Deep learning reveals what facial expressions mean to people in different cultures.

Cross-cultural studies of the meaning of facial expressions have largely focused on judgments of small sets of stereotypical images by small numbers of people. Here, we used large-scale data collection and machine learning to map what facial expressions convey in six countries. Using a mimicry paradigm, 5,833 participants formed facial expressions found in 4,659 naturalistic images, resulting in 423,193 participant-generated facial expressions. In their own language, participants also rated each expression in terms of 48 emotions and mental states. A deep neural network tasked with predicting the culture-specific meanings people attributed to facial movements while ignoring physical appearance and context discovered 28 distinct dimensions of facial expression, with 21 dimensions showing strong evidence of universality and the remainder showing varying degrees of cultural specificity. These results capture the underlying dimensions of the meanings of facial expressions within and across cultures in unprecedented detail.

Dispositional compassion shifts social preferences in systematic ways.

INTRODUCTION: How people attach value to the outcomes of self and other-social preferences-is central to social behavior. Recently, how dispositional and state emotion shape such social preferences has received researchers' attention. METHOD: The present investigation asked whether and to what extent dispositional and state compassion predict shifts in social preferences across 4 samples: two correlational samples (final ns 153 & 368, study 1a and 1b) and two experimental samples (final ns: 430 & 530, studies 2 and 3). RESULTS: In keeping with recent accounts of compassion, dispositional compassion predicted general preference for equality, expressed as dispreference for both monetary advantage over another (interaction ßs = -0.36, -0.33, -0.25, -0.22; all p < 0.001) and monetary disadvantage relative to others (ßs: 0.26, 0.27, 0.28, 0.17; all p < 0.01; positive coefficients imply dispreference). This dispositional effect persisted when controlling for prosociality, positivity, agreeableness, and respectfulness. Furthermore, these dispositional compassion effects were relatively unchanged by experimental emotion inductions in studies 3 and 4. The experimental inductions of state compassion and state pride showed little evidence of systematic effects on social preferences relative to each other or a neutral condition. DISCUSSION: Discussion focused on individual differences in emotion and social preferences.

Kin relationality and ecological belonging: a cultural psychology of Indigenous transcendence.

In this article, we consider prosociality through the lens of an Indigenous "ethics of belonging" and its two constitutive concepts: kin relationality and ecological belonging. Kin relationality predicates that all living beings and phenomena share a familial identity of interdependence, mutuality, and organization. Within the value system of ecological belonging, an individual's identity is constituted in relation to the natural environment, centered on the sentiments of responsibility and reverence for Nature. We detail how Indigenous perspectives upon prosociality differ from Western scientific accounts in terms of the motives, scope, and rewards of altruistic action. Grounded in this understanding, we then profile three self-transcendent states, compassion, gratitude, and awe, and their similarities across Indigenous and Western approaches, and how kin relationality and ecological belonging give rise to cultural variations. We consider convergent insights across Indigenous and Western science concerning the role of ritual and narrative and the cultural cultivation of kin relationality and ecological belonging. We conclude by highlighting how these two core concepts might guide future inquiry in cultural psychology.

Higher emotional granularity relates to greater inferior frontal cortex cortical thickness in healthy, older adults.

Individuals with high emotional granularity make fine-grained distinctions between their emotional experiences. To have greater emotional granularity, one must acquire rich conceptual knowledge of emotions and use this knowledge in a controlled and nuanced way. In the brain, the neural correlates of emotional granularity are not well understood. While the anterior temporal lobes, angular gyri, and connected systems represent conceptual knowledge of emotions, inhibitory networks with hubs in the inferior frontal cortex (i.e., posterior inferior frontal gyrus, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior insula) guide the selection of this knowledge during emotions. We investigated the structural neuroanatomical correlates of emotional granularity in 58 healthy, older adults (ages 62-84 years), who have had a lifetime to accrue and deploy their conceptual knowledge of emotions. Participants reported on their daily experience of 13 emotions for 8 weeks and underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. We computed intraclass correlation coefficients across daily emotional experience surveys (45 surveys on average per participant) to quantify each participant's overall emotional granularity. Surface-based morphometry analyses revealed higher overall emotional granularity related to greater cortical thickness in inferior frontal cortex (pFWE < 0.05) in bilateral clusters in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and extending into the left dorsal anterior insula. Overall emotional granularity was not associated with cortical thickness in the anterior temporal lobes or angular gyri. These findings suggest individual differences in emotional granularity relate to variability in the structural neuroanatomy of the inferior frontal cortex, an area that supports the controlled selection of conceptual knowledge during emotional experiences.

