Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Emotional dimensions'

One of the ways in which the attachment relationships we develop during infancy influence us throughout life is by emotion regulation. Although studies have shown that attachment orientations affect emotional functioning, the effect of attachment dimensions on overall emotional functioning and sociability has still not been investigated. The purpose of the present study was to examine if attachment dimensions predict emotional intelligence (EI) and sociability. The sample consisted of 75 psychology students at Stockholm University who completed the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ; Feeney, Noller & Hanrahan, 1994) and a section of the Understanding Personal Potential (UPP; Sjöberg, 2001) that measures EI with self-report as well as performance measures, and sociability. The current data did not offer conclusive evidence for the impact of attachment on EI, but suggests that secure attachment predicts sociability. The results are discussed in relation to existing theory and a more integrative approach is suggested for future studies.

This research aims to understand, describe and analyze the hidden dimensions of leadership that can nourish leader-follower relationships. Additionally, by analyzing empirical illustrations combined with the theories presented in the literature, we have developed a framework for leading smoothly, which can provide insights into the leadership activities that leaders and executives can benefit from. Our findings on leading smoothly emerged during our analysis and interpretation of two case studies and our literature review, and led us to concentrate on emotional and communicational dimensions of leadership. Concerning crisis and turbulent times as one of the most challenging situations for performing leadership activities, we present two case studies related to leadership approaches during crises. One of the case studies is about the leadership of BP‟s former CEO Tony Hayward during the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and the second case is about the leadership of the former CEO of Johnson & Johnson during the Tylenol crisis in 1982. While analyzing the cases, the emotional and communicational approaches of leaders are examined. Furthermore, these case studies facilitate the identification of the aspects that smooth leadership activities and their impacts on the leader follower relationships. Consequently, the study discusses the emotional and communicational dimensions of leadership and presents the framework for leading smoothly as a different perspective for embellishing the interaction between the leader and the follower, which can provide an understanding of the subtle ways of leading.

Research has shown that self-efficacy is one of the most important personal resources in the work context. However, research on working life has mainly focused on a cognitive and task-oriented dimension of self-efficacy representing employees’ perceptions of their capacity to successfully complete work tasks. Thus, little is known about the influence that believing in one’s social and emotional competence could have. This thesis aims to expand previous theory regarding self-efficacy in the workplace by investigating social, emotional, and cognitive self-efficacy dimensions in relation to leadership, health, and well-being.   The thesis rests on four empirical studies, all related to health and well-being, and including at least one self-efficacy dimension. Study I employed questionnaire data from 169 Swedish high school students. The other three studies were based on questionnaire data obtained during a three-year international health-promoting leadership research project. These participants were employees and leaders from 229 different teams in 12 organizations in Sweden and Germany representing a wide range of occupations. Study I supported the idea that emotional self-efficacy is an important antecedent to prosocial behaviour and also highlighted the value of differentiating between different dimensions of self-efficacy. Study II validated the new work-related Occupational Social and Emotional Self-efficacy Scales; and indicated that these dimensions are positively related to well-being. However, Study III showed that emotional exhaustion in followers crossed over to leaders when the leaders’ emotional self-efficacy was high. Study IV revealed that transformational leadership and social self-efficacy can be positive for team climate. The main theoretical contribution of this thesis is to expand previous theory regarding self-efficacy in the workplace by incorporating social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. The main practical implication is that the new Occupational Social and Emotional Self-efficacy Scales can be used to promote health and well-being in the workplace through activities such as recruitment, staff development, and team-building. This thesis suggests that (a) training managers to exert transformational leadership behaviours may simultaneously promote team climate, and this process may be mediated by social self-efficacy, (b) it may be counterproductive to enhance leaders’ emotional abilities in a team of exhausted followers, since the result can be an exhausted leader rather than an exhilarated team, (c) interventions aimed at improving health and well-being should be specific to each work setting, and (d) a more holistic approach where the mutual influence between leaders and followers is considered may be beneficial for healthier work environments.

The thesis is an exploratory and descriptive study focusing on the emotional dimensions of collegial relationships in a primary school. The research is timely given the current pressures to develop cultures of collaboration and shared leadership in schools today. The study concentrates on the non-classroom work of teachers and investigates three particular areas of school life: the collegial practices of staff; the emotional milieu of teachers' work; and the contributions of members towards an emotionally healthy staff community. An interpretive tradition has been used in conducting the research, thus giving voice to the perceptions of research participants about their work. The research was conducted as an ethnographic case study. Data were gathered largely through participant observation and interviews. The researcher visited the school on a regular basis through the course of one school year, averaging over one day per week working in the school. Eighteen staff members were formally interviewed, the principal and assistant principal on several occasions. Extensive fieldnotes and interview transcripts were created and, aided by NVivo, a computer package for the analysis of non-statistical data, data were broken down into categories and resynthesised to bring to life a picture of the lived reality of collegiality for staff members in a primary school. The study adds to new knowledge in several important ways. First, it allows for a reconceptualisation of teachers' work. It shows how many different practices contribute to a collegial culture within a primary school and demonstrates how the social and emotional dimensions of collegiality are significant in the development of professional relationships. Second, the study develops an understanding of emotional labour for school personnel and contributes importantly to a broader picture of how emotional labour can be practiced, particularly for the sake of collegiality. It is posited that different kinds of emotional labour exist within the school setting, and that emotional labour in schools may be different from that in some other service organisations. The study explores bounded emotionality as a cultural practice among staff, suggesting that it allows expression of emotions about classroom work while at the same time constrains negative emotional displays so as to build and maintain community. The study suggests that the principles of bounded emotionality, as they operate within the primary school, present both benefits and burdens for a collegial staff, but may encourage an emotionally healthy workplace.

It has been argued that agency and communion define the fundamental dimensions of human existence. Agency represents strivings for expansion and elevation that surface as efforts to pursue social dominance. Communion represents strivings for contact and congregation that surface as efforts to preserve social bonds. From an evolutionary perspective, agency and communion define the problems of group living to which our ancestors were historically required to adapt. From a dyadic-interactional perspective, agency and communion organize the domain of behavior that individuals in contemporary societies are presently able to demonstrate. The purpose of this research was to explore the agentic and communal dimensions underlying social adaptation and emotional adjustment; this objective was pursued through the use of event-contingent recording procedures that require respondents to report upon their behavior in significant social interactions over extended time intervals. I first propose that emotional adjustment is optimized through mitigation processes that balance the expression of agency and communion in everyday behavior. Findings indicated that a balance within agency and within communion---achieved through moderate levels of agentic and communal expression---predicted optimal emotional adjustment. I then propose that the dark aspects of agency and communion---the human propensities to quarrel and submit---are equally relevant to social adaptation. In this regard, I argue that these propensities represent social rank strategies through which individuals grapple with and defend themselves against feelings of threat and inferiority. Consistent with an evolutionary perspective upon social competition, individuals tended to quarrel when threatened by subordinates and to submit when threatened by superiors. Consistent with an evolutionary perspective upon defeat and depression, individuals who typically felt more inferior tended to quarrel more frequently with subordina

This master’s thesis attempts to empirically examine the connection between emotional intelligence and the teaching profession.  There  has  been  a growing  amount of quantitative or mixed methods research demonstrating the solid interrelation between teachers’ emotional intelligence and teaching profession. However, the concern of teachers’ emotional intelligence and its corresponding actions requires more empirical researches. Thus, the focus of this narrative research  lies  on finding out how three  Finnish  class teachers  describe  the role of emotions  and the emotional experiences  in  their work. Teachers’ stories are analyzed from the perspective of emotional intelligence. The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence, and the justification of applying Goleman’s theory is  made  along  with other influential  theory constructs.  Furthermore, this thesis  aims to explore how the emotional dimensions in teachers’ work can  be seen in light of  emotional intelligence particularly in terms of Goleman’s EI construct. Methodologically, this master’s thesis applies the principles of narrative inquiry. The data has been collected by interviewing three class teachers  with varied teaching experiences. The  teachers  also work  in different classroom contexts  –  a regular Finnish mainstream classroom, an  international  school  classroom and a preparatory classroom.  This master’s thesis applies the holistic-content reading  approach in  data analysis process; each interview is analyzed individually. By using this method, the analysis results  provide a  two-dimensional finding  for each interview. The first dimension offers an overview or general impression of each teacher’s emotional  experience related to work. The  second-dimension  reveals more specific themes related to emotional  dimensions in teachers’ work from the perspective of emotional intelligence. The findings of the thesis suggest  that  the  class teachers  describe  the  emotional dimensions  in  their work in a similar way,  although emphasizing  different  emotional  aspects. These teachers display  their  acknowledgement of  the critical role of emotions  through their living experience and reflections. They  recognize  the  urge  for teachers to acquire  the set of substantial skills  which are embedded  in  Goleman’s  emotional intelligence  theory: self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, motivation and social skills.  Furthermore, the findings of this empirical thesis reveal that teachers’ working environment is an emotional place. The teaching job is argued to be an emotional  labor which is far  beyond  simply delivering a lesson. Related to the importance of emotions in teachers’ work, teacher wellbeing as  another  major theme emerges from the findings. Therefore, this  master’s thesis  aims  to  raise awareness of the significance of emotions in teachers’ work and shred lights on both pre-service and in-service teachers’ need of developing  emotional intelligence as teaching proficiency. Nevertheless, promoting  teacher  wellbeing in the profession  should also be essential and prevalent.

