DOES EMPATHIC ANGER MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO ACT ON PRO-DEFENDING COGNITIONS?

Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that empathic anger represents a form of anger that motivates bystanders to intervene and defend victims of aggression. Prior research on defending behavior has identified cognitive correlates of defending, but most studies failed to distinguish between different forms of defending and did not evaluate how these cognitions interact with emotions, such as empathic anger, in motivating or inhibiting defending behavior. This study attempted to address these lacunae by analyzing whether empathic anger moderates the associations between cognitions associated with defending (i.e., perspective taking, moral disengagement, and self-efficacy for defending) and different types of defending behavior. The study also tested whether the moderating effect of empathic anger is moderated by inhibitory control. The study sample included 453 total participants, comprised of 291 adults from the general population and 162 college undergraduate students. Factor analysis identified two dimensions of defending behavior: victim-focused defending, comprised of interventions focused on comforting the victim, and other-focused defending, comprised of assertive and aggressive interventions targeting the aggressor and/or other bystanders. The results indicated that empathic anger was a positive predictor of victim-focused defending across models, whereas empathic anger was unrelated to or inversely predicted other-focused defending after controlling for victim-focused defending and other covariates. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that empathic anger moderated the impact of perspective taking on victim-focused defending and the effects of perspective taking and self-efficacy for defending on other-focused defending behavior. Empathic anger’s moderating effect was in turn moderated by inhibitory control. These three-way interactions indicated that, specifically among those with low levels of inhibitory control, the associations between defending cognitions and defending behavior were weaker for people with a tendency to experience heightened empathic anger, compared with people who experience low levels of empathic anger. These results suggest that empathic anger constitutes a motivator of and/or an emotional reaction to the act of comforting the victim, to the exclusion of confrontational defending strategies, and that heightened empathic anger renders people less likely to act on certain pro-defending cognitions

HUMOR AS A MODERATOR OF NEUROTICISM’S EFFECT ON PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND LIFE SATISFACTION

Previous research studies evaluated self-enhancing humor (also referred to as coping humor) as a coping strategy that enables an individual to better manage the negative emotions elicited by external stressors. Research has not, however, adequately considered the role that humor may play for neurotic individuals who are characterized by a propensity to experience stress and negative emotions and are, therefore, more susceptible to developing depression, anxiety, and low life satisfaction. Nor has research adequately explored how self-enhancing humor interacts with the maladaptive form of self-directed humor, namely, self-defeating humor. This study attempts to address these lacunae by analyzing whether self-enhancing humor and self-defeating humor serve as moderators of the relationships between neuroticism and aversive outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, and low life satisfaction. The study sample included 206 total participants, comprised of 99 adults from the general population and 107 college undergraduate students. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that self-enhancing humor moderated the impact of neuroticism on life satisfaction, regardless of the level of self-defeating humor. Highly neurotic individuals who used high levels of self-enhancing humor maintained higher ratings of life satisfaction than highly neurotic individuals who used low levels of self-enhancing humor. The regression analyses also indicated that the use of self-enhancing humor mitigated the impact of neuroticism on anxiety, but only for individuals who used low levels of self-defeating humor. In contrast, the use of both self enhancing and self-defeating humor compounded the impact of neuroticism on anxiety. Neither humor style significantly moderated the relation between neuroticism and depression. These results indicate that self-enhancing humor mitigates the effect of neuroticism on certain negative outcomes, that the two self-directed humor styles interact and should both be considered in any study of self-directed humor, and that the overall amount of self-directed humor an individual uses may be a crucial factor in determining whether humor will mitigate or compound the impact of neuroticism