Beyond happiness: Building a science of discrete positive emotions.

While trait positive emotionality and state positive-valence affect have long been the subject of intense study, the importance of differentiating among several "discrete" positive emotions has only recently begun to receive serious attention. In this article, we synthesize existing literature on positive emotion differentiation, proposing that the positive emotions are best described as branches of a "family tree" emerging from a common ancestor mediating adaptive management of fitness-critical resources (e.g., food). Examples are presented of research indicating the importance of differentiating several positive emotion constructs. We then offer a new theoretical framework, built upon a foundation of phylogenetic, neuroscience, and behavioral evidence, that accounts for core features as well as mechanisms for differentiation. We propose several directions for future research suggested by this framework and develop implications for the application of positive emotion research to translational issues in clinical psychology and the science of behavior change. (PsycINFO Database Record

Discomfort and avoidance of touch: new insights on the emotional deficits of social anxiety.

Physical touch is central to the emotional intimacy that separates romantic relationships from other social contexts. In this study of 256 adults (128 heterosexual couples, mean relationship length = 20.5 months), we examined whether individual differences in social anxiety influenced comfort with and avoidance of physical touch. Because of prior work on sex difference in touch use, touch comfort, and social anxiety symptoms and impairment, we explored sex-specific findings. We found evidence that women with greater social anxiety were less comfortable with touch and more avoidant of touch in same-sex friendships. Additionally, a woman's social anxiety had a bigger effect on a man's comfort with touch and avoidance of touch in the romantic relationship than a man's social anxiety had on the woman's endorsement of touch-related problems. These effects were uninfluenced by the length of romantic relationships. Touch is a neglected emotional experience that offers new insights into the difficulties of individuals suffering from social anxiety problems, and their romantic partners.

Contact high: Mania proneness and positive perception of emotional touches.

How do extreme degrees of positive emotion-such as those characteristic of mania-influence emotion perception? The present study investigated how mania proneness, assessed using the Hypomanic Personality Scale, influences the perception of emotion via touch. Using a validated dyadic interaction paradigm for communicating emotion through touch (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006), participants (N=53) received eight different touches to their forearm from a stranger and then identified the emotion via forced-choice methodology. Mania proneness predicted increased overall accuracy in touch perception, particularly for positive emotion touches, as well as the over-attribution of positive and under-attribution of negative emotions across all touches. These findings highlight the effects of positive emotion extremes on the perception of emotion in social interactions.

Nonverbal channel use in communication of emotion: how may depend on why.

This study investigated the hypothesis that different emotions are most effectively conveyed through specific, nonverbal channels of communication: body, face, and touch. Experiment 1 assessed the production of emotion displays. Participants generated nonverbal displays of 11 emotions, with and without channel restrictions. For both actual production and stated preferences, participants favored the body for embarrassment, guilt, pride, and shame; the face for anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness; and touch for love and sympathy. When restricted to a single channel, participants were most confident about their communication when production was limited to the emotion's preferred channel. Experiment 2 examined the reception or identification of emotion displays. Participants viewed videos of emotions communicated in unrestricted and restricted conditions and identified the communicated emotions. Emotion identification in restricted conditions was most accurate when participants viewed emotions displayed via the emotion's preferred channel. This study provides converging evidence that some emotions are communicated predominantly through different nonverbal channels. Further analysis of these channel-emotion correspondences suggests that the social function of an emotion predicts its primary channel: The body channel promotes social-status emotions, the face channel supports survival emotions, and touch supports intimate emotions.

Gender and the Communication of Emotion Via Touch.

We reanalyzed a data set consisting of a U.S. undergraduate sample (N = 212) from a previous study (Hertenstein et al. 2006a) that showed that touch communicates distinct emotions between humans. In the current reanalysis, we found that anger was communicated at greater-than-chance levels only when a male comprised at least one member of a communicating dyad. Sympathy was communicated at greater-than-chance levels only when a female comprised at least one member of the dyad. Finally, happiness was communicated only if females comprised the entire dyad. The current analysis demonstrates gender asymmetries in the accuracy of communicating distinct emotions via touch between humans.

The communication of emotion via touch.

The study of emotional communication has focused predominantly on the facial and vocal channels but has ignored the tactile channel. Participants in the current study were allowed to touch an unacquainted partner on the whole body to communicate distinct emotions. Of interest was how accurately the person being touched decoded the intended emotions without seeing the tactile stimulation. The data indicated that anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy were decoded at greater than chance levels, as well as happiness and sadness, 2 emotions that have not been shown to be communicated by touch to date. Moreover, fine-grained coding documented specific touch behaviors associated with different emotions. The findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to the study of emotion-related communication.

Maladaptive correlates of the failure to forgive self and others: further evidence for a two-component model of forgiveness.

