Journal of personality and social psychology
-
There has long been interest in describing emotional experience in terms of underlying dimensions, but traditionally only two dimensions, pleasantness and arousal, have been reliably found. The reasons for these findings are reviewed, and integrating this review with two recent theories of emotions (Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1982), we propose eight cognitive appraisal dimensions to differentiate emotional experience. ⋯ Six orthogonal dimensions, pleasantness, anticipated effort, certainty, attentional activity, self-other responsibility/control, and situational control, were recovered, and the emotions varied systematically along each of these dimensions, indicating a strong relation between the appraisal of one's circumstances and one's emotional state. The patterns of appraisal for the different emotions, and the role of each of the dimensions in differentiating emotional experience are discussed.
-
Facial expressions contribute substantially to judgments of sufferer's pain but have not been rigorously described. We obtained a detailed description of 72 female volunteers' facial reactions to the cold pressor experience, using Ekman and Friesen's (1978a) objective, anatomically based Facial Action Coding System. In addition, we examined the impact of exposure to social models tolerant or intolerant to pain. ⋯ The reactions were most salient at onset, indicating blends of startle, adaptive reaction, emotional expression, and pain, but they declined in vigor over time, although self-report of pain continued to mount. The relation between subjective distress and facial expression was greatest at the beginning of noxious stimulation. The social models had a potent impact on verbal report and pain tolerance but not on facial expression, indicating relative independence of components within the rich range of expressive reactions of painful experience.
-
Following earlier animal research, we attempt to condition placebo effects in human subjects. Four groups of 8 voluntary subjects were told that the experimenters would test a powerful new analgesic cream over three sessions by assessing its ability to reduce experimentally induced pain. The analgesic cream was, in fact, a placebo. ⋯ In the third session, all subjects were again tested for placebo response. Results suggested that placebo responses are conditionable in the laboratory in both a positive and negative direction. The clinical implications of a learning theory of placebo behavior are discussed.
-
Research ( Lauderdale , 1976; Schachter , 1951) suggests that an external threat to a group can lead to the rejection of deviant members of the group and alteration of group communication patterns and solidarity. This study sought to extend those findings, integrate them with concepts from Simmel 's (1917/1955) work on group conflict, and link them to key issues in the societal reaction approach to deviant behavior. ⋯ The results suggest that (a) the level of threat is directly related to the extent of rejection and negative definition, (b) nonconformity to the central task norm is not systematically related to deviant status, (c) high-status actors are more involved in the rejection of the deviant, (d) sociometric rejection of the deviant is accompanied by negative definition in the strong-threat condition, and (e) the level of group solidarity is related to the extent of rejection and negative definition. Implications of these findings are discussed relative to the societal reaction approach to deviant behavior and analogous processes in other social groups.
-
This study examined the notion that personality questionnaires can be used to predict different styles of coping with anxiety as expressed by individual differences in patterns of autonomic, verbal, and nonverbal reactions. In line with earlier modifications of the repression-sensitization concept, the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS) and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (SDS) were used to select four groups of 12 subjects each from a pool of 206 male students in Germany: low-anxious subjects (low MAS, low SDS), repressors (low MAS, high SDS), high-anxious subjects (high MAS, low SDS), and defensive high-anxious subjects (high MAS, high SDS). ⋯ Significant differences in baseline-corrected heart rate and self-reported anxiety as well as rated facial anxiety all indicated that repressors exhibited a discrepancy between low self-reported anxiety and high heart rate and facial anxiety; low-anxious subjects reported an intermediate level of anxiety, although they showed low heart rate and facial anxiety; high-anxious subjects had consistently high values on all three variables; and the defensive high-anxious group showed an intermediate level of anxious responding. These group differences were specific to the task of freely associating to phrases of mixed (sexual, aggressive, neutral) content (but not to other experimental situations) and to self-reported anxiety (but not to other self-rated emotions or task difficult), indicating that they reflect individual differences in coping with anxiety.