Not All Levels of Social Re-Inclusion Allow for Recovery from Negative Outcomes of Social Exclusion: The Moderating Role of Self-Esteem.

Previous studies on social exclusion have focused on its adverse effects, rarely exploring how social re-inclusion can aid recovery from exclusion-induced distress. The level of social re-inclusion that can help individuals recover from social exclusion, and whether the recovery effect is influenced by individual characteristics are unclear. The present experimental study extends the Cyberball paradigm, adding a re-inclusion stage to explore the recovery effects of four levels of social re-inclusion on affect; furthermore, it tests the moderating role of self-esteem in the recovery effect. A total of 154 Chinese college students participated in the experiment. Results showed that (1) recovery was effective when the level of re-inclusion was equal to (replica re-inclusion) or greater than (moderate and high over-re-inclusions) the pre-exclusion level of inclusion, but ineffective when it was below this level (token re-inclusion); (2) the re-inclusion level positively predicted recovery, and this was moderated by self-esteem-the prediction was effective for participants with middle and high self-esteem, but not for participants with low self-esteem. These results are discussed from a group process and self-psychology perspective.

The Neural Mechanisms of Group Membership Effect on Emotional Mimicry: A Multimodal Study Combining Electromyography and Electroencephalography.

Emotional mimicry plays a vital role in understanding others' emotions and has been found to be modulated by social contexts, especially group membership. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this modulation remain unclear. We explored whether and how group membership modulated emotional mimicry using a multimodal method combining facial electromyography (fEMG) and electroencephalography (EEG). We instructed participants to passively view dynamic emotional faces (happy vs. angry) of others (in-group vs. out-group) and simultaneously recorded their fEMG and EEG responses. Then, we conducted combined analyses of fEMG-EEG by splitting the EEG trials into two mimicry intensity categories (high-intensity mimicry vs. low-intensity mimicry) according to fEMG activity. The fEMG results confirmed the occurrence of emotional mimicry in the present study but failed to find a group membership effect. However, the EEG results showed that participants mimicked in-group happiness and anger more than out-group. Importantly, this in-group preference involved different neural mechanisms in happiness and anger mimicry. In-group preference for happiness mimicry occurred at multiple neural mechanisms such as N1 (at P7, Pz, and P8), P2 (at Pz and P8), N2 (at P8), and P3 (at P7, Pz, and P8); in-group preference for anger mimicry occurred at P1 (at P7) and P2 (at Pz). Our findings provide new neural evidence for the effect of group membership on emotional mimicry by uncovering the temporal dynamics of this effect.

How mobile phone addiction is associated with suicidal ideation in university students in China: Roles of depression and online social support.

Background: Recent studies have highlighted mobile phone addiction (MPA) as a potential risk of suicidal ideation. However, the mechanisms underlying that association require attention. Objective: This investigation aims to examine whether the relationship between MPA and suicidal ideation would be mediated by depression, and buffered by online social support (OSS) in university students. Methods: A convenient sample of 1,042 Chinese university students completed the measures of mobile phone addiction, depression, suicidal ideation, OSS in classroom settings. Moderated mediation analyses were performed to test the roles of depression and OSS in the association between MPA and suicidal ideation. Results: MPA was positively associated with suicidal ideation through depression (indirect effect =. 23, 95% CI: 0.18, 0.28, p < 0.001); OSS moderated the association between depression and suicidal ideation (B = - 0.09, 95% CI: -0.13, -0.04, p < 0.001). Specifically, the effect of depression on suicidal ideation was weaker in individuals with high (versus low) OSS. OSS moderated the association between MPA and suicidal ideation (B = 0.06, 95% CI: 0.02, 0.10, p = 0.001). The influence of MPA on suicidal ideation was non-significant among individuals with high OSS but negatively significant among students with low OSS. Conclusion: The results enrich the understanding of how MPA may increase suicidal ideation, and highlight the potential importance of reducing depression and enhancing OSS to prevent suicidal ideation in university students.

Right Temporoparietal Junction Plays a Role in the Modulation of Emotional Mimicry by Group Membership.

Our prior research demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) exerted a modulatory role in ingroup bias in emotional mimicry. In this study, two experiments were conducted to further explore whether the rTPJ is a neural region for emotional mimicry or for the modulation of emotional mimicry by group membership in a sham-controlled, double-blinded, between-subject design. Both experiments employed non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to temporarily change the cortical excitability over the rTPJ and facial electromyography (fEMG) to measure facial muscle activations as an index of emotional mimicry. After the anodal or sham stimulation, participants in Experiment 1 passively viewed a series of happy clips, while participants in Experiment 2 viewed happy clips performed by ethnic ingroup and outgroup models. fEMG analyses revealed that participants in Experiment 1 showed the same degree of happy mimicry for both tDCS conditions (anodal vs. sham) and participants in Experiment 2 showed an ingroup bias in happy mimicry in the sham condition, which disappeared in the anodal condition. Taken together, the present study demonstrated that rTPJ plays a role in the modulation of emotional mimicry by group membership.

