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“In My Fiction I Never Say Anything Which Is Not Absolutely True”: Reassessing Constance Fenimore Woolson’S Literary Realism, Ashley N. Hemm

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Despite her immense popularity in the nineteenth century, Constance Fenimore Woolson's reputation dwindled substantially in the decades which followed. While her works have been rediscovered over the past thirty years, they are often categorized as regionalist writing or, in the case of her penultimate novel, Jupiter Lights, melodrama. What many fail to consider, however, is that Woolson very much considered herself a realist author, and may have been remembered as such were it not for the influence of William Dean Howells and his peers, whose very narrow parameters for literary realism excluded Woolson, among others. Unfortunately, those parameters are …

Emotional And Autonomic Responding To Auditory Stimuli, Jeremy C. Peres

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Much of the research examining emotion induction, regulation, and suppression considers solely the visual modality (e.g., pictures of faces) for emotion elicitation. In reality, emotions are cued, expressed, and interpreted through multiple modalities by employing the extensive use of auditory stimuli in addition to visual stimuli. There have been some recent efforts to offset this imbalance in modality preference by using emotional auditory stimuli alone or in addition to visual stimuli. This project aims to further investigate emotional and autonomic responding to auditory stimuli with the added component of examining differential responding across social (nonlinguistic vocal expression) and non-social auditory …

Measuring Physiological Arousal Towards Packaging: Tracking Electrodermal Activity Within The Consumer Shopping Environment, Rupert Andrew Hurley, Dan E. Hutcherson, Charles E. Tonkin, Shaundra B. Dailey, Julie C. Rice

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Contrasted against the popular belief that consumers make purely rational decisions, purchasing decisions are rapid, subconscious, and emotional decisions. In order to understand a consumer’s purchasing decisions, we suggest finding methods beyond focus groups, which typify this type of research, to measure and interpret consumer reactions to various packaging designs. In this paper, we examine electrodermal activity, a measure of emotional arousal, and eye tracking in the context of a realistic shopping environment as possible measures to support insight into customer preference of packaging. We hypothesized that presenting consumers with an experience more closely related to actual shopping would encourage …

Multi-Modal Outcomes From Interpersonal Need (Un)Fulfillment: The Emotional, Cognitive And Behavioral Derivatives Of Consecutive Social Contingencies, Kyle Steven Hull

Doctoral Dissertations

The current study assessed the relationship between the core dimensions of interpersonal communication and relationships, power and intimacy, on the activation of individualistic-prosocial affect systems and subsequent interpersonal outcomes. Despite extensive research examining each dimension, mixed findings are prevalent and few have investigated their potential interaction. This study addressed these issues based on current trends in interdisciplinary research. Specifically, manipulated social triumph-defeat was followed by social inclusion-exclusion to examine their combined effect on interpersonal outcomes. Results indicate that the power and intimacy manipulations were successful, however, the relationship between them was not interactive. The current findings contradict the logical expansion …

Color Me, Please: How Color-Emotion Pairs Affect Our Perceptions, Russell T. Rogers

Honors College Theses

Color-emotion pairings are part of everyday experience, and they develop in early childhood. Emotional experiences are typically much stronger when emotional stimuli (e.g., pictures or videos) are paired with sensory stimuli (e.g., sights or sounds). Since the presence of these sensory stimuli seems to heighten the emotional experience of emotion-evoking visual stimuli, it should be the case that such pairings will allow the manipulation of color-emotion pairings through the presence of a color (a visual stimulus) during an emotional situation (such as watching a video). In this study (N = 44), we paired both a positive and negative video …

Understanding Emotion In Relation To Drinking Motivation, Melissa C. Hinely

Honors College Theses

Recent research has uncovered the interactions between implicit alcohol motivations and drinking behaviors after emotion inductions (Ostafin & Brooks, 2011). However, little research has supplemented such findings. This longitudinal two-part study examined the impact of a personalized emotion induction on implicit alcohol-related associations in a college sample enrolled at southern university. 215 participants were randomly assigned to one of three emotion-induction conditions (negative, neutral, or positive). During phase I, participants completed a baseline Implicit Association Tests (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) to assess implicit alcohol-related cognitions related to valence and motivation. Based on condition, participants were also asked to describe …

Integration Of Audio-~Visual Emotional Information In Schizophrneia, Bern Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Schizophrenia (SZ) is a debilitating illness characterized by a number of perceptual and

cognitive deficits. Deficits in emotional judgment and perception are consistently identified, although less is known about the integration of emotional information from separate sensory modalities. This study investigates the integration of auditory and visual emotional information in schizophrenia and healthy controls through application of an emotion judgment task modeled after the McGurk effect. The emotional judgments of 54 participants (40 SZ and 14 control participants from the community) for auditory, visual, and bimodal phonemic stimuli conveying no lexical information were analyzed. Visual and auditory stimuli conveying joy …