In a sample composed of 162 young adults, we examined the generalizability of an orthogonal, 2-component model of forgiveness previously reported by Ross, Kendall, Matters, Rye, and Wrobel (2004). Furthermore, we examined the relationship of these two components with maladaptive personality characteristics as measured by the Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality (SNAP; Clark, 1993), with an emphasis on Five-factor model markers of personality. Using multiple measures of forgiveness, principal components analysis supported a 2-component model representing self-forgiveness and other forgiveness. Despite the independence of self-forgiveness and other forgiveness, zero order correlations with SNAP scales supported convergent more than discriminant validity. In contrast, hierarchical multiple regression analyses emphasized the discriminant validity of self-forgiveness and other forgiveness. Among indices of Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness, Negative Temperament (+) was the sole predictor of self-forgiveness. In contrast, Positive Temperament (+), Aggression (-), and Histrionic PD (-) were most associated with other forgiveness. Overall, these findings support the validity of these factors and highlight the importance of self-forgiveness in clinical assessment.

Touch communicates distinct emotions.

The study of emotional signaling has focused almost exclusively on the face and voice. In 2 studies, the authors investigated whether people can identify emotions from the experience of being touched by a stranger on the arm (without seeing the touch). In the 3rd study, they investigated whether observers can identify emotions from watching someone being touched on the arm. Two kinds of evidence suggest that humans can communicate numerous emotions with touch. First, participants in the United States (Study 1) and Spain (Study 2) could decode anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, and sympathy via touch at much-better-than-chance levels. Second, fine-grained coding documented specific touch behaviors associated with different emotions. In Study 3, the authors provide evidence that participants can accurately decode distinct emotions by merely watching others communicate via touch. The findings are discussed in terms of their contributions to affective science and the evolution of altruism and cooperation.

The communicative functions of touch in humans, nonhuman primates, and rats: a review and synthesis of the empirical research.

Although touch is one of the most neglected modalities of communication, several lines of research bear on the important communicative functions served by the modality. The authors highlighted the importance of touch by reviewing and synthesizing the literatures pertaining to the communicative functions served by touch among humans, nonhuman primates, and rats. In humans, the authors focused on the role that touch plays in emotional communication, attachment, bonding, compliance, power, intimacy, hedonics, and liking. In nonhuman primates, the authors examined the relations among touch and status, stress, reconciliation, sexual relations, and attachment. In rats, the authors focused on the role that touch plays in emotion, learning and memory, novelty seeking, stress, and attachment. The authors also highlighted the potential phylogenetic and ontogenetic continuities and discussed suggestions for future research.

The retention effects of an adult's emotional displays on infant behavior.

The goal of this investigation was to study the regulatory retention effects of an adult's emotional displays on infant behavior. In Study 1, 11- and 14-month-old infants were tested in a social-referencing-like paradigm in which a 1-hr delay was imposed between the exposure trials and the test trial. In Study 2, 11-month-olds were tested in the same paradigm, but the delay between the exposure trials and the test trial was only 3 min. Study 1 revealed that 14-month-olds, but not 11-month-olds, demonstrated behavior regulatory effects toward the target object linked to the adult's emotional displays. Study 2 indicated that 11-month-olds were affected by the emotional displays if the delay between exposure and test trials was brief enough.

Emotion Regulation Via Maternal Touch.

The study of emotion elicitation in the caregiver-infant dyad has focused almost exclusively on the facial and vocal channels, whereas little attention has been given to the contribution of the tactile channel. This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of touch on infants' emotions. During the time that objects were presented to the dyad, mothers provided tactile stimulation to their 12-month-old infants by either (a) tensing their fingers around the infants' abdomen while abruptly inhaling, (b) relaxing their grip around the infants' abdomen, or (c) not providing additional tactile stimulation (control condition). The results revealed that infants in the first condition (a) touched the objects less and waited longer to touch the objects while displaying more negative emotional displays compared to infants in the control condition. However, no apparent differences were found between infants in the second condition (b) and the control condition. The results suggest that infants' emotions may be elicited by specific parameters of touch.

Travel Broadens the Mind.

The onset of locomotion heralds one of the major life transitions in early development and involves a pervasive set of changes in perception, spatial cognition, and social and emotional development. Through a synthesis of published and hitherto unpublished findings, gathered from a number of converging research designs and methods, this article provides a comprehensive review and reanalysis of the consequences of self-produced locomotor experience. Specifically, we focus on the role of locomotor experience in changes in social and emotional development, referential gestural communication, wariness of heights, the perception of self-motion, distance perception, spatial search, and spatial coding strategies. Our analysis reveals new insights into the specific processes by which locomotor experience brings about psychological changes. We elaborate these processes and provide new predictions about previously unsuspected links between locomotor experience and psychological function. The research we describe is relevant to our broad understanding of the developmental process, particularly as it pertains to developmental transitions. Although acknowledging the role of genetically mediated developmental changes, our viewpoint is a transactional one in which a single acquisition, in this case the onset of locomotion, sets in motion a family of experiences and processes that in turn mobilize both broad-based and context-specific psychological reorganizations. We conclude that, in infancy, the onset of locomotor experience brings about widespread consequences, and after infancy, can be responsible for an enduring role in development by maintaining and updating existing skills.