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Risk as analysis and risk as feelings

Modern theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience indicate that there are two fundamental ways in which human beings comprehend risk.

The “analytic system” uses algorithms and normative rules, such as probability calculus, formal logic, and risk assessment. It is relatively slow, effortful, and requires conscious control.

The “experiential system” is intuitive, fast, mostly automatic, and not very accessible to conscious awareness. The experiential system enabled human beings to survive during their long period of evolution and remains today the most natural and most common way to respond to risk. It relies on images and associations, linked by experience to emotion and affect (a feeling that something is good or bad). This system represents risk as a feeling that tells us whether it is safe to walk down this dark street or drink this strange-smelling water.

Proponents of formal risk analysis tend to view affective responses to risk as irrational. Current wisdom disputes this view. The rational and the experiential systems operate in parallel and each seems to depend on the other for guidance. Studies have demonstrated that analytic reasoning cannot be effective unless it is guided by emotion and affect. Rational decision making requires proper integration of both modes of thought. Both systems have their advantages, biases, and limitations.

Now that we are beginning to understand the complex interplay between emotion and reason that is essential to rational behavior, the challenge before us is to think creatively about what this means for managing risk. On the one hand, how do we apply reason to temper the strong emotions engendered by some risk events? On the other hand, how do we infuse needed “doses of feeling” into circumstances where lack of experience may otherwise leave us too “coldly rational”?

Slovic P, Finucane ML, Peters E, MacGregor DG.
Risk as analysis and risk as feelings: some thoughts about affect, reason, risk, and rationality.
Risk Anal. 2004 Apr;24(2):311-22.

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Acknowledgement: Information is obtained from PubMed at the National Library of Medicine (NCBI)

Posted 25 August 2007 † Feelings.Info § Emotion § Reason ‡ Comments (0)

Women, Men and the Empathy of Dogs and Cats

This exploratory study included 524 undergraduate students enrolled in introductory psychology sections who completed the Empathy in Pet Dogs and Cats Scale to assess their attitudes regarding how much domestic dogs and cats show vicarious experiencing of the thoughts, feelings, or attitudes of their owners.

Results: Women gave significantly higher ratings than men regarding dogs’ and cats’ knowing when their owners are happy, sad, or angry. Women also gave significantly higher ratings than men regarding dogs’ and cats’ feeling love and compassion for their owners.

Specific instances of empathy in pets underscore the need for contemporary research to be inclusive of operational definitions of measures of empathy.

Vitulli WF.
Attitudes toward empathy in domestic dogs and cats.
Psychol Rep. 2006 Dec;99(3):981-91

Acknowledgement: Information is obtained from PubMed at the National Library of Medicine (NCBI)

Posted 25 August 2007 † Feelings.Info § Empathy § Men § Pets § Women ‡ Comments (0)

The Bittersweat Taste of Life Longings

The topic of an optimal or utopian life has received much attention across the humanities and the arts but not in psychology. The German concept of Sehnsucht captures individual and collective thoughts and feelings about one’s optimal or utopian life.

Sehnsucht (life longings; LLs) is defined as an intense desire for alternative states and realizations of life. Presenting a first effort at capturing this phenomenon, the authors conceptualize LLs as composed of 6 interrelated core characteristics: (a) utopian conceptions of ideal development; (b) sense of incompleteness and imperfection of life; (c) conjoint time focus on the past, present, and future; (d) ambivalent (bittersweet) emotions; (e) reflection and evaluation of one’s life; and (f) symbolic richness.

Self-report data from 299 adults (19-81 years) support the postulated structure and support predictions regarding the functional role of Sehnsucht. Having LLs was evaluated as providing direction to development and helping to manage life’s incompleteness. At the same time, the frequent and intense experience of LLs was associated with lower well-being. When LLs were perceived as controllable, however, this negative association disappeared.

Scheibe S, Freund AM, Baltes PB.
Toward a developmental psychology of Sehnsucht (life longings): the optimal (utopian) life.
Dev Psychol. 2007 May;43(3):778-95.

Acknowledgement: Information is obtained from PubMed at the National Library of Medicine (NCBI)

Posted 25 August 2007 † Feelings.Info § Emotion § Longings ‡ Comments (0)

Affectionate Communication Accelerates Hormonal Stress Recovery

Contemporary theory in interpersonal communication and health psychology supports the prediction that engaging in affectionate behavior within established relationships has a direct effect on the alleviation of stress symptoms following exposure to an acute stressor. Participants in this study were exposed to a series of standard laboratory stressors and were subsequently assigned either to an experimental group or to 1 of 2 control groups. Those in the experimental group were instructed to write a letter to a loved one in which they expressed their feelings of affection for that person. Those in 1 control group thought about a loved one but did not engage in any communicative behavior, and those in the other control group simply sat quietly. All 3 conditions were compared with respect to their levels of salivary free cortisol, an adrenal steroid hormone that is instrumental in the body’s neuroendocrine stress response. Results indicated that, compared to the control groups, those in the experimental group experienced accelerated cortisol recovery following exposure to the acute stressors.

Floyd K, Mikkelson AC, Tafoya MA, Farinelli L, La Valley AG, Judd J, Haynes MT, Davis KL, Wilson J.
Human Affection Exchange: XIII. Affectionate Communication Accelerates Neuroendocrine Stress Recovery.
Health Commun. 2007;22(2):123-32.

