Conflict experience and resolution underlying obedience to authority.

Definitions of obedience require the experience of conflict in response to an authority's demands. Nevertheless, we know little about this conflict and its resolution. Two experiments tested the suitability of the 'object-destruction paradigm' for the study of conflict in obedience. An experimenter instructed participants to shred bugs (among other objects) in a manipulated coffee grinder. In contrast to the demand condition, participants in the control condition were reminded of their free choice. Both received several prods if they defied the experimenter. Results show that participants were more willing to kill bugs in the demand condition. Self-reported negative affect was increased after instructions to destroy bugs relative to other objects (Experiments 1 and 2). In Experiment 2, compliant participants additionally showed an increase in tonic skin conductance and, crucially, self-reported more agency and responsibility after alleged bug-destruction. These findings elucidate the conflict experience and resolution underlying obedience. Implications for prominent explanations (agentic shift, engaged followership) are discussed.

Self-reported mask-related worrying reduces relative avoidance bias toward unmasked faces in individuals with low Covid19 anxiety syndrome.

Facial masks have become and may remain ubiquitous. Though important for preventing infection, they may also serve as a reminder of the risks of disease. Thus, they may either act as cues for threat, priming avoidance-related behavior, or as cues for a safe interaction, priming social approach. To distinguish between these possibilities, we assessed implicit and explicit evaluations of masked individuals as well as avoidance bias toward relatively unsafe interactions with unmasked individuals in an approach-avoidance task in an online study. We further assessed Covid19 anxiety and specific attitudes toward mask-wearing, including mask effectiveness and desirability, hindrance of communication from masks, aesthetic appeal of masks, and mask-related worrying. Across one sample of younger (18-35 years, N = 147) and one of older adults (60+ years, N = 150), we found neither an average approach nor avoidance bias toward mask-wearing compared to unmasked individuals in the indirect behavior measurement task. However, across the combined sample, self-reported mask-related worrying correlated with reduced avoidance tendencies toward unmasked individuals when Covid19 anxiety was low, but not when it was high. This relationship was specific to avoidance tendencies and was not observed in respect to explicit or implicit preference for mask-wearing individuals. We conclude that unsafe interaction styles may be reduced by targeting mask-related worrying with public interventions, in particular for populations that otherwise have low generalized Covid19 anxiety.

Facing the enemy: Spontaneous facial reactions towards suffering opponents.

The suffering of an opponent is an important social affective cue that modulates how aggressive interactions progress. To investigate the affective consequences of opponent suffering on a revenge seeking individual, two experiments (total N = 82) recorded facial muscle activity while participants observed the reaction of a provoking opponent to a (retaliatory) sound punishment in a laboratory aggression task. Opponents reacted via prerecorded videos either with facial displays of pain, sadness, or neutrality. Results indicate that participants enjoyed seeing the provocateur suffer: indexed by a coordinated muscle response featuring an increase in zygomaticus major (and orbicularis oculi muscle) activation accompanied by a decrease in corrugator supercilii activation. This positive facial reaction was only shown while a provoking opponent expressed pain. Expressions of sadness, and administration of sound blasts to nonprovoking opponents, did not modulate facial activity. Overall, the results suggest that revenge-seeking individuals enjoy observing the offender suffer, which could represent schadenfreude or satisfaction of having succeeded in the retaliation goal.

What stops revenge taking? Effects of observed emotional reactions on revenge seeking.

What reaction stops revenge taking? Four experiments (total N = 191) examined this question where the victim of an interpersonal transgression could observe the offender's reaction (anger, sadness, pain, or calm) to a retributive noise punishment. We compared the punishment intensity selected by the participant before and after seeing the offender's reaction. Seeing the opponent in pain reduced subsequent punishment most strongly, while displays of sadness and verbal indications of suffering had no appeasing effect. Expression of anger about a retributive punishment did not increase revenge seeking relative to a calm reaction, even when the anger response was disambiguated as being angry with the punisher. It is concluded that the expression of pain is the most effective emotional display for the reduction of retaliatory aggression. The findings are discussed in light of recent research on reactive aggression and retributive justice.

The face of control: Corrugator supercilii tracks aversive conflict signals in the service of adaptive cognitive control.

Cognitive control is the ability to monitor, evaluate, and adapt behavior in the service of long-term goals. Recent theories have proposed that the integral negative emotions elicited by conflict are critical for the adaptive adjustment of cognitive control. However, evidence for the negative valence of conflict in cognitive control tasks mainly comes from behavioral studies that interrupted trial sequences, making it difficult to directly test the link between conflict-induced affect and subsequent increases in cognitive control. In the present study, we therefore use online measures of valence-sensitive electromyography (EMG) of the facial corrugator (frowning) and zygomaticus (smiling) muscles while measuring the adaptive cognitive control in a Stroop-like task. In line with the prediction that conflict is aversive, results showed that conflict relative to non-conflict trials led to increased activity of the corrugator muscles after correct responses, both in a flanker task (Experiment 1) and in a prime-probe task (Experiment 2). This conflict-induced corrugator activity effect correlated marginally with conflict-driven increases in cognitive control in the next trial in the confound-minimalized task used in Experiment 2. However, in the absence of performance feedback (Experiment 3), no reliable effect of conflict was observed in the facial muscle activity despite robust behavioral conflict adaptation. Taken together, our results show that facial EMG can be used as an indirect index of the temporal dynamics of conflict-induced aversive signals and/or effortful processes in particular when performance feedback is presented, providing important new insights into the dynamic affective nature of cognitive control.

Capturing Aesthetic Experiences With Installation Art: An Empirical Assessment of Emotion, Evaluations, and Mobile Eye Tracking in Olafur Eliasson's "Baroque, Baroque!"

Installation art is one of the most important and provocative developments in the visual arts during the last half century and has become a key focus of artists and of contemporary museums. It is also seen as particularly challenging or even disliked by many viewers, and-due to its unique in situ, immersive setting-is equally regarded as difficult or even beyond the grasp of present methods in empirical aesthetic psychology. In this paper, we introduce an exploratory study with installation art, utilizing a collection of techniques to capture the eclectic, the embodied, and often the emotionally-charged viewing experience. We present results from an investigation of two pieces, both part of Olafur Eliasson's exhibition "Baroque, Baroque" held at the Belvedere museum in Vienna. These were assessed by pre- and post-viewing questionnaires focusing on emotion, meaning-making, and appraisals, in tandem with mobile eye tracking to consider viewers' attention to both installed artworks and/or to the museum environment. The data showed differences in participants' emotional states, appraisals, and visual exploration, which together paint a picture of the aesthetic reactions to the works. These differences also showed how viewers' appraisal strategies, meaning making, and physical actions facilitated relatively more or less deep engagement with, and enjoyment of, the art. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for museum studies, art education, and theory in empirical aesthetics.