Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-25DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00277-7
Tabea Meier, Malena Otero, Simon X. Su, Jacquelyn E. Stephens, Chen-Wei Yu, Claudia M. Haase
{"title":"Unraveling the Experience of Affection Across Marital and Friendship Interactions","authors":"Tabea Meier, Malena Otero, Simon X. Su, Jacquelyn E. Stephens, Chen-Wei Yu, Claudia M. Haase","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00277-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00277-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Feelings of affection (i.e., fondness and intense positive regard) are a hallmark of close relationships. Existing studies have often examined affection as a trait or behavior, but rarely as an emotional <i>experience</i> in social interactions. In two dyadic observational interaction studies (total <i>N</i> = 314 individuals), 49 US-based married couples (age range: 21–65) and 108 friendship dyads (age range: 15–26) engaged in two naturalistic 10-min conversations about (a) a topic of disagreement (conflict conversation) and (b) something they enjoyed doing together (pleasant conversation) and reported on their subjective emotional experiences (e.g., affection, using an emotion checklist following each conversation) and relationship satisfaction. Conversation transcripts were analyzed using natural language analysis. Results showed that experiences of affection were most strongly associated with experiences of compassion, amusement, and excitement, as well as with less anger, and were unrelated to most other negative emotions. Natural language analysis further showed that greater positive (but not negative) emotional tone was associated with greater affection (especially among friends in the pleasant conversations). Levels of affection were consistently higher in pleasant versus conflict conversations and similar across marital versus friendship interactions. Finally, experiences of affection were associated with greater relationship satisfaction for friends across conversations and for spouses (women) in the pleasant conversation. These findings contribute to our understanding of affection as a foundational emotional experience in close relationships and highlight avenues for future research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"6 1","pages":"104 - 116"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s42761-024-00277-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143594754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-23DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00276-8
Olivia Le Moëne, Max Larsson
{"title":"Social Avoidance of Mice in Pain in Naturalistic Conditions","authors":"Olivia Le Moëne, Max Larsson","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00276-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00276-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Pain and social behavior are subject to reciprocal modulation. Social animals show attenuated pain behavior in the presence of conspecifics, while observers are in turn affected by exposure to another individual in pain. Both phenomena have been established in rodents, which in addition to experiencing emotional contagion from afflicted conspecifics may act to relieve their afflicted state. Little has been done to investigate the motivation of such prosocial behavior in naturalistic conditions. Here, using a novel formalin test targeting the nape of the neck, a socially relevant area, we investigated nocifensive behaviors and social interactions in mice group-housed in a seminatural environment (SNE). In the SNE, formalin-injected mice displayed fewer back-scratching occurrences than when housed alone, which was inversely correlated to the social behavior received. These mice also emitted and received fewer social interactions, attesting of social withdrawal. With respect to dyadic exchanges, saline-treated mice initiated fewer allosniffing and anogenital sniffing episodes towards formalin-treated mice than towards other saline-treated ones. These findings are counter to those showing empathy and prosocial approach in mouse pain models. It is possible that in naturalistic conditions that allow the mice to express a wide range of their behavioral repertoire, healthy mice simply avoid individuals in pain and the cost associated with emotional contagion. Interestingly, behaviors involving direct body contact, namely allogrooming and pair-resting, were not different between saline- and formalin-treated mice and thus may carry a prosocial, altruistic component. These findings unveil new patterns of social modulation by pain in a naturalistic laboratory setting holding high translational value.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"6 1","pages":"159 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s42761-024-00276-8.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143594696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-23DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00274-w
Michelle N. Shiota, Linda Camras, Ralph Adolphs
{"title":"Introduction to the Special Section Commentaries","authors":"Michelle N. Shiota, Linda Camras, Ralph Adolphs","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00274-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00274-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"171 - 172"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142413283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-20DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00272-y
Daniel Dukes, David Sander
