This chapter focuses on the positive epistemic value that individual and group emotion can have. It explains how group emotion can help to bring about the highest epistemic good, namely group understanding. It is argues that this group good would be difficult to achieve, in very many cases, in the absence of group emotion. Even if group emotion sometimes—indeed often—leads us astray, we would be worse off, from the standpoint of achieving the highest epistemic (...) good, without it. The chapter illustrates the connection between group emotion and group understanding by focusing on the phenomenon of public inquiries. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of the connection between shared emotions and shared epistemic states and undertakings. In so-doing, I aim to answer the following questions: In what sense do shared emotions help or hinder our epistemic enterprises? How do they shape the way that groups engage in these epistemic undertakings? In my analysis, I stress emotions are correlated with far-reaching changes in cognitive processing. I suggest that we should understand emotions within group (...) contexts as ways of thinking that can facilitate cooperation and create a joint epistemic outlook. Overall, my suggestion thus is that shared emotions should be seen as important for epistemic undertakings because they turn groups into unified epistemic subjects. (shrink)

Education and cognition research today generally recognize the tri-dimensional nature of reasoning processes as involving cognitive, social and emotional phenomena. However, there is so far no theoretical framework articulating these three dimensions from a descriptive perspective. This paper aims at presenting a first model of how group emotions work in collective reasoning, and specifies their social and cognitive functions. This model is inspired both from a multidisciplinary literature review and our extensive previous empirical work on an international corpus (...) of videotaped student debates. The cognitive function of emotions is defined in reference to the process of schematization and associated emotional framing. On the other hand, the social function of emotions refers to recognition-oriented behaviors that correspond to engagement into specific types of group talk, implying specific politeness rules or face-preservation systems. We believe that our multi-dimensional and multi-level approach to group reasoning, which mostly employs a linguistic perspective, can be applied to a diversity of contexts. We hope it will serve as a basis for further discussion on the role of emotions in reasoning among the interdisciplinary community of argumentation studies. (shrink)

_Background:_ Literature has documented the role of family in the outcome of chronic schizophrenia. In the light of this, family interventions (FIs) are becoming an integral component of treatment for psychosis. The First Episode of Psychosis (FEP) is the period when most of the changes in family atmosphere are observed; unfortunately, few studies on the relatives are available. _Objective:_ To explore burden of care and emotional distress at baseline and at 9-month follow-up and the levels of service satisfaction at follow-up (...) in the two groups of relatives (experimental treatment EXP vs. treatment as usual TAU) recruited in the cluster-randomized controlled GET UP PIANO trial. _Methods:_ The experimental treatment was provided by routine public Community Mental Health Centers (Italian National Health Service) and consisted of Treatment as Usual plus evidence-based additional treatment (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis for patients, Family Intervention for psychosis, and Case Management). TAU consisted of personalized outpatient psychopharmacological treatment, combined with non-specific supportive clinical management and informal support/educational sessions for families. The outcomes on relatives were assessed by the Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ-EU), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the Verona Service Satisfaction Scale (VSSS-EU). Differences within and between groups were evaluated. _Results:_ At baseline, 75 TAU and 185 EXP caregivers were assessed. In the experimental group 92% of relatives participated in at least 1 family session. At follow-up both groups experienced improvement in all IEQ and GHQ items, but caregivers belonging to the EXP arm experienced a significantly greater change in 10 IEQ items (mainly pertaining to the “Tension” dimension) and in GHQ items. Due to the low sample size, a significant effectiveness was only observed for 2 IEQ items and 1 GHQ-12 item. With respect to VSSS data at follow-up, caregivers in the EXP arm experienced significantly greater satisfaction in 8 items, almost all pertaining to the dimensions “Relatives' Involvement” and “Professionals' Skills and Behavior.” _Conclusions:_ The Family intervention for psychosis delivered in the GET UP PIANO trial reduced family burden of illness and improved emotional distress and satisfaction with services. These results should encourage to promote FIs on caregivers of first-episode psychosis patients. (shrink)

