This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive road map of the important and rapidly growing field of emotion regulation.

The case of pain asymbolia is a case study that provides evidence of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between bodily experience, affective experience, and self-awareness. On one account pain asymbolia is the result of an affective deficit. Sensory signals of bodily damage are not associated with characteristic negative affect. Cochrane endorses this account as part of his version of a “conceptual act” theory of affective experience. In contrast, I propose an active inference account of affect in general and pain asymbolia (...) in particular. In the active inference framework the self is inferred as the endogenous cause of bodily and affective experience in the process of organismic regulation. This preserves Cochranes ambition to ground affect in bodily regulation but avoids the problem for affective deficit accounts of asymbolia that cannot do justice to the neural correlates. (shrink)

Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated insula and anterior cingulate cortices in the empathic response to another’s pain. However, virtually nothing is known about the impact of the voluntary generation of compassion on this network. To investigate these questions we assessed brain activity using fMRI while novice and expert meditation practitioners generated a loving-kindness-compassion meditation state. To probe affective reactivity, we presented emotional and neutral sounds during the meditation and comparison periods. Our main hypothesis (...) was that the concern for others cultivated during this form of meditation enhances affective processing, in particular in response to sounds of distress, and that this response to emotional sounds is modulated by the degree of meditation training. The presentation of the emotional sounds was associated with increased pupil diameter and activation of limbic regions (insula and cingulate cortices) during meditation (versus rest). During meditation, activation in insula was greater during presentation of negative sounds than positive or neutral sounds in expert than it was in novice meditators. The strength of activation in insula was also associated with self-reported intensity of the meditation for both groups. These results support the role of the limbic circuitry in emotion sharing. The comparison between meditation vs. rest states between experts and novices also showed increased activation in amygdala, right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in response to all sounds, suggesting, greater detection of the emotional sounds, and enhanced mentation in response to emotional human vocalizations for experts than novices during meditation. Together these data indicate that the mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion alters the activation of circuitries previously linked to empathy and theory of mind in response to emotional stimuli.. (shrink)

Autonomous mechanisms have been proposed to regulate certain aspects of society and are already being used to regulate business organisations. We take seriously recent proposals for algorithmic regulation of society, and we identify the existing technologies that can be used to implement them, most of them originally introduced in business contexts. We build on the notion of 'social machine' and we connect it to various ongoing trends and ideas, including crowdsourced task-work, social compiler, mechanism design, reputation management systems, and social (...) scoring. After showing how all the building blocks of algorithmic regulation are already well in place, we discuss possible implications for human autonomy and social order. The main contribution of this paper is to identify convergent social and technical trends that are leading towards social regulation by algorithms, and to discuss the possible social, political, and ethical consequences of taking this path. (shrink)

This study examined the relationship between individual differences in executive functions (EF; assessed by measures of working memory, Stroop, trail making, and verbal fluency) and ability to down-regulate and up-regulate responses to emotionally evocative film clips. To ensure a wide range of EF, 48 participants with diverse neurodegenerative disorders and 21 older neurologically normal ageing participants were included. Participants were exposed to three different movie clips that were designed to elicit a mix of disgust and amusement. While watching the films (...) they were either instructed to watch, down-regulate, and up-regulate their visible emotional responses. Heart rate and facial behaviours were monitored throughout. Emotion regulatory ability was operationalised as changes in heart rate and facial behaviour in the down- and up-regulation conditions, controlling for responses in the watch condition. Results indicated that higher verbal fluency scores were related to greater ability to regulate emotion in both the down-regulation and up-regulation conditions. This finding remained significant even after controlling for age and general cognitive functioning. No relationships were found between emotion regulation and the other EF measures. We believe these results derive from differences among EF measures, with verbal-fluency performance best capturing the complex sequence of controlled planning, activation, and monitoring required for successful emotion regulation. These findings contribute to our understanding of emotion–cognition interaction, suggesting a link between emotion-regulatory abilities and individual differences in complex executive functions. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on intellectual property (IP) is still very young. Whilst much has been written by lawyers on intellectual property, the vast majority of this writing is philosophically unsophisticated. This paper aims to at least partially remedy this philosophical deficit by examining what reflection on the ontology of intellectual property can add to our understanding of how to regulate IP. I argue that ontological reflection should bring us to an important basic fact, namely that ownership of intellectual property involves the (...) ownership of types rather than tokens. This difference in the ontological status of the objects owned makes a normative difference to how we should regulate ownership of intellectual property as compared to tangible property. The argument falls into three main parts. I begin by arguing that the type-token distinction is the best way to account for the ontology of intellectual property. I next argue that the realisation that we are dealing with ownership of types rather than tokens has important normative implications. In particular some of the standard arguments in favour of private ownership of physical property simply do not apply in the case of ownership of types, whilst some other arguments apply only in an attenuated way. The next section examines the limitations of ontology as a guide to the regulation of IP. I argue that whilst thinking through the normative implications of the type-token distinction is a necessary 1 condition for a sound regulatory approach to IP, it is certainly not sufficient. This is because many of the specific questions about the regulation of intellectual property that matter most in practice—such as how long the patent term should be, or how much someone should be able to quote from a book and it count as fair use—are not answerable by ontological reflection. Such questions concern the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits involved in the construction of public goods, rather than questions of ontology.. (shrink)

