Search

Objective: The current study aims to (1) examine the association between measures of trait anger (i.e., anger temperament and anger reaction) and cardiovascular reactivity to acute psychological stress, and (2) to identify if anger expression styles moderate the association between trait anger and cardiovascular reactivity., Methods: A sample of 669 participants completed a standardized cardiovascular reactivity protocol consisting of resting baseline and stressor phase (mental arithmetic and Stroop), with systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and heart rate (HR) monitored throughout. Participants also completed measures of trait anger including anger temperament and anger reaction, as well as measures assessing anger expression styles including anger-in, anger-out and anger control., Results: Anger temperament was significantly associated with blunted cardiovascular reactivity, as well as increased levels of subjective stress. Moreover, the association between anger temperament and cardiovascular reactivity was significantly moderated by anger-in, with associations observed only amongst those who reported an increased tendency to suppress their anger. The association between anger reaction and cardiovascular reactivity was moderated by both anger-out and anger control., Conclusion: While blunted cardiovascular responses may be a mechanism linking facets of trait anger to adverse health outcomes, the current findings accentuate the importance of considering expression styles when examining the association between anger experience and cardiovascular reactivity., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Recognition of sadness from facial expressions is associated with empathic responses. In this study, we devised an emotional probabilistic reward task (PRT) to facilitate sadness recognition and tested its effects on attentional and empathic responses to others in distress. During the emotional PRT, healthy participants were asked to discriminate between facial expressions subtly expressing sadness or anger. Reward feedback for correct sadness and anger recognition was provided, with different probabilities between the training (70% vs. 30%) and control groups (50% vs. 50%). Subsequently, participants performed a visual dot-probe task involving facial expressions of sadness, anger, fear, and happiness. They also completed an empathy rating task while viewing short video clips depicting people experiencing distressing or neutral events. The results showed that the training group developed greater recognition bias for sadness than the control group. Within the training group, sad recognition bias was positively associated with subsequent attentional orienting to sad faces and empathic concern towards distressed others. These findings suggest that the emotional PRT holds promise for modifying cognitive and emotional processes that are associated with empathy for others., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Lee, Kim. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objective: Limited research has examined associations between trait anger and hostility and incident type 2 diabetes (T2D) and diabetes-related heart complications. However, anger expression styles (i.e., anger-in, anger-out) have not been examined. The present study used secondary data to examine the associations between anger expression styles, cynical hostility, and the risk of developing T2D (objective 1) or diabetes-related heart complications (objective 2)., Methods: Self-report data came from participants aged 50 to 75 years in the Health and Retirement Study. Anger-in (anger that is suppressed and directed toward oneself, anger-out (anger directed toward other people or the environment), and cynical hostility were measured at baseline (2006 or 2008). Follow-up data (i.e., diabetes status or diabetes-related heart complications status) were collected every 2 years thereafter until 2020. The objective 1 sample included 7898 participants without T2D at baseline, whereas the objective 2 sample included 1340 participants with T2D but without heart complications at baseline., Results: Only anger-in was significantly associated with incident T2D after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics (hazard ratio = 1.08, 95% confidence interval = 1.01-1.16), but the association did not hold after further adjustment for depressive symptoms. Only anger-out was significantly associated with incident diabetes-related heart complications after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, health-related covariates, and depressive symptoms (hazard ratio = 1.21, 95% confidence interval = 1.02-1.39)., Conclusions: Anger expression styles were differentially related to diabetes outcomes. These findings demonstrate the value of expanding the operationalization of anger beyond trait anger in this literature and encourage further investigation of anger expression styles., (Copyright © 2024 by the American Psychosomatic Society.)

Temperamental characteristics and emerging cognitive control are meaningful predictors of children's development of adaptive and maladaptive social behaviors during the preschool period. However, knowledge of the interplay of these pathways, when examined concurrently to highlight their individual contributions, is limited. Using a cross-sectional sample of 3-year-old children, we examined parent-reported discrete traits of negative (anger, fear, sadness, and shyness) and positive (low- and high-intensity pleasure) temperamental reactivity as predictors of children's prosociality and physical aggression. Further, we tested whether the effects of discrete temperament were moderated by cognitive control, as indexed by the N2 event-related potential, during a go/no-go task. Analyses focus on a subsample of children with an observable N2 (n = 66). When controlling for other relative temperament traits, several significant main effects emerged. Moreover, at low cognitive control (smaller N2), fear was negatively associated with aggression, whereas at high cognitive control, sadness was positively associated with aggression. Heightened anger was linked to reduced prosocial behavior when cognitive control was low but linked to greater prosocial behavior when cognitive control was high. The results highlight that discrete temperament traits predict individual differences in child outcomes but that associations depend on concurrent levels of cognitive control., (© 2024 The Author(s). Developmental Psychobiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Stressful life events are highly associated with chronic pain. Yet, research is needed to identify the psychological mechanisms that link life adversity and pain, especially studies that test comprehensive models, recruit racially diverse samples, and measure varied pain-related symptoms. This study examined the relationship between stressful life events and pain in a racially diverse sample and tested the potential mediating roles of both anger and perceived injustice. Both centralized pain symptoms and pain intensity were the outcomes. Analyses consisted of 2 cross-sectional, mediation models among 673 adults with self-reported chronic pain who were racially diverse (Black: n = 258, Latine: n = 254, Asian American: n = 161). The results indicated a positive relationship between stressful life events and centralized pain symptoms (b = 2.53, P < .001) and pain intensity (b = .20, P < .001). In parallel mediation analyses, anger (b = .91, 95% CI = .67, 1.17) and perceived injustice (b = .86, 95% CI = .64, 1.11) acted as partial mediators on centralized pain symptoms. Also, anger (b = .05, 95% CI = .03, .08) and perceived injustice (b = .11, 95% CI = .08, .14) acted as full mediators on pain intensity. The combined psychosocial variables accounted for 51% of centralized pain symptoms and 26% of pain intensity. The findings suggest that psychosocial factors are significantly associated with pain outcomes. Future research is needed to investigate exposure to adversity in life, anger, and perceived injustice together as psychosocial mechanisms of pain symptoms. PERSPECTIVE: Among racially minoritized adults with chronic pain, this article presents empirical evidence that stressful life events, anger, and perceived injustice are associated with centralized pain symptoms and pain intensity. This could guide psychological intervention to focus on anger and perceived injustice, especially when addressing centralized pain., (Copyright © 2024 United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Family environment, emotion regulation and biological sensitivity have been shown to be associated with adolescents' externalizing problem behaviours. However, findings regarding respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity are mixed and sometimes contradictory. This study aims to clarify the roles of RSA reactivity and anger regulation in the relationship between negative family expressiveness (NFE) and adolescents' externalizing behaviour by measuring RSA reactivity during the Parent-Adolescent Interaction Task (PAIT), designed to simulate a naturalistic negative family environment. In this study, 125 Chinese adolescents (M = 13.95 years, SD = 0.95; 48% male) completed questionnaires assessing negative family expressiveness, anger regulation and externalizing problems. Additionally, we collected electrocardiogram and respiration data during both the resting period and a 10-min PAIT. Results showed that anger regulation mediated the relationship between NFE and externalizing problem behaviours. Moreover, adolescents' RSA reactivity moderated this mediation effect, even after controlling for baseline RSA. Greater RSA suppression potentially indicated greater susceptibility, with the relationship between NFE and anger regulation being more pronounced in adolescents with greater RSA suppression compared to those with lesser RSA suppression. These findings highlight the importance of considering physiological systems, especially within the context of adverse family environments, when studying the relationships with externalizing problems., (© 2024 British Psychological Society.)

