Cognition & EmotionPub Date : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2024-12-10DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2434156
Chi Fung Chan, Gilad Feldman
{"title":"The link between Empathy and Forgiveness: Replication and extensions Registered Report of McCullough et al. (1997)'s Study 1.","authors":"Chi Fung Chan, Gilad Feldman","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2024.2434156","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2024.2434156","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>McCullough et al. [McCullough, M. E., Worthington, E. L., & Rachal, K. C. (1997). Interpersonal Forgiving in Close Relationships. <i>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</i>, 73(2), 321-336.] demonstrated that in situations of feeling hurt by an offender, empathy towards the offender is positively associated with forgiving the offender, which in turn is positively associated with conciliatory behaviour and negatively associated with avoidance behaviour. In a Replication Registered Report with a Prolific US online sample (<i>N</i> = 794), we conducted a replication of Study 1 from McCullough et al. (1997) with extensions manipulating empathy to determine causality and measuring revenge motivation adopted from McCullough et al. [McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., Sandage, S. J., Worthington, E. L., Brown, S. W., & Hight, T. L. (1998). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II. Theoretical Elaboration and Measurement. <i>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</i>, <i>75</i>(6), 1586-1603]. We found that empathy was positively associated with perceived apology (<i>r </i>= 0.45[0.35,0.55]) and forgiveness toward the offender (<i>r </i>= 0.64[0.56,0.70]), and forgiveness was positively associated with conciliatory motivation (<i>r </i>= 0.51[0.41,0.59]) and negatively associated with avoidance motivation (<i>r </i>= -0.51[-0.59,-0.42]) and revenge motivation (<i>r </i>= -0.43[-0.52,-0.33]). Manipulating empathy, we found that participants who recalled situations in which they felt strong empathy towards the offender rated higher forgiveness compared to participants recalling situations with low empathy or compared to control (<i>d </i>= 0.60-0.62). Overall, this was a successful replication of the findings by McCullough et al. (1997; 1998) with the empathy model of forgiveness receiving strong empirical support. Materials, data and code are available on: https://osf.io/fmuv2/. This Registered Report has been endorsed by <i>Peer Community in Registered Reports</i>: https://doi.org/10.24072/pci.rr.100444.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1227-1249"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142802465","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 : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2025-02-17DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2459849
Claire M Growney, Tammy English
{"title":"Perceived demands associated with emotion regulation strategies among young and cognitively diverse older adults.","authors":"Claire M Growney, Tammy English","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2459849","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2459849","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Emotion regulation (ER) is viewed as a cognitively demanding process, with strategies varying in demands. Individuals may prefer strategies perceived as lower in cognitive demands, and selecting low-demand strategies may be particularly adaptive for those with limited cognitive resources. We examine how ER strategies differ in perceived cognitive demands and how perceived demands predict strategy selection and well-being among regulators of varying age and cognitive status. Young adults (aged 21-34, <i>n </i>= 66), cognitively normal older adults (CN; aged 70-83, <i>n </i>= 90), and older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI; aged 70-84, <i>n </i>= 60) reported perceived demands and use of ten ER strategies. As expected, early-acting strategies (e.g. situation selection) were generally viewed as less demanding than later-acting strategies (e.g. masking). Younger adults reported higher cognitive demands and effort requirements compared with CN older adults. For younger adults and CN older adults (but not those with MCI), strategies perceived as less demanding were used more. Older (but not younger) adults who perceived ER to be more demanding experienced poorer well-being. Age-related differences in perceived cognitive demands suggest ER perceptions may change with gained life experience. However, MCI may create ER difficulties by interfering with one's ability to select easier to implement strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1384-1395"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12353151/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143442290","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 : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2024-12-20DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2434148
Heather Ashley Kumove, Gilad Hirschberger, Boaz M Ben-David
{"title":"Left out and vilified: Do the effects of political metaphors on spatial orientation judgments indicate a taboo effect?","authors":"Heather Ashley Kumove, Gilad Hirschberger, Boaz M Ben-David","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2024.2434148","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2024.2434148","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Can aversion from a political ideology lead to rapid, automatic rejection of said ideology? We tested this question in the Israeli political context using a spatial Stroop task to examine whether politically charged left-wing terms would elicit slower verbal latencies. In Study 1 (<i>n</i> <i>=</i> 85), participants were presented with left- and right-wing political terms presented either in a congruent or incongruent spatial location and were asked to verbally indicate only the location of the word. Study 2 (<i>n</i> = 128), replicated this procedure with the Hebrew words for \"left\" and \"right\" and examined whether political awareness primes would amplify the effect. Results indicated a slowdown for left-wing related terms above and beyond a congruency effect that was exacerbated under political priming. The slowdown was particularly pronounced among centre-right-wing participants in Study 1, but significant across political orientations in Study 2. Two auxiliary studies rule out the possibility that phonemic features of the words, or spatial preferences could explain these effects. Overall, results support a taboo effect (i.e., implicit aversion) for left-wing political terms.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1289-1300"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142869760","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 : 2025-09-01Epub Date: 2025-02-06DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2025.2455600
