Affect (Psychology)

This work seeks to explore the possibilities of applying affect theory to practices of social justice, specifically, through the affect theories based on energetics described by Teresa Brennan. The first section gives an overview on Brennan’s main arguments and how I interpret her through a Spinozistic lens. This project then explores the positive and negative roles that happiness, anger, grief, and humor have had in various social movements and how they have often been mis- or underused in these moments. The final section offers Brennan’s theory of “Living Attention” as a means of understanding our own affects and the affects of others and how to use them effectively and healthily.

The present study applies Driver and Gottman’s (2004a) Turning System to
observations of the therapeutic relationship in a quasi-experimental between and within
groups design. A sample of 63 full counseling sessions (21 first sessions with clients who
return for four sessions, 21 first sessions for clients who terminate therapy prior to four
sessions, and 21 fourth sessions) were collected from a university counseling center in
South Florida. Clients and clinicians also completed self report evaluations of the
therapeutic relationship that were also included in this study (Working Alliance Inventory
– Short Form, and the Real Relationship Inventory). A series of multivariate analysis of
the variance (MANOVA) tests were performed to assess for significant differences in
Turning System behavior between return and dropout groups in the first sessions of
therapy, as well as for significant differences between return groups’ first and fourth sessions. Correlation analyses were run for client and therapist self report data and
Turning System codes.
Overall, the Turning System codes did not predict attrition from therapy;
however, significant effects were found for specific behaviors in the return versus
dropout comparisons, including client’s uses of negative bids, high level questions, and
preoccupied away responses. The Turning System also did not predict clear differences
between behaviors in ongoing therapy, though significant effects were again found for
individual behaviors enacted by both clients and therapists. Significant negative
correlations were also found for return group clients between specific behaviors and
ratings of the therapeutic alliance, such as high level questions and preoccupied away
responses. Individual behaviors in the therapist return group, such as high level questions,
negative bids, and interruptions, correlated negatively with ratings of the therapeutic
alliance. The results of this study are presented in an effort to synthesize the data into a
narrative for developing effective therapeutic relationships and guidance for future
research.

The purpose of this study was to investigate possible relationships between selfdirected
learning and emotional intelligence in healthcare managers. There are
commonalities between these constructs; however, they had not previously been
examined side by side. The interrelationships of these variables with age, gender, and
tenure with the health system in a supervisory role were examined. A post hoc hypothesis
exploring the relationships of self-directed learning, emotional intelligence, problem
solving ability needed on the job and the amount of change facing the manager in the
workplace was formulated after the data were collected. Conclusions focus on the strong interrelationship between self-directed learning
and emotional intelligence. This research failed to establish a link between performance,
self-directed learning and emotional intelligence, perhaps attributable to unanticipated
aspects of the performance review process of this health system. The study revealed
significant relationships between self-directed learning, degree of change in the job and
level of problem solving ability needed to perform the job. This topic merits further
investigation in circumstances in which the performance assessment system is more
likely to provide accurate, precise knowledge of the level of performance.

Allusions explores the volatile nature of intimate relationships by revisiting and
recovering my memory of dramatic experiences in my own intimate relationships then
translating them into painted psychological scenes. These scenes are activated by
symbolically charged objects and interrupted by openings or portals serving as points of
entry or exit. The people involved are referred to by pieces of carefully chosen furniture
situated in a space that has shifting perspectives and illogical planes, referencing the
complexity of memory and the subjectivity of experience. Discordant color, texture, and
layered information are used to heighten the drama of the moment. These painted panels
and ceramic structures are a manifestation of my mental processing of interpersonal
exchanges and remembered experiences through the development of a unique visual
vocabulary in paint.

Our lives are a series of patterns. In Katrina's case, fear plays a reoccurring role. Each chapter illustrates one particular picture in the protagonist's existence; each scene depicts a different year of her life, ranging from age six to twenty-six. The human body, both inner and outer, is a theme throughout, as well as her relationship with her mother. Each chapter title is named after a type of phobia, ranging from Mnemophobia (the fear of memories) to Ostraconophobia (the fear of shellfish).

This study investigates affect coding within the therapeutic relationship, by exploring the client's and therapist's perception of the relationship and the facial and vocal affect expressed by both parties. A sample of 14 therapy sessions each having 1800 data points was collected. The Working Alliance Inventory Short Form (WAI-S) and Real Relationship Inventory (RRI) were completed after each recorded session. The participants were therapists and clients at a university counseling center in South Florida. Data were analyzed using one-tailed t tests, descriptive statistics, scores from RRI and the WAI-S and percentages of negative, neutral and positive affect. Statistically significant relationships were found between seconds of therapist negative affect (t(13)= -2.065, p. <.05) and seconds of therapist neutral affect (t(13)= -1.959, p. <.05) for clients who dropped out of therapy. The seconds of negative affect coded for clients (t(13) = -1.396, p. >.05) was approaching statistical significance for clients who drop out of therapy. This study provides theoretical and empirical support for linking the presence of facial affect in the first session and its effects on the therapeutic relationship and thus client retention or drop out. The clinical implications of these findings are also discussed.