Contemplating Mindfulness At Work: An Integrative Review, Christopher Lyddy, Darren J. Good, Theresa M. Glomb, Joyce E. Bono, Kirk W. Brown, Michelle K. Duffy, Ruth A. Baer, Judson A. Brewer, Sara W. Lazar

School of Business Faculty Publications

Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management research investigating a broad range of constructs. The framework identifies how mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being. Consideration of the evidence on mindfulness at work stimulates important …

Emotional Responses Following Sports-Related Concussion; A Pilot Study With Controls, Eva Keatley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mild traumatic brain injury is associated with new onset emotional symptoms (Caroll et al., 2014; Konrad et al., 2011). This study will address a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between mTBI, autonomic arousal, and emotional symptoms in the acute phase of a concussion in athletes. In this pilot study, skin conduction and heart rate changes in response to emotional stimuli were measured in 25 undergraduate controls. Results indicate that emotional valence of facial expressions did not elicit the expected differential physiological responses as suggested by previous research, but habituation to an acoustic startle over repeated exposures was …

Moral Judgment As Information Processing: An Integrative Review, Steve Guglielmo

Steve Guglielmo

The Abcs Of Stress Responding: Examining The Time Course Of Affective, Biological, And Cognitive Responses To Induced Stress As Prospective Predictors Of Depressive Symptoms, Marissa Erin Rudolph

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

Vulnerability-stress models of depression posit risk for depression is characterized by the presence of underlying affective, biological, and cognitive vulnerabilities that become activated during life stress exposure. Extant research has shown heightened reactivity to stress across these vulnerability domains predicts depression; however, little is known whether the persistence of and failure to down-regulate these maladaptive stress responses conveys greater risk of depression than initial reactivity alone. The current study examined associations between the time course of responses to a laboratory stress induction and depressive symptoms. I hypothesized that prolonged maladaptive responses to the stressor across affective (state negative affect; NA), …

Distinct Effects Of Contrast And Color On Subjective Rating Of Fearfulness, Zhengang Lu, Bingbing Guo, Anne Boguslavsky, Marcus Cappiello, Weiwei Zhang, Ming Meng

Dartmouth Scholarship

Natural scenes provide important affective cues for observers to avoid danger. From an adaptationist perspective, such cues affect the behavior of the observer and shape the evolution of the observer’s response. It is evolutionarily significant for individuals to extract affective information from the environment as quickly and as efficiently as possible. However, the nearly endless variations in physical appearance of natural scenes present a fundamental challenge for perceiving significant visual information. How image-level properties, such as contrast and color, influence the extraction of affective information leading to subjective emotional perception is unclear. On the one hand, studies have shown that …

Can Non-Haptic Manipulation Of Temperature Influence The Same Emotions As Ostracism?, Rebecca Ann Oglesby

Theses and Dissertations

I explored the possibility that temperature can alter the same variables affected by ostracism (i.e., being ignored and excluded): belonging, control, meaningful existence, and self-esteem need satisfaction, feelings of ostracism, mood, and loneliness. According to the theory of embodied cognition, individuals can associate physical warmth with social intimacy, as well as cold temperatures with social isolation (Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008; IJzerman et al., 2012). Bargh and Shalev (2012) found that participants holding a cold pack reported higher loneliness than participants holding a neutral or warm pack. My study expands upon Bargh and Shalevâ??s (2012) findings by examining more emotions frequently …

Emotional Facial Expressions In Synthesised Sign Language Avatars: A Manual Evaluation., Robert G Smith, Brian Nolan

Other Resources

This research explores and evaluates the contribution that facial expressions might have regarding improved comprehension and acceptability in sign language avatars. Focusing specifically on Irish sign language (ISL), the Deaf (the uppercase ‘‘D’’ in the word ‘‘Deaf’’ indicates Deaf as a culture as opposed to ‘‘deaf’’ as a medical condition) community’s responsiveness to sign language avatars is examined. The hypothesis of this is as follows: augmenting an existing avatar with the seven widely accepted universal emotions identified by Ekman (Basic emotions: handbook of cognition and emotion. Wiley, London, 2005) to achieve underlying facial expressions will make that avatar more human-like …

Improving Lawyers’ Judgment: Is Mediation Training De-Biasing?, Douglas N. Frenkel, James H. Stark