Anna Matsulevits, Mariska E Kret
{"title":"Priming using human and chimpanzee expressions of emotion biases attention toward positive emotions.","authors":"Anna Matsulevits, Mariska E Kret","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2455600","DOIUrl":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2455600","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Perceiving and correctly interpreting emotional expressions is one of the most important abilities for social animals' communication. It determines the majority of social interactions, group dynamics, and cooperation - being highly relevant for an individual's survival. Core mechanisms of this ability have been hypothesised to be shared across closely related species with phylogenetic similarities. This study explored homologies in human processing of species-specific facial expressions using eye-tracking. Introducing a prime-target paradigm, we tested the influences on human attention elicited by priming with differently valenced emotional stimuli depicting human and chimpanzee faces. We demonstrated an attention shift towards the conspecific (human) target picture that was congruent with the valence depicted in the primer picture. We did not find this effect with heterospecific (chimpanzee) primers and ruled out that this was due to participants interpreting them incorrectly. Implications about the involvement of related emotion-processing mechanisms for human and chimpanzee facial expressions are discussed. Systematic cross-species-investigations of emotional expressions are needed to unravel how emotion representation mechanisms can extend to process other species' faces. Through such studies, we can better understand the implications of humans' and apes' shared evolutionary ancestry and better understand \"<i>Where our emotions come from\"</i>.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1374-1383"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143257073","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}
Stephanie C Goodhew, David Denniston, Amy Dawel, Mark Edwards
{"title":"A registered conceptual replication and extension of Gable and Harmon-Jones (2008): does motivational intensity, valence, or perceptual focality drive attentional breadth?","authors":"Stephanie C Goodhew, David Denniston, Amy Dawel, Mark Edwards","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2549318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2549318","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How do emotion and motivation affect the breadth of attention? Competing theoretical accounts propose that valence (pleasantness) or motivational intensity (strength of the urge to approach/avoid) drive changes in attentional breadth. Seminal work by Gable and Harmon-Jones (Gable, P. A., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2008). Approach-motivated positive affect reduces breadth of attention. <i>Psychological Science, 19</i>(5), 476-482, Study 2) found that pictures of desserts narrowed attentional breadth relative to pictures of rocks. This was interpreted as higher motivational intensity narrowing attentional breadth, but the desserts were rated as higher in positive valence than the rocks and may have differed in perceptual focality - confound(s) commonly present in the broader literature. Further, recent work questions whether emotion/motivation has reliable effects on attentional breadth. Here, therefore, we conducted a registered conceptual replication where we assessed whether the narrowing of attentional breadth following dessert (vs rocks) pictures replicated with a new picture set. We also assessed any unique contribution of motivational intensity, valence, and perceptual focality to driving changes in attentional breadth. Participants rated the desserts as more positive in valence and higher in motivational intensity than the rocks. However, attentional breadth was invariant across image type and perceptual focality, and across participant ratings of valence and motivational intensity. These findings challenge the robustness with which emotion and motivation influence attentional breadth.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1-28"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144974736","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}
{"title":"The interplay between language and emotion: introduction to the special issue.","authors":"Pilar Ferré, Isabel Fraga, José Antonio Hinojosa","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2549966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2549966","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This special issue provides an overview of recent developments in the relationship between language and emotion. It includes a theoretical paper reviewing the extensive empirical evidence of this relationship, as well as 25 empirical studies. The studies address topics related to the conveyance of emotional content by language, focusing on semantics and speech sounds; the impact of emotion on language processing, from words to sentences; and the influence of language in the perception, experience and regulation of emotions throughout life. The findings highlight several modulatory factors, primarily relating to the affective and non-affective properties of verbal information, as well as some inter-individual differences. The conclusion is that all these factors must be considered to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the complex relationship between language and emotion.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144974467","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}
