Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-06-17DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2517361
Zeynep B Özden, Eric A Walle
{"title":"From emotion to action: developmental differences in linking discrete emotions to behaviour.","authors":"Zeynep B Özden, Eric A Walle","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2517361","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2517361","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Understanding how discrete emotional experiences correspond with their likely behavioural responses is essential for navigating social interactions. While emotion understanding is typically examined via emotion labels, appreciation for the behaviours associated with emotions remains understudied, particularly in early development. This study explored 4- and 5-year-old children's and college students' understanding of behavioural consequences associated with anger, disgust, fear, and sadness using a novel task with minimal verbal demands and no emotion labels. Participants viewed illustrated stories depicting emotion-eliciting events and selected a matching behavioural consequence. Each target behaviour was based on prior research (Frijda et al., 1989. Relations among emotion, appraisal, and emotional action readiness. <i>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</i>, <i>57</i>(2), 212-228. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.2.212) examining action tendencies associated with discrete emotions. Results showed that older children and college students performed above chance for selecting the target behavioural response for disgust and sadness, whereas younger children did not. Additionally, younger and older children selected the target behaviour for anger above chance, but college students performed significantly below chance. No age group matched the target behaviour for fear above chance. These findings highlight age-related differences in associating behavioural consequences with emotions. Moreover, the visual measure limiting verbal demands and explicit emotion labels provides exciting possibilities to broaden our knowledge of the behavioural consequences of emotions in young populations.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"715-727"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144318429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-08-04DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2541766
Nikoletta Symeonidou
{"title":"Emotion-enhanced source memory: effects of age and experimental setting.","authors":"Nikoletta Symeonidou","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2541766","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2541766","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This preregistered research examined whether younger and older adults robustly show enhanced source memory for socio-emotional versus neutral sources in a lab- and online-based experimental setting. The Lab Experiment (<i>N</i> = 138) was conducted in a lab room with German-speaking younger and older adults, while the Online Experiment (<i>N</i> = 136) was run on Prolific with English-speaking younger and older samples. In both experiments, neutral faces (= items) were shown on positive, negative, or neutral scenes (= sources) and participants rated at encoding how (un)pleased the face appeared. All stimuli were selected based on valence and arousal norms, ensuring their intended socio-emotional character. Memory was measured with a multinomial model. Across experiments, participants rated faces as least pleased when paired with negative scenes, moderately pleased with neutral scenes, and most pleased with positive scenes. Lab-recruited older adults additionally exhibited a positivity bias, which, however, was absent online. Source memory results revealed that younger adults in both experiments did not benefit from emotional sources. In contrast, lab-recruited older adults showed better source memory for emotional, especially positive, sources; this benefit was, however, absent online. Lower compliance and distractibility in the Online Experiment are discussed as explanations for the diverging results.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"695-714"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144785682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-07-11DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2528924
Anca Lazar, Marine Rougier, Marco Perugini, Florin A Sava
{"title":"Moderating effect of stimulus presentation type, contingency awareness and anxiety on evaluative conditioning: an attentional perspective.","authors":"Anca Lazar, Marine Rougier, Marco Perugini, Florin A Sava","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2528924","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2528924","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study explored how evaluative conditioning (EC) is impacted by the type of stimulus presentation (sequential versus simultaneous), considering also other possible attention- and memory-related moderators at both procedural (contingency awareness, ambivalence) and individual levels (anxiety). A sample of 537 adult participants completed either a simultaneous or sequential conditioning procedure using positive, negative, neutral, and ambivalent unconditioned stimuli (US) paired with neutral conditioned stimuli (CS). Participants evaluated the CS both before and after conditioning and completed a memory task assessing their contingency awareness (memory of the US valence paired with each CS). Results indicated that the EC effect was significantly larger in simultaneous conditioning and in the presence of contingency awareness. Participant's anxiety level did not moderate the effect in either monovalent EC (positive versus negative) or ambivalent EC (ambivalent versus neutral). Findings are discussed in terms of theoretical and practical implications.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"752-762"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144612344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-06-23DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2517810
Dianna Vidas, Nicole L Nelson, Genevieve A Dingle
