Effects of Induced Optimism on Subjective States, Physical Activity, and Stress Reactivity.

This study examined effects of experimentally-induced optimism on physical activity and stress reactivity with community volunteers. Using an intervention to induce short-term optimism, we conducted two harmonized randomized experiments, performed simultaneously at separate academic institutions. All participants were randomized to either the induced optimism intervention or to a neutral control activity using essay-writing tasks. Physical activity tasks (Study 1) and stress-related physiologic responses (Study 2) were assessed during lab visits. Essays were coded for intensity of optimism. A total of 324 participants (207 women, 117 men) completed Study 1, and 118 participants (67 women, 47 men, 4 other) completed Study 2. In both studies, the optimism intervention led to greater increases in short-term optimism and positive affect relative to the control group. Although the intervention had limited effects on physical activity and stress reactivity, more optimistic language in the essays predicted increased physical activity and decreased stress reactivity.

Affect and Social Judgment: The Roles of Physiological Reactivity and Interoceptive Sensitivity.

Humans imbue the objects of their perception with affective meaning, a phenomenon called affective realism. The affective realism hypothesis proposes that a brain continually predicts the meaning of sensations (e.g., identifying a sound as a siren, or a visual array as a face) in part by representing the current state of the body and the immediate physiological impact that similar sensory events have entailed in the past. However, the precise contribution of physiological activity to experiences of affective realism remains unknown. In the present study, participants' peripheral physiological activity was recorded while they made social evaluative judgments of target faces displaying neutral expressions. Target faces were shown concurrent with affective images that were suppressed from reportable awareness using continuous flash suppression. Results revealed evidence of affective realism-participants judged target faces more positively when paired with suppressed positive stimuli than suppressed negative stimuli-but this effect was significantly less pronounced among individuals higher in cardiac interoceptive sensitivity. Moreover, while some modest differences in peripheral physiological activity were observed across suppressed affective stimulus conditions, physiological reactivity to affective stimuli did not directly predict social evaluative judgments. We explore the implications of these findings with respect to both theories of emotion and theories detailing a role for interoception in experiences of first-person subjectivity. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00114-9.

Understanding Police Performance Under Stress: Insights From the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat.

We examine when and how police officers may avoid costly errors under stress by leveraging theoretical and empirical work on the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat. According to the BPS model, in motivated performance contexts (e.g., test taking, athletics), the evaluation of situational and task demands in relation to one's perceived resources available to cope with those demands engenders distinct patterns of peripheral physiological responding. Individuals experience more challenge-like states in which blood circulates more efficiently in the periphery when they evaluate their coping resources as meeting or exceeding the task demands. Conversely, individuals experience more threat-like states in which blood circulates less efficiently in the periphery when they view the situation or task demands as exceeding their coping resources. Patterns of response consistent with challenge and threat states have been shown to predict important performance and decision-making outcomes in stressful contexts, and repeated experiences of threat-like patterns of physiological activity are thought to have detrimental effects on long-term cardiovascular health. To date, however, research has not used the biopsychosocial model to understand police decision-making under stress. Here, we review relevant empirical work from the perspective of the BPS model concerning how minority status and power can shape challenge and threat responding and contribute to decision-making under stress. We then detail a research agenda aimed at improving the translational value of research being conducted within the BPS model for understanding complex performance and decision-making in the real world, including among law enforcement personnel.

Physiological indices of challenge and threat: A data-driven investigation of autonomic nervous system reactivity during an active coping stressor task.

We utilized a data-driven, unsupervised machine learning approach to examine patterns of peripheral physiological responses during a motivated performance context across two large, independent data sets, each with multiple peripheral physiological measures. Results revealed that patterns of cardiovascular response commonly associated with challenge and threat states emerged as two of the predominant patterns of peripheral physiological responding within both samples, with these two patterns best differentiated by reactivity in cardiac output, pre-ejection period, interbeat interval, and total peripheral resistance. However, we also identified a third, relatively large group of apparent physiological nonresponders who exhibited minimal reactivity across all physiological measures in the motivated performance context. This group of nonresponders was best differentiated from the others by minimal increases in electrodermal activity. We discuss implications for identifying and characterizing this third group of individuals in future research on physiological patterns of challenge and threat.

You are what I feel: A test of the affective realism hypothesis.