Emotions are the very heart of people's experiences. Moreover, emotions determine people's focus because they influences people's interests and define dimensions of people's worlds across cultures. However, past research on emotions has argued about the meaning of basic emotions being relative or universal cross cultures. It seems as if researchers are avoiding the issues regarding the meaning of negative and positive emotions and how these emotions are expressed within a cross–cultural context. One of the biggest concerns is that if the descriptions of people's positive and negative emotions are not understood, it becomes difficult for people from different cultural backgrounds to maintain healthy relationships and relate their emotions with one another. Apart from the lack of research regarding the meaning of emotions across cultures, emotion and emotion experiences in the extrinsic and intrinsic level to the employee, especially within the cross cultural context, is also an under researched topic in South African organisations. The reason for this is that organisations view emotions as a complicated subject to understand and tend to focus more on maintaining positive emotions at work rather than creating a stable emotional climate in an organisation for employees. The lack of creating a stable emotional climate within an organisation and addressing adverse discrete emotions and emotional experiences could have harmful effects on employees' mental health and physical well–being. Furthermore, the absence of measuring instruments to investigate the emotions and emotional experiences of employees may result into experiencing painful personal incidents, lack of pride in one's accomplishments, lack of engagement and commitment, negative behaviour and attitudes, and intentions to quit. These experiences might trigger any negative emotions such as anger, hate, irritation, disappointment, despair and frustrations. The above problem statement gave a reason to investigate whether the meaning of emotions differs across cultures or is the same cross culturally, to identify the meaning structure of emotions and to identify the emotions and emotion experience of the employees within the work environment's extrinsic and intrinsic level experience to the individual. Therefore, the Componential Emotions Theory was a relevant theory to determine the meaning of emotions within the Tswana speaking group. The theory of determining emotions and emotion episodes by the Affective Events Theory was followed as a way of determining emotions and emotion experiences comprehensively in the Setswana speaking language group. The Componential Emotion Theory was adapted to provide a clarification of how people across cultures describe their emotion terms. According to the Componential Emotion Theory, emotion terms across cultures can be described through cognitive appraisal, subjective feelings, facial expressions, verbal expressions, gesture, bodily sensations, action tendencies and emotion regulation. Regarding the Affective Events Theory (AET), the theory suggests that emotion episodes at work can cause or be generated by either positive or negative emotions at work. The theory represents an understanding of how employees emotionally respond to certain emotion episodes that occur in various organisational settings. The following research objectives were formulated based on the above–mentioned description of the research problem. The research objectives were addressed into two research articles where study 1 (the meaning of emotion) was the first research article and study 2 (studying the emotion episodes and associated emotions) was the second research article. The objectives of study 1 were to determine the meaning of emotions as conceptualised in a literature review with specific reference to emotion dimensions; to determine how emotions and culture are conceptualised in a literature review with specific reference to the Setswana language group; to describe the Componential Emotion Theory in the literature as an approach to study the meaning of emotion in cultural contexts; to determine if the 24 emotion terms as measured by the Grid instrument, will refer to all components by revealing the meaning of an emotion structure in Setswana; to determine if the Meaning Grid will display acceptable alpha coefficients when compared with internationally studies having a value of 0, 80 and higher; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the Componential Emotion Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include the evaluation–pleasantness dimension; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the Componential Emotion Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include the potency–control dimension; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the Componential Emotion Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include the activation–arousal dimension; to determine if the meaning of emotion (as measured in the context of the Componential Emotion Theory approach) in a Setswana–speaking students sample will include the unpredictability dimension; and to draw conclusions and suggest future research about the meaning of emotion in the Setswana language group. In this part of the study, the sample consisted of (N=122) and was taken from a higher education institution in the North–West Province. A Setswana translated version of the shortened form of the Meaning Grid instrument was administered. Four pilot studies were conducted (Meaning Grid) which consisted of (N=28) and the data gathering was held in a higher education institution in the North West Province. After all four pilot studies had been conducted, the shortened form of the GRID (Translated in Setswana) was then administered using the paper and pencil method (61 emotion features). Furthermore, by utilising the SPSS program, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was executed to determine the number of factors and indicate the emotion dimensions present in the Setswana language group. In terms of inter–rater reliability, the cronbach–alpha for each respondent was calculated on their rating of emotion terms. A cut–off point for each item – total correlations of at least 0,20 – was used for inclusion for the final determination of reliability. In essence, it means that unreliable raters were dropped in order to keep the reliability high. The Componential Emotion Theory of Scherer (1987) was applied and indicated a four–factor model that should first be extracted namely: evaluation–pleasantness, activation–arousal, potency–control and unpredictability. However, examination of a three and four factorial extraction was not interpretable. The two emotion words, namely sadness and shame, were eliminated because they were outliers in the rotations done. Further inspection of the Scree–plot indicated that a two factor solution should be extracted. A principal component analysis (PCA) (done on the mean corrected scores) were therefore computed for two factors after a varimax rotation - which was interpretable as Evaluation–pleasantness and potency–control dimensions. The results and the interpretation of the two components (dimensions) are based on their relationship with the 61 emotion features. A further analysis was done to determine the component loadings of the 24 Grid emotion term on each factor. This gave an indication of the position of the emotion terms on the specific factors (evaluation–pleasantness and potencycontrol dimensions). Furthermore, the positions of each emotion term in relation with other emotions were graphically represented in a scatter plot. The objectives of study 2 were to conceptualise emotions at work as from a literature research; To determine the relevance of discrete emotions, emotion episodes and the use of the Affective Events Theory for the work context as presented in the research literature; to determine emotion episodes that are experienced in the workplace by Setswana employees; to determine emotion episodes and associated emotions reported on an extrinsic level of Setswana speaking working adults; to determine emotion episodes and associated emotions reported on an intrinsic level of Setswana speaking working adults; and to draw conclusions and make suggestions for future research about the emotion episodes and related emotions of Setswana employees. Within this part of the study a non–probability availability sample (N= 120) was taken from the mining industry, tourism industry, and community services including the government, manufacturing, agriculture, construction and the infrastructure industry. A pilot study was utilised as a prerequisite for the successful execution, and completion of this research study allowed the researcher to acquire thorough background knowledge about specific problems that the researcher intended to investigate. Thereafter, the Tswana employees understood the questions and could report without effort on emotion episodes at work that they experienced. Data collection was done through the Episode Grid, and two questions on emotion episodes were used for collecting emotion episodes in Setswana namely: the participants had to report their most intense emotion episode that they have experienced within their workplace in detail, for example, what happened? How did the episode begin? How did it evolve? How did it end? Secondly, the participants were asked to describe the three most important emotions or feelings that were experienced in the particular event. The described episodes were then categorised into different categories on intrinsic and extrinsic level experienced to the individual. Furthermore, the specific episodes were divided into two types of category levels namely extrinsic emotion episodes and intrinsic emotion episodes. The categories that were found on the extrinsic level concerning emotion episodes at work were acts of management, acts of colleagues, company procedure/company policy, acts of customers, work procedure, external environment and acts of subordinates. Concerning the intrinsic level about emotion episodes at work, the categories that were found included task problems/making mistakes, personal incidents, goal achievement, receiving recognition, physical incidents, discrimination, workload and lack of control. The emotions that were experienced on the extrinsic level comprised emotion terms such as anger, disappointment, anxiety, hurt, irritation, disgust, annoyance, fear, sadness, despair, worry, frustration, embarrassment, shame, hate, stress and anxiety. Regarding the emotions experienced on the intrinsic level, the emotion terms that were described included anger, disappointment, anxiety, hurt irritation, fear, sadness, despair, frustration, hate, pride, stress, compassion, guilt and happiness. Recommendations for the organisation and future research were made.
Thesis (M.Com. (Human Resource Management))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

User experience (UX) is a multi-dimensional user-product interaction involving positive and emotional usage. Fun experience is a component of UX which maintains distinctive dimensions. In this study these dimensions of the fun concept, namely the nature of the experience, the qualities of products that take place in the experience, and the emotional content of the fun experiences are investigated. The thesis is supported by arguments collected from the literature and the data from two empirical studies.

The issue of career transition in and out of sport has received increasing attention from researchers over the past three decades (e.g. Fortunato & Marchant, 1999; Lavallee, 2005; Park, 2012; Ryba, Stambulova & Ronkainen, 2016). However, there continues to be a paucity of research exploring the impact of ‘others’ on athletes’, or indeed former athletes’ transitional experiences. Therefore, an aim of this study was to provide a relational, emotional and socio-cultural analysis of former professional footballers’ multiple transitional experiences and, in particular, to how interactions and relationships with significant ‘others’ impacted upon their transitions. Data were collected through a series of in-depth, semi-structured, interviews with three participants alongside my own auto-ethnography. Throughout the study, the collection, analysis, and representation of data were features of an ongoing, reflexive, and iterative process (Tracy, 2013). Here, the analysis comprised of both emic and etic readings of the data which gave me the opportunity to explore emerging themes and issues in both future writings and in subsequent interviews (Sparkes & Smith, 2002). In keeping with my interpretive stance, the findings were principally understood in relation to Bauman’s (2012) liquid modernity, Crossley’s (2011) relational sociology, May’s (2013) sense of belonging, and Burkitt’s (2014a; 2014b) discussions of emotions and social relations. The work of Turner and Stets (2005) and Cooley (1964[1902) was also used to make sense of the emotions I experienced throughout my auto-ethnographic research. My analysis revealed that the participants understood their transitions through their interactions and relationships with a variety of significant others who played important roles in both decision-making and sense-making processes. Here, each transitional experience (both inside and outside of football) affected, and was affected by, the participants’ location in various networks of interaction. This was also evidenced in my own transition(s) as I approached the end of my playing days in (semi-) professional football where my emotions were also inextricably linked to my multiple identities and therefore multiple networks of social relations.

Abstract

As technology is invading the society of millions of people around the world today, more and more people are affected in their daily life by services such as Internet bank services, e-commerce, telecom services and ATM machines. Technical advances are providing new possibilities and solutions to many different customer needs. To be competitive on the market, companies must manage and take advantage of the opportunities technology is providing.

One of the characteristics of services which require a lot of technical integration is that it often involves little or no physical interaction between customer and service provider in the service encounter. Under these circumstances it is many times hard for companies to control how customers experience their services, since the customer response is not being directly revealed for the company. It is nevertheless important for service providers to understand how their present and potential customers are experiencing their offerings since this knowledge provide the acquisitions for the value of the service.

The present investigation aims to identify and analyze the dimensions that form the basis for the service experience and how it is linked to value in use. It further aims to study how users can contribute with information regarding the service experience within the technology-based service field.

The reason for choosing the technological base for this research is that it could be assumed, according to above mentioned arguments, that there is a need for service providers within the technological-based service field to better understand what their customers are experiencing. Also, these services are just in its initiation phase when it comes to service research and there is much to be done when it comes to understanding technology-based service experiences.

The research is based on a literature study of services experiences, as well as an empirical study of different functional and emotional dimensions of the technology-based service experience. Mobile phone users were invited to uncover the different aspects of their service experience and the value of different dimensions of service offerings created by other users and by companies.

The contribution of this study is a framework where the major influencing dimensions of a technology-based service experience are put together and describe how the service experience is linked to value in use. The study also presents results regarding how users can contribute with valuable information regarding the service experience by co-creating in a service development process. Users were found to be better when it comes to create services that satisfied several of the most demanded functions and emotions, among others functions that regarded cost saving, and emotions such as the feeling of security.

