Buffering effect of fiction on negative emotions: engagement with negatively valenced fiction decreases the intensity of negative emotions.

Previous research has investigated how the context of perception affects emotional response. This study investigated how engagement with perceived fictional content vs perceived everyday-life content affects the way people experience negative emotions. Four studies with an experimental design tested how engagement with perceived fictional content vs perceived everyday life content affects the intensity of negative emotional response to negative emotional content, the motivation to decrease negative emotions, and cognitive reappraisal. Participants were presented with negatively valenced images and were asked to imagine either that they were witnessing them, or that a bystander was witnessing them, or that they were viewing a movie including these scenes. After the manipulation, all participants observed a different set of negatively valenced images or a set of negatively valenced videos and reported their emotional response. We found that the intensity of negative emotions and motivation to decrease them was lower among participants in the fiction condition compared to participants in the everyday life condition. Although perspective-taking had a similar effect on negative emotions, fiction condition was more successful in decreasing negative emotions. This might indicate that fiction plays a buffering role in decreasing the negative emotions people experience when facing negative emotional content.

Attitudes toward children: Distinguishing affection and stress.

BACKGROUND: Adults' views and behaviors toward children can vary from being supportive to shockingly abusive, and there are significant unanswered questions about the psychological factors underpinning this variability. OBJECTIVE: The present research examined the content of adults' attitudes toward children to address these questions. METHOD: Ten studies (N = 4702) identified the factor structure of adults' descriptions of babies, toddlers, and school-age children and examined how the resulting factors related to a range of external variables. RESULTS: Two factors emerged-affection toward children and stress elicited by them-and this factor structure was invariant across the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa. Affection uniquely captures emotional approach tendencies, concern for others, and broad positivity in evaluations, experiences, motivations, and donation behavior. Stress relates to emotional instability, emotional avoidance, and concern about disruptions to a self-oriented, structured life. The factors also predict distinct experiences in a challenging situation-home-parenting during COVID-19 lockdown-with affection explaining greater enjoyment and stress explaining greater perceived difficulty. Affection further predicts mentally visualizing children as pleasant and confident, whereas stress predicts mentally visualizing children as less innocent. CONCLUSIONS: These findings offer fundamental new insights about social cognitive processes in adults that impact adult-child relationships and children's well-being.

Beliefs about COVID-19 as a threat to values are related to preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19.

We investigated factors related to preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19: values and beliefs about threat to values because of COVID-19. In two studies, participants reported their own values and evaluated how COVID-19 may threaten values. They also reported their preventive behaviors (washing hands, wearing a facial mask, keeping social distance, and avoiding public places) and fear of COVID-19. COVID-19 is perceived as a threat to personal focused values (openness and self-enhancement values) rather than social focused values (conservation and self-transcendence values). Both value importance and perceived threats to values are related to preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19. Greater importance of conservation values was related to engaging in preventive behaviors and increased fear of COVID-19. Perceived threats to personal focused values (self-enhancement and openness values) were also related to engaging in preventive behaviors and fear of COVID-19.

Cross-modal associations between paintings and sounds: Effects of embodiment.

The present study investigated cross-modal associations between a series of paintings and sounds. We studied the effects of sound congruency (congruent vs. non-congruent sounds) and embodiment (embodied vs. synthetic sounds) on the evaluation of abstract and figurative paintings. Participants evaluated figurative and abstract paintings paired with congruent and non-congruent embodied and synthetic sounds. They also evaluated the perceived meaningfulness of the paintings, aesthetic value and immersive experience of the paintings. Embodied sounds (sounds associated with bodily sensations, bodily movements and touch) were more strongly associated with figurative paintings, while synthetic sounds (non-embodied sounds) were more strongly associated with abstract paintings. Sound congruency increased the perceived meaningfulness, immersive experience and aesthetic value of paintings. Sound embodiment increased immersive experience of paintings.

Perceived value threats are related to fear of health impairments.

Health impairments are problems in the body and mental functioning, which can be a result of a disease or side effects of treatment. Fear of health impairments plays an important role in decision-making and behavior. People might fear health impairments because of their beliefs about their dangerousness, but also because these impairments threaten important values. However, while the role of cognitive appraisal in the fear of health impairments is investigated, the role of motivation is less clear. To fill this gap, this study analyzed the role of values as motivational constructs in the fear of cognitive, motor, and sensory impairments, as well as impairments of reproductive functions and disfiguring impairments. Participants evaluated these health impairments as frightening or not. They also evaluated how these health impairments may threaten values and reported their value priorities. Health impairments are believed to threaten personally focused values (openness to change and self-enhancement) more than socially focused values (conservation and self-transcendence). Threats to personally focused values are related to higher fear of health impairments.

"I had the feeling that I was trapped": a bedside qualitative study of cognitive and affective attitudes toward noninvasive ventilation in patients with acute respiratory failure.

BACKGROUND: Noninvasive ventilation (NIV) is the application of mechanical ventilation through a mask. It is used to treat certain forms of acute respiratory failure in intensive care units (ICU). NIV has clinical benefits but can be anxiogenic for the patients. This study aimed at describing cognitive and affective attitudes toward NIV among patients experiencing NIV for the first time in the context of an ICU stay. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 10 patients during their ICU stay and soon after their first NIV experience. None of the patients had ever received NIV previously. Evaluative assertion analysis and thematic analysis were used to investigate cognitive and affective attitudes toward NIV before, during, and after the first NIV experience, as well as patient attitudes toward caregivers and relatives. RESULTS: Before their first NIV session, the cognitive attitudes of the patients were generally positive. They became less so and more ambiguous during and after NIV, as the patients discovered the actual barriers associated with NIV. Affective attitudes during NIV were more negative than affective attitudes before and after NIV, with reports of dyspnea, anxiety, fear, claustrophobic feelings, and reactivation of past traumatic experiences. The patients had more positive attitudes toward the presence of a caregiver during NIV, compared to the presence of a family member. CONCLUSION: This study corroborates the possibly negative-or even traumatic-nature of the NIV experience, with emphasis on the role of affective attitudes. This is a rationale for evaluating the impact of NIV-targeted psychological interventions in ICU patients with acute respiratory failure.

Emotions associated with different textures during touch.

Haptics plays an important role in emotion perception. However, most studies of the affective aspects of haptics have investigated emotional valence rather than emotional categories. In the present study, we explored the associations of different textures with six basic emotions: fear, anger, happiness, disgust, sadness and surprise. Participants touched twenty-one different textures and evaluated them using six emotional scales. Additionally, we explored whether individual differences in participants' levels of alexithymia are related to the intensity of emotions associated with touching the textures. Alexithymia is a trait related to difficulties in identifying, describing and communicating emotions to others. The findings show that people associated touching different textures with distinct emotions. Textures associated with each of the basic emotions were identified. The study also revealed that a higher alexithymia level corresponds to a higher intensity of associations between textures and the emotions of disgust, anger and sadness.