We present evidence for the affective realism hypothesis, that incidental affect is a key ingredient in an individual's experience of the world. In three studies, we used an interocular suppression technique (continuous flash suppression [CFS]) to present smiling, scowling, or neutral faces suppressed from conscious visual awareness while consciously perceived neutral faces were presented at three different timing intervals: 150 ms before, 150 ms after, and concurrent with the suppressed affective faces (Studies 1 and 3) or at timing intervals of 100 ms (Study 2). Results for all three studies revealed that consciously perceived neutral faces were experienced significantly more positively (e.g., as more trustworthy) when concurrently paired with suppressed smiling faces than when concurrently paired with suppressed scowling faces; there was no effect of suppressed affective faces on first impressions in the other timing conditions. This pattern of results is consistent with the affective realism hypothesis but inconsistent with both affective misattribution and affective priming interpretations. Incidental affect must be meaningfully contiguous in time with the target stimulus to be experienced as a property of the target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion fingerprints or emotion populations? A meta-analytic investigation of autonomic features of emotion categories.

The classical view of emotion hypothesizes that certain emotion categories have a specific autonomic nervous system (ANS) "fingerprint" that is distinct from other categories. Substantial ANS variation within a category is presumed to be epiphenomenal. The theory of constructed emotion hypothesizes that an emotion category is a population of context-specific, highly variable instances that need not share an ANS fingerprint. Instead, ANS variation within a category is a meaningful part of the nature of emotion. We present a meta-analysis of 202 studies measuring ANS reactivity during lab-based inductions of emotion in nonclinical samples of adults, using a random effects, multilevel meta-analysis and multivariate pattern classification analysis to test our hypotheses. We found increases in mean effect size for 59.4% of ANS variables across emotion categories, but the pattern of effect sizes did not clearly distinguish 1 emotion category from another. We also observed significant variation within emotion categories; heterogeneity accounted for a moderate to substantial percentage (i.e., I2 ≥ 30%) of variability in 54% of these effect sizes. Experimental moderators epiphenomenal to emotion, such as induction type (e.g., films vs. imagery), did not explain a large portion of the variability. Correction for publication bias reduced estimated effect sizes even further, increasing heterogeneity of effect sizes for certain emotion categories. These findings, when considered in the broader empirical literature, are more consistent with population thinking and other principles from evolutionary biology found within the theory of constructed emotion, and offer insights for developing new hypotheses to understand the nature of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record

Seeing What You Feel: Affect Drives Visual Perception of Structurally Neutral Faces.

Affective realism, the phenomenon whereby affect is integrated into an individual's experience of the world, is a normal consequence of how the brain processes sensory information from the external world in the context of sensations from the body. In the present investigation, we provided compelling empirical evidence that affective realism involves changes in visual perception (i.e., affect changes how participants see neutral stimuli). In two studies, we used an interocular suppression technique, continuous flash suppression, to present affective images outside of participants' conscious awareness. We demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more smiling when paired with unseen affectively positive stimuli. Study 2 also demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more scowling when paired with unseen affectively negative stimuli. These findings have implications for real-world situations and challenge beliefs that affect is a distinct psychological phenomenon that can be separated from cognition and perception.

Unseen positive and negative affective information influences social perception in bipolar I disorder and healthy adults.

Bipolar disorder is fundamentally a disorder of emotion regulation, and associated with explicit processing biases for socially relevant emotional information in human faces. Less is known, however, about whether implicit processing of this type of emotional information directly influences social perception. We thus investigated group-related differences in the influence of unconscious emotional processing on conscious person perception judgments using a continuous flash suppression task among 22 individuals with remitted bipolar I disorder (BD; AgeM=30.82, AgeSD=7.04; 68.2% female) compared with 22 healthy adults (CTL; AgeM=20.86, AgeSD=9.91; 72.2% female). Across both groups, participants rated neutral faces as more trustworthy, warm, and competent when paired with unseen happy faces as compared to unseen angry and neutral faces; participants rated neutral faces as less trustworthy, warm, and competent when paired with unseen angry as compared to neutral faces. These findings suggest that emotion-related disturbances are not explained by early automatic processing stages, and that activity in the dorsal visual stream underlying implicit emotion processing is intact in bipolar disorder. Implications for understanding the etiology of emotion disturbance in BD are discussed.

Unseen Affective Faces Influence Person Perception Judgments in Schizophrenia.

To demonstrate the influence of unconscious affective processing on consciously processed information among people with and without schizophrenia, we used a continuous flash suppression (CFS) paradigm to examine whether early and rapid processing of affective information influences first impressions of structurally neutral faces. People with and without schizophrenia rated visible neutral faces as more or less trustworthy, warm, and competent when paired with unseen smiling or scowling faces compared to when paired with unseen neutral faces. Yet, people with schizophrenia also exhibited a deficit in explicit affect perception. These findings indicate that early processing of affective information is intact in schizophrenia but the integration of this information with semantic contexts is problematic. Furthermore, people with schizophrenia who were more influenced by smiling faces presented outside awareness reported experiencing more anticipatory pleasure, suggesting that the ability to rapidly process affective information is important for anticipation of future pleasurable events.