This study examined how narcissism affects preadolescent children's choices of peer targets for aggression. Based on the idea that narcissists have a grandiose sense of self that requires nourishment, we hypothesized that narcissistic children are especially likely to attack peers who threaten, or fail to nourish, their grandiose self. We assessed narcissism and the degree to which each child's aggression toward peers depended on (a) the child's perceived liking by each peer, (b) the child's liking of each peer, (c) each peer's actual liking of the child, and (d) the child's perceived similarity to each peer. Participants were 197 children in the fourth through eighth grades at a university school. Narcissism predicted the four types of target-specific aggression in disparate ways for boys and girls. Narcissistic boys were especially likely to direct aggression toward male peers whom (a) they perceived as disliking them, (b) they disliked, and (c) they perceived as dissimilar to themselves. Narcissistic girls were especially likely to attack female peers whom they perceived as similar to themselves. Narcissism may enhance different motives for boys and girls in same-sex peer relatinships. We propose that narcissism enhances investment in status and rivalry amoung girls while enhancing the motive to attack dissimilar peers among boys.

Despite extensive research in conflict, relatively little is known about how psychological processes evolve over time in response to a dispute. The present research examines how cognitive and affective processes react to cooperative, competitive, or mixed cooperative-competitive interactions. Experimental predictions were derived from a model of two-actor interaction (Liebovitch, Naudot, Vallacher, Nowak, Bu--Wrzosinksa & Coleman, 2008). Specifically, it was expected that attitudes and emotional valence would exhibit stable dynamics when people encountered a neutral, continually cooperative, or continually competitive interaction. However, attitudes and emotional valence were expected to exhibit perturbation in response to transitions from cooperation to competition and vice-versa. These predictions were tested in four experiments. The first study verified most predictions, finding that people have little attitude or valence reaction to interactions that are neutral, continually coo perative or continually competitive. This study also established that people's attitudes are significantly unstable when faced with an interaction shifting from cooperation to competition, and this is experienced with negative emotions. However, interactions shifting from competition to cooperation resulted in stable attitudes and emotional valence. The remaining three experiments sought to explain the lack of psychological reaction to the development of cooperation in a previously competitive interaction. In Study 2, interaction expectancy was ruled out as a factor. Study 3 demonstrated that the reactivity to sudden competition and lack of reactivity to sudden cooperation developed regardless of interaction history. Finally, Study 4 offers evidence indicating that the lack of reaction to sudden cooperation results from factors other than the duration of cooperative feedback. The research has several important implications. First, the results provide evidence that competition is

System justification theorists have proposed that people are motivated to view their political, economic, and social circumstances as desirable, necessary, and fair (e.g., Jost, Nosek & Banaji, 2004). Despite more than 15 years of system justification research, the meaning of fairness within this context has not been investigated directly. Over the past several decades three major criteria have been identified as contributing to people's perceptions of fairness: distributive justice, procedural justice, and one's own idiosyncratic set of personal values. Focusing on the last two, we reasoned that values are represented more abstractly than is information about procedural fairness, and that the relative weight of values versus procedures should increase at higher levels of mental construal. Whereas information about procedures is often seen as providing a basis for the acceptance of undesirable outcomes, judgments based on personal conceptions of right and wrong are considered to be independent from "establishment, convention, rules, or authority" (Skitka & Mullen, 2008, p. 531), and are therefore unlikely to be used in a motivated defense of the status quo. We therefore hypothesized that system justification would be most likely to occur in conditions where procedures are most salient (i.e., at low levels of construal). However, despite using manipulations of the system justification motive that have previously been successful, and working with issues similar to those used in previous work, we were unable to produce the typical system justification pattern of results. Possible reasons for this are discussed.

This study examined the empirical relationship between narcissism and self-esteem in an attempt to evaluate competing conceptualizations of narcissism. Participants were 236 children (mean age 11.3 years) in the fourth through eighth grades. Counter to earlier conceptions, which characterized narcissism as very high self-esteem, narcissism and self-esteem were slightly negatively correlated. Also, narcissism predicted several adjustment variables, including aggression. None of these relationships was mediated by self-esteem. Lastly, self-esteem moderated the relationship between narcissism and aggression in boys. Taken together, these lines of evidence point to a new conceptualization of narcissism, modeled after self-discrepancy theory, in which narcissism is conceptualized as grandiosity in the ideal self. Implications of this proposal and directions for future research are discussed.