Victims of oppression are often called to let go of their anger in order to facilitate better discussion to bring about the end of their oppression. According to Amia Srinivasan, this constitutes an affective injustice. In this paper, we use research on emotion regulation to shed light on the nature of affective injustice. By drawing on the literature on emotion regulation, we illustrate specifically what kind of work is put upon people who are experiencing affective injustice and why it is (...) damaging. We begin by explaining affective injustice and how it can amount to a call for emotion regulation. Then we explain the various techniques that can be used to regulate emotions and explain how each might be harmful here. In the penultimate section of the paper, we explain how the upshot of this is that victims of affective injustice are left with a dilemma. Either they try to regulate their anger in a way that involves ignoring the fact of their oppression or they regulate it in a way that is likely to be harmful for them. Finally, we consider whether there are any good solutions to this dilemma, and how this issue opens up the possibility for further research into emotion regulation and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Expectations play a central role in understanding scientific and technological changes. Future-oriented representations are also central with regard to nanotechnologies as they can guide policy activities, provide structures and legitimation, attract different interests, focus policy-makers’ attention and foster investments for research. However, the emphasis on future scenarios tends to underrate the complexity of the challenges of the present market of nanotechnologies by flattening them under the needs and promises of scientific research. This is particularly apparent if we consider the viewpoint (...) of the regulator who faces two different ranges of problems with regard to the market and research and is expected, simultaneously, to manage two different types of regulatory instruments, pursuing at the same time the same goals. Instead, by favoring only the future scenarios, the regulator runs the risk of abruptly shifting from more flexible and elastic tools to forms of hard legislation, wasting, thus, the resources of the soft-regulation, in particular those of self-regulation. By referring primarily to the European context, human rights, also thanks to their normative structure of principles, can help in strengthening both the legislation needed for regulating the present market and the soft instruments needed for steering research and for fostering the stakeholders’ participation without sacrificing the coherence of the regulatory response. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to bring together contemporary psychological literature on emotion regulation and the classical sentimentalism of David Hume and Adam Smith to arrive at a plausible account of empathy's role in explaining patterns of moral judgment. Along the way, I criticize related arguments by Michael Slote, Jesse Prinz, and others.

