Emotional design for pro-environmental life: Visual appeal and user interactivity influence sustainable consumption intention with moderating effect of positive emotion.

As the public pursues sustainable consumption patterns, pro-environmental mobile applications are being developed to promote green lifestyles. Ant Forest has attracted a large number of users to participate due to its gamified interactive design. The objectives of this study are to understand the process by which visual appeal and user interactivity in pro-environmental mobile applications influence the user's sustainable consumption intention and to analyse the moderating effect of the user's positive emotion on this process. The researchers constructed a theoretical framework based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) theory in this study and used the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) for quantitative analysis with an online questionnaire survey of 586 Ant Forest users. Findings for this study include: 1) Visual appeal shows a large positive effect on the perceived usefulness of Ant Forest; 2) Ant Forest's perceived usefulness shows a significant positive effect on the user's sustainable consumption intention; 3) Ant Forest's perceived usefulness fully mediates the relationship between visual appeal and the user's sustainable consumption intention; 4) Positive emotion moderates the relationship between perceived usefulness and sustainable consumption intention. This study improves the application of the S-O-R theory in emotional design research, while emphasising the importance of optimising the visual appeal of design elements and guiding users' positive emotions in the development of pro-environmental mobile applications. The findings of this study highlight the importance of incorporating positive emotions into visual design for designers and developers of pro-environmental applications, further clarifying the focus of emotional design.

How physical exercise with others and prioritizing positivity contribute to (work) wellbeing: a cross-sectional and diary multilevel study.

Introduction: This work is a dual study employing a cross-sectional approach and a diary method to investigate how physical exercise can become a habit. Guided by the Upward Spiral Theory of Lifestyle Change, we examined the role of prioritizing positivity and engaging in physical exercise with others as advantageous resources and their impact on the relational loop of physical exercise behavior, emotions, and engagement. Methods: The first study involved a sample of 553 participants, and the second study included 146 participants, all of whom were employed and regularly engaged in physical exercise. We utilized structural equation modeling and multilevel analysis for the respective studies. Results: The results of the first study indicate that individuals exercise more when they experience higher levels of engagement and positive emotions, particularly when exercising with others and prioritizing positivity. The findings of the second study reveal that prioritizing positivity acts as a precursor to positive emotions during physical exercise, which in turn reinforces the relational loop between emotions and exercise behavior. Discussion: Both studies conclude that individuals who prioritize positivity experience better psychological wellbeing and higher engagement in physical exercise.

Temperamental Shyness, Peer Competence, and Loneliness in Middle Childhood: The Role of Positive Emotion.

Guided by the conceptual frameworks of social withdrawal (Rubin, K. H., & Chronis-Tuscano, A. (2021). Perspectives on social withdrawal in childhood: Past, present, and prospects. Child Development Perspectives, 15(3), 160-167.) and emotion socialization (Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9, 241-273.; Morris, (A) S., Criss, M. M., Silk, J. S., & Houltberg, (B) J. (2017). The impact of parenting on emotion regulation during childhood and adolescence. Child Development Perspectives, 11(4), 233-238.), the current study examined multifaceted relations among temperamental shyness, peer competence, and loneliness and focused on the role of socializing and expressing positive emotion in middle childhood. Participants included 1,364 families, among whom mothers reported children's temperament when children were 4.5 years old. Mothers and alternative caregivers (usually fathers) independently rated family expressiveness when children were 8-9 years old. Mothers rated their children's peer competence, and children's positive affect with peers were observed when children were ages 8-9 and 10-11. Children self-rated their loneliness levels at ages 10-11. A path model revealed a moderated mediation effect, such that family positive expressiveness moderated the sequential mediation pathway from child temperamental shyness through child peer competence at ages 8-9 and positive affect with peers at ages 10-11 to loneliness at ages 10-11. This sequential mediation was significant only under low but not high levels of family positive expressiveness. Findings support the importance of socializing positive emotion in the context of temperamental shyness and have implications for family-based intervention strategies aimed at children exhibiting high temperamental shyness.

