Affective Images of Climate Change

Climate change is not only a scientific phenomenon, but also a cultural one. Individuals’ opinions on climate change are often based on emotion rather than on scientific evidence. Therefore, research into the emotional characteristics of the imagery that the non-expert public find relevant to climate change is important in order to build a database of effective climate change imagery, which can then be used by scientists, policymakers, and practitioners in mobilizing climate adaptation and resilience efforts. To this end, we collected ratings of relevance to climate change as well as emotional arousal and valence on 320 images to assess the relationship between relevance to climate change and the emotional qualities of the image. In addition, participants’ environmental beliefs were measured, to investigate the relationship between beliefs and image ratings. The results suggest that images rated highly relevant to climate change are higher in negative emotional valence and emotional arousal. Overall, images were rated as being more relevant to climate change by participants with higher pro-environmental disposition. Critically, we have compiled the mean relevance, valence, and arousal ratings of each of these 320 images into a database that is posted online and freely available (https://affectiveclimateimages.weebly.com; https://www.nmu.edu/affectiveclimateimages) for use in future research on climate change visuals

Beneath the surface:How social inhibition affects stress and emotion regulation

Sociale geremdheid is een persoonlijkheidskenmerk dat gekenmerkt wordt door angst voor, en het vermijden van, onbekende situaties. Sociaal geremde mensen zijn gevoeliger voor sociale dreiging en onderdrukken emotionele expressie, gedachten en gedragingen tijdens sociale interacties. Eerder onderzoek laat zien dat sociale geremdheid samen zou kunnen hangen met een verslechterde psychologische en lichamelijke gezondheid, maar hoe en waarom dit zo is bij sociaal geremde volwassenen is nog onduidelijk. Daarom was het doel van dit proefschrift om meer inzicht te krijgen in sociale geremdheid bij volwassenen, en kennis te vergaren over de lichamelijke en psychologische processen die gerelateerd zijn aan dit persoonlijkheidskenmerk. Onderzoeksmethoden De eerste stap was om een meetinstrument te ontwikkelen dat sociale geremdheid bij volwassenen betrouwbaar en valide kan meten. Met dit meetinstrument waren we in staat om te bekijken in hoeverre mensen met en zonder deze persoonlijkheidstrek van elkaar verschillen op bepaalde uitkomsten. Daarna hebben we een aantal stress- en emotieregulatie experimenten uitgevoerd in het Gedrags-fysiologisch Onderzoekslaboratorium (GO-Lab) om te bestuderen hoe sociaal geremde mensen reageren op stress en hoe ze omgaan met bepaalde emoties (verdriet, boosheid). Belangrijkste conclusies De uitkomsten van dit proefschrift laten zien dat sociaal geremde mensen meer psychologische en lichamelijke stress ervaren en minder goed kunnen omgaan met negatieve emoties, wat op den duur kan leiden tot stress-gerelateerde gezondheidsproblemen. Dit komt voornamelijk doordat sociaal geremde mensen sociale situaties als bedreigend ervaren en daardoor meer op hun hoede zijn, wat zorgt voor een herhaalde activatie van het stress-systeem. Daarnaast hebben sociaal geremde mensen de neiging om de (negatieve) gevoelens die ze ervaren te vermijden of onderdrukken, om niet te laten zien hoe ze zich echt voelen, uit angst voor afwijzing van anderen. Het vermijden en onderdrukken van emoties hangt samen met het ervaren van meer angst en stress, en zou een risico factor kunnen zijn voor het ontwikkelen van psychologische en lichamelijke aandoeningen. Belangrijkste aanbevelingen De bevindingen tonen aan dat het belangrijk is om sociaal geremde mensen te ondersteunen bij het managen van hun emotionele en lichamelijke welzijn. Het ontwikkelen en testen van interventies die gericht zijn op het emotionele en lichamelijke risicoprofiel van sociale remming is daarom essentieel

Positive Sustainable Built Environments: The Cognitive and Behavioral Affordances of Environmentally Responsible Behavior in Green Residence Halls

