The current study examined whether excessive reassurance seeking serves as a vulnerability factor to depression in a sample of high-risk youth using a multiwave longitudinal design. At Time 1, 140 children (aged 6-14) of affectively disordered parents completed measures assessing reassurance seeking and depressive symptoms. In addition, every 6…

Does mood vary as a function of age, sex, or situation? In four investigations, 6,452 persons aged 4 to 99 were interrupted at leisure, at home, at school, and at work and asked to assess their mood as being happy, neutral, or unhappy. (Author)

Research on altruism has found that persons experiencing either positive or negative moods are often more altruistically inclined than their counterparts experiencing neutral affective states. Prosocial behavior may become self-gratifying and altruism may be a form of hedonism. A field study investigated the effects of positive and negative moods…

Emotional expressiveness is generally considered to be an important verbal behavior in the therapeutic interview. The purpose of this research was to examine, within the limits of a low structured, counseling-type situation and under conditions of response contingent and non-contingent reinforcement, the existance of two emotional affect-type…

This paper presents a theory of shame development and resolution. Shame is a primary effect that is induced interpersonally. Shame inducement occurs when one significant person breaks the interpersonal bridge with another. Following internalization of shame within the personality, shame activation becomes an autonomous function of the self and the…

From 300 introductory psychology students, 40 female "snake phobics" were selected to test the hypothesis that distraction paired with fearful imagery is effective in alleviating the "phobia." Subjects were divided into three treatment groups and a control group: H+PI (fear hierarchy plus pleasant imagery as distraction), H+P…

This study reports the initial results of an attempt at introducing and validating the theoretical construct of loneliness. The conception of loneliness included four components: intensity and types of missing relationships; rationalizations and defenses of feelings of deprivation; time-perspective; and perception of personal abilities to change…

Data were examined to determine (1) the stability of negative emotional characteristics from early life through adolescence; (2) the degree of relation between these emotional characteristics and adjustment in childhood and adolescence; and (3) the degree to which the characteristics differentially predict multiple adjustment dimensions in…

Interviewed persons (N=36) who had been close to death as a result of a suicide attempt to determine whether such persons report near-death experiences. Half related such experiences; these were more common for men. Found three patterns in suicide-related, near-death experiences. (Author/JAC)

Analyzes defensiveness in communication as caused by an unwillingness to acknowledge and tolerate differences in others, a fear of change in ourselves, and a desire to avoid mental imbalance. It causes a deteriorating cycle between communicators but can be reduced by empathy, treatment of fellow communicators as equals, and genuineness. (JMF)

Latent-variable confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the interrelationships of depressive and anxious symptomatology and 12 measures of psychosocial functioning in 5,900 adolescents in the community. Findings are discussed in terms of potential contributors to gender differences in distress and psychosocial functioning. (SLD)

The complex ideas of William James on emotion were oversimplified during his lifetime, with his emphasis on the interpretation of the stimulus largely overlooked. Damaging scientific consequences of this mischaracterization are described. (SLD)

It is commonly assumed that worry and anxiety are synonymous. However, there is growing evidence that anxiety and worry are separate, yet related, constructs (i.e., Davey, Hampton, Farrell, & Davidson, 1992; Davey, 1993; Gana, Martin, & Canouet, 2001 ). Worry, is generally defined as a stream of negative thoughts (Kelly & Miller,…

This research investigated mothers' affect in the context of children's homework. Mothers (N=109) of children 8 to 12 years old were interviewed daily about their affect while interacting with children, their assistance with children's homework, and children's behavior while completing homework. At this time and 6 months later, children's…

Thirty-four 1st-year counseling students recorded their inner experiences following a simulated counseling session. Using a qualitative collective case study approach to extract emotion from a large pool of inner experience, 6 judges identified samples of affect through a triangulation process using intensity, extreme, and critical case sampling…