Pipecolic Acid Confers Systemic Immunity by Regulating Free Radicals

Pipecolic acid (Pip), a non-proteinaceous product of lysine catabolism, is an important regulator of immunity in plants and humans alike. In plants, Pip accumulates upon pathogen infection and has been associated with systemic acquired resistance (SAR). However, the molecular mechanisms underlying Pip-mediated signaling and its relationship to other known SAR inducers remain unknown. We show that in plants, Pip confers SAR by increasing levels of the free radicals, nitric oxide (NO), and reactive oxygen species (ROS), which act upstream of glycerol-3-phosphate (G3P). Plants defective in NO, ROS, G3P, or salicylic acid (SA) biosynthesis accumulate reduced Pip in their distal uninfected tissues although they contain wild-type-like levels of Pip in their infected leaves. These data indicate that de novo synthesis of Pip in distal tissues is dependent on both SA and G3P and that distal levels of SA and G3P play an important role in SAR. These results also suggest a unique scenario whereby metabolites in a signaling cascade can stimulate each other\u27s biosynthesis depending on their relative levels and their site of action

Fuel in the Fire : The Effects of Anger on Risky Decision Making

Many social and economic interactions involve some form of risk, and thus these risk decisions we make define our lives. There is accumulating empirical evidence suggesting that anger can have a strong impact on normatively unrelated risk-taking, such as discrete risk or trust behaviors. However, the mechanisms by which anger influences risk-taking are still unclear. The answer to this question has immediate relevance and important implications for many social and economic issues. Therefore, the present dissertation aims to investigate the mechanisms by which anger influences risk-taking. The theoretical framework of this dissertation is based on the Appraisal Tendency Framework (ATF, Lerner & Keltner, 2000a, 2001), which proposes a general theoretical model predicting emotion-specific impacts on economic judgments and choices. It allows a precise prediction of the differential impact of discrete emotions on particular judgments due to their link to emotion-specific appraisal tendencies. As anger is one of the most frequently experienced emotions in our daily lives, it merits special attention in the process of risk-taking. Anger affects basic cognitive processes (e.g., perceptions of control and certainty) and social processes (e.g., perceived social distance to other people), which, in turn, could shape the decisions people make and the lives they lead. In this dissertation, I manipulate anger by using two paradigms, either arousing incidental anger by asking participants to play computer games or to recall past anger experiences. Furthermore, I measure two types of risk-taking behavior, including tasks in which uncertainty is generated by objective probability (e.g., lottery-based risk) and those in which uncertainty is generated by the uncertain behavior of another person (e.g., person-based risk). I investigate the effects of anger on risk-taking behavior in these two types of tasks, by applying the two paradigms to manipulate anger in three sets of studies. Study I focuses on the impact of anger on lottery-based risk-taking, by arousing anger via a computer game. Study II investigates how anger influences person-based risk (here referred to as trust behavior). Furthermore, Study III examines the mechanisms underlying how and when anger influences trust. Study II and III manipulate anger by asking participants to recall past anger experiences. Study I investigates how anger influences lottery-based risk. Considering the importance of control appraisals in the emergence of emotions, an experimental paradigm for inducing externally caused and consequently externally attributed loss of control, which should lead to experiences of anger, is developed and pretested in a Pilot Study. The Main Study investigates the relationship between loss of control experiences, anger, and risk-taking behavior. More precisely, it examines whether anger, an emotion usually elicited by experiences where one’s goal attainment has been blocked by external causes, mediates the relationship between subjective loss of control and risk-taking. Furthermore, the cross-cultural generalizability of the proposed mechanisms is tested by investigating and comparing two separate student samples from Germany (N = 84, 54% female) and China (N = 125; 64% female). In line with the hypotheses, the results show that anger mediates the link between subjective loss of control experiences and increased risk-taking behavior. Multiple group comparisons revealing similar patterns in both samples affirm the results’ cross-cultural generalizability. These results indicate that anger makes people less risk averse in the process of economic decision making. Study II investigates the influence of anger on person-based risk, namely trust behavior. There is accumulating evidence suggesting that anger can have a strong impact on discrete trust behavior. However, the mechanisms underlying how anger influences trust are still unclear. In the present study, perceived social distance is expected to mediate the effect of anger on trust, and gender is assumed to moderate this mediation. To test this hypothesis, a 2 (emotion: anger vs. control) × 2 (gender: male vs. female) factorial design (N = 107, 48 female) is used. Instead of using the computer game paradigm from Study I, anger is manipulated by asking participants to recall personal anger experiences in this study, which is a classic method to arouse emotion. The results are in line with our predictions: social distance mediates the effect of anger on trust, and gender moderates this mediation. More precisely, anger drives women, but not men, to send more money to their counterparts in a trust game than controls because, unlike men, angry women perceive smaller social distance between themselves and their game partners. Our results have implications for the study of emotions and gender differences in economic transactions. Based on the evidence from Study II, Study III further explores how and when anger influences trust in a set of two experiments. In the present study, we hypothesize that gender and social distance to the trustee moderate the effect of anger on trust. To test this hypothesis, a 2 (emotion: anger vs. control) × 2 (social distance: chat vs. no chat) × 2 (gender: male vs. female) factorial design is used, including two separate student samples from Germany (N = 215, 100 female) and China (N = 310, 177 female). Results show that the effect of anger is moderated by gender and the social distance of the trustee. More precisely, men’s trust is neither influenced by anger nor by the social distance of trustee, whereas women’s trust is context-dependent, based on both their anger and social distance of trustee. Consistent with the theory of ATF, the trust of German women is increased by anger, through the activation of affective heuristic processing. However, when they have a prior chat experience with the trustee (small social distance), they instead use analytic processing, and the positive effect of anger on trust fades away. Because of the highly important personality trait of anger suppression for Chinese women, they appear to suppress their anger and use analytic processing, and thus they invest a similar amount of money to the trustee as in the control situation, regardless of whether the trustee is an absolute stranger or someone that they have chatted with. In conclusion, German women’s trust is more context-dependent than men’s, based on their anger and social distance with the trustee. That these functional relationships are detected in both samples affirms the results’ cross-cultural generalizability. In summation, three studies provide empirical evidence for the impact of anger on subsequent risk-taking. Though these studies deal with two different types of risk – lottery-based risk (Study I) and person-based risk (Study II, III) – and use two different methods to arouse anger, risk-taking in two different cultures are shown to be strongly impacted by incidental anger. There are two major contributions of this dissertation. From the methodological perspective, this dissertation develops and successfully does a test a new experimental paradigm to induce anger. In addition to this methodological contribution, this dissertation also provides empirical evidence that incidental anger influences not only lottery-based risk-taking but also person-based risk-taking, a finding that generalizes across two cultures. Several implications for future research and practice are discussed, with a particular focus on the effects of emotions on risky decision making in more applied settings and everyday contexts.publishe

