Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories (...) are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain–emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories. (shrink)

In this review, we highlight evidence suggesting that concepts represented in language are used to create a perception of emotion from the constant ebb and flow of other people’s facial muscle movements. In this “construction hypothesis,” (cf. Gendron, Lindquist, Barsalou, & Barrett, 2012) (see also Barrett, 2006b; Barrett, Lindquist, & Gendron, 2007; Barrett, Mesquita, & Gendron, 2011), language plays a constitutive role in emotion perception because words ground the otherwise highly variable instances of an emotion category. We demonstrate (...) that language plays a constitutive role in emotion perception by discussing findings from behavior, neuropsychology, development, and neuroimaging. We close by discussing implications of a constructionist view for the science of emotion. (shrink)

Over a century ago, William James outlined the first psychological constructionist model of emotion, arguing that emotions are phenomena constructed of more basic psychological parts. In this article, I outline a modern psychological constructionist model of emotion. I first explore the history of psychological construction to demonstrate that psychological constructionist models have historically emerged in an attempt to explain variability in emotion that cannot be accounted for by other approaches. I next discuss the modern psychological constructionist model of emotion that (...) I take in my own research, outlining its hypotheses, existing empirical support, and areas of future research. I conclude by arguing that psychological constructionist models can help scientists better understand the human mind. (shrink)

In our response, we clarify important theoretical differences between basic emotion and psychological construction approaches. We evaluate the empirical status of the basic emotion approach, addressing whether it requires brain localization, whether localization can be observed with better analytic tools, and whether evidence for basic emotions exists in other types of measures. We then revisit the issue of whether the key hypotheses of psychological construction are supported by our meta-analytic findings. We close by elaborating on commentator suggestions for future research.

We point out that constructionist models from experimental psychology account for the sociocultural, psychological, and neural levels of analysis in emotion. Individual constructionist models form a “metamodel” that integrates the levels of analysis important to a science of emotion. By clarifying the multilevel nature of constructionism, we hope to help lay a strong foundation for future cross-disciplinary collaborations.

As Wierzbicka suggests in her recent review, language is powerful in emotion. Wierzbicka's solution is to remove the linguistically relative aspects of emotion concepts, like icing from a cake, to reveal the universal meanings below. In the present commentary, I suggest that language is a more fundamental ingredient in emotion than Wierzbicka's solution assumes; language can be no more removed from emotion, than flour can be removed from an already baked cake. As an alternate solution, I present a constructionist view (...) of emotion, which not only recognizes the role of language in emotion, but also predicts and models its impact as language constitutes emotion experience. (shrink)

Situation selection involves choosing situations based on their likely emotional impact and may be less cognitively taxing or challenging to implement compared to other strategies for regulating emotion, which require people to regulate their emotions “in the moment”; we thus predicted that individuals who chronically experience intense emotions or who are not particularly competent at employing other emotion regulation strategies would be especially likely to benefit from situation selection. Consistent with this idea, we found that the use of situation selection (...) interacted with individual differences in emotional reactivity and competence at emotion regulation to predict emotional outcomes in both a correlational and an experimental field study. Taken together, the findings suggest that situation selection is an effective strategy for regulating emotions, especially for individuals who otherwise struggle to do so. (shrink)

Lindquist et al. convincingly argue that the brain implements psychological operations that are constitutive of emotion rather than modules subserving discrete emotions. However, the nature of such psychological operations is open to debate. I argue that considering appraisal theories may provide alternative interpretations of the neuroimaging data with respect to the psychological operations involved.

Although early emotion theorists posited that bodily changes contribute to emotion, the primary view in affective science over the last century has been that emotions produce bodily changes. Recent findings from physiology, neuroscience, and neuropsychology support the early intuition that body representations can help constitute emotion. These findings are consistent with the modern psychological constructionist hypothesis that emotions emerge when representations of bodily changes are conceptualized as an instance of emotion. We begin by introducing the psychological constructionist approach to emotion. (...) With Schachter as inspiration, we next examine how embodied representations contribute to affective states, and ultimately emotion, with inflammation as a key example. We close by looking forward to future research on how body representations contribute to human experience. (shrink)

Ruba and Repacholi review an important debate in the emotion development literature: whether infants can perceive and understand facial configurations as instances of discrete emotion catego...

