Emotional responsivity

Last updated

Emotional responsivity is the ability to acknowledge an affective stimuli by exhibiting emotion. [1] It is a sharp change of emotion according to a person's emotional state. [2] Increased emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating more response to a stimulus. Reduced emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating less response to a stimulus. [3] Any response exhibited after exposure to the stimulus, whether it is appropriate or not, would be considered as an emotional response. Although emotional responsivity applies to nonclinical populations, it is more typically associated with individuals with schizophrenia and autism.

Contents

Emotional responsivity is connected to broader psychology concepts about emotions. People exhibit emotions in response to outside stimuli. Positive affective stimuli trigger feelings of pleasure such as happiness; negative affective stimuli trigger feelings of displeasure such as disgust and fear. [3] Emotional responses include but are not limited to facial expressions and neurophysiological activities. For example, people display a “smile” when exposed to positive stimuli and a “frown” when exposed to negative stimuli. The feeling associated with emotion is called an affect, which can be categorized by valence and arousal. Valence describes the degree to which the feeling is a pleasure or displeasure. Arousal describes the degree to which a person is awoken by outside stimuli. [4]  

Experimental measures

Clinical studies of emotional responsivity involve two essential procedures. First, the researchers try to stimulate emotions from the participants by engaging participants in specific tasks. Then, the researchers measure the degree to which the participants respond to the stimuli.

Tasks used to stimulate emotional responses include:

After exposing participants to affective stimuli, researchers typically use the following methods to measure, record, and sometimes code emotional responsivity:

Emotional responsivity in mental illness

Autism

Autism is associated with decreased emotional responsivity. There was a study involving twenty-six children with autism and fifteen children with other learning disabilities, in which an adult displayed some form of emotion to study how the children respond. They focused on attention, hedonic tone, latency to changes in tone and an emotional contagion summery was made. Studies show correlations between measures of joint attention, emotional contagion, and the severity of autism. Results demonstrate that children with autism did not demonstrate changes in affect; however, their responses occurred much less than in comparison groups. [9]

In another study involving twenty-one autism patients, FACS analysis demonstrates that people with autism display less facial responsivity when watching evocative films. Specifically, when compared to the control group, the autism group does not demonstrate the more complex muscular movements and displayed less differentiated facial responses when exposed to stimuli. This study confirms that autism impedes social interaction and cognition. [6]

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia impacts emotional responsivity by reducing a person’s hedonic capacity and producing a blunted affect. Patients usually have an increased emotional response to displeasure and a decreased emotional response to pleasure. A study involving 22 outpatients demonstrates that schizophrenia increases the emotional responsivity to low arousing negative stimuli while decreases the emotional responsivity to high arousing positive stimuli. People with Schizophrenia exhibit fewer facial expressions when watching evocative films. [12]

There are differences in the arousal level of stimuli between paranoid and non-paranoid schizophrenia. Non-paranoid patients have increased negative emotional responsitivity and decreased positive emotional disregarding arousal levels. In comparison, paranoid schizophrenia has increased emotional responsivity to low arousing stimuli and reduced responsivity to high arousing stimuli. This study supports that Schizophrenia disturbs emotional experience. [3]

Traumatic brain injury (TBI)

Traumatic brain injury is associated with reduced responsivity to negative affective stimuli. A study involving twenty-one TBI individuals uses picture stimuli to demonstrate that people TBI have normal emotional responsivity to pleasant pictures but show limited responses to unpleasant pictures. A potential explanation is that TBI damages the ventral surfaces of the frontal and temporal lobes, which are areas associated with emotional processing. [4]

Math anxiety

Math anxiety describes the situation in which a person is overly distressed by math stimuli. A study involving fMRI techniques and 40 students demonstrates that people with math anxiety have increased emotional responsivity to math stimuli. The study suggests that when exposed to math-related stimuli, amygdala activity increases in participants' brain, which lowers the threshold of responding to a potential threat. Moreover, participants with math anxiety disengage and avoid the math stimuli more than images with negative valence such as a bleeding arm. The study suggests that math anxiety resembles other types of phobia in that there is increased vigilance and responsivity to specific stimuli. [10]

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Post-traumatic stress disorder impacts emotional responsivity. A study showed that people with high PTSD severity abuse much more substances than others and have difficulties controlling their emotions. Not being able to regulate their emotions were found to have symptoms of PTSD and problems of alcohol and drug use. [13]

