Testing the limits of tolerance: How inter-group anxiety amplifies negative and offensive responses to out-group-initiated contact

Three studies examine the amplifying effects of intergroup anxiety on individuals ’ negative and offensive responses to out-group-initiated contact. Because intergroup anxiety typically results in avoidance of the initiation of intergroup contact, we explored how intergroup anxiety affected individuals ’ interpretation of and responses to out-group-initiated contact. We hypothesized that intergroup anxiety amplifies individuals ’ threat appraisal of out-group-initiated contact as well as their feelings of anger and offensive action tendencies toward the out-group. Results showed consistent support for these hypotheses by demonstrating that intergroup anxiety amplified individuals ’ threat appraisal (Studies 2 and 3), anger (Studies 1-3), and offensive action tendencies toward the out-group (Study 2). Anger consistently predicte

Children’s depressive symptoms and their regulation of negative affect in response to vignette-depicted emotion-eliciting events

The present study examined the relationship between sub-clinical depressive symptoms and children's anticipated cognitive and behavioral reactions to two written vignettes depicting emotion-eliciting stressors (i.e., fight with one's best friend and failure at a roller blade contest). Participants (N = 244) ranging in age between 10 and 13 were presented each vignette and then asked to rate their anticipated utilization of each of seven emotion-regulation strategies (ERs), along with the anticipated mood enhancement effects of each strategy. In addition, ratings of participants' perceived coping efficacy to manage the stressful situation were collected. Results indicated that participants were more likely to endorse ERs for which they have greater confidence in their mood enhancement effects. Moreover, marked differences were observed between ratings for conceptually distinct cognitive ERs. Consistent with expectations, results revealed that participants displaying higher levels of depressive symptoms were more likely to endorse cognitive and behavioral ERs that are negative, passive, and/or avoidant in nature. Children's ratings of the anticipated mood enhancement effects of several ERs were inversely related to their level of depressive symptoms, as was their perceived self-efficacy to manage the stressor. © 2007 The International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development

The Ties that Double Bind Us: Career, Emotion and Narrative Coping in Difficult Working Relationships

This article examines through an autoethnographic account how career aspirations and constraints may lead individuals to endure emotionally aversive situations. It presents evidence that individuals in such situations engage in emotion‐focused coping through narrative, illustrated by the author’s autoethnographic narrative of a difficult working relationship which developed into a double bind situation. The paper suggests that narrative coping in response to a double bind can actually serve to reify and prolong such situations. The paper concludes that autoethnographic research does not lend itself to simple organisational solutions. Possible avenues for further research are outlined and discussed

Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality and life expectancy, 1950–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

