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Euphoria

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124-489: Euphoria ( / juː ˈ f ɔːr i ə / yoo- FOR -ee-ə ) is the experience (or affect ) of pleasure or excitement and intense feelings of well-being and happiness . Certain natural rewards and social activities, such as aerobic exercise , laughter , listening to or making music and dancing, can induce a state of euphoria. Euphoria is also a symptom of certain neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders , such as mania . Romantic love and components of

248-522: A sine qua non condition for pleasurable hedonic reactions to music in humans. The various stages of copulation may also be described as inducing euphoria in some people. Various analysts have described either the entire sexual act, the moments leading to orgasm , or the orgasm itself as the pinnacle of human pleasure or euphoria. A euphoriant is a type of psychoactive drug which tends to induce euphoria. Most euphoriants are addictive drugs due to their reinforcing properties and ability to activate

372-551: A 10-item negative affect scale. The PANAS-X is an expanded version of PANAS that incorporates negative affect subscales for Fear, Sadness, Guilt, Hostility, and Shyness. I-PANAS-SF – The International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short Form is an extensively validated brief, cross-culturally reliable 10-item version of the PANAS. Negative Affect items are Afraid, Ashamed, Hostile, Nervous and Upset. Internal consistency reliabilities between .72 and .76 are reported. The I-PANAS-SF

496-473: A beneficial role in increasing skepticism and decreasing gullibility. Because negative affective states increase external analysis and attention to details, people in negative states are better able to detect deception. Researchers have presented findings in which students in negative affective states had improved lie detection compared to students in positive affective states. In a study, students watched video clips of everyday people either lying or telling

620-421: A better quality descriptions and greater amount of information and details. These results show that negative mood can improve people's communication skills. A negative mood is closely linked to better conversation because it makes use of the hippocampus and different regions of the brain. When someone is upset, that individual may see or hear things differently than an individual who is very upbeat and happy all

744-593: A certain amount of cognitive processing of information has been accomplished. In this view, such affective reactions as liking, disliking, evaluation, or the experience of pleasure or displeasure each result from a different prior cognitive process that makes a variety of content discriminations and identifies features, examines them to find value, and weighs them according to their contributions (Brewin, 1989). Some scholars (e.g. Lerner and Keltner 2000) argue that affect can be both pre- and post-cognitive: initial emotional responses produce thoughts, which produce affect. In

868-442: A certain situation. They will jump right to their current mood when asked a question. However, some mistake this process when using their current mood to justify a reaction to a stimulus. If they are only a little sad, their reactions and input may be negative as a whole. First impressions are one of the most basic forms of judgments people make on a daily basis; yet judgment formation is a complex and fallible process. Negative affect

992-434: A colored box, but the participants did not know that they would eventually be asked what color box the word appeared in. Motivation intensity refers to the strength of urge to move toward or away from a particular stimulus. Anger and fear affective states, induced via film clips, resulted in more selective attention on a flanker task compared to controls as indicated by reaction times that were not very different, even when

1116-590: A common practice in South- and Southeast Asia – produces stimulant effects and euphoria. The major psychoactive ingredients – arecoline (a muscarinic receptor partial agonist ) and arecaidine (a GABA reuptake inhibitor ) – are responsible for the euphoric effect. Certain depressants can produce euphoria; some of those drugs in this class include alcohol in moderate doses, γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), and ketamine . Some barbiturates and benzodiazepines may cause euphoria. Euphoriant effects are determined by

1240-849: A departure from earlier psychological research, which was characterized by a unilateral emphasis on the benefits of positive affect . Both states of affect influence mental processes and behavior. Benefits of negative affect are present in areas of cognition including perception , judgement , memory and interpersonal personal relations. Since negative affect relies more on cautious processing than preexisting knowledge, people with negative affect tend to perform better in instances involving deception , manipulation, impression formation , and stereotyping . Negative affectivity's analytical and detailed processing of information leads to fewer reconstructive-memory errors, whereas positive mood relies on broader schematic to thematic information that ignores detail. Thus, information processing in negative moods reduces

1364-458: A different view of the world and what goes on in it, thus making their conversations different and interesting to others. Results of one study show that participants with negative affectivity were more careful with the information they shared with others, being more cautious with who they could trust or not. Researchers found that negative mood not only decreases intimacy levels but also increases caution in placing trust in others. Negative affect

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1488-518: A dopamine precursor ( levodopa ), dopamine antagonist ( risperidone ), and a placebo on reward responses to music – including the degree of pleasure experienced during musical chills , as measured by changes in electrodermal activity as well as subjective ratings – found that the manipulation of dopamine neurotransmission bidirectionally regulates pleasure cognition (specifically, the hedonic impact of music) in human subjects. This research suggests that increased dopamine neurotransmission acts as

1612-427: A faster reaction to name the smaller letters within the larger letter. A source-monitoring paradigm can also be used to measure how much contextual information is perceived: for instance, participants are tasked to watch a screen which serially displays words to be memorized for 3 seconds each, and also have to remember whether the word appeared on the left or the right half of the screen. The words were also encased in

1736-433: A flanker attention task to figure out whether cognitive scope is broadened or narrowed. For example, using the letters "H" and "N" participants need to identify as quickly as possible the middle letter of 5 when all the letters are the same (e.g. "HHHHH") and when the middle letter is different from the flanking letters (e.g. "HHNHH"). Broadened cognitive scope would be indicated if reaction times differed greatly from when all

1860-442: A further iteration, some scholars argue that affect is necessary for enabling more rational modes of cognition (e.g. Damasio 1994). A divergence from a narrow reinforcement model of emotion allows other perspectives about how affect influences emotional development. Thus, temperament , cognitive development, socialization patterns, and the idiosyncrasies of one's family or subculture might interact in nonlinear ways. For example,

