Del 24 al 26 de Mayo de 2012

Core Affect
James A. Russell
Boston College

At any point in time, a person can answer the question, how do you feel? Introspection and then psychometric studies of self-reported moods and feelings have led to the concept of Core Affect. Core Affect is, at a psychological level, the most elementary simple primitive affective feeling. It is a neurophysiological state accessible to consciousness, although not always attended to. A person’s Core Affect at any one moment in time is represented by one point somewhere inside a space defined by degree of pleasure and degree of arousal. The person thus has only one Core Affect at a time. The center can be thought of as an adaptation level (a neutral point midway between pleasure and displeasure and midway between low and high arousal), with distance from the center representing intensity or extremity of feeling. Core Affect can be extremely intense at times, milder at other times.

I suggest Core Affect as a road to better understanding mood, emotion, and emotion regulation. Rather than focus on discrete moods and emotions labeled with words drawn from natural language, research can focus on Core Affect as a simple, universal, and ubiquitous process that gives the feeling tone to moods and emotions. Much (although not all) of emotion regulation is seeking to alter core affect – calming down or getting energized. Core Affect is a principal (but not the only) motivation in choosing a course of action.

Paulo N. Lopes
Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics
Catholic University of Portugal

Leaders and managers often seek to enhance the emotional climate and motivation of their direct reports. Yet, many managers apparently neglect the influence of emotional expression. In this talk I will explore the role of emotional expression in organizational settings and the challenges involved in expressing emotions to influence others effectively. Building on existing theory and research, I will discuss some of these challenges and ways to address them. For this purpose, I will draw from several lines of work, integrating research on emotional expression and regulation, emotional intelligence, motivation, and positive psychology. In particular, I will highlight the practical implications of relevant research and identify gaps in existing knowledge that might point the way for further research in applied psychology and organizational behavior. Moreover, I will present recent research findings on expressive flexibility, viewed as the capacity to adapt emotional expression flexibly in light of situational demands and opportunities.

Effective Goal Striving
Peter M. Gollwitzer
New York University/Universität Konstanz

Forming strong goal commitments is a necessary first step to securing goal attainment. For example, when people want to achieve success in the social, professional, or health domain, they are well advised to strongly commit to respective goals. However, strong goal commitments are not sufficient when goals are difficult to attain. For meeting difficult goals it becomes necessary that people make their goal striving particularly effective. But what can they do to enhance their goal striving and thus solve the typical problems of effective goal striving such as getting started, staying on track, selecting effective means, and acting efficiently? A promising answer is the following: People may plan out in advance how they want to solve these problems of goal implementation.

I will describe research showing that making if-then plans (i.e., forming implementation intentions) on how to deal with these problems is a very effective strategy. After a short report on research investigating how implementation intentions work (i.e., by automating goal striving), I will discuss the question of whether implementation intentions can be used to increase willpower on the spot. Research provides a positive answer to this question revealing that implementation intentions help people to meet their goals even when they are facing immutable hindrances from within (e.g., lack of cognitive capabilities) or from outside (i.e., difficult social situations or task demands that overtax executive functions); some research even shows that increased willpower can be observed in those samples (e.g., children with ADHD) that are known to suffer from impaired action control. I will conclude that forming implementation intentions is an easy to use self-regulation tool that should allow people to meet their goals – and this without engaging in major efforts of self-change or attempts to change their social settings.