Infusing Context Into Emotion Perception Impacts Emotion Decoding Accuracy

The accurate decoding of facial emotion expressions lies at the center of many research traditions in psychology. Much of this research, while paying lip service to the importance of context in emotion perception, has used stimuli that were carefully created to be deprived of contextual information. The participants' task is to associate the expression shown in the face with a correct label, essentially changing a social perception task into a cognitive task. In fact, in many cases, the task can be carried out correctly without engaging emotion recognition at all. The present article argues that infusing context in emotion perception does not only add an additional source of information but changes the way that participants approach the task by rendering it a social perception task rather than a cognitive task. Importantly, distinguishing between accuracy (perceiving the intended emotions) and bias (perceiving additional emotions to those intended) leads to a more nuanced understanding of social emotion perception. Results from several studies that use the Assessment of Contextual Emotions demonstrate the significance and social functionality of simultaneously considering emotion decoding accuracy and bias for social interaction in different cultures, their key personality and societal correlates, and their function for close relationships processes.Peer Reviewe

Adult attachment, cultural orientation, and well-being in Greece

Οι κοινωνικές και διαπροσωπικές σχέσεις επηρεάζουν σημαντικά την ψυχική ευεξία και τη χαρά. Η τάση των ανθρώπων για σχέση σε ατομικό και πολιτισμικό επίπεδο μπορεί να επηρεάσουν, ως έναν βαθμό, την ψυχική ευεξία σε διαφορετικά πολιτισμικά πλαίσια. Το παρόν άρθρο διερεύνησε τον τρόπο με τον οποίο οι προσανατολισμοί δεσμού των ενηλίκων, μια σημαντική πλευρά των διαπροσωπικών σχέσεων, και η ανεξάρτητη και η αλληλοεξαρτώμενη κατασκευή εαυτού, μια πολιτισμική κατηγορία των κοινωνικών σχέσεων, αλληλοσυνδέονται σε ατομικό επίπεδο και μπορούν να προβλέψουν τη ψυχική ευεξία στην Ελλάδα. Σε μία μεγάλης κλίμακας κοινοτική έρευνα, διαπιστώθηκε ότι ο ασφαλής τύπος δεσμού, όπως και η κατασκευή εαυτού, ανεξάρτητη και αλληλοεξαρτώμενη, συνδέονταν θετικά με την ψυχική ευεξία. Όπως προβλεπόταν, οι δύο συνδεόμενες έννοιες αλληλεπιδρούν, με τα υψηλότερα επίπεδα αλληλεξαρτώμενης κατασκευής του εαυτού να συνδέονται με υψηλότερα επίπεδα άγχους και χαμηλότερα επίπεδα αποφυγής, σε συμφωνία με τις υποθέσεις. Σημαντικό ήταν, επίσης, το εύρημα ότι η αλληλεπίδραση μεταξύ αλληλεξάρτησης και έμμονου τύπου δεσμού εξηγούσε ένα σημαντικό ποσοστό της διακύμανσης της ψυχικής ευεξίας: Οι συμμετέχοντες με υψηλότερα επίπεδα έμμονου τύπου δεσμού και αλληλεξάρτητητης κατασκευής εαυτού παρουσίαζαν υψηλότερη ψυχική ευεξία, ενώ το αντίστροφο συνέβαινε για τους συμμετέχοντες με υψηλά επίπεδα εμμονής και  ανεξάρτητης κατασκευής του εαυτού. Τα αποτελέσματα αυτά αναδεικνύουν τον ρόλο των πολιτισμικών προτύπων στον τρόπο που τα  κεντρικά σχήματα σχέσεων συμβάλουν στην ψυχική ευεξία.Social bonds and relationships are important determinants of well-being and happiness. Peoples’ propensities for relating to individual and cultural levels can partially account for variations in well-being in different cultures. The present paper examined how adult attachment orientations, a seminal aspect of relating, and independent and interdependent self-construal, a cultural category of social relations, interrelate at an individual level to explain well-being in Greece. In a large-scale community study state secure attachment and independent and interdependent cultural orientations were all positively associated with well-being. As expected, the two relating constructs intersected so that higher interdependence was associated with higher anxiety and lower avoidance in line with expectations. Importantly, the interaction between interdependence and anxious attachment accounted for an additional part of the variance in well-being: participants higher in anxiety and interdependence had higher well-being whereas the inverse was true for participants higher in anxiety and independence. These results point to culture-specific patterns in how central relating schemas contribute to well-being[1].