1984-501: A greater amount of false memories. This implies that positive affect promotes integration of misleading details and negative affect reduces the misinformation effect. People who experience negative affectivity following an event report fewer reconstructive false memories. This was evidenced by two studies conducted around public events. The first surrounded the events of the televised O.J. Simpson trial. Participants were asked to fill out questionnaires three times: one week, two months and

2108-514: A gun. Some of the targets wore turbans making them appear Muslim. As expected, there was a significant bias against Muslim targets resulting in a tendency to shoot at them. However, this tendency decreased with subjects in negative affective states. Positive affect groups developed more aggressive tendencies toward Muslims. Researchers concluded that negative affect leads to less reliance on internal stereotypes, thus decreasing judgmental bias. Multiple studies have shown that negative affectivity has

2232-423: A halo effect in identifying a middle-aged man as more likely to be a philosopher than an unconventional, young woman. These halo effects were nearly eliminated when participants were in a negative affective state. In the study, researchers sorted participants into either happy or sad groups using an autobiographical mood induction task in which participants reminisced on sad or happy memories. Then, participants read

2356-714: A healthy person", while about 1890 the German neuropsychiatrist Carl Wernicke lectured about the "abnormal euphoria" in patients with mania. A 1903 article in The Boston Daily Globe refers to euphoria as "pleasant excitement" and "the sense of ease and well-being". In 1920 Popular Science magazine described euphoria as "a high sounding name" meaning "feeling fit": normally making life worth living, motivating drug use, and ill formed in certain mental illnesses. Robert S. Woodworth 's 1921 textbook Psychology: A study of mental life , describes euphoria as an organic state which

2480-407: A highly controversial topic. Participants were informed that the debater was assigned a stance to take in the essay that did not necessarily reflect his views. Still, the positive affect groups rated debaters who argued unpopular views as holding the same attitude expressed in the essay. They were also rated as unlikeable compared to debaters with popular stances, thus, demonstrating FAE. In contrast,

2604-527: A logical and consistent framework for research. Researchers can predict a person's actions by assuming effort refers to the energy investment. The motivational intensity theory is used to show how changes in goal attractiveness and energy investment correlate. Mood , like emotion, is an affective state. However, an emotion tends to have a clear focus (i.e., its cause is self-evident), while mood tends to be more unfocused and diffuse. Mood, according to Batson, Shaw and Oleson (1992), involves tone and intensity and

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2728-404: A mood induction process. After the mood induction process, participants were required to watch a show with positive and negative elements. After watching the show, they were asked to engage on a hypothetical conversation in which they "describe the episode (they) just observed to a friend". Their speech was recorded and transcribed during this task. Results showed that speakers in a negative mood had

2852-513: A multi-agent system—a system that contains multiple agents interacting with each other and/or with their environments over time. The outcomes of individual agents' behaviors are interdependent: Each agent's ability to achieve its goals depends on not only what it does but also what other agents do. Emotions are one of the main sources for the interaction. Emotions of an individual influence the emotions, thoughts and behaviors of others; others' reactions can then influence their future interactions with

2976-501: A narrowed attentional scope. The experimenters further increased the narrowed attentional scope in appetitive stimuli by telling participants they would be allowed to consume the desserts shown in the pictures. The results revealed that their hypothesis was correct, in that the broad attentional scope led to quicker detection of global letters, while narrowed attentional scope led to quicker detection of local letters. Researchers Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert and Lang wanted to further examine

3100-510: A negative person or depressed. They are going through a normal process and are feeling something that many individuals may not be able to feel or process due to differing problems. These findings complement evolutionary psychology theories that affective states serve adaptive functions in promoting suitable cognitive strategies to deal with environmental challenges. Positive affect is associated with assimilative, top-down processing used in response to familiar, benign environments. Negative affect

3224-411: A note should be considered on the differences between affect and emotion. Arousal is a basic physiological response to the presentation of stimuli. When this occurs, a non-conscious affective process takes the form of two control mechanisms: one mobilizing and the other immobilizing. Within the human brain, the amygdala regulates an instinctual reaction initiating this arousal process, either freezing

3348-618: A person to be more polite and elaborate when making requests. Negative affectivity increases the accuracy of social perceptions and inferences. Specifically, high negative-affectivity people have more negative, but accurate, perceptions of the impression they make to others. People with low negative affectivity form overly-positive, potentially inaccurate impression of others that can lead to misplaced trust. A research conducted by Forgas J.P studied how affectivity can influence intergroup discrimination. He measured affectivity by how people allocate rewards to in-group and out-group members. In

3472-411: A philosophical essay by a fake academic who was identified as either a middle-aged, bespectacled man or as a young, unorthodox-looking woman. The fake writer was evaluated on intelligence and competence. The positive affect group exhibited a strong halo effect, rating the male writer significantly higher than the female writer in competence. The negative affect group exhibited almost no halo effects rating

3596-486: A psychiatric illness characterized by alternating periods of mania and depression. Euphoria may occur during auras of seizures typically originating in the temporal lobe , but affecting the anterior insular cortex . This euphoria is symptomatic of a rare syndrome called ecstatic seizures , often also involving mystical experiences . Euphoria (or more commonly dysphoria ) may also occur in periods between epileptic seizures. This condition, interictal dysphoric disorder ,

3720-434: A research article about affect tolerance written by psychiatrist Jerome Sashin, "Affect tolerance can be defined as the ability to respond to a stimulus which would ordinarily be expected to evoke affects by the subjective experiencing of feelings." Essentially it refers to one's ability to react to emotions and feelings. One who is low in affect tolerance would show little to no reaction to emotion and feeling of any kind. This