This dissertation examined the emotional and relational aspects of co-design, and how the co-design process for creating caring classrooms supported teacher learning. I drew on key elements of improvement science, as a type of design-based implementation research, to understand teachers as learners and as experts. I elaborated two layers of theory to guide this study. First, I conceptualized caring in the context of intentional relationship building with students, described characteristics of caring classrooms, and identified dilemmas that arise from caring. Then, I explored expansive learning and deliberative agency as concepts for understanding teacher learning. With a small group of teachers, we planned, implemented, studied, and revised the routine designed for improving relationships with students. We created a student survey to learn about students’ experiences and used data to guide revisions. Through qualitative data collection and analysis, I tested, revised, and refined my high-level conjecture that the co-design process supported teacher learning. The findings suggest teachers had opportunities to demonstrate deliberative agency, learn, and grow professionally. I described the evolution of the design and examined the ways the design team grappled with dilemmas. Teachers engaged in learning as they broke away from old routines to design and implement a new routine in their classrooms. I also examined teachers’ talk when looking at data and found that in analyzing student data together, talk turned both towards and away from deeper investigations of pedagogical practice and the practical measure. Teachers considered students’ experiences and feelings within their classrooms, which made the data more salient and contributed to the emotional dimensions of design work. In a case study of one teacher, I found that she grappled with dilemmas connected to the co-design process and caring for students, and she used the design team space to reflect on dilemmas and explore emotions related to the dilemmas. Through this study I show how improving teacher-student relationships requires risk-taking, creating classrooms can be complex, and the design team space can become a site of care.

Keeping forestland intact has emerged as a critical policy objective at state and federal levels. This target has been supported by substantial public investment. The collective impact from the bequest decisions of millions of landowning individuals and families has the potential to affect the extent and functionality of future forests in the United States. Despite a growing body of research devoted to studying these transitions in forest ownership, much remains unknown about how family forest owners make decisions in this arena. The social and emotional dimensions of woodland succession planning have been particularly under-examined. This thesis explores the process of planning for the future use and ownership of woodlands through in-depth analysis of 32 semi-structured interviews with family forest owners in Massachusetts, Maine, New York, and Vermont. The first article investigates how family forest owners evaluate and integrate stories derived from their social networks when planning for the future of their woodlands. Analysis of the themes contained in stories framed as “cautionary tales” revealed common fears surrounding succession planning. The second article explores the complexity of emotional relationships with family forests showing how emotional geographies manifest in the succession planning process. Together, these studies deepen understanding of how family forest owners plan for the future of private woodlands and offer implications for Extension and outreach.

The increase in white-collar crimes has become a common feature around the globe and

its impact has left many conglomerates despaired affecting businesses, economies,

employees and families that are somehow related to these organizations. The famous

money laundering and accounting scandals such as; Parmalat, Adelphia, Yukos Oil

Company, Qwest Communications International, Tyco, and WorldCom, are true bitter

realities of the corporate world. The dilemma is costing enterprises great amounts of

money to set the image right that keeps on getting wrong. People are hired on loads of

relevant work experience with excellent academic backgrounds, yet the strain of

dishonesty lurks within the individual worker of an organization.

The purpose of the research is to investigate the dismal realities that occur within the

recruiters’ conscious or subconscious mind during a recruitment and selection process

(the gateway to an organization). Our objective is to identify the dimensions of enterprise

hypocrisy and to understand and explain the scenarios and the ways professionals are

trying to cope with the matter.

The recruiters see the white collar crimes as a potential rising concern and are using

personality test such as the OPQ 32 (Occupational Personality Questionnaire) together

with other methods (interviews, references, intuition, education, etc.) in hiring the right

candidate for the job, which hopefully would be potentially harmless to the organization.

The findings are not based on a systematic comparative study and can therefore only be

interpreted as indicative.

Existing studies on happiness in consumer research argued that brands should contribute to consumers’ happiness through experiences, yet they have failed to discuss how individual brand experience dimensions could contribute to consumer happiness, leading to increased brand loyalty and price premium. Bridging brand experience and consumers’ orientation to happiness literature together, this thesis theoretically argues and empirically proves that brand experience could influence brand loyalty and price premium through the mediating effect of consumer happiness. Survey data collected from 1086 participants based on their restaurant dining experiences in the UK show that each brand experience dimension affects consumer behaviour outcomes differently. Relational brand experience contributes the most to happiness, brand loyalty and price premium, followed by emotional brand experience. The findings support the mediating role of happiness and its orientations between brand experience dimensions and consumer behaviour outcomes. Further, the result validates the three different orientations to happiness in a consumption context, and demonstrates that pleasure is the dominant route to happiness, compared to meaning and engagement. The thesis aids new light to existing understanding on brand experience and happiness. Marketers are recommended to focus their effort on delivering certain brand experience dimensions more effectively. For restaurant brand managers, relational and emotional brand experience dimensions are considered most important to acquire customers brand loyalty and price premium.

La majorité des systèmes de reconnaissance d'états affectifs est entrainée sur des données artificielles hors contexte applicatif et les évaluations sont effectuées sur des données pré-enregistrées de même qualité. Cette thèse porte sur les différents défis résultant de la confrontation de ces systèmes à des situations et des utilisateurs réels.Pour disposer de données émotionnelles spontanées au plus proche de la réalité, un système de collecte simulant une interaction naturelle et mettant en oeuvre un agent virtuel expressif a été développé. Il a été mis en oeuvre pour recueillir deux corpus émotionnels, avec la participation de près de 80 patients de centres médicaux de la région de Montpellier, dans le cadre du projet ANR ARMEN.Ces données ont été utilisées dans l'exploration d'approches pour la résolution du problème de la généralisation des performances des systèmes de détection des émotions à d'autres données. Dans cette optique, une grande partie des travaux menés a porté sur des stratégies cross-corpus ainsi que la sélection automatique des meilleurs paramètres. Un algorithme hybride combinant des techniques de sélection flottante avec des métriques de similitudes et des heuristiques multi-échelles a été proposé et appliqué notamment dans le cadre d'un challenge (InterSpeech 2012). Les résultats de l'application de cet algorithme offrent des pistes pour différencier des corpus émotionnels à partir des paramètres les plus pertinents pour les représenter.Un prototype du système de dialogue complet, incluant le module de détection des émotions et l'agent virtuel a également été implémenté.

Vikten av de fysiska och interaktiva omgivningsdimensionerna i servicelandskapet på livsstilshotell har omvärderats. Bakgrunden till detta beror på det pågående skifte som fortgått under en längre tid av den varudominanta logiken till den servicedominanta logiken. Att vara det hotell som får gästernas uppmärksamhet, helhjärtat, kan vara avgörande för vilket hotell de väljer. Det påverkas inte bara av hotellets läge, erbjudande av kärntjänst utan vilket typ av upplevelse de har att erbjuda. För att utforska det här byggs studien upp på Bitners modell för servicelandskap tillsammans med Pine och Gilmores upplevelseekonomi-modell. Genom fältstudier undersöks de materiella och immateriella aspekterna som kan ingå i omgivningsdimensionerna i servicelandskapet samt gästernas emotionella reaktioner på upplevelsen. Hotellen kategoriseras i upplevelseekonomi-modellen samt jämförs mellan varandra. Syftet med undersökningen är att generera kunskap kring vilka dimensioner och variabler som livsstilshotell använder, samt vilka som är mest värdefulla för att skapa en stark upplevelse. Studiens resultat visar att hotellen inom de olika kategorierna i upplevelseekonomi-modellen använder de interaktiva och fysiska omgivningsdimensionerna på olika sätt. Beroende på vilken typ av upplevelse hotellen vill skapa och förmedla krävs det olika mycket engagemang i de olika dimensionerna och dess variabler.
The importance of the physical and interactive dimensions of the service landscape in lifestyle hotels has been re-evaluated. The reason for this is due to the ongoing shift that has continued over a long period of time from the goods-dominant logic to the service-dominant logic. Being the hotel that gets the guests' attention, wholeheartedly, can be decisive for which hotel they choose. This is not only affected by the hotels location, core service offerings, but the kind of experience the hotel have to offer. To explore this, the essay uses Bitner's model for the servicescape together with Pine and Gilmore's experience economy model. Field studies investigate the material and intangible aspects that can be included in the ambient dimensions of the servicescape as well as the guests' emotional reactions to the experience. The hotels are categorized in the experience economy model and compared between each other. The purpose of the essay is to generate knowledge about the dimensions and variables that lifestyle hotels use. Which are most valuable for creating a strong experience based on the different categories in the experience economy model. The results of the study shows that the hotels within the different categories in the experience economy model use the interactive and physical environmental dimensions in different ways. Depending on the type of experience the hotels want to create and convey, the various levels of commitment to the different dimensions and its variables are required.