All Faculty Scholarship

When people are placed in a partisan role or otherwise have an objective they seek to accomplish, they are prone to pervasive cognitive and motivational biases. These judgmental distortions can affect what people believe and wish to find out, the predictions they make, the strategic decisions they employ, and what they think is fair. A classic example is confirmation bias, which can cause its victims to seek and interpret information in ways that are consistent with their pre-existing views or the goals they aim to achieve. Studies consistently show that experts as well as laypeople are prone to such biases, …

Taking Risks With Their Hearts: Risk And Emotion In Innovative Forms Of Assessment, Tania Leiman, Elizabeth Abery, Eileen M. Willis

Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice

Research involving student and tutor responses to a ‘pedagogy of the heart’ approach in a first year university health science topic revealed anxiety, insecurity and perceptions of unpredictability in relation to an innovative arts-based assignment designed to elicit and assess experiential or imaginal knowledge. Using the lens of contemporary theories of risk, and explicitly considering the role of emotion in assessment, this paper identifies both the effectiveness of and challenges encountered in this form of assessment. It also explores the relationships between risk and emotion, and between risk and assessment, particularly for young people in the higher education context. By …

The Experience Of Recalling Christian Spiritual Songs On Affect Dysregulation In The Mood And Anxiety Disorders, Nancy J. Cochran

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Although existing treatment methods for the mood and anxiety disorders have improved the lives of many who suffer from these conditions, there remains a significant portion of the population for whom these methods are only partially effective or are ineffective entirely. The purpose of the present study was to explore the experiences of a spiritually-integrated music therapy intervention with a nonclinical population during times of affect dysregulation. Ten participants used this intervention over the course of a two-week period and were interviewed regarding their experiences. The results indicated that the participants were impacted in their biological, spiritual, social and psychological …

Fear Feedback Loop: Creative And Dynamic Fear Experiences Driven By User Emotion, Charlene Dimeglio

Theses

This thesis examines whether it is possible to generate fear-eliciting media that custom fits to the user. The system described uses a genetic algorithm to produce images that get more scary through the generations in reaction to either physiological signals obtained from the user or a user-provided fear rating. The system was able to detect differing levels of fear using a regression trained on EEG and heart rate data gathered while users view clips from horror movies. It was also found to produce images with significantly higher fear ratings at the fifth generation as compared to the first generation. These …

Inversion Effects Reveal Dissociations In Facial Expression Of Emotion, Gender, And Object Processing, Pamela M. Pallett, Ming Meng

Dartmouth Scholarship

To distinguish between high-level visual processing mechanisms, the degree to which holistic processing is involved in facial identity, facial expression, and object perception is often examined through measuring inversion effects. However, participants may be biased by different experimental paradigms to use more or less holistic processing. Here we take a novel psychophysical approach to directly compare human face and object processing in the same experiment, with face processing broken into two categories: variant properties and invariant properties as they were tested using facial expressions of emotion and gender, respectively. Specifically, participants completed two different perceptual discrimination tasks. One involved making …

Associations Between Alexithymia And Executive Function In Younger And Older Adults, Gennarina Diane Santorelli

Masters Theses

The prevalence of alexithymia, a condition characterized by difficulties identifying and verbalizing one’s emotions, increases across the lifespan, with older adults reporting greater alexithymic features than young and middle-aged adults. This late-life increase in alexithymia may be the product of age-related decline in prefrontal brain circuitry implicated in emotional awareness and executive processes, notably in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). There is a dearth of research on the link between executive function and alexithymia in healthy adults. This study determined associations between alexithymia and executive function in healthy younger and older adults. Higher alexithymia scores were predicted to be associated …

Mindfulness, Emotions, And Mental Models: Theory That Leads To More Effective Dispute Resolution, Peter Reilly

Peter R. Reilly

At the core of nearly all great negotiators, mediators, lawyers, and leaders is a person who has learned to connect with other people, that is, to build relationships of trust, cooperation, and collaboration. This Article argues that when people learn a sense of "self" and "other" through both theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of mindfulness and human emotion, connections with others are more likely to be made, and important relationships are more likely to be built.

My goal, then, is to begin thinking about how one might bring mindfulness and emotions from the “mind level” to what human relations …

"I Second That Emotion": Minding How Plagiarism Feels, Ann E. Biswas

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

It stands to reason that when writing teachers believe their students have plagiarized, they will experience strong emotions that impact their relationships with students, their pedagogy, and their sense of professional identity. Far from being a threat to reason, understanding and acknowledging writing teachers’ emotional responses to plagiarism can lead to a deeper wisdom of its true impact. By examining the literature on emotion from psychology, sociology, education, and writing studies as well as findings from a pilot study of writing teachers’ emotional responses to plagiarism, this article argues that the work involved in managing the emotions of plagiarism reflects …