We agree that conceptualisation is key in understanding the brain basis of emotion. We argue that by conflating facial emotion recognition with subjective emotion experience, Lindquist et al. understate the importance of biological predisposition in emotion. We use examples from the anxiety disorders to illustrate the distinction between these two phenomena, emphasising the importance of both emotional hardware and contextual learning.

This paper presents an extensional account of manyand few that explains data that have previously motivated intensional analyses of these quantifiers :599–620, 2000). The key insight is that their semantic arguments are themselves set intersections: the restrictor is the intersection of the predicates denoted by the N’ or the V’ and the restricted universe, U, and the scope is the intersection of the N’ and V’. Following Cohen, I assume that the universe consists of the union of alternatives to the (...) nominal and verbal predicates, where an alternative to a property ψ is one that shares a pragmatic presupposition with ψ, and a pragmatic presupposition is one that is selected by context from a set of potential presuppositions associated with the sentence. A many/few-quantified sentence is then true iff the proportion of the scope to the restrictor is greater/less than some threshold, n. In addition to explaining various problematic cases from the literature, the analysis shows how the readings of a many/few-quantified sentence can be derived from the same syntactico-semantic structure, it being unnecessary to claim lexical or structural ambiguity. The analysis also provides strong support for the idea that natural language quantification is always purely extensional. (shrink)

When do humans become moral beings? This commentary draws on developmental psychology theory to expand the understanding of early moral behaviours. We argue that by looking at a broader range of other-oriented acts than what has been considered by Baumard et al., we can find support for the mutualistic approach to morality even in early instances of other-oriented behaviours.

ABSTRACT This project seeks to put material culture, craft, and community in conversation with the long-standing American mythology of self-sufficiency referenced not only in elite discourse by the founding statesmen of the United States but also in contemporary popular iterations of the “Green” and urban homesteading movements. Indeed, many of the individuals involved in these movements identify not only as artists but also as advocates of a form of social activism referred to as “craftivism” that explicitly links this American iconographic (...) tradition of self-sufficiency to contemporary mandates for a politics of sustainability, particularly in urban life. Accordingly, I examine the ways in which urban craftivists are preserving and/or reintroducing traditional folkways ranging from subsistence farming to blacksmithing and welding, hand-sewing, knitting and crocheting, and film photography. Offering specific case studies related to these practices, I argue that practitioners of contemporary American craftivisms lean heavily on discourses of memory and tradition, as well as on the material practices and folkways associated therewith, but do so with the intention of creating a new world order that embraces both local and global perspectives as well as resources to support a politics of ethical production reconciling discourses of “tradition” and “sustainability” within the United States and abroad. (shrink)

This article examines the cultural dimensions of synthetic ‘body fat replicas’, anatomically modelled objects used in educational and medical settings to train subjects in particular affective responses to fat/ness. Specifically, I focus on theorizing the phenomenological experience of embodied engagements with such models, and exploring the manner in which the replicas are designed to participate in the shaping of emotional orientations toward one’s own body and those of others. Appealing to the work of contemporary social and cultural theorists, I consider (...) how the capacity of objects to act as nexuses for the commingling of abstract and concrete, psychological and material, inner space and outer life, and meaning and affect situates these lumps of polyvinyl chloride as valuable aids to elucidating the cultural polyvalence of ‘fat’. This article is oriented around the application of a selection of insightful theoretical work, drawn from the multidisciplinary field of science and technology studies, as well as from sociological research on medicine and the body. I argue that, by moving toward an understanding of fat/ness as a phenomenon comprised, in Annemarie Mol’s terminology, of ‘multiple enactments’, we can better understand how ‘fat’ has come to embody particular sets of meanings and emotions in the context of a contemporary medicalized transnational culture. (shrink)