Navigating autonomy: unraveling the dual influence of job autonomy on workplace well-being in the gig economy.

Introduction: With the rapid rise of the gig economy globally, its characteristics of promoting employment and facilitating autonomy have supported its rapid growth and development in China. While the flexibility of gig work offers more employment options and income sources for workers, it also caused many problems and uncertainties. Workplace well-being is an important psychological factor that indicates the psychological state of workers and significantly predicts their behavior at work. However, previous studies on the gig economy rarely analyze gig workers' workplace well-being, which is of great significance to improving their individual emotions, promoting their physical and mental health, and maintaining the sustainable development of the gig economy and society in general. Methods: This study draws on the cognitive-affective processing system framework to construct a moderated dual-mediator model to explore the dual influence mechanism of job autonomy on gig workers' workplace well-being. Based on the data of 442 digital gig workers who were mainly engaged in manual labor. Results: The survey results show that job autonomy positively affects employees' workplace well-being, and work alienation and positive emotion mediate this relationship. Perceived algorithmic control can moderate not only the influence of job autonomy on work alienation and positive emotion but also the indirect impact of job autonomy on workplace well-being through work alienation and positive emotion. Discussion: The finding of this research contributes to expand the comprehension of the relationship between gig-worker job autonomy and workplace wellbeing and this relationship's underlying mechanism, holding significant implications for management practice.

Does the good life feel good? The role of positive emotion in competing conceptions of the good life.

Flourishing refers to one kind of generalized wellbeing. Contemporary flourishing research often privileges positive emotion in the theorization and measurement of the construct, such that flourishing is frequently conceptualized as involving a predominance of positive over negative emotions. Positive emotions are thus, on some views of flourishing, seen as an essential component of "the good life." This paper explores the nuanced variations in conceptions of the good life, focusing on the interplay between positive emotion and flourishing. Through an analysis of contemporary perspectives on flourishing, we underscore the diversity in conceptualizations of flourishing and the implications of this diversity for flourishing theorists. Our review reveals significant disparities in perspectives regarding the significance of positive emotion in the pursuit of a good life. Furthermore, we delineate the theoretical distinctions between objective-list approaches and functional approaches to flourishing, highlighting their respective advantages and limitations. Theoretical dissensus persists regarding whether positive emotion is a necessary constituent of the good life, thus prompting a critical examination of the justification for its inclusion in flourishing models. Finally, we emphasize the need for greater theoretical clarity in defining wellbeing to inform both research endeavors and societal discourse. We suggest that an adequate appreciation of variation in the development and maintenance of flourishing requires admitting for more complex relationships between the construct and both positive and negative emotionality, while embracing the cultural and individual variety that are unavoidable in accurate models of human life.

Bidirectional Relations Among Maternal Positive Emotion, Infant Positive Emotionality, and Infant Physiological Regulation Across the First 18 Months of Life.

Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a marker of self-regulation, has been linked to developmental outcomes in young children. Although positive emotions may have the potential to facilitate physiological self-regulation, and enhanced self-regulation could underlie the development of positive emotions in early childhood, the relation between positive emotions and physiological self-regulation in infancy has been relatively overlooked. The current study examined the bidirectional associations among maternal positive emotion, infant positive emotionality, and infant resting RSA across the first 18 months of life. We used data from the Longitudinal Attention and Temperament Study (LanTs; N = 309 in the current analysis) to test the within- and between-person relations of study variables over time using a random-intercepts cross-lagged panel model. We found that infants with higher overall levels of positive emotionality also displayed greater resting RSA, and their mothers exhibited higher levels of positive emotion. However, there were negative cross-lagged associations within-person; higher than average infant positive emotionality predicted lower levels of infant resting RSA at the subsequent timepoint during early infancy, whereas higher than average infant RSA subsequently predicted decreased levels of infant positive emotionality later in infancy. Results highlight the importance of considering transactional relations between positive emotion and physiological self-regulation in infancy.

