While lying is assumed to be cognitively and emotionally demanding, empirical research has primarily focused on cognitive mechanisms. The current study therefore examined cognitive and emotional components of lying simultaneously, using self-reports and reaction times. In two preregistered experiments (n = 49; n = 48), participants conducted a modified version of the Sheffield Lie Test, providing truthful and deceptive responses to neutral and mock-crime-related questions. After each block, participants rated their cognitive and emotional load, as well as specific subprocesses. Results revealed robust main effects of instruction and question type. Lying led to longer reaction times and higher self-reported cognitive and emotional load than telling the truth, and the same was true for mock-crime-related compared to neutral questions. No interaction was observed. Subjective ratings indicated that the most pronounced cognitive processes during lying were response inhibition and task switching, and nervousness and fear the emotional ones. These findings extend previous research by providing strong evidence that lying is not only cognitively but also emotionally demanding, highlighting the need for a comprehensive theoretical framework that integrates both mechanisms. It also provides first information which specific cognitive and emotional processes may be the most relevant.
Emotional vocabulary (EV) constitutes an operational approximation to emotion concept knowledge, whose role in shaping emotional experience is emphasised within constructionist approaches to emotion. Despite its theoretical relevance, empirical evidence in adolescence remains limited, particularly regarding whether EV uniquely predicts emotional functioning beyond general verbal ability. This study examined the specificity of EV in relation to perceived emotional intelligence (EI) and teacher-rated socioemotional competence in a sample of 529 typically developing adolescents aged 12-18. Participants completed measures of EV, general vocabulary, and perceived EI, while teachers rated students' emotional and social adjustment. Linear regression models showed that EV - but not general vocabulary - significantly predicted total perceived EI. EV was also significantly associated with teacher-rated competence. Correlational analyses revealed small but significant associations between EV and selected dimensions of emotional functioning, specifically Mood Repair and teacher-rated socioemotional competence. Overall, findings suggest that EV serves as a specific linguistic-cognitive resource contributing to emotional functioning in adolescence, consistent with constructionist accounts emphasising the role of conceptual knowledge in emotional development.
Across three studies (256 participants making 6,866 scenario-level ratings), we investigate how people forecast others' emotional responses to potentially offensive behaviours. Our two goals were to assess whether these forecasts reflect social projection, i.e. whether people rely on their own emotional reactions when estimating others', and to assess the accuracy of those forecasts using both intensity ratings and percentage estimates (sometimes called consensus estimates). In Study 1, participants rated how offensive 15 behaviours felt to them and how offensive they believed others would feel. Self and other ratings were strongly correlated, but participants consistently believed others would be more offended, especially for behaviours most people regarded as benign. In Study 2, participants indicated (yes/no) whether they were offended by 32 behaviours and estimated what percentage of others would be offended. We found evidence of a truly false consensus effect; those who were offended showed substantial overestimation, although even unoffended participants overestimate percentages for the least offensive behaviours. Study 3 replicated these patterns using a hybrid design. We discuss possible mechanisms underlying our findings, as well as implications for the regulation of offensive content and directions for future research.
Problematic Internet Use (PIU) has been linked to emotional distress, cognitive impairments, and diminished academic performance among university students. The present randomised controlled trial examined the efficacy of emotional working memory training (eWMT) in enhancing cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS) and risky decision-making in individuals with PIU. Following baseline assessment, eligible participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n = 15; eWMT) or a control group (n = 15; feature-matching training). Both groups completed 20 training sessions. Post-test and one-month follow-up results revealed that eWMT led to significant improvements in PIU symptoms, risky decision-making and reductions in maladaptive CERS, while no significant changes were observed for adaptive CERS. These findings highlight eWMT as a promising cognitive-affective intervention for improving executive and emotional regulation processes in students with PIU.