Emotional responsivity in substance-use

Cocaine-exposed infants

Using cocaine during pregnancy creates neurological damage to the fetus and neurobehavioral problems to the infants. 72 infants participated in a study where 36 infants have prenatal exposure to cocaine. The results demonstrate that compared to the control group, cocaine-exposed infants have decreased emotional responsivity, as they exhibit fewer expressions of joy, interest, surprise, anger, and sadness. Specifically, the cocaine-exposed group has reduced response to positive affective stimuli, suggesting that cocaine-exposure during pregnancy decreases feelings of joyfulness. [11]

Alcoholism

Alcohol consumption impairs affective processing and therefore leads to abnormal responses to environmental stimuli. A study involving 42 abstinent alcoholics and 46 nonalcoholic demonstrates that alcoholics usually have lower emotional responsivity to erotic, happy, aversive, and gruesome stimuli. However, an in-depth analysis of fMRI images reveals gender differences. Alcoholic men have reduced emotional responsivity while alcoholic women have increased emotional responsivity to positive affective stimuli. The study suggests that the gender difference is associated with different functional abnormalities of emotional processing in the cortical, subcortical, and cerebellar regions of the brain. [5]

Opioids

Opioids has shown to help decrease negative emotional responsivity. A study involving 21 people using opioids and 21 people not using opioids found that those using the drug had decreased levels of depression and elation compared to the other group. Those using the drug tend to show less emotion. [14]

Emotional responsivity in social factors

Social interaction

Emotional responsivity is said to have a unique association with social interaction. Studies suggest that social interaction, especially at home, can influence the way a child responds to emotional stimuli. For example, if child grew up in a home where emotional displays resulted in punishment or negative criticism, the child would have the tendency to find ways to hide their emotions. [15]

Sleep Deprivation

Sleeping issues in children have been linked to many physical and mental health problems later on in adulthood and created a greater risk for emotional and behavioral issues in children. Studies haven't been able to link the physiological functions with sleeping disturbances to these psychological consequences. [16] Emotional liability, responsivity, psychological responses to positive and negative picture stimuli have all been a result of sleep deprivation.

Doctors today are using neuroimaging to connect the relationship between sleep and neural mechanisms that cause emotional responsively in children. These studies resulted, "In general, the largest and most extensive sleep-related correlations for any emotion were found for disgust expressions". [16]

Treatment

Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT)

A developed treatment that combines principles from traditional and contemporary cognitive therapy. ERT looks to understand and help individuals with mental illnesses. Experiments have shown support for the use of ERT as it has shown better results than already established treatments. [17]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Empathy</span> Capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing

Empathy is generally described as the ability to take on another's perspective, to understand, feel and possibly share and respond to their experience. There are more definitions of empathy that include but is not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Often times, empathy is considered to be a broad term, and broken down into more specific concepts and types that include cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face perception</span> Cognitive process of visually interpreting the human face

Facial perception is an individual's understanding and interpretation of the face. Here, perception implies the presence of consciousness and hence excludes automated facial recognition systems. Although facial recognition is found in other species, this article focuses on facial perception in humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Somatic marker hypothesis</span> Hypothesis that emotional processes guide or bias decision-making

The somatic marker hypothesis, formulated by Antonio Damasio and associated researchers, proposes that emotional processes guide behavior, particularly decision-making.

Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.

Reduced affect display, sometimes referred to as emotional blunting or emotional numbing, is a condition of reduced emotional reactivity in an individual. It manifests as a failure to express feelings either verbally or nonverbally, especially when talking about issues that would normally be expected to engage emotions. In this condition, expressive gestures are rare and there is little animation in facial expression or vocal inflection. Additionally, reduced affect can be symptomatic of autism, schizophrenia, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, depersonalization disorder, schizoid personality disorder or brain damage. It may also be a side effect of certain medications.

The facial feedback hypothesis, rooted in the conjectures of Charles Darwin and William James, is that one's facial expression directly affects their emotional experience. Specifically, physiological activation of the facial regions associated with certain emotions holds a direct effect on the elicitation of such emotional states, and the lack of or inhibition of facial activation will result in the suppression of corresponding emotional states.

Affect displays are the verbal and non-verbal displays of affect (emotion). These displays can be through facial expressions, gestures and body language, volume and tone of voice, laughing, crying, etc. Affect displays can be altered or faked so one may appear one way, when they feel another. Affect can be conscious or non-conscious and can be discreet or obvious. The display of positive emotions, such as smiling, laughing, etc., is termed "positive affect", while the displays of more negative emotions, such as crying and tense gestures, is respectively termed "negative affect".