{"title":"From Mozart to Fleetwood Mac: music listening is not detrimental to reading comprehension in university students.","authors":"Dianna Vidas, Nicole L Nelson, Genevieve A Dingle","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2517810","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2517810","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Most university students choose to study with music, yet whether this is detrimental or beneficial for studying remains unclear. We investigated the impact of music listening with 279 participants who \"often listen to music while studying\", using a reading comprehension task as an indicator of study performance. Students were randomly assigned to one of 3 conditions (participant-selected music, background noise, or silence) during reading. We measured reading comprehension test scores, and ratings of emotional positivity and energy before reading, after reading, and post-test. There was no effect of music listening on reading comprehension - participants performed equally well whether they listened to music, background noise, or silence. Music listening did impact emotion - participants in the noise and silence conditions reported decreased positivity after reading, while those in the music condition maintained their positivity. Participants in the music and noise conditions experienced no change in energy, while those who heard silence felt less energised after reading. Analysis of chosen music from participants in the music condition revealed no relationships between audio features and reading scores. These findings indicate that listening to self-selected music has no detrimental impact on reading comprehension and may protect against the decrease in positivity students experience during study.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"728-737"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144477362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-07-04DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2525481
Carli Mastronardi, Rachel Smail-Crevier, Josephine H Shih, Lance M Rappaport
{"title":"Manifestation of emotion regulation difficulties in intraindividual emotion dynamics.","authors":"Carli Mastronardi, Rachel Smail-Crevier, Josephine H Shih, Lance M Rappaport","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2525481","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2525481","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emotion dynamics, which describe affective patterns over time, may illustrate how specific emotion regulation difficulties manifest in daily life. However, limited research links emotion regulation with emotion dynamics assessed naturalistically. In two samples, 62 and 304 university students completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale then completed ecological momentary assessments of positive and negative affect thrice daily for seven and 14 days, respectively, to examine mean positive and negative affect, affective variability, affective instability, and emotional inertia. Self-reported emotion regulation difficulties broadly correlated with elevated mean negative affect and lower positive affect. However, no specific association of an emotion regulation difficulty with affective variability, instability, or inertia replicated across samples. Further research is needed with diverse methodologies to explore how in situ emotion dynamics reflect emotion regulation difficulties.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"600-617"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12233195/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144565414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2026-03-29DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2026.2648063
Jens Lange
{"title":"Promoting theoretical precision in emotion science.","authors":"Jens Lange","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2026.2648063","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2026.2648063","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Theories are the backbone of scientific progress. Yet, many theories in the behavioural sciences - including emotion science - remain vague. To address this theory crisis, my tenure in the Theory Section of <i>Cognition and Emotion</i> will be dedicated to enhancing theoretical precision. To this end, I propose four complementary approaches: (1) formalising narrative theories, (2) advancing methodology, (3) engaging in consensus-building initiatives, and (4) engaging in adversarial collaborations. Senior and junior researchers may combine these approaches and enrich them through interdisciplinary work, including submissions of brief <i>Theory Notes</i>. By incentivizing precise theoretical contributions, emotion science can move toward theory convergence and more robust explanatory frameworks. Increasing theoretical precision will ultimately strengthen emotion science, enabling it to generate more testable, integrative, and practically valuable accounts of emotional life.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"513-516"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147575890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-07-08DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2524870
Mehmet Necip Tunç, Mark J Brandt, Marcel Zeelenberg
{"title":"Are regret and disappointment differentially associated with norm compliant and norm deviant failures?","authors":"Mehmet Necip Tunç, Mark J Brandt, Marcel Zeelenberg","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2524870","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2524870","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People compare actual decision outcomes with what might, could, or should have been, and they experience negative emotions when the foregone outcomes are better. We hypothesised that the normativity of a decision, whether it is norm-compliant or norm-deviant, also shapes emotional experiences to the outcomes. We expected that norm-deviant decisions would result in more regret than disappointment, because there would be more blame associated with norm-deviant decisions. We expected that norm-compliant decisions would result in more disappointment than regret, because norm-compliant decisions would be associated with higher expectancies. In five pre-registered experiments (<i>N<sub>1</sub></i> = 332, <i>N<sub>2</sub></i> = 334, <i>N<sub>3</sub></i> = 338, <i>N<sub>4</sub></i> = 1284, <i>N<sub>5</sub></i> = 347), participants read about norm-compliant or norm-deviant investment decisions, and were asked to rate how much regret and disappointment the person in the vignette (or they themselves in Experiment 5) would feel. Consistent with the hypotheses, norm compliance was associated with more disappointment than regret and norm deviance was associated with more regret than disappointment, though the effect sizes were small (<i>M<sub>r</sub></i> = 0.14). We also found evidence for that norm-deviant failures in general engender more negative emotional reactions than their norm-compliant counterparts.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"567-583"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144592639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-07-14DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2529527