The influences of daily experiences of awe on stress, somatic health, and well-being: a longitudinal study during COVID-19.

In the present work, we used daily diary methodology to investigate the influence of awe on stress, somatic health (e.g., pain symptoms), and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. We recruited a sample of community adults (N = 269) and a sample of healthcare professionals (N = 145) in the United States. Across both samples, we found that awe and well-being increased, and stress and somatic health symptoms decreased over the 22-day diary period. In daily level analyses, we found that the more daily awe people experienced, the less stress, less somatic health symptoms, and greater well-being they felt. Daily experiences of awe can benefit individuals during times of acute and chronic stress-such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nature and neurobiology of fear and anxiety: State of the science and opportunities for accelerating discovery.

Fear and anxiety play a central role in mammalian life, and there is considerable interest in clarifying their nature, identifying their biological underpinnings, and determining their consequences for health and disease. Here we provide a roundtable discussion on the nature and biological bases of fear- and anxiety-related states, traits, and disorders. The discussants include scientists familiar with a wide variety of populations and a broad spectrum of techniques. The goal of the roundtable was to take stock of the state of the science and provide a roadmap to the next generation of fear and anxiety research. Much of the discussion centered on the key challenges facing the field, the most fruitful avenues for future research, and emerging opportunities for accelerating discovery, with implications for scientists, funders, and other stakeholders. Understanding fear and anxiety is a matter of practical importance. Anxiety disorders are a leading burden on public health and existing treatments are far from curative, underscoring the urgency of developing a deeper understanding of the factors governing threat-related emotions.

Emotional Well-Being: What It Is and Why It Matters.

Psychological aspects of well-being are increasingly recognized and studied as fundamental components of healthy human functioning. However, this body of work is fragmented, with many different conceptualizations and terms being used (e.g., subjective well-being, psychological well-being). We describe the development of a provisional conceptualization of this form of well-being, here termed emotional well-being (EWB), leveraging prior conceptual and theoretical approaches. Our developmental process included review of related concepts and definitions from multiple disciplines, engagement with subject matter experts, consideration of essential properties across definitions, and concept mapping. Our conceptualization provides insight into key strengths and gaps in existing perspectives on this form of well-being, setting a foundation for evaluating assessment approaches, enhancing our understanding of the causes and consequences of EWB, and, ultimately, developing effective intervention strategies that promote EWB. We argue that this foundation is essential for developing a more cohesive and informative body of work on EWB. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00163-0.

A Perfect Storm to Set the Stage for Ontological Exploration: Response to Commentaries on "Emotional Well-Being: What It Is and Why It Matters".

Our target article (Park et al., this issue) described the process of developing a provisional conceptualization of emotional well-being (EWB). In that article, we considered strengths and gaps in current perspectives on a variety of related concepts and ways that the proposed conceptualization of EWB informs our evaluation of measures and methods of assessment and identification of its causes and consequences. We concluded with recommendations for moving the framework and the field forward. Eight rich, thoughtful, and highly engaged commentaries addressed the target article. Collectively, these commentaries illustrate both points of consensus and areas of substantial disagreement, providing a potential roadmap for continued work. In this response, we summarize key issues raised and highlight those points raised by multiple commentators or that we considered seminal to advancing future discussion and research.

The Gap Between Us: Income Inequality Reduces Social Affiliation in Dyadic Interactions.

In this investigation, we tested the hypothesis that increased income inequality between individuals will reduce social affiliation within dyadic interactions. In three experiments, we examined the effects of income inequality on key indices of affiliation using semi-structured interactions. In the first two experiments, a participant and confederate were randomly assigned to a low- or high-power role and compensated mildly or extremely unequally. In Experiment 3, inequality and inequity were orthogonally manipulated to determine whether inequality's social consequences are moderated by the fairness of the income distribution. We demonstrated that greater inequality produced more negative emotional responses, reduced desire for closeness, and harsher evaluations of one's partner, regardless of one's power role and the equitability of the income distribution. We also obtained evidence that greater inequality reduces behavioral warmth, although this effect was less consistent. Our results begin to unpack the psychological processes through which income inequality worsens societal well-being.

Awe Sparks Prosociality in Children.