Interdependent Self-Construal Moderates Relationships Between Positive Emotion and Quality in Social Interactions: A Case of Person to Culture Fit

How emotion is experienced and expressed in social encounters can very much depend on a person’s cultural orientation and the two can affect the quality of social relationships. The present research examined how an interaction between cultural orientation (person) and emotion in social encounters (situation) can influence social interaction outcomes and by extent, cultural fit. For a period of seven days, participants (N = 164) reported eight positive and eight negative emotions they experienced in naturally occurring social encounters together with indicators of quality of social interaction (satisfaction, attending to the other, perceiving others as emotionally more positive). Results from multilevel random coefficient analyses found that self-construal, interdependence in particular, moderated relationships between positive emotion and social interaction quality. At high levels of positive emotion, higher, compared to lower, interdependence was associated with lower attention to other and lower satisfaction with the encounter. At low levels of positive emotion, higher interdependence was associated with higher social interaction quality than persons lower in interdependence. These effects were more robust when social anxiety was controlled, and social anxiety was highly correlated with participants’ interdependent orientation. The results support socially situated accounts to emotion and cultural constructions of the self, and depict emotion in social interaction as an important indicator of cultural fit

Measuring non-verbal communication of emotion in personal relationships: The Procedure for assessing Affect Communication Accuracy

The present study describes a new method for the assessment of accuracy in non-verbal communication of emotion in close relationships and presents results from a study that examined the validity of the method. The paper initially argues for the need of a new method on the basis of critical review of most the existing methods of accuracy of non-verbal communication of emotion, specifically: a) that they assess more symbolic rather than affective dimensions of non-verbal communication, b) that they involve inconsistencies with regards to the elicitation of emotion and c) that they involve methodological problems in the procedure of assessing the accuracy of non-verbal communication of emotion in the couple. The new method, the Procedure for assessing Affect Communication Accuracy, focuses on affective components of non-verbal communication of emotion. Assessment of affective dimensions of non-verbal communication via facial expressions are important since they serve as indicators of both intra-individual and interpersonal components of the interaction. The results from a study on the validity of the method in a sample of 40 dating couples has shown that two main part of the method (elicitation of positive and negative autobiographical emotions and assessment of the accuracy in non-verbal communication of emotion) have good structural and discriminant validity

Primado en el esquema del apego seguro: Efectos sobre procesamiento de informaciones emocionales

The present study examined the effects of secure schema activation on selective attention towards attachment-related and emotional information. Seventy two participants were randomly allocated into two conditions–subliminal priming of mental representations of supportive attachment figures (a Picasso sketch of a mother holding a baby and looking into his eyes) and a no priming condition followed by an administration of a dot probe task that included positive and negative attachment-related and emotion words. The results showed that the activation of the secure prime in conjunction with chronic attachment orientations affected the processing of positive and negative attachment-unrelated emotional information. Results highlight relationships between higher-order processes of the attachment system (attachment schema activation) with early stage information processing (selective attention) as assessed by the dot probe task. Methodological issues are discussed with reference to the priming method used and the traditional version of the dot-probe task.Este estudio investiga los efectos de la activación del esquema seguro sobre la atención selectiva con respecto al apego e informaciones emocionales. Setenta y dos participantes fueron repartidos al azar en dos condiciones – primado subliminal de las representaciones mentales de figuras de apego que servían de apoyo (el dibujo de Picasso de la madre con el niño en los brazos y mirándole a los ojos) y una condición no primada y seguida por la aplicación de dot probe task que incluía palabras emocionales y aquellas positivas y negativas relacionadas con el apego. Los resultados han mostrado que la activación del primado seguro junto con las orientaciones del apego crónico afectó al procesamiento de la información emocional positiva y negativa que no estaba relacionada con el apego. Los resultados destacan la relación entre el proceso de nivel más alto del sistema de apego (activación del esquema de apego) con la etapa temprana del procesamiento de informaciones (atención selectiva), como ha sido comprobado por dot probe task. Los problemas metodológicos se discuten respecto al método de primado usado y las versiones tradicionales de dot probe task

