Can people be motivated to experience an emotion solely due to the belief that this emotion reinforces their ideology? This study investigated whether people would be motivated to experience...Show moreCan people be motivated to experience an emotion solely due to the belief that this emotion reinforces their ideology? This study investigated whether people would be motivated to experience ideology-congruent and -incongruent emotions, if they believed these would reinforce their (left or right) ideology. A repeated-measures design showed that across ideologies, people were more motivated to experience fear when they believed it was ideology-reinforcing than when they had no such belief. Contrary to the hypothesis, for hope, the data suggested motivation to be high regardless of people’s beliefs about its usefulness for their ideology. This study also investigated potential differences between leftists and rightists in their motivation to experience ideology congruent and incongruent emotions. Whilst the data suggested rightists to be generally more motivated to experience both hope and fear, these results had to be disregarded, due to a great gender and age difference between the samples of the leftist and rightist supporters, which influenced the results. The significance and implications of the current findings are discussed.Show less
Background: Verbal threat transmission is significant part of the etiology of fear as Rachman (1977, 1991) suggested in his three pathway theory. To test his theory, as Remmerswaal & Muris ...Show moreBackground: Verbal threat transmission is significant part of the etiology of fear as Rachman (1977, 1991) suggested in his three pathway theory. To test his theory, as Remmerswaal & Muris (2011) did, our research investigated the contribution of verbal threat information which is provided by parents to the development of children’s fear in the context of Covid-19. In order to do that, we tried to observe the relationships among the parental verbal threat information, parents’ and children’s fear of Covid-19, also, we tested whether parents’ and children’s fear of the Covid-19 were mediated by parental verbal threat transmission related to the Covid-19. Furthermore, this paper tried to depict if the different information sources in addition to the parental verbal threat information, parents’ fear of the Covid-19, children’s general fear of medical affairs, parents’ general fear of medical affairs, direct experience of children and direct experience of parents significantly contributed children’s fear of the Covid-19. Methods: Children aged between 8-18 years old (N=90) and one of their parents (N=90) completed Fear of Covid-19 Questionnaire (FCV-19), the Sources of Information about the Covid-19 Scale (SIQ) and Fear Survey Schedule for Children’s Revised version (FSSC-R; Ollendick, 1983) online. To test the mediation, we conducted multiple regression analysis using Baron and Kenny’s (1986) statistical method and to see different information sources’ contribution on children’s fear of the Covid-19, we conducted hierarchical regression. Results: We concluded that parental verbal threat information partially mediated the relationship between children’s and parents’ fear of the Covid-19 and different information sources significantly contributed to the children’s fear of the Covid-19 in addition to other predictors. Discussion: Our results provided support for Rachman’s (1977, 1991) theory which argued the existence of the verbal threat transmission. Another important area was, different information sources might contribute into fear acquisition of children. It leads other future studies that can investigate which information sources are more effective in the children’s fear acquisition.Show less
Previous research has shown that people are motivated to up-regulate certain emotions if they believe that it reinforces their ideological convictions. More specifically, Pliskin and colleagues...Show morePrevious research has shown that people are motivated to up-regulate certain emotions if they believe that it reinforces their ideological convictions. More specifically, Pliskin and colleagues reported that leftists were more likely to experience hope, and rightists were more likely to experience fear if they believed that the respective emotions reinforce their ideology in regard to the acceptance or rejection of social change. The present research expands on these findings by investigating whether people would be motivated to up-regulate their level of anger if they believe it reinforces their ideology, and whether such motivational effort differs between ideological groups (left vs right). To this end, we sampled 206 British participants (114 female, 90 male, 2 other, Mage = 33.18, SD = 11.96) of which 115 (40 male, 73 female, 2 self-identified; Mage = 29.15, SD = 9.9) reported a leftist ideology and 91 (41 female, Mage = 38.29, SD = 12.43) a rightist ideology. Both groups were presented with one of three bogus scientific articles claiming that anger reinforces a leftist ideology, anger reinforces a rightist ideology or a neutral control article. Subsequently, the participants were asked to rank order eight headlines that hinted at emotion-inducing articles (anger, fear, hope, neutral). The results of the ANCOVA revealed a non-significant interaction effect, disconfirming our formulated hypothesis. Such null findings may support the context-dependence of anger and point at the necessity of adopting a multi-dimensional, context sensitive approach to the study of ideological differences in the motivated regulation of emotions.Show less
