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1. Constructivist Approaches for Computational Emotions: A Systematic Survey

   Viola, Alexander ; Pavlovic, Vladimir ; Yoon, Sejong ( January 2023 , Computational Theory of Mind for Human-Machine Teams. AAAI-FSS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

   Gurney, Nikolos ; Sukthankar, Gita (Ed.)

   Computational emotion, is naturally predicated on an operating theory of emotion. This paper seeks to explore the prevalence of three different approaches in the literature, namely basic emotion, dimensional emotion, and constructed emotion. Basic emotion maintains that there exists a discrete set of primitive emotions evolved as responses to certain stimuli; dimensional emotion sees different emotions as systematically related by two or more dimensions (typically valence and arousal); and constructed emotion describes emotional experience as a function of the brain’s general predictive faculties applied to learned social concepts of different emotions. In order to see how these approaches are represented in affective computing literature, we conduct a systematic survey spanning the IEEE, ACM, ScienceDirect, and Engineering Village databases. Out of 204 selected papers, 151 apply basic emotion theory, 48 apply dimensional emotion, and 5 apply constructed emotion. We find promising representation of the constructed emotion theory in the affective computing literature and conclude that it provides a theoretical basis worth pursuing for affective engagement human computer interaction (HCI) applications. 

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2. Emotion Naming Impedes Both Cognitive Reappraisal and Mindful Acceptance Strategies of Emotion Regulation

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00036-y  

   Nook, Erik C. ; Satpute, Ajay B. ; Ochsner, Kevin N. ( April 2021 , Affective Science)

   Friends and therapists often encourage people in distress to say how they feel (i.e., name their emotions) with the hope that identifying their emotions will help them cope. Although lay and some psychological theories posit that emotion naming should facilitate subsequent emotion regulation, there is little research directly testing this question. Here, we report on two experimental studies that test how naming the emotions evoked by aversive images impacts subsequent regulation of those emotions. In study 1 (N= 80), participants were randomly assigned into one of four between-subjects conditions in which they either (i) passively observed aversive images, (ii) named the emotions that these images made them feel, (iii) regulated their emotions by reappraising the meaning of images, or (iv) both named and regulated their emotions. Analyses of self-reported negative affect revealed that emotion naming impeded emotion regulation via reappraisal. Participants who named their emotions before reappraising reported feelingworsethan those who regulated without naming. Study 2 (N= 60) replicated these findings in a within-participants design, demonstrated that emotion naming also impeded regulation via mindful acceptance, and showed that observed effects were unrelated to a measure of social desirability, thereby mitigating the concern of experimenter demand. Together, these studies show that the impact of emotion naming on emotion regulation opposes common intuitions: instead of facilitating emotion regulation via reappraisal or acceptance, constructing an instance of a specific emotion category by giving it a name may “crystalize” one’s affective experience and make it more resistant to modification.

    

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3. The Promise of Emotion Practice: At the Bedside and Beyond

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0730888419892664  

   Cottingham, Marci_D ; Erickson, Rebecca_J ( December 2019 , Work and Occupations)

   Emotion scholars have documented the relevance of emotional labor for understanding exhaustion, burnout, and other negative outcomes among workers in care-based occupations. Yet, an emotion management framework that centers emotional labor is not without limitations. The authors use audio diary data from 48 acute care hospital nurses to illustrate how an emotion practice approach can empirically capture complex emotional processes beneath and beyond individual acts of emotional labor. This analysis highlights the interplay of context and self in shaping the occupational outcomes of care workers and illustrates how emotions are simultaneously conscious and embodied, dynamic and structured, individual and collective.

    

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4. Maternal reactions to children’s negative emotions: Relations to children's socio-emotional development among European American and Chinese immigrant children

   https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461520905997  

   Yang, Yang ; Song, Qingfang ; Doan, Stacey_N ; Wang, Qi ( February 2020 , Transcultural Psychiatry)

   This study examined the relations between maternal reactions to children’s negative emotions and children’s socio-emotional outcomes, including psychological adjustment, emotion knowledge, and coping strategies. European American and Chinese immigrant mothers reported on their reactions to children’s ( N = 117, M = 7.14 years) negative emotions and on children’s psychological adjustment. One year later, children were interviewed for emotion knowledge and mothers reported on children’s use of coping strategies. Mothers from the two cultural groups reported the same level of supportive reactions to their children’s negative emotions, whereas Chinese immigrant mothers more often adopted what are commonly considered to be non-supportive strategies than did European American mothers. Whereas supportive maternal reactions were associated with better child outcomes in both cultures, maternal non-supportive reactions were negatively associated with children’s functioning for European American children but not for Chinese immigrant children. The findings shed critical light on the functional meaning of parenting practices in specific cultural contexts in shaping developmental outcomes.

    

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5. An Emotion Translator: Speculative Design By Neurodiverse Dyads

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642210  

   Zolyomi, Annuska ; Snyder, Jaime ( May 2024 , ACM Digital Library)

   For autistic individuals, navigating social and emotional interactions can be complex, often involving disproportionately high cognitive labor in contrast to neurotypical conversation partners. Through a novel approach to speculative co-design, autistic adults explored affective imaginaries — imagined futuristic technology interventions — to probe a provocative question: What if technology could translate emotions like it can translate spoken language? The resulting speculative prototype for an image-enabled emotion translator chat application included: (1) a visual system for representing personalized emotion taxonomies, and (2) a Wizard of Oz implementation of these taxonomies in a low-fidelity chat application. Although wary of technology that purports to understand emotions, autistic participants saw value in being able to deploy visual emotion taxonomies during chats with neurotypical conversation partners. This work shows that affective technology should enable users to: (1) curate encodings of emotions used in system artifacts, (2) enhance interactive emotional understanding, and (3) have agency over how and when to use emotion features. 

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