On Passion and Sports Fans:A Look at Football

The purpose of the present research was to test the applicability of the Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) to being a sport (football) fan. The model posits that passion is a strong inclination toward an activity that individuals like (or even love), that they value, and in which they invest time and energy. Furthermore, two types of passion are proposed: harmonious and obsessive passion. While obsessive passion entails an uncontrollable urge to engage in the passionate activity, harmonious passion entails a sense of volition while engaging in the activity. Finally, the model posits that harmonious passion leads to more adaptive outcomes than obsessive passion. Three studies provided support for this dualistic conceptualization of passion. Study 1 showed that harmonious passion was positively associated with adaptive behaviours (e.g., celebrate the team’s victory), while obsessive passion was rather positively associated with maladaptive behaviours (e.g., to risk losing one’s employment to go to the team’s game). Study 2 used a short Passion Scale and showed that harmonious passion was positively related to the positive affective life of fans during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, psychological health (self-esteem and life satisfaction), and public displays of adaptive behaviours (e.g., celebrating one’s team victory in the streets), while obsessive passion was predictive of maladaptive affective life (e.g., hating opposing team’s fans) and behaviours (e.g., mocking the opposing team’s fans). Finally, Study 3 examined the role of obsessive passion as a predictor of partner’s conflict that in turn undermined partner’s relationship satisfaction. Overall, the present results provided support for the Dualistic Model of Passion. The conceptual and applied implications of the findings are discussed

What does touch tell us about emotions in touchscreen-based gameplay?

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ACM. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution.Nowadays, more and more people play games on touch-screen mobile phones. This phenomenon raises a very interesting question: does touch behaviour reflect the player’s emotional state? If possible, this would not only be a valuable evaluation indicator for game designers, but also for real-time personalization of the game experience. Psychology studies on acted touch behaviour show the existence of discriminative affective profiles. In this paper, finger-stroke features during gameplay on an iPod were extracted and their discriminative power analysed. Based on touch-behaviour, machine learning algorithms were used to build systems for automatically discriminating between four emotional states (Excited, Relaxed, Frustrated, Bored), two levels of arousal and two levels of valence. The results were very interesting reaching between 69% and 77% of correct discrimination between the four emotional states. Higher results (~89%) were obtained for discriminating between two levels of arousal and two levels of valence

Mutually exclusive STAT1 modifications identified by Ubc9/substrate dimerization-dependent SUMOylation

Post-translational modifications control the physiological activity of the signal transducer and activator of transcription STAT1. While phosphorylation at tyrosine Y701 is a prerequisite for STAT1 dimerization, its SUMOylation represses the transcriptional activity. Recently, we have demonstrated that SUMOylation at lysine K703 inhibits the phosphorylation of nearby localized Y701 of STAT1. Here, we analysed the influence of phosphorylation of Y701 on SUMOylation of K703 in vivo. For that reason, an Ubc9/substrate dimerization-dependent SUMOylation (USDDS) system was developed, which consists of fusions of the SUMOylation substrate and of the SUMO-conjugating enzyme Ubc9 to the chemically activatable heterodimerization domains FKBP and FRB, respectively. When FKBP fusion proteins of STAT1, p53, CRSP9, FOS, CSNK2B, HES1, TCF21 and MYF6 are coexpressed with Ubc9-FRB, treatment of HEK293 cells with the rapamycin-related dimerizer compound AP21967 induces SUMOylation of these proteins in vivo. For STAT1-FKBP and p53-FKBP we show that this SUMOylation takes place at their specific SUMOylation sites in vivo. Using USDDS, we then demonstrate that STAT1 phosphorylation at Y701 induced by interferon-β treatment inhibits SUMOylation of K703 in vivo. Thus, pY701 and SUMO-K703 of STAT1 represent mutually exclusive modifications, which prevent signal integration at this molecule and probably ensure the existence of differentially modified subpopulations of STAT1 necessary for its regulated nuclear cytoplasmic activation/inactivation cycle

Dominance, reward, and affiliation smiles modulate the meaning of uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour

We investigated the effects of different types of smiles on the perception of uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour. In five studies, participants assigned to one group played an economic game with a representative of another group. In an initial round, the representative acted uncooperatively by favouring their group and then displayed a dominance, reward, or affiliation smile. Participants rated the motives of the representative and played a second round of the game with a different member of the same outgroup. Following uncooperative or untrustworthy behaviour, affiliation smiles communicated less positivity and superiority, and a greater desire to both repair the relationship between groups and change the uncooperative decision than reward or dominance smiles. Perceptions of a desire to repair the relationship and to change the decision were associated with trust and cooperation in a subsequent round of the game. Together, these findings show that smiles that are subtly different in their morphology can convey different messages and highlight the importance of these expressions in influencing the perceptions of others’ intentions