Angry Women Are More Trusting : The Differential Effects of Perceived Social Distance on Trust Behavior

Accumulating evidence suggests that anger can have a strong impact on discrete trust behaviors. However, the mechanisms underlying how anger influences trust are still unclear. Based on the appraisal tendency framework, we hypothesized that perceived social distance would positively mediate the effect of anger on trust, and that gender would moderate this mediation. In Study 1, a 2 (Anger vs. Control) × 2 (Men vs. Women) factorial design was used to investigate this hypothesis. Results supported our predictions that anger drove women, but not men, to perceive smaller social distance, and thus sent more money to their counterparts in a trust game as compared to controls. In Study 2, social distance was manipulated, and a 2 (Low social distance vs. Control) × 2 (Men vs. Women) factorial design was used to critically test the causal role of the mediator, namely to examine the effect of perceived social distance on trust. Results showed that women, but not men, sent more money to their counterparts in the low social distance condition than in the control condition. Results of both studies indicate that the high certainty, higher individual control, and approach motivation associated with anger could trigger optimistic risk assessment, and thus more trust toward others in women, via perceiving smaller social distance to others.publishe

Beyond Flood Preparedness: Effects of Experience, Trust, and Perceived Risk on Preparation Intentions and Financial Risk-Taking in China

Flooding, already the most damaging type of natural disaster in China, is expected to become increasingly costly around the world. However, few studies have examined residents’ flood-preparedness intentions and the effect of flood experience and other variables on general financial risk-taking. This study explored the effects of Chinese residents’ previous flood experiences, trust in public flood protection, and flood-risk perception on flood-preparedness intentions and attitudes towards financial risk-taking in general. Study 1 surveyed residents in a flooded area (n = 241) and a non-flooded area (n = 248); Study 2 surveyed a non-flooded area (n = 1599). The relations between the variables were tested through structural-equation modelling (SEM). Overall, the two studies found that residents’ flood experiences, trust in public protection, and flood-risk perception not only predicted their flood preparedness but also their financial risk aversion. This study highlights the importance of residents’ trust in public flood protection for flood risk management and communication, especially for those who have not yet experienced flooding

中国博士生遇到德国导师 : 给博士新生的建议

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Spillover Effects of Loss of Control on Risky Decision-Making