Recently, novel lines of research have developed to study the influence of identity processes in sport-related behaviours. Yet, whereas emotions in sport are the result of a complex psychosocial process, little attention has been paid to examining the mechanisms that underlie how group membership influences athletes’ emotional experiences. The present narrative review aims at complementing the comprehensive review produced by Rees et al. (2015) on social identity in sport by reporting specific work on identity-based emotions in sport. (...) To that end, we firstly overview the different terminology currently used in the field of emotions in groups to clarify the distinct nature of emotions that result from an individual’s social identity. Secondly, we discuss key concepts of social identity to better understand the mechanisms underlying identity-based emotions. Thirdly, we address existing knowledge on identity-based emotions in sport. We close the present narrative review by suggesting future research perspectives based on existing meta-theories of social identity. Evidence from the social psychology literature is discussed alongside existing works from the sport literature to propose a crucial theoretical approach to better understand emotions in sport. (shrink)

Group-based emotions have been conceptualised as being rooted in perceivers' social identity. Consistent with this idea, previous research has shown that social identity salience affects group-based emotions, but no research to date has directly examined the role of group-based appraisals in comparison with individual appraisals. In the present studies, we measured group-based appraisals through a thought-listing procedure. In Experiment 1, we explicitly reminded people of their group identity, which led to the predicted change (...) in group-based anger. This effect was mediated by group-based appraisals. In Experiment 2, participants either discussed a group-relevant scenario in small groups or a related topic irrelevant to the group. The group-relevant condition not only led to stronger indignation but the perceived presence of group-based appraisals was also related to participants' reports of indignation. These results provide further evidence for the importance of group-based appraisals as components of group-based emotions. (shrink)

The theories or programs of research described in the chapters of this book move beyond the traditional evaluation model of prejudice, drawing on a broad range of theoretical ancestry to develop models of why, when, and how differentiated reactions to groups arise, and what their consequences might be. The chapters have in common a re-focusing of interest on emotion as a theoretical base for understanding differentiated reactions to, and differentiated behaviors toward, social groups. The contributions also share a focus on (...) specific interactional and structural relations among groups as a source of these differentiated emotional reactions. The chapters in the volume thus reflect a theoretical shift from an earlier emphasis on knowledge about ingroups and outgroups to a new perspective on prejudice in which socially-grounded emotional differentiation becomes a basis for social regulation. (shrink)

Over-time variability characterizes not only individual-level emotions, but also group-level emotions, those that occur when people identify with social groups and appraise events in terms of their implications for those groups. We discuss theory and research regarding the role of emotions in intergroup contexts, focusing on their dynamic nature. We then describe new insights into the causes and consequences of emotional dynamics that flow from conceptualizing emotions as based in group membership, and conclude with (...) research recommendations. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory and computational model of the role of emotions in group decision making. After reviewing the role of emotions in individual decision making, it describes social and psychological mechanisms by which emotional and other information is transmitted between individuals. The processes by which these mechanisms can contribute to group consensus are modeled computationally using a program, HOTCO 3, which has been used to simulate simple cases of emotion-based group decision making.

While human beings might be rational animals, they are emotional animals as well. Emotions play a central role in all areas of our lives and if we are to have a proper understanding of human life and activity, we ought to have a good grasp of the emotions. Michael S. Brady structures Emotion: The Basics around two basic, yet fundamental, questions: What are emotions? And what do emotions do? In answering these questions Brady provides insight into (...) a core component of all our lives, covering: the nature of emotion; emotion, knowledge, and understanding; emotion and action; emotions and social groups; emotion, morality, and art. In this concise and insightful introduction, Brady explains why we are often better off as a result of emotion rather than reason being in the driving seat, as our lives, both individual and social, would be significantly impoverished without the emotions. With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, Emotion: The Basics is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to the philosophical study of emotion. (shrink)

Emotions are a natural vector for acting together with others and are witnessed in human behaviour, perception and body functions. For this reason, studies of human-to-human interaction, such as multi-person motor synchronisation, are a perfect setting to disentangle the linkage of emotion with socio-motor interaction. And yet, the majority of joint action studies aiming at understanding the impact of emotions on multi-person performance resort to enacted emotions, the ones that are emulated based on the previous experience of (...) such emotions, and almost exclusively focus on dyadic interaction. In addition, tasks chosen to study emotion in joint action are frequently characterised by a reduced number of physical dimensions to gain experimental control and subsequent facilitation in data analysis. Therefore, it is not clear how naturalistically induced emotions diffuse in more ecological interactions with other people and how emotions affect the process of interpersonal synchronisation. Here, we show that positive and negative emotions differently alter spontaneous human synchronous behaviour during a multi-person improvisation task. The study involved 39 participants organised in triads who self-reported liking improvisational activities. The task involved producing improvisational movements with the right hand. Participants were emotionally induced by manipulated social feedback involving a personal ranking score. Three-dimensional spatio-temporal data and cardiac activity were extracted and transformed into oscillatory signals to compute behavioural and physiological synchrony. Our results demonstrate that individuals induced with positive emotions, as opposed to negative emotions or a neutral state, maintained behavioural synchrony with other group members for a longer period of time. These findings contribute to the emerging shift of neuroscience of emotion and affective sciences towards the environment of social significance where emotions appear the most—in interaction with others. Our study showcases a method of quantification of synchrony in an improvisational and interactive task based on a well-established Kuramoto model. (shrink)