Jochim Hansen, Anna Khvorost, Marijana Zimonjic, Claudia Schoosleitner
{"title":"How (why) could this have happened? The influence of construal level on shame versus guilt and related action tendencies.","authors":"Jochim Hansen, Anna Khvorost, Marijana Zimonjic, Claudia Schoosleitner","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2529527","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2529527","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Shame and guilt are social emotions that share several similarities. However, there are important differences between these two emotions: Shame relates to the whole self and involves more global appraisal tendencies, whereas guilt relates to a specific behaviour. Therefore, shame may be a more high-level emotion than guilt. Considering construal-level theory and the construal-matching hypothesis, we hypothesised that a high-level construal of one's transgression would more likely result in shame than guilt compared to a low-level construal. We investigated this hypothesis with two studies that experimentally manipulated the level at which transgressions were construed using different methods: the category-versus-exemplar task (Study 1) and focusing on the how or the why of diverse transgressions (Study 2). We tested whether these manipulations affected shame versus guilt. Study 1 provided only correlational support, whereas Study 2 provided causal support for our hypothesis. Study 2 additionally showed that construal level affected downstream consequences in particular: A high-level construal caused relatively more hide and escape tendencies than a low-level construal. Implications of these findings are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"636-652"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144638454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-07-17DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2528920
Tarini Singh, Eva Walther, Christian Frings
{"title":"No memory, no effect: action based evaluative conditioning effects are modulated by contingency memory.","authors":"Tarini Singh, Eva Walther, Christian Frings","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2528920","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2528920","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Evaluative conditioning refers to the change in the liking of a stimulus due to its pairing with another affective stimulus. Action control research indicates that not only affective stimuli, but also affective actions can lead to conditioning effects. While a large number of studies have examined the influence of contingency memory on evaluative conditioning for stimulus-stimulus contingencies, its effect on stimulus-response contingencies has not yet been examined. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to test whether contingency memory modulates action based evaluative conditioning effects. In two experiments (Exp. 1, lab and Exp. 2, online) participants underwent a conditioning procedure and then a memory test. In Experiment 2, an additional task was included in order to test whether enhanced processing of the stimuli modulated the evaluative conditioning effects. The results indicate that the action based evaluative conditioning effect is modulated by contingency memory, such that, an evaluative conditioning effect is only observed when the stimulus-response contingencies could be recalled. These results were replicated across both studies. Additional processing of the CS did not have any effect on the results in the present study.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"618-635"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144660766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2026-05-01Epub Date: 2025-06-19DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2519665
Haixin Liu, Jinxia Wang, Siyuan Zhou, Xinqi Zhou, Hong Li, Haoran Dou, Yi Lei
{"title":"Impact of trait anxiety on computational mechanism of approach-avoidance conflict decision.","authors":"Haixin Liu, Jinxia Wang, Siyuan Zhou, Xinqi Zhou, Hong Li, Haoran Dou, Yi Lei","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2519665","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2519665","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How do individuals with trait anxiety perform in an approach-avoidance (ap-av) conflict situation? To answer this question, we employed computational models to explore the effect of trait anxiety on decisions in ap-av conflict situations and uncover the computational mechanism involved in resolving such conflicts. Sixty-seven participants with high or low trait anxiety completed the ap-av conflict task, which was analysed using the hierarchical drift-diffusion model (HDDM). Anxiety levels were assessed during both baseline and six-month follow-up sessions. Results showed that, during ap-av conflict decision-making, the reaction time of the high trait anxiety group was slower than that of the low trait anxiety group. The slower reaction time in the high trait anxiety group was due to a longer non-decision time. However, the intercept of drift rate and the effect of reward and aversion on drift rate significantly increased in the high trait anxiety group compared to the low trait anxiety group. The high trait anxiety group had a starting point closer to avoidance decisions. This study provides evidence that individuals with high and low trait anxiety manifest distinct alterations in the underlying computational decision-making processes during ap-av conflict situations.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"548-566"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144334225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}