Is humility a sentiment?

Gervais & Fessler reintroduce the concept of a sentiment as a framework for conceptualizing contempt, a construct with both attitudinal and emotional components. We propose that humility might also fit this mold. We review recent findings regarding the antecedents, phenomenology, and functional consequences of humility, and discuss why conceptualizing it as a sentiment may advance our understanding of this construct.

The Benefits of Following Your Pride: Authentic Pride Promotes Achievement.

Although the emotion authentic pride has been posited to promote achievement, it remains unclear precisely how this works. Here, we tested whether authentic pride promotes adaptive downstream achievement outcomes by motivating individuals to engage in appropriate behavioral responses to success and failure. In two longitudinal studies (N = 1,132), we measured pride emotional responses to a prior performance and subsequent changes in achievement-oriented behavior and performance outcomes among (a) adults training for long-distance running races and (b) undergraduates completing class exams. Authentic pride shifted in direct response to achievement outcomes, such that those who performed well felt greater pride. Furthermore, individuals who felt low authentic pride responded to these feelings by changing their achievement behavior in a functional manner. In Studies 2a, 2b, and 2c, we found that pride-driven behavioral changes led to improved future performance among low performers. In these studies we also demonstrated that the effect of authentic pride on achievement is independent of that of self-efficacy, which in fact works in an opposite manner. Taken together, these results suggest that authentic pride functions as a barometer of achievement, promoting behavioral responses that lead to improved performance.

Compensatory internet use among individuals higher in social anxiety and its implications for well-being.

The social compensation hypothesis states that the internet primarily benefits individuals who feel uncomfortable communicating face-to-face. In the current research, we tested whether individuals higher in social anxiety use the internet as a compensatory social medium, and whether such use is associated with greater well-being. In Study 1, individuals higher in social anxiety reported greater feelings of comfort and self-disclosure when socializing online than less socially anxious individuals, but reported less self-disclosure when communicating face-to-face. However, in Study 2, social anxiety was associated with lower quality of life and higher depression most strongly for individuals who communicated frequently online. Our results suggest that, whereas social anxiety may be associated with using the internet as an alternative to face-to-face communication, such a strategy may result in poorer well-being.

Examining emotional tool use in daily life.

Emotions such as anger, gratitude, envy, and pride can be thought of as tools: They tend to serve context-specific functions in daily life. Prior work has shown that people can use emotions as tools in laboratory contexts, yet it is unclear whether people do use emotions as tools in daily life by intentionally trying to feel or express emotions that could yield context-specific beneficial outcomes. We examined this issue in 6 studies (total N = 1,409) in which participants (a) identified scenarios where specific emotions typically function as tools, (b) recalled episodes of emotional tool use, and (c) reported on emotional tool use in daily life via experience-sampling under experimental instructions. We found that people regularly used emotions as tools in daily life, but that people used positive emotions as tools much more frequently than negative emotions. Yet, when people used positive emotions as tools, this led to less beneficial outcomes than when participants felt positive emotions reactively-in part because using positive emotions as tools felt inauthentic-whereas using negative emotions as tools led to more beneficial outcomes than feeling negative emotions reactively. These findings point to a fascinating paradox: Although people are more willing to use positive (vs. negative) emotions as tools, these choices may not lead people to garner maximal possible benefits of positive emotions, while preventing people from capitalizing on the benefits of using negative emotions as tools. We discuss implications of this work for incorporating emotional tool use into theories of emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Retrospective Analysis and Forecasted Economic Impact of a Virtual Cardiac Rehabilitation Program in a Third-Party Payer Environment.

Background: Participation in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is recommended for all patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) following hospitalization for acute coronary syndrome or stenting. Yet, few patients participate due to the inconvenience and high cost of attending a facility-based program, factors which have been magnified during the ongoing COVID pandemic. Based on a retrospective analysis of CR utilization and cost in a third-party payer environment, we forecasted the potential clinical and economic benefits of delivering a home-based, virtual CR program, with the goal of guiding future implementation efforts to expand CR access. Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study using insurance claims data from a large, third-party payer in the state of Pennsylvania. Primary diagnostic and procedural codes were used to identify patients admitted for CAD between October 1, 2016, and September 30, 2018. Rates of enrollment in facility-based CR, as well as all-cause and cardiovascular hospital readmission and associated costs, were calculated during the 12-months following discharge. Results: Only 37% of the 7,264 identified eligible insured patients enrolled in a facility-based CR program within 12 months, incurring a mean delivery cost of $2,922 per participating patient. The 12-month all-cause readmission rate among these patients was 24%, compared to 31% among patients who did not participate in CR. Furthermore, among those readmitted, CR patients were readmitted less frequently than non-CR patients within this time period. The average per-patient cost from hospital readmissions was $30,814 per annum. Based on these trends, we forecasted that adoption of virtual CR among patients who previously declined CR would result in an annual cost savings between $1 and $9 million in the third-party healthcare system from a combination of increased overall CR enrollment and fewer hospital readmissions among new HBCR participants. Conclusions: Among insured patients eligible for CR in a third-party payer environment, implementation of a home-based virtual CR program is forecasted to yield significant cost savings through a combination of increased CR participation and a consequent reduction in downstream healthcare utilization.

