Search

This study analyses how affective stance is used for evaluation and positioning in fan discourse. Adopting a corpus-based approach, the paper focuses on affective stance verbs in an English-speaking popular media fandom on three social media platforms, Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit. Fans use affective stance to construct positions in relation to the popular media franchise, in this case a popular Japanese manga and anime series. By combining quantitative and qualitative linguistic analysis the study shows that stancetaking verbalises fans' investment in the fictional world of the narrative media, in the franchise production, and in the context of fan productivity. The discursively constructed positions reflect common fan practices such as publicising fan affect and emotions, reviewing the franchise critically, and sharing textual fan productivity. The analysis associates platform differences with the social norms of the fans and the technological affordances that enable their interaction. Because hashtag-based interaction on micro-blogs is primarily indirect, the study argues that the interactive functions of stance can be understood in relation to the general fandom affect. • Stancetaking in a narrative media fandom marks investment in fictional world. • Social media platforms vary in frequency and function of stance verb constructions. • Positions taken through stancetaking reflect the practices of the online community. • Stance as an interactive process occurs in relation to the general fandom affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research. [Display omitted] • The affective sciences have grown disparate due to differing assumptions. • A teleological principle for human affective phenomena can organize the field's assumptions. • Some affective phenomena adjust based on the comfort zone (affective concerns). • Others monitor that adaptive process (affective features). • This Human Affectome framework organizes existing research and provides a research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the decision-making processes of people who kill, paying particular attention to the role of situational, interactional and emotional factors. The paper considers what killers were thinking and feeling immediately prior to and during the moments of homicide, what situational and emotional factors influence their decision to become embroiled in a lethal encounter and the extent to which they draw upon prior knowledge and ‘expertise’ in planning and/or executing homicide. The overall aim is to review existing research to illuminate whether and how those who commit homicide adopt particular cognitive processes that inform their ‘decisions’ to become involved in a lethal act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The aim of this position paper is to discuss the role of affect in designing learning experiences to enhance expertise acquisition in sport. The design of learning environments and athlete development programmes are predicated on the successful sampling and simulation of competitive performance conditions during practice. This premise is captured by the concept of representative learning design, founded on an ecological dynamics approach to developing skill in sport, and based on the individual-environment relationship. In this paper we discuss how the effective development of expertise in sport could be enhanced by the consideration of affective constraints in the representative design of learning experiences. Conclusions Based on previous theoretical modelling and practical examples we delineate two key principles of Affective Learning Design : (i) the design of emotion-laden learning experiences that effectively simulate the constraints of performance environments in sport; (ii) recognising individualised emotional and coordination tendencies that are associated with different periods of learning. Considering the role of affect in learning environments has clear implications for how sport psychologists, athletes and coaches might collaborate to enhance the acquisition of expertise in sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the findings of a multi-country study of medical professionals' perceptions and evaluations of children. The primary aim of the study was to establish the perceptions medical professionals working in three Eastern European countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova) hold toward children identified as “typical”, “at-risk” and “with disability”. A second aim was to explore the existence of country-level differences in medical professionals' perceptions of children. The third aim was to examine the pattern of associations between attitudes toward children and a change in use of institutional care to family and community-based alternatives. Over 800 respondents provided survey responses using paper-based and online returns. Findings indicated that positive affect toward children was associated with the favourability of attributes generated about “typical” children. In contrast, positive affect toward children was associated with less favourability toward at-risk children. Attribute favourability ratings generated for at-risk children were positively associated with attributes generated for children with disability. Differences were identified between respondents working across the three countries. No association was identified between attitudes toward children and endorsement of a statement supportive of de-institutionalisation as part of child protection reforms. These findings illuminate how children are conceptualised and understood by a group of medical professionals who hold considerable sway over decisions and recommendations about their relative risk and vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Sexual fantasy is proposed to be an important factor in sexual offending. However, the existing research on this topic suggests that its role is multifaceted and interrelated with various other important factors associated with sexual offending. In this paper, we begin by examining some of the conceptual and definitional issues regarding the term ‘deviant sexual fantasy’. We then discuss the literature relating to sexual fantasies and some of its chief correlates, including: (1) sexual arousal, (2) affective states, (3) personality, and (4) behavior. Throughout the paper we discuss the relevant research and theories; identify possible areas for future research; and offer some suggestions for theoretical development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The study of therapeutic landscapes, restorative places and enabling environments – what might collectively be referred to as enabling places – has revealed much of the relationship between place and health promotion. However, it is arguable that this work has only partially accounted for the diverse therapeutic features of enabling places and the various means of their production. Drawing on Bruno Latour, this paper introduces a conceptual logic of enabling places grounded in the analysis of enabling resources. Three categories of enabling resources will be considered: social, affective and