115 research outputs found
Mobile Belonging in Digital Exile: Methodological Reflection on Doing Ethnography on (Social) Media Practices
Life in exile presents hardship and brings with it multiple personal and socio-political challenges and grievances. Being forced into separation from family and home society often stimulates the desire to maintain belonging and contact with families and communities. "Co-presence" and "being there" require a lot of personal effort and commitment. Communication and mediation strategies have a special significance as everyday practices in social and digital media technologies. "Mobile belonging" and staying connected across various online and offline spaces and in various social and political environments and communities can be a constant requirement in digital exile. After an introduction to relevant literature about the complexity of media communication, belonging, and migration, the article examines mobile media technologies and the central role they play in everyday exile. Following a discussion about the notion of "digital exile" and "mobile belonging," the second part of the article will focus on a specific case study of an Iranian artist and activist living in exile in Germany. It will show how (social) media promotes activism and performance in both online and offline public spaces as practices of "mobile belonging here and there" during the Covid-19 pandemic. Thirdly, the article will turn to a methodological reflection about doing ethnographic research on digital exile and practices of mobile belonging. With a systematic description of applied methods, early developments in multi-modal ethnography will be outlined that illustrate how collaboration and co-creation promise innovative directions for doing ethnography on digital exile in the different-yet-shared times of the pandemic crisis
Reversing Threat to Safety: Incongruence of Facial Emotions and Instructed Threat Modulates Conscious Perception but Not Physiological Responding
Facial expressions inform about other peoples’ emotion and motivation and thus are
central for social communication. However, the meaning of facial expressions may
change depending on what we have learned about the related consequences. For
instance, a smile might easily become threatening when displayed by a person who is
known to be dangerous. The present study examined the malleability of emotional facial
valence by means of social learning. To this end, facial expressions served as cues for
verbally instructed threat-of-shock or safety (e.g., “happy faces cue shocks”). Moreover,
reversal instructions tested the flexibility of threat/safety associations (e.g., “now
happy faces cue safety”). Throughout the experiment, happy, neutral, and angry facial
expressions were presented and auditory startle probes elicited defensive reflex activity.
Results show that self-reported ratings and physiological reactions to threat/safety cues
dissociate. Regarding threat and valence ratings, happy facial expressions tended to be
more resistant becoming a threat cue, and angry faces remain threatening even when
instructed as safety cue. For physiological response systems, however, we observed
threat-potentiated startle reflex and enhanced skin conductance responses for threat
compared to safety cues regardless of whether threat was cued by happy or angry
faces. Thus, the incongruity of visual and verbal threat/safety information modulates
conscious perception, but not the activation of physiological response systems. These
results show that verbal instructions can readily overwrite the intrinsic meaning of facial
emotions, with clear benefits for social communication as learning and anticipation of
threat and safety readjusted to accurately track environmental changes.This research was supported by the German Research Foundation
(DFG) grant to FB (BU 3255/1-1)
The mere sight of loved ones does not inhibit psychophysiological defense mechanisms when threatened
Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Looking at pictures of loved ones, such as one’s romantic partner or good friends, has been shown to
alleviate the experience of pain and reduce defensive reactions. However, little is known about such
modulatory effects on threat and safety learning and the psychophysiological processes involved.
