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This paper presents a case of jointly produced passion work. Passion work is emotional labor designed to elicit a strong response from subjects through an impression of extreme states such as pain, agony, or suffering. Based on an ethnographic investigation of professional wrestling participants, this study analyzes the backstage emotion teamwork that takes place within the self and with other performers. The study traces how performers do this physical labor and the social consequences of such work. The findings demonstrate that a) social rewards are intrinsic to performances of passion work, b) jointly produced passion work allows for the sort of breadth that is difficult to achieve in solo emotional work, and e) emotional labor shapes identity in recreational performances of the body.

Objectives: Chronic alcoholism leads to impaired visual and auditory processing of emotions, but the cross-modal (auditory-visual) processing of emotional stimuli has not yet been explored. Our objectives were to describe [...]

Within the thought control literature, Wegner [(1989). White bears and other unwanted thoughts: Suppression, obsession, and the psychology of mental control. New York, NY, USA: Penguin Press.] referred to the combined initial suppression and expression phases of thought control as an indulgence cycle which results in the rebound effect typically observed in suppression studies. According to Ironic Process Theory [Wegner, (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34-52.], this rebound leads to further attempts to suppress that are difficult due to the target thought's hyperaccessibility, resulting in a secondary rebound effect owing to a positive feedback system of indulgence cycles. The current study investigated (i) the effects of repeated suppression and opportunities for expression by using a method to index the frequency, duration, and associated levels of distress of an experimentally induced visual intrusion, and (ii) whether any observed effects were differentially linked to depressive symptomatology in an analogue sample of low and high dysphoric participants. Results supported a secondary rebound effect in those participants most successful at suppressing target intrusions. The findings offer an important extension to the emerging literature on the management of intrusive memories in depression. Keywords: Thought suppression; Intrusive memories; Visual intrusions; Depression

We examined the impact of family emotional climate and sibling relationship quality on behavioral problems and adaptation in preschool-aged children. Participants were 63 mothers with a preschool-aged child enrolled in a Southern Arizona Head Start Program. Siblings were identified as children closest in age to target child. Mothers of predominantly Mexican descent (95%) participated in home interviews during the Fall and Spring of the year children entered center-based programs. Sibling relationship quality (warmth, agonism/ competition) was proposed to predict children's adjustment (behavioral problems and adaptation) longitudinally. Results indicate that after controlling for child characteristics (temperament, child gender, birth order) and after accounting for family characteristics (family emotional expressiveness, child exposure to interparental conflict, and parental agreement on childrearing), sibling warmth made a significant and unique contribution to child adjustment as reported by mothers and teachers six months later. Findings are consistent with existing research indicating that sibling relationships impact children's adjustment and shape young children's lives in meaningful and marked ways. Moreover, these associations were found with an understudied sample of young children of predominantly Mexican descent in low-income families, and thus make an important contribution to knowledge in the field. Keywords Sibling relationship quality * Family emotional expressiveness * Child exposure to interparental conflict * Parental agreement on childrearing * Child adjustment

Despite the clinical importance of deliberate self-harm, research on the risk factors for self-harm among nonclinical populations has been limited. This study examined the role of childhood maltreatment, emotional inexpressivity, and affect intensity/reactivity in the self-harm behavior of 249 female college students. Childhood maltreatment and low positive affect intensity/reactivity reliably distinguished women with frequent self-harm from women with no history of self-harm, as did the combination of greater maltreatment, greater inexpressivity, and higher levels of affect intensity/reactivity (global and negative). Among women with a history of self-harm, emotional inexpressivity was associated with more frequent self-harm, as was the combination of greater maltreatment, greater inexpressivity, and lower levels of positive affect intensity/reactivity. Keywords: deliberate self-harm, self-injury, serf-mutilation, etiology, risk factors, childhood abuse, childhood maltreatment, emotional responding

Objectives: To understand the features of child abuse/neglect (CA/N) allegations in cases with emotional maltreatment (EMT) allegations, as well as the features of the EMT allegations themselves, and to describe any associations of EMT with distinct impairments of children's behavior, emotion and functioning. Method: The sample consisted of 806 high-risk children, 545 with one or more maltreatment reports to CPS. The Maltreatment Classification System was used to record the number and severity levels of maltreatment allegations, which compared cases with and without EMT. Multiple regression analyses were conducted using 10 outcome scales from the Child Behavior Checklist, Vineland Screener, and Trauma Symptom Checklist. Successive blocks of predictor variables included demographics, maltreatment classification variables, maternal and family characteristics, and study site. Results: When there were allegations of EMT as well as CA/N in a CPS case-record (by age 8), the CA/N allegations tended to be either more frequent or less severe than those kinds of allegations in cases without EMT. When neglect was alleged to occur with EMT, neglect allegations outnumbered allegations of EMT. However, when sexual abuse allegations were accompanied by EMT allegations, there were more EMT allegations than sexual abuse allegations in the cases. Higher severity ratings for EMT allegations than for physical abuse occurred when cases included any abuse. Distinctive effects of EMT subtypes were found between problems of safety/restriction and self-reported anger symptoms, and between problems of self-esteem/autonomy and posttraumatic stress. Conclusion: Differences exist between the CA/N allegations in cases with and without EMT. Having few cases containing only EMT allegations made it difficult to assess distinctive harm associated with EMT. Certain types of EMT allegations were associated with increases in children's anger and posttraumatic stress. Keywords: Emotional maltreatment; Maltreatment dimensions: Types; Behavior problems; Emotional functioning

