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Biomedical subjects

J J Gross

Publications and source records attributed to J J Gross.

11 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Social anxiety and response to touch: incongruence between self-evaluative and physiological reactions.

Touch is an important form of social interaction, and one that can have powerful emotional consequences. Appropriate touch can be calming, while inappropriate touch can be anxiety provoking. To examine the impact of social touching, this study compared socially high-anxious (N=48) and low-anxious (N=47) women's attitudes concerning social touch, as well as their affective and physiological responses to a wrist touch by a male experimenter. Compared to low-anxious participants, high-anxious participants reported greater anxiety to a variety of social situations involving touch. Consistent with these reports, socially anxious participants reacted to the experimenter's touch with markedly greater increases in self-reported anxiety, self-consciousness, and embarrassment. Physiologically, low-anxious and high-anxious participants showed a distinct pattern of sympathetic-parasympathetic coactivation, as reflected by decreased heart rate and tidal volume, and increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, skin conductance, systolic/diastolic blood pressure, stroke volume, and respiratory rate. Interestingly, physiological responses were comparable in low and high-anxious groups. These findings indicate that social anxiety is accompanied by heightened aversion towards social situations that involve touch, but this enhanced aversion and negative-emotion report is not reflected in differential physiological responding.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Emotion regulation and memory: the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool.

An emerging literature has begun to document the affective consequences of emotion regulation. Little is known, however, about whether emotion regulation also has cognitive consequences. A process model of emotion suggests that expressive suppression should reduce memory for emotional events but that reappraisal should not. Three studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool may vary according to how this is done.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Mapping the domain of expressivity: multimethod evidence for a hierarchical model.

Increased interest in emotional expressivity has led to a proliferation of conceptions and measures. It is unclear, however, whether they all refer to the same construct and whether the domain of emotional expressivity is best conceptualized as unidimensional or multifaceted. Study 1 examined 6 common expressivity questionnaires, yielding 5 factors: Expressive Confidence, Positive Expressivity, Negative Expressivity, Impulse Intensity, and Masking. To develop a nomological network for these factors, the factors were related to broader personality taxonomies and their differential relations to sex and ethnicity were tested. Study 2 provided further evidence of discriminant validity in relation to (a) typical emotion expression in peer relationships, (b) ability to pose emotions in the laboratory, (c) likability, and (d) regulation of emotion and mood. These findings support a hierarchical model of individual differences in emotional expressivity.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology.

Using a process model of emotion, a distinction between antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation is proposed. To test this distinction, 120 participants were shown a disgusting film while their experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses were recorded. Participants were told to either (a) think about the film in such a way that they would feel nothing (reappraisal, a form of antecedent-focused emotion regulation), (b) behave in such a way that someone watching them would not know they were feeling anything (suppression, a form of response-focused emotion regulation), or (c) watch the film (a control condition). Compared with the control condition, both reappraisal and suppression were effective in reducing emotion-expressive behavior. However, reappraisal decreased disgust experience, whereas suppression increased sympathetic activation. These results suggest that these 2 emotion regulatory processes may have different adaptive consequences.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1997

Hiding feelings: the acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion.

Emotion regulation plays a central role in mental health and illness, but little is known about even the most basic forms of emotion regulation. To examine the acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion, we asked 180 female participants to watch sad, neutral, and amusing films under 1 of 2 conditions. Suppression participants (N = 90) inhibited their expressive behavior while watching the films; no suppression participants (N = 90) simply watched the films. Suppression diminished expressive behavior in all 3 films and decreased amusement self-reports in sad and amusing films. Physiologically, suppression had no effect in the neutral film, but clear effects in both negative and positive emotional films, including increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system. On the basis of these findings, we suggest several ways emotional inhibition may influence psychological functioning.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Revealing feelings: facets of emotional expressivity in self-reports, peer ratings, and behavior.

