James D. Laird

Sex differences in human jealousy: A coordinated study of forced-choice, continuous rating-scale, and physiological responses on the same subjects

Abstract Previous investigators have confirmed the evolutionary hypothesis that the sexes differ in their responses to sexual vs. emotional infidelity and have taken their results as suggesting the existence of a mechanism that regulates the perceptions of threat, the emotional responses, and the physiological reactions that constitute jealousy. This notion implies that these three categories of response should occur systematically in the same group of subjects. However, no study has been done to confirm this implication. This study is the first to demonstrate the traditional findings concerning these three categories of response on the same group of subjects. Overall, the results of this investigation are consistent with the core evolutionary hypothesis of sex differences in human jealousy.

Individual differences in the effects of spontaneous mimicry on emotional contagion

Two experiments explored the role of mimicry and self-perception processes in emotional contagion. In Study 1, 46 subjects watched two brief film clips depicting an episode of startled fear. In a separate procedure, subjects adopted facial expressions of emotion, and reported whether the expressions had caused them to feel corresponding emotions. Those who reported feeling the emotions were identified as more responsive to self-produced cues for feeling. Subjects who visibly moved to mimic the behavior of the actor were significantly more likely to be those who were more responsive to self-produced cues. In Study 2, 57 subjects watched three film clips depicting happy people. During clips when they inhibited the movements of their faces, subjects reported less happiness than during clips when they moved naturally and were able to mimic, or when they exaggerated their movements. This effect occurred only among subjects who, in a separate procedure, had been identified as more responsive to self-produced cues.

The Experience of Boredom: The Role of the Self-Perception of Attention

The effect of the self-perception of inattention on feeling bored was investigated. Ss in a listening situation were simultaneously distracted (a) not at all, (b) moderately, or (c) loudly. As hypothesized, Ss who were distracted by extraneous noise at levels too tow to be recognized as a distraction reported that they felt more bored and that the task was less pleasant. That is, they attributed their inattention to the material as opposed to the distraction. Extraverts required louder distractions than introverts to produce boredom. These findings extend self-perception theory in an important direction. This is the first demonstration of a self-perception being based on a cognitive, rather than a physical, action.

The deliberate control of emotional experience through control of expressions

Recent research suggests that deliberate manipulation of expressive behaviours might self-regulate emotional experiences. Eighty people were first induced to adopt emotional expressions in a successfully disguised procedure that identified whether their feelings were affected by their expressive behaviour when they were unaware of the nature and purpose of that behaviour. They then deliberately attempted to change emotional feelings by adopting or inhibiting emotional behaviours, or by focusing on or being distracted from situational cues for emotion. Participants more responsive to their own behaviour in the disguised procedure felt more intensely when they adopted emotional behaviours, and less intensely when they inhibited those behaviours. In contrast, people identified as unresponsive to their own emotional behaviour were most affected by deliberate focus on or distraction from emotional thoughts. The effectiveness of techniques for emotional self-regulation depends on a match with characteristics of...

A college student volunteer program in the elementary school setting.

A college student, afterschool, day-care volunteer program for primary grade children with manifest or incipient emotional problems is reported. Attitudes differentiating volunteers from nonvolunteers and changes in volunteer attitudes following participation in the program are identified. A description of the program itself, including objective process data and evaluation of outcome indices is presented. Interrelations among various process measures, among the several outcome measures, and, finally, between process and outcome measures are summarized.

Looking and loving the effects of mutual gaze on feelings of romantic love

Abstract In two studies, subjects induced to exchange mutual unbroken gaze for 2 min with a stranger of the opposite sex reported increased feelings of passionate love for each other. In Study I, 96 subjects were run in the four combinations of gazing at the others hands or eyes, or in a fifth condition in which the subject was asked to count the others eye blinks. Subjects who were gazing at their partners eyes, and whose partner was gazing back reported significantly higher feelings of affection than subjects in any other condition. They also reported greater liking than all subjects except those in the eye blink counting condition. In Study II, with 72 subjects, those who engaged in mutual gaze increased significantly their feelings of passionate love, dispositional love, and liking for their partner. This effect occurred only for subjects who were identified on a separate task as more likely to rely on cues from their own behavior in defining their attributes.

Emotional expression and feeling in schizophrenia: Effects of specific expressive behaviors on emotional experiences

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between emotional expression and experience in schizophrenia by manipulating expressive behaviors directly and then assessing subsequent emotional feelings. In Study 1, facial expressions and bodily postures were manipulated in a sample of normals, the results of which replicate findings from previous studies of peripheral feedback effects on emotions. In Study 2, the same procedures were used with matched groups of outpatient schizophrenic men, patients with depression, and nonpsychiatric controls. Schizophrenia patients showed the usual effects from their facial expressions of sadness, fear, happiness, and surprise, but only from their postures of anger, whereas patients with depression showed the same effects only from their expressions and postures of sadness, and normal controls only from their expressions and postures of anger. These patterns may reflect those aspects of the emotional response system that are functional and dysfunctional in schizophrenia and depression.

Bodily Influences on Emotional Feelings: Accumulating Evidence and Extensions of William James’s Theory of Emotion

William James’s theory of emotion has been controversial since its inception, and a basic analysis of Cannon’s critique is provided. Research on the impact of facial expressions, expressive behaviors, and visceral responses on emotional feelings are each reviewed. A good deal of evidence supports James’s theory that these types of bodily feedback, along with perceptions of situational cues, are each important parts of emotional feelings. Extensions to James’s theory are also reviewed, including evidence of individual differences in the effect of bodily responses on emotional experience.

Accurate encoding and decoding of emotional facial expressions in schizophrenia

This is a study of the encoding and decoding of emotional facial expressions by people diagnosed as schizophrenic. The results of most previous investigations have shown that schizophrenics are worse than other psychiatric and normal comparison groups at adopting and recognizing facial expressions of emotion. This study is the first in which both abilities were tested within the same group of outpatient subjects. In contrast to earlier findings, the results of this study indicate that this group of schizophrenics was equally proficient, as compared with unipolar depressive and normal medical control subjects, in the encoding and decoding of facial expressions of anger, sadness, fear, happiness, disgust, and surprise. Encoding and decoding responses in all three groups were largely unrelated. Some of the potential explanatory factors for these unusual findings include the older age of this sample and the use of a rating procedure in the decoding task that is more similar to the nature of decoding decisions made in social situations than those typically used by other investigators. The general conclusion that schizophrenics are deficient relative to comparison groups in the encoding and decoding of emotional facial expressions is not supported by these results.

The Effect of Vividness of Experience on Sex Differences in Jealousy

Doubt has been raised about the validity of results that appear to demonstrate sex differences in the type of infidelity that elicits jealousy. Two studies explored proposed methodological weaknesses of this research. The first study distinguished participants who had experienced infidelity and those who had only imagined infidelity. The study found the classic sex differences when participants were “forced” to choose which kind of infidelity would be most upsetting, and these differences were more pronounced among participants who were recalling the actual infidelity of a partner. The second study explored the impact of the relatively brief, perhaps cursory response that is commonly evoked by questionnaires versus a slower, more vivid imagining of the infidelity experience. The classic forced choice results were found, and the vivid imagining produced effects that are more powerful. The overall results suggest that participants who had experienced infidelity or vividly imagined infidelity showed greater sex differences, suggesting that the usual format (filling out a questionnaire) may not trigger the evolved mechanism for jealousy.