Most research on cross-cultural emotion recognition has focused on facial expressions. To integrate the body of evidence on vocal expression, we present a meta-analysis of 37 cross-cultural studies...

The concept of interpersonal emotion regulation refers to a variety of processes in which emotion regulation occurs as part of live social interactions and includes, among others, also those interpersonal interactions in which individuals turn to others to be helped or to help the others in managing emotions. Although IER may be a concept of interest in group therapy, specific theoretical insights in this field appear to be missed. In this article, we firstly provide a review of IER (...) definitions, of classifications of IER strategies, and of IER clinical conceptualizations. Afterwards, we discuss the relevance of considering IER for group therapy, both in terms of non-specific group therapeutic factors and of group therapy techniques promoting adaptive emotion regulation, underlining the potentially relevant role of IER behaviors as intrinsically involved in group experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAcross two studies majority group children’s perception of positive and negative emotions in ethnic in-group and disadvantaged ethnic out-group peers was examined. Study 1 (N =...

ABSTRACTOther people’s emotional reactions to a third person’s behaviour are potentially informative about what is appropriate within a given situation. We investigated whether and how observers’ inferences of such injunctive norms are shaped by expressions of anger and disgust. Building on the moral emotions literature, we hypothesised that angry and disgusted expressions produce relative differences in the strength of autonomy-based versus purity-based norm inferences. We report three studies using different types of stimuli to investigate how emotional reactions shape norms (...) about potential norm violations, and contexts. Consistent with our theoretical argument, the results indicate that observers use others’ emotional reactions not only to infer whether a particular behaviour is inappropriate, but also why it is inappropriate: because it primarily violates auto... (shrink)

We present the first neurophysiological signatures showing distinctive effects of group social context and emotional arousal on cultural perceptions, such as the efficacy of religious rituals. Using a novel protocol, EEG data were simultaneously recorded from ethnic Chinese religious believers in group and individual settings as they rated the perceived efficacy of low, medium, and high arousal spirit-medium rituals presented as video clips. Neural oscillatory patterns were then analyzed for these perceptual judgements, categorized as low, medium, and high (...) efficacy. The results revealed distinct neural signatures and behavioral patterns between the experimental conditions. Arousal levels predicted ratings of ritual efficacy. Increased efficacy was marked by suppressed alpha and beta power, regardless of group or individual setting. In groups, efficacy ratings converged. Individual setting showed increased within-participant phase synchronization in alpha and beta bands, while group setting enhanced between-participant theta phase synchronization. This reflected group participants' orientation toward a common perspective and social coordination. These findings suggest that co-presence in groups leads to a social-tuning effect supported by between-participant theta phase synchrony. Together these neural synchrony patterns reveal how collective rituals have both individual and communal dimensions. The emotionality of spirit-medium rituals drives individual perceptions of efficacy, while co-presence in groups signals the significance of an event and socially tunes enhanced agreement in perceptual ratings. In other words, mass gatherings may foster social cohesion without necessarily requiring group-size scaling limitations of direct face-to-face interaction. This could have implications for the scaling computability of synchrony in large groups as well as for humanistic studies in areas such as symbolic interactionism. (shrink)