Self-reported affect to positive and negative emotional pictures was contrasted in people with major depressive disorder (MDD) and never-depressed control participants (n = 25 in each group). The results revealed significant differences in response to positive images (reduced arousal, less pleasant valence, decreased happiness, increased sadness) in MDD but no clear group differences in response to negative stimuli. Extending earlier findings of reduced responsiveness to positive, but not negative, stimuli in MDD (D. M. Sloan, M. E. Strauss, S. W. Quirk, & M. Satajovik, 1997; D. M. Sloan, M. E. Strauss, & K. L. Wisner, 2001), the data indicate that blunted response to positive stimuli is found when both categorical and dimensional ratings are elicited. Further, the data replicate earlier findings of elevated sadness reports to positive stimuli (J. Rottenberg, K. L. Kasch, J. J. Gross, & I. H. Gotlib, 2002), which may reflect broader difficulties in regulating emotions in MDD.

The role of daily positive emotions in the stress process was examined in a sample of 34 recently bereaved older adult widows. Humor coping and perceived stress were measured in questionnaires, and positive emotions, depression, anxiety, and stress were assessed daily for 98 days. Results highlight the critical role of daily positive emotions in the months immediately following conjugal loss. Intraindividual analyses revealed significant reductions in the magnitude of the stress-depression correlation on days in which greater positive emotions were present. Results also suggest that different vulnerability and resilience factors are implicated in the emotion differentiation process. For widows with greater humor coping skills, there was less overlap in daily ratings of positive emotions and depressive symptoms. In contrast, higher levels of chronic stress resulted in less differentiation of emotional responses.

A dynamical systems approach was used to model the intraindividual variability in emotional well-being following conjugal loss. Well-being in a sample of 19 recently bereaved older adult widows was measured every day for 3 months. The pattern of variability of well-being was hypothesized to be an oscillating process that damps across time (i.e., large swings followed by a gradual damping). Results indicated that there was significant patterned variability in the emotional well-being adjustment that can be modeled by a linear oscillator model ([R.sup.2] = .77), in addition to an overall positive trend. Applying dynamical systems analyses to capture variability and subsequent well-being trajectories following spousal loss is an important step in delineating the complex adjustment to widowhood.

P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks (2002) suggested that expectancy of the unconditional stimulus and emotional ratings are valid indexes of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning and that participants are aware if they can discriminate the conditional stimuli. However, research suggests that processes that are irrelevant to awareness affect these measures. Further, as awareness refers to conscious experience, a valid measure needs to index subjective state rather than discrimination ability. In support, research using subjective measures has demonstrated qualitatively different effects depending on whether participants reported being aware or unaware of the stimuli. In this research, participants reported being unaware of the stimuli even though they were clearly able to discriminate the stimuli. These findings question the validity of Lovibond and Shanks' concept of awareness and their suggestion of a close association between conditioning and awareness.

Experiments in evaluative conditioning are discussed in relation to the acquisition of disgust responses. Affective ratings, physiological responses, and contingency verbalizations are examined.

Affective learning does not seem to occur without contingency awareness, according to results of an experiment using the differential conditioning paradigm. The study involved between-subject comparisons of verbalizers and nonverbalizers, as well as within-subject comparisons of verbalizers before and after verbalization.

A reprint of an article by John B. Watson is presented. The article describes his experiments with conditional fear produced in a 9-month-old boy named Albert.

When an attractive action opportunity has been forgone, individuals tend to decline a substantially less attractive current opportunity in the same action domain, even though, in an absolute sense, it still has positive value. The hypothesis that continued inaction (inaction inertia) occurs in the service of avoiding anticipated regret was tested. In Experiments 1 and 2, when repeated contact with the forgone opportunity (and, hence, the experience of regret) was made unavoidable, the tendency toward subsequent inaction decreased. The inaction inertia effect was also reduced when avoidance costs were increased (Experiment 3) or when the initial reason for avoidance was removed (Experiment 4). Experiment 4 included a thought-listing task that provided direct evidence for the role of regret in producing inaction inertia.