In this paper, we draw on developmental findings to provide a nuanced understanding of background emotions, particularly those in depression. We demonstrate how they reflect our basic proximity (feeling of interpersonal connectedness) to others and defend both a phenomenological and a functional claim. First, we substantiate a conjecture by Fonagy & Target (International Journal of Psychoanalysis 88(4):917–937, 2007) that an important phenomenological aspect of depression is the experiential recreation of the infantile loss of proximity to significant others. Second, we argue (...) that proximity has a particular cognitive function that allows individuals to morph into a cohesive dyadic system able to carry out distributed emotion regulation. We show that elevated levels of psychological suffering connected to depressive background emotions may be explained not only in terms of a psychological loss, but also as the felt inability to enter into dyadic regulatory relations with others—an experiential constraint that decreases the individual’s ability to adapt to demanding situations. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how the ideas of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas offer insights into a debate often held today in the field of corporate governance, concerning the relative merits of statutory and voluntary approaches to the regulation of business. The philosophical position outlined by Levinas questions whether any rule-based systematisation of ethical responsibility, either statutory or voluntary, can ever equate to a genuine responsibility for the other person. I reflect on how various authors have adapted Levinas’s philosophy to (...) form a critique of bureaucracy and rule following in business, and the lack of ethical authenticity in corporate codes. However, this article also considers the question of whether a theoretical separation can be made between an ethical responsibility based on sensibility (as is suggested by Levinas) and a rational conceptualisation of how one is required to act. Considering the difficulty of disentangling these notions of ethics, I return to the problem of corporate governance and suggest an approach to stakeholder conflict based on mediation and dialogue, which rules out neither principles of conduct nor an openness of responsibility to the Other. (shrink)

In the popular and academic literature on the problems of the so-called attention economy, the cost of attention grabbing, sustaining, and immersing digital medias has been addressed as if it touched all people equally. In this paper I ask whether everyone has the same resources to respond to the recent changes in their stimulus environments caused by the attention economy. I argue that there are not only differences but disparities between people in their responses to the recent, significant increase in (...) the degree and persuasiveness of digital distraction. I point toward individual variance in an agent’s top-down and bottom-up attention regulation, and to further inequality-exacerbating variance in active participation on the internet and in regulating reward-seeking behaviors on the internet. Individual differences in these areas amount to disparities because they have been found to be connected to socioeconomic background factors. I argue that disparities in responding to digital distraction threaten fair equality of opportunity when it comes to digital distraction in the classroom and that they may lead to an unequal contribution of achievements that require complex cognition by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. (shrink)

Emotions evoked in response to others’ distress are important for motivating concerned prosocial responses. But how emotion regulation shapes prosocial responding is not yet well understood. We tes...

Law and the legal system through which law is effected are very powerful, yet the power of the law has always been limited by the laws of nature, upon which the law has now direct grip. Human law now faces an unprecedented challenge, the emergence of a second limit on its grip, a new “species” of intelligent agents (AI machines) that can perform cognitive tasks that until recently only humans could. What happens, as a matter of law, when another species (...) interacts with us, can be integrated into human minds and bodies, makes “real-world” decisions—not through human proxies, but directly—and does all this “intelligently”, with what one could call autonomous agency or even a “mind” of its own? The article starts from the clear premise that control cannot be exercised directly on AI machines through human law. That control can only be effected through laws that apply to humans. This has several regulatory implications. The article’s first discusses what, in any attempt to regulate AI machines, the law can achieve. Having identified what the law can do, the article then canvases what the law should aim to achieve overall. The article encapsulate its analysis in a list of both doctrinal and normative principles that should underpin any regulation aimed at AI machines. Finally, the article compares three transnational options to implement the proposed regulatory approach. (shrink)

Moral judgment has typically been characterized as a conflict between emotion and reason. In recent years, a central concern has been determining which process is the chief contributor to moral behavior. While classic moral theorists claimed that moral evaluations stem from consciously controlled cognitive processes, recent research indicates that affective processes may be driving moral behavior. Here, we propose a new way of thinking about emotion within the context of moral judgment, one in which affect is generated and transformed by (...) both automatic and controlled processes, and moral evaluations are shifted accordingly. We begin with a review of how existing theories in psychology and neuroscience address the interaction between emotion and cognition, and how these theories may inform the study of moral judgment. We then describe how brain regions involved in both affective processing and moral judgment overlap and may make distinct contributions to the moral evaluation process. Finally, we discuss how this way of thinking about emotion can be reconciled with current theories in moral psychology before mapping out future directions in the study of moral behavior. (shrink)

