Browsing by Subject "Personality and emotions"
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Item Assessing emotional evaluation: a validation study of the reactions to emotions questionnaire(2007-08) Barrow, Amanda Piper, 1980-; Rude, Stephanie SandraThis study describes the development and validation of the Reactions to Emotions Questionnaire (REQ), a measure that assesses individuals' evaluation of themselves when experiencing various core emotions. A primary aim of the current study was to explore the predictive validity of the REQ; specifically, whether scores on the measure predict recovery time following a distressing event. Participants engaged in a negative mood induction to induce a sense of disappointment or failure. Emotional arousal was assessed with physiological measurements and self-report of mood. Cognitive arousal was measured with a task that compared time to recognize words related to the negative mood induction with time to recognize neutral words. It was hypothesized that individuals who have a relatively accepting stance towards their emotions (as measured by the REQ) will have a quicker return to baseline levels of emotional arousal and will be less cognitively primed following the negative mood induction than individuals who have a more judgmental stance towards their emotions. Analyses indicated that emotional evaluation was not a significant predictor of emotional or cognitive arousal following the negative mood induction. The level of arousal between individuals with either accepting or judgmental emotional evaluations did not differ following the failure manipulation. A separate hypothesis addressed the REQ's construct validity by predicting that scores on the REQ subscales would be moderately correlated with scores on questionnaires assessing ideas related to emotional evaluation. This hypothesis was supported, as the REQ was moderately correlated with measures of constructs such as self-esteem, acceptance of emotional experiences, and emotional expression. It was negatively correlated with measures of guilt, rumination, and suppression of emotions. A secondary focus of the study was the relationship between emotional evaluation, emotion expression, and attachment style. Attachment theory is one conceptualization of the etiology of emotional evaluation and emotion expression style, and a proposed model depicting the relationship between these three constructs is described. First-order correlations and a canonical correlation analysis were conducted between the attachment styles outlined by Bartholomew (1994), tendency to inhibit emotions, and the subscales of the REQ. Results suggested that attachment theory is a useful marker of emotion regulation and emotional evaluation tendencies.Item Father-child emotional reciprocity and children's prosocial behavior(Texas Tech University, 2001-05) Tankersley, Laura GThe purpose of this study was to examine the links between father-child emotional reciprocity, or the relative matching of both positive and negative affect between father and child, and children's positive mood, cooperative behavior, and aggressive behavior when playing with a peer. In addition, three factors were examined as possible contributors to individual differences in father-child emotional reciprocity: (a) marital conflict, (b) father personality, and (c) children's temperament. Participants were 59 families with preschool children, 35 boys and 34 girls, who were a subsample of subjects participating in a larger longitudinal investigation. Findings revealed that fathers who expressed more positive emotion had children who displayed more positive mood and prosocial behavior, and less aggression, when playing with a peer. Children who displayed more positive emotion with their father also displayed more positive mood with their peer, whereas children who displayed more negative emotion with their father were more aggressive when interacting with a peer. Children from father-child dyads with higher levels of positive emotional reciprocity displayed more positive mood when playing with a peer, whereas children from father-child dyads with higher levels of negative emotional reciprocity displayed less positive mood and less prosocial behavior. Father-child emotional mismatch was associated with children's having a more positive mood and high levels of prosocial behavior when playing with a peer. Findings suggest that father-child emotional expressiveness has important implications for children's prosocial behavior.Item Perfectionism's relationship to anxiety, depression, and attributional style within a stressful task paradigm(Texas Tech University, 2002-12) Whittaker, Paul DaveThe diathesis-stress model of perfectionism proposes that an interaction exists between perfectionistic behavior and stress/failure, and that this interaction leads to increases in depression (Hewitt & Flett, 1991b). It has been further hypothesized that a stress and failure interaction additionally affects the relationship between perfectionism and other forms of negative affect (i.e., anxiety) (Antony, Purdon, Huta, & Swinson, 1998). Hence, the perfectionism construct has often been conceptualized as representing a dysfunctional attributional/cognitive style (Pacht, 1984). Preliminary research has supported the association between perfectionism and certain attributional styles (i.e., causal attributions that are internal, stable, and global) often found in depressed individuals (Flett, Hewitt, Blankstein, & Pickering, 1998). Moreover, research has demonstrated that specific dimensions of perfectionism (i.e., socially-prescribed perfectionism, concern over mistakes, parental criticism), posited to represent the more maladaptive cognitive styles of those high in perfectionism, are positively associated with negative affect (Frost, Heimberg, Holt, Mattia, & Neubauer, 1993). Thus, the purposes of this study were to further explore the cognitive and affective responses of individuals high and low in perfectionism when subjected to a stressful task paradigm and investigate whether certain cognitive variables (i.e., attributional style) and/or perfectionism dimensions were predictive of increases in negative effect. The present study posited that (1) perfectionism would have a moderating effect on one's level of anxiety and depression in stressful scenarios, (2) attributional styles of individuals high in perfectionism would be similar to attributional styles found in depressed individuals, (3) specific "maladaptive" dimensions of perfectionism would be more predictive of increases in anxiety and depression than the more "positive" dimensions, and (4) the maladaptive dimensions would be more predictive of increases in negative performance perceptions than the positive dimensions. Resufts did not support the first hypothesis which examined the diathesis-stress model of perfectionism, suggesting that level of perfectionism did not interact with stress to predispose one to increased anxiety or depression. However, results were consistent with the other hypotheses and supported the theoretical distinction between more adaptive and maladaptive forms of perfectionism. Maladaptive perfectionism was positively related to increases in negative effect, dysfunctional attributional styles, and negative performance perceptions.