This study examined several forms of repetitive negative thinking in relation to measures of Cluster B disorders to identify unique and co-occurring cognitive mechanisms contributing to these symptom presentations. MTurk participants ( N = 725; 53% men; 76% White) completed categorical and dimensional trait-based measures of Cluster B disorders alongside six measures of rumination and worry. Oversampling strategies were used during participant recruitment to obtain a sample with clinically relevant personality features. Path analyses examined each form of repetitive negative thinking in relation to Cluster B measures while controlling for shared variance between each construct. Anger rumination demonstrated notable relations across all four Cluster B personality disorders. Similarly, sadness rumination was positively associated with all four Cluster B personality disorders. Self-critical rumination and depressive rumination were uniquely associated with borderline symptoms. Worry demonstrated negative associations with measures of narcissistic, histrionic, and antisocial/psychopathy symptoms. Findings expand previous research by highlighting probable transdiagnostic and distinguishing cognitive process contributing to the presentation of Cluster B personality pathology. However, partialling the influence of overlapping constructs presents notable challenges in identifying and interpreting unique relations between various forms of repetitive negative thinking and Cluster B symptoms. Future research investigating these relations within outpatient and inpatient samples may provide avenues for the development of effective cognitive-based interventions for treating these symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Effectively regulating anger driving has become critical in ensuring road safety. The existing research lacks a feasible exploration of anger-driving regulation. This paper delves into the effect and neural mechanisms of emotional olfactory stimuli (EOS) on regulating anger driving based on EEG. First, this study designed an angry driving regulation experiment based on EOS to record EEG signals. Second, brain activation patterns under various EOS conditions are explored by analyzing functional brain networks (FBNs). Additionally, the paper analyzes dynamic alterations in anger-related characteristics to explore the intensity and persistence of regulating anger driving under different EOS. Finally, the paper studies the frequency energy of EEG changes under EOS through time-frequency analysis. The results indicate that EOS can effectively regulate a driver's anger emotions, especially with the banana odor showing superior effects. Under banana odor stimulus, synchronization between the parietal and temporal lobes significantly decreased. Notably, the regulatory effect of banana odor is optimal and exhibits sustained efficacy. The regulatory effect of banana odor on anger emotions is persistent. Furthermore, the impact of banana odor significantly reduces the distribution of high-energy activation states in the parietal lobe region. Our findings provide new insights into the dynamic characterization of functional connectivity during anger-driving regulation and demonstrate the potential of using EOS as a reliable tool for regulating angry driving.

We explored whether urban American Indian (AI) caregivers who maintained a strong sense of cultural connectedness buffered their children from the negative effects of stress on mental health. A community sample of 161 urban AI children (91 girls) ages 8-15 years (M = 11.20 years) and their primary caregivers participated between 2016 and 2017. Caregiver cultural connectedness moderated associations among child stressful life events and increased anger (R 2  = .13) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (R 2  = .15). For caregivers with greater cultural connectedness, associations were attenuated and not significant. Higher hair cortisol was related to increased depressive (R 2  = .11), anxiety (R 2  = .10), and PTSD (R 2  = .15) symptoms and was not moderated by cultural connectedness., (© 2024 The Author(s). Child Development © 2024 Society for Research in Child Development.)

Objective: Emerging work suggests that affect regulation strategies (e.g., active coping, anger expression) predict disease and mortality risk, with sometimes divergent estimates by sex or education levels. However, few studies have examined potential underlying biological mechanisms. This study assessed the longitudinal association of affect regulation with future allostatic load., Method: In 2004-2006, 574 participants from the Midlife in the United States study completed validated scales assessing use of nine general and emotion-specific regulatory strategies (e.g., denial, anger expression). As a proxy for how flexibly participants regulate their affect, variability in the use of regulatory strategies was operationalized using a standard deviation-based algorithm and considered categorically (i.e., lower, moderate, greater variability) to assess non-linear effects. Participants also provided data on relevant covariates and 24 allostatic load biomarkers (e.g., cortisol, blood pressure). In 2017-2021, these biomarkers were again collected. Linear regressions modeled betas (β) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI) examining associations of affect regulatory constructs with future allostatic load., Results: In fully-adjusted models including initial allostatic load, general regulatory strategies were unrelated to future allostatic load. Yet, greater versus moderate affect regulation variability levels predicted lower allostatic load (β=-0.14; 95 %CI: -0.27, -0.01). Only among more educated participants, greater use of anger expression predicted lower allostatic load, while the reverse was noted with anger control (β expression =-0.12; 95 %CI: -0.20, -0.05; β control =0.14; 95 %CI: 0.05, 0.24)., Conclusions: While general regulatory strategies appeared unrelated to allostatic load, greater variability in their use and anger-related strategies showed predictive value. Subsequent studies should examine these associations in larger, more diverse samples., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors do not have any declarations of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Although major depression is the disorder most frequently associated with suicidal behavior, it is unclear that major depressive disorder patients may develop suicidal ideation. Basic affective system theory may provide a novel and beneficial viewpoint in this field. The goal of this study was to investigate the basic affective system in relation to suicidal ideation in individuals with depression., Method: The study population comprised 160 participants who had been formally diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Participants were divided into two groups according to whether they had suicide ideation (depression with suicide [DS]) (N = 93) or not (depression with no suicidal ideation [DNS]) (N = 67). The Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Suicide Probability Scale (SPS), the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), and the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scale (ANPS) were applied. Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) 24 and the SPSS macroprocess, which were specifically developed for assessing complex models including serial mediators, were used to analyze the data., Results: The mean age of all participants was 31.1 ± 11 years, and most of them were female (65%). The DS group had a higher family history of psychiatric medication use and suicidal attempts. In addition, BDI, BHS, and SPS total scores were higher, as well as ANGER subscale scores were higher in the DS group. In mediation analysis, the ANGER subscale significantly predicted the presence of suicide ideation. We observed a direct effect of the ANGER subscale score on suicide ideation as well as an indirect effect of the ANGER subscale score on suicidal ideation via depression severity., Conclusion: Higher scores on ANGER are associated with suicidal ideation. Neurobiological correlates, including the ANGER system, may be promising in understanding suicidal behaviors., (© 2024 The Author(s). Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The happy face advantage, the faster recognition of happy than of negative, angry or fearful, emotional expressions, has been reliably found and is modulated by social category cues, such as perceived gender, that is, is larger on female than on male faces. In this study, we tested whether this pattern of results is unique to human faces by investigating whether ambient examples of face pareidolia can also evoke a happy face advantage that is dependent on perceived gender. "Face pareidolia" describes the illusion of facial structure on inanimate objects, such as a tree trunk or a piece of burnt toast. While it has been shown that these illusory faces have expressions that can be recognized by participants, it is unknown whether they drive the same behavioral biases as real facial expressions. Thus, we measured the speed and accuracy with which the expressions of illusory faces that are perceived as female or male are recognized as happy or angry. We found a robust happy face advantage for illusory faces that were rated as more feminine in appearance. Concomitantly, we also found a robust angry face advantage for illusory faces that were rated as more masculine in appearance. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that illusory faces confer the same behavioral advantages as human faces. They also suggest that both perceived emotion and perceived gender are powerful socioevaluative dimensions that are extracted from visual stimuli that merely resemble human faces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Objective: Cognitive theories emphasize the central role of anger and anger suppression in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). According to these theories, anger suppression is seen as a consequence of OCD, whereas cognitive beliefs, such as an inflated sense of responsibility, are seen as antecedent factors. To extend the findings from cross-sectional studies, the current study investigated the temporal associations between OCD symptoms, an inflated sense of responsibility, and anger suppression. Consistent with cognitive considerations, we hypothesized that OCD symptoms mediate the association between feelings of responsibility and anger suppression. These associations were also explored in patients presenting particularly high checking-related symptoms. Further, the stability of effects beyond controlling for depressive symptoms and medication intake was explored., Methods: A total of N = 48 patients with OCD (50% female, M = 32.46 [SD = 10.63] years of age) completed measures on obsessive beliefs, OCD symptoms, and anger suppression at three assessment points: before and after a metacognitive intervention as well as at a follow-up 6 months later. Mediation models investigating symptom associations at these three timepoints were conducted. Exploratory analyses investigating these associations in individuals presenting high checking-related symptoms (n = 20) and testing the stability of effects beyond controlling for depressive symptoms and medication intake were conducted., Results: The sense of responsibility did not significantly predict the level of anger suppression. A temporal association between OCD symptoms (as assessed with the self-report measure) and anger suppression could be evidenced, which was stable beyond controlling for depressive symptoms and medication intake. Against the expectations based on cognitive theories, the sense of responsibility did not predict OCD symptoms. No mediating effect of OCD symptoms was found., Conclusion: In line with cognitive viewpoints, the present study shows that higher OCD symptoms predict higher levels of anger suppression in a longitudinal design, thereby contributing to the suppression of anger. This effect seems to be independent from depressive symptoms and medication intake. The effect of sense of responsibility on OCD symptoms was less clear and could only be found in the subgroup of patients with OCD and checking-related symptoms, who generally presented higher levels of responsibility. Overall, this is the first study demonstrating temporal associations between OCD symptoms and anger suppression. Acknowledging that anger and anger suppression may be a consequence of OCD symptoms and may also affect aspects of psychotherapy, which can ultimately inform future adjustments to psychotherapeutic treatment., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Clinical Psychology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Anger outbursts (AO) are associated with severe symptoms, impairment and poorer treatment outcomes for anxious children, though limited research has examined AO in youth with co-occurring autism and anxiety disorders. This study examined AO in children with autism and anxiety by evaluating clinical characteristics, family accommodation, and changes in AO following anxiety-focused treatment. The sample comprised 167 youth with autism and anxiety enrolled in a multi-site randomized clinical trial comparing standard care CBT for anxiety, CBT adapted for youth with autism, and usual care. Most participants (60%) had AO, which contributed to impairment above and beyond anxiety and autism. AO impacted functional impairment indirectly through a pathway of parental accommodation. AO reduced with anxiety-focused treatment. Findings highlight that AO are common in this population and uniquely contribute to functional impairment, indicating a need for direct targeting in treatment., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Stressful social experiences play an important role in increasing vulnerability to substance use, including cocaine. Oxytocin (OXT), known for its anxiolytic properties and involvement in social functioning, has been suggested as a potential therapeutic for cocaine use disorder (CUD). However, limited research has explored OXT's influence on social stress in CUD, and no study has examined its effects on neural response to subconscious (implicit) social threat cues in this population. To address this gap, the present study administered intranasal OXT (24 IU) or placebo (PBO) to participants with CUD (CUD+, N = 76) or without CUD (CUD-, N = 61) in a randomized parallel design. Participants then completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task involving briefly presented facial fear and anger (i.e., threat) cues, followed by neutral face stimuli. Whole-brain activation and amygdala functional connectivity (using psychophysiological interaction modeling) were examined in response to the facial threat cues. OXT reduced activation in the thalamus and pontine reticular formation in response to fear cues, and in the supplementary motor area for both fear and anger cues, regardless of CUD status. Additionally, under PBO, amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex connectivity to fear stimuli was negative for the CUD+ group, but under OXT, this coupling was positive, similar to the positive coupling observed for the CUD- group under both PBO and OXT administration. The finding of OXT-mediated reversal of amygdala-prefrontal coupling was specific to CUD+ and suggests that OXT alters circuitry related to threat surveillance and implicit emotion regulation in CUD. However, additional research is needed to determine whether these alterations due to OXT have clinical significance in CUD., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Several studies show an association between obesity, impulsivity, and anger. The condition of obesity has moreover an important correlation with Eating Disorders (EDs), the most frequent of which is Binge Eating Disorder (BED). Obese patients seem to express peculiarities regarding the expression of some emotional processes, including impulsivity, aggression and anger, compared with regular-weight patients and those without an ED., Subject and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study carried out on a population of 47 obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery. Patients underwent a psychiatric evaluation at the outpatient clinics of the Section of Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Psychiatric Rehabilitation of the University Hospital of Perugia. Levels of anger and impulsivity were characterized using the STAXI-2 and BIS-11 scores. Scores were compared based on sex, the presence/absence of EDs and on the presence/absence of psychiatric disorders attested during the evaluation., Results: No statistically significative difference were detected on STAXI-2 and BIS-11 scores comparing men and women. People diagnosed with EDs had higher scores in the subscores of attention, cognitive complexity, motor impulsivity, non-planning impulsivity, and in the BIS-11 total score. No differences were detected in the STAXI-2 scores. When comparing patients on the presence/absence of psychiatric comorbidities, obese patients with a psychiatric diagnosis had higher scores on the impulsivity measures, but also a higher value on the ER index of the STAXI-2., Conclusions: Obese subjects undergoing bariatric surgery represent a fragile population that must be carefully evaluated from a psychiatric point of view. Indeed, the co-existence of psychiatric comorbidities may underpin the present of trait-like characteristics, such as impulsivity and anger, that should be carefully considered when proposing treatment strategies.