Research suggests that wide facial shape relative to facial height (fWHR) may serve as a cue to social threat in men by signalling aggression and dominance. In the present study, we examined whether observers rely on facial shape itself rather than on emotional facial expression when they infer character traits. In two experiments participants viewed photographs of male faces in which either expressions were masked (Experiment 1), or facial shape was manipulated so that facial width was no longer recognisable (Experiment 2). Participants completed two-alternative forced-choice tasks in which they indicated whether the photographs depicted aggressive (Experiment 1) or powerful (Experiment 2) characters, or their opposites. Results showed that participants inferred the target traits above chance and continued to identify aggressive-dominant traits above chance even when facial expressions were masked. However, facial width was not correlated with the accuracy of participants' character assignments and was rarely mentioned as an informative cue. We conclude that observers may have relied on other shape-related features, some of which may covary with facial width, such as chin angularity. Overall, and contrary to our expectations, participants did use face shape in addition to expression cues to infer aggressiveness and dominance, albeit to a limited extent.
Anger signals interpersonal threat, yet little is known about how anger-related cues are processed under different task demands or how this relates to individual differences in anger expression. This study examined associations between subjective anger - across trait and anger-expression dimensions - and performance on tasks assessing conscious emotion recognition and breakthrough to visual awareness under interocular suppression. Sixty participants completed the Facial Expression Recognition Task (FERT) and a Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) paradigm, alongside the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI). At the group level, results revealed a dissociation between tasks: angry faces were recognised more accurately than fearful faces in the FERT, whereas angry faces were slower to enter visual awareness than fearful faces under CFS. At the level of individual differences, externalised anger was associated with higher accuracy in recognising angry facial expressions relative to fear, whereas internalised anger was associated with relatively slower access to awareness of angry faces compared with fearful and neutral faces under suppression. These findings suggest that internalised and externalised anger-expression tendencies are differentially associated with performance on tasks measuring conscious recognition and breakthrough to visual awareness under suppression, underscoring the need for frameworks that integrate task demands with individual differences in anger regulation.
Emotion regulation research has traditionally examined intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies in isolation, limiting understanding of their combined effectiveness in daily life. This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to compare the effectiveness of combined interpersonal-intrapersonal strategies versus intrapersonal-only approaches across two samples. Study 1 analysed 10,739 observations from 156 civilians over 21 days, finding that combined strategies were modestly more effective for decreasing negative emotions but did not differ significantly from intrapersonal-only strategies for enhancing positive emotions or problem-solving facilitation. Study 2 analysed 3,894 observations from 70 veterans, revealing significantly larger combined strategy advantages for both decreasing negative emotions and enhancing positive emotions, with effect sizes approximately 2-4 times larger than civilians. Problem-solving effectiveness was unrelated to strategy type in either sample, instead being driven by the number of strategies deployed. Multilevel models revealed substantial individual variability in combined strategy benefits across both samples. These findings provide naturalistic evidence that integrating interpersonal and intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies may enhance emotional outcomes, while highlighting important population differences that have implications for personalised clinical interventions.
Alexithymia is associated with a lack of flexibility at several stages of emotion regulation. Additionally, previous studies associated higher alexithymia with particularities in emotional facial expression perception, and with lower executive performance. The objective of the study was to explore the cognitive factors that may underlie the lack of flexibility associated with emotion regulation in alexithymia. One hundred and twenty-six non-clinical adults underwent Go/no-Go tasks with neutral and emotional material (positive and negative emotional facial expressions of low vs. high arousal levels). The results first show that emotional stimuli had an effect on inhibition that was differentiated according to both valence and arousal levels. Alexithymia scores were never associated with executive performance in neutral blocks but moderated the effect of emotional stimuli depending on the valence and arousal combination in emotional blocks. Most of the moderation effects led to higher performances: higher alexithymia scores moderated the effect of emotional stimuli on inhibitory and perceptual performances, but direction of effects, facets and emotional stimuli involved are not consistent. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of emotional salience effects on cognition and their potential role in alexithymia.
Research indicates that the human visual system is highly efficient at detecting snakes, yet less is known about how ecological visual contexts modulate this advantage. We conducted two experiments with university students (N = 58 each) to test whether background complexity influences snake-detection efficiency using a dual-task paradigm. In Experiment 1, stimuli were presented on a uniform grey background. Here, snakes were detected and visually fixated significantly faster than non-snake control animals, consistent with previous findings. Crucially, this advantage was not influenced by participants' self-reported fear of snakes or anxiety levels. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli were embedded in a complex leaf-litter background. Under these conditions, non-snake stimuli were detected earlier than snakes, and overall accuracy declined. This indicates that the snake detection advantage is sensitive to changes in perceptual and contextual conditions, which may attenuate or reverse the pattern observed under simplified settings. Subjective fear scores again showed no moderating effect. Overall, these findings are consistent with an evolved sensitivity to snake-related visual features, but show that this advantage is context-dependent and can be attenuated or even reversed under ecologically complex visual conditions, independently of self-reported fear. They underscore the necessity of incorporating ecological variables into threat-detection research.