Recent research has shown that even in non-political contexts, leftists and rightists are motivated to experience hope and fear respectively, because of their belief that these emotions justify...Show moreRecent research has shown that even in non-political contexts, leftists and rightists are motivated to experience hope and fear respectively, because of their belief that these emotions justify their ideological convictions. This raises the question of whether the desire to reinforce one’s ideology could also influence the motivation to experience other emotions. In order to fill this gap in the research literature, the present study investigates whether believing that anger reinforces rightist (or leftist) ideology, would motivate people holding on to this ideology to feel more anger in response to politically neutral major current events. To test this, we conducted an online study with 235 adult participants from the United Kingdom, presenting them with (fabricated) scientific information stating that anger can promote and justify the principles of rightist (or leftist) ideology. Next, we assessed if this manipulation influenced participants motivation to experience anger, by measuring the order in which participants prioritized reading anger inducing news, as opposed to hope and fear inducing news, during the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results indicate that manipulating the belief that anger reinforces one’s (or the opposite) ideology did not influence participants’ motivation to experience anger in this context. Also, contrary to the findings of previous research, leftists and rightists did not differ in their motivation to experience hope and fear. This thesis discusses the implications of these findings, and puts them into context with the world pandemic. Moreover, it proposes future directions for the study of ideological motivated emotion regulation.Show less
Background: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is highly prevalent around the world, and often develops in childhood. Transfer of SAD from parents-to-children occurs both by genetic transmission as by...Show moreBackground: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is highly prevalent around the world, and often develops in childhood. Transfer of SAD from parents-to-children occurs both by genetic transmission as by environmental transmission, namely by social learning. The verbal information pathway is known as one of the social learning pathways for fear. There are multiple studies on the acquisition of animal fears via the verbal pathway, but studies on social fears are limited. Therefore this study aims to investigate the verbal information pathway as a learning mechanism of social fears. Besides, a proposed risk factor for the development of SAD, behavioral inhibition (BI), is included in the current study as a potential moderator. Methods: The study sample consisted of 68 dyads, with children aged 4-6. Parents provided safety and threat information about two strangers to the children. Fear beliefs were compared between safety and threat condition. In addition, a questionnaire measured children’s BI tendency to study both as a covariate and directly in relation with fear beliefs. Results: When children received threat information fear beliefs were significantly higher compared to when children received safety information about the stranger. There was no interaction effect or main effect with BI. Conclusions: We conclude that 4-to-6-year old children are influenced by parents verbal information about strangers in such a way that threat information compared to safety information creates more fear beliefs. Besides, moderation by BI was not significant in the community sample used in the current study.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
open access
2020-08-06T00:00:00Z
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by communication deficits. Emotions are part of interpersonal communication and adequate use of emotions are vital for successful...Show moreChildren with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by communication deficits. Emotions are part of interpersonal communication and adequate use of emotions are vital for successful interaction. To see if children with ASD express emotions to the same extent, we compared 17 children with ASD (age range: 3-6 years) to 33 typically developing children of the same age on both on behavioral emotion expression and on psychophysiological arousal. The behavioral expression and psychophysiological parameters of emotion (heart rate and skin conductance level) were continuously measured during rest and a fear inducing paradigm. The groups did not differ on the intensity of negative or positive emotion expression. The ASD group had lower skin conductance levels during rest compared to the typically developing children and a more pronounced increase in psychophysiological arousal in response to a fear paradigm. To integrate these two separate measures of emotion, the concordance between the behavioral and psychophysiological components was evaluated. Negative emotions were related to heart rate in the ASD group and to skin conductance in the control group, but the strength of the correlation did not differ significantly between the two groups. Considering the health and behavioral risks associated with abnormal levels of emotional arousal, the specific effects of deviant emotional arousal in children with ASD need to be further explored. Targeting psychophysiological levels of arousal in interventions might be an effective approach to ameliorate challenging behavior in children with ASD.Show less
Research master thesis | Political Science and Public Administration (research) (MSc)
open access
The main hypothesis which is tested in this paper is that voters who experience more fear are more likely to vote for radical right parties. The underlying idea of this hypothesis is that important...Show moreThe main hypothesis which is tested in this paper is that voters who experience more fear are more likely to vote for radical right parties. The underlying idea of this hypothesis is that important explanations mentioned in the literature about the radical right vote are based on the experience of some sort of economic or symbolic threat. Research has shown that fear can influence people's decision-making and electoral behavior. Different analyses conducted in the paper support the claim that fear as a personal characteristic plays a role on its own when it comes to voting for radical right parties. While the measurement of fear was not optimal, the results show that further research should take the role of fear into account. These studies also have the task to find better ways to measure fear to look at the relationship in more detail.Show less