Here, we explored the hypothesis that beloved faces serve as implicit safety cues and attenuate the
expression of fear responses and/or accelerate extinction learning in a threatening context. Thirtytwo
participants viewed pictures of their loved ones (romantic partner, parents, and best friend) as
well as of unknown individuals within contextual background colors indicating threat-of-shock or
safety. Focusing on the extinction of non-reinforced threat associations (no shocks were given), the
experiment was repeated on two more test days while the defensive startle-EMG, SCR, and threat
ratings were obtained. Results confirmed pronounced defensive responding to instructed threatof-
shock relative to safety context (e.g., threat-enhanced startle reflex and SCR). Moreover, threatpotentiated
startle response slowly declined across test days indicating passive extinction learning in
the absence of shocks. Importantly, neither a main effect of face category (loved vs. unknown) nor a
significant interaction with threat/safety instructions was observed. Thus, a long-term learning history
of beneficial relations (e.g., with supportive parents) did not interfere with verbal threat learning and
aversive apprehensions. These findings reflect the effects of worries and apprehensions that persist
despite the repeated experience of safety and the pictorial presence of loved ones. How to counter
such aversive expectations is key to changing mal-adaptive behaviors (e.g., avoidance or stockpiling),
biased risk perceptions, and stereotypes.Projekt DEA
Verbal threat learning does not spare loved ones
This research was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant to Florian Bublatzky (BU
3255/1-1 and 1-2).Significant others provide individuals with a sense of safety and security. However, the mechanisms
that underlie attachment-induced safety are hardly understood. Recent research has shown beneficial
effects when viewing pictures of the romantic partner, leading to reduced pain experience and
defensive responding. Building upon this, we examined the inhibitory capacity of loved face pictures
on fear learning in an instructed threat paradigm. Pictures of loved familiar or unknown individuals
served as signals for either threat of electric shocks or safety, while a broad set of psychophysiological
measures was recorded. We assumed that a long-term learning history of beneficial relations
interferes with social threat learning. Nevertheless, results yielded a typical pattern of physiological
defense activation towards threat cues, regardless of whether threat was signaled by an unknown or
a loved face. These findings call into question the notion that pictures of loved individuals are shielded
against becoming threat cues, with implications for attachment and trauma research.German Research Foundation (DFG)
BU 3255/1-1
BU 3255/1-
Contextual information resolves uncertainty about ambiguous facial emotions: Behavioral and magnetoencephalographic correlates
We are grateful to Karin Wilken for her assistance in data collection.Environmental conditions bias our perception of other peoples’ facial emotions. This becomes quite relevant in
potentially threatening situations, when a fellow’s facial expression might indicate potential danger. The present
study tested the prediction that a threatening environment biases the recognition of facial emotions. To this end,
low- and medium-expressive happy and fearful faces (morphed to 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40% emotional) were
presented within a context of instructed threat-of-shock or safety. Self-reported data revealed that instructed
threat led to a biased recognition of fearful, but not happy facial expressions. Magnetoencephalographic correlates
revealed spatio-temporal clusters of neural network activity associated with emotion recognition and contextual
threat/safety in early to mid-latency time intervals in the left parietal cortex, bilateral prefrontal cortex, and the
left temporal pole regions. Early parietal activity revealed a double dissociation of face–context information as a
function of the expressive level of facial emotions: When facial expressions were difficult to recognize (lowexpressive), contextual threat enhanced fear processing and contextual safety enhanced processing of subtle
happy faces. However, for rather easily recognizable faces (medium-expressive) the left hemisphere (parietal
cortex, PFC, and temporal pole) showed enhanced activity to happy faces during contextual threat and fearful
faces during safety. Thus, contextual settings reduce the salience threshold and boost early face processing of lowexpressive congruent facial emotions, whereas face-context incongruity or mismatch effects drive neural activity
of easier recognizable facial emotions. These results elucidate how environmental settings help recognize facial
emotions, and the brain mechanisms underlying the recognition of subtle nuances of fear.German Research Foundation (DFG)
BU 3255/1-1
Ju2/024/15
SF58C0
Verbal instructions override the meaning of facial expressions
Psychological research has long acknowledged that facial expressions can implicitly trigger affective
psychophysiological responses. However, whether verbal information can alter the meaning of facial
emotions and corresponding response patterns has not been tested. This study examined emotional
facial expressions as cues for instructed threat-of-shock or safety, with a focus on defensive responding.
In addition, reversal instructions were introduced to test the impact of explicit safety instructions on
fear extinction. Forty participants were instructed that they would receive unpleasant electric shocks,
for instance, when viewing happy but not angry faces. In a second block, instructions were reversed
(e.g., now angry faces cued shock). Happy, neutral, and angry faces were repeatedly presented, and
auditory startle probes were delivered in half of the trials. The defensive startle reflex was potentiated
for threat compared to safety cues. Importantly, this effect occurred regardless of whether threat
was cued by happy or angry expressions. Although the typical pattern of response habituation was
observed, defense activation to newly instructed threat cues remained significantly enhanced in the
second part of the experiment, and it was more pronounced in more socially anxious participants.
