International Journal of Sexual Health

Emotions in scientific research are typically portrayed as short-lived responses or dispositions to manifest such responses. Some philosophers have argued that this fails to capture long-term emotions (e.g., love, hate, and grief). This article examines whether the emerging field of affect dynamics (or emotion dynamics), which studies how emotions fluctuate over time, can address the philosophical critique. I argue that there are still aspects of long-term emotion (i.e., their temporal components and temporal dynamics) missing from affect dynamics. I end by proposing a few positive steps psychologists working in affect dynamics can take to mitigate these shortcomings.

Despite advances in understanding emotion regulation (ER) flexibility (e.g., flexibly using ER strategies to meet situational demands), there is heterogeneity in conceptualizations. To address this, we provide a unifying operationalization for ER flexibility and a person-specific ER flexibility framework. We define ER flexibility as the ability to continuously monitor the effectiveness of chosen ER strategies to meet one's goals for a situation and to adjust strategies, as needed, in response to changes in internal states (e.g., affect, beliefs about emotions) and external contextual demands (e.g., regulatory goals, situational factors/demands). This paper discusses existing ER flexibility frameworks, their empirical research, and potential limitations. We then present our person-specific ER flexibility framework. We highlight methodological applications, future research directions, and limitations.

I argue that compassion entails the experience of feelings that lie in tension with one another. Specifically, I argue that to be compassionate is to simultaneously identify with and feel separated from the regarded individual, and it is to feel empowered in being needed while also feeling powerless to prevent the other's suffering. Previous studies have typically only emphasized one side or the other of this complex dynamic, which has resulted in the phenomenon being cast in radically different directions: as an ethically valuable end to be sought in social relations and, conversely, as a means of affirming one's privilege in an asymmetrical relationship with another person.

In my response to the three commentaries, I emphasize the importance of philosophical reflections on nostalgia, and especially those that are oriented phenomenologically. I criticize the methodological commitments that underlie the approach taken by Constantine Sedikides and Tim Wildschut as well as their contention that nostalgia for the past is the only legitimate form of nostalgia. I reflect on the importance of various implications that James Morley and Kathleen Higgins draw in their commentaries. I accept the view presented by the three critics that nostalgia can be lived not only as a negative, but also as a positive emotion, and provide some further reflections on how positive nostalgia can be spoken of as nostalgia for the past, present and future.

Remarking on Geniusas’ phenomenological explication of nostalgia, I review nostalgia as a form of daydreaming but with its own unique constituent of wider temporal horizons. Also, I concur with Geniusas’ observation that nostalgia is about a boundary of impossibility whereas most other forms of daydreaming offer possibility. I then contrast two modes of nostalgia, fulling nostalgia that playfully, and even lucidly, accepts the temporal boundaries and pathological nostalgia that makes demands on the temporal boundary. I conclude with a reflection, on the cultural level, on how reactionary social movements are typically characterized by pathological nostalgia that rejects current conditions and demand a return to an impossible past. This highlights the significance of nostalgia for further study.

This commentary considers some applications of the typology of nostalgia proposed by Saulius Geniusas. The typology can illuminate our understanding of existential feelings of temporal malaise, perturbations of temporal experience in grief, and common experiences of letdown and resistance to the passage of time. It can also help in diagnosing various obstacles to mindfulness. However, the typology does not reflect the more positive aspects of nostalgia, such as the appreciation of transience as contributing to value—an important theme in Japanese aesthetics.

Ontological accounts of shame claim that the emotion has to do with our basic human vulnerability: on this view, one is ashamed over having had this vulnerability exposed before others. Against this view, I argue that it is not our vulnerable dependency on others itself which causes us to feel ashamed, but our rejection in the face of such vulnerability. Shame is not the result of simply being looked at, then, but being looked at and not being seen. In this sense, the shame we do feel over being vulnerable before, and dependent on, others is not a necessary part of human relations, but a sign that something has gone wrong within them; it is personal, not ontological.