A changing climate and global resource degradation have prompted technological innovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are responsive to local ecological conditions. Green buildings that minimize the environmental impacts of the construction process and ongoing maintenance of the built environment, have been praised for their resource efficiency, design innovation, and benefits to building occupants. Increasingly, a growing body of literature has begun to examine the mutually beneficial relationships between sustainable architecture and building occupants. In addition to the well-documented benefits of inhabiting green buildings, the environmentally responsible behaviors (ERBs) of building occupants are worthy of examination. As a counterbalance to the dominant narrative in the green building industry that frames the building occupant as a potential energy liability, this research adopts a hopeful perspective of human behavior. Human behavior, though a significant contributor to global climate change, can also be part of the solution. This dissertation asserts that the situational context of green buildings may be designed to support the ERBs of building occupants. Much of the current research examining occupant ERBs in green buildings has focused exclusively on educational buildings, or buildings designed with a pedagogical intent (e.g., schools, museums, libraries). Less is known about how occupants learn about issues of sustainability and adopt environmental behaviors in buildings that are not designed to teach. This dissertation focuses on the environmental behaviors emerging from the informal relationship between undergraduate students and their on-campus residence halls, asking how the built environment supports or undermines the ERBs of occupants in green and non-green buildings over time. This dissertation develops and tests a theoretical model for understanding how buildings may support occupant ERBs. The Positive Sustainable Built Environments (PSBE) model is composed of three principle domains: Prime, Permit, and Invite. Collectively, the three components of the PSBE model suggest that a building 1) may prepare occupants to participate in ERBs through the restoration of their mental resources and/or by communicating a sustainable ethos, 2) may allow building occupants to control aspects of the interior environment related to their own energy and resource consumption, and 3) may encourage occupants to engage in ERBs through building features that implement a variety of behavioral intervention strategies. Occupant ERBs were measured over the course of one academic year through an online survey conducted with the first-time residents of six undergraduate residence halls. While many studies have explored the effectiveness of environmental behavior change intervention strategies with undergraduate students, very little research has examined the pre-existing psychological dimensions and the situational context of green buildings that may influence students’ environmental behaviors. The results of a linear mixed-effects regression analysis revealed no significant relationship between occupying a green residence hall and students’ ERBs. However, a further analysis of specific building characteristics, analyzed according to the PSBE model, suggest strong support for two of the three domains. The Prime and Invite domains were found to positively support occupant ERBs, regardless of the greenness of the residence hall. Additionally, several personal characteristics (i.e., Biospheric values, Environmental Concern, Technology motive, and Egoistic values) were found to significantly impact students’ ERBs. Results are discussed in light of implications for designers seeking to harness the existing environmental inclinations of college students and to adapt the physical and informational environments of residence halls to better support environmentally responsible behavior.PHDArch&Nat ResEnv PhDUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147618/1/emham_1.pd

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Examining the psychological preparation and management of performance by elite and sub-elite endurance sport performers: a systematic review

Successful endurance performance is commonly attributed to the athlete who possesses the right blend of physical and mental capabilities, to cope with the specific demands of an endurance sport, in tough environmental conditions. Sport psychology is important for a variety of sports, especially endurance-based sports, given the mental and physical effort required to effectively train and compete at varying intensities and duration. The growing interest for endurance performance, has resulted in some narrative reviews examining the specific skills that may enhance performance, such as self-talk, attentional control, and active self-regulatory strategies. A systematic review focused on experimental or quasi-experimental studies, with largely non-elite populations, to address the psychological determinants of whole-body endurance performance for which strategies work best. [Continues.

Salience Perspectives

In the philosophy of language and epistemology, debates often centre on what content a person is communicating, or representing in their mind. How that content is organised, along dimensions of salience, has received relatively little attention. I argue that salience matters. Mere change of salience patterns, without change of content, can have dramatic implications, both epistemic and moral. Imagine two newspaper articles that offer the same information about a subject, but differ in terms of what they headline. These articles can be said to adopt different linguistic salience perspectives. Making different things salient in language is a way of making different things salient in an audience’s mind: it is a way of encouraging the audience to adopt a particular cognitive salience perspective. Building on Elisabeth Camp’s work on perspectives, and Sebastian Watzl’s work on attention, I suggest that one has a certain cognitive salience perspective in virtue of better noticing, remembering, and finding cognitively accessible certain contents over others. Drawing on psychological research into cognitive biases and framing effects, I argue that that simply making some content salient in the mind, perhaps through first making it salient in language, can be sufficient to activate substantive cultural beliefs or ideologies associated with that content. Where those beliefs and ideologies have epistemic and moral problems, we have grounds for criticising the salience perspective that causally produced them. Besides this instrumental harm, I also suggest that certain salience perspectives can themselves constitute harm. I draw on feminist work on objectification to argue that making the wrong thing salient about a person can constitute a way of dehumanising them. A great many factors, from physical and psychological violence, to false beliefs and credibility deficits, have already been identified as potentially harming an individual or group. What is distinctive about this argument, then, is the idea that, sometimes, mere patterns of salience can be damaging in and of themselves.I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Faculty of Philosophy for financial support, which enabled me to complete this thesis

Cross-cultural evidence for the influence of positive self-evaluation on cross-cultural differences in well-being

Poster Session F - Well-Being: abstract F197We propose that cultural norms about realism and hedonism contribute to the cross-cultural differences in well-being over and above differences in objective living conditions. To test this hypothesis, we used samples from China and the United States. Results supported the mediating role of positive evaluative bias in cross-cultural differences in well-being.postprin

Values and need satisfaction across 20 world regions

Poster Session F - Motivation/Goals: abstract F78Intrinsic valuing predicts the satisfaction of psychological needs (Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009). We conceptually replicate and extend this finding across 20 world regions. In multi-level models, Schwartz’s (1992) self-transcendence value was positively related to autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction, even when controlling for the Big Five.postprin