Decision making in risky situations is frequently required in our everyday lives and has been shown to be influenced by various factors, some of which are independent of the risk context. Based on previous findings and theories about the central role of perceptions of control and their impact on subsequent settings, spillover effects of subjective loss of control on risky decision-making are assumed. After developing an innovative experimental paradigm for inducing loss of control, its hypothesized effects on risky decision-making are investigated. Partially supporting the hypotheses, results demonstrated no increased levels of risk perceptions but decreased risk-taking behavior following experiences of loss of control. Thus, this study makes a methodological contribution by proposing a newly developed experimental paradigm facilitating further research on the effects of subjective loss of control, and additionally provides partial evidence for the spillover effects of loss of control experiences on risky decision-making.publishe

The Differential Effects of Anger on Trust : a Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Effects of Gender and Social Distance

Accumulating empirical evidence suggests that anger elicited in one situation can influence trust behaviors in another situation. However, the conditions under which anger influences trust are still unclear. The present study addresses this research gap and examines the ways in which anger influences trust. We hypothesized that the social distance to the trustee, and the trusting person's gender would moderate the effect of anger on trust. To test this hypothesis, a study using a 2 (Anger vs. Control) × 2 (Low vs. High social distance) × 2 (Men vs. Women) factorial design was conducted in Germany (N = 215) and in China (N = 310). Results reveal that in both countries men's trust behavior was not influenced by the manipulations (i.e., anger and social distance). The pattern for women, however, differed by country. In Germany, women's trust to a stranger (i.e., high social distance) was increased by anger; while in China, women's trust to someone who they have communicated with (i.e., low social distance) was increased by anger. These results indicate that women's trust levels seem to be more context-sensitive than men's.publishe

Beyond Flood Preparedness: Effects of Experience, Trust, and Perceived Risk on Preparation Intentions and Financial Risk-Taking in China

Flooding, already the most damaging type of natural disaster in China, is expected to become increasingly costly around the world. However, few studies have examined residents’ flood-preparedness intentions and the effect of flood experience and other variables on general financial risk-taking. This study explored the effects of Chinese residents’ previous flood experiences, trust in public flood protection, and flood-risk perception on flood-preparedness intentions and attitudes towards financial risk-taking in general. Study 1 surveyed residents in a flooded area (n = 241) and a non-flooded area (n = 248); Study 2 surveyed a non-flooded area (n = 1599). The relations between the variables were tested through structural-equation modelling (SEM). Overall, the two studies found that residents’ flood experiences, trust in public protection, and flood-risk perception not only predicted their flood preparedness but also their financial risk aversion. This study highlights the importance of residents’ trust in public flood protection for flood risk management and communication, especially for those who have not yet experienced flooding

Emotions, Illness Symptoms, and Job Satisfaction among Kindergarten Teachers: The Mediating Role of Emotional Exhaustion

Kindergarten teachers’ emotions are an essential factor in their physical and psychological wellbeing. Previous studies mainly focused on the relationship between kindergarten teachers’ emotions and their students’ emotions while ignoring the important relationships between kindergarten teachers’ emotions and their own wellbeing (e.g., teachers’ health, job satisfaction, burnout). Therefore, this study explores teacher emotions as predictor variables, illness symptoms, and job satisfaction as criterion variables, and emotional exhaustion as a mediator. In total, 1997 kindergarten teachers completed the Teacher’s Emotion Scale, the Occupational Emotional Exhaustion Scale, the Illness Symptoms Scale, and the Job Satisfaction Scale. Results revealed that enjoyment negatively predicted illness symptoms and positively predicted job satisfaction via the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. The opposite relationships were found with anger, also confirming the mediating role of emotional exhaustion. Anxiety positively predicted illness symptoms, completely mediated by emotional exhaustion, but no relationship was found with job satisfaction. The function of emotions in teachers’ physical and mental health, implications for kindergartens’ research and practice, and suggestions for future research are discussed

Beyond Flood Preparedness: Effects of Experience, Trust, and Perceived Risk on Preparation Intentions and Financial Risk-Taking in China

Flooding, already the most damaging type of natural disaster in China, is expected to become increasingly costly around the world. However, few studies have examined residents’ flood-preparedness intentions and the effect of flood experience and other variables on general financial risk-taking. This study explored the effects of Chinese residents’ previous flood experiences, trust in public flood protection, and flood-risk perception on flood-preparedness intentions and attitudes towards financial risk-taking in general. Study 1 surveyed residents in a flooded area (n = 241) and a non-flooded area (n = 248); Study 2 surveyed a non-flooded area (n = 1599). The relations between the variables were tested through structural-equation modelling (SEM). Overall, the two studies found that residents’ flood experiences, trust in public protection, and flood-risk perception not only predicted their flood preparedness but also their financial risk aversion. This study highlights the importance of residents’ trust in public flood protection for flood risk management and communication, especially for those who have not yet experienced flooding