A Provisional Taxonomy of Subjectively Experienced Positive Emotions.

Over the past two decades, scholars have conducted studies on the subjective experience of over 30 positive emotional states (see Weidman, Steckler, & Tracy, 2017). Yet, evidence from research on the non-verbal expression and biological correlates of positive emotions suggests that people likely experience far fewer than 30 distinct positive emotions. The present research provided an initial, lexically driven examination of how many, and which, positive emotions cohere as distinct subjective experiences, at both the state and trait levels. Four studies (including two pre-registered replications) using factor and network analyses of 5939 participants' emotional experiences, elicited through the relived emotions task, found consistent evidence for nine distinct positive emotion states and five distinct traits. At both levels, many frequently studied positive emotions were found to overlap considerably or entirely with other ostensibly distinct states in terms of the subjective components used to describe them, suggesting that researchers currently study more positive emotions than individuals experience distinctively. These findings provide the first-ever comprehensive portrait of the taxonomic structure of subjectively experienced positive emotions, with the ultimate aim of inspiring further examination of the positive emotion space at the subjective experiential as well as more biological and behavioral levels of analysis.

Picking up good vibrations: Uncovering the content of distinct positive emotion subjective experience.

Inquiry into positive emotions such as awe, compassion, gratitude, and pride has increased rapidly in recent years. Yet, the distinct subjective content of each positive emotion remains unknown, leaving unclear what people feel, think, and do when they experience these states, and whether regularly studied positive emotions are experientially distinct from other positive emotions. Furthermore, there are currently no validated measurement tools with which to assess the majority of positive emotions. The present research aimed to address these limitations. In Study 1 (N = 150) participants generated over 1,000 subjective elements (i.e., thoughts, feelings, and action tendencies) characterizing 18 regularly studied positive emotions. In Studies 2-3 (N = 3,334) participants were induced to experience each of these emotions through the Relived Emotion Task, and then reported whether the previously uncovered subjective elements characterized their feelings. Using factor analyses, we examined which elements cohered together in response to each emotion and which emotions were associated with distinctive content compared with conceptually similar emotions. Results revealed distinctive subjective content associated with 15 positive emotions, as well as 4 positive emotions often treated as distinct that were not associated with distinct subjective content. Using these results, we developed reliable self-report scales for assessing each emotion and provided initial validation for these scales. These findings lay the groundwork for future empirical efforts aimed at understanding the similarities and differences among positive emotions, and for the construction of a taxonomy of subjectively experienced positive emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Punish or Protect? How Close Relationships Shape Responses to Moral Violations.

People have fundamental tendencies to punish immoral actors and treat close others altruistically. What happens when these tendencies collide-do people punish or protect close others who behave immorally? Across 10 studies (N = 2,847), we show that people consistently anticipate protecting close others who commit moral infractions, particularly highly severe acts of theft and sexual harassment. This tendency emerged regardless of gender, political orientation, moral foundations, and disgust sensitivity and was driven by concerns about self-interest, loyalty, and harm. We further find that people justify this tendency by planning to discipline close others on their own. We also identify a psychological mechanism that mitigates the tendency to protect close others who have committed severe (but not mild) moral infractions: self-distancing. These findings highlight the role that relational closeness plays in shaping people's responses to moral violations, underscoring the need to consider relational closeness in future moral psychology work.

(Not) hearing happiness: Predicting fluctuations in happy mood from acoustic cues using machine learning.

Recent popular claims surrounding virtual assistants suggest that computers will soon be able to hear our emotions. Supporting this possibility, promising work has harnessed big data and emergent technologies to automatically predict stable levels of one specific emotion, happiness, at the community (e.g., counties) and trait (i.e., people) levels. Furthermore, research in affective science has shown that nonverbal vocal bursts (e.g., sighs, gasps) and specific acoustic features (e.g., pitch, energy) can differentiate between distinct emotions (e.g., anger, happiness) and that machine-learning algorithms can detect these differences. Yet, to our knowledge, no work has tested whether computers can automatically detect normal, everyday, within-person fluctuations in one emotional state from acoustic analysis. To address this issue in the context of happy mood, across 3 studies (total N = 20,197), we asked participants to repeatedly report their state happy mood and to provide audio recordings-including both direct speech and ambient sounds-from which we extracted acoustic features. Using three different machine learning algorithms (neural networks, random forests, and support vector machines) and two sets of acoustic features, we found that acoustic features yielded minimal predictive insight into happy mood above chance. Neither multilevel modeling analyses nor human coders provided additional insight into state happy mood. These findings suggest that it is not yet possible to automatically assess fluctuations in one emotional state (i.e., happy mood) from acoustic analysis, pointing to a critical future direction for affective scientists interested in acoustic analysis of emotion and automated emotion detection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The painful duality of envy: Evidence for an integrative theory and a meta-analysis on the relation of envy and schadenfreude.