Objectives: Heart rate variability (HRV) reflects the capacity to adapt to internal and environmental changes. Decreased HRV may indicate inadequate adaptive capacity. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the heart and brain's adaptive abilities, both at rest and when negative emotions are stimulated in depression., Subjects and Methods: The study included 30 patients (20 female, 10 male) with major depression (mean age = 29.8 ± 7.8) and 30 healthy controls, all of whom had similar characteristics in terms of age and gender, selected through convenience sampling. The patients were drug-free at the time of the assessment. Holter recordings were obtained while subjects watched videos stimulating anger, fear, sadness, and a neutral video, and at rest, HRV parameters were calculated. To control for interindividual variability and account for paired sampling, linear mixed effects models were employed., Results: Watching the 'sadness video' led to an increase in low frequency band (LF) [LF change (Control vs depression); Difference:-620.80 df:107 t:-2.093 P:0.039] and LF/high frequency band ratio (LF/HF) [LF/HF change (control vs depression group); Difference:-1.718 df:105 t:-2.374 P:0.020] in the depression group. The video led to a decrease in LF and LF/HF in the controls. Although the differences between the conditions and interactions with the group were significant, the effects were independent of depression severity., Conclusion: In depression, brain's regulatory effect on the heart differed from controls in the sadness condition, possibly due to increased arousal levels in subjects with depression and their inability to suppress sympathetic activity when a state of sadness is stimulated., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare any financial support or relationship that may pose a conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Although veritable libraries have been written about anger, the practical and theoretical understanding of its effects has been somewhat hampered by the difficulty of experimentally manipulating this emotion. Thus, key questions related to methodological precision and theoretical clarity remain, specifically with regard to whether and how anger induction techniques may interact with various moderators and elicit other co-occurring emotions in the process. Addressing this gap, a meta-analysis of 31 experimental studies in persuasion offers insights regarding the effect of anger elicitation on felt anger and its sensitivity to a host of theoretically meaningful moderators, as well as the relationship between anger induction and the arousal of other incidental emotions. Findings broadly affirm the complexity of anger as a contested emotion and offer new insight into methodological considerations and theoretical nuances of anger elicitations to be taken into account in persuasion research. These results should be interpreted with the caveat of an exclusive focus on persuasion and a Western-centric corpus of studies, further accenting the need to diversify and expand research into emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Background and Objectives: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is not only associated with fear but also with other emotions. The present study aimed to examine if changes in shame, guilt, anger, and disgust predicted changes in PTSD symptoms during treatment, while also testing if PTSD symptoms, in turn, predicted changes in these emotions., Methods: Participants (N = 155) with childhood-related PTSD received a maximum of 12 sessions of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or imagery rescripting. The data was analyzed using Granger causality models across 12 treatment sessions and 6 assessment sessions (up until one year after the start of treatment). Differences between the two treatments were explored., Results: Across treatment sessions, shame, and disgust showed a reciprocal relationship with PTSD symptoms, while changes in guilt preceded PTSD symptoms. Across assessments, anger was reciprocally related to PTSD, suggesting that anger might play a more important role in the longer term., Limitations: The individual emotion items were not yet validated, and the CAPS was not administered at all assessments., Conclusions: These findings partly differ from earlier studies that suggested a unidirectional relationship in which changes in emotions preceded changes in PTSD symptoms during treatment. This is in line with the idea that non-fear emotions do play an important role in the treatment of PTSD and constitute an important focus of treatment and further research., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest Dr. Arntz publishes scientific articles and book chapters about ImRs, and occasionally gives workshops. The financial remuneration received go to the University to support research. There are no other conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The present 21-day daily diary study (conducted 2021-2022) tested anger and racism-related vigilance as potential transdiagnostic mediators linking exposure to racial and ethnic discrimination (RED) to distress (negative affect and stress, respectively). The data analytic sample included N = 317 Mexican-origin adolescents (M age  = 13.5 years; 50.8% male, 46.7% female; 2.5% non-binary) from the Midwestern United States. Results from longitudinal mediation models revealed significant mediation effects through anger and racism-related vigilance, respectively, in the association between daily RED and daily distress, both within and across adolescents. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed so that future work can leverage these novel findings toward promoting the well-being of Mexican-origin adolescents, especially those who live in contexts of ethnoracial adversity., (© 2024 The Authors. Child Development © 2024 Society for Research in Child Development.)

When asked to judge the duration of a face people typically overestimate the duration of angry compared with neutral faces. A novel feature of the current research was the inclusion of secondary manipulations designed to distort timing performance namely the effects of visual cues (Experiment 1) and action preparedness (Experiment 2). Furthermore, to establish whether the effects are multiplicative with duration, the effects were examined across two duration ranges (200-800 and 400-1,600 ms). Visual cues and instructions to prepare to act increased the tendency to judge faces as lasting longer. Experiment 1 revealed an unexpected underestimation effect for angry faces presented for short durations (200-800 ms). However, the effect was not replicated in Experiment 2 where the results were generally consistent with either an increase the speed of a pacemaker mechanism that resides within an internal clock or the widening of an attentional gate-the temporal overestimation effect for angry faces grew in magnitude from the short to long duration. Experiment 2 also showed that the temporal overestimation for angry faces was reduced in magnitude when participants were asked to prepare to either push or pull a joystick., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Affective stimuli in our environment indicate reward or threat and thereby relate to approach and avoidance behavior. Previous findings suggest that affective stimuli may bias visual perception, but it remains unclear whether similar biases exist in the auditory domain. Therefore, we asked whether affective auditory voices (angry vs. neutral) influence sound distance perception. Two VR experiments (data collection 2021-2022) were conducted in which auditory stimuli were presented via loudspeakers located at positions unknown to the participants. In the first experiment ( N = 44), participants actively placed a visually presented virtual agent or virtual loudspeaker in an empty room at the perceived sound source location. In the second experiment ( N = 32), participants were standing in front of several virtual agents or virtual loudspeakers and had to indicate the sound source by directing their gaze toward the perceived sound location. Results in both preregistered experiments consistently showed that participants estimated the location of angry voice stimuli at greater distances than the location of neutral voice stimuli. We discuss that neither emotional nor motivational biases can account for these results. Instead, distance estimates seem to rely on listeners' representations regarding the relationship between vocal affect and acoustic characteristics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Ultimatum Game is an effective tool for understanding how social decision-making is influenced by emotions in both research and clinical settings. Previous findings have shown that the Ultimatum Game can evoke negative emotions, especially anger and aggression. In a sample of non-clinical adults (N = 143) we evaluated the sensitivity of an anger-infused version of the Ultimatum Game to individual differences in anger and irritability. Findings showed significant relationships between anger and aggressive behaviors in the Ultimatum game, but no association between irritability and aggressive behavior were observed. This indicates that the anger-infused Ultimatum Game is a promising method for studying individual differences in trait anger and anger expression. However, the relationship between decision-making in the anger-infused Ultimatum Game and irritability is less straight forward and needs further investigation. Therefore, when studying the behavioral responses of irritability, it would be beneficial to capture other behaviors beyond aggressive responses., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Gröndal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Findings from a paucity of research suggest that need for cognition (NFC) is negatively correlated with trait aggression. The correlational nature of the data juxtaposed with the reliance on