Humility-Based Persuasion: Individual Differences in Elicited Emotions and Politician Evaluation

The notion of humility has been neglected in the field of political communication in favor of the persuasive strength of a dominant leader. Humility is defined here as an interpersonal and epistemic stance aimed, on one side, at involving the interlocutor in an empathic and horizontal relation, and on the other, at admitting possible shortcomings in one’s own knowledge or competence, as inherent in human nature. The present study investigates the effect of humble communication on emotional and evaluative reactions of potential voters by taking into consideration their individual differences in terms of perceived competence (self-esteem), benevolence (moral relevance), and dominance (social dominance orientation). Results reveal that a social dominance is a good predictor of negative emotions and evaluations elicited by a humble politician, whereas self-esteem and moral sensitivity are best predictors of positive emotions and positive evaluations of a humble politician. The results shed light on possible “humble-based interventions” to promote voters’ political empowerment

Schadenfreude: Malicious Joy in Social Media Interactions

The paper presents a model of Schadenfreude, pleasure at another’s misfortune, resulting in a typology of cases of this emotion. Four types are singled out: Compensation, Identification, Aversion, and Injustice Schadenfreude. The typology is first tested on a corpus of 472 comments drawn from three social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Then a specific corpus of comments is collected and analyzed concerning a specific case of Injustice Schadenfreude, the posts concerning Brexit, United Kingdom leaving the European Union. From the analysis, it emerges that spatial or factual closeness does not look necessary to feel Schadenfreude. Finally, a lexicometric automatic analysis is conducted on the general corpus of Italian comments collected using several hashtags and enriched by comments about the fire of Notre Dame, showing how even complex emotions like Schadenfreude can be automatically extracted from social media

Fostering Forgiveness Through the REACH Forgiveness Model to Dispel the Angry Black Woman Trope

For generations, the African American community has felt lingering reminders of the oppression of their ancestors. Consequently, this oppression may have inhibited forgiveness or the ability to forgive. Unforgiveness can be expressed in many forms, but most commonly as anger, bitterness, and rage. The American culture depicts the African American woman in the media as an “Angry Black Woman,” neglecting her existence as a pillar to her family and community and the stressors that accompany this role. Research is lacking around forgiveness models using the population of African American women. The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the literature for this demographic by guiding African American women in being more forgiving using a psychoeducational workshop implementing the Worthington REACH Forgiveness workshop resources, in the efforts of dispelling the “Angry Black Woman” trope. The research design was completed using a qualitative case study of four African American women, age 18-65, from the eastern region of the United States of America. The data revealed that the participants responded positively to the REACH workshop. Three primary themes emerged from the data analysis: Awareness and Reflection, Validation, and Empathy Repairs Emotional Unforgiveness, as well as five subthemes: Improved Relationships, Perceptions and Social Norms, Passion versus Anger, Acceptance of Self, and Moral Conflicts

Mental Health Advocacy on Social Media: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Mental health remains one of today’s most relevant global issues. Mental health organisations (Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, Time to Change) provide resources on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) with the goal to support positive mental health and eradicate societal stigma. The aim of this PhD is to understand how these mental health organisations communicate during social media campaigns. To analyse this, Martin and White’s (2005) appraisal framework is applied to linguistics and visuals, enabling insights into multimodal meaning creation (e.g. through image/post structure, colours, participant representations and gaze). The WHO has previously pointed out that in order to improve global mental health, a "unifying" language needs to be adopted around all sectors of mental health activities, focusing on "health as opposed to illness" (WHO, 2004, p 24). Based on this, RQ1 investigates positive and negative evaluative valence charges. Findings (RQ1) show differences between organisations, with 100% positive visual affected individual evaluations in Mind, 90% in Time to Change (TTC), but only 59% in Rethink Mental Illness. RQ2 applies appraisal theory to explore linguistic and semiotic expression of agency, and finds agency ascribed to affected individuals in 100% of Mind advice posts, through positive capacity judgement evaluations, whilst TTC ascribes the most agency to external & potentially stigmatising societal attitudes. Finally, investigations into how charities position themselves amongst other participant voices using appraisal engagement resources (RQ3), outlines how Mind and TTC present exclusively affected individual acknowledgement engagement direct quotations, whilst Rethink relies on expanding the heteroglossic space to include professional expert voices. Appraisal engagement resources are further expanded to cover creation of unity, whereby Mind and TTC, not only align themselves with, but also position themselves as part of affected individual groups

Interfaces da Psicologia – Qualidade de Vida, Vidas de Qualidade

Pode parecer um paradoxo falar de qualidade de vida quando a turbulência dos mercados tem gerado crises sucessivas nos últimos anos, crises essas que têm remetido os indivíduos para a procura de soluções de vida focadas no evitamento de problemas, parecendo a qualidade um luxo a que não têm direito. Porém, os momentos conturbados são também oportunidades de reformulação do que estava antes estabelecido. As crises económicas e financeiras que têm assolado o mundo nos últimos anos, são certamente um alerta para a necessidade de reformulação de um status quo que sobrevaloriza os resultados em detrimento dos processos. Emergem então oportunidades de olhar para aquilo em que estamos a tornar a nossa vida, e de procurar alternativas que facilitem a valorização do aqui e agora e não apenas do futuro que virá um dia. E a vida interessa-nos em todas as suas dimensões: física, emocional, social, intelectual e espiritual. Na edição de 2011 do Interfaces da Psicologia, teremos como pano de fundo esta reflexão, enquadrada naquele que tem sido o espírito destes eventos. Esse espírito pode ser configurado em duas ideias fundamentais. A primeira, que a especialização progressiva do conhecimento vem ampliar as áreas de intersecção entre saberes, e requerer o diálogo cooperativo entre campos do conhecimento, para a construção da realidade social e para a escolha deliberada do percurso de desenvolvimento das sociedades humanas. A segunda, que a diversidade é hoje uma constante nos ambientes de acção quotidiana dos indivíduos, apelando à flexibilidade mental e à aceitação das diferenças, senão mesmo à sua estimulação. Assim, as temáticas a abordar situam-se em todos os campos do conhecimento, desde que perspectivadas na sua interface com a psicologia e focadas na temática geral do evento. Lançamos por isso o repto a todos aqueles que vêem nesta reflexão um esforço que vale a pena, a apresentarem os seus trabalhos de modo que, juntamente com um desafiador conjunto de convidados, possamos produzir pensamento relevante sobre a qualidade de vida e as vidas de qualidade que queremos para nós, sem que fiquem comprometidas as legítimas aspirações das gerações vindouras

The mental ingredients of Bitterness

In view of multimodal interfaces capable of a detailed representation of the User’s possible emotions, the paper analyses bitterness in terms of its mental ingredients, the beliefs and goals represented in the mind of a person when feeling an emotion. Bitterness is a negative emotion in between anger and sadness: like anger, it is caused by a sense of injustice, but also entails a sense of impotence which makes it similar to sadness. Often caused by betrayal, it comes from the disappointment of an expectation from oneself or anothers with whom one is affectively involved, or from a disproportion between commitment and actual results. The ingredients found in a pilot study were tested through qualitative analysis of a further questionnaire, which confirmed the ingredients hypothesized, further revealing the different nature of bitterness across ages and across types of work