Emotions are of utmost relevance for everyday life and the development and maintenance of psychological disorders. Emotion theories mainly describe emotions as generalisable experiences, whereas differences in individual affective dynamics are less researched. Therefore, we endeavoured developing a tool to assess individual mental representations of emotions, aiming for a rich, yet replicable informational structure. We compared three methods: (1) A Multi-Arrangement Task (MAT), (2) Pairwise Comparisons (PC), and (3) Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) rating scales. Using a within-subjects design (N = 103), emotional adjectives were arranged or rated on a computer monitor with subsequent calculation of a dissimilarity matrix of each item's emotional impact. These matrices showed good test-retest reliabilities for each method, while clear differences emerged in the exploratory analyses. Dimensionality analyses using multidimensional scaling showed two, respectively three, dimensions yielding an ideal solution to represent the data in the SAM, with some participants using up to five dimensions in the MAT. Quantifying the affective spaces as polygons revealed the highest correlation of surface areas in the MAT, indicating that MAT might be particularly useful when focusing on emotion differentiation. By developing an instrument measuring the individual affective space, we propose applying the personalised medicine approach to emotions and, eventually, transferring the results to psychiatry and psychotherapy for better treatments.
The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly restructured daily life, significantly impacting mental health. This negative event has been reported to alter subjective experience of time, such as the blending of days, reflecting distortions in long-term time perception over relatively coarse scales. However, the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on short-term time perception over fine scales has received much less attention. Here we delve into this underexplored territory, demonstrating that the pandemic, as a high-arousal negative event, lengthens our perception of short time intervals. Using a two-session duration discrimination paradigm, we showed that COVID-19 related images were perceived as significantly longer than neutral pictures of the same duration. Unlike emotion-induced temporal distortions, this dilation was consistent across sessions, correlated with heightened arousal, remained unaffected by anxiety, and exhibited a long-lasting effect - persisting even four years after the initial outbreak. Taken together, our findings highlight a temporal dilation induced by COVID-19 stimuli, extending our understanding of how high-arousal negative events interact with cognitive processes, particularly time perception.
Pleasant facial expressions, like happiness, are recognised faster than negative expressions such as anger or fear. The size of this happy face advantage depends on facial social category cues (larger for female, young or ethnic ingroup faces), facial attractiveness (larger for attractive faces), and person knowledge (larger for persons believed to be of good character). These findings are best explained by the evaluative congruence account, which holds that positive expressions are recognised faster when shown by relatively more positively evaluated posers. Experiment 1 showed that happiness is recognised faster than anger for posers who made positive statements about the participant or another person, but not for posers who made negative statements. Experiments 2-3 assessed whether these findings were due to evaluative conditioning (EC), which can shift poser evaluations by pairing poser images with positive or negative pictures or words. Although Experiments 2 and 3 successfully altered poser evaluations, there was no effect on expression recognition. These findings are not consistent with the evaluative congruence account and suggest that different types of knowledge about a person (what someone did, said or likes/hates), which all alter poser evaluation, differ in their effect on socially relevant processes such as expression perception.
Research on action-inaction regret has mostly examined morally-neutral, instrumental choices; far less is known about regret in prosocial contexts where help-offering is morally valued yet can be intrusive. We hypothesised that failing to meet recipients' expectations by offering unwanted help (action) would elicit more regret than not offering wanted help (inaction), particularly under weak prosocial norms. We manipulated (Study 1) or measured (Study 2) prosocial norms using workplace vignettes (N = 425). When norms discouraged helping, participants anticipated more regret following action, compared to inaction. However, when workplace norms encouraged helping, participants anticipated more regret following inaction. Moreover, participants expected actors to be less willing to help in the future than non-actors, especially under weak prosocial norms. These findings show that anticipated regret and behavioural intentions following prosocial action or inaction depend on social norms, suggesting that what people perceive as common behaviour shapes expected emotions and intentions in moral domains.