3844-583: A result, an internationally reliable short-form, the I-PANAS-SF, has been developed and validated comprising two 5-item scales with internal reliability, cross-sample and cross-cultural factorial invariance, temporal stability, convergent and criterion-related validities. Mroczek and Kolarz have also developed another set of scales to measure positive and negative affect. Each of the scales has 6 items. The scales have shown evidence of acceptable validity and reliability across cultures. In relation to perception,

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3968-754: A sad picture, participants were faster to identify the larger letter in a Navon attention task, suggesting more global or broadened cognitive scope. Sadness is thought to sometimes have low motivational intensity. But, after seeing a disgusting picture, participants were faster to identify the component letters, indicative of a localized and narrower cognitive scope. Disgust has high motivational intensity. Affects which are high in motivational intensity narrow one's cognitive scope, enabling people to focus more on central information, whereas affects which are low in motivational intensity broadened cognitive scope, allowing for faster global interpretation. The changes in cognitive scope associated with different affective states

4092-446: A set of euphoriants that include drugs such as heroin , morphine , codeine , oxycodone , and fentanyl . By contrast, κ-opioid receptor agonists, like the endogenous neuropeptide dynorphin , are known to cause dysphoria , a mood state opposite to euphoria that involves feelings of profound discontent. Cannabinoid receptor 1 agonists are a group of euphoriants that includes certain plant-based cannabinoids (e.g., THC from

4216-572: A small percentage of individuals at recommended doses, euphoria is increasingly frequent at supratherapeutic doses (or with intravenous- or nasal administration ). At doses five times the maximum recommended, intense euphoria is reported. Another GABA analogue , gabapentin , may induce euphoria. Characterized as opioid-like but less intense, it may occur at supratherapeutic doses, or in combination with other drugs, such as opioids or alcohol. Ethosuximide and perampanel can also produce euphoria at therapeutic doses. μ-Opioid receptor agonists are

4340-556: A specific event), and affectivity (an individual's overall disposition or temperament , which can be characterized as having a generally positive or negative affect). In psychology, the term affect is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition . Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and

4464-407: A state of great happiness, well-being and excitement, which may be normal, or abnormal and inappropriate when associated with psychoactive drugs, manic states, or brain disease or injury. Hedonic hotspots are functionally interrelated neural substrates/structures that (intrinsically or extrinsically) generate the feelings of pleasure . Activation of one hedonic hotspot involves the stimulation of

4588-585: A strong motivation to consume alcohol. The researchers tested the participants by exposing them to alcohol and neutral pictures. After the picture was displayed on a screen, the participants finished a test evaluating attentional focus. The findings proved that exposure to alcohol-related pictures led to a narrowing of attentional focus to individuals who were motivated to use alcohol. However, exposure to neutral pictures did not correlate with alcohol-related motivation to manipulate attentional focus. The Alcohol Myopia Theory (AMT) states that alcohol consumption reduces

4712-501: A structured set of beliefs about general expectations of a future experience of pleasure or pain, or of positive or negative affect in the future. Unlike instant reactions that produce affect or emotion, and that change with expectations of future pleasure or pain, moods, being diffuse and unfocused and thus harder to cope with, can last for days, weeks, months or even years (Schucman, 1975). Moods are hypothetical constructs depicting an individual's emotional state. Researchers typically infer

4836-401: A symptom. Euphoria can occur as a result of dancing to music, music-making, and listening to emotionally arousing music. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the reward system plays a central role in mediating music-induced pleasure. Pleasurable emotionally arousing music strongly increases dopamine neurotransmission in the dopaminergic pathways that project to the striatum (i.e.,

4960-479: A type of non-conscious affect may be separate from the cognitive processing of environmental stimuli. A monohierarchy of perception, affect and cognition considers the roles of arousal , attention tendencies, affective primacy (Zajonc, 1980), evolutionary constraints (Shepard, 1984; 1994), and covert perception (Weiskrantz, 1997) within the sensing and processing of preferences and discriminations. Emotions are complex chains of events triggered by certain stimuli. There

5084-589: A variety of aspects of the world around them in generally negative terms. Negative affectivity is strongly related to life satisfaction . Individuals high in negative affect will exhibit, on average, higher levels of distress, anxiety, and dissatisfaction, and tend to focus on the unpleasant aspects of themselves, the world, the future, and other people, and also evoke more negative life events. The similarities between these affective traits and life satisfaction have led some researchers to view both positive and negative affect with life satisfaction as specific indicators of

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5208-438: A variety of negative emotions, including anger , contempt , disgust , guilt , fear , and nervousness . Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence , activeness, and great enthusiasm. Individuals differ in negative emotional reactivity. Trait negative affectivity roughly corresponds to the dominant personality factor of anxiety / neuroticism that

5332-407: A video that induced either negative emotion or a neutral mood. The two videos were deliberately similar except for the action of interest, which was either a mugging (negative emotion) or a conversation (neutral emotion). After watching one of the two videos participants are shown perpetrator lineups, which either contained the target perpetrator from the video or a foil, a person that looked similar to

5456-425: A witness's memory. This corresponds to two types of memory failure: Negative mood is shown to decrease suggestibility error. This is seen through reduced amounts of incorporation of false memories when misleading information is present. On the other hand, positive affect has shown to increase susceptibility to misleading information. An experiment with undergraduate students supported these results. Participants began

5580-401: A year after the televised verdict. These questionnaires measured participant emotion towards the verdict and the accuracy of their recalled memory of what occurred during the trial. Overall the study found that although participant response to the event outcome did not affect the quantity of remembered information, it did influence the likelihood of false memory. Participants who were pleased with