Emotions, Values, and the Law brings together ten of John Deigh's essays written over the past fifteen years. In the first five essays, Deigh ask questions about the nature of emotions and the relation of evaluative judgment to the intentionality of emotions, and critically examines the cognitivist theories of emotion that have dominated philosophy and psychology over the past thirty years. A central criticism of these theories is that they do not satisfactorily account for the emotions (...) of babies or animals other than human beings. Drawing on this criticism, Deigh develops an alternative theory of the intentionality of emotions on which the education of emotions explains how human emotions, which innately contain no evaluative thought, come to have evaluative judgments as their principal cognitive component. The second group of five essays challenge the idea of the voluntary as essential to understanding moral responsibility, moral commitment, political obligation, and other moral and political phenomena that have traditionally been thought to depend on people's will. Each of these studies focuses on a different aspect of our common moral and political life and shows, contrary to conventional opinion, that it does not depend on voluntary action or the exercise of a will constituted solely by rational thought. Together, the essays in this collection represent an effort to shift our understanding of the phenomena traditionally studied in moral and political philosophy from that of their being products of reason and will, operating independently of feeling and sentiment to that of their being manifestations of the work of emotion. (shrink)

COVID-19 has made it difficult to adopt traditional face-to-face psychological intervention under this situation because of the blocked down and social distancing, which brings big psychological crisis to the public among the global. To explore the emotional change of the public in China at the outburst of the pandemic at different phases, to establish an online working platform and create a new model of an online intervention to hold public emotions under pandemic, and test its effectiveness, so to give (...) advisement for government emergency management system. We established an online organization to work for this program ad innovated a model of online group counseling with online emotional support accompany group right after the outburst of a pandemic. We analyzed 53 OESAGs from February 10 to April 9, including 555 application forms, 253 feedback from members, and 139 feedback from group leaders by using NVivo and SPSS to explore the evolution and characteristics of public emotion during COVID-19 and the effectiveness of OESAG. Our results showed that the emotional changes of members ranged from shock to depression to positive. The public's emotions swiftly changed from stress, anxiety, and isolation, to the hope of returning to work or finding a job during the pandemic with the help of OESAG. OESAG has effectively regulated the negative emotions of members by conducting psychological crisis intervention to provide members a space to communicate with each other, especially the female and frontline staff. Policy makers can set up an online systematic psychological crisis intervention system as soon as possible to make up for the lack of psychological assistance in the emergency management system. (shrink)

The contributions gathered in this volume present the state of the art in key areas of current social ontology. They focus on the role of collective intentional states in creating social facts, and on the nature of intentional properties of groups that allow characterizing them as responsible agents, or perhaps even as persons. Many of the essays are inspired by contemporary action theory, emotion theory, and theories of collective intentionality. Another group of essays revisits early phenomenological approaches to social (...) ontology and accounts of sociality that draw on the Hegelian idea of recognition. This volume is organized into three parts. First, the volume discusses themes highlighted in John Searle's work and addresses questions concerning the relation between intentions and the deontic powers of institutions, the role of disagreement, and the nature of collective intentionality. Next, the book focuses on joint and collective emotions and mutual recognition, and then goes on to explore the scope and limits of group agency, or group personhood, especially the capacity for responsible agency. The variety of philosophical traditions mirrored in this collection provides readers with a rich and multifaceted survey of present research in social ontology. It will help readers deepen their understanding of three interrelated and core topics in social ontology: the constitution and structure of institutions, the role of shared evaluative attitudes, and the nature and role of group agents. (shrink)

Psychological research shows that our emotions and feelings often guide the moral decisions we make about our own lives and the social groups to which we belong. But should we be concerned that out important moral judgments can be swayed by "hot" passions, such as anger, disgust, guilt, shame and sympathy? Aren't these feelings irrational and counterproductive? Using a functional conflict theory of emotions (FCT), Giner-Sorolla proposes that each emotion serves a number of different functions, sometimes inappropriately, and (...) that moral emotions in particular are intimately tied to problems faced by the individuals in a group, and by groups interacting with each other. Specifically, the author suggests that these emotions help us, as individuals and group members, to: Appraise developments in the environment Learn through association Regulate our own behavior Communicate convincingly with others. Drawing on extensive research, including many studies from the author's own lab, this book shows why emotions work to encourage reasonable moral behaviour, and why they sometimes fail. This is the first single-authored volume in the field of psychology dedicated to a separate examination of the major moral and positive emotions. As such, the book is ideal reading for researchers, postgraduates and undergraduates of social psychology, sociology, philosophy and politics. (shrink)

Book review of Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology, edited by Anita Konzelmann Ziv & Hans Bernhard Schmid. Springer, 2013.