assessing trait aggression negates causal claims regarding this relationship. The objective of the current research to expand our understanding of the relationship between NFC and aggression in the following ways: (1) focus on state, rather than trait, aggressive behavior, (2) examine the role of provocation, and (3) test the mediating influence of state anger and revenge motives. Our study had US emerging adult participants randomly assigned to be provoked or not before completing measures of anger, revenge motives, and aggression. Results showed that only revenge motives mediated the relationship between NFC and aggression, which was found to be significant only for provoked participants. Results are discussed in theoretical and practical implications., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The perception of threatening facial expressions is a critical skill necessary for detecting the emotional states of others and responding appropriately. The anger superiority effect hypothesis suggests that individuals are better at processing and identifying angry faces compared with other nonthreatening facial expressions. In adults, the anger superiority effect is present even after controlling for the bottom-up visual saliency, and when ecologically valid stimuli are used. However, it is as yet unclear whether this effect is present in children. To fill this gap, we tested the anger superiority effect in children ages 6-14 years in a visual search task by using emotional dynamic stimuli and equating the visual salience of target and distractors. The results suggest that in childhood, the angry superiority effect consists of improved accuracy in detecting angry faces, while in adolescence, the ability to discriminate angry faces undergoes further development, enabling faster and more accurate threat detection., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Emotion is a fundamental aspect of human life and therefore is critically encoded in language. To facilitate research into the encoding of emotion in language and how emotion associations affect language processing, we present a new set of emotion norms for over 24,000 Dutch words. The emotion norms include ratings of two key dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal, as well as ratings on discrete emotion categories: happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise. We show that emotional information can predict word processing, such that responses to positive words are facilitated in contrast to neutral and negative words. We also demonstrate how the ratings of emotion are related to personality characteristics. The data are available via the Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/9htuv/ ) and serve as a valuable resource for research into emotion as well as in applied settings such as healthcare and digital communication., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

It has recently been theorized that the frontal asymmetry of approach- and avoidance-related motivation is mirrored in the posterolateral cerebellum. Accordingly, left-to-right dominant cerebellar activity is associated with avoidance-related motivation, whereas right-to-left dominant cerebellar activity is associated with approach-related motivation. The aim of this study was to examine the cerebellar asymmetry of motivational direction in approach-related behavior in the context of aggression. In this randomized double-blind sham-controlled crossover study, thirty healthy right-handed adult volunteers received 2 mA active or sham left cathodal-right anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the cerebellum on two separate occasions while engaging in the Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm (PSAP) task to measure aggressive behavior. Self-reported state anger was assessed before, halfway and immediately after the task, and heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV) were measured during the task. No main effects of tDCS on aggressive behavior, heart rate and HRV were found. Higher state anger before and during the PSAP task was associated with increased aggressive behavior in the active compared to sham tDCS condition. Aggressive behavior was positively correlated with heart rate during active tDCS, while an inverse association was observed during sham tDCS. Results provide support for the cerebellar asymmetry of motivational direction in approach-related behavior and illustrate the importance of affective state-dependency in tDCS-related effects., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Obesity remains a medical issue of great concern. Behavioural methods attempting to induce weight loss have largely failed because of a minimal understanding of stress- and depression-associated psychosocial correlates. This study extended research into the effects of exercise on weight loss through psychological pathways to improve treatments. Women with obesity (N = 108), participating in an original theory-driven cognitive-behavioural treatment within community-based health promotion centres, were evaluated over 24 months. Their mean scores on anxiety, depression, and anger at baseline were significantly higher than normative data from a general sample of United States women. Three serial mediation models were specified assessing mediation of the significant exercise→dietary change relationship. These yielded two significant paths: changes in exercise→anxiety→anxiety-associated emotional eating→self-efficacy→diet, and changes in exercise→depression→depression-associated emotional eating→self-efficacy→diet; and one non-significant path: changes in exercise→anger→anger-associated emotional eating→self-efficacy→diet. In a subsequent moderated moderation model, change in eating-related self-regulation moderated the relationship between changes in anxiety and anxiety-associated emotional eating, where exercise-associated self-regulation moderated effects from eating-related self-regulation. Dietary improvement was significantly related to weight loss over 6 (β = -0.40), 12 (β = -0.42), and 24 (β = -0.33) months. Findings indicated an increased treatment focus on the completion of moderate amounts of exercise for weight loss and, following that, attention to improvements in anxiety, depression, anxiety- and depression-associated emotional eating, self-efficacy for controlled eating, and the transfer of exercise-related self-regulation to eating-related self-regulation. Given the scope of the obesity problem, extensions of this research within field settings are warranted to accelerate application opportunities., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Fearful, angry, and disgusted facial expressions are evolutionarily salient and convey different types of threat signals. However, it remains unclear whether these three expressions impact sensory perception and attention in the same way. The present ERP study investigated the temporal dynamics underlying the processing of different types of threatening faces and the impact of attentional resources employed during a perceptual load task. Participants were asked to judge the length of bars superimposed over faces presented in the center of the screen. A mass univariate statistical approach was used to analyze the EEG data. Behaviorally, task accuracy was significantly reduced following exposure to fearful faces relative to neutral distractors, independent of perceptual load. The ERP results revealed that the P1 amplitude over the right hemisphere was found to be enhanced for fearful relative to disgusted faces, reflecting the rapid and coarse detection of fearful cues. The N170 responses elicited by fearful, angry, and disgusted faces were larger than those elicited by neutral faces, suggesting the largely automatic and preferential processing of threats. Furthermore, the early posterior negativity (EPN) component yielded increased responses to fearful and angry faces, indicating prioritized attention to stimuli representing acute threats. Additionally, perceptual load exerted a pronounced influence on the EPN and late positive potential (LPP), with larger responses observed in the low perceptual load condition, indicating goal-directed cognitive processing. Overall, the early sensory processing of fearful, angry, and disgusted faces is characterized by differential sensitivity in capturing attention automatically, despite the importance of these facial signals for survival. Fearful faces produce a strong interference effect and are processed with higher priority than angry and disgusted ones., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest All authors declared that they had no conflict of interest concerning their authorship or the publication of this article., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Background: Psychosocial function of Chinese temporomandibular disorders (TMD) pain patients and the correlation with somatosensory function has not been sufficiently studied., Objective: The study aims at assessing the psychosocial function of Chinese TMD pain patients by visualisation method and evaluating the correlations with somatosensory function quantitatively., Methods: The Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) questionnaire and standardised quantitative sensory testing (QST) were administered to 70 Chinese TMD pain patients and age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs). Of these, 40 TMD arthralgia patients received QST before and after medication. Psychosocial and somatosensory parameters were transformed into standardised scores. Differences within groups were assessed through t tests. Correlations between psychosocial and somatosensory profiles were explored through correlation analyses with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons., Results: 100% of the Chinese TMD pain patients exhibited psychosocial distress in contrast to HCs. Anger and hostility showed negative correlation with the thermal nonnociceptive parameter (thermal sensory limen, p =.002) and nociceptive parameters (cold pain threshold and pain pressure threshold, p<.001). Correlation analysis indicated that cold detection threshold was negatively correlated with somatization and mechanical pain sensitivity had a negative correlation with anger and hostility through medical treatment (p <.001)., Conclusions: Visual psychosocial profiles provided an easy overview of psychosocial function in Chinese TMD pain patients. Anger and hostility was associated with increased thermal nonnociceptive and nociceptive sensitivity to stimuli. Psychosocial distress might be negatively associated with TMD treatment response which indicated a possible need for psychological intervention during treatment., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