Positive Emotion Dysregulation and Social Impairments in Adolescents with and without ADHD.

Although research suggests that emotion dysregulation may underlie adolescents' social impairments, studies have focused almost exclusively on the dysregulation of negative emotions. The present study addressed this gap in the literature by examining whether behavioral manifestations of positive emotion dysregulation are also implicated. A sample of 13-18-year-old adolescents (56.8% female) with and without a childhood diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was used, increasing variability in impairment profiles. Adolescents self-reported behavioral difficulties related to positive emotion dysregulation (i.e., impulse control difficulties, difficulties engaging in goal-directed behavior, and non-acceptance of positive emotions), negative emotion dysregulation, and social impairments (i.e., peer rejection, friendship quality, deviant peer affiliation, aggression, and victimization); parents rated adolescent's ADHD symptoms. Regression analyses indicated that impulse control difficulties when experiencing positive emotions uniquely predicted greater conflict in the best friend relationship, deviant peer affiliation, aggression, and victimization, even when accounting for negative emotion dysregulation and current ADHD symptoms. The significant effect of impulse control difficulties on these social impairments was consistent when accounting for oppositional defiant disorder and depression symptoms and when examining the main predictors only in adolescents with childhood or adolescent clinical elevations in ADHD symptoms. These results are the first to indicate that even for adolescents with ADHD, positive emotion dysregulation, and specifically impulse control difficulties, may significantly predict social challenges.

The bidirectional influence between emotional language and inhibitory control in Chinese: An ERP study.

The bidirectional influence between emotional language and inhibitory processes has been studied in alphabetic languages, highlighting the need for additional investigation in nonalphabetic languages to explore potential cross-linguistic differences. The present ERP study investigated the bidirectional influence in the context of Mandarin, a language with unique linguistic features and neural substrates. In Experiment 1, emotional adjectives preceded the Go/NoGo cue. The ERPs revealed that negative emotional language facilitated inhibitory control. In Experiment 2, with a Go/NoGo cue preceding the emotional language, the study confirmed that inhibitory control facilitated the semantic integration of negative language in Chinese, whereas the inhibited state may not affect deeper refinement of the emotional content. However, no interaction was observed in positive emotional language processing. These results suggest an interaction between inhibitory control and negative emotional language processing in Chinese, supporting the integrative emotion-cognition view.

When Being Bad Feels Good: A Systematic Review of the Relationship Between Positive Emotion and Antisocial Behavior in Children and Adolescents.

Antisocial behavior in childhood and adolescence is associated with poor family and peer relationships, and a higher risk of mental and physical health problems in adulthood, as well as criminality. Emotions play a central role in children's moral development, but most research has focused on negative emotions (e.g., shame and guilt), in relation to childhood antisocial behavior. Research in adult populations indicates that positive emotions experienced in anticipation of, during, and after antisocial acts may play an important role in the development and maintenance of antisocial behavior. Consequently, this systematic review aimed to investigate the relationship between positive emotion and antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. A systematic search in five databases was conducted, yielding 52 studies that used different methodological approaches, samples, designs and methods to examine this association. Results provide support for a positive relationship between positive emotion and antisocial behavior across community, forensic and clinical samples. This link appeared to be stronger for younger children, boys, and for children high in social dominance, callous-unemotional or sensation-seeking traits. Results suggested that positive affect may act in concert with negative emotion, cognitive, personality and motivational processes, as well as peer influences to determine the initiation and maintenance of antisocial behavior. This review presents directions for future research and discusses the implications of findings for prevention and intervention programs for youth with antisocial behavior.

Leading with purpose: Unraveling the impact of responsible leadership on employee green behavior in the workplace.