5704-408: Is a construct that is closely related to motivational intensity, they differ in that motivation necessarily implies action while arousal does not. Affect is sometimes used to mean affect display , which is "a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect" (APA 2006). In psychology, affect defines the organisms ' interaction with stimuli . It can influence the scope of

5828-447: Is a result of an anticipated, experienced, or imagined outcome of an adaptational transaction between organism and environment, therefore cognitive appraisal processes are keys to the development and expression of an emotion (Lazarus, 1982). Affective states vary along three principal dimensions: valence , arousal, and motivational intensity . It is important to note that arousal is different from motivational intensity. While arousal

5952-454: Is also strongly associated with both hypomania and mania , mental states characterized by a pathological heightening of mood, which may be either euphoric or irritable, in addition to other symptoms, such as pressured speech , flight of ideas , and grandiosity . Although hypomania and mania are syndromes with multiple etiologies (that is, ones that may arise from any number of conditions), they are most commonly seen in bipolar disorder ,

6076-474: Is closely related to alexithymia . "Alexithymia is a subclinical phenomenon involving a lack of emotional awareness or, more specifically, difficulty in identifying and describing feelings and in distinguishing feelings from the bodily sensations of emotional arousal" At its core, alexithymia is an inability for an individual to recognize what emotions they are feeling—as well as an inability to describe them. According to Dalya Samur < Archived 2022-01-09 at

6200-559: Is connected with positive affect since it occurs when people use top-down cognitive processing based on inferences. Negative affect stimulates bottom-up, systematic analysis that reduces fundamental attribution error. This effect is documented in FAE research in which students evaluated a fake debater on attitude and likability based on an essay the "debater" wrote. After being sorted into positive or negative affect groups, participants read one of two possible essays arguing for one side or another on

6324-441: Is considered an atypical affective disorder . Persons who experience feelings of depression or anxiety between or before seizures occasionally experience euphoria afterwards. Some persons experience euphoria in the prodrome – hours to days before the onset – of a migraine headache . Similarly, a euphoric state occurs in some persons following the migraine episode. Euphoria sometimes occurs in persons with multiple sclerosis as

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6448-475: Is considered to be the positive counterpart of gender dysphoria . Related euphorias have also been recorded in studies of alignments between sexual identity and social recognition such as support in schools for lesbian and gay people, and experiences of intersex variation and their diagnoses such as receiving a diagnosis of congenital adrenal hyperplasia which explained physical differences for example. Affect (psychology) Affect , in psychology ,

6572-400: Is evolutionarily adaptive because high motivational intensity affects elicited by stimuli that require movement and action should be focused on, in a phenomenon known as goal-directed behavior. For example, in early times, seeing a lion (a fearful stimulus) probably elicited a negative but highly motivational affective state (fear) in which the human being was propelled to run away. In this case

6696-757: Is found within the Big Five personality traits as emotional stability. The Big Five are characterized as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Neuroticism can plague an individual with severe mood swings, frequent sadness, worry, and being easily disturbed, and predicts the development and onset of all "common" mental disorders . Research shows that negative affectivity relates to different classes of variables: Self-reported stress and (poor) coping skills, health complaints, and frequency of unpleasant events. Weight gain and mental health complaints are often experienced as well. People who express high negative affectivity view themselves and

6820-510: Is improved in areas such as impression formation , reducing fundamental attribution error , stereotyping , and gullibility . While sadness is normally associated with the hippocampus, it does not produce the same side effects that would be associated with feelings of pleasure or excitement. Sadness correlates with feeling blue or the creation of tears, while excitement may cause a spike in blood pressure and one's pulse. As far as judgment goes, most people think about how they themselves feel about

6944-617: Is no way to completely describe an emotion by knowing only some of its components. Verbal reports of feelings are often inaccurate because people may not know exactly what they feel, or they may feel several different emotions at the same time. There are also situations that arise in which individuals attempt to hide their feelings, and there are some who believe that public and private events seldom coincide exactly, and that words for feelings are generally more ambiguous than are words for objects or events. Therefore, non-conscious emotions need to be measured by measures circumventing self-report such as

7068-413: Is often associated with team selection. It is viewed as a trait that could make selecting individuals for a team irrelevant, thus preventing knowledge from becoming known or predicted for current issues that may arise. Negative affectivity subconsciously signals a challenging social environment. Negative mood may increase a tendency to conform to social norms. In a study, college students were exposed to

7192-407: Is regularly recognized as a "stable, heritable trait tendency to experience a broad range of negative feelings, such as worry, anxiety, self-criticisms, and a negative self-view". This allows one to feel every type of emotion, which is regarded as a normal part of life and human nature. So, while the emotions themselves are viewed as negative, the individual experiencing them should not be classified as

7316-432: Is separate from the reward of food itself. Therefore, earning the reward and anticipating the reward are separate processes and both create an excitatory influence of reward-related cues. Both processes are dissociated at the level of the amygdala, and are functionally integrated within larger neural systems. Cognitive scope can be measured by tasks involving attention, perception, categorization and memory. Some studies use

7440-486: Is shown to decrease errors in forming impressions based on presuppositions. One common judgment error is the halo effect , or the tendency to form unfounded impressions of people based on known but irrelevant information. For instance, more attractive people are often attributed with more positive qualities. Research demonstrates that positive affect tends to increase the halo effect, whereas negative affect decreases it. A study involving undergraduate students demonstrated

7564-539: Is strongly linked to social activity. Recent research suggests that high functional support is related to higher levels of positive affect. In his work on negative affect arousal and white noise, Seidner found support for the existence of a negative affect arousal mechanism regarding the devaluation of speakers from other ethnic origins. The exact process through which social support is linked to positive affect remains unclear. The process could derive from predictable, regularized social interaction, from leisure activities where