Covid-19 förändrade evenemangsbranschen och arrangörer fick ställa om och utveckladigitala evenemang. Den stora konkurrensen mellan evenemang och faktumet att evenemangsbranschen inte är tillräckligt digitalt mogen har bidragit till att forskning kring utformningen av digitala evenemang har blivit än mer väsentlig. I en förändradevenemangsomgivning blev det därmed viktigt att studera ett digitalt evenemang utifrån ett konsumentperspektiv för att bidra till att evenemangsarrangörer mer effektivt ska kunna utforma digitala evenemang. Upplevelserummet är den fysiska miljö där samtliga evenemang äger rum. Det är utifrån upplevelserummet som olika attribut formas och mynnar ut i kvalitetsdimensioner som skiljer sig åt beroende på evenemang, och påverkar besökares upplevda emotionella och funktionella värde. Genom att fokusera på både emotionellt- och funktionellt värde kan arrangörer maximera fördelarna från evenemanget och förhöja besökares upplevelse. Syftet med den här studien är således att skapa en ökad förståelse kring vilka dimensioner som är viktiga i utformningen av ett digitalt evenemang genom att studerabesökares upplevelse utifrån emotionellt- och funktionellt värde. Ett kvantitativt tillvägagångssätt har genomförts genom insamling av data i form av en webbaserad enkät. Studien tillämpades på ett internt digitalt företagsevenemang och enkäten fick 103 svar vilket resulterade i en 100 procentig svarsfrekvens. Svaren har därefter presenterats och analyserats. Utifrån studiens resultat visade det sig att informationstjänster, programinnehåll och produkter var viktiga kvalitetsdimensioner i utformningen av det specifika evenemanget. Det här bidrog till emotionellt- och funktionellt värde och har därmed varit avgörande faktorer i en förhöjdupplevelse. Fortsättningsvis visade resultatet att det fanns ett samband mellan emotionella och funktionella påståenden vilket betyder att det multidimensionella synsättet går att tillämpa på det här specifika digitala evenemanget. Dessutom hittade studien flera samband mellan de funktionella och emotionella påståendena vilket visar på att värdet från exempelvisinformationstjänster har ett samband med programinnehåll. Det betyder att värdet kan stärkas av att både informationen inför evenemanget gjorde att jag kunde njuta av evenemanget, och att upplägget på AW:n var underhållande.
Covid-19 changed the event industry and organizers had to change and develop digital events. The great competition among events and the fact that the event industry is not sufficiently digital mature has contributed to research on the design of digital events becoming even more significant. Accordingly, it became necessary in a changed event environment to study a digital event from a consumer perspective, in order to contribute to event organizers being able to design digital events more efficiently. The experience room is the physical environment where all events take place. It is based on the experience room where different attributes form and result in quality dimensions which differ depending on the event, and affect visitors' perceived emotional and functional value. By focusing on both emotional and functional value, organizers can maximize the benefits of the event and enhance visitors' experience. The purpose of this study is thus to create an increased understanding of which dimensions are important in the design of a digital event by studying visitors' experience based on emotional- and functional value. A quantitative approach has been implemented by collecting data through a web-based survey. The study is applied to an internal digital corporate event and the survey received 103 responses that result in a 100 percent response rate. The answers have then been presented and analyzed. Based on the results of the study, it turned out that information services, program content and products were important quality dimensions in the design of the specific event. This contributed to emotional- and functional value and has thus been decisive factors in an enhanced experience. Furthermore, the results showed that there was a connection between emotional and functional statements, which means that the multidimensional approach can be applied to this specific digital event. Additionally, the study finds connections between the functional and emotional statements indicating that the value from, for example information services has a connection with program content. This signifies that the value can be strengthened by the fact that both the information introduced to the event made it possible for me to enjoy the event, and that the layout of the AW was entertaining. The following essay is written in swedish.

The present study aimed to explore both situational (Emotional Display Rules and Affective Events) and dispositional antecedents (Four of Big Five personality dimensions
Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness) of emotional labor. Potential interaction effects of situational and dispositional variables on emotional labor
and long-term consequences of the construct were also examined. Data were collected from table servers working in café
s, restaurants, and hotels in Ankara, Istanbul, Kusadasi, (Aydin) and Antalya. The study was performed in three stages. In the first stage, diary study was conducted and Affective Events Scale was created for the service work. In the second stage, psychometric properties of the new scale were pilot tested. In the main study, reliabilities of the scales, hypotheses and potential moderation effects were tested with a total sample of 254 employees. Results revealed that emotional display rules were a significant predictor of both surface and deep acting. Positive events positively predicted emotional labor. Among dispositional antecedents, agreeableness was the only dimension that predicted surface acting. Deep acting was predicted by all of the personality dimensions utilized in the study, especially by agreeableness. On the other hand,conscientiousness had a marginally significant moderation effect on the relationship between emotional display rules and surface acting. With respect to consequences of emotional labor, both surface acting and deep acting positively predicted personal accomplishment. Deep acting was also positively related to job satisfaction, and negatively related to turnover intentions. Findings discussed and practical implications, limitations, and directions for future research were presented.

Un sentiment global d’intimité se construit à travers des composantes comportementales ainsi que, des expériences d’intimité qui correspondent à la perception de la réactivité du partenaire. De plus, la manière dont les individus appréhendent leurs relations interpersonnelles ainsi que leurs émotions et celles d’autrui, est susceptible d’influencer la construction de cette intimité. La qualité de l’intimité conjugale se caractériserait par trois dimensions : (1) un sentiment de connexion, (2) une bonne communication et (3) un partage de loisirs avec des amis communs (Article 1). En outre, la construction d’un sentiment d’intimité dans une relation de couple dépendrait du profil d’attachement des individus et de leurs compétences émotionnelles à gérer leurs émotions. Cependant, avoir des compétences élevées pour gérer les émotions des autres serait néfaste pour la qualité de l’intimité perçue (Article 2). Dans une interaction conflictuelle de couple, il existe une relation entre la réactivité perçue vis-à-vis de soi et de son partenaire et les réponses physiologiques des partenaires produites au cours de l'interaction. Plus précisément, la perception des partenaires de la réactivité de l’homme serait associée à des patterns d’activations physiologiques émotionnelles différents selon leur sexe. Aussi, la perception de l’homme envers sa propre réactivité lui permettrait une meilleure régulation émotionnelle (Article 3). Les comportements verbaux et non verbaux exprimés par les partenaires seraient également associés à un degré d’intimité différent selon le sexe (Article 4). Dans un contexte de maladie, ces comportements d’intimité exprimés entre les partenaires lors d’une interaction liée à leur vécu du cancer digestif refléteraient un ajustement émotionnel spécifique selon le rôle social de patient et d’aidant (Article 5). Une discussion intégrative de ces différents éléments empiriques nous amène à proposer des pistes de recherches et d’interventions thérapeutiques dans le domaine du couple
An overall feeling of intimacy is constructed through behavioral components as well as, experiences of intimacy that correspond to the perception of partner responsiveness. Besides, the way in which people shape their interpersonal relationships and their own emotions and that of others, might influence the construction of this intimacy. The quality of romantic intimacy would be characterized by three dimensions: (1) a feeling of connection, (2) good communication and (3) sharing of leisure time with mutual friends (Article 1). Furthermore, the construction of a feeling of intimacy in couple relationship would depend on the people’s profile of attachment and their emotional competences to deal with their own emotions. However, have high competences to deal with the emotions of others would be harmful for the quality of intimacy perceived (Article 2). In conflictive interaction of couple, there is a relation between the responsiveness perceived toward oneself and one’s partner. In particular, the husbands’ responsiveness perceived by the two partners would be associated with different patterns of physiological emotional arousal, according to their gender (Article 3). Verbal and nonverbal behaviors expressed by the partners would be also associated with a different level of intimacy according to the gender (Article 4). In a context of disease, these intimate behaviors expressed between the partners during an interaction about their life experience of the digestive cancer would reflect a specific emotional adjustment according to their social role of patient and caregiver (Article 5). An integrative discussion of these empirical evidences leads us to propose future research and clinical interventions in the field of couple relationships

