Bullying and Belonging
Kenneth I. Mavor, Michael J. Platow, Boris Bizumic in Self and Social Identity in Educational Contexts, 2017
In order to examine children’s capacity to experience emotion on behalf of another group member, Bennett, Yuill, Banerjee and Thomson (1998) studied whether children were affected by the wrongdoings of ingroup members. Hypothetical scenarios were read to 5-, 7- and 9-year-olds in which they themselves were responsible for a negative, potentially embarrassing action or in which a member of their own group committed the same action. In an individual condition, all age groups indicated that they would want to apologise. In a social condition, however, only 7- and 9-year-olds wanted to apologise. Sani and Bennett (2003) argued that it is debatable whether younger children’s references to group memberships have the same meaning as those of older children, suggesting that affect-based responding is unlikely to be seen in children younger than 7 years of age. This study was one of the earliest to examine social emotions in children and provided a basis for further research on the role of emotions in children’s responses to intergroup contexts, at least among children aged 8 years or over.
Surviving death
Fredrik Svenaeus in Phenomenological Bioethics, 2017
Philippe Rochat, the well-known child developmental psychologist to whose path-breaking work, Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness, I have already referred above, convincingly argues that the birth of self-consciousness in a child is not only a cognitive move but also, and more importantly, an emotional recognition of oneself as somebody being seen and evaluated by others (Rochat 2009). Reflective self-consciousness means that the child becomes aware of itself as a ‘me’ in the eyes of others in addition to a pre-reflectively experiencing ‘I’, and this first feeling of me-ness is most often a feeling of embarrassment or shame (Rochat 2009: chapter 6). Interestingly, animals other than humans that have been reported to pass the mirror test (e.g. primates, corvids, dolphins, elephants) do not as a rule express such social feelings (at least not in a way that we humans fully understand). Complex social emotions appear to be unique to humans (and possibly some other species of the great apes), and they show the extent to which we as persons are dependent upon a network of social relations that demand a moral sensitivity nurtured by these very feelings (de Waal 2006; Steinbock 2014).
Shame in Medicine
Clare Gerada, Zaid Al-Najjar in Beneath the White Coat, 2020
Shame is a social emotion. It is the feeling of inadequacy we experience when we fail to meet our own, or others, expectations of ourselves. Experiences of shame in medicine are rarely discussed by doctors, yet shame is a powerful, primitive emotion that plays an important role in development of self and in one’s social values. Shame differs from guilt as it is a personal and internalised emotion; ‘I am bad’ rather than guilt: ‘I did something bad’. It is a ‘quiet’ emotion, resulting in withdrawal or making oneself small, so can be easily missed by colleagues and educators. It is such a distressing emotion that most strive to avoid it. However, as well as being potentially destructive, feeling shame can drive the so-called prosocial behaviour of helping others, increase doctors’ awareness of their important core values and act to reinforce their commitment to caring. All of these are vital assets in a well-rounded doctor.
Emotion recognition of faces and emoji in individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury
Published in Brain Injury, 2023
Sharice Clough, Emily Morrow, Bilge Mutlu, Lyn Turkstra, Melissa C. Duff
To date, studies examining emoji-emotion relationships have focused on the six basic emotions initially identified by Ekman and colleagues (34–37). There are over 100 facial expression emoji represented by unique Unicode identifiers and depicted across platforms (https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html). Given that senders frequently use facial emoji depicting a variety of emotions and moods, we compared emotion recognition for emoji depicting the six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, happy) as well as six social emotions (embarrassed, remorseful, anxious, flirting, confident, proud). Social emotions differ from basic emotions in that they require a social context, involving interactions with other people and inferences about others’ mental states (45–49). For example, feelings of embarrassment require a social context where a person becomes self-conscious about another’s real or imagined negative perceptions. We predicted that both groups would have reduced emotion labeling accuracy for emoji depicting social emotions relative to basic emotions. However, given that people with TBI commonly have deficits in social cognition (1), we predicted a group-by-stimulus condition interaction where the TBI group would demonstrate a greater reduction in emotion labeling accuracy of social emotions relative to basic emotions than the neurotypical group. (4) Compare confidence ratings of emotion labels by stimulus type and group.
Leo Kanner and autism: a 75-year perspective
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2018
It is proposed that this capacity to identify with others does not adequately mature in individuals with ASD and gives rise to core ASD symptoms (Hobson & Hobson, 2007). As children with ASD grow older, their innate affective deficits are important impediments in symbolic play and language development (Hobson, Harris, García-Pérez, & Hobson, 2009; Hobson, Hobson, Malik, Bargiota, & Caló, 2013). Hobson proposes that flexible thinking may develop from early interpersonal affective engagement. If so, deficits in interpersonal relating during early development may play a role in the cognitive deficits detected in autism. Complex self-conscious emotions may too emerge from an infants’ early interactive experiences as they become aware of being the object of the parent’s attention. Development essentially proceeds with an ongoing intersubjectivity with attuned parental interpersonal engagement as the infant and child seek to make sense of relationships with other people and their surroundings. Such interactions lead to an understanding of the social emotions of embarrassment, pride, and shame. The lack of ongoing interactional coordination in ASD results in a lack of flexibility in thinking and in internalizing self-conscious emotions. Finally, symbolic play is linked to communicative engagement of emotion. Children with an ASD diagnosis show less joint engagement and less symbolic play (Hobson, Hobson, Cheung, & Caló, 2015).
Tolerance for specific negative affective states and coping-oriented cannabis use motives among college student cannabis users
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2022
Sarah A. Hartmann, Alison C. McLeish
It is, perhaps, not surprising that tolerance of fear was not associated with coping-oriented marijuana use motives as fear is a time-limited state and typically subsides once the fearful stimulus is removed. Sadness can both be a prolonged or persistent mood state that requires greater effort and resources to tolerate, leading to a greater chance of needing to use maladaptive coping methods. A similar explanation could account for the nonsignificant findings for disgust and even negative social emotions. If the individual removes themselves from the situation that produces these negative social emotions, perhaps the intensity of these emotions subsides enough that the individual is better able to tolerate them. In terms of tolerance of anger, the majority of research on anger and cannabis use has focused on the effects of cannabis use and cannabis withdrawal. Thus, little is known about the use of cannabis to cope with anger. Based on the current findings, it appears that individuals who are unable to tolerate anger may not motivated to use marijuana to cope with this anger.