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7688-498: Is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The PANAS is a lexical measure developed in a North American setting and consisting of 20 single-word items, for instance excited , alert , determined for positive affect, and upset , guilty , and jittery for negative affect. However, some of the PANAS items have been found either to be redundant or to have ambiguous meanings to English speakers from non-North American cultures. As

7812-551: Is the opposite of fatigue, and "means about the same as feeling good." In 1940, The Journal of Psychology defined euphoria as a "state of general well being ... and pleasantly toned feeling." A decade later, finding ordinary feelings of well being difficult to evaluate, American addiction researcher Harris Isbell redefined euphoria as behavioral changes and objective signs typical of morphine . However, in 1957 British pharmacologist D. A. Cahal did not regard opioid euphoria as medically undesirable but an effect which "enhance[s]

7936-500: Is the underlying experience of feeling , emotion , attachment , or mood . It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive (e.g., happiness, joy, excitement) or negative (e.g., sadness, anger, fear, disgust). Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood (enduring, less intense emotional states that are not necessarily tied to

8060-457: The Navon letters . The Navon task included a neutral affect comparison condition. Typically, neutral states cause broadened attention with a neutral stimulus. They predicted that a broad attentional scope could cause faster detection of global (large) letters, whereas a narrow attentional scope could cause faster detection of local (small) letters. The evidence proved that the appetitive stimuli produced

8184-844: The Wayback Machine > and colleagues, persons with alexithymia have been shown to have correlations with increased suicide rates, mental discomfort, and deaths. Affect tolerance factors, including anxiety sensitivity, intolerance of uncertainty, and emotional distress tolerance , may be helped by mindfulness . Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations without judgment. The practice of Intention, Attention, & Attitude. Mindfulness has been shown to produce "increased subjective well-being, reduced psychological symptoms and emotional reactivity, and improved behavioral regulation." The affective domain represents one of

8308-493: The brain 's reward system . Dopaminergic stimulants like amphetamine , methamphetamine , cocaine , MDMA , and methylphenidate are euphoriants. Nicotine is a parasympathetic stimulant that acts as a mild euphoriant in some people. Xanthines such as caffeine and theobromine may also be considered mild euphoriants by some. Chewing areca nut (seeds from the Areca catechu palm) with slaked lime ( calcium hydroxide ) –

8432-484: The cannabis plant), endogenous cannabinoids (e.g., anandamide ), and synthetic cannabinoids . Certain gases, like nitrous oxide (N 2 O, aka "laughing gas"), can induce euphoria when inhaled. Traditional psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin are capable of inducing euphoria despite lacking addictive qualities. The Global Drug Survey has revealed that out of 22,000 participant reports, MDMA , LSD, and psilocybin mushrooms were ranked most positively on

8556-415: The human sexual response cycle are also associated with the induction of euphoria. Certain drugs, many of which are addictive , can cause euphoria, which at least partially motivates their recreational use. Hedonic hotspots – i.e., the pleasure centers of the brain – are functionally linked. Activation of one hotspot results in the recruitment of the others. Inhibition of one hotspot results in

8680-406: The mesolimbic pathway and nigrostriatal pathway ). Approximately 5% of the population experiences a phenomenon termed " musical anhedonia ", in which individuals do not experience pleasure from listening to emotionally arousing music despite having the ability to perceive the intended emotion that is conveyed in passages of music. A clinical study from January 2019 that assessed the effect of

8804-474: The misinformation effect and increases overall accuracy of details. People also exhibit less interfering responses to stimuli when given descriptions or performing any cognitive task. People are notoriously susceptible to forming inaccurate judgments based on biases and limited information. Evolutionary theories propose that negative affective states tend to increase skepticism and decrease reliance on preexisting knowledge. Consequently, judgmental accuracy

8928-469: The Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT; Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009). Affective responses, on the other hand, are more basic and may be less problematic in terms of assessment. Brewin has proposed two experiential processes that frame non-cognitive relations between various affective experiences: those that are prewired dispositions (i.e. non-conscious processes), able to "select from

9052-544: The Net Pleasure Index of all recreational drugs included in the study. Acute exogenous glucocorticoid administration is known to produce euphoria, but this effect is not observed with long-term exposure. The following is a full list of euphoriant or rewarding/reinforcing drugs: Fasting has been associated with improved mood, well-being, and sometimes euphoria. Various mechanisms have been proposed and possible applications in treating depression considered. Euphoria

9176-592: The Operation of a Medicine, i.e., when the patient finds himself eas'd or reliev'd by it". During the 1860s, the English physician Thomas Laycock described euphoria as the feeling of bodily well-being and hopefulness ; he noted its misplaced presentation in the final stage of some terminal illnesses and attributed such euphoria to neurological dysfunction. Sigmund Freud 's 1884 monograph Über Coca described (his own) consumption of cocaine producing "the normal euphoria of

9300-643: The Red Sox fans. The results from both of these experiments are consistent with the findings that negative emotion can lead to fewer memory errors and thus increased memory accuracy of events. Although negative affect has been shown to decrease the misinformation effect, the degree to which memory is improved is not enough to make a significant effect on witness testimony. In fact, emotions, including negative affect, are shown to reduce accuracy in identifying perpetrators from photographic lineups. Researchers demonstrated this effect in an experiment in which participants watched

9424-545: The accuracy of recalled memories. This has been especially pragmatic in criminal settings as eyewitness memories have been found to be less reliable than one would hope. However, the externally focused and accommodative processing of negative affect has a positive effect on the overall improvement of memory. This is evidenced by reduction of the misinformation effect, and the number of false memories reported. The knowledge implies that negative affect can be used to enhance eyewitness memory; however, additional research suggests that