Emotion research is an important research topic, thus making the measurement of emotion in the workplace crucial. In attempting to study, understand and measure the role of emotions in the human condition, various researchers have identified different theoretical models to manage the information they have gathered and the observations they have made. In order to study or scientifically investigate any human behaviour, it is essential that such behaviour can be measured, if not quantitatively, then at least qualitatively. However, what one finds with regard to emotion research and measurement are two–dimensional models. The existing affect has been described with a choice of two dimensions and structures, i.e. circumplex, positive and negative affect, tense and energetic arousal, and eight combinations of pleasantness and activation. These two dimensions and structures measure a person’s experiences and, thereafter, report them. The question is if these two–dimensional emotion models are sufficient to cover the broad and often complex dynamics of emotions. The start of multiple–emotion dimension models were reported by researchers, who identified a three–dimensional structure in the emotion domain that is suggestive of the Evaluation–Potency– Activation (EPA) dimensions in the connotative or affective meaning of words. However, in recent studies the sufficiency of two–dimension models to comprehensively investigate emotions was questioned. The three–dimensional emotion model was replicated in cross–cultural similarity sorting studies by other researchers. The similarity sorting studies also indicate the importance of studying emotions in specific cultural contexts. Studying emotion in different cultures is especially relevant in a country such as South Africa that has a variety of cultures and eleven official languages. Researchers followed an approach that studied the meaning of emotion in different cultural groups in the context of 144 emotion features using a componential emotion theory approach. Researchers argue in the groundbreaking research that was published in Psychological Science that emotion meaning has more than only two dimensions. The approach postulated by researchers was tested in a student population of three language groups, namely Dutch–, Englishand French–speaking students. According to researchers this is an empirical and theoretical method to study the meaning of emotions across cultures. However, apart from studying the meaning of emotions in specific cultural groups, research also attempts to determine the meaning of emotion in the natural contexts in which they occur. The relevant natural contexts for the field of Industrial Psychology are the work contexts. It is therefore also important to investigate the categories of emotion episodes in the work environment. The general goal of this study was therefore a) to investigate the emotion lexicon in the white Afrikaans–speaking working adult language group, b) to determine the cognitive emotion structure of this cultural group, c) to investigate the meaning of emotion as comprehensively as possible (multidimensional models of the meaning of emotion), and d) to determine the meaning and content of emotion episodes in the workplace. Research Article 1 The research was subsequently presented in two independent phases. Firstly, a free listing of emotion terms was compiled, and secondly the emotion terms were prototypically rated by Afrikaans–speaking people in South Africa. Both of these were then used as measuring instruments. A survey was designed to explore the research objectives utilising availability samples in two studies. The participants in the free–listing (N=70) and in the prototypicality (N=70) study consisted of native Afrikaans–speaking employees. The sample consisted of participants from the white ethnic group speaking Afrikaans within the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Free State, Mpumalanga, North–West and KZN provinces and use was made of an availability sample. After conducting the research, the emotion terms with the highest frequency, as identified during the first study, the free listing task, were to be happy (gelukkig wees), be sad (hartseer wees), love (liefde), anger (kwaad) and hateful (haatlik). The emotion terms with the lowest scores as identified during the free listing were uncomfortable (ongemaklik), painful (seer), be hurt (seergemaak wees), sympathetic (simpatiek) and shout/yell (skreeu). Correspondingly, the five (5) prototypical terms with the highest scores in Afrikaans were nice (lekker), fed–up/had enough (gatvol/“genoeg gehad”), loveable (liefdevol), anger (kwaad) and to be scared (om bang te wees). The five (5) least prototypical terms from the list generated in the free listing task were: unstable (onvas), bashfulness (skugterheid), captivation (geboeidheid), envy (naywer) and delight (opgetoënheid). From the information obtained in this research it was revealed that the emotion terms nice (lekker), fed up/had enough (gatvol/“genoeg gehad”) and loveable (liefdevol) are at this stage unique to the white Afrikaans language group. These terms had not been reported in any previously conducted prototypical studies. The results of this study contribute to a cross–cultural understanding of the emotion concepts within the Afrikaans–speaking language groups in South Africa. Research Article 2 A survey design was used to achieve the research objectives utilising availability samples in a series of one study. The participants of the Similarity study (N=131) consisted of native Afrikaans–speaking employees. The sample consisted of participants from the white ethnicity group speaking Afrikaans within the Eastern Cape, Gauteng, Free State, Mpumalanga, North– West, KZN and Northern Cape provinces and use was made of an availability sample. Results of Multidimensional Scaling revealed a three–dimensional cognitive emotion structure. The first dimension was the evaluation–pleasantness dimension. This dimension evaluates the pleasantness versus the unpleasantness of an emotion. This dimension is characterised by intrinsic appraisals of pleasantness and goal conduciveness and action tendencies of approach versus avoidance. The second dimension that emerged was a power–control dimension. This dimension is characterised by appraisals of control, how powerful or weak a person feels when a particular emotion is experienced. This includes feelings of dominance or submission, the impulse to act or withdraw and changes in speech and parasymphatic symptoms. The third dimension which emerged was an activation–arousal dimension. According to other researchers this arousal dimension is characterised by sympathetic arousal, e.g. rapid heartbeat and readiness for action. This study produced a cognitive emotion structure in a white Afrikaans–speaking working adult population in South Africa. To add value to the field of Industrial Psychology, the threedimension structure (evaluation–pleasantness, power–control and activation–arousal dimension) that was found, is very important and valuable when studying the meaning of emotion and can consequently be used as a reference for other emotion research constructs. If it is accurate as stated in literature, there are three and not only two emotion dimension structures, and researchers are missing out on a bigger picture for not drawing on the experience of emotion sufficiently. Research Article 3 A survey design and an availability sample (N=120) in the Eastern Cape, Free State and Gauteng provinces in South Africa was utilised for this study. The Meaning Grid was translated and backtranslated and adapted for use in Afrikaans. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients were obtained for the emotion terms. According to the results of the Meaning Grid instrument, the following emotion terms were the highest: disgust (afkeur) 0,95; pleasure (plesier) 0,94; stress (stres) 0,92; happiness (blydskap) 0,91; joy (vreugde) 0,91; fear (bang) 0,91; anger (angstig) 0,91 and hate (haat) 0,90. The emotion terms that scored the lowest with the Meaning Grid instrument were compassion (medelye) 0,79; pride (trots) 0,79 and contempt (minagting) 0,74. Out of the 24 emotion terms of the Meaning Grid instrument, 8 terms were above 0,90 and 13 were between 0,80 and 0,89. Only 3 terms were between 0,74 and 0,79 [compassion (medelye), pride (trots) and contempt (minagting)]. A three–factor solution was found which represented four emotion dimensions (evaluation, arousal/unpredictability and power) that were universal to the emotion structures found in European samples. Factor scores of the 24 Meaning Grid emotions indicate a three–factor solution that explained 62,2 % of the total variance. The first factor was labelled evaluation and explained 43,0% of the variance, the second factor was labelled arousal/unpredictability as it was a combination of arousal and unpredictability and explained 11,0% of the variance, and the third factor was labelled power and explained 8,2% of the variance. This study followed an approach that investigated the meaning structure of emotion in the sample group in the context of 144 emotion features using a componential emotion theory approach. Different researchers argued that emotion meaning has more than only two dimensions. A three–dimensional emotion structure was found that was universal to the emotion structures of three language groups in a European sample. Therefore, the meaning of emotions for this sample group is far more complex than the two–dimensional emotion models that are found in literature. According to the componential emotion theory approach, the 144 emotion features are very important building blocks for Industrial Psychology when studying the meaning of emotion. Research Article 4 A survey design was used in this research study. The Episode Meaning Grid was administered and participants reported on the two intense emotion experiences at work (in total 358 episodes). Employees rated their emotion experiences on features based on the componential emotion theory and also described the emotion events in their own words. The participants in the emotion episodes (N=179) study consisted of native white Afrikaans–speaking working adults. The sample consisted of participants from the white ethnicity group speaking Afrikaans within the Eastern Cape, Free State and North–West provinces and use was made of an availability sample. The results indicated a three–dimensional structure (evaluation–pleasantness, activation–arousal and power–control dimension) was identified within a white Afrikaans–speaking working adult language group. The first dimension was an evaluation–pleasantness dimension. The second dimension was an activation–arousal dimension. The third dimension was a power–control dimension. Regarding the reporting of emotion episodes one hundred and ninety seven respondents reported 84 satisfying emotion episodes and 267 less satisfying emotion episodes that took place at work. Nine different categories of episodes for satisfying emotions experienced were mentioned. It consists of behaviour of work colleagues, acts of boss/superior/management, goal achievement, receiving recognition, workplace policy, task recognition, personal incidents, emotion involvement and subordinate behaviour. The three highest categories of satisfying emotions episodes were “Goal Achievement” (N=31), “Receiving Recognition” (N=20) and “Personal Incidents” (N=10). Goal achievement describes situations where job related targets or goals were met, and receiving recognition refers to positive feedback from managers, supervisors and work colleagues on meeting targets. Nineteen different categories of episodes for less satisfying emotion episodes were mentioned. It consists of behaviour of work colleagues, acts of boss/superior/management, lack of goal achievement, lack of receiving recognition, workplace policy, task requirement, personal incidents, emotional involvement, subordinate behaviour, workload, work mistakes, customer behaviour, external environment, lack of control, physical well–being, involvement in disciplinary action, workplace strikes, wellness of colleagues and unfairness in the workplace. In the categories of less satisfying emotions episodes, the three highest were “Behaviour of Work Colleagues” (N=58), “Acts of Boss/Superior/Management” (N=47) and “Task Requirement” (N=33). The first two categories are appraised less satisfying behaviour towards oneself or others by work colleagues, managers, supervisors and customers. In terms of the categories of satisfying and less satisfying emotions episodes, less satisfying emotion episodes outnumbered satisfying emotions episodes by three to one. By making use of a multi–componential emotion model, the results confirm that the four factors of pleasantness, power, arousal, and unpredictability, in that order of importance, are essential to satisfactorily determine the emotion experience and meaning of emotion terms. A threedimensional emotion structure (evaluation, arousal and power) was found after determining the meaning of emotion in the natural contexts in which they occur. The answer to the question if these two–dimensional emotion models, as stated in literature, are sufficient to cover the broad and often complex dynamics of emotion, is certainly no. Recommendations for the organisation and future research were made.
Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

This thesis is about the neural mechanisms that underpin the expression of emotion in the human face and emotional modulation of behavioural responses. I designed 5 integrated studies and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to address specifically the neural mechanisms underlying human facial expression and emotional response. This work complements studies of emotion perception and subjective affective experience to provide a more comprehensive understanding of human emotions. I examined the neural underpinnings of emotional facial expression in three studies. I first demonstrated that emotional (compared to non-emotional) facial expression is not a purely motoric process but engages affective centres, including amygdala and rostral cingulate gyrus. In a second study I developed the concept of emotion contagion to demonstrate and verify a new interference effect (emotion expression interference, EEI). There is a cost (in reaction time and effort) to over-riding pre-potent tendency to mirror the emotional expressions of others. Several neural centres supporting EEI were identified (inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal sulcus and insula), with their activity across subject predicting individual differences in personal empathy and emotion regulation. In a third study I examined an interesting phenomenon in our daily social life: how our own emotional facial expressions influence our judgment of the emotional signals of other people I explored this issue experimentally to examine the behavioural and neural consequences of posing positive (smiling) and negative (frowning) emotional expressions on judgments of perceived facial expressions. Reciprocal interactions between an emotion centre (amygdala) and a social signal processing region (superior temporal sulcus) were quantified. My analysis further revealed that the biasing of emotion judgments by one's own facial expression works through changes in connectivity between posterior brain regions (specifically from superior temporal sulcus to post-central cortex). I further developed two versions of an emotion GO/NOGO task to probe the impact of affective processing on behavioural responses. GO represents response execution and NOGO represents response inhibition. I therefore investigated how different emotions modulate both these complementary response dimensions (i.e. execution and inhibition). This research line is pertinent to a major theme within emotion theory, in which emotion is defined in terms of response patterns (e.g. approach and withdrawal). My results confirmed that both emotional processing and induced emotional states have robust modulatory effects on neural centres supporting response execution and response inhibition. Importantly, my results argue for emotion as a context for response control. My work extends our understanding of human emotion in terms of the nature and effect of its expression and its influence on response system.

Le but de cette thèse était de comprendre le processus émotionnel per-compétitif opérant dans un contexte interpersonnel de performance sportive. Nous avons élaboré un modèle théorique appelé Processus Emotionnel Interpersonnel, que nous avons testé au travers de deux études menées sur des populations de rugby à XV de niveaux élites. La première étude était une analyse du processus émotionnel en contexte naturel. Une analyse des 44 entretiens relatifs à huit matches joués par 22 joueurs professionnels a notamment montré l’inclusion d’une dimension interpersonnelle enrichissant la théorie Relationnelle Cognitive et Motivationnelle des émotions (Lazarus, 1999) ainsi que le modèle de la Régulation émotionnelle (Gross, 1998). La seconde étude consistait en une recherche quasi-expérimentale, étudiant la dimension interpersonnelle du processus émotionnel et sa relation à la performance, chez l’ensemble des joueurs (N=30) des deux équipes participant à un match de rugby. Au travers d’un design quantitatif et qualitatif, les résultats ont permis de comprendre l’influence de la dimension interpersonnelle sur le vécu per-compétitif et la performance individuelle et collective. Ce travail de recherche a permis de valider le modèle du Processus Emotionnel Interpersonnel. Il offre des perspectives nouvelles dans la compréhension du processus émotionnel et de sa relation à la performance, ainsi que des applications pratiques à destination des entraîneurs
The aim of this doctoral work is to understand the emotional process occurring during competition in an interpersonal sport performance context. To this end, we elaborated a theoretical model that we labelled Interpersonal Emotion Process. This framework was based on knowledge from psychological literature on emotions, social psychology, and sport psychology. To test the validity of such a theoretical model, we conducted two studies on populations from rugby union playing at elite levels. The first study was an analysis of the emotional process in a natural setting. An analysis of 44 interviews, on eight games played by 22 professional players, showed especially the inclusion of an interpersonal dimension improving Cognitive-Motivational-Relational theory of emotions (Lazarus, 1999), and of Emotion Regulation model (Gross, 1998). The second study was a quasi-experimental research, studying the interpersonal dimension of the emotional process and its relationship to performance, among all players (N = 30) of the two teams taking part in a rugby match. Through a quantitative and qualitative design, the results allowed us to understand the influence of the interpersonal dimension of the competitive emotional experience and on individual and collective performance. This research has validated the Interpersonal Emotion Process model. It offers new perspectives for further research in understanding the emotional process and its relationship with performance, while also providing practical applications for coaches