{"title":"The interplay between language and emotion: a narrative review.","authors":"Pilar Ferré, Isabel Fraga, José Antonio Hinojosa","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2549965","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2549965","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This review addresses the interface between language and emotion, focusing on three key aspects related to the emotion process. The first section is devoted to research on language as an emotional stimulus. In addition to a characterisation of emotional content, relevant studies on the acquisition of emotional words by children and adult speakers are reviewed. The second section reviews the literature on the influence of both the emotional content of verbal stimuli and the emotional state of the individual on language processing. The third section focuses on characterising the lexicon of emotion terms and also addresses the modulatory role of language in the understanding, experience, and regulation of emotions. The most influential theoretical frameworks are presented in each section. The findings reviewed illustrate the bidirectional nature of the language-emotion interface, with emotion affecting language and language affecting emotion. The concluding discussion highlights the benefits of a comprehensive approach that considers findings from different disciplines to adequately characterise the relationship between language and emotion.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1-28"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144974472","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}
{"title":"Role of contingency in the effects of appetitive and aversive motivation on emotional distraction.","authors":"Athulya Krishnan, Sahithyan Sivakumaran, Srikanth Padmala","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2542920","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2542920","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The presence of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli impedes behavioural performance. Some past studies have reported that performance-based monetary rewards mitigate emotional interference by enhancing cognitive control. In such manipulations, the effects of the expected reward <i>value</i> and the <i>contingency</i> between a successful response and reward outcome were conflated. To disentangle the contribution of these two distinct components of motivation, we conducted two behavioural experiments to investigate the role of contingency in the effects of appetitive and aversive motivation on emotional distraction. In Experiment 1 involving appetitive motivation, a pre-cue indicated different reward levels (high vs. low) and contingency (contingent vs. non-contingent) conditions. Subsequently, participants performed a letter-search task while ignoring a centrally presented positive, neutral, or negative task-irrelevant image. In the reaction time data, we detected a three-way interaction between Contingency, Reward, and Distractor Valence. Specifically, in the contingent (but not during non-contingent) condition, we observed reduced negative (but not positive) distraction during high (relative to low) reward prospect trials. Similar interaction patterns were observed in Experiment 2, where we manipulated aversive motivation via the prospect of monetary losses. Overall, our findings indicate that contingency plays a crucial role in driving the effects of appetitive and aversive motivation on emotional distraction.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1-18"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144822956","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}
Elli Cole, Darha Ponder, Alessandra R Grillo, Rachel Suresky, Catherine B Stroud, Suzanne Vrshek-Schallhorn
{"title":"Association of early adversity, neuroticism, and depression with perceived severity ratings of stressful life event vignettes.","authors":"Elli Cole, Darha Ponder, Alessandra R Grillo, Rachel Suresky, Catherine B Stroud, Suzanne Vrshek-Schallhorn","doi":"10.1080/02699931.2025.2542921","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2025.2542921","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Stress appraisal is implicated in psychological outcomes and may be influenced by environment, personality, and psychopathology, but novel methods are needed to examine how individual differences influence appraisal. Using participant-rated stress appraisals of life event vignettes, we hypothesised an association between researcher-rated and perceived severity, and early adversity, neuroticism, and depression would each be associated with higher average ratings of stress severity and steeper slopes, that is, a more rapidly increasing rate in perceived severity ratings as researcher-rated severity increased, consistent with stress sensitisation. Emerging adults (<i>N</i> = 237) rated 42 researcher-rated vignettes (9,954 total observations). Multilevel growth curve models indicated researcher-rated severity was associated with perceived severity, but early adversity was associated with a <i>flatter</i> slope, consistent with stress inoculation. Neuroticism was associated with greater severity in overall ratings, and depression was associated with both greater severity ratings and altered linear and quadratic growth in separate models; however, in simultaneous models, depression was the only significant unique predictor. Results provide a new approach for examining stress appraisal and indicate that early adversity is associated with reduced stress appraisals, but show past year depression is associated with heightened appraisals. Findings highlight stress appraisal as a potential mechanism of depression maintenance or recurrence.</p>","PeriodicalId":48412,"journal":{"name":"Cognition & Emotion","volume":" ","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144800653","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}