material resources. It will be argued that enabling places are composed in diverse actor-networks, facilitating access to enabling resources and supporting the development of novel agencies or capacities. This draws attention to the various networks and associations that promote health and wellbeing, as well as the resources and agencies necessary to maintain these states. The paper concludes that the analysis of enabling resources, and the networks and agencies that comprise them, provides a novel basis for describing the character and production of enabling places, as well as the diverse benefits associated with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates hyperbolic expressions of emotion in Mandarin Chinese conversations in Taiwan for two dimensions: how hyperbole is realized via a variety of syntactic devices based on metaphor, and how hyperbole takes affective stance to evidence speakers’ intersubjectification. It is shown that syntactic devices utilized to render hyperbole include polysyndeton, extreme case formulation, resultative verb construction, and four-word idiomatic construction. Highly understood in metaphorical senses, hyperbolic expressions of emotion have rich data revealing that hyperbole draws on metaphor as a bedrock mechanism. This paper argues that it is the analogical and imaginative capacities of metaphor that opens up possibility for speakers to talk about exaggerative interpretations of events, which further increase speakers’ intersubjectification to indicate their stance for interactive purposes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores the affective formation of health and space/place through an examination of the affective and bodily practices of marathon runners in China. By elaborating the idea of "affective spaces of health", we investigate not only how the affective potential of running bodies enables a therapeutic and individualised form of selfhood in response to China's post-socialist transformation, but also how affective atmospheres might condition and discipline runners' affective capacities for health. The paper therefore questions the simplistic association of health with particular qualities of place, and calls for research to focus on the affective, dispersed and fluid spaces of health instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A theological notion of affect operates as a cultural boundary tool. • Pastoral authority is rooted in the pastors' capabilities as aesthetic workers. • The atmosphere in the Night Church is designed as a boundary quasi-object. This paper examines how a Copenhagen Night Church worked to affirm and bridge cultural boundaries by relating worship services to an incomprehensible corpo-affective experience and construing the atmosphere as a type of boundary object; an object that provides an interpretational flexibility while conserving an underlying common identity. It starts by exploring a public trial concerning the use of music in the Night Church. The trial forced the clergy to engage in boundary work in order to establish the Night Church events as worship services and not concerts. Most importantly, this included relating worship services and religion to an incomprehensible corpo-affective experience unmediated by meaning-making. This helped protect and transform pastoral authority as pastors emerged as theologically minded aesthetic workers just as it created a sense of coherence with an imagined religious past. However, if it helped establish a cultural border, it also afforded a crossing of cultural boundaries outside the context of the trial. Drawing on data generated from fieldwork in the Night Church, we explore how it helped position the Night Church atmosphere as a boundary quasi-object intended to connect a younger, more secular generation to religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The question of time in psychoses has been studied more often as lived time (perceived) than as discursive time (abstract). The specificity of lived time in psychosis can disturb the modes of “intrigue setting” (‘mise en intrigue’ according to Ricœur seems to translate lived time into a narrative process), particularly as concerns lack of dating or excess of dating. In this paper, the authors study the phenomenon they have named “hyperdating” and its defensive function in psychosis. “Hyperdating” would be a function of overdating, illustrating the distance between the patient who “hyperdates” and the affective charge he feels. “Hyperdating” would then consist in a radical lack of the dating function. The purpose of dating would not be to tag events temporally in order to organize the narrative chronologically, but to proceed to evacuate the meaning out of the event by designating only its date. In fact, we suppose that the affect would be shifted onto this date, and thus disconnected with the representation of the event for which there are representational deficiencies and probably a very intensive original affective load. Dating is a vehicle of chronology, and is the manifestation of a faculty for the narrative of self to become an autobiography as temporal experience. We suppose that in psychosis, this process is inefficient. In fact, there is either a lack of dating of narrative events, or a “hyperdating” which overloads narrative with temporal pseudo-indicators, in particular through quasi-sacred dates. “Hyperdating” would therefore be a defensive psychic process against the traumatic load connected to the remembrance of the event, transferring the central characteristics to the date itself, which would then be exterior to any meaningful chronology. The authors propose to define this “hyperdating” phenomenon, and to investigate its psychic function. The methodology is qualitative, and based on two clinical cases, one of schizophrenia, the other of mania. A single case of schizophrenia: We think that in schizophrenia the “hyperdating” phenomenon could be underlain by a schism between affect and representation. This is an isolating process which fits into a psychotic dissociation, recalling the break characterising schizophrenic temporality. The speech is centred on a time-based accuracy to the detriment of experience narration and its affective expression. It then seems that “hyperdating” enables the person to avoid the huge traumatic load related to the factual content in order to shift the affective load on the dating itself. A single case of mania: Here “hyderdating” would be the expression of a game with dates in an omnipotent process. This game appears as a mosaic, a disjointed and blurred control attempt lacking a linear temporal trajectory. In mania, a cumulated series of dates does not ensure either temporal links or any necessary “temporalisation” for “intrigue setting”. Time is one of the forms of “discontinuity and hopping” frozen in instantaneity. “Hyperdating” reveals a need to control the temporal flux which can only fail and it is, under a chronological appearance, an expression of a temporality frozen on the return of the same. The lack of temporal succession and of alternatives to “temporalisation” of events by means of a date which freezes