We were interested in how people in a romantic relationship would perceive the intelligence of their partners who have high or low trait anger. Specifically, we referred to the tension between compassion (low anger) and competence (high intelligence) in mate choice. Some evolutionary theories suggest that mating might be considered a bargaining process between these two higher-order attributes. Our study involved 148 heterosexual couples in romantic relationships. We measured the relationship between relationship satisfaction, trait anger, objective intelligence, self-assessed intelligence, and subjectively assessed partners' intelligence. We found that angrier men were less satisfied in their romantic relationship than those men who were less angry, and their partners were also less satisfied in the relationship. Additionally, women perceived angrier men as less intelligent, an effect that remained after controlling for men's objective intelligence. Lastly, we found that women's perception of their partner's intelligence mediated the link between men's anger and relationship satisfaction for both sexes. Our findings suggest that both anger and intelligence play important roles in romantic relationship functioning, consistent with evolutionary theories that emphasize the value of competence (i.e., intelligence) and compassion (i.e., low anger) in romantic partners. Furthermore, our study highlights the importance of women's perception of their partner's intelligence in determining the quality of the relationship., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Background: Self-regulation in early childhood develops within a social context. Variations in such development can be attributed to inter-individual behavioral differences, which can be captured both as facets of temperament and across a normal:abnormal dimensional spectrum. With increasing emphasis on irritability as a robust early-life transdiagnostic indicator of broad psychopathological risk, linkage to neural mechanisms is imperative. Currently, there is inconsistency in the identification of neural circuits that underlie irritability in children, especially in social contexts. This study aimed to address this gap by utilizing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm to investigate pediatric anger/frustration using social stimuli., Methods: Seventy-three children (M = 6 years, SD = 0.565) were recruited from a larger longitudinal study on irritability development. Caregivers completed questionnaires assessing irritable temperament and clinical symptoms of irritability. Children participated in a frustration task during fMRI scanning that was designed to induce frustration through loss of a desired prize to an animated character. Data were analyzed using both general linear modeling (GLM) and independent components analysis (ICA) and examined from the temperament and clinical perspectives., Results: ICA results uncovered an overarching network structure above and beyond what was revealed by traditional GLM analyses. Results showed that greater temperamental irritability was associated with significantly diminished spatial extent of activation and low-frequency power in a network comprised of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and the precuneus (p < .05, FDR-corrected). However, greater severity along the spectrum of clinical expression of irritability was associated with significantly increased extent and intensity of spatial activation as well as low- and high-frequency neural signal power in the right caudate (p < .05, FDR-corrected)., Conclusions: Our findings point to specific neural circuitry underlying pediatric irritability in the context of frustration using social stimuli. Results suggest that a deliberate focus on the construction of network-based neurodevelopmental profiles and social interaction along the normal:abnormal irritability spectrum is warranted to further identify comprehensive transdiagnostic substrates of the irritability., (© 2023 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.)

Aggressive behaviors have been related to approach/avoidance tendencies. In our current study, we investigated whether approach/avoidance tendencies for angry versus fearful emotional expressions were differentially predictive of children's reactive and proactive aggression. A total of 116 children (58 girls, M age  = 10.90, standard deviation SD age  = 0.98) completed an approach/avoidance task (AAT) and a stimulus-response compatibility task (SRCT), both measuring the extent to which they tended to approach or avoid angry and fearful facial expressions relative to neutral facial expressions. Children also completed a self-report scale of reactive and proactive aggression. Although none of the approach/avoidance tendency scores correlated significantly with either of the aggression scores, stronger approach tendencies for angry faces and stronger avoidance tendencies for fearful faces in the AAT predicted more reactive aggression. Similar yet nonsignificant results were found for proactive aggression, but no effects were replicated in the SRCT. Our results thus invite the conclusion that reactive aggression is characterized by a tendency to approach angry faces and a tendency to avoid fearful faces. However, the poor discrimination between both types of aggression as well as the lack of convergence between the results of our two measures of approach/avoidance tendencies indicates that further research is needed to establish the role of approach/avoidance tendencies for emotional faces as markers for childhood aggression., (© 2024 The Author(s). Aggressive Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Emotional expressions are an evolutionarily conserved means of social communication essential for social interactions. It is important to understand how anxious individuals perceive their social environments, including emotional expressions, especially with the rising prevalence of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxiety is often associated with an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli, such as angry faces. Yet the mechanisms by which anxiety enhances or impairs two key components of spatial attention-attentional capture and attentional disengagement-to emotional expressions are still unclear. Moreover, positive valence is often ignored in studies of threat-related attention and anxiety, despite the high occurrence of happy faces during everyday social interaction. Here, we investigated the relationship between anxiety, emotional valence, and spatial attention in 574 participants across two preregistered studies (data collected in 2021 and 2022; Experiment 1: n = 154, 54.5% male, M age = 43.5 years; Experiment 2: n = 420, 58% male, M age = 36.46 years). We found that happy faces capture attention more quickly than angry faces during the visual search experiment and found delayed disengagement from both angry and happy faces over neutral faces during the spatial cueing experiment. We also show that anxiety has a distinct impact on both attentional capture and disengagement of emotional faces. Together, our findings highlight the role of positively valenced stimuli in attracting and holding attention and suggest that anxiety is a critical factor in modulating spatial attention to emotional stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Neurocognitive models of pediatric irritability suggest a prominent role of anger; however, few studies have investigated anger-related biases and their neural correlates. Resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the amygdala was examined in relation to anger attribution bias (AAB) in a sample of young children (5-9 years old; N = 60; 55% White, 26.7% Hispanic) with clinically significant irritability characterized by impairing emotional outbursts (IEOs). Children completed a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan as well as the assessment of children's emotional skills (ACES), which yields three measures of AAB in the context of social situations, social behaviors, and facial expressions. ACES scores were entered into a general linear model to examine associations with rsFC of the bilateral amygdalae. Children with IEOs exhibited significant biases in attributing anger to others across all three ACES domains. Greater biases toward attributing anger in social situations were associated with reduced rsFC of the bilateral amygdalae with the fusiform/lingual gyri and lateral occipital cortex. Alternatively, greater biases toward attributing anger to facial expressions positively predicted right amygdala-precuneus rsFC. Greater bias toward attributing anger to others based on their behaviors was associated with heightened rsFC of the right amygdala with the left middle frontal gyrus. Findings extend previous work implicating functional connections among regions of default mode and frontoparietal networks in pediatric irritability. Longitudinal studies are needed to further investigate the putative role of AAB in the etiology and long-term outcomes of pediatric irritability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Aggression refers to a wide range of behaviors with lasting individual and