Basic Taste Stimuli Elicit Unique Responses in Facial Skin Blood Flow

Facial expression changes characteristically with the emotions induced by basic tastes in humans. We tested the hypothesis that the five basic tastes also elicit unique responses in facial skin blood flow. Facial skin blood flow was measured using laser speckle flowgraphy in 16 healthy subjects before and during the application of basic taste stimuli in the oral cavity for 20 s. The skin blood flow in the eyelid increased in response to sweet and umami taste stimuli, while that in the nose decreased in response to a bitter stimulus. There was a significant correlation between the subjective hedonic scores accompanying these taste stimuli and the above changes in skin blood flow. These results demonstrate that sweet, umami, and bitter tastes induce unique changes in facial skin blood flow that reflect subjective hedonic scores

Unforgettable film music: The role of emotion in episodic long-term memory for music

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Specific pieces of music can elicit strong emotions in listeners and, possibly in connection with these emotions, can be remembered even years later. However, episodic memory for emotional music compared with less emotional music has not yet been examined. We investigated whether emotional music is remembered better than less emotional music. Also, we examined the influence of musical structure on memory performance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Recognition of 40 musical excerpts was investigated as a function of arousal, valence, and emotional intensity ratings of the music. In the first session the participants judged valence and arousal of the musical pieces. One week later, participants listened to the 40 old and 40 new musical excerpts randomly interspersed and were asked to make an old/new decision as well as to indicate arousal and valence of the pieces. Musical pieces that were rated as very positive were recognized significantly better.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Musical excerpts rated as very positive are remembered better. Valence seems to be an important modulator of episodic long-term memory for music. Evidently, strong emotions related to the musical experience facilitate memory formation and retrieval.</p

UCS protein function is partially restored in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae she4 mutant with expression of the human UNC45-GC, but not UNC45-SM

A dedicated UNC45, Cro1, She4 (UCS) domain-containing protein assists in the Hsp90-mediated folding of the myosin head. Only weak sequence conservation exists between the single UCS protein of simple eukaryotes (She4 in budding yeast) and the two UCS proteins of higher organisms (the general cell and striated muscle UNC45s; UNC45-GC and UNC45-SM, respectively). In vertebrates, UNC45-GC facilitates cytoskeletal functions, whereas the 55% identical UNC45-SM assists assembly of the contractile apparatus of cardiac and skeletal muscles. A Saccharomyces cerevisiae she4Δ mutant, totally lacking any UCS protein, was engineered to express as its sole Hsp90 either the Hsp90α or the Hsp90β isoforms of human cytosolic Hsp90. A transient induction of the human UNC45-GC, but not UNC45-SM, could rescue the defective endocytosis in these she4Δ cells at 39 °C, irrespective of whether they possessed Hsp90α or Hsp90β. UNC45-GC-mediated rescue of the localisation of a Myo5-green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusion to cortical patches at 39 °C was more efficient in the yeast containing Hsp90α, though this may relate to more efficient functioning of Hsp90α as compared to Hsp90β in these strains. Furthermore, inducible expression of UNC45-GC, but not UNC45-SM, could partially rescue survival at a more extreme temperature (45 °C) that normally causes she4Δ mutant yeast cells to lyse. The results indicate that UCS protein function has been most conserved-yeast to man-in the UNC45-GC, not UNC45-SM. This may reflect UNC45-GC being the vertebrate UCS protein that assists formation of the actomyosin complexes needed for cytokinesis, cell morphological change, and organelle trafficking-events also facilitated by the myosins in yeast

Laugh Like You Mean It:Authenticity Modulates Acoustic, Physiological and Perceptual Properties of Laughter

Several authors have recently presented evidence for perceptual and neural distinctions between genuine and acted expressions of emotion. Here, we describe how differences in authenticity affect the acoustic and perceptual properties of laughter. In an acoustic analysis, we contrasted spontaneous, authentic laughter with volitional, fake laughter, finding that spontaneous laughter was higher in pitch, longer in duration, and had different spectral characteristics from volitional laughter that was produced under full voluntary control. In a behavioral experiment, listeners perceived spontaneous and volitional laughter as distinct in arousal, valence, and authenticity. Multiple regression analyses further revealed that acoustic measures could significantly predict these affective and authenticity judgements, with the notable exception of authenticity ratings for spontaneous laughter. The combination of acoustic predictors differed according to the laughter type, where volitional laughter ratings were uniquely predicted by harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). To better understand the role of HNR in terms of the physiological effects on vocal tract configuration as a function of authenticity during laughter production, we ran an additional experiment in which phonetically trained listeners rated each laugh for breathiness, nasality, and mouth opening. Volitional laughter was found to be significantly more nasal than spontaneous laughter, and the item-wise physiological ratings also significantly predicted affective judgements obtained in the first experiment. Our findings suggest that as an alternative to traditional acoustic measures, ratings of phonatory and articulatory features can be useful descriptors of the acoustic qualities of nonverbal emotional vocalizations, and of their perceptual implications