The size of easily-accessible libraries of digital music recordings is growing every day, and people need new and more intuitive ways of managing them, searching through them and discovering new music. Musical emotion is a method of classification that people use without thinking and it therefore could be used for enriching music libraries to make them more user-friendly, evaluating new pieces or even for discovering meaningful features for automatic composition. The field of Emotion in Music is not new: there has been a lot of work done in musicology, psychology, and other fields. However, automatic emotion prediction in music is still at its infancy and often lacks that transfer of knowledge from the other fields surrounding it. This dissertation explores automatic continuous dimensional emotion prediction in music and shows how various findings from other areas of Emotion and Music and Affective Computing can be translated and used for this task. There are four main contributions. Firstly, I describe a study that I conducted which focused on evaluation metrics used to present the results of continuous emotion prediction. So far, the field lacks consensus on which metrics to use, making the comparison of different approaches near impossible. In this study, I investigated people’s intuitively preferred evaluation metric, and, on the basis of the results, suggested some guidelines for the analysis of the results of continuous emotion recognition algorithms. I discovered that root-mean-squared error (RMSE) is significantly preferable to the other metrics explored for the one dimensional case, and it has similar preference ratings to correlation coefficient in the two dimensional case. Secondly, I investigated how various findings from the field of Emotion in Music can be used when building feature vectors for machine learning solutions to the problem. I suggest some novel feature vector representation techniques, testing them on several datasets and several machine learning models, showing the advantage they can bring. Some of the suggested feature representations can reduce RMSE by up to 19% when compared to the standard feature representation, and up to 10-fold improvement for non-squared correlation coefficient. Thirdly, I describe Continuous Conditional Random Fields and Continuous Conditional Neural Fields (CCNF) and introduce their use for the problem of continuous dimensional emotion recognition in music, comparing them with Support Vector Regression. These two models incorporate some of the temporal information that the standard bag-of-frames approaches lack, and are therefore capable of improving the results. CCNF can reduce RMSE by up to 20% when compared to Support Vector Regression, and can increase squared correlation for the valence axis by up to 40%. Finally, I describe a novel multi-modal approach to continuous dimensional music emotion recognition. The field so far has focused solely on acoustic analysis of songs, while in this dissertation I show how the separation of vocals and music and the analysis of lyrics can be used to improve the performance of such systems. The separation of music and vocals can improve the results by up to 10% with a stronger impact on arousal, when compared to a system that uses only acoustic analysis of the whole signal, and the addition of the analysis of lyrics can provide a similar improvement to the results of the valence model.

Emociones han sido un objeto de estudio importante en Psicología. Otro tema bien estudiado es la percepción social. Esta tesis estudia cómo el contenido social de los estímulos afectivos puede modificar la respuesta emocional provocada por dichos estímulos. El objetivo principal de la tesis era investigar esta cuestión mediante diferentes métodos. Hemos empleado fotografías clasificándolas atendiendo a dos dimensiones afectivas básicas – valencia afectiva y activación. Para operativizar la variable “contenido social” dividimos los estímulos sociales en tres categorías (sin personas, con una persona y con dos o más personas) y introducimos una escala de autoinforme, “interacción social”, que participantes usaron para evaluar el grado de interacción social en imágenes. La parte experimental consiste en cuatro estudios. En el Experimento 1 obtuvimos la evaluación subjetiva de 200 imágenes afectivas para disponer de una base de imágenes equiparadas en valencia afectiva, activación y interacción social para usarlas en sucesivos experimentos. Además, estudiamos las relaciones entre las mencionadas dimensiones. En el Experimento 2 estudiamos respuestas periféricas: actividad electrodérmica, actividad electromiográfica facial y respuesta de parpadeo reflejo de sobresalto durante la observación pasiva de imágenes. En el Experimento 3 investigamos la actividad cerebral mediante la electroencefalografía durante una tarea atencional con imágenes como distractores. En el Experimento 4 introducimos una técnica novedosa para la captación de los movimientos de cabeza como indicadores del estado emocional. Según la evaluación subjetiva (Experimento 1) las imágenes agradables se valoraron como las más sociales. Observamos una correlación positiva entre la escala de interacción social y las escalas de valencia afectiva y activación sólo en el caso de las imágenes agradables: cuanto más social se percibe una imagen agradable, tanto más agradable y activadora es. La actividad electromiográfica del músculo corrugador superciliar era mayor en respuesta a imágenes desagradables con una persona que a imágenes desagradables sin personas (Experimento 2). La actividad electrodérmica era mayor cuando participantes vieron las imágenes desagradables con una persona que cuando vieron las imágenes desagradables sin personas y con dos o más personas. Pensamos que la situación social “uno a uno” provocó cierto estado de incertidumbre. Para explicar este resultado recurrimos al efecto del espectador, que consiste en que los espectadores de situaciones de emergencia son más responsables. Este efecto parece manifestarse en los patrones de la actividad periférica registrados por nosotros. La modulación emocional de la respuesta de parpadeo no fue influida por el contenido social. Probablemente, la base cerebral de percepción social es difusa y no puede modular directamente una respuesta tan rápida. En la tarea atencional con imágenes afectivas como estímulos distractores, las imágenes con dos o más personas provocaron una respuesta más rápida (Experimento 3), lo que interpretamos a la luz de la teoría de la facilitación social que postula que los humanos desempeñan unas tareas mejor en presencia de otras personas gracias a un aumento de activación. Este efecto conductual iba acompañado de la modulación de los potenciales evocados electroencefalográficos. La latencia de las ondas N1a, P2a, P2p, N2a y N2p era más corta y la amplitud de las ondas N2a y P3 era mayor en respuesta a imágenes con una y dos o más personas. Es decir, el procesamiento de tales estímulos es más rápido, pero requiere más recursos. La dispersión espacial de los movimientos de cabeza era menor durante la visión de imágenes agradables con una y dos o más personas que durante la visión de imágenes agradables sin personas (Experimento 4). Este hallazgo está de acuerdo con una visión evolucionista que supone que el ambiente social agradable provoca una sensación de seguridad que puede provenir de la naturaleza social de humanos.
Emotions have always been an important subject of study in Psychology. Another well-studied topic is social perception. This thesis studies how the social content of affective stimuli can modulate different responses provoked by such stimuli. The main aim of the present work was to investigate this question using different methods. We employed photographs and classified them according to two main affective dimensions - affective valence and arousal. To operationalise the term "social content”, first, we divided social stimuli into three categories (without people, with one person, and with two or more people) and, second, we introduced a self-report scale, "social interaction", that participants used to evaluate the degree of social interaction depicted in pictures. The experimental part consists of four studies. In Experiment 1 we obtained the subjective ratings of 200 pictures to build a set of pictures balanced in affective valence, arousal level and social interaction, in order to use these pictures in the following experiments. We also investigated the relationships between the aforementioned dimensions. In Experiment 2 we measured peripheral variables: electrodermal activity, facial electromyography and modulation of the startle blink response during the passive observation of pictures. In Experiment 3 we investigated the brain activity using the evoked potentials of the electroencephalogram during an attentional task with pictures as background distracters. In Experiment 4 we introduced a new technique for capturing the head movements as an indicator of emotional state and predisposition to act. According to subjective evaluation (Experiment 1), pleasant pictures were evaluated as the most social ones. We observed a positive correlation between the social interaction ratings and the affective valence and arousal ratings only for pleasant pictures (but not for neutral and unpleasant pictures): the more social a pleasant picture was, the more pleasant and arousing was considered. The electromyographic activity of the corrugator supercilii muscle was greater to unpleasant pictures with one person than to unpleasant pictures without people (Experiment 2). Electrodermal response was greater when participants watched unpleasant pictures with one person than when they watched unpleasant pictures without people and with two or more people. We think that the "one-to-one" social situation caused a state of uncertainty, and for a possible explanation we referred to the bystander effect that consists in that in emergency situations observers are more responsible when they are alone. This effect seems to manifest itself in the physiological patterns we obtained. However, the startle blink response was not influenced by the social content. A possible interpretation is that the brain underpinnings of social perception are diffuse and cannot directly modulate the startle blink reflex that develops very quickly. In the attentional task pictures with two or more people provoked a faster response (Experiment 3). We interpret this result in the light of the theory of social facilitation that postulates that humans perform a task better in the presence of others thanks to the increase of arousal. The data on the cerebral activity, as measured by event-related potentials, revealed that the latency of N1a, P2a, P2p, N2a and N2p was shorter and the amplitude of the N2a and P3 was larger to pictures with one person and two or more people. Thus, the processing of social stimuli is faster but requires more resources. The spatial spread of head movement was lesser when viewing pleasant pictures with one and two or more people (Experiment 4). This finding is consistent with an evolutionary theory that assumes that pleasant social environment causes a sense of security that might come from the social nature of humans that allowed them to survive.

The creation of realistic and believable Three-Dimensional (3D) human characters continues to be an important goal for many modern 3D animators. However, the relationship between quality of 3D human animation and the way in which the audience responds is not yet understood. Since the audience's subjective judgement has implications for their perception and emotional response, it is important to find ways to address whether these are reported similarly by audiences. Moreover, the Uncanny Valley model, which describes a drop in believability as human-like characters become more realistic, assumes that the audience's perception would be affected by their emotional response. Therefore many 3D animators try to improve realism and believability so their 3D human animations cross over the Uncanny Valley. This thesis explore a number of components of 3D human characters and proposes a new model. for better understanding the interplay between 3D human animation and the audience. A review of the literature established that the audience's subjective feeling and emotional response are different aspects of audience perception, although both relate to their prior experience. This new model establishes that 3D human character's Appearance and Movement properties could influence the audience's perception of visual realism, but they also interact with the Contextual properties, which may not match the audience's expectations. These Contextual properties, including emotional expressions, are becoming increasingly important, especially when the 3D human characters are performing in a realistic context. Therefore this thesis investigated a number of factors influencing cephalic animation and perception of cephalic animation in 3D human characters. Empirical studies demonstrated that a dynamic displayed 3D human cephalic animation with speech can significantly affect the audience's subjective judgement, in terms of Eeriness, Believability and Actual Visual Realism. Further investigation demonstrated that there is a range of subcomponents of movements, which affect the audience's subjective judgement.Neck auxiliary, gaze behaviour and eye region all contributed to the audience perception and emotional response in different ways. This thesis adds to this understanding and will facilitate 3D animators to create 3D human characters which can better influence the audience's subjective judgement. Moreover, this thesis suggests that there is more to understanding animated display than simply the display itself or the sum of its component parts.