Metacognition refers to any knowledge or cognitive process that monitors or controls cognition. We highlight similarities between metacognitive and executive control functions, and ask how these processes might be implemented in the human brain. A review of brain imaging studies reveals a circuitry of attentional networks involved in these control processes, with its source located in midfrontal areas. These areas are active during conflict resolution, error correction, and emotional regulation. A developmental approach to the organization of the anatomy involved in (...) executive control provides an added perspective on how these mechanisms are influenced by maturation and learning, and how they relate to metacognitive activity. (shrink)

I argue that gendered stereotypes, gendered emotions and attitudes, and display rules can influence extrinsic regulation stages, making failure points likely to occur in gendered-context and for reasons that the emotion regulation literature has not given adequate attention to. As a result, I argue for ‘feminist emotional intelligence’ as a way to help escape these failures. Feminist emotional intelligence, on my view, is a nonideal ability-based approach that equips a person to effectively reason about emotions through an intersectional lens and (...) use emotions to inform how we think and react to the world. This includes being attuned to the ways in which the world and our emotional lives are structured by and favors men. It stresses the need to be attuned to, as well as resist and challenge gender-based stereotypes and attitudes around emotions, paying close attention to the ways those stereotypes, norms, and attitudes differ across race, class, ethnicity, et cetera. (shrink)

Theorists of criminal law widely agree that state punishment involves harsh treatment and stigma and that states must therefore provide protections for targeted individuals. But certain regulatory...

Recent theories have argued that emotions play a central role in moral decision-making and suggested that emotion regulation may be crucial in reducing emotion-linked biases. The present studies focused on the influence of emotional experience and individual differences in emotion regulation on moral choice in dilemmas that pit harming another person against social welfare. During these “harm to save” moral dilemmas, participants experienced mostly fear and sadness but also other emotions such as compassion, guilt, anger, disgust, regret and contempt (Study (...) 1). Fear and disgust were more frequently reported when participants made deontological choices, whereas regret was more frequently reported when participants made utilitarian choices. In addition, habitual reappraisal negatively predicted deontological choices, and this effect was significantly carried through emotional arousal (Study 2). Individual differences in the habitual use of other emotion regulation strategies (i.e., acceptance, rumination and catastrophising) did not influence moral choice. The results of the present studies indicate that negative emotions are commonly experienced during “harm to save” moral dilemmas, and they are associated with a deontological bias. By efficiently reducing emotional arousal, reappraisal can attenuate the emotion-linked deontological bias in moral choice. (shrink)

The discovery and ongoing investigation of microRNAs suggest important conceptual and methodological lessons for philosophers and historians of biology. This paper provides an account of miRNA research and the shift from viewing these tiny regulatory entities as minor curiosities to seeing them as major players in the post-transcriptional regulation of genes. Conceptually, the study of miRNAs is part of a broader change in understandings of genetic regulation, in which simple switch-like mechanisms were reinterpreted as aspects of complex cellular and genome-wide (...) processes. Among them are the activities of small RNAs, previously regarded as non-functional. Methodologically, the miRNA story suggests new ways of characterizing biological research that should prove helpful to philosophers of science who seek to develop more pluralistic, pragmatic models of scientific inquiry. miRNA research displays iterative movements between multiple modes of investigation that include not only the proposal and testing of hypotheses but also exploratory, technology-oriented and question-driven modes of research. As an exemplary story of scientific discovery and development, the miRNA case illustrates transitions from genetics to genomics and systems biology, and it shows how diverse configurations of research practice are related to major scientific advances. (shrink)

The central role played by emotions in conflict has long been recognized by many of the scholars who study ethnic conflicts and conflict resolution. Yet recent developments in the psychological study of discrete emotions and of emotion regulation have yet to receive adequate attention by those who study and seek to promote conflict resolution. At the same time, scholars of emotion and emotion regulation have only rarely tested their core theories in the context of long-term conflicts, which constitute a unique (...) and highly emotional environment. I argue that building bridges between these two communities would help us to form a better understanding of core processes in emotion and emotion regulation as well as greatly advance theory and practice in conflict resolution. To address that goal, a theoretical, appraisal-based model elucidating the way emotions operate in the context of conflict resolution processes is presented, followed by a review of recent empirical developments in the study of discrete emotions in conflict resolution processes. Next, I discuss various avenues of influence and provide preliminary data regarding the potential role of two types of emotion regulation processes in conflict resolution efforts. Finally, I describe the future challenges in integrating these two bodies of knowledge, at both the theoretical and the applied levels. (shrink)

