What Do Emotions Do？ A Pragmatist Approach to the Role of Emotions in Media Events

Expressions of emotion in the media, especially in the context of news, are often criticized as promoting irrational attitudes. For supporters of this kind of criticism, rather than addressing such emotional sensitivity, journalism should be objective, appealing to the rationality of the public. Anger, indignation, enthusiasm, and expressions of joy or sadness should not have part in public debates. From this perspective, rationality and emotions are opposed, the former being fundamental for the constitution of the public sphere, while the latter falls into the category of inner impulses. While Kant denied any sort of rationality to emotions, Gustave Lebon attributed emotional attitudes to crowds rather than to a public. In a crowd, emotions spread like an epidemic through a kind of contagion. The present study is based on a contrasting perspective and focuses on the rationality of emotions＇, whether in philosophy （Nussbaum）, sociology （Paperman, Aranguren 2014; Livet 2002）, or psychology （Krant-Gruber）. Oddly enough, these different approaches do not seem to have affected media studies where, belief in the irrationality of emotions, still dominates analyses of media coverage of natural or industrial catastrophes, wars, or terrorist attacks. Instead of considering the nature of emotions, or the question of whether they actually corrupt the objectivity of journalism and the supposed rationality of public debates, I will seek to develop a pragmatist approach to the question of what, emotions actually do. In fact, the idea of emotions spreading contagiously had been disputed since the 18th century when Adam Smith asked how a British newspaper reader could be affected by an earthquake happening in China. Suffering from a distance, says Adam Smith, is not the product of some kind of contagion. If we want to understand this sort of feeling, we have to imagine an inner moral spectator inside of every human being Oddly enough, Adam Smith considers emotions to be moral feelings. To feel horrified by the consequences of an earthquake, or to feel indignant about the death of innocent victims, are moral attitudes. In this respect, they are rational, but the feelings of indignation or horror also include bodily reactions. We scream, put our hands over our mouths; we blush, have tears in our eyes; we feel our heartbeat accelerate etc. These bodily reactions seem impulsive and entirely subjective, but to what extent can we say that they are rational or moral？

The relationship between self-presentation concerns and pre-game affect among adolescent American football players

Background： The influence of self-presentation concerns on the adolescent sport experience has received scant empirical attention. The purpose of this investigation was to prospectively examine the relationship among self-presentational concerns and pre-game affective states among middle and high school aged football players. Methods： American football players （n = 112; mean age = 15.57 years） completed a measure of self-presentational concerns （SPSQ, McGowan, et al., 2008） a week prior to the measurement of selected pre-game affective states （i.e., attentiveness, self-assurance, serenity, and fear）. Results： Regression analyses revealed that concerns about appearing athletically untalented negatively contributed to the significant prediction （p 〈 0.001） of pre-game attentiveness, /3 = -0.43, Radj ^2 19.5% （p 〈 0.001）, and self-assurance, /3 = -0.38, R^dj = 11.9% （p 〈 0.01）. Conclusion： These findings highlight the importance of reducing self-presentational concerns in promoting positive pre-game mental states that likely impact the quality of athletes＇ competitive play and experience. Copyright @ 2012, Shanghai University of Sport. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Emotional State Transition Model Based on Stimulus and Personality Characteristics

In order to use mathematical methods to study how cognitive reappraisal strategies affect the output state of emotions,Gross's cognitive reappraisal strategy is transformed into a quantitative parameter which is proposed to describe the general perception of emotional events on the basis of the emotion regulation.According to Gross's emotional regulation model,the Finite State Machine(FSM) model is used for describing the process of emotional state transition and the Likert 5 grading scale is introduced to study the level of an individual's reappraisal according to the participant's self-evaluation.The experimental results verify that the algorithm can effectively describe the relationship between the reappraisal strategy,emotional events and an emotiongenerative process.There are multiple dimensions of a human's emotional state.Thus,in the field of human-computer interaction,further research requires the development of a specific algorithm which can be implemented by a computer for the emotion regulation process.

Relationship between negative emotions and perceived support among parents of hospitalized,critically ill children

Objectives:The purpose of this study was to describe relationships between negative emotions and perceived emotional support in parents of children admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit(PICU).Methods:This cross-sectional descriptive study conducted face-to-face interviews between January 2019 and January 2020.Study variables included depression(PHQ-9 Scale),anxiety(Emotional Distress-Anxiety-Short Form 8a),anger(Emotional Distress-Anger-Short Form 5a),fear(Fear-Affect Computerized Adaptive Test),somatic fear(Fear-Somatic Arousal-Fixed Form),loneliness(Revised 20-item UCLA Loneliness Scale),and perceived emotional support(Emotional Support-Fixed Form).Results:Eighty parents reported symptoms of depression 8.00(4.00,13.75),anxiety(23.43±7.80),anger(13.40±5.46),fear(72.81±27.26),somatic fear 9.00(6.00,12.75),loneliness(39.35±12.00),and low perceived emotional support(32.14±8.06).Parents who were young,single,low-income,and with limited-post secondary education reported greater loneliness and lower perceived emotional support.Fear correlated with depression(r=0.737,P<0.01)and anxiety(r=0.900,P<0.01).Inverse relationships were discovered between perceived emotional support and loneliness(r=-0.767,P<0.01),anger(r=-0.401,P<0.01),and depression(r=-0.334,P<0.01).Conclusions:The cluster of negative emotions identified will serve as potential targets for future interventions designed to enhance support for parents of critically ill children.

Gait Recorded by Smart Phone Can Reveal Your Emotion

So far,a lot of scientific studies have been carried out on nonverbal signals,which are considered as extrinsic expression of human’s intrapsychic state.Among them,emotion detection aims to automatically determine a person’s affective state,with immense potentials in many areas from health care,psychological detection to human-computer interaction.Traditional emotion detection is based on expressions,or linguistic and acoustic features in speech.However,