Emotional self-regulation or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. Emotional self-regulation belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

Paradoxical laughter is an exaggerated expression of humour which is unwarranted by external events. It may be uncontrollable laughter which may be recognised as inappropriate by the person involved. It is associated with mental illness, such as mania, hypomania or schizophrenia, schizotypal disorder and can have other causes. Paradoxical laughter is indicative of an unstable mood, often caused by the pseudobulbar affect, which can quickly change to anger and back again, on minor external cues.

Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Facial electromyography</span> Electromyography technique that measures muscle activity of the face

Facial electromyography (fEMG) refers to an electromyography (EMG) technique that measures muscle activity by detecting and amplifying the tiny electrical impulses that are generated by muscle fibers when they contract.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Superior temporal sulcus</span> Part of the brains temporal lobe

In the human brain, the superior temporal sulcus (STS) is the sulcus separating the superior temporal gyrus from the middle temporal gyrus in the temporal lobe of the brain. A sulcus is a deep groove that curves into the largest part of the brain, the cerebrum, and a gyrus is a ridge that curves outward of the cerebrum.

Emotional lateralization is the asymmetrical representation of emotional control and processing in the brain. There is evidence for the lateralization of other brain functions as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music and emotion</span> Psychological relationship between human affect and music

Research into music and emotion seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music. The field, a branch of music psychology, covers numerous areas of study, including the nature of emotional reactions to music, how characteristics of the listener may determine which emotions are felt, and which components of a musical composition or performance may elicit certain reactions.

Images and other stimuli contain both local features and global features. Precedence refers to the level of processing to which attention is first directed. Global precedence occurs when an individual more readily identifies the global feature when presented with a stimulus containing both global and local features. The global aspect of an object embodies the larger, overall image as a whole, whereas the local aspect consists of the individual features that make up this larger whole. Global processing is the act of processing a visual stimulus holistically. Although global precedence is generally more prevalent than local precedence, local precedence also occurs under certain circumstances and for certain individuals. Global precedence is closely related to the Gestalt principles of grouping in that the global whole is a grouping of proximal and similar objects. Within global precedence, there is also the global interference effect, which occurs when an individual is directed to identify the local characteristic, and the global characteristic subsequently interferes by slowing the reaction time.

Social cues are verbal or non-verbal signals expressed through the face, body, voice, motion and guide conversations as well as other social interactions by influencing our impressions of and responses to others. These percepts are important communicative tools as they convey important social and contextual information and therefore facilitate social understanding.

Pain empathy is a specific variety of empathy that involves recognizing and understanding another person's pain.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

Expressive suppression is defined as the intentional reduction of the facial expression of an emotion. It is a component of emotion regulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sleep and emotions</span> Overview about sleep and emotions

Emotions play a key role in overall mental health, and sleep plays a crucial role in maintaining the optimal homeostasis of emotional functioning. Deficient sleep, both in the form of sleep deprivation and restriction, adversely impacts emotion generation, emotion regulation, and emotional expression.