Psychological constructivist models of emotion propose that emotions arise from the combinations of multiple processes, many of which are not emotion specific. These models attempt to describe both the homogeneity of instances of an emotional “kind” (why are fears similar?) and the heterogeneity of instances (why are different fears quite different?). In this article, we review the iterative reprocessing model of affect, and suggest that emotions, at least in part, arise from the processing of dynamical unfolding representations of valence across (...) time. Critical to this model is the hypothesis that affective trajectories—over time—provide important information that helps build emotional states. (shrink)

The environmentally responsive molecular chaperone Hsp90 assists the maturation of many key regulatory proteins. An unexpected consequence of this essential biochemical function is that genetic variation can accumulate in genomes and can remain phenotypically silent until Hsp90 function is challenged. Notably, this variation can be revealed by modest environmental change, establishing an environmentally responsive exposure mechanism. The existence of diverse cryptic polymorphisms with a plausible exposure mechanism in evolutionarily distant lineages has implications for the pace and nature of evolutionary change. (...) Chaperone‐mediated storage and release of genetic variation is undoubtedly rooted in protein‐folding phenomena. As we discuss, proper protein folding crucially affects the trajectory from genotype to phenotype. Indeed, the impact of protein quality‐control mechanisms and other fundamental cellular processes on evolution has heretofore been overlooked. A true understanding of evolutionary processes will require an integration of current evolutionary paradigms with the many new insights accruing in protein science. BioEssays 26:348–362, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this dissertation I discuss emotional rationality generally, and the fear of death specifically. I argue that the intentionality of emotion is one source of difficulty for philosophers who defend the view that the fear of death is irrational. I suggest that since there are several things we can fear when we fear death, the acceptability of some arguments will vary depending on the objects the arguments presuppose. I also argue that philosophers often employed inappropriate conceptions of emotional rationality. If (...) the conceptual framework in which these philosophers were working is unacceptable, then perhaps their arguments are unacceptable as well. I ultimately develop a view of emotional rationality that takes its inspiration from externalist accounts of belief justification. I try to show that, even if the fear of death is not a "true" emotion, it is nonetheless justified.^. (shrink)

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...) vulnerable to increases in child abuse. The best available external evidence from systematic research during the pandemic demonstrates an increase in the risk of child maltreatment, an increase in child maltreatment hospitalisations and a concerning decrease in official child maltreatment referrals. The paradoxical phenomenon of increased hospitalisations and decreased reports is unlikely to be explained by a genuine decrease in child abuse. We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. The desire for a sense of security may be a tempting bias towards emphasising the resilience of children, but it is ethically problematic to push children towards abuse in the name of public health. It is our view that the collateral damage of prolonged school closures for society’s most vulnerable members is a powerful ethical consideration against any pandemic response which involves their use. (shrink)

For over a decade, managed care has profoundly altered how healthcare is delivered in the United States. There have been concerns that the patient-physician relationship may be undermined by various aspects of managed care, such as restrictions on physician choice, productivity requirements that limit the time physicians may spend with patients, and the use of compensation formulas that reward physicians for healthcare dollars not spent. We have previously published data on the effects of managed care on the physician-patient relationship from (...) the physician's perspective. In 1999, we collected data on the impact of managed care arrangements on the physician-patient relationship from the patient's perspective. This article discusses our collective findings. (shrink)

Over the past several years, healthcare has been profoundly altered by the growth of managed care. Because managed care integrates the financing and delivery of healthcare services, it dramatically alters the roles and relationships among providers, payers, and patients. While analysis of this change has focused on whether and how managed care can control costs, an increasingly important concern among healthcare providers and recipients is the impact of managed care on the physicianpatient relationship, but little data have been collected and (...) analyzed. We designed a survey for distribution to Wisconsin physicians to analyze the prevalence and types of managed care arrangements in the state, and the impact of these arrangements on physicians and their relationships with patients. (shrink)

During the last several decades, business schools have increasingly portrayed themselves as the advocates and teachers of business ethics. In this context, educators have examined, criticized, and written about the questionable actions of many organizations. Business schools are, however, currently facing their own unprecedented crisis in the form of dramatically declining enrollments. This paper examines the morality of the various possible response strategies and argues that how business schools respond to this crisis will serve as a clear indication of their (...) own organizational ethics and values. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