Healthcare professionals' perspectives on mental health service provision : a pilot focus group study in six European countries

Background: The mental healthcare treatment gap (mhcGAP) in adult populations has been substantiated across Europe. This study formed part of MentALLY, a research project funded by the European Commission, which aimed to gather qualitative empirical evidence to support the provision of European mental healthcare that provides effective treatment to all adults who need it. Methods: Seven focus groups were conducted with 49 health professionals (HPs), including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, general practitioners, and psychiatric nurses who worked in health services in Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The focus group discussions centered on the barriers and facilitators to providing quality care to people with mild, medium, and severe mental health problems. Analyses included deductively and inductively driven coding procedures. Cross-country consensus was obtained by summarizing findings in the form of a fact sheet which was shared for triangulation by all the MentALLY partners. Results: The results converged into two overarching themes: (1) Minding the treatment gap: the availability and accessibility of Mental Health Services (MHS). The mhcGAP gap identified is composed of different elements that constitute the barriers to care, including bridging divides in care provision, obstacles in facilitating access via referrals and creating a collaborative 'chain of care'. (2) Making therapeutic practice relevant by providing a broad-spectrum of integrated and comprehensive services that value person-centered care comprised of authenticity, flexibility and congruence. Conclusions: The mhcGAP is comprised of the following barriers: a lack of funding, insufficient capacity of human resources, inaccessibility to comprehensive services and a lack of availability of relevant treatments. The facilitators to the provision of MHC include using collaborative models of primary, secondary and prevention-oriented mental healthcare. Teamwork in providing care was considered to be a more effective and efficient use of resources. HPs believe that the use of e-mental health and emerging digital technologies can enhance care provision. Facilitating access to a relevant continuum of community-based care that is responsive coordinated and in line with people's needs throughout their lives is an essential aspect of optimal care provision

Lived experiences: A focus group pilot study within the MentALLY project of mental healthcare among European users

Background Mental healthcare is an important component in societies’ response to mental health problems. Although the World Health Organization highlights availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of healthcare as important cornerstones, many Europeans lack access to mental healthcare of high quality. Qualitative studies exploring mental healthcare from the perspective of people with lived experiences would add to previous research and knowledge by enabling in-depth understanding of mental healthcare users, which may be of significance for the development of mental healthcare. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to describe experiences of mental healthcare among adult Europeans with mental health problems. Method In total, 50 participants with experiences of various mental health problems were recruited for separate focus group interviews in each country. They had experiences from both the private and public sectors, and with in- and outpatient mental healthcare. The focus group interviews (N = 7) were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed through thematic analysis. The analysis yielded five themes and 13 subthemes. Results The theme Seeking and trying to find help contained three subthemes describing personal thresholds for seeking professional help, not knowing where to get help, and the importance of receiving help promptly. The theme Awaiting assessment and treatment contained two subthemes including feelings of being prioritized or not and feelings of being abandoned during the often-lengthy referral process. The theme Treatment: a plan with individual parts contained three subthemes consisting of demands for tailored treatment plans in combination with medications and human resources and agreement on treatment. The theme Continuous and respectful care relationship contained two subthemes describing the importance of continuous care relationships characterised by empathy and respect. The theme Suggestions for improvements contained three subthemes highlighting an urge to facilitate care contacts and to increase awareness of mental health problems and a wish to be seen as an individual with potential. Conclusion Facilitating contacts with mental healthcare, a steady contact during the referral process, tailored treatment and empathy and respect are important aspects in efforts to improve mental healthcare. Recommendations included development of collaborative practices between stakeholders in order to increase general societal awareness of mental health problems. Peer Review reportspublishedVersio