References

  1. ↑ Mathews, J.R.; Barch, D.M. (2010). "Emotion responsivity, social cognition, and functional outcome in schizophrenia". Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 119 (1): 50–59. doi:10.1037/a0017861. PMC   2849101 . PMID   20141242.
  2. 1 2 Carels, R. A.; Blumenthal, J. A.; Sherwood, A. (April 2000). "Emotional responsivity during daily life: relationship to psychosocial functioning and ambulatory blood pressure". International Journal of Psychophysiology. 36 (1): 25–33. doi:10.1016/s0167-8760(99)00101-4. ISSN   0167-8760. PMID   10700620.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Lee, Eun; Kim, Jae-Jin; Namkoong, Kee; An, Suk Kyoon; Seok, Jeong-Ho; Lee, Yu Jin; Kang, Jee In; Choi, Jae Hyuk; Hong, Taekyong; Jeon, Jong Hee; Lee, Hong Shick (2006). "Aberrantly flattened responsivity to emotional pictures in paranoid schizophrenia". Psychiatry Research. 143 (2–3): 135–145. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2005.09.011. PMID   16884781. S2CID   24230799.
  4. 1 2 3 4 de Sousa, Arielle; McDonald, Skye; Rushby, Jacqueline; Li, Sophie; Dimoska, Aneta; James, Charlotte (2010). "Why don't you feel how I feel? Insight into the absence of empathy after severe Traumatic Brain Injury". Neuropsychologia. 48 (12): 3585–3595. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.08.008. PMID   20713073. S2CID   25275909.
  5. 1 2 3 Sawyer, Kayle S; Maleki, Nasim; Urban, Trinity; Marinkovic, Ksenija; Karson, Steven; Ruiz, Susan M; Harris, Gordon J; Oscar-Berman, Marlene (2019-04-30). "Alcoholism gender differences in brain responsivity to emotional stimuli". eLife. 8: e41723. doi: 10.7554/eLife.41723 . ISSN   2050-084X. PMC   6491039 . PMID   31038125.
  6. 1 2 3 Weiss, Elisabeth M.; Rominger, Christian; Hofer, Ellen; Fink, Andreas; Papousek, Ilona (2019). "Less differentiated facial responses to naturalistic films of another person's emotional expressions in adolescents and adults with High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder". Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry. 89: 341–346. doi:10.1016/j.pnpbp.2018.10.007. PMID   30336172. S2CID   53013060.
  7. ↑ Sigman, M.D.; Kasari, C.; Kwon, J.; Yirmiya, N. (1992). "Responses to the negative emotions of others by autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children". Child Development. 63 (4): 796–807. doi:10.2307/1131234. JSTOR   1131234. PMID   1505241.
  8. ↑ Repacholi, B. M.; Gopnick, A. (1997). "Early reasoning about desires: Evidence from 14- and 18-month-olds". Developmental Psychology. 33 (1): 12–21. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.33.1.12. PMID   9050386.
  9. 1 2 Scambler, D. J.; Hepburn, S.; Rutherford, M. D.; Wehner, E. A.; Rogers, S. J. (2007-03-01). "Emotional Responsivity in Children with Autism, Children with Other Developmental Disabilities, and Children with Typical Development". Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 37 (3): 553–563. doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0186-y. ISSN   0162-3257. PMID   16933089. S2CID   2213430.
  10. 1 2 3 Pizzie, Rachel G.; Kraemer, David J.M. (2017). "Avoiding math on a rapid timescale: Emotional responsivity and anxious attention in math anxiety". Brain and Cognition. 118: 100–107. doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2017.08.004. PMID   28826050. S2CID   8013856.
  11. 1 2 Alessandri, Steven M.; Sullivan, Margaret W.; Imaizumi, Sonia; Lewis, Michael (1993). "Learning and emotional responsivity in cocaine-exposed infants". Developmental Psychology. 29 (6): 989–997. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.29.6.989. ISSN   0012-1649.
  12. ↑ Leung, Winnie W.; Couture, Shannon M.; Blanchard, Jack J.; Lin, Stephanie; Llerena, Katiah (2010). "Is social anhedonia related to emotional responsivity and expressivity? A laboratory study in women". Schizophrenia Research. 124 (1–3): 66–73. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2010.06.012. PMC   2962705 . PMID   20620020.
  13. ↑ Weiss, Nicole H.; Schick, Melissa R.; Contractor, Ateka A.; Dixon-Gordon, Katherine L. (2019-09-01). "Posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use: Identifying the underlying role of difficulties regulating positive emotions". Addictive Behaviors. 96: 119–126. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.04.029. ISSN   0306-4603. PMID   31075729. S2CID   149454349.
  14. ↑ Savvas, Steven M.; Somogyi, Andrew A.; White, Jason M. (February 2012). "The effect of methadone on emotional reactivity". Addiction. 107 (2): 388–392. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03634.x. ISSN   1360-0443. PMID   21883603.
  15. ↑ Eisenberg, N., Fabes, R.A., Carlo, G., & Karbon, M. (1992). "Emotional responsivity to others: Behavioral correlates and socialization antecedents". New Directions for Child Development. 1992 (55): 57–73. doi: 10.1002/cd.23219925506 . PMID   1608515.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. 1 2 Reidy, Hamann, Inman, Johnson, Brennan, Brooke L., Stephan, Cory, Katrina C., Patricia A. (January 24, 2016). "Decreased sleep duration is associated with increased fMRI responses to emotional faces in children". Neuropsychologia. 84: 54–62. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.01.028. PMID   26821063. S2CID   25259283.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ↑ Renna, Megan; Quintero, Jean; Fresco, David; Mennin, Douglas (2017). "Emotion Regulation Therapy: A mechanism-targeted treatment for disorders of distress". Frontiers in Psychology. 8: 98. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00098 . ISSN   1664-1078. PMC   5292405 . PMID   28220089.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.