Anger is commonly referred to in the context of aggressive behaviors. However, little is known about more nuanced effects of this emotion on behavior, nor its neural correlates as a subjective feeling state. For instance, several studies suggest that angry people, in contrast to anxious individuals, perceive risks optimistically. It remains unknown whether these opposing effects of trait anxiety and trait anger on risk perceptions manifest in a direct behavioral measure of risk taking. Our first experiment showed, as predicted, that high trait anxiety was associated with pessimism, whereas anger exerted an optimistic bias on likelihood perceptions. However, these biases did not translate into differences in risk taking behavior. Instead of optimism, impulsivity was highlighted as a mediator of risk proneness in individuals who tend to express anger. A second project investigated the neural basis of anger as an affective state elicited by emotionally evocative social scenes. Participants' attention was directed towards transgressors or their victim, which elicited feelings of anger and sadness respectively. These distinct emotions were associated with differential activity patterns in regions related to affective processing; the amygdala, insula and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. Individual differences in trait empathy emerged as strong modulators of these activity patterns. In contrast, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex response to transgressors versus victims correlated positively with an individual's tendency to express anger, suggesting a role of this region in the regulation of angry feelings.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.111592 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Pietruska, Karin. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Division of Neuroscience.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 003164222, proquestno: AAIMR66895, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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