Time of conditioning influences long-term retention of contextual but not auditory-cue fear conditioning. Long-Evans rats (Rattus norvegicus) conditioned at 12 noon displayed reduced contextual fear conditioning compared to rats conditioned at 8 a.m. or 4 p.m. This effect was eliminated by exposure to the context 24 hr prior to conditioning and by a post-trial injection of corticosterone (1.0 mg/kg). Time of conditioning did not influence short-term retention of contextual fear. These results suggest that time of conditioning influences the posttrial processes that construct a memory representation of the context. They also support the view that contextual and auditory-cue fear conditioning depend on different processes. These results are discussed in relation to the concept of memory storage modulators.

Human subjects are shown an angry face for under 40 milliseconds and then shown an expressionles mask directly afterwards. Subjects only report seeing the mask, rather than the angry face or target. Volunteers were shown two angry faces and one of these was associated with white noise as a result of previous conditioning. A neural response occurred in the right amygdala when the conditioned face was shown in masked presentations, while if the same face was shown unmasked, the left amygdala showed enhanced activity. Levels of awareness are reflected in which amygdala is involved.

The role of conscious awareness in human Pavlovian conditioning was examined in 2 experiments using masked fear-relevant (snakes and spiders; Experiments 1 and 2) and fear-irrelevant (flowers and mushrooms; Experiment 1) pictures as conditioned stimuli, a mild electric shock as the unconditioned stimulus, and skin conductance responses as the primary dependent variable. The conditioned stimuli were presented briefly (30 ms) and were effectively masked by an immediately following masking stimulus. Experiment 1 demonstrated nonconscious conditioning to fear-relevant but not to fear-irrelevant stimuli. Even though the participants could not recognize the stimuli in Experiment 2, they differentiated between masked stimuli predicting and not predicting shocks in expectancy ratings. However, expectancy ratings were not related to the conditioned autonomic response.

Researchers used the Stroop color-naming test with women with anorexia nervosa and with women with restrained and unrestrained diets. They used words connected with fatness and thinness, and words for foods with high and low calorific values. They controlled for valence effects and presented the stimuli under masked and unmasked conditions. The women with anorexia nervosa displayed delayed color-naming in words relating to both body shapes and, to a lesser degree, to high calorie food words. The restrained and unrestrained eaters in the sample did not have delayed color-naming latencies.

In evaluative conditioning, effects of more presentations of the unconditioned stimulus before conditioning (US preexposure) or after conditioning (US postexposure) were studied using between-subjects and within-subjects controls. Different nationalities of the subjects differentiated two experiments. US-alone presentations, in both experiments, cut down on the evaluative response. The unexpected effect of US postexposure brings up speculation on the learning process that underlies evaluative conditioning.

In analogical problem solving, a source problem with a known solution is used to solve a target problem. The present study deals with one possible condition influencing the search for possible source problems (i.e., with similarities between source and target problems in the emotional connotation of the problem cover stories). Subjects were given six source problems - distractors as well as target-relevant problems - that were varied with respect to the emotional valence of the cover stories. Then one group of subjects (n = 32) was given a pleasant target problem, while the other group (n = 31) received an unpleasant target problem. Except for emotional valence the two target problems were identical. Subjects preferred those target-relevant source problems that were emotionally congruent with the target problem. The findings are interpreted within network theories of long-term memory, introducing emotional markers or emotion-concept nodes to represent the emotional connotation of the represented units. By controlling subjects' mood change after reading the (un)pleasant target-problem cover story, it could be ruled out that the observed results were due to a mood congruity effect of the type described by Bower (1981)., Theoretical considerations In analogical problem solving, one tries to solve a new problem by referring to a different one, for which the solution is already known. The following question arises: [...]

Evaluative conditioning experiments may be marred by a biased process of stimulus selection, resulting in apparent conditioning effects that are actually artifacts of the way the experimental stimuli are chosen. A study of conceptual conditioning elicited differential responses suggesting evaluative conditioning, but the same effects were produced in control and no treatment conditions as in the experimental condition. The present study represents the first time these control conditions were used with the evaluative conditioning paradigm.