Prior research has primarily investigated the effects of emotion on spatial and temporal associations separately. Here, we jointly examined the influence of negative arousal on both types of associations to provide a more comprehensive understanding of emotion's impact on episodic memory. During encoding, participants (N = 133) viewed a series of images involving dissociable foreground and background components and were encouraged to make temporal contextual associations between consecutive images. Subsequently, participants' relational memory (RM) was tested using a retrieval task that assessed: (1) subjective RM (recollection-based), (2) objective spatial RM (foreground-background matches), along with the link between subjective and objective RM accuracy (Double-Hit), and (3) temporal RM (sequential associations) and accuracy in the spatiotemporal associations (Triple-Hit). First, replicating and extending earlier evidence, emotion enhanced subjective recollection confirmed by objective spatial RM (Double-Hit). Second, we also present novel evidence that emotion enhances spatiotemporal integration - i.e. emotion enhanced subjective and spatial objective RM, while also upregulating associations with subsequent neutral information (Triple-Hit). These findings promote a broader understanding of emotion's impact on episodic memory and lay the foundation for developing interventions aimed at improving memory for contextual associations in healthy functioning and reducing memory decontextualization associated with PTSD and age-related cognitive decline.
Post-retrieval extinction has been proposed to modify fear memories by introducing safety information during the reconsolidation window. Imagery rescripting (ImRS) is a visual imagery-based intervention that alters the valence of emotional memories through UCS revaluation. The integration of ImRS and extinction targets both UCS revaluation and expectancy revaluation, providing a dual mechanism for fear reduction. This study explores the combined effects of imagery rescripting (ImRS) and extinction during the reconsolidation window to attenuate the return of generalised fear. Sixty-one healthy individuals underwent fear acquisition and generalisation (Day 1), followed by intervention (Day 2: Reactivation- ImRS and Extinction group or ImRS and Extinction group). On Day 3, return of generalised fear through reinstatement was tested using unsignalled UCS presentations. Skin conductance responses (SCR), expectancy ratings, and valence ratings were the outcome measures. The reactivation-ImRS + extinction group showed reduced reinstatement effects compared to the ImRS + extinction group, evidenced by attenuated SCR and increased CS+ valence ratings. The current study suggests that imagery rescripting and extinction conducted post-retrieval is more effective in reducing the return of conditioned fear. Therefore, integrating ImRS with post-retrieval extinction may offer a novel therapeutic pathway for reducing fear relapse.
Facial expression recognition depends on both motion and intensity, but how these factors interact within and across emotions remains unclear. Here we examined recognition accuracy of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) across low, medium, and high intensity displays of static and naturally dynamic facial expressions. Results showed while there was an overall increase in accuracy with intensity, there were complex interactions between intensity, motion, and emotion. Dynamic cues enhanced recognition of joy, surprise, and anger, particularly at low intensity, whereas disgust, fear, and sadness were recognised with greater accuracy from static expressions. We found common confusion patterns of fear-surprise, anger-sadness, and disgust-anger. However, contrary to reports of equivalent confusion patterns across dynamic and static expressions, motion reduced confusions of surprise as fear, but increased confusions of fear as surprise. This novel finding suggests that temporal unfolding facilitates recognition of surprise, but obscures cues aiding identification of fear. These patterns show that the benefits of dynamic information are intensity and emotion-specific and limited when emotions share morphological features. The current findings highlight the complexity of the role of motion and intensity in facial expression recognition and underscore the importance of employing naturally unfolding dynamic stimuli.