Existing 3D human face modelling methods are confronted with difficulties in applying flexible control over all facial features and generating a great number of different face models. The gap between the existing methods and the requirements of emotional bio-robots applications urges the creation of a generic 3D human face model. This thesis focuses on proposing and developing two new methods involved in the research of emotional bio-robots: face detection in complex background images based on skin colour model and establishment of a generic 3D human face model based on NURBS. The contributions of this thesis are: A new skin colour based face detection method has been proposed and developed. The new method consists of skin colour model for skin regions detection and geometric rules for distinguishing faces from detected regions. By comparing to other previous methods, the new method achieved better results of detection rate of 86.15% and detection speed of 0.4-1.2 seconds without any training datasets. A generic 3D human face modelling method is proposed and developed. This generic parametric face model has the abilities of flexible control over all facial features and generating various face models for different applications. It includes: The segmentation of a human face of 21 surface features. These surfaces have 34 boundary curves. This feature-based segmentation enables the independent manipulation of different geometrical regions of human face. The NURBS curve face model and NURBS surface face model. These two models are built up based on cubic NURBS reverse computation. The elements of the curve model and surface model can be manipulated to change the appearances of the models by their parameters which are obtained by NURBS reverse computation. A new 3D human face modelling method has been proposed and implemented based on bi-cubic NURBS through analysing the characteristic features and boundary conditions of NURBS techniques. This model can be manipulated through control points on the NURBS facial features to build any specific face models for any kind of appearances and to simulate dynamic facial expressions for various applications such as emotional bio-robots, aesthetic surgery, films and games, and crime investigation and prevention, etc.

Doutoramento em Marketing e Estratégia
The purpose of this thesis is to analyze experience dimensions, using Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) model applied to serious leisure context, looking at customer perspective, in order to measure the connection of the customer to the experience event. We use experiential paradigm from the marketing stream and take into account, on one hand, decision-making factors (i.e. characteristics of the event, socialization and networking) and emotions (pleasure and arousal, felt at the beginning of the activity) as antecedents and, on the other hand, the assessment of experience (using customer satisfaction and memory variables) and the customer behavior (return) as output. We perform a survey with 445 valid questionnaires collected from 5th BTT Marathon - Rota do Bacalhau participants, a serious leisure activity context, which occurred on June 1st, 2014. The main findings show that Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) model is also valid in a serious leisure activity. The participation decision-making factors selected (i.e. characteristics of event, socialization and networking) explained 40,4 per cent of the variation in Education, 19,1 per cent of the variation in Escapism, 18,6 per cent of the variation in Entertainment and 13,9 per cent of variation in Esthetics. These results confirm the experience dimensions proposed by Pine e Gilmore’s (1998) model defined according to level of active participation (active /passive) and the level of connection (absorption/immersion). Positive emotions felt at the beginning of the event are positive and from pleasure. The customer’s outcomes of experience are not customer satisfaction, memory and retour. Instead, we have a new dimension called experience assessment. The results show that all the experience dimensions defined by Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) Model explaining 43 per cent of the variation in the variable Experience Assessment. The results do not group the dimensions according to axis XX (related to the level of participation active/passive) or to axis YY (related to the level of connection absorption/immersion). Instead the results show the contribution of experience dimension in cross way. In descending order, the experience dimensions which contribute most to explain the Experience Assessment are: Esthetics/Education (i.e. physical connection in passive participation/active participation with a mental stimulus) and Entertainment/Escapism (i.e. passive participation with a mental stimulus/physical connection in an active participation).
O objetivo desta tese é analisar as dimensões da experiência, aplicando o modelo dos autores Pine e Gilmore (1998) ao contexto de lazer sob a perspectiva do cliente, com o propósito de medir a relação entre o cliente e a experiencia do evento. Usa-se o paradigma experimental da perspectiva do marketing, tendo em consideração, por um lado, os fatores de tomada de decisão do cliente (como sejam, características do evento, a socialização e a rede de contactos) e as emoções (prazer e entusiasmo, sentidas no início do evento) como antecedentes, e por outro lado, a avaliação da experiência (com a satisfação do cliente, memória) e o comportamento do cliente (fidelização do cliente) como resultados. Usa-se o inquérito por questionário com uma amostra de 445 participantes na 5ª Maratona BTT - Rota do Bacalhau participantes, num contexto de atividade de lazer, realizada a 1 de Junho de 2014. Os principais resultados mostram que o modelo de Pine e Gilmore (1998) também é válido para as actividades de lazer. Os fatores de tomada de decisão selecionados (características do evento, a socialização e a rede de contactos) explicam 40,4% da variação na dimensão Educação, 19,1% na dimensão Evasão, 18,6% na dimensão Entretenimento e 13,9% na dimensão Estética. Estes resultados confirmam as dimensões da experiencia proposto no Modelo de Pine e Gilmore (1998), definido em termos de nível de participção (activa / passiva) e do nível de envolvimento (mental/físico). As emoções sentidas no início do evento são de prazer e positivas. Os resultados da avaliação da experiência pelo cliente não foram a satisfação do cliente, memória e o comportamento do cliente em termos de repetição da experiência. Em vez disso, surgiu uma nova dimensão denominada avaliação da experiência. Os resultados mostram que todas as dimensões da experiência definidas no modelo de Pine e Gilmore (1998) explicam 43% da variação da variável avaliação da experiência. Os resultados não agrupam as dimensões segundo os eixos XX (referentes ao nível de participção activa/passiva) ou os eixos YY (referentes ao nível de envolvimento mental/físico). Em vez disso, os resultados evidenciam o contributo das dimensões de forma cruzada. Por ordem descrescente, as dimensões que mais contribuem para a explicação da avaliação da experiência são: Estética/Educação (envolvimento físico exercido de forma passiva/participação activa com estímulo mental) e o Entretenimento/Evasão (participação passiva com estímulo mental/ envolvimento físico exercido de forma activa).

Extant research on temperament shows that it may be related to certain developmental outcomes. However, according to the goodness-of-fit hypothesis (Chess and Thomas, 1999), developmental outcomes are the result of how well the biological tendencies of an individual (i.e. temperament) fit with the contextual demands of their environment. Thus, temperament should only affect developmental outcomes as a function of their environmental context. The current study proposes that parent temperament may serve as an environmental context that interacts with adolescent temperament to affect the development of the adolescent emotion regulatory system. Structural equation modeling results revealed parent temperament, specifically parent effortful control, to moderate the relationship between adolescent temperament and the adolescent emotion regulatory system. Several gender differences were also found for both main and interaction effects. Adolescent negative affect was negatively related to emotion regulation for girls only. Parent effortful control moderated the relationship between adolescent effortful control and suppression use also for girls only. Parent effortful control moderated the relationship between adolescent surgency and emotion lability for boys only, and parent effortful control moderated the relationship between adolescent surgency and suppression for both boys and girls, but in opposite directions. The interaction term was negatively related to suppression for girls, and it was positively related to suppression for boys. Results have several implications for potential parenting interventions and may inform programs that teach emotion regulation strategies.
Ph. D.

Education is currently in the midst of a serious crisis in terms of leadership sustainability, retention, recruitment and succession. There are those who would cite the constant barrage of educational change and reform, along with the over-emphasis on accountability for outcomes, as the major reasons for making the role of headteacher or principal a less and less attractive career option. However, even under increasingly difficult circumstances, there are still school leaders who continue to do an exceptional job and who are sustained and energized by it while others, facing the same leadership challenges and difficulties, fall by the wayside. This research study explores the role of emotional intelligence in explaining the disparity. The concept of emotional intelligence is a relatively new construct by comparison with cognitive intelligence, providing different insights from traditionally associated measures of intelligence. From the emergence of the construct in the early 1990s to current times much has been written about emotional intelligence in relation to the world of work and effective leadership per se, but far less specifically related to the role it can play in effective school leadership. The research study therefore sets out to root the construct firmly in the world of education by carrying out an extensive review of the literature, using the outcomes to develop a school-based emotional intelligence model of effective school leadership and testing out the credence of the developed model through a comparative study of a number of acknowledged outstanding secondary school and academy headteachers and principals.The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter outlines the purpose of the study that is to determine if emotional intelligence offers a different insight from those traditionally associated with effective school leadership. Further to this, it sets the scene for the exploration of the theoretical framework best suited to the purpose and nature of this research. The second chapter through an examination and review of the literature illustrates the emergence of the differing schools of thought in relation to the emotional intelligence construct and further informs the chosen theoretical framework which supports the development of a model for effective school leadership. Chapter 3 examines the possible research methodologies and approaches and considers the most appropriate forms for investigating the key elements arising from the proposed study. The fourth chapter discusses the research findings from the semi-structured interviews and the comparative outcomes from an integrated thematic analysis of the cases and further informs the developing model for effective school leadership. Chapter 5 provides an evaluation drawing conclusions and recommendations from what has been established through the research and what can be learnt from best practice. How to proceed in successfully sustaining, developing, retaining, and recruiting secondary school and academy leaders now and in the future, and the role the developed model could play in this, are proposed as opportunities for further lines of research.The thesis as a whole not only provides new information on how the challenges and complexities of leading secondary schools and academies can be successfully met and supported, but also offers a practical model for building emotionally intelligent school communities through emotionally intelligent leadership.The primary method of research is semi-structured interviews and the comparative thematic analysis of the findings supported by review of the literature.