Much of the most substantive and in‐depth experience with formal cost‐benefit analysis in the public policy realm has occurred in the context of federal environmental regulation in the United States. This experience has many important lessons to teach in the realm of synthetic biology. Indeed, many of the dangers and pitfalls that arise when decision‐makers use formal CBA to evaluate environmental regulation seem likely to arise in the synthetic biology context as well, sometimes in particularly troubling forms. Unfortunately, while in (...) many instances these concerns may well point toward a rejection of formal CBA for synthetic biology, the experience from environmental regulation turns out to be far less helpful in identifying alternative decision‐making tools. Because the decisions that arise in the synthetic biology context have a fundamentally different structure from decisions about environmental regulation, the most useful alternatives from that context do not map easily onto this new context.It may well be generally true that in the search for decision‐making tools, we should not be looking for a single silver bullet that will work in all public policy realms. Perhaps, instead, different kinds of decision‐making call for different tools. This may be true even within the realm of synthetic biology. I am not entirely sure what the “right” tool is for synthetic biology applications, or even whether a “right” tool exists. But at the end of this essay, I offer a few tentative thoughts about why scenario analysis—a strategic planning tool first developed in the context of military planning following World War II—might be one alternative worth considering. (shrink)

In vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy have enabled many to achieve their dreams of parenthood. With a turnover of $500 million, reproductive tourism in India has helped transform the country into a “global baby factory.” However, as the surrogacy industry grew, so did concerns of women’s exploitation, commodification of motherhood, and human rights violations. In an effort to prevent women from being exploited, the Indian government had taken successive administrative measures to regulate surrogacy. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 and Assisted (...) Reproductive Technologies Bill 2008 were introduced in the Parliament to regulate various aspects of surrogacy arrangements. Yet, it was not until 25 January 2022, that the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 went into effect. The Act does, however, leave certain important points unaddressed. The article claims that the legislation’s purposeful exclusion of the LGBTQ population and emphasis on “familial altruism” stinks of inequity and moral conservatism. It also delineates the mechanics of altruistic surrogacy by examining documents that illustrate how the connections between money and morality are framed via the framing of altruism. The article therefore demands that a comprehensive dialogue must be held considering the socio-economic realities of Indian society, or else India risks enacting yet another law that cannot be implemented or that society dislikes. (shrink)

“Sentiment” is a term of art, intended to refer to object-directed, irruptive states, that occur in relatively transient bouts involving positive or negative affect, and that typically involve a distinctive motivational profile. Not all the states normally called “emotions” are sentiments in the sense just characterized. And all the terms for sentiments are sometimes used in English to refer to longer lasting attitudes. But this discussion is concerned with boutish affective states, not standing attitudes. That poses some challenges that will (...) be my focus here. Rational sentimentalism is a cousin of fitting attitude theories of value, but other fitting attitude theories appeal to attitudes that are widely assumed to be governable by certain kinds of judgments. The basic challenge is this: are these boutish sentiments the sorts of things that we can and do regulate in the ways that are required for treating ‘shameful’, ‘funny’, ‘disgusting’ and the like as values? In what follows I briefly sketch some necessary conditions on treating something as a value, from which it emerges that treating sentimental values as values requires regulating the sentiments for fittingness. The rest of the paper is devoted to two ways of understanding how such regulation might work. I argue first that sentiments are susceptible to regulation by evaluative judgment, though perhaps not in quite the same way that philosophers have thought “judgment-sensitive attitudes” are regulated by judgment. I then suggest more tentatively that sentiments are also susceptible to regulation for fittingness in a different way: by educating sensibilities. (shrink)