9548-427: The amount of information available in memory, which also narrows attention so only the most proximal items or striking sources are encompassed in attentional scope. This narrowed attention leads intoxicated persons to make more extreme decisions than they would when sober. Researchers provided evidence that substance-related stimuli capture the attention of individuals when they have high and intense motivation to consume

9672-541: The blunting of the effects of activating another hotspot. Therefore, the simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is believed to be necessary for generating the sensation of an intense euphoria. The word "euphoria" is derived from the Ancient Greek terms εὐφορία : εὖ eu meaning "well" and φέρω pherō meaning "to bear". It is semantically opposite to dysphoria . A 1706 English dictionary defines euphoria as "the well bearing of

9796-617: The broader construct of subjective well-being . Negative affect arousal mechanisms can induce negative affective states as evidenced by a study conducted by Stanley S. Seidner on negative arousal and white noise. The study quantified reactions from Mexican and Puerto Rican participants in response to the devaluation of speakers from other ethnic origins. There are many instruments that can be used to measure negative affectivity, including measures of related concepts, such as neuroticism and trait anxiety. Two frequently used are: PANAS – The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule incorporates

9920-406: The cognitive processes. Initially, researchers had thought that positive affects broadened the cognitive scope, whereas negative affects narrowed it. Thereafter, evidences suggested that affects high in motivational intensity narrow the cognitive scope, whereas affects low in motivational intensity broaden it. The construct of cognitive scope could be valuable in cognitive psychology. According to

10044-415: The color of the box the word was in compared to nondepressed students. Sadness (low motivational intensity) is usually associated with depression, so the more broad focus on contextual information of sadder students supports that affects high in motivational intensity narrow cognitive scope whereas affects low in motivational intensity broaden cognitive scope. The motivational intensity theory states that

10168-634: The context of their work. The modern conception of affect developed in the 19th century with Wilhelm Wundt . The word comes from the German Gefühl , meaning "feeling". A number of experiments have been conducted in the study of social and psychological affective preferences (i.e., what people like or dislike). Specific research has been done on preferences, attitudes , impression formation , and decision-making . This research contrasts findings with recognition memory (old-new judgments), allowing researchers to demonstrate reliable distinctions between

10292-401: The data for the negative affect group displayed no significant difference in ratings for debaters with popular stance and debaters with unpopular stances. These results indicate that positive affect assimilation styles promote fundamental attribution error, and negative affect accommodation styles minimize the error in respect to judging people. Negative affect benefits judgment in diminishing

10416-427: The difficulty of a task combined with the importance of success determine the energy invested by an individual. The theory has three main layers. The innermost layer says human behavior is guided by the desire to conserve as much energy as possible. Individuals aim to avoid wasting energy so they invest only the energy that is required to complete the task. The middle layer focuses on the difficulty of tasks combined with

10540-407: The drug's speed of onset, increasing dose, and with intravenous administration . Barbiturates more likely to cause euphoria include amobarbital , secobarbital and pentobarbital . Benzodiazepines more likely to cause euphoria are flunitrazepam , alprazolam and clonazepam . Benzodiazepines also tend to enhance opioid-induced euphoria. Pregabalin induces dose-dependent euphoria. Occurring in

10664-410: The effect of appetitive stimuli on narrowed attention. They also tested whether individual dissimilarities in approach motivation are associated with attentional narrowing. In order to test the hypothesis, the researchers used the same Navon task with appetitive and neutral pictures in addition to having the participants indicate how long since they had last eaten in minutes. To examine neural activation,

10788-589: The emotional reactions in picture priming. Instead of using an appetitive stimulus they used stimulus sets from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The image set includes various unpleasant pictures such as snakes, insects, attack scenes, accidents, illness, and loss. They predicted that an unpleasant picture would stimulate a defensive motivational intensity response, which would produce strong emotional arousal such as skin gland responses and cardiac deceleration. Participants rated

10912-452: The existence of moods from a variety of behavioral referents (Blechman, 1990). Habitual negative affect and negative mood is characteristic of high neuroticism. Positive affect and negative affect ( PANAS ) represent independent domains of emotion in the general population, and positive affect is strongly linked to social interaction. Positive and negative daily events show independent relationships to subjective well-being, and positive affect

11036-452: The extent to which memory is improved by negative affect does not sufficiently improve eyewitness testimonies to significantly reduce its error. Negative affect has been shown to decrease susceptibility of incorporating misleading information, which is related to the misinformation effect. The misinformation effect refers to the finding that misleading information presented between the encoding of an event and its subsequent recall influences

11160-403: The flanking letters were different from the middle target letter. Both anger and fear have high motivational intensity because propulsion to act would be high in the face of an angry or fearful stimulus, like a screaming person or coiled snake. Affects which are high in motivational intensity, and thus are narrow in cognitive scope, enable people to focus more on target information. After seeing

11284-463: The focus is on relaxation and positive mood, or from the enjoyment of shared activities. The techniques used to shift a negative mood to a positive one are called mood repair strategies . Affect display is a critical facet of interpersonal communication . Evolutionary psychologists have advanced the hypothesis that hominids have evolved with sophisticated capability of reading affect displays. Emotions are portrayed as dynamic processes that mediate

11408-414: The goal orientation of the athletes were significantly associated with alcohol use but not alcohol-related problems. In terms of psychopathological implications and applications, college students showing depressive symptoms were better at retrieving seemingly "nonrelevant" contextual information from a source monitoring paradigm task. Namely, the students with depressive symptoms were better at identifying