Difficulty in emotional regulation is significantly correlated with depression. Depression is a psychological disease that seriously affects the physical and mental health of college students. Therefore, it is of great importance to develop diversified preventive interventions such as group impromptu music therapy. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of GIMT on the improvement of emotional regulation ability and the reduction of depressive symptoms in college students. A 71 college students were recruited to carry out (...) randomized controlled trial was used. The experimental group was intervened by GIMT. After the 4th week of intervention, follow-up and scale measurement were carried out. In the experimental group, emotional regulation difficulty scales showed significant difference before and after GIMT, implying the improvement in the emotional regulation. But there was no significant improvement in the control group. In addition, the depressive symptoms of experimental group were relieved. All findings showed that GIMT can effectively improve college students’ emotional regulation and reduce depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of emotion focuses on challenging dualistic conceptualizations. Three of the most obvious dualisms are the following: 1. emotion opposes reason; 2. emotion is subjective, while reason is objective; 3. emotion lies internal to the subject, while reason is external. With challenges to these dualisms, one of the more interesting questions that has surfaced is the idea of emotional appropriateness in a particular context. Here, consider a widely held belief in the United States associates racialized groups (...) with specific emotions—most notably African American women with anger. Clearly these emotional attributions are essentialistic--and hence racist. But this response is too easy. The acknowledgement that emotion lies both internally in the subject and externally in the world opens the possibility of attributing an emotional temperament to a population group. Yet if an identity group has an emotional temperament, can they be accountable for emotionally appropriate behavior? (shrink)

The vast literature on negative treatment of outgroups and favoritism toward ingroups provides many local insights but is largely fragmented, lacking an overarching framework that might provide a unified overview and guide conceptual integration. As a result, it remains unclear where different local perspectives conflict, how they may reinforce one another, and where they leave gaps in our knowledge of the phenomena. Our aim is to start constructing a framework to help remedy this situation. We first identify a few key (...) ideas for creating a theoretical roadmap for this complex territory, namely the principles of etiological functionalism and the dual inheritance theory of human evolution. We show how a “molecular” approach to emotions fits into this picture, and use it to illuminate emotions that shape intergroup relations. Finally, we weave the pieces together into the beginnings of a systematic taxonomy of the emotions involved in social interactions, both hostile and friendly. While it is but a start, we have developed the argument in a way that illustrates how the foundational principles of our proposed framework can be extended to accommodate further cases. (shrink)

It has been repeatedly stated that approach and avoidance reactions to emotional faces are triggered by the intention signalled by the emotion. This line of thought suggests that each emotion signals a specific intention triggering a specific behavioural reaction. However, empirical results examining this assumption are inconsistent, suggesting that it might be too short-sighted. We hypothesise that the same emotional expression can signal different social messages and, therefore, trigger different reactions; which social message is signalled by an emotional expression should (...) be influenced by moderating variables, such as the group membership of the expresser. In two experiments, we show that group membership influences approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions: Emotions (fear and happiness) expressed by in-group members elicited concordant behaviour, whereas emotions expressed by out-group members activated the reverse pattern. A third experiment, in which participants directly evaluated smiling and fearful individuals resembling in-group and out-group members supported this result. (shrink)

Although convergence in emotion expressions within small groups is well documented, the motives that explain why members converge are rarely explicated. We approach expressive convergence from a conformity perspective and introduce the Emotional Conformity Framework, in which we posit that members match their groupmates’ emotion expressions because they are motivated to gain an accurate understanding of reality (informational conformity motive) or to form and maintain social relationships (normative conformity motive). These motives determine members’ standards for correctness, social responses, and plausible (...) convergence mechanisms, while members’ personalities and situational properties shape the relative strength of the two motives. By explicating these motivational underpinnings, the Framework improves our capacity to understand, predict, and regulate expressive convergence and emphasizes its functionality. (shrink)

Volume 47, Issue 2, July 2020, Page 322-325.

Teacher's emotions have been shown to be highly important in the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning. There is a recognized need to examine the essential role of teacher's emotions in students' academic achievement. However, the influence of teacher's displays of emotions on students' outcomes in small-group interaction activities, especially in the online environment, has received little attention in prior research. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between teacher's different emotional (...) displays and students' perceptions of the teacher's competence, as well as students' collaborative feelings and productivity in online small-group discussions. Using a three-level between-subjects design, 74 participants were randomly divided into four-member groups comprising a teacher and three other participants. All the groups were asked to discuss an open-ended realistic problem using online software, during which the teacher's display of emotions varied. The participants' self-reported questionnaire data and productivity were measured to compare the participants who were exposed to different emotional displays. As expected, the results showed that the participants who received the teacher's positive emotional display reported that they experienced higher levels of pleasure during the task. However, in contrast to our expectations, those under the negative emotional display condition showed a significantly higher level of productivity in the group task. In addition, compared to emotional display, the participants' perceptions of the teacher's competence were rated significantly higher under the neutral condition, and they reported higher levels of collaborative satisfaction and greater willingness to continue collaborating with their group. The findings have the potential benefit of informing educational practice on whether teachers should display their emotions in a small-group discussion or how they should display emotions following adjustment for the relative aim of the teaching activities. (shrink)

_Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis_ provides a detailed look at the intricacies of attaining emotional presence in psychoanalytic work. John Madonna and a distinguished group of contributors draw on both the relational and modern psychoanalytic schools of thought to examine a variety of different problems commonly experienced in achieving emotional resonance between analyst and patient, setting out ways in which such difficulties may be overcome in psychoanalytic treatment, practical clinical settings and in training contexts. A focused review of relevant comparative (...) literature is followed by chapters featuring individual clinical case studies, each illustrating particularly challenging aspects. The uniqueness of this book lays not simply in the espousal of the commonly accepted importance of emotional resonance between analyst and patient; rather it is in the way in which emotional presence is registered by both participants, requiring a working through, which at times can be not only difficult but dangerous. Such efforts involve a theory which enables the lens to understanding, an effective methodology which guides intervention. The book also calls for the art of the analyst to construct with patients meanings which heal, and possess the heart to persist in commitment despite the odds. _Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis_ is about patients who suffer, struggle, resist and prevail. It offers distinctive, transparently told accounts of analysts who engage with patients, navigating through states of confusion, hatred and more controversial feelings of love. Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis features highly compelling material written in an accessible and easily understood style. It will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and clinical social workers as well as teachers, trainers and students seeking to understand the power and potential of the analytic process and the resistances to it. (shrink)

In his seminal work, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman suggests that the common view of human intelligence is far too narrow and that emotions play a much greater role in thought, decision-making and individual success than is commonly acknowledged. The importance of emotion to human experience cannot be denied, yet the relationship between law and emotion is one that has largely been ignored until recent years. However, the last two decades have seen a rapidly expanding interest among scholars of all (...) disciplines into the way in which law and the emotions interact, including the law's response to emotion and the extent to which emotions pervade the practice of the law. In The Emotional Dynamics of Law and Legal Discourse a group of leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic explore these issues across key areas of private law, public law, criminal justice and dispute resolution, illustrating how emotion infuses all areas of legal thought. The collection argues for a more positive view of the role of emotion in the context of legal discourse and demonstrates ways in which the law could, in the words of Goleman, become more emotionally intelligent. (shrink)

The various roles proposed for emotion, whether psychological such as preparing for action or serving prior concerns, or biological such as protecting and promoting well-being, are easily shown to have an awkward number of exceptions. This paper attempts to explain why. To this end it undertakes a Husserlian phenomenological examination of first-person experience of two types of responses, the various somatic responses elicited by sensations (pain, cold, pleasure, sudden intensity) and the various personal directed emotions (grief, fear, affection, joy). (...) The analysis brings out the overall close structural symmetry between the two types of response and the strong hedonic, dynamic, and topological similarity between particular members from each of the two groups. The findings strongly suggest that emotions evolved from the more rudimentary involuntary somatic responses. The hypothesis finds further support in the fact that it explains both the biological unsoundness and anomalous archaic features that emotions often display. It also explains why emotions have no tidy function. (shrink)

Civilian casualties contribute to the perpetuation of intergroup conflicts through increased radicalization and hostilities, but little is known on the psychological processes that affect responses to outgroup civilian casualties. The goal of the present research was to explore two factors expected to lead group members to act more cautiously, thereby reducing civilian casualties: perceived accountability and forecast group-based moral emotions. In two studies, Jewish–Israeli civilians (Study 1) and soldiers (Study 2) were asked to forecast their group-based (...) moral emotions in case of Palestinian (i.e., outgroup) civilian casualties, then exposed to accountability manipulations. Participants who expected to feel low levels of shame and were primed with accountability made more cautious decisions than those in the control condition. Participants who expected to feel high levels of shame were unaffected by accountability primes. Theoretical and practical implications regarding forecast moral emotions and accountability as an intervention in intergroup conflicts are discussed. (shrink)