Over the past two decades ethics committees have proliferated in healthcare institutions across the country. Catalysts for this growth include the endorsement of ethics committees by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the Quinlan case, by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical Research in its report entitled Deciding to Forgo Life Sustaining Medical Treatment, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in its 1985 “Baby Doe” regulations, by numerous other courts in (...) treatment decisionmaking opinions issued after Quinlan, and more recently by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. (shrink)

Lewis makes a strong case for the interdependence and integration of emotion and cognitive processes. Yet, these processes exhibit considerable independence in early life, as well as in certain psychopathological conditions, suggesting that the capacity for their integration emerges as a function of development. In some circumstances, the concept of highly interactive emotion and cognitive systems seems a viable alternative hypothesis to the idea of systems integration.

Extensively updated to include clinical findings over the last two decades, this third edition of A Practitioner's Guide to Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy reviews the philosophy, theory, and clinical practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. This model is based on the work of Albert Ellis, who had an enormous influence on the field of psychotherapy over his 50 years of practice and scholarly writing. Designed for both therapists-in-training and seasoned professionals, this practical treatment manual and guide introduces the basic principles of (...) rational-emotive behavior therapy, explains general therapeutic strategies, and offers many illustrative dialogues between therapist and patient. The volume breaks down each stage of therapy to present the exact procedures and skills therapists need, and numerous case studies illustrate how to use these skills. The authors describe both technical and specific strategic interventions, and they stress taking an integrative approach. The importance of building a therapeutic alliance and the use of cognitive, emotive, evocative, imaginal, and behavioral interventions serves as the unifying theme of the approach. Intervention models are presented for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, anger, personality disorders, and addictions. Psychologists, clinical social workers, mental health counselors, psychotherapists, and students and trainees in these areas will find this book useful in learning to apply rational-emotive behavior therapy in practice. (shrink)

Societal evaluation of new technologies, specifically nanotechnology and genetically engineered organisms , challenges current practices of governance and science. Employing environmental risk assessment for governance and oversight assumes we have a reasonable ability to understand consequences and predict adverse effects. However, traditional ERA has come under considerable criticism for its many shortcomings and current governance institutions have demonstrated limitations in transparency, public input, and capacity. Problem Formulation and Options Assessment is a methodology founded on three key concepts in risk assessment (...) and three in governance . Developed through a series of international workshops, the PFOA process emphasizes engagement with stakeholders in iterative stages, from identification of the problem through comparison of multiple technology solutions that could be used in the future with their relative benefits, harms, and risk. It provides “upstream public engagement” in a deliberation informed by science that identifies values for improved decision making. (shrink)

Societal evaluation of new technologies, specifically nanotechnology and genetically engineered organisms, challenges current practices of governance and science. When a governing body is confronted by a technology whose use has potential environmental risks, some form of risk analysis is typically conducted to help decision makers consider the range of possible benefits and harms posed by the technology. Environmental risk assessment is a critical component in the governance of nanotechnology and genetically engineered organisms because the uncertainties and complexities surrounding these technologies (...) pose such risk potential. However, GEOs are unique technologies, and there is widespread, international recognition that many traditional forms of ERA are not well-suited for evaluating them. Nanotechnology products are also likely to need different models of risk assessment, as there is very little information on their fate, transport, and impacts in the environment. (shrink)

Kristen Hessler argues that philosophy can best contribute to understanding human rights by exploring the full range of their use in practice. Her approach emphasizes how human rights activism and adjudication can both reveal and dismantle unjust social hierarchies. The result is an innovative vision of interdisciplinary human rights scholarship.