societal consequences. Recurrent, unplanned aggressive behavior is the core diagnostic criterion for intermittent explosive disorder (IED). In this study, we compared two behavioral measures of aggression in the laboratory: the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) and the Point-Subtraction Aggression Paradigm (PSAP). This sample (n = 528) included community participants who met DSM-5 criteria for IED (n = 156), met DSM-5 criteria for a nonaggressive psychiatric disorder (n = 205), or did not meet DSM-5 criteria for any psychiatric disorder (n = 167). All participants completed the TAP, a single-session PSAP, and relevant self-report measures. MANOVA analyses demonstrated differences between IED participants and nonaggressive participants; however, these group differences were no longer significant for the PSAP after including demographic variables. Correlation analyses found that the TAP and PSAP were positively related to one another and the composite variables associated with aggressive behavior (i.e., history of aggression, impulsivity, and propensity to experience anger) and; dependent correlations revealed that past aggression and trait anger were more strongly related to the TAP. Differences in TAP and PSAP outcomes may be partially attributed to operationalizations of aggression and methods of aggression and provocation. Further, as aggressive and nonaggressive participants differed on the PSAP somewhat mirroring the TAP, our results add to growing evidence of the validity of a single-session PSAP; further research is needed to fully establish single-session PSAP as a laboratory aggression task compared to the multi-session PSAP., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

In visual environments, selective attention must be employed to focus on task-relevant stimuli. A key question here concerns the extent to which other stimuli within the visual field influence target processing. In this study, we ask whether face identity matching is subject to similar effects from irrelevant stimuli in the visual field, specifically task-irrelevant people. Although most previous studies rely on highly controlled face and body stimuli presented in isolation, here we use a more realistic environment. Participants take the role of passport officers and must match a person's face to their photo-ID, while other people appear in the background, waiting to be processed. Presenting an interactive virtual environment on screen (Experiments 1 and 2) or in immersive VR (Experiment 3), we generally found no evidence for distraction from background people on face-matching accuracy. However, when immersed in VR, an angry crowd in the background delayed matching speed while not affecting accuracy. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results and their potential importance in practical settings., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Pain is rarely communicated alone, as it is often accompanied by emotions such as anger or sadness. Communicating these affective states involves shared representations. However, how an individual conceptually represents these combined states must first be tested. The objective of this study was to measure the interaction between pain and negative emotions on two types of facial representations of these states, namely visual (i.e., interactive virtual agents; VAs) and sensorimotor (i.e., one's production of facial configurations). Twenty-eight participants (15 women) read short written scenarios involving only pain or a combined experience of pain and a negative emotion (anger, disgust, fear, or sadness). They produced facial configurations representing these experiences on the faces of the VAs and on their face (own production or imitation of VAs). The results suggest that affective states related to a direct threat to the body (i.e., anger, disgust, and pain) share a similar facial representation, while those that present no immediate danger (i.e., fear and sadness) differ. Although visual and sensorimotor representations of these states provide congruent affective information, they are differently influenced by factors associated with the communication cycle. These findings contribute to our understanding of pain communication in different affective contexts., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This study delves into expressing primary emotions anger, happiness, sadness, and fear through drawings. Moving beyond the well-researched color-emotion link, it explores under-examined aspects like spatial concepts and drawing styles. Employing Python and OpenCV for objective analysis, we make a breakthrough by converting subjective perceptions into measurable data through 728 digital images from 182 university students. For the prominent color chosen for each emotion, the majority of participants chose red for anger (73.11%), yellow for happiness (17.8%), blue for sadness (51.1%), and black for fear (40.7%). Happiness led with the highest saturation (68.52%) and brightness (75.44%) percentages, while fear recorded the lowest in both categories (47.33% saturation, 48.78% brightness). Fear, however, topped in color fill percentage (35.49%), with happiness at the lowest (25.14%). Tangible imagery prevailed (71.43-83.52%), with abstract styles peaking in fear representations (28.57%). Facial expressions were a common element (41.76-49.45%). The study achieved an 81.3% predictive accuracy for anger, higher than the 71.3% overall average. Future research can build on these results by improving technological methods to quantify more aspects of drawing content. Investigating a more comprehensive array of emotions and examining factors influencing emotional drawing styles will further our understanding of visual-emotional communication., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric disorder that is frequently encountered in the clinic and affects the functionality of patients significantly. Patients with higher levels of aggression have lower treatment compliance and recovery rates for their current mental illnesses. In our study, the relationships between OCD and its subtypes and aggression were examined. A total of 87 patients with OCD were included in the study. Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) were applied to the patients. In this study, the relationship between Obsession subtypes and aggression total and subtypes was evaluated. Hostility (p=0.004), anger (p=0.034), verbal aggression (p=0.002) and total aggression scores (p=0.017) were significantly higher in patients with aggression obsessions. Hostility (p=0.021) and aggression total scores (p=0.043) were significantly higher in patients with contamination obsession. Anger total scores of patients with hoarding obsessions (p=0.025) and symmetry obsessions (p=0.023) were found to be significantly higher. Anger levels of patients with counting compulsions (p= 0.038) were significantly higher. Anger levels (p= 0.047) and verbal aggression levels (p= 0.018) were significantly higher in patients with hoarding compulsion. A positive and significant correlation was found between the levels of total obsession score and total aggression scores (p=0.038 r= 0.222). However there was no significant correlation between the total compulsion score and the total aggression score.

This study examined the mediating role of anger rumination in the relationship between anger and reactive aggression and the potential of adaptive anger rumination in reducing reactive aggression. Study 1, a two-wave longitudinal survey of 177 Chinese adolescents, showed that anger rumination mediated the relationship between anger and reactive aggression. Study 2, an experimental study with 160 university students, showed that the self-distanced group had lower aggression than the self-immersed group, and anger rumination mediated the impact of anger on reactive aggression in only the self-immersed group. These findings clarify the role of anger rumination concerning the relationship between anger and reactive-aggression and highlight the importance of self-distanced anger rumination in preventing reactive aggression among adolescents and young adults., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Purpose: To investigate how commonly adolescent psychiatric outpatients with symptoms of depression and anxiety report having been subjected to sexual harassment, and to explore how symptoms and functional abilities differ between adolescent psychiatric outpatients with symptoms of depression and anxiety who do report and those who do not report having been subjected to sexual harassment., Methods: Swedish adolescent psychiatric outpatients with symptoms of depression or anxiety ( n  = 324; 66 boys and 258 girls, aged 12-19 years, M  = 15.6, SD = 1.7) answered the PROMIS paediatric measures. Logistic regression analyses were performed to assess differences between the respondents classified as 'Sexually harassed' and 'Not sexually harassed' based on these self-report questionnaires., Results: About 60% of the adolescents reported having been subjected to sexual harassment, and reported higher levels of suicidal ideation, disturbed sleep, fatigue, anxiety, depression, anger, and pain interference, as well as lower functional ability in terms of school problems, alcohol consumption, and poor family relationships. Logistic regression analyses showed that the strongest associations were with suicidal ideation, disturbed sleep, anger, and alcohol consumption., Conclusions: About 60% of the adolescents in the studied psychiatric cohort reported having been subjected to sexual harassment. Reported experiences were high in all three subtypes, with the most reports on having been subjected to verbal harassment. Clinicians should ask about experiences of sexual harassment and give information about the consequences of sexual violence and treatment options. Alcohol consumption should be addressed and tested for. Structured assessment of suicidality should always be done.