them and removes their affective dimension can only render the reflexive capture of an identity through a biographic narrative problematic. Conclusion: Thus, other than the discrepancies related to the specificity of the “hyperdating” process in the psychic economy of psychotic patients, there would be some similarities concerning “hyperdatation” in psychoses such as abortive attempts of intrigue restoration, deadlock of the chronological function of dating, but also freezing of temporalisation on a number. These illustrate the schism or the instantaneity, devoid of any temporal flux and therefore of any link with “withholding” (apprehension of what has just occurred) and with “protention” (intuition of the immediate future), which characterise time experience according to Husserl. The limits of our study are rooted in the difficulty of identifying this phenomenon as it seems to occur less often than those concerning forgetting or lack of dating. Furthermore the links between “hyperdating” and the affect management process as well as the differences of those links within the different types of psychosis will need to be investigated more thoroughly. That is why the prospects of this study could be the following ones: interrogating the links between “hyperdating” and memory in psychoses. (Is the “hyperdating” phenomenon a failed attempt to recover memories, and/or an attempt to shape raw mnesic traces?); further investigations of the psychotic temporality issue; therapeutic contributions in the management of time and affects could be based on these previous points as far as it seems that it is only through the flexibility of such a defence that the patient will reach the affects and integrate them in an intersubjective relationship with the therapist. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Although the term social support has positive connotations, research has shown that receiving help may be a double-edged sword. Received support may have no effects or may even be detrimental to recipients’ well-being. However, providing support may have beneficial effects for the helper. This paper reports a study of competing and interactive effects of enacted support on affect in couples undergoing assisted reproduction treatments. Sixty-six male/female couples from two German fertility clinics participated in this study. Affect and support were assessed at 3 time points: upon oocyte and sperm collection, after embryo transfer, and following the first pregnancy test (3 weeks after the treatment outcomes were known). Results indicated that depending on the providers’ gender, different forms of support provision predicted better affect developments. While women seemed to benefit from providing emotional support, higher positive affect among men was related to their provision of instrumental support. Neither support receipt nor reciprocal support, however, were reliably associated with affect changes. Results partially coincide with predictions from esteem-enhancement theory of supportive exchanges. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background and purpose: This paper is a reply to Gauvin and Rejeski’s rebuttal (Psychol. Sport Exerc. 2 (2001) 73) of a previously published conceptual and methodological critique (Psychol. Sport Exerc. 2 (2001) 1) of the Exercise-induced Feeling Inventory (EFI; J. Sport Exerc. Psychol. 15 (1993) 403).Methods: Our responses focus on (a) issues regarding scientific debates, (b) the necessity of psychometric scrutiny, (c) the ongoing search for a definition of “exercise-induced feeling states,” (d) concerns regarding the underrepresentation of the intended domain of content of the EFI and its appropriate uses, (e) the implications of inductive and deductive scale development, (f) several methodological issues, (g) the value of a circumplex model for exercise psychology research, and (h) the compatibility of categorical and dimensional models of affect.Results and conclusions: We maintain that the most important issues raised in the original critique of the EFI, such as the definition, the demarcation, and the structure of its intended domain of content, were not addressed in Gauvin and Rejeski’s rejoinder and remain unclear. Researchers are urged to contemplate the theoretical bases and to scrutinize the psychometric data of the available measures before making their selection. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper explores the role of voice quality in the communication of emotions, moods and attitudes. Listeners’ reactions to an utterance synthesised with seven different voice qualities were elicited in terms of pairs of opposing affective attributes. The voice qualities included harsh voice, tense voice, modal voice, breathy voice, whispery voice, creaky voice and lax–creaky voice. These were synthesised using a formant synthesiser, and the voice source parameter settings were guided by prior analytic studies as well as auditory judgements. Results offer support for some past observations on the association of voice quality and affect, and suggest a number of refinements in some cases. Listeners’ ratings further suggest that these qualities are considerably more effective in signalling milder affective states than the strong emotions. It is clear that there is no one-to-one mapping between voice quality and affect: rather a given quality tends to be associated with a cluster of affective attributes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Over the past seventy years, biomedical and epidemiological research has shown that regular physical activity (PA) is critical for physical and mental health. Despite this knowledge, physical inactivity is the fourth leading risk factor for global mortality, accounting for 9% (5.3 million) of premature deaths annually. We suggest this mismatch between knowing about the risks of PA and engaging in regular PA can be reconciled by focusing less on expected health benefits of PA and more on how people feel during PA. Specifically, in this position paper, we argue that affective response (feeling good versus bad) to PA is an intermediate phenotype that can explain significant variance in PA behavior and is, in turn, a function of genetic variability. In making this argument, we first review empirical evidence showing that affective response to PA predicts future physical activity behavior. Second, we systematically review research on single nucleotide morphisms (SNPs) that are associated with affective response to PA. Investigating affective response to PA as an intermediate phenotype will allow future researchers to move beyond asking " What SNPs are associated with PA?", and begin asking " How do these SNPs influence PA?", thus ultimately optimizing the translation of knowledge gained from genomic data to intervention development. • Affective response to physical activity (PA) is predictive of PA behavior. • Three genetic variants are associated with affective response to PA. • Affective response to PA may be conceptualized as an intermediate phenotype. • Intermediate phenotypes are potential targets for health promotion interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]