It is deemed that the effectiveness of teachers is highly entangled with psycho-emotional constructs, such as critical thinking (CT), emotion regulation (ER), and immunity. Despite the potential roles of CR, ER, and immunity, their possible relationships have remained unexplored in the higher education context of Iran. To fill in this lacuna, this study explored the potential role of CT and ER in university teachers' immunity in the Iranian higher education context. For this purpose, a total of 293 English university teachers (...) were selected using a convenience sampling method. They were invited to fill out the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal-Form, Language Teacher Emotion Regulation Inventory, and Language Teacher Immunity Instrument. The findings of path analysis indicated that the university teachers with higher CT were more productively immunized. Moreover, the results revealed that ER could predict the university teachers' immunity. The findings of the study lead to this implication that higher order thinking skills, emotion regulatory strategies, and immune enhancement should be incorporated into educational programs of higher education. (shrink)

Abstract:There is a role for regulatory oversight over new genetic technologies. Research must ensure the rights of human subjects, and all medical products and techniques should be ensured to be safe and effective. In the United States, these forms of regulation are largely the purview of the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. Some have argued, however, that human genetic therapies require new regulatory agencies empowered to enforce cultural norms, protect against hypothetical social harms, or ensure (...) that the human genome remains unchanged. Focusing on the United States, this essay will briefly review these arguments and argue that the current limited regulatory role over human gene therapies is sufficient to protect public health, bodily autonomy, and reproductive freedom. (shrink)

In this study we use dual process theory of self-regulation to develop a framework that outlines the mediating and moderating mechanisms explaining the relationship between leader emotional exhaustion and leadership style (transformational leadership and abusive supervision). Using Glomb et al.’s (2011) framework, we identify empathy and negative emotion as mediators that are of particular importance for leaders. In addition, we propose that leader mindfulness moderates these processes to improve leadership style. Using a time-lagged survey of leaders (N = 505) we (...) found that leader empathy and negative emotion mediated the relationships between emotional exhaustion and leadership style. Furthermore, we found that leader mindfulness significantly moderated the indirect effect of leader emotional exhaustion on leadership style through negative emotion. However, leader mindfulness did not moderate the relationship between emotional exhaustion and empathy. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

After the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, the flow of forced migration from Ukraine has significantly increased as people tried to protect their lives and find a safe place to live. Given that Ukraine shares the external border with the European Union, most people sought protection precisely in the Member States of the European Union. The study aims to analyze the features of the legal regulation of the provision of temporary protection in the European Union and determine (...) the reasons and conditions that led to its activation after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The leading method of the research was the method of systematic analysis, which helped define temporary protection as a multifaceted phenomenon and determine the reasons and conditions that led to its activation in the European Union after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In order to regulate the mass influx of Ukrainian displaced persons, the European Union has activated the mechanisms of temporary protection, which is an emergency mechanism introduced by a decision of the Council of the European Union. The status of a person with temporary protection provides certain rights analyzed in the article. Thus, the activation by the European Union of the Temporary Protection Directive is a justified and appropriate measure to protect the mass influx of displaced persons from Ukraine. (shrink)

In emphasising improvement, smooth coping and success over variability and regression, skill theory has overlooked the processes performers at all levels develop and rely on for managing bodily and affective fluctuations, and their impact on skilled performance. I argue that responding to the instability and variability of unique bodily capacities is a vital feature of skilled action processes. I suggest that embodied intelligence – a term I use to describe a set of abilities to perceptively interpret and make use of (...) information from body, mind, environment and task requirements, and to modulate one’s focus, awareness and action strategies accordingly – is critical for performing well-learned skills in vulnerable situations. It is critical for staying safe. To investigate these components of skilled action, I employ a cognitive ethnographic method, combined with apprenticeship on the static trapeze, to produce two ‘experience near’ case studies. These document in-situ experiences of awareness, self-regulation and embodied intelligence. Both reveal strong connections between a reflective awareness of bodily vulnerability and variability, and self-regulatory processes – specifically, the down- and up-regulation of anxiety. I then reflect on these case studies in relation to a prospective sense of agency, the awareness of control acts that may lead to performance outcomes. With increased clarity on these features of embodied intelligence and attention during action, other researchers can build on this study to further probe and map the maintenance and functions of embodied intelligence in dealing with the instability of skills. (shrink)