Drawing on an explicit model of emotion, we propose a multifaceted approach to emotional expressivity, defined as the behavioral (e.g., facial, postural) changes associated with emotion. Study 1 shows that self-reported expressivity has 3 facets (Impulse Strength, Negative Expressivity, Positive Expressivity). Study 2 shows that the same 3 facets emerge in peer ratings and that there are robust relations between self- and peer-rated expressivity. In Study 3, emotion-expressive behavior was videotaped and related to expressivity self-reports obtained several months earlier. As expected, Negative Expressivity predicted behavioral expressions of sadness (but not amusement), whereas Positive Expressivity predicted amusement (but not sadness). These relations remained even when subjective emotional experience and physiological response were controlled. These studies demonstrate the importance of a multifaceted approach to emotional expressivity and have implications for the understanding of personality and emotion.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Emotion and aging: experience, expression, and control.

Age differences in emotional experience, expression, and control were investigated in 4 studies. A community sample of 127 African Americans and European Americans (ages 19-96 years) was used in Study 1; a community sample of 82 Chinese Americans and European Americans (ages 20-85 years) was used in Study 2; a community sample of 49 Norwegians drawn from 2 age groups (ages 20-35 years and 70+ years) was used in Study 3; and a sample of 1,080 American nuns (ages 24-101 years) was used in Study 4. Across studies, a consistent pattern of age differences emerged. Compared with younger participants, older participants reported fewer negative emotional experiences and greater emotional control. Findings regarding emotional expressivity were less consistent, but when there were age differences, older participants reported lesser expressivity. Results are interpreted in terms of increasingly competent emotion regulation across the life span.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

The psychophysiology of crying.

Two conflicting views have emerged as to why people cry when they are sad. One suggests that crying serves homeostasis by facilitating recovery; the other suggests that crying produces an aversive high-arousal state that motivates behavior aimed at ending the tears. To test hypotheses drawn from these views, we showed a short film known to elicit sadness to 150 women. During this film, 33 subjects spontaneously cried and 117 did not. Subjects who cried exhibited more expressive behavior and reported feeling more sadness and pain than did subjects who did not cry. Crying also was associated with increases in somatic and autonomic nervous system activity. The increases in autonomic activity could not be accounted for solely by the increases in somatic activity. Crying is thus associated with an aversive state, including negative emotion and a complex mixture of sympathetic, parasympathetic, and somatic activation, and we speculate about the functional implications of these findings.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Emotional suppression: physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior.

This study examined the effects of emotional suppression, a form of emotion regulation defined as the conscious inhibition of emotional expressive behavior while emotionally aroused. Ss (43 men and 42 women) watched a short disgust-eliciting film while their behavioral, physiological, and subjective responses were recorded. Ss were told to watch the film (no suppression condition) or to watch the film while behaving "in such a way that a person watching you would not know you were feeling anything" (suppression condition). Suppression reduced expressive behavior and produced a mixed physiological state characterized by decreased somatic activity and decreased heart rate, along with increased blinking and indications of increased sympathetic nervous system activity (in other cardiovascular measures and in electrodermal responding). Suppression had no impact on the subjective experience of emotion. There were no sex differences in the effects of suppression.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

In vitro evidence supporting two mechanisms of action for the anion transport inhibitor L-644,711 in cerebral ischaemia.

L-644,711 is a novel anion channel inhibitor which has previously been shown to decrease brain injury in two related rabbit models of cerebral ischaemia. We hypothesize two mechanisms of action of L-644,711 for its salutary effects on cerebral ischaemia: inhibition of neutrophil function and prevention of excitotoxin release from astrocytes. We present in vitro evidence supporting these two mechanisms of action. L-644,711 demonstrated a dose dependent inhibition of fMLP-induced neutrophil aggregation and superoxide anion release. In addition, L-644,711 demonstrated a dose dependent inhibition of glutamate release from swollen astrocytes in primary culture. We conclude that L-644,711 may prevent brain injury in cerebral ischaemia by inhibiting neutrophil function and preventing release of glutamate from swollen astrocytes.

Animals↗