When subjects are read a list of stimulus words and are asked to generate an associate to each word, recall for associates given to emotionally toned stimulus words is poorer than recall for associates given to stimulus words of a neutral affective tone. The present study reports the results of 4 experiments designed to investigate this finding. Experiment 1 replicated the effect and showed that when subjects associate to an emotionally toned stimulus word, that associate is likely to be a word with a congruent emotional tone. Experiment 2 demonstrated that reducing the number of emotionally toned stimulus words in the word list resulted in an improvement in recall for associates generated to these words. In the third experiment recall for associates generated to emotionally toned stimulus words was poorer if the stimulus words were similar in meaning (eg. worry, anxiety, panic, fear) than if they were dissimilar (eg. anxiety, death, passion, greed). Experiment 4 found that stimulus word properties other than emotionality could be manipulated to demonstrate a differential recall. The results throw doubt on an explanation involving impaired consolidation of the associate due to the arousing properties of the emotional stimulus words. Rather, they are best explained in terms of the inability of the retrieval system to discriminate amongst competing sets of responses which are semantically and emotionally congruent.

This investigation examined the influence of verbal descriptions on impression judgments formed through communicative interactions. Specifically, verbal descriptions were hypothesized to have the most influence when they were negative and presented prior to, rather than following, a communicative encounter. Findings indicated that only positive descriptions influenced judgments of negative persons and that order of presentation was not significant. The findings suggest that interactive judgment processes may differ significantly from previously studied observational judgment processes.

Analysis of several research on the structural model which supports the assumption that a formal structural social-action system affects the manner by which actors label their emotions reveal that the formal model competently differentiates emotional labels. Findings also indicate that the formal model discussed can be used to develop a comprehensive and formal mapping of emotions. The implications of such results to the treatment of emotional problems and to future research have been discussed.

This was an exploratory investigation of the relationship between sensitivity to emotional cues and social functioning in 20 head-injured children and adolescents (median coma 7.5 days) and 20 controls who had sustained other accidental injuries. Median age was 12.8 yr. (range 5 to 16 years). Sensitivity to fundamental facial expressions and both visual and verbal context cues to emotion was measured. Analysis indicated that head-injured subjects were impaired relative to controls on a global index of emotion interpretation ability. A significant number of head-injured subjects also made errors confusing positive and negative emotions and errors interpreting emotionally toned vignettes. Results of a parent questionnaire indicated that head-injured subjects exhibit less appropriate social behavior than controls. The data showed a strong trend for global ability to interpret emotion to predict social behavior.

The permanence of aversive memories has been reported to vary when assessed with conditioned emotional response procedures (months) versus avoidance response measures (days). When evaluated with the potentiated startle paradigm, five light-shock pairings at a 2-min intertrial interval produced highly reliable potentiated startle, which was similar in magnitude from 1 to 28 days after training and maximal using a 0.6-mA footshock intensity. These results are consistent with such measures as conditioned emotional response procedures, in which aversive memories have been observed after months following original training. The results obtained with various shock intensities are also discussed in the context of other indices of fear.

This study describes a human electrodermal conditioning experiment in which subjects were asked to mentally rehearse the UCS in a period following initial fear conditioning and prior to a test period involving nonreinforced presentations of the CS. Subjects who were asked to rehearse the UCS retained a differential fear CR during subsequent unreinforced presentations of the CS, but control subjects who were asked to rehearse either a nonaversive event or an aversive event unrelated to the UCS failed to retain the differential CR they had acquired during conditioning. These results suggest that rehearsal of the UCS during periods when CS and UCS are absent can aid the persistence of a fear CR in the absence of further pairings of the CS and UCS. It is argued that these effects can be explained in terms of the effect of UCS rehearsal on the strength and evaluation of the UCS representation. It is also suggested that cued UCS rehearsal might provide a useful procedure for understanding clinical incubation effects and for understanding how the 'worry' process contributes to the maintenance and incubation of fear.

A program for objective textual analysis which incorporated measures of style, word emotionality, and word imagery, was used to score the verbal portion of 152 30-sec. television advertisements. This analysis indicated that advertisements directed at children were more active, longer, and less negative than those directed at adults. A comparison of advertisements directed at males and females regardless of age showed greater linguistic complexity (more words, fewer common words) when their text was directed at women and girls. Each of the 13 stylistic and emotional measures used to describe advertisements produced at least one significant difference associated with the age or the sex of the target population or their interaction.

A retrospective study was conducted to examine the extent to which phobias are associated with a conditioning pathway to fear. The Phobic Origin Questionnaire (Ost and Hugdahl, Behav. Res. Ther. 19, 439-477, 1981) was administered to a sample of 91 phobic outpatients (patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia, social phobics, simple phobics). Results show clearly that conditioning experiences occur more frequently than either vicarious or informational, learning experiences, which confirms the findings previously reported by Rimm, Janda, Lancaster, Nahl and Dittmar (Behav. Res. Ther. 15, 231-238, 1977) and by Ost and Hugdahl (1981; Behav. Res. Ther. 21, 623-631, 1983). Yet, conditioning experiences consist mainly of panic attacks in confined environments. The findings also suggest that a considerable number of phobias are based on a combination of different pathways to fear.