{"title":"Affectivism and the Emotional Elephant: How a Componential Approach Can Reconcile Opposing Theories to Serve the Future of Affective Sciences","authors":"Daniel Dukes, David Sander","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00272-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00272-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This article discusses how the <i>affectivism framework</i> and the <i>componential approach</i> to emotion may serve the future of affective sciences. A particular aim of the article is to show that an appraisal-based componential approach to emotion can help reconcile opposing theories. It begins by contextualizing the evolution of emotion science within the framework of affectivism, acknowledging that the significant epistemological differences between various theories have paradoxically spurred interest in studying emotion across various perspectives and disciplines. If affectivism is regarded as the pursuit of a deeper understanding of not only emotions and other affective processes but also cognitive and behavioral processes, then its success can be partly attributed to the existence of multiple approaches, allowing each discipline and perspective to advance using the most suitable theory and methodology. We contend that a componential approach reveals that the five principal theories of emotion have each focused on one of five components of emotion. Overall, based on the analysis of several articles published in the <i>special issue on the future of affective science,</i> we argue that affective scientists are well equipped not only to build a future in which conceptual and methodological tools will be used to test diverging hypotheses between competing theories but also to acknowledge and celebrate where such theories converge.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"196 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11461373/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142402159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-19DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00273-x
George F. Michel
{"title":"A Developmental Psychobiologist’s Commentary on the Future of Affective Science","authors":"George F. Michel","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00273-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00273-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A developmental psychobiologist commented on the role of dynamic systems theory in the future of <i>affective science</i> and proposed an alternative paradigm.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"209 - 212"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11461360/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142402156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-13DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00267-9
Beatriz M. Brandao, Bryan T. Denny
{"title":"What Instagram Means to Me: Links Between Social Anxiety, Instagram Contingent Self-worth, and Automated Textual Analysis of Linguistic Authenticity","authors":"Beatriz M. Brandao, Bryan T. Denny","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00267-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00267-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>While research has shown mixed effects of social media on mental health and well-being, little is known about the association between social media attitudes and objective measures of social interaction, such as linguistic authenticity. This study examined the relationship between self-reported social anxiety, linguistic authenticity, and Instagram contingent self-worth (ICSW). A total of 149 adults with active Instagram accounts completed online questionnaires and shared their Instagram comment data. Automated linguistic analysis of authenticity was performed on participants’ comment data using validated algorithms. Multiple linear regression showed that ICSW significantly moderated the relationship between social anxiety and linguistic authenticity, whereby higher levels of social anxiety marginally predicted lower linguistic authenticity at high levels of ICSW. As social media use continues to rise, this study emphasizes the need to explore the impact of social media interactions on emotional and social well-being.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 4","pages":"449 - 457"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s42761-024-00267-9.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142778341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-07DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00260-2
Ana M. DiGiovanni, Kevin N. Ochsner
{"title":"Emphasizing the Social in Social Emotion Regulation: A Call for Integration and Expansion","authors":"Ana M. DiGiovanni, Kevin N. Ochsner","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00260-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00260-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The Future of Affective Science Special Issues illuminate where the field of Affective Science is headed in coming years, highlighting exciting new directions for research. Many of the articles in the issues emphasized the importance of studying emotion regulation, and specifically, social emotion regulation. This commentary draws on these articles to argue that future research needs to more concretely focus on the <i><u>social</u></i> aspects of social emotion regulation, which have been underexplored in affective science. Specifically, we discuss the importance of focusing on social goals, strategies and tactics, and outcomes relevant to social emotion regulation interactions, more closely considering these processes for all individuals involved. To do so, we draw on research from neighboring subdisciplines of psychology that have focused on the social aspects of interactions. Moreover, we underscore the need to better integrate components of the process model of social emotion regulation and approach empirical inquiry more holistically, in turn illuminating how piecemeal investigations of these processes might lead to an incomplete or incorrect understanding of social emotion regulation. We hope this commentary supplements the research in the special issues, further highlighting ways to advance the field.\u0000</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"173 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142402163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-07DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00270-0
Jianming Zhu, Angela Radulescu, Daniel Bennett
