoção básica, é uma das mais intensas da vida humana comparada às outras, a qual nem sempre possui aspectos negativos. Desta forma, os objetivos deste trabalho foram identificar e analisar os desencadeadores de tristeza, o interesse dos indivíduos por estímulos com conteúdo triste (música, filmes e notícias), além de testar o modelo preditivo tendo a autoestima, autorregulação emocional e ruminação como preditoras e a tristeza como variável dependente, comparando os resultados entre homens e mulheres. Para responder os objetivos, foram realizados dois estudos: o primeiro, de caráter descritivo e comparativo, e o segundo, de caráter exploratório e comparativo. Os resultados mostraram que a tristeza pode ser desencadeada por diversos fatores, como questões financeiras, trabalho, estudo, relações interpessoais e perdas, se assemelhando com dados de pesquisas realizadas em outras culturas. Ademais, muitos particip... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Influencing aspects of human development include the interaction of environmental and innate factors, such as the individual's historical and biological constitution, involving the sharing of experiences and individual characteristics in which they dynamically establish and modify the thoughts, emotions and behaviors of people and groups. In this way, emotions belong to universal innate biological conditions, equivalent to a communication that can be understood in any culture, having important functions in the evolutionary process. Sadness, as a basic emotion, is one of the most intense in human life compared to others, which does not always have negative aspects. Thus, the objectives of this work were to identify and analyze the triggers of sadness, the interest of individuals in stimuli with sad content (music, films and news), in addition to testing the predictive model with self-esteem, emotional self-regulation and rumination as predictors and sadness as a dependent variable, comparing the results between men and women. To answer the objectives, two studies were carried out: the first, descriptive and comparative, and the second, exploratory and comparative. The results showed that sadness can be triggered by several factors, such as financial issues, work, study, interpersonal relationships and losses, similar to data from research conducted in other cultures. In addition, many participants said they were interested in experiencing stimuli such as sad songs and movies, ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

The affect and decision literature has established that incidental moods affect our decisions and choices. Yet few studies have gathered process data to examine the role of affect on the cognitive processes underlying decision-making. The primary purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of induced moods on the process and outcomes of decisions under risk, using mixed-domain financial problems. In two empirical studies, an eye tracker was used to record decision-makers’ distribution of attention across specific aspects of the decision problems, and transitions in attention. Both studies tested for possible mood congruency effects and mood effects on depth of processing in the decision-making task. In Study 1, viewing of short movie clips was used to induce either happy or sad mood in participants, who then made choices between pairs of mixed-domain options consisting of a probabilistic gain coupled with a probabilistic loss. Data were also gathered in a control condition, where participants were instructed to use an EV-calculation strategy, a prototypical integrative compensatory strategy. In Study 2, instead of movie clips, the mood induction task involved reading a sad or neutral news story. Inclusion of a neutral condition enabled inferences about the specific effect of the induced sad mood condition. Also, the decision task in Study 2 was modified in structure by always pairing a sure option with a mixed-domain risky option. Study 1 results showed significant differences in choices and in attention transitions between the EV-instruction and the induced mood conditions, but no significant differences between the happy and sad induced mood conditions. Participants with induced moods showed relatively more evidence of heuristic strategy use, but analytic strategies remained the modal strategy in all conditions. Importantly, key types of attention transitions were shown to reliably predict the frequency of observed choices consistent with optimal (EV- maximizing) and heuristic strategies. Study 2 found significant effects of problem structure (domain) on choices and distribution of attention. Participants in general had longer fixations and showed more EV-maximizing choices for problem structure 2 (sure loss versus mixed risky option) than for problem structure 1 (sure gain versus mixed risky option) problems. Across both studies, however, the results did not demonstrate any effect of specific induced incidental mood on decision-making. Limitations of the findings and future research directions are discussed.