The relationship between emotion comprehension and social competence from very young ages has been addressed in numerous studies in the field of developmental psychology. Emotion knowledge in childhood seems to have its roots in the conversations and explanations children hear about what emotions are and how to manage them. Given that behavioral interventions often do not achieve medium-term improvements or generalization to other contexts, this study evaluates the results of an intervention using the Thinking Emotions program. This program (...) uses Philosophy for Children as the work format and is based on the idea that reflection and dialogue among peers is one of the most effective ways to interiorize significant knowledge. The program was applied during one school year in two preschool classrooms . Comparisons of the pre- and post-treatment measures of the control and experimental groups show significant improvements in emotion comprehension and social competence in the 5-year-old children and improvements related to social competence in the 4-year-olds. (shrink)

In the 1970s, a multifaceted alternative scene developed in West Germany. At the core of this leftist scene was a struggle for feelings in a capitalist world that seemed to be devoid of any emotions. Joachim C. Häberlen offers here a vivid account of these emotional politics. The book discusses critiques of rationality and celebrations of insanity as an alternative. It explores why capitalism made people feel afraid and modern cities made people feel lonely. Readers are taken to consciousness (...) raising groups, nude swimming at alternative vacation camps, and into the squatted houses of the early 1980s. Häberlen draws on a kaleidoscope of different voices to explore how West Germans became more concerned with their selves, their feelings, and their bodies. By investigating how leftists tried to transform themselves through emotional practices, Häberlen gives us a fresh perspective on a fascinating aspect of West German history. (shrink)

One of the main elements of Sartre[aut]Sartre, Jean-Paul’s original contribution to social ontologyOntologysocial is his distinction between groups and collectives. Groups and collectives are both gatherings of individuals, but they are very different social entities.

Emotions play an important part in moral life. Within clinical ethics support (CES), one should take into account the crucial role of emotions in moral cases in clinical practice. In this paper, we present an Aristotelian approach to emotions. We argue that CES can help participants deal with emotions by fostering a joint process of investigation of the role of emotions in a case. This investigation goes beyond empathy with and moral judgment of the (...) class='Hi'>emotions of the case presenter. In a moral case deliberation, the participants are invited to place themselves in the position of the case presenter and to investigate their own emotions in the situation. It is about critically assessing the facts in the case that cause the emotion and the related (moral) thoughts that accompany the emotion. It is also about finding the right emotion in a given situation and finding the right balance in dealing with that emotion. These steps in the moral inquiry give rise to group learning. It is a process of becoming open towards the perspectives of others, leading to new insights into what is an appropriate emotion in the specific situation. We show how this approach works in moral case deliberation. A physician presents a situation in which he is faced with a pregnant woman who is about to deliver multiple extremely premature infants at the threshold of viability. The moral deliberation of the case and the emotions therein leads to the participants’ conclusion that “compassion” is a more adequate emotion than “sadness”. The emotion “sadness” is pointed towards the tragedy that is happening to the woman. The emotion “compassion” is pointed towards the woman; it combines consideration and professional responsibility. Through the shift towards compassion, participants experienced more creativity and freedom to deal with the sad situation and to support the woman. The paper ends with an analysis and reflection on the deliberation process. In the conclusion we argue for more attention to emotions in clinical ethics support and offer some directions for doing this in the right way. (shrink)

Given the fundamental role of emotional intelligence in learning, especially in virtual learning contexts where individuals experience more stress and anxiety, the need to understand and recognize one's own feelings and the mutual feelings of peers has gained more importance. Flow as the ultimate state in harnessing emotions in the service of performance and learning has been introduced as the main reason for one's willingness to perform activities which are connected to no external motivation. In this regard, the present (...) study was conducted to first introduce a new educational program to enhance the EI level in the English as a foreign language online education environment and next to investigate the possibility of raising EFL learners' perceived flow. To achieve these goals, the study recruited a sample of 67 EFL learners who were next divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group received the EI intervention over 10 weeks and the control group received the ordinary online EFL instruction. Data were collected through EI and flow questionnaires and semi-structured interviews which focused on learners' perception of the EI intervention and signs of enhanced flow. Statistical analysis of the data showed a positive effect of the program on the learners' EI and their perceived flow. The study emphasizes the role of applying positive emotions in making language learners more engaged in online classroom tasks. (shrink)

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional (...) response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)