Facial color influences the perception of facial expressions, and emotional expressions bias how facial color is remembered. However, it remains unclear whether facial expressions affect daily facial color memory. The memory color effect demonstrates that knowledge about typical colors affects the perception of the actual color of given objects. To investigate the effect of facial color memory, we examined whether the memory color effect for faces varies depending on facial expression. We calculated the subjective achromatic point of the facial expression image stimulus and compared the degree to which it was shifted from the actual achromatic point between facial expression conditions. We hypothesized that if the memory of facial color is influenced by the facial expression color (e.g., anger is a warm color, fear is a cold color), then the subjective achromatic point would vary with facial expression. In Experiment 1, we recruited 13 participants who adjusted the color of facial expression stimuli (anger, neutral, and fear) and a banana stimulus to be achromatic. No significant differences in the subjective achromatic point between facial expressions were observed. Subsequently, we conducted Experiment 2 with 23 participants because Experiment 1 did not account for the sensitivity to color changes on the face; humans perceive greater color differences in faces than in non-faces. Participants selected which facial color they believed the expression stimulus appeared to be, choosing one of two options provided to them. The results indicated that the subjective achromatic points of anger and fear faces significantly shifted toward the opposite color direction compared with neutral faces in the brief presentation condition. This research suggests that the memory color of faces differs depending on facial expressions and supports the idea that the perception of emotional expressions can bias facial color memory.

Autistic people exhibit atypical use of prior information when processing simple perceptual stimuli; yet, it remains unclear whether and how these difficulties in using priors extend to complex social stimuli. Here, we compared autistic people without accompanying intellectual disability and nonautistic people in their ability to acquire an "emotional prior" of a facial expression and update this prior to a different facial expression of the same identity. Participants performed a two-interval same/different discrimination task between two facial expressions. To study the acquisition of the prior, we examined how discrimination was modified by the contraction of the perceived facial expressions toward the average of presented stimuli (i.e., regression to the mean). At first, facial expressions surrounded one average emotional prior (mostly sad or angry), and then the average switched (to mostly angry or sad, accordingly). Autistic people exhibited challenges in facial discrimination, and yet acquired the first prior, demonstrating typical regression-to-the-mean effects. However, unlike nonautistic people, autistic people did not update their perception to the second prior, suggesting they are less flexible in updating an acquired prior of emotional expressions. Our findings shed light on the perception of emotional expressions, one of the most pressing challenges in autism., (© 2024 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Major functions of the olfactory system include guiding ingestion and avoidance of environmental hazards. People with anosmia report reliance on others, for example to check the edibility of food, as their primary coping strategy. Facial expressions are a major source of non-verbal social information that can be used to guide approach and avoidance behaviour. Thus, it is of interest to explore whether a life-long absence of the sense of smell heightens sensitivity to others' facial emotions, particularly those depicting threat. In the present, online study 28 people with congenital anosmia (mean age 43.46) and 24 people reporting no olfactory dysfunction (mean age 42.75) completed a facial emotion recognition task whereby emotionally neutral faces (6 different identities) morphed, over 40 stages, to express one of 5 basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, or sadness. Results showed that, while the groups did not differ in their ability to identify the final, full-strength emotional expressions, nor in the accuracy of their first response, the congenital anosmia group successfully identified the emotions at significantly lower intensity (i.e. an earlier stage of the morph) than the control group. Exploratory analysis showed this main effect was primarily driven by an advantage in detecting anger and disgust. These findings indicate the absence of a functioning sense of smell during development leads to compensatory changes in visual, social cognition. Future work should explore the neural and behavioural basis for this advantage., Competing Interests: Declarations of competing interest None, (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Attention to emotional signals conveyed by others is critical for gleaning information about potential social partners and the larger social context. Children appear to detect social threats (e.g., angry faces) faster than non-threatening social signals (e.g., neutral faces). However, methods that rely on behavioral responses alone are limited in identifying different attentional processes involved in threat detection or responding. To address this question, we used a visual search paradigm to assess behavioral (i.e., reaction time to select a target image) and attentional (i.e., eye-tracking fixations, saccadic shifts, and dwell time) responses in children (ages 7-10 years old, N = 42) and adults (ages 18-23 years old, N = 46). In doing so, we compared behavioral responding and attentional detection and engagement with threatening (i.e., angry and fearful faces) and non-threatening (i.e., happy faces) social signals. Overall, children and adults were faster to detect social threats (i.e., angry faces), but spent a smaller proportion of time dwelling on them and had slower behavioral responses. Findings underscore the importance of combining different measures to parse differences between processing versus responding to social signals across development. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children and adults are slower to select angry faces when measured by time to mouse-click but faster to detect angry faces when measured by time to first eye fixation. The use of eye-tracking addresses some limitations of prior visual search tasks with children that rely on behavioral responses alone. Results suggest shorter time to first fixation, but subsequently, shorter duration of dwell on social threat in children and adults., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Self-identification as a victim of violence may lead to increased negative emotions and stress and thus, may change both structure and function of the underlying neural network(s). In a trans-diagnostic sample of individuals who identified themselves as victims of violence and a matched control group with no prior exposure to violence, we employed a social exclusion paradigm, the Cyberball task, to stimulate the re-experience of stress. Participants were partially excluded in the ball-tossing game without prior knowledge. We analyzed group differences in brain activity and functional connectivity during exclusion versus inclusion in exclusion-related regions. The victim group showed increased anger and stress levels during all conditions. Activation patterns during the task did not differ between groups but an enhanced functional connectivity between the IFG and the right vmPFC distinguished victims from controls during exclusion. This effect was driven by aberrant connectivity in victims during inclusion rather than exclusion, indicating that victimization affects emotional responses and inclusion-related brain connectivity rather than exclusion-related brain activity or connectivity. Victims may respond differently to the social context itself. Enhanced negative emotions and connectivity deviations during social inclusion may depict altered social processing and may thus affect social interactions., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The perception of facial expression plays a crucial role in social communication, and it is known to be influenced by various facial cues. Previous studies have reported both positive and negative biases toward overweight individuals. It is unclear whether facial cues, such as facial weight, bias facial expression perception. Combining psychophysics and event-related potential technology, the current study adopted a cross-adaptation paradigm to examine this issue. The psychophysical results of Experiments 1A and 1B revealed a bidirectional cross-adaptation effect between overweight and angry faces. Adapting to overweight faces decreased the likelihood of perceiving ambiguous emotional expressions as angry compared to adapting to normal-weight faces. Likewise, exposure to angry faces subsequently caused normal-weight faces to appear thinner. These findings were corroborated by bidirectional event-related potential results, showing that adaptation to overweight faces relative to normal-weight faces modulated the event-related potential responses of emotionally ambiguous facial expression (Experiment 2A); vice versa, adaptation to angry faces relative to neutral faces modulated the event-related potential responses of ambiguous faces in facial weight (Experiment 2B). Our study provides direct evidence associating overweight faces with facial expression, suggesting at least partly common neural substrates for the perception of overweight and angry faces., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permission@oup.com.)