The effect of eye gaze direction on emotional mimicry: A multimodal study with electromyography and electroencephalography.

Emotional mimicry plays an important role in social interaction and is influenced by social context, especially eye gaze direction. However, the neural mechanism underlying the effect of eye gaze direction on emotional mimicry is unclear. Here, we explored how eye gaze direction influenced emotional mimicry with a combination of electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) techniques, which may provide a more comprehensive measure. To do this, we recorded facial EMG and scalp EEG signals simultaneously while participants observed emotional faces (happy vs. angry) with direct or averted gaze. Then, we split the EEG trials into two mimicry intensity categories (high mimicry intensity, HMI vs. low mimicry intensity, LMI) according to EMG activity. The ERP difference between HMI and LMI EEG trials revealed four ERP components (P50, P150, N200 and P300), and the effect of eye gaze direction on emotional mimicry was prominent on P300 at P7 and P8. Moreover, we also observed differences in the effect of eye gaze direction on mimicry of happy faces and angry faces, which were found on P300 at P7, as well as P150 at P7 and N200 at P7 and Pz. In short, the present study isolated the neural signals of emotional mimicry with a new multimodal method, and provided empirical neural evidence that eye gaze direction affected emotional mimicry.

Right Temporoparietal Junction Modulates In-Group Bias in Facial Emotional Mimicry: A tDCS Study.

The present study employs transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, to explore the possible role of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) in regulating in-group bias in facial emotional mimicry. Participants received either anodal or cathodal stimulation, or they were assigned to a sham condition. After that, they passively viewed a series of video clips depicting different emotions (happiness and anger) that were performed either by ethnic in-group or out-group models. The emotion-specific muscle activities, zygomatic major (ZM) and corrugator supercilii (CS) were recorded simultaneously as the index of facial emotional mimicry. The results first confirm the in-group bias in facial emotional mimicry in the sham condition, as shown in prior studies, though it only occurs in happy mimicry. Moreover, the in-group bias in facial emotional mimicry is modulated by the cortical excitability over the rTPJ, which may be attributed to the accompanied change of overlap of the mental representations of in-group and out-group. This study provides a close look at the neural underpinning of the modulation of facial emotional mimicry by group membership and highlights the role of rTPJ in on-line control of co-activated self and other representations in social cognition.

Universality vs. Cultural Specificity in the Relations Among Emotional Contagion, Emotion Regulation, and Mood State: An Emotion Process Perspective.

To investigate the universality and cultural specificity of emotion processing in children from three different ethnic groups (Han, Jingpo, and Dai), we administered three questionnaires, including the emotional contagion scale, emotion regulation scale, and the Chinese mood adjective check list, to 1,362 ethnic Han, Dai, and Jingpo participants (M age = 13.78 years). Structural equation modeling was used to examine the universality and cultural specificity in the relations among emotional contagion, emotion regulation, and mood state. The results revealed that emotion regulation mediated the relation between emotional contagion and mood state: positive emotional contagion increased positive mood state and decreased negative mood state by the mediated role of reappraisal, negative emotional contagion decreased positive contagion and increased negative mood state by the inconsistent mediated role of reappraisal; negative contagion increased negative mood state by the mediated role of suppression. We found both universality and cultural specificity in the relations among emotional contagion, emotion regulation, and mood state. Regarding cultural specificity, among Dai and Jingpo participants, negative contagion positively predicted reappraisal, while for Han participants, it did not; Jingpo participants demonstrated a weaker negative relation between reappraisal and negative mood state, and a stronger positive relation between negative contagion and suppression; and Dai participants were the only ethnic group that showed a negative connection between negative contagion and positive mood state. Regarding emotion universality, the three ethnic groups all showed positive relations between negative contagion and negative mood, and between suppression and negative mood; additionally, positive contagion positively predicted positive mood state, mediated by reappraisal. Thus, some emotion processes are universal and others more specific. In this paper, we discuss universal emotion processes and ethnic cultural differences in these emotion processes.

Memory of Ensemble Representation Was Independent of Attention.

The hierarchical view of working memory suggested that object ensemble could also be stored into working memory by treating ensemble properties as single "unit." However, it remains unclear whether ensemble representation in working memory is vulnerable to attention demanding. The present study designed a dual-task paradigm constituting of a memory retaining task and an attention-demanding arrow flanker task. Participants were firstly presented an array (4 or 9) of facial images with neutral expressions and then shown a left- or right-orientated arrow surrounded by four congruent or incongruent oriented arrows or short lines. Participants judged the orientation of the target arrow and then indicated whether a probe facial image was present or absent in the preceding facial array. The probe face consisted of four conditions: (1) a morphed average face of prior face set, (2) a morphed average face of another face set, (3) an exemplar face of prior set, and (4) an exemplar face of another face set. Results confirmed that participants implicitly coded the average facial image of preceding set and retained in working memory. More importantly, the memory representation of ensemble property (e.g., average facial identity) was independent of flanker type. In sum, this study provided further evidence of the hierarchical view of working memory and suggested that attention was not a pre-requisite for the retaining of ensemble properties in working memory.