Despite envy's importance as a driver of social behavior, scholars disagree on its conceptualization. We review the literature and distinguish three incongruent theories: (a) Malicious Envy Theory (i.e., envy as uniform and malicious), (b) Dual Envy Theory (i.e., envy as taking on 2 forms, benign and malicious), and (c) Pain Theory of Envy (i.e., envy as uniform and driven by pain). Moreover, within and across theories, operationalizations of envy have included various different components. We integrate these conceptualizations using a data-driven approach, deriving a comprehensive theory of envy in 5 studies (total N = 1,237)-the Pain-driven Dual Envy (PaDE) Theory. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of an exhaustive set of envy components (Studies 1-4) suggest that envy consists of 3 factors: Pain (i.e., preoccupation with the envy-eliciting situation, inferiority), predicts both benign envy (i.e., desire for the envy object, improvement motivation, emulation of the other), and malicious envy (i.e., communication about the other, directed aggression, nondirected aggression). An experience-sampling study (Study 5) suggests that pain constitutes a quickly fading reaction, whereas benign and malicious envy are enduring attitudinal constructs. We apply this theory in a meta-analysis on the controversial relation of envy and schadenfreude (N = 4,366), finding that envy and schadenfreude are more strongly and positively correlated to the extent that the respective research operationalizes envy as malicious, compared with as pain or benign envy. We discuss how the PaDE Theory can illuminate research on envy in diverse settings, and envy's relation to other distinct emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record

The psychological structure of humility.

Psychological inquiry into humility has advanced considerably over the past decade, yet this literature suffers from 2 notable limitations. First, there is no clear consensus among researchers about what humility is, and conceptualizations vary considerably across studies. Second, researchers have uniformly operationalized humility as a positive, socially desirable construct, while dismissing evidence from lay opinion and theological and philosophical traditions suggesting that humility may also have a darker side. To redress these issues, we conducted the first comprehensive, bottom-up analysis of the psychological structure of humility. Here we report 5 studies (total N = 1,479) that involve: (a) cluster analysis and categorization of humility-related words, generated by both lay persons and academic experts; (b) exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of momentary and dispositional humility experiences; and (c) experimental induction of a momentary humility experience. Across these studies, we found converging evidence that humility can take 2 distinct forms, which we labeled "appreciative" and "self-abasing" humility. Appreciative humility tends to be elicited by personal success, involve action tendencies oriented toward celebrating others, and is positively associated with dispositions such as authentic pride, guilt, and prestige-based status. In contrast, self-abasing humility tends to be elicited by personal failure, involves negative self-evaluations and action tendencies oriented toward hiding from others' evaluations, and is associated with dispositions such as shame, low self-esteem, and submissiveness. Together, these findings provide a systematic and empirically grounded understanding of humility. (PsycINFO Database Record

The jingle and jangle of emotion assessment: Imprecise measurement, casual scale usage, and conceptual fuzziness in emotion research.

Although affective science has seen an explosion of interest in measuring subjectively experienced distinct emotional states, most existing self-report measures tap broad affect dimensions and dispositional emotional tendencies, rather than momentary distinct emotions. This raises the question of how emotion researchers are measuring momentary distinct emotions in their studies. To address this question, we reviewed the self-report measurement practices regularly used for the purpose of assessing momentary distinct emotions, by coding these practices as observed in a representative sample of articles published in Emotion from 2001-2011 (n = 467 articles; 751 studies; 356 measurement instances). This quantitative review produced several noteworthy findings. First, researchers assess many purportedly distinct emotions (n = 65), a number that differs substantially from previously developed emotion taxonomies. Second, researchers frequently use scales that were not systematically developed, and that include items also used to measure at least 1 other emotion on a separate scale in a separate study. Third, the majority of scales used include only a single item, and had unknown reliability. Together, these tactics may create ambiguity regarding which emotions are being measured in empirical studies, and conceptual inconsistency among measures of purportedly identical emotions across studies. We discuss the implications of these problematic practices, and conclude with recommendations for how the field might improve the way it measures emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record