Emotional awareness, gender, and suspiciousness

Abstract

We investigated the causal relation between emotional awareness (EA) and suspiciousness, and whether this relation is moderated by gender. After inducing an unpleasant mood, we manipulated EA by having participants read one of two versions of a story (the high EA condition provided cues to what the participant was feeling and why, whereas the low EA condition did not). Following the manipulation, one sample of participants completed a measure of suspiciousness, and a second, independent sample of participants described their emotional state. Emotional Awareness Condition × Gender effects were obtained for suspiciousness and EA. Men in the low EA condition reported significantly higher levels of suspiciousness and lower levels of EA than men in the high EA condition. Women in both conditions reported equally high levels of EA, which were greater than those of men in both conditions, and the manipulation did not affect their levels of suspiciousness.There is broad consensus that emotions directly affect judgment, decision making, and information processing (Clore, Gasper, & Garvin, 2001;Gasper & Clore, 2000;Kahneman & Ritov, 1994;Lowenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001). Thus, it should come as no surprise that theorists have long posited a relation between emotions and delusional and peculiar beliefs (e.g., Kraepelin, 1899Kraepelin, /1989. In fact, unpleasant emotions are primary components of several contemporary models of delusions, including persecutory delusions (e.g., Freeman, Garety, Kuipers, Fowler, & Bebbington, 2002;Zigler & Glick, 1988). In support of these theories and models, empirical research examining clinical populations has found a relation between persecutory delusions and unpleasant emotions such as depression, fear, worry, and anger (e.g., Freeman & Garety, 1999;Kennedy, Kemp, & Dyer, 1992). Similarly, several studies conducted with non-clinical populations have also found a relation between suspiciousness (which we distinguish from paranoia as being of less than delusional severity), and unpleasant emotions, such as general unhappiness, depression, anger, and social anxiety (e.g., Martin & Penn, 2001;Rawlings & Freeman, 1996).That there is an association between suspiciousness/paranoia and increased levels of unpleasant affect is not in doubt. However, the experience of unpleasant affect may be only one of several facets of emotional experience that contribute to the development and maintenance of suspiciousness/paranoia. Models of paranoia have typically focused on excesses of unpleasant affect as a causal factor. We posit that emotional awareness (EA) is a second facet of emotional © 2007 Psychology PressCorrespondence should be addressed to: M. Tyler Boden, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 603 E. Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61821, USA. mboden@s.psych.uiuc.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study pu...

Facets of emotional clarity and suspiciousness

“…These results also extend experimental studies that have linked source awareness manipulations to increased suspiciousness (Boden & Berenbaum, 2007; Zimbardo et al, 1981) by demonstrating that individual differences in source awareness are associated with suspiciousness. Extending previous research and suggesting that low source awareness is a robust predictor of suspiciousness, we found that the relation between source awareness and suspiciousness was not an artifact of shared variance with specific types of unpleasant emotional arousal.…”

“…The results of the studies reviewed above provide preliminary evidence that suspiciousness is associated with type awareness (Berenbaum et al, 2006), and source awareness (Boden & Berenbaum, 2007; Zimbardo et al, 1981). However, none of these studies specifically investigated the relations between individual differences in both facets of emotional clarity and suspiciousness.…”

“…Two experimental studies have found evidence that induced reductions in source awareness, specifically, are associated with elevated levels of suspiciousness (Boden & Berenbaum, 2007; Zimbardo, Andersen & Kabat, 1981). Zimbardo and colleagues (1981) investigated the relation between hypnotically diminished source awareness and suspiciousness.…”

“…Participants who were posthypnotically induced to experience emotional arousal (i.e., increased heart rate and respiration) and amnesia for the source of arousal had higher levels of pre- to post-induction suspiciousness than did participants who were posthypnotically induced to experience: (a) partial deafness or an itch but no amnesia, and (b) partial deafness and amnesia. Boden and Berenbaum (2007) induced anger and then provided participants with either: (a) no information about their emotions; or (b) information that was expected to make them aware of the antecedents of these emotions. It was found that men who were not provided with information about their emotions were more suspicious than were men who were provided with this information, whereas there were no differences among women in either condition.…”

“…First, source and type awareness would incrementally predict suspiciousness when statistically accounting for each other and a third dimension of emotional awareness, attention to emotions. As attention to emotions has been indirectly linked to suspiciousness and peculiar beliefs in several studies (Berenbaum et al, 2009; Boden & Berenbaum, 2004; 2007; Kerns, 2005), we attempted to demonstrate that the facets of emotional clarity, specifically, and not emotional awareness, broadly, predict suspiciousness. Our second hypothesis is based on previous research that has found that negative emotional arousal is positively associated with peculiar beliefs (Boden, Berenbaum & Topper, 2012).…”