Although sustainability has been a priority for organizations, there is still a lack of research on how leaders with a stakeholder perspective can motivate employees to adopt green behavior for sustainability in a complex and changing environment. This paper introduced social cognitive theory to describe two mechanisms by which responsible leadership predicts employee green behavior. Our research considers felt obligation for constructive change and stakeholder value as mediations with cognitive perspective in this process. Additionally, we consider the moderating effects of positive emotion and the superior-subordinate relationship. Our model received support from the investigation and research. By emphasizing the significance of perceived responsible leadership and proposing a new way of perceiving employee green behavior that ensures guidance from responsible leadership along the cognition perspective, the present research contributes to our understanding of the incentive effect of responsible leadership on employee green behavior.

Resilience to Stress and Adversity: A Narrative Review of the Role of Positive Affect.

The modern conception of mental health encompasses not only mental illness but also mental wellbeing, including positive emotional states and other forms of positive experience. Accordingly, research on resilience - that is, recovery or adaptation following adversity - has recently expanded to consider the roles of positive affect in the resilience process. To review this research, we performed a keyword search of all peer-reviewed journals within the American Psychological Association's PsycInfo database, retrieving all studies of positive affect in the context of resilience. These studies measured positive affect either as the outcome of the resilience process or as a resilience resource in its own right. With positive affect as the outcome, the literature suggests that various resilience resources can promote positive affect following a stressor, especially positive personality traits (eg, hope, optimism, self-compassion) and supportive interpersonal connections. With positive affect as a resilience resource, the literature suggests that higher levels of positive affect may protect individuals from the impact of stress on a number of outcomes, such as depression and trauma symptoms. In all, the reviewed research showcases a wide range of stressors, resources, and outcomes, and there are numerous openings for future discoveries in this promising area of inquiry.

Examining Links Between Distinct Affective States and Tobacco Lapse During a Cessation Attempt Among African Americans: A Cohort Study.

BACKGROUND: Affect states are posited to play a pivotal role in addiction-related processes, including tobacco lapse (i.e., smoking during a quit attempt), and distinct affective states (e.g., joy vs. happiness) may differentially influence lapse likelihood. However, few studies have examined the influence of distinct affective states on tobacco lapse. PURPOSE: This study examines the influence of 23 distinct affect states on tobacco lapse among a sample of tobacco users attempting to quit. METHODS: Participants were 220 adults who identified as African American (50% female, ages 18-74). Ecological momentary assessment was used to assess affect and lapse in real-time. Between and within-person associations testing links between distinct affect states and lapse were examined with multilevel modeling for binary outcomes. RESULTS: After adjusting for previous time's lapse and for all other positive or negative affect items, results suggested that at the between-person level, joy was associated with lower odds of lapse, and at the within-person level, attentiveness was associated with lower odds of lapse. Results also suggested that at the between-person level, guilt and nervous were associated with higher odds of lapse, and at the within-person level, shame was associated with higher odds of lapse. CONCLUSIONS: The present study uses real-time, real-world data to demonstrate the role of distinct positive and negative affects on momentary tobacco lapse. This work helps elucidate specific affective experiences that facilitate or hinder the ability to abstain from tobacco use during a quit attempt.

Additive Effects of Monetary Loss and Positive Emotion in the Human Brain.

In many real-life scenarios, our decisions could lead to multiple outcomes that conflict with value. Hence, an appropriate neural representation of the net experienced value of conflicting outcomes, which play a crucial role in guiding future decisions, is critical for adaptive behavior. As some recent functional neuroimaging work has primarily focused on the concurrent processing of monetary gains and aversive information, very little is known regarding the integration of conflicting value signals involving monetary losses and appetitive information in the human brain. To address this critical gap, we conducted a functional MRI study involving healthy human male participants to examine the nature of integrating positive emotion and monetary losses. We employed a novel experimental design where the valence (positive or neutral) of an emotional stimulus indicated the type of outcome (loss or no loss) in a choice task. Specifically, we probed two plausible integration patterns while processing conflicting value signals involving positive emotion and monetary losses: interactive versus additive. We found overlapping main effects of positive (vs neutral) emotion and loss (vs no loss) in multiple brain regions, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, striatum, and amygdala, notably with a lack of evidence for interaction. Thus, our findings revealed the additive integration pattern of monetary loss and positive emotion outcomes, suggesting that the experienced value of the monetary loss was not modulated by the valence of the image signaling those outcomes. These findings contribute to our limited understanding of the nature of integrating conflicting outcomes in the healthy human brain with potential clinical relevance.