11532-474: The goal would be to avoid getting killed. Moving beyond just negative affective states, researchers wanted to test whether or not negative or positive affective states varied between high and low motivational intensity. To evaluate this theory, Harmon-Jones, Gable and Price created an experiment using appetitive picture priming and the Navon task, which would allow them to measure the attentional scope with detection of

11656-420: The illness progresses. This euphoria is part of a syndrome originally called euphoria sclerotica, which typically includes disinhibition and other symptoms of cognitive and behavioral dysfunction. Gender euphoria is satisfaction or enjoyment felt by a person due to consistency between their gender identity and gendered features associated with a gender different to the sex they were assigned at birth . It

11780-399: The implicit use of stereotypes by promoting closer attention to stimuli. In one study, participants were less likely to discriminate against targets that appeared Muslim when in a negative affective state. After organizing participants into positive and negative affect groups, researchers had them play a computer game. Participants had to make rapid decisions to shoot only at targets carrying

11904-423: The importance of success and how this affects energy conservation. It focuses on energy investment in situations of clear and unclear task difficulty. The last layer looks at predictions for energy invested by a person when they have several possible options to choose at different task difficulties. The person is free to choose among several possible options of task difficulty. The motivational intensity theory offers

12028-479: The individual expressing the original emotion, as well as that individual's future emotions and behaviors. Emotion operates in cycles that can involve multiple people in a process of reciprocal influence. Affect, emotion, or feeling is displayed to others through facial expressions , hand gestures , posture, voice characteristics , and other physical manifestation. These affect displays vary between and within cultures and are displayed in various forms ranging from

12152-437: The individual or accelerating mobilization. The arousal response is illustrated in studies focused on reward systems that control food-seeking behavior (Balleine, 2005). Researchers have focused on learning processes and modulatory processes that are present while encoding and retrieving goal values. When an organism seeks food, the anticipation of reward based on environmental events becomes another influence on food seeking that

12276-433: The individual's relation to a continually changing social environment. In other words, emotions are considered to be processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relation between the organism and the environment on matters of significance to the person. Most social and psychological phenomena occur as the result of repeated interactions between multiple individuals over time. These interactions should be seen as

12400-461: The left frontal-central region due to frustration. This statement was proved false because the research showed that dessert pictures increased positive affect even in hungry individuals. The findings revealed that narrowed cognitive scope has the ability to assist us in goal accomplishment. Later on, researchers connected motivational intensity to clinical applications and found that alcohol-related pictures caused narrowed attention for persons who had

12524-454: The letters were the same compared to when the middle letter is different. Other studies use a Navon attention task to measure difference in cognitive scope. A large letter is composed of smaller letters, in most cases smaller "L"'s or "F"'s that make up the shape of the letter "T" or "H" or vice versa. Broadened cognitive scope would be suggested by a faster reaction to name the larger letter, whereas narrowed cognitive scope would be suggested by

12648-472: The most discrete of facial expressions to the most dramatic and prolific gestures. Observers are sensitive to agents' emotions, and are capable of recognizing the messages these emotions convey. They react to and draw inferences from an agent's emotions. The emotion an agent displays may not be an authentic reflection of their actual state (See also Emotional labor ). Agents' emotions can have effects on four broad sets of factors: Emotion may affect not only

12772-458: The others. Inhibition of one hedonic hotspot blunts the activation the other ones. Therefore, the simultaneous activation of every hedonic hotspot within the reward system is probably necessary for generating the sensation of euphoria. Many different types of stimuli can induce euphoria, including psychoactive drugs , natural rewards , and social activities. Affective disorders such as unipolar mania or bipolar disorder can involve euphoria as

12896-503: The participants received questions with misleading information and the other half received questions without any misleading information. This manipulation was used to determine if participants were susceptible to suggestibility failure. After 45 minutes of unrelated distractors participants were given a set of true or false questions which tested for false memories. Participants experiencing negative moods reported fewer numbers of false memories, whereas those experiencing positive moods reported

13020-532: The person at whom it was directed, but also third parties who observe an agent's emotion. Moreover, emotions can affect larger social entities such as a group or a team. Emotions are a kind of message and therefore can influence the emotions, attributions and ensuing behaviors of others, potentially evoking a feedback process to the original agent. Agents' feelings evoke feelings in others by two suggested distinct mechanisms: People may not only react emotionally, but may also draw inferences about emotive agents such as

13144-541: The pictures based on valence , arousal and dominance on the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) rating scale. The findings were consistent with the hypothesis and proved that emotion is organized motivationally by the intensity of activation in appetitive or defensive systems. Prior to research in 2013, Harmon-Jones and Gable performed an experiment to examine whether neural activation related to approach-motivation intensity (left frontal-central activity) would trigger

13268-556: The procedure, participants had to describe their interpretations after looking at patterns of judgments about people. Afterwards, participants were exposed to a mood induction process, where they had to watch videotapes designed to elicit negative or positive affectivity. Results showed that participants with positive affectivity were more negative and discriminated more than participants with negative affectivity. Also, happy participants were more likely to discriminate between in-group and out-group members than sad participants. Negative affect

13392-420: The researchers used electroencephalography and recorded eye movements in order to detect what regions of the brain were being used during approach motivation. The results supported the hypothesis that the left frontal-central brain region is related to approach-motivational processes and narrowed attentional scope. Some psychologists were concerned that the individuals who were hungry had an increase in activity in

13516-405: The social status or power of an emotive agent, their competence and their credibility. For example, an agent presumed to be angry may also be presumed to have high power. Negative emotion In psychology , negative affectivity ( NA ), or negative affect , is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept . Negative affectivity subsumes

