Marilyn Mendolia

An index of self-regulation of emotion and the study of repression in social contexts that threaten or do not threaten self-concept

This research tests a model of repression (M. Mendolia, 1999; M. Mendolia, J. Moore, & A. Tesser, 1996) which specifies that the interaction of individual differences in emotional responsiveness and situational threats to self-concept contributes to ones tendency to regulate emotional responsiveness. This research demonstrates that (a) individuals regulate their autonomic activity, facial muscle activity, cognitive attention, and subjective experience during isolated and repeated exposures to self-threatening negative and positive emotional events and (b) repressive behavior can be predicted by the Index of Self-Regulation of Emotion, which complements and extends conventional categorical measures of dispositional repression. This model provides a more detailed understanding of basic mechanisms in emotion by identifying how individual differences in emotionality and particular social contexts contribute to self-regulation of emotion.

Self-Evaluation Maintenance in Marriage: Toward a Performance Ecology of the Marital Relationship

The self-evaluation maintenance (SEM) model was originally developed to integrate distinct literatures on the potential positive and negative consequences for the self of being outperformed by others. Because close others are of particular importance for both of the basic processes thought to underlie the SEM model, committed heterosexual relationships provide an area in which relatively robust SEM effects should occur. In keeping with the expectation that SEM effects would be present among committed, heterosexual, married couples, the current series of studies demonstrated (a) that experimental manipulations of SEM processes influenced the behavior of married couples, (b) that patterns of couple outcomes conformed to predictions derived from the SEM model, and (c) that SEM effects accounted for inaccurate perceptions of partner needs.

Watching people talk about their emotions: Inferences in response to full-face vs. profile expressions

Young adults talked to an experimenter about their emotional reactions to video episodes intended to evoke either negative or positive affect. Facial behavior was simultaneously videotaped from three perspectives (full-face, a 90° right profile, and a 90° left profile) without their awareness. Judges viewed a subset of dynamic expressions in one of the three facial perspectives in either normal or mirror-reversed orientation. While subjects talked about a negative affect elicitor, the left hemiface and the full-face were perceived as more expressive than the right hemiface. The left hemiface, in reversed orientation, was perceived to display more emotion than the same expression in original orientation for positive or negative affect. These results are discussed in the context of the literature exploring hemifacial differences in emotional expression and mouth asymmetry during propositional speech.

Facial Identity Memory Is Enhanced When Sender’s Expression Is Congruent to Perceiver’s Experienced Emotion:

The role of the social context in facial identity recognition and expression recall was investigated by manipulating the sender’s emotional expression and the perceiver’s experienced emotion during encoding. A mixed-design with one manipulated between-subjects factor (perceiver’s experienced emotion) and two within-subjects factors (change in experienced emotion and sender’s emotional expression) was used. Senders’ positive and negative expressions were implicitly encoded while perceivers experienced their baseline emotion and then either a positive or a negative emotion. Facial identity recognition was then tested using senders’ neutral expressions. Memory for senders previously seen expressing positive or negative emotion was facilitated if the perceiver initially encoded the expression while experiencing a positive or a negative emotion, respectively. Furthermore, perceivers were confident of their decisions. This research provides a more detailed understanding of the social context by exploring how the sender–perceiver interaction affects the memory for the sender.