Rooted in the novel and the mysterious, awe is a common experience in childhood, but research is almost silent with respect to the import of this emotion for children. Awe makes individuals feel small, thereby shifting their attention to the social world. Here, we studied the effects of art-elicited awe on children's prosocial behavior toward an out-group and its unique physiological correlates. In two preregistered studies (Study 1: N = 159, Study 2: N = 353), children between 8 and 13 years old viewed movie clips that elicited awe, joy, or a neutral (control) response. Children who watched the awe-eliciting clip were more likely to spend their time on an effortful task (Study 1) and to donate their experimental earnings (Studies 1 and 2), all toward benefiting refugees. They also exhibited increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, an index of parasympathetic nervous system activation associated with social engagement. We discuss implications for fostering prosociality by reimagining children's environments to inspire awe at a critical age.

Deep learning reveals what vocal bursts express in different cultures.

Human social life is rich with sighs, chuckles, shrieks and other emotional vocalizations, called 'vocal bursts'. Nevertheless, the meaning of vocal bursts across cultures is only beginning to be understood. Here, we combined large-scale experimental data collection with deep learning to reveal the shared and culture-specific meanings of vocal bursts. A total of n = 4,031 participants in China, India, South Africa, the USA and Venezuela mimicked vocal bursts drawn from 2,756 seed recordings. Participants also judged the emotional meaning of each vocal burst. A deep neural network tasked with predicting the culture-specific meanings people attributed to vocal bursts while disregarding context and speaker identity discovered 24 acoustic dimensions, or kinds, of vocal expression with distinct emotion-related meanings. The meanings attributed to these complex vocal modulations were 79% preserved across the five countries and three languages. These results reveal the underlying dimensions of human emotional vocalization in remarkable detail.

Meta-analytic evidence that attachment insecurity is associated with less frequent experiences of discrete positive emotions.

OBJECTIVE: Individual differences in attachment insecurity can have important implications for experiences of positive emotions. However, existing research on the link between attachment insecurity and positive emotional experiences has typically used a composite measure of positive emotions, overlooking the potential importance of differentiating discrete emotions. METHOD: We conducted a meta-analysis of 10 cross-sectional samples (N = 3215), examining how attachment insecurity is associated with self-reported frequency of experiencing positive emotions, with a distinction made between more social (i.e., love and gratitude) and less social (i.e., peace and awe or curiosity) positive emotions. RESULTS: High (vs. low) levels of both attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with less frequent experience of positive emotions regardless of their social relevance. When analyzing each emotion separately, we found that attachment anxiety showed negative relations to all emotions except gratitude. Attachment avoidance was negatively associated with all emotions, and the link was even stronger with love (vs. peace, awe, or curiosity). Additional analyses of daily diary data revealed that attachment anxiety and avoidance were also negatively associated with daily experiences of positive emotions, regardless of social relevance. CONCLUSION: Our results underscore the need to further investigate the mechanisms underlying insecure individuals' blunted positive emotional experiences.

Intersectional implicit bias: Evidence for asymmetrically compounding bias and the predominance of target gender.

Little is known about implicit evaluations of complex, multiply categorizable social targets. Across five studies (N = 5,204), we investigated implicit evaluations of targets varying in race, gender, social class, and age. Overall, the largest and most consistent evaluative bias was pro-women/anti-men bias, followed by smaller but nonetheless consistent pro-upper-class/anti-lower-class biases. By contrast, we observed less consistent effects of targets' race, no effects of targets' age, and no consistent interactions between target-level categories. An integrative data analysis highlighted a number of moderating factors, but a stable pro-women/anti-men and pro-upper-class/anti-lower-class bias across demographic groups. Overall, these results suggest that implicit biases compound across multiple categories asymmetrically, with a dominant category (here, gender) largely driving evaluations, and ancillary categories (here, social class and race) exerting relatively smaller additional effects. We discuss potential implications of this work for understanding how implicit biases operate in real-world social settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Awe as a Pathway to Mental and Physical Health.

How do experiences in nature or in spiritual contemplation or in being moved by music or with psychedelics promote mental and physical health? Our proposal in this article is awe. To make this argument, we first review recent advances in the scientific study of awe, an emotion often considered ineffable and beyond measurement. Awe engages five processes-shifts in neurophysiology, a diminished focus on the self, increased prosocial relationality, greater social integration, and a heightened sense of meaning-that benefit well-being. We then apply this model to illuminate how experiences of awe that arise in nature, spirituality, music, collective movement, and psychedelics strengthen the mind and body.

How emotions, relationships, and culture constitute each other: advances in social functionalist theory.