Humans and other animals communicate a large quantity of information vocally through nonverbal means. Here, we review the domains of animal vocalizations, human nonverbal vocal communication and computer-mediated communication (CMC), under the common thread of emotion, which, we suggest, connects them as a dimension of all these types of communication. After reviewing the use of emotions across domains, we focus on two concepts that have often been opposed to emotion in the animal versus human communication literature: control and meaning. Non-human vocal communication is commonly described as emotional, preventing either control or meaning; in contrast, the emotional dimension of human nonverbal signals does not prevent them from being perceived as both intentionally produced and meaningful. Amongst others, we disagree with this position, highlighting here that emotions should be integrated across species and modalities such as the written modality. We conclude by delineating ways in which each of these domains can meaningfully influence each other, and debates in their respective fields, and more generally the debate on the evolution of communication.

The concept of general arousal has a long history in emotion research. However, the concept is more complex and nuanced than is generally appreciated. In this comment, we note some of the early conceptualizations of arousal and how they might comport with more modern representations of the construct. Importantly, we show how modern conceptualizations which incorporate the physiological complexity of arousal measurement and peripheral-central nervous system interactions might help to provide a more solid framework for the construct moving forward. The authors of the target article are to be commended for addressing this important issue.

This article highlights the systematic impact of experienced and implicit affect on the intensity of mental effort. The key argument is that both consciously experienced affect and implicitly activated affect knowledge can influence responses in the cardiovascular system reflecting effort intensity by informing individuals about task demand—the key variable determining resource mobilization. According to the motivational intensity theory, effort rises with experienced demand as long as success is possible and the necessary effort is justified. Twenty-five years of programmatic research have provided clear evidence that both consciously experienced affect and implicitly activated affect knowledge systematically influence the intensity of effort. Importantly, affect's impact on effort is moderated by task context variables, like objective task difficulty, incentive, and other general boundary conditions.

We propose a cognitive and neurobiological model by which curiosity regulates affective memory, by positively biasing memory encoding through the promotion of emotion regulation. We begin with a brief overview of curiosity's observed emotional effects. Then we introduce three prominent models of affective memory encoding to suggest that the dopaminergic modulation of encoding associated with curiosity may positively bias memory processes. We situate the role of curiosity role in emotion regulation relative to its promotion of abstract thinking and cognitive flexibility. We then identify the neural processes associated with abstraction and flexibility observed in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and the lateral prefrontal cortex as the neurobiological mechanisms underlying our framework.

Situating phenomenological reflections on nostalgia within a historical context, I argue that Kant's temporalization of nostalgia remains incomplete. Bringing into question the widespread assumption that the object of nostalgia must be the past, I argue that nostalgia can be spoken of in three fundamental ways: as nostalgia for the past, for the present, and for the future. I further clarify the relation between the three forms of nostalgia here distinguished, and some other nostalgia that have been addressed in the literature. I conclude with a contention that a characteristic feature of present-day nostalgia is that it is more often lived through not only as nostalgia for the past but also as nostalgia for the present and for the future.

We raise issues about the philosophical claims made in this article regarding the nature of nostalgia. Drawing on psychological research, we contend that nostalgia is rooted in memory rather than time, is directed toward specific objects rather than being object-free, is predominantly positive rather than a form of mourning, and is focused on the past rather than the present or future.

In this commentary, I briefly present in chronological order several historical developments which can explain some of the confusions with respect to arousal that have become entrenched in the contemporary debate. These historical developments include: Immanuel Kant's eighteenth-century division of the affects into sthenic vs. asthenic; the emergence of modern conceptions of pleasure and displeasure in the West; the nineteenth-century alignment of pleasure and displeasure with “sthenic” and “asthenic” in psycho-physiology; the early-twentieth-century disruption of this nineteenth-century alignment; the establishment of a new-physiological order of emotions; and the emergence of “emotional excitement” as the new feeling of the new emotion order of physiology.