13640-445: The study in a lecture hall and witnessed what they thought was an unexpected five-minute belligerent encounter between an intruder and the lecturer. A week later, these participants watched a 10-minute-long video that generated either a positive, negative or neutral mood. They then completed a brief questionnaire about the previous incident between the intruder and lecturer that they witnessed the week earlier. In this questionnaire half of

13764-668: The substance. Motivational intensity and cue-induced narrowing of attention has a unique role in shaping people's initial decision to consume alcohol. In 2013, psychologists from the University of Missouri investigated the connection between sport achievement orientation and alcohol outcomes. They asked varsity athletes to complete a Sport Orientation Questionnaire which measured their sport-related achievement orientation on three scales—competitiveness, win orientation, and goal orientation. The participants also completed assessments of alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. The results revealed that

13888-804: The target. The results revealed that the participants who watched the emotion-induced video were more likely to incorrectly identify the innocent foil than to correctly identify the perpetrator. Neutral participants were more likely to correctly identify the perpetrator in comparison to their emotional counterparts. This demonstrates that emotional affect in forensic settings decreases accuracy of eyewitness memory. These findings are consistent with prior knowledge that stress and emotion greatly impair eyewitness ability to recognitive perpetrators. Negative affectivity can produce several interpersonal benefits. It can cause subjects to be more polite and considerate with others. Unlike positive mood, which causes less assertive approaches, negative affectivity can, in many ways, cause

14012-443: The temperament of a highly reactive/low self-soothing infant may "disproportionately" affect the process of emotion regulation in the early months of life (Griffiths, 1997). Some other social sciences, such as geography or anthropology , have adopted the concept of affect during the last decade. In French psychoanalysis a major contribution to the field of affect comes from André Green . The focus on affect has largely derived from

14136-513: The three divisions described in modern psychology : the other two being the behavioral , and the cognitive . Classically, these divisions have also been referred to as the "ABC's of psychology", However, in certain views, the cognitive may be considered as a part of the affective, or the affective as a part of the cognitive; it is important to note that "cognitive and affective states … [are] merely analytic categories." "Affect" can mean an instinctual reaction to stimulation that occurs before

14260-448: The time. The small details the negative individual picks up may be something completely overlooked before. Anxiety disorders are often associated with over-thinking and ruminating on topics that would seem irrelevant and pointless to an individual without a disorder. OCD is one common anxiety trait that allows the affected individual a different insight on how things may appear to be. A person that makes use of his or her negative affect has

14384-484: The total stimulus array those stimuli that are causally relevant, using such criteria as perceptual salience, spatiotemporal cues, and predictive value in relation to data stored in memory" (Brewin, 1989, p. 381), and those that are automatic (i.e. subconscious processes), characterized as "rapid, relatively inflexible and difficult to modify... (requiring) minimal attention to occur and... (capable of being) activated without intention or awareness" (1989 p. 381). But

14508-598: The truth. First, music was used to induce positive, negative, or neutral affect in participants. Then, experimenters played 14 video messages that had to be identified by participants as true or false. As expected, the negative affect group performed better in veracity judgments than the positive affect group who performed no better than chance. Researchers believe that the negative affect groups detected deception more successfully because they attended to stimulus details and systematically built inferences from those details. Memory has been found to have many failures that affect

14632-518: The two equally. Researchers concluded that impression formation is improved by negative affect. Their findings support theories that negative affect results in more elaborate processing based upon external, available information. The systematic, attentive approach caused by negative affect reduces fundamental attribution error , the tendency to inaccurately attribute behavior to a person's internal character without taking external, situational factors into account. The fundamental attribution error (FAE)

14756-420: The two. Affect-based judgments and cognitive processes have been examined with noted differences indicated, and some argue affect and cognition are under the control of separate and partially independent systems that can influence each other in a variety of ways ( Zajonc , 1980). Both affect and cognition may constitute independent sources of effects within systems of information processing. Others suggest emotion

14880-526: The typical cognitive processes considered necessary for the formation of a more complex emotion. Robert B. Zajonc asserts this reaction to stimuli is primary for human beings and that it is the dominant reaction for non-human organisms. Zajonc suggests that affective reactions can occur without extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding and be made sooner and with greater confidence than cognitive judgments (Zajonc, 1980). Many theorists (e.g. Lazarus, 1982) consider affect to be post-cognitive: elicited only after

15004-410: The value of a major analgesic." The 1977 edition of A Concise Encyclopaedia of Psychiatry called euphoria "a mood of contentment and well-being," with pathologic associations when used in a psychiatric context. As a sign of cerebral disease, it was described as bland and out of context, representing an inability to experience negative emotion . In the 21st century, euphoria is generally defined as

15128-509: The verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial were more likely to falsely believe something occurred during the trial than those who were displeased with the verdict. Another experiment found the same findings with Red Sox fans and Yankees fans in their overall memory of events that occurred in the final game of a 2004 playoff series in which the Red Sox defeated the Yankees. The study found that the Yankees fans had better memory of events that occurred than

15252-520: The work of Deleuze and brought emotional and visceral concerns into such conventional discourses as those on geopolitics, urban life and material culture. Affect has also challenged methodologies of the social sciences by emphasizing somatic power over the idea of a removed objectivity and therefore has strong ties with the contemporary non-representational theory . Affect has been found across cultures to comprise both positive and negative dimensions. The most commonly used measure in scholarly research

15376-406: Was developed to eliminate redundant and ambiguous items and thereby derive an efficient measure for general use in research situations where either time or space are limited, or where international populations are of interest but where English may not be the mother tongue. Studies have indicated that negative affect has important, beneficial impacts on cognition and behavior. These developments were

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