The Hadza foragers of Tanzania are currently experiencing a nutritional shift that includes the intensification of domesticated cultigens in the diet. Despite these changes, no study, to date, has examined the possible effects of this transition on the food collection behavior of young foragers. Here we present a cross-sectional study on foraging behavior taken from two time points, 2005 and 2017. We compare the number of days foraged and the type and amount of food collected for young foragers, aged 5–14 (...) years, in age- and season-matched samples. Compared with 2005, in 2017 fewer subadults left camp to forage, and overall, they targeted a smaller variety of wild foods, with the noticeable absence of wild honey, figs, and tubers. In addition, participants in 2017 were significantly more likely to have attended school. Despite the increased presence of domesticated plant foods in the diet and increased attendance at school, some young foragers continue to be highly productive in collecting wild, undomesticated foods. Despite the preliminary nature of our results, our findings suggest that the range of wild foods targeted by subadults is decreasing as the amount of domesticated cultigens in the diet increases. These data underscore the importance of studying diet composition and foraging decisions across temporal, nutritional, and ecological landscapes. (shrink)

This paper develops hypotheses about the implications of different types of decision for the utilization of different types of systematically produced information: data, research, and analysis. The engineering and enlightenment models found in the knowledge utilization literature prove inadequate for this purpose. We turn to three decision models—routine, incremental, and fundamental–and determine their implied demands for information. We also examine how information might be used in scanning procedures in anticipation of decision regime shifts. The results suggest that patterns of information (...) should differ markedly in each decision context and indicate that there may be an inherent bias against the use of research in decision. (shrink)

This study examines the methods students use to cheat on class examinations and suggests ways of deterring using an international sample from Australia, China, Ireland, and the United States. We also examine the level of cheating and reasons for cheating that prior research has highlighted as a method of demonstrating that our sample is equivalent to those in prior studies. Our results confirm the results of prior research that primarily employs students from the United States. The data indicate that actions (...) such as having multiple versions of the examination and scrambling the questions on these versions would deter cheating. In addition, given the increased level of cheating and students' increased perception of the social acceptability of cheating in college, the data provided by our international sample also suggest that some relatively simple precautions by instructors could dramatically reduce the level of cheating on in-class examinations. (shrink)

This paper examines how gender is represented within conspiracy theories by drawing on data from a corpus composed of conspiracy theory documents. It presents an analysis of the collocates of gendered nouns, highlighting the ways that conspiracy theorists use language to reinforce connections between religiosity and masculinity and understandings of femininity that rely on biological gender essentialism. Further, this paper highlights the overlap in values between religious masculinity and hegemonic masculinity that occur within this discourse. It also argues that the (...) ways in which gender is represented in conspiracy theory discourse shares links to far-right ideology, even when the conspiracies in question do not have direct or overt connections to the far-right. (shrink)

During emerging public health crises, both policymakers and members of the public are looking to scientific experts to provide guidance. Even in cases where there are significant uncertainties, there is pressure for experts to “speak with one voice” to avoid confusion, allow officials to make evidence-based decisions rapidly, and encourage public support for such decisions. This can lead experts to engage in masking of information about the state of the science or regarding assumptions involved in policy recommendations. Although experts might (...) have good reasons for masking disagreements, uncertainties, or assumptions when offering policy advice, we argue that this strategy can result in epistemic harms. Using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that public health authorities masked two types of information necessary for laypersons to evaluate public health recommendations: (1) experts’ disagreements about the scientific evidence and (2) the role of values in making inferences from the science to policy positions. We contend that this resulted in epistemic harms against laypeople that provide a pro tanto case against masking information. We further argue that when the science is in flux and policies need to be implemented despite significant uncertainties, there is an all-things-considered case against masking the types of information discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, I undertake a conceptual analysis of ordinary usages of the concepts of “litter” and “pollution.” If “litter” or “pollution” applies to space debris in its various contexts, then in dealing with space debris as an ethical concern, we may more neatly apply arguments for the wrongness of litter and pollution to these new contexts. After engaging in a conceptual analysis of “litter” and “pollution,” I consider whether these concepts apply to space debris, examining three contexts: (1) surface (...) debris on Moon and Mars, (2) intentionally crashing objects into gas giants, ice giants, and stars, and (3) the pressing issue of orbital space debris. I conclude by finding that neither “litter” nor “pollution” cleanly applies to any of these three contexts. (shrink)