Children show increasing control of emotions and behavior during their early years. Our studies suggest a shift in control from the brain’s orienting network in infancy to the executive network by the age of 3—4 years. Our longitudinal study indicates that orienting influences both positive and negative affect, as measured by parent report in infancy. At 3—4 years of age, the dominant control of affect rests in a frontal brain network that involves the anterior cingulate gyrus. Connectivity of brain structures (...) also changes from infancy to toddlerhood. Early connectivity of parietal and frontal areas is important in orienting; later connectivity involves midfrontal and anterior cingulate areas related to executive attention and self-regulation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBeing able to resist temptation at a young age is crucial for successful functioning yet it can be challenging. According to the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation framework, one central element of successful functioning is selection which involves choosing among regulatory options whose resource requirements fits with the amount of available resources an individual possesses. Although conceptually important, direct empirical evidence is lacking. Accordingly, the present study utilised performance based measures to examine the interactive effect of regulatory selection (...) to resist temptation, and individual differences in executive resources, on functioning in young children. Specifically, 39 first grade children that varied in executive resources, selected between two major regulatory strategies to resist temptation, that varied in their resource demands, and were evaluated on successful functioning... (shrink)

The aim of this research was to establish linear relations (association and prediction) and inferential relations between three constructs at different levels of psychological research –executive dysfunction(microanalysis),self-regulation(molecular level), andself-vs.external regulation(molar level), in the prediction of emotion regulation difficulties. We hypothesized that personal and contextual regulatory factors would be negatively related to levels of executive dysfunction and emotion regulation difficulties; by way of complement, non-regulatory and dysregulatory personal, and contextual factors would be positively related to these same difficulties. To establish relationships, (...) we used a retrospective,ex postfacto design, where 298 university students voluntarily participated by completing standardized self-reports. Linear and structural correlational, predictive analyses were performed, as well as inferential analyses. Results were consistent and validated the proposed hypotheses, for both association and prediction. The most important result refers to the discriminant value of the five-level combination heuristic for predicting Executive Function and External (contextual) Dys-Regulation. In conclusion: (1) both personal and contextual regulation factors must be analyzed in order to better understand the variation in executive functions and emotion regulation difficulties; (2) it is important to continue connecting the different levels of the constructs referring to self-regulation, given their complementary role in the behavioral analysis of regulation difficulties. (shrink)

Like all technologies, nanotechnology will inevitably present risks, whether they result from unintentional effects of otherwise beneficial applications, or from the malevolent misuse of technology. Increasingly, risks from new and emerging technologies are being regulated at the international level, although governments and private experts are only beginning to consider the appropriate international responses to nanotechnology. In this paper, we explore both the potential risks posed by nanotechnology and potential regulatory frameworks that law may impose. In so doing, we also explore (...) the various rationales for international regulation including the potential for cross-boundary harms, sharing of regulatory expertise and resources, controlling protectionism and trade conflicts, avoiding a “race to the bottom” in which governments seek economic advantage through lax regulation, and limiting the “nano divide” between North and South. Finally, we examine some models for international regulation and offer tentative thoughts on the prospects for each. (shrink)

Since the first draft of the human genome was published in 2001, DNA sequencing technology has advanced at a remarkable pace. Launched in 1990, the Human Genome Project sought to sequence all three billion base pairs of the haploid human genome, an endeavor that took more than a decade and cost nearly three billion dollars. The subsequent development of so-called “next generation” sequencing methods has raised the possibility that real-time, affordable genome sequencing will soon be widely available. Currently, NGS methods (...) can be used to sequence up to 60 billion base pairs per day. Whole-genome sequencing costs an estimated $5,000-10,000, with that number predicted to fall to $1000 in the near future.In the past few years, the availability of high-throughput NGS methods has led to a proliferation of potential and actual clinical applications for NGS. NGS therefore has the potential to usher in the long-awaited era of personalized medicine. (shrink)