Social Functionalist Theory (SFT) emerged 20 years ago to orient emotion science to the social nature of emotion. Here we expand upon SFT and make the case for how emotions, relationships, and culture constitute one another. First, we posit that emotions enable the individual to meet six "relational needs" within social interactions: security, commitment, status, trust, fairness, and belongingness. Building upon this new theorising, we detail four principles concerning emotional experience, cognition, expression, and the cultural archiving of emotion. We conclude by considering the bidirectional influences between culture, relationships, and emotion, outlining areas of future inquiry.

Intersectionality in emotion signaling and recognition: The influence of gender, ethnicity, and social class.

Emotional expressions are a language of social interaction. Guided by recent advances in the study of expression and intersectionality, the present investigation examined how gender, ethnicity, and social class influence the signaling and recognition of 34 states in dynamic full-body expressive behavior. One hundred fifty-five Asian, Latinx, and European Americans expressed 34 emotional states with their full bodies. We then gathered 22,174 individual ratings of these expressions. In keeping with recent studies, people can recognize up to 29 full-body multimodal expressions of emotion. Neither gender nor ethnicity influenced the signaling or recognition of emotion, contrary to hypothesis. Social class, however, did have an influence: in keeping with past studies, lower class individuals proved to be more reliable signalers of emotion, and more reliable judges of full body expressions of emotion. Discussion focused on intersectionality and emotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Theories of power: Perceived strategies for gaining and maintaining power.

What does it take to gain and maintain power? Aristotle believed that power was afforded to individuals that acted in virtuous ways that promote the greater good. Machiavelli, nearly 2,000 years later, argued to great effect that power could be taken through the use of manipulation, coercion, and strategic violence. With these historical perspectives as a conceptual foundation, we validate a 2-factor measure of theories of power (TOPS; Study 1), which captures lay theories of how power is gained and maintained among family members, at work, and in international politics (Study 2). We differentiate TOPS from other established measures of power, highlighting that these beliefs about power are conceptually distinct from widely used measures of dominance and prestige, and uniquely predict social outcomes. Turning to social class, we find that participants who make upward social comparisons perceive themselves to be of lower class and endorse less collaborative and more coercive theories of power, relative to those who make downward comparisons and report themselves to be higher in the class hierarchy (Studies 3a and 3b). Building upon these findings, we identify theory of power endorsement as a correlate of interpersonal trust, and a mediator of how lower class individuals, who endorse less collaborative views of power, report less trust of institutions and individuals (Study 4). Theories of power provide a novel construct for understanding power dynamics at multiple levels of analysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults.

Aging into later life is often accompanied by social disconnection, anxiety, and sadness. Negative emotions are self-focused states with detrimental effects on aging and longevity. Awe-a positive emotion elicited when in the presence of vast things not immediately understood-reduces self-focus, promotes social connection, and fosters prosocial actions by encouraging a "small self." We investigated the emotional benefits of a novel "awe walk" intervention in healthy older adults. Sixty participants took weekly 15-min outdoor walks for 8 weeks; participants were randomly assigned to an awe walk group, which oriented them to experience awe during their walks, or to a control walk group. Participants took photographs of themselves during each walk and rated their emotional experience. Each day, they reported on their daily emotional experience outside of the walk context. Participants also completed pre- and postintervention measures of anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction. Compared with participants who took control walks, those who took awe walks experienced greater awe during their walks and exhibited an increasingly "small self" in their photographs over time. They reported greater joy and prosocial positive emotions during their walks and displayed increasing smile intensity over the study. Outside of the walk context, participants who took awe walks reported greater increases in daily prosocial positive emotions and greater decreases in daily distress over time. Postintervention anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction did not change from baseline in either group. These results suggest cultivating awe enhances positive emotions that foster social connection and diminishes negative emotions that hasten decline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The dynamics of coping, positive emotions, and well-being: Evidence from Latin American immigrant farmworkers and college students during a time of political strife.

In the present article, we use daily diary methodology to investigate how coping influences well-being via the engagement of positive emotions in immigrant farmworkers and university students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In Study 1, in a sample of Latinx immigrant farmworkers (N = 76), we found that the daily use of adaptive coping strategies predicted greater daily well-being, and that this relationship was accounted for by greater daily experiences of positive emotions. In Study 2, in a sample of college students from Latinx, Asian, and European American backgrounds (N = 336), we replicated the mediating effect of positive emotionality on the effect of adaptive coping on daily well-being and extended these findings to an examination of longitudinal well-being. This work provides evidence of one mechanism by which coping affects well-being and is one of the first studies of these dynamics in Latinx samples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).