Developing Social Enhancements for a Web-Based, Positive Emotion Intervention for Alzheimer Disease Caregivers: Qualitative Focus Group and Interview Study.

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer disease is a degenerative neurological condition that requires long-term care. The cost of these responsibilities is often borne by informal caregivers, who experience an elevated risk of negative physical and psychological outcomes. Previously, we designed a positive emotion regulation intervention that was shown to improve well-being among dementia caregivers when delivered through one-on-one videoconferencing lessons with a trained facilitator. However, the format required significant resources in terms of logistics and facilitator time. To broaden the reach of the intervention, we aimed to develop the Social Augmentation of Self-Guided Electronic Delivery of the Life Enhancing Activities for Family Caregivers (SAGE LEAF) program, an iteration of the intervention in a self-guided, web-based format with enhanced opportunities for social connection. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to gather feedback to inform the design of social features for the SAGE LEAF intervention. In the absence of a facilitator, our goal with the self-guided SAGE LEAF intervention was to integrate various social features (eg, discussion board, automated support, and profiles) to maximize engagement among participants. METHODS: Qualitative data were collected from 26 individuals through (1) interviews with participants who completed a previous version of the intervention via videoconferencing with a facilitator, (2) focus groups with dementia caregivers who had not previously experienced the intervention, and (3) focus groups with Alzheimer disease clinical care providers. We conducted a qualitative thematic analysis to identify which social features would be the most helpful and how they could be implemented in a way that would be best received by caregivers. RESULTS: Interview and focus group feedback indicated that participants generally liked the potential features suggested, including the discussion boards, multimedia content, and informational support. They had valuable suggestions for optimal implementation. For example, participants liked the idea of a buddy system where they would be matched up with another caregiver for the duration of the study. However, they expressed concern about differing expectations among caregivers and the possibility of matched caregivers not getting along. Participants also expressed interest in giving caregivers access to a podcast on the skills, which would allow them to review additional content when they wished. CONCLUSIONS: Taken together, the discussions with caregivers and providers offered unique insights into the types of social features that may be integrated into the SAGE LEAF intervention, as well as implementation suggestions to improve the acceptability of the features among caregivers. These insights will allow us to design social features for the intervention that are optimally engaging and helpful for caregivers.

Cheerful tails: Delving into positive emotional contagion.

This review delves into the phenomenon of positive emotional contagion (PEC) in rodents, an area that remains relatively understudied compared to the well-explored realm of negative emotions such as fear or pain. Rodents exhibit clear preferences for individuals expressing positive emotions over neutral counterparts, underscoring the importance of detecting and responding to positive emotional signals from others. We thoroughly examine the adaptive function of PEC, highlighting its pivotal role in social learning and environmental adaptation. The developmental aspect of the ability to interpret positive emotions is explored, intricately linked to maternal care and social interactions, with oxytocin playing a central role in these processes. We discuss the potential involvement of the reward system and draw attention to persisting gaps in our understanding of the neural mechanisms governing PEC. Presenting a comprehensive overview of the existing literature, we focus on food-related protocols such as the Social Transmission of Food Preferences paradigm and tickling behaviour. Our review emphasizes the pressing need for further research to address lingering questions and advance our comprehension of positive emotional contagion.

Savoring changes novel positive mindset targets of GAD treatment: Optimism, prioritizing positivity, kill-joy thinking, and worry mediation.