Nature contact has associations with emotional ill-being and well-being. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not fully understood. We hypothesised that increased adaptive and decreased maladaptive emotion regulation strategies would be a pathway linking nature contact to ill-being and well-being. Using data from a survey of 600 U.S.-based adults administered online in 2022, we conducted structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses. We found that (1) frequency of nature contact was significantly associated with lesser emotional ill-being and greater emotional (...) well-being, (2) effective emotion regulation was significantly associated with lesser emotional ill-being and greater emotional well-being, and (3) the associations of higher frequency of nature contact with these benefits were partly explained via emotion regulation. Moreover, we found a nonlinear relationship for the associations of duration of nature contact with some outcomes, with a rise in benefits up to certain amounts of time, and a levelling off after these points. These findings support and extend previous work that demonstrates that the associations of nature contact with emotional ill-being and well-being may be partly explained by changes in emotion regulation. (shrink)

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have reached the consensus that one can use two different kinds of regulation to achieve self-control. Synchronic regulation uses willpower to resist current temptation. Diachronic regulation implements a plan to avoid future temptation. Yet this consensus may rest on contaminated intuitions. Specifically, agents typically use willpower (synchronic regulation) to achieve their plans to avoid temptation (diachronic regulation). So even if cases of diachronic regulation seem to involve self-control, this may be because they are contaminated by synchronic (...) regulation. We therefore developed a novel multifactorial method to disentangle synchronic and diachronic regulation. Using this method, we find that ordinary usage assumes that only synchronic––not diachronic––regulation counts as self-control. We find this pattern across four experiments involving different kinds of temptation, as well as a paradigmatic case of diachronic regulation based on the classic story of Odysseus and the Sirens. Our final experiment finds that self-control in a diachronic case depends on whether the agent uses synchronic regulation at two moments: when she (1) initiates and (2) follows-through on a plan to resist temptation. Taken together, our results strongly suggest that synchronic regulation is the sole difference maker in the folk concept of self-control. (shrink)

The study reported in this paper sought to examine the extent to which organisational leadership support and organisational culture explain the effect of regulation on sustainable procurement practice, as insights into this relationship is lacking in the extant literature. Useable survey data from 322 Ghanaian organisations were analysed using descriptive statistics, and structural equation modelling techniques. The analysis examined the nature of sustainable procurement practice in an African context, and the potential mediating effects of organisational leadership support and organisational culture (...) on regulation’s relationship with sustainable procurement. The findings reveal a moderate sustainable procurement practice in Ghanaian organisations, a significantly positive effect of regulation on related practices, and a mediation effect of organisational leadership support on regulation’s relationship with sustainable procurement. There was, however, no mediation effect relative to organisational culture. Potential relevance and implications of the study for theory and practice are explored in the discussion and conclusion sections. (shrink)

Technology assessment (TA) is an important instrument for the regulation of innovation. From the perspective of sociology of knowledge, the regulatory process can be understood as a complex interplay between different forms of knowledge. The prevailing instruments of TA, expertise and participation, are both facing difficulties in dealing with the limits and impasses of regulatory knowledge in the realm of innovation. Nevertheless, as is argued in this article, reflexive forms of TA offer a good, if not the only, answer to (...) the question of how we can deal with the contradictions and paradoxes involved in the regulation of innovation. (shrink)

Systems theory holds that emotional responses derive from the continuous, mutual interaction between multiple neurobiological and behavioral systems associated with emotion as they are contextually embedded. Developmental systems theory portrays these systems as becoming progressively integrated as they mature. From this perspective, regulatory processes are incorporated into emotion throughout the course of emotional development. This article examines the implications of developmental systems theory in understanding the association between emotion and emotion regulation, enlisting the functionalist orientation of contemporary emotions theory, a (...) broad portrayal of emotion regulatory influences, and attention to the role of context in the management of emotion. (shrink)

This article explores the emergence of standards and regulation associated with the provision of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance systems in the United Kingdom. It argues that despite the intrusive and controlling nature of CCTV technology there is limited formal intervention in the form of legislation, governing its introduction and use. Instead government has sought to influence the regulation of the technology indirectly through its ability to shape and govern policy networks in the policy arena. In doing so, it is (...) argued here, that government remains the dominant actor in the policy process. (shrink)