Social anxiety (SA) is characterised by heightened vigilance to socially evaluative threat, yet the extent to which this vigilance operates outside conscious awareness remains understudied. This review synthesises evidence from 11 studies investigating threat processing in individuals with SA or elevated SA traits, using masking and suppression paradigms to manipulate visual awareness. Across paradigms, samples, and contexts, findings on threat processing under constrained awareness in SA do not converge on a consistent effect, varying instead with paradigm-specific features, awareness level, stimulus type, and task context. Conceptual and methodological heterogeneity, particularly in the definition and assessment of awareness, limits cross-study integration. SA-related effects can be better characterised as reflecting preconscious vigilance to socially evaluative cues rather than unconscious threat processing. Masking paradigms most consistently reveal early vigilance under restricted awareness, whereas interocular suppression paradigms capture later attentional dynamics (avoidance or regulatory) as stimuli compete for conscious access. These divergences highlight the need for clearer theoretical distinctions between levels of awareness, standardised awareness checks, and attention to socially evaluative context. A refined framework conceptualising SA-related threat processing along a continuum, from preconscious vigilance to conscious avoidance, may better guide future research and improve interpretability.
Feminine honor norms require women to uphold a reputation for sexual purity through behaviors such as dressing modestly or maintaining virginity before marriage. While the consequences of these norms for women's health and well-being are well-documented, their socio-psychological origins remain poorly understood. The dominant account holds that feminine honor is endorsed because female infidelity threatens a male partner's honor. An alternative explanation - the ideological mate-guarding account - proposes that support for feminine honor is rooted in psychological motives related to mate guarding and is shaped by sexual jealousy and mating strategy. However, previous evidence for this account has been correlational and based on trait-level measures of jealousy. Here, we provide initial experimental evidence for this account by inducing state sexual jealousy, which was associated with increased support for feminine honor, particularly among men. Additionally, individuals with a more restricted mating orientation (lower socio-sexuality) showed greater support for feminine honor across genders, even after controlling for state masculinity threat, other honor norms (masculine, family, integrity), religiosity, political conservatism, and age. These findings highlight the importance of mating motives in shaping support for feminine honor and enrich our understanding of how evolved psychological mechanisms contribute to the maintenance of traditional gender norms.
Mindfulness has been linked to lower psychological distress. Yet, it remains unclear how, or the mechanism(s) by which, mindfulness reduces psychological distress, particularly during times of heightened, prolonged stress. The present research utilised secondary analysis of data from two independent studies to 1) assess whether greater trait mindfulness protected U.S. adults against psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2) test whether negatively biased cognition (pessimism) mediated the association between trait mindfulness and psychological distress. Both studies utilised a two-wave longitudinal design with an initial survey conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and a follow-up survey conducted during the pandemic. Participants completed validated measures of trait mindfulness, negatively biased cognition (i.e. pessimism), and psychological distress (i.e. anxiety and depression symptoms). Across two studies, pre-pandemic levels of trait mindfulness prospectively predicted less psychological distress during the pandemic, controlling for pre-pandemic psychological distress. Further, lower pessimism during the pandemic mediated the association between greater pre-pandemic trait mindfulness and lower psychological distress during the pandemic. These findings suggest that mindfulness may protect against, or reduce, psychological distress by decreasing negatively biased cognition. As such, mindfulness and negatively biased cognition may be important targets for interventions aimed at promoting psychological health.
This study investigated whether verbal humour could preventively regulate negative emotions in high trait anxiety (HTA) and low trait anxiety (LTA) individuals, exploring underlying cognitive neural mechanisms using ERPs and ERO. In a two-factor mixed design, humorous stimuli elicited more positive emotions than neutral condition, with greater emotional improvement in the LTA group. Humour also modulated subsequent negative-stimulus processing: LTA individuals showed reduced P2 amplitude in the humorous condition, indicating decreased early attention to negative stimuli, whereas both groups showed enhanced LPC, suggesting altered late evaluative processing. During humour processing, humorous stimuli elicited larger LAN and sustained LAN amplitudes, reflecting increased cognitive resource allocation during incongruity detection and resolution. LTA individuals further showed stronger late humour-related processing than HTA individuals, as indexed by larger LPP amplitude and greater theta activity. Supplementary analyses showed that Theta negatively predicted LPP, Beta negatively predicted downstream P2, and the Beta-LAN association was present only in the HTA group. However, delta-based regression and mediation analyses provided limited support for specific upstream-downstream pathway. Overall, verbal humour appears to function as a preventive regulator of negative emotions by affecting subsequent early and late processing of negative stimuli, and this effect is moderated by trait anxiety.