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 Acknowledgement: Information is obtained from PubMed at the National Library of Medicine (NCBI)

Posted 25 August 2007 † Feelings.Info § Communication § Emotion ‡ Comments (0)

Thoughts & Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life: A Workbook of Cognitive Behavioral Techniques

Thoughts and Feelings adapts the powerful and widely adaptable techniques of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) into a set of tools readers can use, not to solve a particular problem, but to overcome any of the emotional and behavioral changes that life throws their way. CBT recognizes that most negative feelings arise from confused, irrational thoughts. By learning to identify and change these thoughts and by replacing destructive and limiting behaviors with new, more constructive ones, readers can start steering their lives in the direction they want to go.

Changes to this new edition include revisions and updates to the core CBT chapters as well as a new chapter on how to use mindfulness to bring focus and intention to the process of change.

Thoughts & Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life: A Workbook of Cognitive Behavioral Techniques

Posted 07 April 2007 † Feelings.Info § Taking Control ‡ Comments (0)

The self-fulfilling nature of positive illusions in romantic relationships: love is not blind, but prescient.

It is proposed that satisfying, stable relationships reflect intimates’ ability to see imperfect partners in idealized ways. In this study of the long-term benefits (or possible costs) of positive illusions, both members of dating couples completed measures of idealization and well-being 3 times in a year. Path analyses revealed that idealization had a variety of self-fulfilling effects. Relationships were most likely to persist-even in the face of conflicts and doubts-when intimates idealized one another the most. Intimates who idealized one another more initially also reported relatively greater increases in satisfaction and decreases in conflicts and doubts over the year. Finally, individuals even came to share their partners’ idealized images of them. In summary, intimates who idealized one another appeared more prescient than blind, actually creating the relationships they wished for as romances progressed.

J Pers Soc Psychol. 1996 Dec;71(6):1155-80.
Murray SL, Holmes JG, Griffin DW.

PMID: 8979384 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Posted 07 April 2007 † Feelings.Info § Romance ‡ Comments (0)

Young people’s romantic attachment styles and their associations with well-being

This research, based on attachment theory, examined the relationships between romantic attachment styles, romantic attitudes and well-being among 461 tertiary students, aged 17-21 years. Those with secure romantic attachment styles were less stressed, less lonely and more satisfied academically than those with clingy or casual/fickle styles, independent of current relationship status. Copyright 2002 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

J Adolesc. 2002 Apr;25(2):243-55.
Moore S, Leung C.
PMID: 12069438 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Posted 07 April 2007 † Feelings.Info § Romance ‡ Comments (0)

The Emotional Revolution: How the New Science of Feelings Can Transform Your Life

The paradigm of this book is based on five propositions:

  1. Emotions are critical survival mechanisms that have survived through many millennia.
  2. Emotions are processed in the brain by specialized circuits that anticipate, evaluate, and respond to reward and punishment, and the rest of the body is involved.
  3. The relationship between emotions and memory is understood.
  4. The concept of emotional intelligence is acceptable.
  5. Emotions profoundly affect physical health

(By Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D. Sacramento, Calif., Citadel Press, 2002, 433 pp., $25.00; $18.95 (paper, published 2003)

Posted 07 April 2007 † Feelings.Info § Emotion ‡ Comments (0)

Children’s understanding of emotion in speech

Children’s understanding of emotion in speech was explored in three experiments. In Experiment 1, 4- to 10-year-old children and adults (N = 165) judged the happiness or sadness of the speaker from cues conveyed by propositional content and affective paralanguage. When the cues conflicted (i.e., a happy situation was described with sad paralanguage), children relied primarily on content, in contrast to adults, who relied on paralanguage. There were gradual developmental changes from 4-year-olds’ almost exclusive focus on content to adults’ exclusive focus on paralanguage. Children of all ages exhibited greater response latencies to utterances with conflicting cues than to those with nonconflicting cues, indicating that they processed both sources of emotional information. Children accurately labeled the affective paralanguage when the propositional cues to emotion were obscured by a foreign language (Experiment 2, N = 20) or by low-pass filtering (Experiment 3, N = 60). The findings are consistent with children’s limited understanding of the communicative functions of affective paralanguage.

Morton JB, Trehub SE.
Children’s understanding of emotion in speech.
Child Dev. 2001 May-Jun;72(3):834-43.

Acknowledgement: Information is obtained from PubMed at the National Library of Medicine (NCBI) Â

Posted 07 April 2007 † Feelings.Info § Children ‡ Comments (0)

Emotion & Personality

  • The clinical psychology program at Universitat des Saarlandes is involved in the clinical application of emotion research with a focus on facial expression.
  • Psychonomics Department at the University of Amsterdam.
  • Cognition and Affect Project at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham. Their technical reports are available here.
  • Personality Project at NorthWestern University, including Personality Processes by William Revelle.
  • The Meanings of Social Interaction page at Indiana University’s Department of Sociology provides articles and downloadable software for the analysis of social interaction and affect.
  • On a more “popular” front, Time magazine has some interesting articles on the WWW, including:
    • GLIMPSES OF THE MIND What is consciousness? Memory? Emotion? Science unravels the best-kept secrets of the human brain.
    • WHAT’S YOUR EQ? It’s not your IQ. It’s not even a number. But emotional intelligence may be the best predictor of success in life, redefining what it means to be smart.
    • CAN MACHINES THINK? Maybe so, as Deep Blue’s chess prowess suggests. and that sparks a fresh debate about the nature of mind. Is it just neurons?

(Geneva Emotion Research Group, 2001-10-10)

Posted 06 April 2007 † Feelings.Info § Emotion § Personality ‡ Comments (0)