The hundred-year emotion war: are emotions natural kinds or psychological constructions? Comment on Lench, Flores, and Bench (2011).

For the last century, there has been a continuing debate about the nature of emotion. In the most recent offering in this scientific dialogue, Lench, Flores, and Bench (2011) reported a meta-analysis of emotion induction research and claimed support for the natural kind hypothesis that discrete emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness, anger, and anxiety) elicit specific changes in cognition, judgment, behavior, experience, and physiology. In this article, we point out that Lench et al. (2011) is not the final word on the emotion debate. First, we point out that Lench et al.'s findings do not support their claim that discrete emotions organize cognition, judgment, experience, and physiology because they did not demonstrate emotion-consistent and emotion-specific directional changes in these measurement domains. Second, we point out that Lench et al.'s findings are in fact consistent with the alternative (a psychological constructionist approach to emotion). We close by appealing for a construct validity approach to emotion research, which we hope will lead to greater consensus on the operationalization of the natural kind and psychological construction approaches, as well as the criteria required to finally resolve the emotion debate.

Out of sight but not out of mind: unseen affective faces influence evaluations and social impressions.

Using Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS), we demonstrated in four experiments that affective information extracted from unseen faces influences both affective and personality judgments of neutral faces. In four experiments, participants judged neutral faces as more pleasant or unpleasant (Studies 1 and 2) or as more or less trustworthy, likable, and attractive (Study 3) or as more or less competent or interpersonally warm (Study 4) when paired with unseen smiling or scowling faces compared to when paired with unseen neutral faces. These findings suggest that affective influences are a normal part of everyday experience and provide evidence for the affective foundations consciousness. Affective misattribution arises even when affective changes occur after a neutral stimulus is presented, demonstrating that these affective influences cannot be explained as a simple semantic priming effect. These findings have implications for understanding the constructive nature of experience, as well as the role of affect in social impressions.

A little bit louder now: negative affect increases perceived loudness.

Traditionally, perception was considered to be an encapsulated process that was unaffected by top-down processes like affect. Recent work in vision draws this framework into question by showing that changes in the affective state of the perceiver can impact many different aspects of visual perception. Here, we extend the relationship between affect and perception into another perceptual modality: audition. Participants were induced into a negative or neutral mood by writing about a frightening or neutral experience in their past. They then listened to a series of short, neutral tones (320 and 640 ms) and rated the loudness and duration of the tones. Participants in a negative mood rated the tones as significantly louder, but not longer, than participants in a neutral mood, suggesting that the difference between the groups was perceptual rather than just a response bias. This research shows for the first time that the role of affect in perceptual processes may be more pervasive than previously considered.

What You Feel Influences What You See: The Role of Affective Feelings in Resolving Binocular Rivalry.

It seems obvious that what you see influences what you feel, but what if the opposite were also true? What if how you feel can shape your visual experience? In this experiment, we demonstrate that the affective state of a perceiver influences the contents of visual awareness. Participants received positive, negative, and neutral affect inductions and then completed a series of binocular rivalry trials in which a face (smiling, scowling or neutral) was presented to one eye and a house to the other. The percepts "competed" for dominance in visual consciousness. We found, as predicted, that all faces (smiling, scowling, and neutral) were dominant for longer when perceivers experienced unpleasant affect compared to when they were in a neutral state (a social vigilance effect), although scowling faces increased their dominance when perceivers felt unpleasant (a relative negative congruence effect). Relatively speaking, smiling faces increased their dominance more when perceivers were experiencing pleasant affect (a positive congruence effect). These findings illustrate that the affective state of a perceiver serves as a context that influences the contents of consciousness.

The visual impact of gossip.

Gossip is a form of affective information about who is friend and who is foe. We show that gossip does not influence only how a face is evaluated--it affects whether a face is seen in the first place. In two experiments, neutral faces were paired with negative, positive, or neutral gossip and were then presented alone in a binocular rivalry paradigm (faces were presented to one eye, houses to the other). In both studies, faces previously paired with negative (but not positive or neutral) gossip dominated longer in visual consciousness. These findings demonstrate that gossip, as a potent form of social affective learning, can influence vision in a completely top-down manner, independent of the basic structural features of a face.