This study analyzed effects of savoring on unstudied positive mindset targets of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) treatment (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT05040061). 85 students with GAD were randomly assigned to one of two ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) on smartphone for seven days. The SkillJoy EMI promoted practices for savoring positive emotions. An active control EMI mirrored SkillJoy, yet did not include savoring or positive emotion. Optimism, worry, kill-joy thinking (lessening positive emotion with cognition), and prioritization of positive emotion activities and goals were assessed at pre-trial, eighth-day, post-trial, and 30th-day follow-up. Savoring was assessed pre-trial and fifth-day mid-trial. Longitudinal linear mixed models and simple slope analyses examined change between and within conditions. Bias-corrected bootstrapping path analysis examined mediation of worry change by increased savoring. SkillJoy led to significantly greater increases in both optimism and prioritizing positivity than the control from pre-trial to post-trial and pre-trial to follow-up. Both interventions significantly reduced kill-joy thinking at both timepoints with Skilljoy leading to marginally greater change at post-trial. Pre- to mid-trial increases in savoring mediated the relationships between treatment condition and reductions in worry at both post-trial and follow-up.

Time-savoring moderates associations of solitude with depressive mood, loneliness, and somatic symptoms in older adults' daily life.

Episodes of solitude (being alone and without social interaction) are common in older age and can relate to decreased well-being. Identifying everyday resources that help maintain older adults' well-being in states of solitude is thus important. We investigated associations of daily solitude with subjective and physical well-being under consideration of time-savoring (i.e., attending to positive experiences and upregulating positive emotions). 108 older adults aged 65-92 years (M = 73.11, SD = 5.93; 58% women; 85% born in Switzerland) took part in an app-based daily diary study in 2022. Over 14 consecutive days, participants reported daily solitude, time-savoring, depressive mood, loneliness, and somatic symptoms in an end-of-day diary. Multilevel models revealed that participants reported higher depressive mood and loneliness, but not higher somatic symptoms on days on which they spent more time in solitude than usual. Higher-than-usual daily time-savoring was associated with lower depressive mood, loneliness, and somatic symptoms. Associations of solitude with depressive mood, loneliness, and somatic symptoms were weaker on days on which higher time-savoring than usual was reported. Findings highlight the potential of everyday time-savoring as a resource in older adults in the context of increased solitude.

How do leaders' positive emotions improve employees' psychological safety in China? The moderating effect of leader-member exchange.

The extant research on psychological safety has explored mainly its consequences, with less attention paid to its formation mechanism and its applied situation. This study investigates the impact of leaders' positive emotions on employees' psychological safety based on a questionnaire survey of 319 employees working in 67 teams in China and verifies the moderating role of leader-member exchange in this relationship. According to the findings of the multilevel analysis, there is a positive association between leaders' positive emotions and employees' psychological safety, and leader-member exchange has a cross-level moderating influence on the link between leaders' positive emotions and subordinates' psychological safety.

Generalization of savoring to novel positive stimuli.

Savoring is a positive emotion up-regulation technique that can increase electrocortical and self-reported valence and arousal to positive and neutral pictures, with effects persisting to increase response to the same stimuli when encountered later. Outside of the lab, emotion regulation techniques that persist to affect not just encounters with the same stimuli but also encounters with similar, but previously unencountered stimuli should save individuals time and effort. Here, we used event-related potentials and picture ratings to test whether savoring would generalize to similar, but previously unseen positive pictures. To this end, 89 participants (56 female; M age = 18.96 years, SD = 1.87) were asked to savor positive pictures from one category (e.g., happy people) and to view positive pictures from another category (e.g., cute animals), as well as to view neutral pictures (e.g., plants). In a subsequent passive picture viewing task, participants viewed novel pictures from all three categories (i.e., happy people, cute animals, plants). In the first task, savoring was effective for pictures of animals throughout picture presentation, but only for pictures of people during the later part of picture presentation. In the second task, savoring generalized to novel pictures of animals, though this was only evident in the early portion of picture processing (and for self-reported ratings). Therefore, savoring holds promise as a useful technique for increasing positive emotion in everyday life, though more work is needed to understand whether effects may vary depending on different types of picture content.