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In recent years, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has shown increased interest on the confluence of emotional factors in UX with systems, aiming to understand user¿s emotion during the experience with a product. New sensor technologies allow us to collect physiological measures of users, and consequently collect data that allow the analysis of emotion. However, it is still a challenge for HCI researchers to understand user¿s emotions. Some psychophysiological measures (EEG, GSR/EDA and HR) have already been correlated with both valence and arousal (dimensions of emotion), but there is no consensus which psychophysiological measure better represents the emotion¿s dimensions. This research work investigated the use of psychophysiological measures in HCI experiments, and aimed to answer some related questions, such as "Can psychophysiological measures represent user¿s dimensions of emotion during an experience?". The results using Pearson¿s r showed important correlations, and gave us statistical evidence to elaborate an approach (called ETUXE) to support UX researchers in the use of psychophysiological measures in HCI experiments, as a complement of traditional methods of evaluation. We found correlations between psychophysiological measures and the dimensions of emotion, but not for all types of experience, and between psychophysiological measures and user¿s errors. This scenario shows an opportunity for UX evaluation methods, once a future work considers the use of psychophysiological measures.
Nos últimos anos, a comunidade de Interação Homem-Computador (IHC) mostrou maior interesse na confluência de fatores emocionais na UX com sistemas, visando compreender a emoção do usuário durante a experiência com um produto. Novas tecnologias de sensores viabilizam coletar medidas fisiológicas dos usuários e, consequentemente, dados úteis à análise da emoção. No entanto, ainda é um desafio para os pesquisadores de IHC entender as emoções dos usuários. Algumas medidas psicofisiológicas (EEG, GSR / EDA e HR) já foram correlacionadas com valência e excitação (dimensões da emoção), mas não há consenso sobre qual medida psicofisiológica representa melhor as dimensões da emoção. Este trabalho de pesquisa investigou o uso de medidas psicofisiológicas em experimentos de IHC e teve como objetivo responder a algumas questões relacionadas, como "As medidas psicofisiológicas podem representar as dimensões da emoção do usuário durante uma experiência?". Os resultados usando r de Pearson mostraram correlações importantes e nos forneceram evidências estatísticas para elaborar uma abordagem (chamada ETUXE) para apoiar pesquisadores da UX no uso de medidas psicofisiológicas em experimentos de IHC, como um complemento aos métodos tradicionais de avaliação. Encontramos correlações entre as medidas psicofisiológicas e as dimensões da emoção, mas não para todos os tipos de experiência, e entre as medidas psicofisiológicas e os erros dos usuários. Este cenário apresenta oportunidades para métodos de avaliação de UX, uma vez que um trabalho futuro considera o uso de medidas psicofisiológicas.

Thesis (M.S.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Dept. of Family Studies. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.

Many aspects of teaching involve the personal dimension of teaching and yet this dimension is often neglected and overlooked as we prepare teachers and sustain teachers in their work. The personal beliefs, attitudes and emotions of teachers often determine the decisions that teachers make in their classrooms. Increasingly, educational researchers have found that effective teachers are aware of this dimension. The aim of this study was to better understand how teachers' self perceptions and understandings of teaching evolve and change across their professional lives and what events contribute to these understandings. A series of in-depth individual interviews were conducted with six early career public education teachers who were also alumni of the graduate teacher education program at Virginia Tech. Interview data were supplemented with a review of artifacts from preservice teacher education program, visual representations of teacher identity development at various stages over the career of teaching and a timeline of significant events encountered during the teaching career. Results of this research suggest that teachers' understandings of the multiple complexities of teaching deepen within the first years of teaching; teaching is emotional work; and the context of teaching heavily influences teachers' practice of teaching regardless of their beliefs about teaching. Suggestions for university teacher education programs and local school districts are discussed.
Ph. D.

The PhD thesis aimed to characterize the dynamic or temporal dimension of the emotional experience assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Brain response to primary emotional stimuli and basal brain functional connectivity during a sustained resting-state have been analyzed using a dynamic approach in healthy subjects and in patients suffering from fibromyalgia and major depression (MDD), both disorders showing relevant abnormalities in the affective sphere. The technical advance recently incorporated to the field of fMRI data acquisition and analysis has made possible the dynamic study of the human emotional experience from a brain-system perspective.

Two different approaches were employed. The first approach (i) was intended to dynamically characterize brain responses in emotion circuits when specifically targeted by aversive painful stimulation, considered a primary elicitor of emotional responses, in healthy subjects and in the selected clinical populations. The second approach (ii) specifically aimed to dynamically characterize the "baseline" functional organization of distinct emotion-processing circuits in healthy subjects and in a core affective disorder such as major depression.

Four studies compose the PhD thesis. The first study assessed the existence of regional specialization within the right lateral aspect of the frontal cortex, important for the affective modulation of pain perception, on the basis of their response dynamics during mechanical painful stimulation in a group of healthy subjects. Three distinct locations were found with separate temporal courses of activation showing each of them a different contribution to the final experience of pain reported by the subject. In the second study, information concerning the actual brain response dynamics (time-courses of brain responses) to painful stimulation were used in a group of fibromyalgia patients (and in healthy subjects) to better characterize their overall subjective pain experience and the specific contribution of brain emotional processing abnormalities to such a clinical disorder. The dynamic analysis approach successfully identified relevant abnormalities in the patients' response to pain that would have not been possibly detected with a conventional model-based approach based on the fixed stimulus duration. The third study aimed to assess possible alterations in the baseline functional organization of the emotion-related brain networks during resting-state (stimulation free) conditions in a group of MDD patients, characterized by a continuous and severe negative affective state. Gray-matter abnormalities observed in MDD patients guided the functional connectivity study, which successfully captured major brain networks relevant to MDD physiopathology. Overall, the baseline functional disposition of the brain systems under study revealed functional connectivity disruptions (loss of coherence between fMRI signal fluctuations in distinct brain regions) affecting most of the networks, coinciding with the general hypo-functional state characterizing such patients. Specific functional connectivity enhancements were also found in regions integrating the basic threat response circuit, which may be associated with the sustained stress characterizing MDD patients. Finally, the fourth study aimed to characterize the temporal changes in the abnormal responses to aversive painful stimulation in MDD patients following one and eight weeks of antidepressant treatment observed within relevant emotion brain circuits, and the specific brain correlates of affect-related symptomatic improvement in such patients. The dynamic study successfully identified (i) the normalization of brain hyper-responses to painful stimulation in emotion-related systems in MDD patients, associated with their symptomatic improvement following antidepressant treatment (ii) brain imaging correlates of symptomatic improvement in specific clinical dimensions of interest (iii) baseline brain response measurements predicting clinical responders following 8 weeks of antidepressant treatment. All in all, the four studies presented in the PhD thesis constitute a step forward in the dynamic characterization of how the brain constructs emotion perception and sustained affective states in the context of both health and disease.

[Truncated abstract] Attentional and interpretive biases are important dimensions of individual difference that have been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of a range of clinical problems. Yet there has been no systematic investigation into the relationship between these dimensions of individual difference. The current research program tested predictions derived from two competing theoretical accounts of the relationship between attentional and interpretive biases. The Common Mechanism Account proposes that cognitive biases represent concurrent manifestations of a single underlying selective processing mechanism. The Independent Mechanism account proposes that independent mechanisms underlie each bias. . . An apparent contradiction is that the manipulation of one bias served to also modify the other bias, despite the observation that the magnitude of the resulting change in both biases was uncorrelated. Neither the Common Mechanism nor the Independent Pathways accounts can adequately explain this pattern of results. A new account is proposed, in which attentional and interpretive biases are viewed as representing mechanisms that are related but that are not the same. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed, including the possibility that the two biases each may best predict emotional reactions to quite different stressful events and that training programs designed to attenuate allocation of attentional resources to threat may serve to reduce both attentional and interpretive selectivity in emotionally vulnerable individuals.

This bachelor thesis discusses the conveying power of the audio and visual media in an audiovisual creative process based on the concept of audiovisual dissonance and Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell, 1980) with its key components, valence and arousal. In this design process we use the research key concept of audiovisual dissonance as a design perspective.Dissonance can also be described as a contradiction, with this an audiovisual dissonance can be seen as a contradiction between the audio and visual media. Chion (1994) coined the term audiovisual counterpoint which he describes as when the picture and the sound doesn’t match. In this design process we strived to create dissonance between audio and visual representations of different emotions. To create these dissonances the design process uses the Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell, 1980) which is a way to organize emotions in a two-dimensional coordinate system in relation to each other and their experienced valence-arousal. Valence is the concept that describes if the emotion is positive or negative while arousal is the concept that describes how intense the emotion is. The proximity between each of the emotions is based on their similarities in how they are experienced. This study is based on the idea to get a better understanding of how the audio and visual media affects a person’s emotional experience and how dissonance could be created between these two forms of media. The study resulted in a creative process with a strong connection to previous research in affect and media technology related work procedures. The creation of a matrix based on previous research created a focus and an approach that was beneficial for the creative process. The study deals with questions about effect in cooperation with the audio and the visual medium. New questions have emerged where we question whether it’s the physical properties of the medium or their association in everyday life that determines the experienced affect.
Detta kandidatarbete diskuterar ljud och bilds förmedlande krafter i en audiovisuell skapande process utifrån begreppet audiovisuell dissonans och Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell, 1980) samt dess nyckelbegrepp valence-arousal. Vi har valt att applicera undersökningens centrala begrepp audiovisuell dissonans som designperspektiv. Dissonans kan också beskrivas som motsägelse, en audiovisuell dissonans är då en motsägelse mellan ljud och bild. Chion (1994) myntade begreppet audiovisual counterpoint vilket han beskriver som när det audiella och det visuella mediet inte stämmer överens. Vi har i arbetet strävat efter att skapa dissonans mellan representationer av olika känslor i det audiella samt visuella mediet. För att skapa dessa dissonanser använder sig undersökningen av Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell, 1980) vilket är ett sätt att placera ut känslor i ett tvådimensionellt koordinatsystem i relation till varandra utifrån känslans upplevda valence-arousal. Valence är begreppet som beskriver hur positiv eller negativ en känsla är medan arousal beskriver hur intensiv känslan är. Detta koordinatsystem baseras på att känslor som är placerade nära varandra har mer gemensamt än de känslor som är placerade långt ifrån varandra. Denna undersökning syftar till att kunna få en tydligare bild av hur det audiella och det visuella mediet påverkar en persons emotionella upplevelse samt hur en dissonans kan skapas mellan dessa två medier. Undersökningen resulterade i en skapande process med stark koppling till tidigare forskning kring emotionella stimuli samt medietekniska arbetssätt. Skapandet av en matris genom sammanställning av den tidigare forskningen skapade fokus och ett tillvägagångssätt som lett den skapande processen framåt. Undersökningen hanterar frågor kring emotionella stimuli i samverkan med det audiella och visuella mediet. Nya frågor har framträtt där vi frågar oss om det är de audiella samt visuella mediets fysiska uppbyggnad eller deras association till vardagen som ligger till grund för vilka känslor som framkallas.