{"title":"Emotional Overshadowing: Pleasant and Unpleasant Cues Overshadow Neutral Cues in Human Associative Learning","authors":"Jianming Zhu, Angela Radulescu, Daniel Bennett","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00270-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00270-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>When learning about stimuli comprised of multiple cues, humans and other animals tend to form stronger cue-outcome associations for more salient cues than for less salient cues. This phenomenon, termed <i>overshadowing</i>, has typically been demonstrated between cues that vary in salience because of differences in physical intensity. In this study, we investigated whether differences in the emotional valence of cues in a compound stimulus similarly led to differences in the strength of cue-outcome learning. Using a probabilistic categorisation task in which stimuli were compounds consisting of pairs of emotional or non-emotional cue images<i>,</i> we found consistent evidence for emotional overshadowing across both an initial exploratory study (<i>N</i> = 50) and a confirmatory preregistered replication study (<i>N</i> = 200). Specifically, both pleasant and unpleasant cue images tended to overshadow neutral cue images, but pleasant and unpleasant cue images did not overshadow one another. Moreover, across stimuli, the magnitude of differences in learning between cues was proportional to differences in their absolute emotional valence, suggesting that attentional capture by both positively and negatively valenced emotions drives overshadowing. These findings have implications for understanding associative learning in natural environments, where stimuli are frequently imbued with emotional valence prior to learning.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"222 - 231"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11461368/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142402162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-05DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00266-w
Jordan E. Pierce, Valerie K. Jones, Maital Neta
{"title":"A More Connected Future: How Social Connection, Interdisciplinary Approaches, and New Technology Will Shape the Affective Science of Loneliness, a Commentary on the Special Issue","authors":"Jordan E. Pierce, Valerie K. Jones, Maital Neta","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00266-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00266-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The recent Special Issue of <i>Affective Science</i> considered “The Future of Affective Science,” offering new directions for the field. One recurring theme was the need to consider the social nature of emotional experiences. In this article, we take an interdisciplinary approach toward studies of social connection that builds upon current theoretical foundations to address an important public health issue – loneliness. Loneliness is an affective state that is characterized by feelings of isolation and has widespread adverse effects on mental and physical health. Recent studies have established links between loneliness, social connection, and well-being, but most of this work has been siloed in separate fields. We bridge these themes, leveraging advances in technology, such as artificial intelligence-based voice assistants (e.g., Alexa), to illuminate new avenues for detecting and intervening against loneliness “in the wild.” Recognizing the power of connection among individuals as social beings and among researchers with shared goals, affective science can advance our understanding of loneliness and provide tangible benefits to society at large.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"217 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142402158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Affective sciencePub Date : 2024-09-05DOI: 10.1007/s42761-024-00263-z
Anthony G. Vaccaro
{"title":"Feelings are Messy: The Feelings We Study in Affective Science Should Be Too","authors":"Anthony G. Vaccaro","doi":"10.1007/s42761-024-00263-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s42761-024-00263-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Affective science has taken up the challenge of building a bridge between basic affective science and practical applications. The articles in the Future of Affective Science issue lay out methodological and conceptual frameworks that allow us to expand affective science into real-world settings and to handle naturalistic methods. Along with these advances, accomplishing this goal will require additionally refocusing the types of experiences we study, and the measures of experience we are interested in. This paper explores the necessity for basic affective science to embrace the messy and complex nature of human emotion in order to bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and real-world applicability. Specifically, this involves studying experiences that do not fit as neatly into dominant conceptual frameworks, such as valenced scales and the most common discrete emotion categories, and that may be more difficult to measure or experimentally control. This makes the gap between affective science and real-world feelings larger. To move the field towards incorporating emotional complexity in an empirical manner, I propose measurement standards that err on the side of less fixed-choice options and using stimuli chosen for their potential to elicit highly complex responses over time within the same individual. Designing studies that can measure these experiences will push emotion theories to explain data they were not originally designed for, likely leading to refinement and collaboration. These approaches will help capture the full spectrum of human emotional experience, leading to a more nuanced and applicable understanding of affective science.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":72119,"journal":{"name":"Affective science","volume":"5 3","pages":"190 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11461722/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142402165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}