BACKGROUND: Assessments of age-specific mortality and life expectancy have been done by the UN Population Division, Department of Economics and Social Affairs (UNPOP), the United States Census Bureau, WHO, and as part of previous iterations of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD). Previous iterations of the GBD used population estimates from UNPOP, which were not derived in a way that was internally consistent with the estimates of the numbers of deaths in the GBD. The present iteration of the GBD, GBD 2017, improves on previous assessments and provides timely estimates of the mortality experience of populations globally. METHODS: The GBD uses all available data to produce estimates of mortality rates between 1950 and 2017 for 23 age groups, both sexes, and 918 locations, including 195 countries and territories and subnational locations for 16 countries. Data used include vital registration systems, sample registration systems, household surveys (complete birth histories, summary birth histories, sibling histories), censuses (summary birth histories, household deaths), and Demographic Surveillance Sites. In total, this analysis used 8259 data sources. Estimates of the probability of death between birth and the age of 5 years and between ages 15 and 60 years are generated and then input into a model life table system to produce complete life tables for all locations and years. Fatal discontinuities and mortality due to HIV/AIDS are analysed separately and then incorporated into the estimation. We analyse the relationship between age-specific mortality and development status using the Socio-demographic Index, a composite measure based on fertility under the age of 25 years, education, and income. There are four main methodological improvements in GBD 2017 compared with GBD 2016: 622 additional data sources have been incorporated; new estimates of population, generated by the GBD study, are used; statistical methods used in different components of the analysis have been further standardised and improved; and the analysis has been extended backwards in time by two decades to start in 1950. FINDINGS: Globally, 18·7% (95% uncertainty interval 18·4–19·0) of deaths were registered in 1950 and that proportion has been steadily increasing since, with 58·8% (58·2–59·3) of all deaths being registered in 2015. At the global level, between 1950 and 2017, life expectancy increased from 48·1 years (46·5–49·6) to 70·5 years (70·1–70·8) for men and from 52·9 years (51·7–54·0) to 75·6 years (75·3–75·9) for women. Despite this overall progress, there remains substantial variation in life expectancy at birth in 2017, which ranges from 49·1 years (46·5–51·7) for men in the Central African Republic to 87·6 years (86·9–88·1) among women in Singapore. The greatest progress across age groups was for children younger than 5 years; under-5 mortality dropped from 216·0 deaths (196·3–238·1) per 1000 livebirths in 1950 to 38·9 deaths (35·6–42·83) per 1000 livebirths in 2017, with huge reductions across countries. Nevertheless, there were still 5·4 million (5·2–5·6) deaths among children younger than 5 years in the world in 2017. Progress has been less pronounced and more variable for adults, especially for adult males, who had stagnant or increasing mortality rates in several countries. The gap between male and female life expectancy between 1950 and 2017, while relatively stable at the global level, shows distinctive patterns across super-regions and has consistently been the largest in central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia, and smallest in south Asia. Performance was also variable across countries and time in observed mortality rates compared with those expected on the basis of development. INTERPRETATION: This analysis of age-sex-specific mortality shows that there are remarkably complex patterns in population mortality across countries. The findings of this study highlight global successes, such as the large decline in under-5 mortality, which reflects significant local, national, and global commitment and investment over several decades. However, they also bring attention to mortality patterns that are a cause for concern, particularly among adult men and, to a lesser extent, women, whose mortality rates have stagnated in many countries over the time period of this study, and in some cases are increasing

Can Positive Employees Help Positive Organizational Change? Impact of Psychological Capital and Emotions on Relevant Attitudes and Behaviors

Although much attention has been devoted to understanding employee resistance to change, relatively little research examines the impact that positive employees can have on organizational change. To help fill this need, the authors investigate whether a process of employees’ positivity will have an impact on relevant attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, this study surveyed 132 employees from a broad cross-section of organizations and jobs and found: (a) Their psychological capital (a core factor consisting of hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience) was related to their positive emotions that in turn were related to their attitudes (engagement and cynicism) and behaviors (organizational citizenship and deviance) relevant to organizational change; (b) mindfulness (i.e., heightened awareness) interacted with psychological capital in predicting positive emotions; and (c) positive emotions generally mediated the relationship between psychological capital and the attitudes and behaviors. The implications these findings have for positive organizational change conclude the article

Tracing the self-regulatory bases of moral emotions

In this article we explore a self-regulatory perspective on the self-evaluative moral emotions, shame and guilt. Broadly conceived, self-regulation distinguishes between two types of motivation: approach/activation and avoidance/inhibition. We use this distinction to conceptually understand the socialization dimensions (parental restrictiveness versus nurturance), associated emotions (anxiety versus empathy), and forms of morality (proscriptive versus prescriptive) that serve as precursors to each self-evaluative moral emotion. We then examine the components of shame and guilt experiences in greater detail and conclude with more general implications of a self-regulatory perspective on moral emotions.PostprintPeer reviewe

Affective Intelligence: The Human Face of AI

Affective computing has been an extremely active research and development area for some years now, with some of the early results already starting to be integrated in human-computer interaction systems. Driven mainly by research initiatives in Europe, USA and Japan and accelerated by the abundance of processing power and low-cost, unintrusive sensors like cameras and microphones, affective computing functions in an interdisciplinary fashion, sharing concepts from diverse fields, such as signal processing and computer vision, psychology and behavioral sciences, human-computer interaction and design, machine learning, and so on. In order to form relations between low-level input signals and features to high-level concepts such as emotions or moods, one needs to take into account the multitude of psychology and representation theories and research findings related to them and deploy machine learning techniques to actually form computational models of those. This chapter elaborates on the concepts related to affective computing, how these can be connected to measurable features via representation models and how they can be integrated into humancentric applications