Thus, anxious individuals did not exhibit more pronounced defense activation compared to less anxious
participants, but their defense activation was more persistent
Spatial navigation under threat: aversive apprehensions improve route retracing in higher versus lower trait anxious individuals
Spatial navigation is a basic function for survival, and the ability to retrace a route has direct relevance for avoiding dangerous places. This study investigates the effects of aversive apprehensions on spatial navigation in a virtual urban environment. Healthy participants with varying degrees of trait anxiety performed a route-repetition and a route-retracing task under threatening and safe context conditions. Results reveal an interaction between the effect of threatening/safe environments and trait anxiety: while threat impairs route-retracing in lower-anxious individuals, this navigational skill is boosted in higher-anxious individuals. According to attentional control theory, this finding can be explained by an attentional shift toward information relevant for intuitive coping strategies (i.e., running away), which should be more pronounced in higher-anxious individuals. On a broader scale, our results demonstrate an often-neglected advantage of trait anxiety, namely that it promotes the processing of environmental information relevant for coping strategies and thus prepares the organism for adequate flight responses
Explicit attention interferes with selective emotion processing in human extrastriate cortex
BACKGROUND: Brain imaging and event-related potential studies provide strong evidence that emotional stimuli guide selective attention in visual processing. A reflection of the emotional attention capture is the increased Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) for pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral images (~150–300 ms poststimulus). The present study explored whether this early emotion discrimination reflects an automatic phenomenon or is subject to interference by competing processing demands. Thus, emotional processing was assessed while participants performed a concurrent feature-based attention task varying in processing demands. RESULTS: Participants successfully performed the primary visual attention task as revealed by behavioral performance and selected event-related potential components (Selection Negativity and P3b). Replicating previous results, emotional modulation of the EPN was observed in a task condition with low processing demands. In contrast, pleasant and unpleasant pictures failed to elicit increased EPN amplitudes compared to neutral images in more difficult explicit attention task conditions. Further analyses determined that even the processing of pleasant and unpleasant pictures high in emotional arousal is subject to interference in experimental conditions with high task demand. Taken together, performing demanding feature-based counting tasks interfered with differential emotion processing indexed by the EPN. CONCLUSION: The present findings demonstrate that taxing processing resources by a competing primary visual attention task markedly attenuated the early discrimination of emotional from neutral picture contents. Thus, these results provide further empirical support for an interference account of the emotion-attention interaction under conditions of competition. Previous studies revealed the interference of selective emotion processing when attentional resources were directed to locations of explicitly task-relevant stimuli. The present data suggest that interference of emotion processing by competing task demands is a more general phenomenon extending to the domain of feature-based attention. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent with the notion of effortlessness, i.e., early emotion discrimination despite concurrent task demands. These findings implicate to assess the presumed automatic nature of emotion processing at the level of specific aspects rather than considering automaticity as an all-or-none phenomenon
Level of uncertainty about the affective nature of a pictorial stimulus influences anticipatory neural processes: An event-related potential (ERP) study
Uncertainty about the emotional impact of future events is a common part of everyday life. However, relatively little is known about whether the level of uncertainty about the affective nature of an upcoming visual image influences anticipatory neurocognitive processes. To investigate this, participants viewed a series of negative and neutral pictures, which were preceded by abstract anticipatory cues. Neural activity was measured using event-related potentials (ERPs). In the ‘uncertain’ cue condition, the cue could be followed by either a negative or a neutral picture with equal probability; in the ‘fairly uncertain’ condition the cue was followed by a negative picture on 70% of trials, and by a neutral picture on 30% of trials. In the ‘certain’ condition, the cue was always followed by a negative picture. For the P200 component, reflecting early stages of selective attention, there was no amplitude difference between cue conditions. At later stages of processing, the early posterior negativity (EPN) amplitude was enhanced for cues indicating a greater level of certainty, and the late positive potential (LPP) amplitude was greater for certain, compared to fairly uncertain and uncertain cues. The stimulus preceding negativity (SPN), an index of anticipatory processing, was more negative for certain cues compared to fairly uncertain and uncertain cues. For the SPN there was no difference between fairly uncertain and uncertain cues. These results provide evidence that the level of uncertainty regarding the affective nature of an upcoming picture influenced several stages of processing during the anticipation of the stimulus
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