Previous work has shown that acts of self-regulation appear to deplete a psychological resource, resulting in poorer self-regulation subsequently. Four experiments using assorted manipulations and measures found that positive mood or emotion can counteract ego depletion. After an initial act of self-regulation, participants who watched a comedy video or received a surprise gift self-regulated on various tasks as well as non-depleted participants and significantly better...

Although the systematic study of meditation is still in its infancy, research has provided evidence for meditation-induced improvements in psychological and physiological well-being. Moreover, meditation practice has been shown not only to benefit higher-order cognitive functions but also to alter brain activity. Nevertheless, little is known about possible links to brain structure. Using high-resolution MRI data of 44 subjects, we set out to examine the...

초록 없음  Harmon-Jones, E., & Peterson, C. (2009). Supine body position reduces neural response to anger evocation. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1209.10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02416.x    

Although the psychological benefits of mindfulness training on emotion regulation are well-documented, the precise mechanisms underlying these effects remain unclear. In the present account, we propose a new linkage between mindfulness and improved emotion regulation—one that highlights the role played by executive control. Specifically, we suggest that the present-moment awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance that is cultivated by mindfulness training is crucial in promoting executive control...

Mindfulness meditation describes a set of different mental techniques to train attention and awareness. Trait mindfulness and extended mindfulness interventions can benefit self-control. The present study investigated the short-term consequences of mindfulness meditation under conditions of limited self-control resources. Specifically, we hypothesized that a brief period of mindfulness meditation would counteract the deleterious effect that the exertion of self-control has on subsequent self-control performance. Participants...

How exteroceptive attention (EA) alters neural representations of the external world is well characterized, yet little is known about how interoceptive attention (IA) alters neural representations of the body's internal state. We contrasted visual EA against IA toward respiration. Visual EA modulated striate and extrastriate cortices and a lateral frontoparietal “executive” network. By contrast, respiratory IA modulated a posterior insula region sensitive to respiratory frequency,...

Easterbrook’s (1959) cue-utilization theory has been widely used to explain the inverted U-shaped relationship, initially established by Yerkes and Dodson, between emotional arousal and performance. The basic tenet of the theory assumes that high levels of arousal lead to restriction of the amount of information to which agents can pay attention. One fundamental derivative of the theory, as typically conceived in psychology, is the assumption...

Research over the last 5 decades has suggested that negative affective states narrow cognitive scope, whereas positive affective states broaden cognitive scope. An examination of this past research, however, reveals that only negative affects of high motivational intensity (e.g., fear, stress) and positive affects of low motivational intensity (e.g., gratitude, amusement) may have been examined. Consequently, over the last 5 years, research has examined positive...

For the last 50 years, research investigating the effect of emotions on scope of cognitive processing was based on models proposing that affective valence determined cognitive scope. More recently, our motivational intensity model suggests that this past work had confounded valence with motivational intensity. Research derived from this model supports the idea that motivational intensity, rather than affective valence, explains much of the variance emotions...

Two concurrent measures of the evoked startlé response, the elicited blink reflex and the event‐related potential, were measured while individuals viewed pictures that varied in pleasure and arousal. Replicating previous findings, the blink response was modulated by picture pleasantness, with larger reflexes elicited in the context of viewing unpleasant versus pleasant pictures. However, the probe P3 was primarily modulated by picture arousal, with smaller P3...