Pleasant stimuli typically elicit greater electromyographic (EMG) activity over zygomaticus major and less activity over corrugator supercilii than do unpleasant stimuli. To provide a systematic comparison of these 2 measures, the authors examined the relative form and strength of affective influences on activity over zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii. Self-reported positive and negative affective reactions and facial EMG were collected as women (n = 68) were exposed to series of affective pictures, sounds, and words. Consistent with speculations based on known properties of the neurophysiology of the facial musculature, results revealed a stronger linear effect of valence on activity over corrugator supercilii versus zygomaticus major. In addition, positive and negative affect ratings indicated that positive and negative affect have reciprocal effects on activity over corrugator supercilii, but not zygomaticus major.

Prior research has shown that perceived social isolation (loneliness) motivates people to attend to and connect with others but to do so in a self-protective and paradoxically self-defeating fashion. Although recent research has shed light on the neural correlates of social perception, cooperation, empathy, rejection and love, little is known about how individual differences in loneliness relate to neural responses to social and emotional stimuli. Using functional MRI we show that there are at least two neural mechanisms differentiating social perception in lonely and nonlonely young adults. For pleasant depictions, lonely individuals appear to be less rewarded by social stimuli, as evidenced by weaker activation of the ventral striatum to pictures of people than of objects, whereas nonlonely individuals showed stronger activation of the ventral striatum to pictures of people than of objects. For unpleasant depictions, lonely individuals were characterized by greater activation of the visual cortex to pictures of people than of objects, suggesting their attention is drawn more to the distress of others; whereas nonlonely individuals showed greater activation of the right and left temporoparietal junction to pictures of people than of objects, consistent with the notion that they are more likely to reflect spontaneously on the perspective of distressed others.As a social species, humans create emergent organizations beyond the individual-structures that range from dyads, families, and groups to cities, civilizations, and cultures. These emergent structures evolved hand in hand with neural and hormonal mechanisms to support them because the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long that they too reproduced (Cacioppo & Patrick, in press;Dunbar & Shultz, 2007). The multimodal neurophysiological processes involved in the execution of an action, for instance, give rise to parallel neurophysiological sensorimotor processes in the observer of these actions (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004). This mirror neuron system appears to play a role in a variety of social processes including mimicry, synchrony, contagion, coordination, and co-regulation (e.g., Rizzolatti & Fabbri-Destro, in press; Semin & Cacioppo, in press).Empathy for another person's pain is also associated with many of the same neural mechanisms associated with one's personal experience, including activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC), thalamus, and anterior insula (Decety & Lamm, in press-a;Jackson, Rainville, & Decety, 2006). In an illustrative study, Jackson, Meltzoff, and Decety (2005) found that the level of activity in the dACC was strongly correlated with ratings of the intensity of pain experienced by the observed person, a result reminiscent of Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams ' (2003) exclusion was strongly correlated with activity in the dACC. In the case of empathy and of social pain, evolutionarily older neural mechanisms appear to have been co-opted to ...

Corrugator supercilii muscle activity is considered an objective measure of valence because it increases in response to negatively valenced facial expressions (angry) and decreases to positive expressions (happy). The authors sought to determine if corrugator activity could be used as an objective measure of positivity-negativity bias. The authors recorded corrugator responses as participants rated angry, happy, and surprised faces as "positive" or "negative." The critical measure of bias was the percentage of positive versus negative ratings assigned to surprised faces by each participant. Reaction times for surprise expressions were longer than for happy and angry expressions, consistent with their ambiguous valence. Participants who tended to rate surprised faces as negative showed increased corrugator activity to surprised faces, whereas those who tended to rate surprise as positive showed decreased activity. Critically, corrugator responses reflected the participants' bias (i.e., their tendency to rate surprise as positive or negative). These data show that surprised faces constitute a useful tool for assessing individual differences in positivity-negativity bias, and that corrugator activity can objectively reflect this bias.

Psychological stress has been known to have negative effects on health since the work of Cannon (1929) and Selye (1956). Contemporary research suggests that negative emotional reactions to stressors can also be detrimental to health, but that emotion management can foster healthy coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Those who ignore the occasional aggressive driver on the morning commute, for example, avoid the negative COACTIVATION OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS 213

The structure of evaluative space shapes emotional life. Although behavior may be constrained to a single bipolar dimension, for example as defined by the opposing movements of approach and withdrawal, the mechanisms underlying the affect system must be capable of an astonishing range of emotional experience and expression. The model of evaluative space (ESM; J. T. Cacioppo, W. L. Gardner, & G. G. Berntson, 1997, 1999) proposes that behavioral predispositions are the ultimate output of the affect system, which is defined by operating characteristics that differ both for positivity and negativity, as well as across levels of the nervous system. In this article, we outline the current status of theory and research on the structure of evaluative space. First, we summarize the basic tenets of the model, as well as recent research supporting these ideas and counterarguments that have been raised by other theorists. To address these counterarguments, we discuss the postulates of affective oscillation and calibration, two mechanistic features of the affect system proposed to underlie the durability and adaptability of affect. We summarize empirical support for the functional consequences of the principles of affective oscillation and calibration, with a focus on how oscillation and the “stickiness” of affect can lead to the emergence of ambivalence, whereas affective calibration and the flexibility of the affect system produce asymmetries in affective processing (e.g., the negativity bias). Finally, we consider the clinical implications of disorder in the structure of evaluative space for the comprehension and treatment of depression and anxiety.

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Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation.

Abstract& Social stimuli function as emotional barometers for the immediate environment are the catalysts for many emotional reactions, and have inherent value for relationships and survival independent of their current emotional content. We, therefore, propose that the neural mechanisms underlying social and emotional information processing may be interconnected. In the current study, we examined the independent and interactive effects of social and emotional processes on brain activation. Whole-brain images were acquired while participants viewed and categorized affective pictures that varied on two dimensions: emotional content (i.e., neutral, emotional) and social content (i.e., faces/people, objects/scenes). Patterns of activation were consistent with past findings demonstrating that the amygdala and part of the visual cortex were more active to emotionally evocative pictures than to neutral pictures and that the superior temporal sulcus was more active to social than to nonsocial pictures. Furthermore, activation of the superior temporal sulcus and middle occipito-temporal cortex showed evidence of the interactive processing of emotional and social information, whereas activation of the amygdala showed evidence of additive effects. These results indicate that interactive effects occur early in the stream of processing, suggesting that social and emotional information garner greater attentional resources and that the conjunction of social and emotional cues results in synergistic early processing, whereas the amygdala appears to be primarily implicated in processing biologically or personally relevant stimuli, regardless of the nature of the relevance (i.e., social, emotional, or both). &