An Examination Of Impulsivity In Adolescence: Frontal Alpha Eeg Markers And Relations With Emotion Regulation, Ellie Johnston, Stuart Johnstone, Joseph Ciarrochi

joseph Ciarrochi

Abstract presented at the 23rd Australasian Society for Psychophysiology Conference, 20-22 Nov 2013, Wollongong, Australia

The Effects Of Alcohol On The Interpretation Of Social And Emotional Cues: A Field Study Of College Student Drinking, Emotion Recognition, And Perceptions Of A Hypothetical Sexual Assault, Alexander James Melkonian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol use and abuse among emerging adults is highly correlated with increased risk for sexual victimization. Alcohol myopia theory has been used to explain impairments in Social information processing resulting in decreased attention to environmental Social cues including risk factors for sexual assault as well as facial emotional recognition. Those with deficits in Social information processing may be at particular risk for the misperception of salient risk factors for sexual assault by victims, perpetrators, and bystanders when intoxicated. In this naturalistic field study, participants who had been consuming alcohol were recruited to engage in tasks of facial emotion recognition and …

I Judge, Therefore I React: An Experimental Investigation Of Acceptance, Jennifer Ann Shaver

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study was designed to provide empirical tests of some of the mechanisms thought to operate in mindfulness-based treatments. Specifically, I tested the hypothesis that appraising distress judgmentally (as a needless and useless indication of personal weakness) would be associated with experiencing meta-distress (e.g., feeling ashamed about being distressed), which would, in turn, be associated with increased experiential avoidance (i.e., suppression or distraction from the distress) and shorter distress tolerance. In addition, I examined the hypothesis that compassionately appraising distress (as normal, understandable, and potentially a source of growth) would be associated with spending more time curiously exploring that …

Age Differences In The Impact Of Emotional Cues On Subsequent Target Detection, Brandon Wade Coffey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Emotional cues within the environment capture our attention and influence how we perceive our surroundings. Past research has shown that emotional cues presented before the detection of a perceptual gap can actually impair the perception of elementary visual features (e.g., the lack of detail creating a spatial gap) while simultaneously improving the perception of fast temporal features of vision (e.g., the rapid onset, offset, and re-emergence of a stimulus). This effect has been attributed to amygdalar enhancements of visual inputs conveying emotional features along magnocellular channels. The current study compared participants’ ability to detect spatial and temporal gaps in simple …

A Case Study Illustrating The Importance Of Educating The Whole Person By Using The Arts As A Supplementary Training Tool In Workplace Learning, Matilda Mettälä

The Qualitative Report

From a humanistic, learner-centered view this practical case study involving Tetra Pak, a world leadingfood processing and packaging solution company,explores the role of emotion in learning and the arts as a supplementary training tool by describing and interpreting their new employee orientation trainings based on the facilitator’s accounts. This case will illustrate the added value the arts contribute as well as the need to include the whole person-concept in workplace learning. This case does not suggest an exact design with specifications of how this kind of training should be conducted, but rather this specific study will offer additional knowledgeby exemplifying …

Dancing In Silence, Moyu Zhang

Theses

I seek to create objects that reveal their essential quality and simplicity as a means to convey my attitudes toward life. I intend to capture the essence of emotion by looking deeply into the spiritual and the invisible through my pieces.

I intend to apply two very different visual logics: minimal simplicity and a richness of color and form. I hope to create contrast, tension, and a sense of discovery. I want to experiment with materials, such as different wood species, stained wood, and acrylic painted wood; I also want to experiment with colors, textures, patterns and graphics. I see …

Effects Of Virtual Humans’ Facial Emotional Displays On Persuasion, Yuqiong Wang

Theses

This dissertation explores the effect of virtual humans’ facial emotional displays in the context of persuasion. In a collaborative problem-solving game, participants received persuasive information from a virtual teammate. The first study demonstrated that a subservient virtual teammate’s facial emotional displays reduced his or her persuasive capacity. The second study revealed that the effect of a virtual human’s facial emotional displays was jointly determined by whether the observer was in power, and/or whether the observer considered it appropriate to express emotions. Emotional expressions undermined persuasion when the observer overpowered the virtual human, and/or when the observer perceived emotional expressions to …

Does Our Fear Of Death Stem From Threatened Belongingness?, Stan Treger

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine the relative contribution to worldview defense (i.e., upholding one’s cultural worldviews) provided by the thoughts of one’s death and perceptions of curbed close relationships.

The need to belong, to form meaningful and strong ties with others, is what many social psychologists believe to be one of the most fundamental and strongest motivations that humans possess (Baumeister, 2012; Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, & Schaller, 2010; Tomasello, 2014). The human brain is “hard-wired” to be around others (Beckes & Coan, 2011). In fact, large social group sizes of humans’ evolutionary past may have contributed …