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Biomedical subjects

N H Frijda

Publications and source records attributed to N H Frijda.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Understanding the level of fatigue in cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy.

This study tests the hypothesis that a discrepancy between resources and demands explains most of the variance in fatigue in cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy. Patients (n=250) were interviewed at pretreatment, posttreatment, and at 9-month follow-up. Resources involved physical condition, neuroticism, optimism, social support, gender, age, and level of education. Demands entailed prognosis, radiotherapy dose, the effort associated with actual activity, and the patient's perception of overall burden. Regression analyses were performed, using interaction terms to operationalize the discrepancy between resources and demands. The hypothesis was not supported. At pretreatment, physical condition explained most of the fatigue, whereas, at posttreatment, both the patients' physical condition and perception of burden contributed to fatigue. At follow-up, demands did not add to the variance already explained by resources, and vice versa. Factors that contribute to the patient's physical condition before starting radiotherapy and to his/her perception of burden need to be addressed to further our understanding of their fatigue.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

The premenstrual phase and reactions to aversive events: a study of hormonal influences on emotionality.

Fifty-eight normal cycle, healthy women were confronted with an aversive, anger-provoking situation in the laboratory. Eighteen women were tested in their follicular phase. A further 40 women were tested in the premenstrual phase, half of whom reported suffering from complaints of premenstrual emotional lability and irritation, the other half reported being without premenstrual problems. Apart from a strong effect of emotion induction on cardiovascular arousal and anger-related moods in the follicular and premenstrual groups, a premenstrual phase effect was also demonstrated, with premenstrual women showing evidence of being more affected by the manipulations on systolic blood pressure and intensity of angry behaviour during anger provocation. Furthermore, some differences were found between those subjects who reported suffering from premenstrual complaints and those free of such complaints, among the most interesting ones being differences in cortisol level preceding the experimental session, in intensity of angry behaviour, and in report of anger intensity at debriefing. The study indicates that the premenstrual phase may have the effect of making women more susceptible to responding emotionally to negative life events.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Perceived antecedents of emotional reactions in inter-ethnic relations.

It is argued that the aspects of intergroup relations that potentially can arouse emotions in the perceiver are likely to become central and motivationally relevant elements of group stereotypes. Asking participants to report on the perceived antecedents of their emotional reactions to in-group and out-group members should therefore be an especially useful method to reveal the content of stereotypes. Native Dutch participants reported both the frequencies with which different emotions were felt in different intergroup relations and the perceived causes of these emotions. Analysis of self-reported antecedents of emotional reactions revealed that (a) despite a general in-group favourability bias, both the in-group and the two out-groups employed arouse different kinds of negative and positive emotions; and (b) differences in emotional reactions to the two out-groups are related to salient differences in perceived antecedents between these groups. Theoretical and practical implications of the present emphasis on the cognitive foundation of emotion in intergroup relations are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Gender differences in behaviour: activating effects of cross-sex hormones.

The relative contribution of organizing and activating effects of sex hormones to the establishment of gender differences in behaviour is still unclear. In a group of 35 female-to-male transsexuals and a group of 15 male-to-female transsexuals a large battery of tests on aggression, sexual motivation and cognitive functioning was administered twice: shortly before and three months after the start of cross-sex hormone treatment. The administration of androgens to females was clearly associated with an increase in aggression proneness, sexual arousability and spatial ability performance. In contrast, it had a deteriorating effect on verbal fluency tasks. The effects of cross-sex hormones were just as pronounced in the male-to-female group upon androgen deprivation: anger and aggression proneness, sexual arousability and spatial ability decreased, whereas verbal fluency improved. This study offers evidence that cross-sex hormones directly and quickly affect gender specific behaviours. If sex-specific organising effects of sex hormones do exist in the human, they do not prevent these effects of androgen administration to females and androgen deprivation of males to become manifest.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Activating effects of androgens on cognitive performance: causal evidence in a group of female-to-male transsexuals.

It is still unclear whether sex differences in cognitive functioning are mainly due to perinatal organizing effects of sex hormones on the brain, or to activating effects in adulthood. In a group of 22 female-to-male transsexuals a battery of visuospatial and verbal ability tests was administered twice: shortly before and 3 months after the start of androgen treatment. The administering of androgens was clearly associated with an increase in spatial ability performance. In contrast, it had a deteriorating effect on verbal fluency tasks. This study offers preliminary evidence that androgens directly and quickly affect cognitive performance in females.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

Emotions and respiratory patterns: review and critical analysis.

The literature on emotions and respiration is reviewed. After the early years of experimental psychology, attention to their relationship has been sparse, presumably due to difficulties in adequate measurement of respiration. The available data suggest nevertheless that respiration patterns reflect the general dimensions of emotional response that are linked to response requirements of the emotional situations. It is suggested that the major dimensions are those of calm-excitement, relaxation-tenseness, and active versus passive coping. Research on the emotion-respiration relationships has been largely restricted to the correlates of respiration rate, amplitude, and volume. Finer distinctions than those indicated may well be possible if a wider range of parameters, such as the form of the respiratory cycle, is included in the investigation.

Animals↗
PubMed1994

Modulation of the acoustic startle response by film-induced fear and sexual arousal.

The response matching model of Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert (1992) predicts startle reflex facilitation during negative relative to positive emotional states. Using slide and imagery paradigms, larger eyeblink responses to startle probes for unpleasant than for pleasant conditions have consistently been reported. The present study extended the previously observed relationship between valence and startle to more complex stimuli, namely 1-min film fragments. Thirty-three subjects viewed a sequence of 27 film fragments with neutral, negative (fearful), and positive (sexual) contents, presented in one of three mixed orders. Blink magnitude to brief bursts of white noise was larger during fearful fragments than during sexual fragments. Blink magnitudes habituated across successive film fragments, but the positive-negative difference remained stable within film fragments and during the entire length of the videotape (approximately 40 min).

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1992

Cultural variations in emotions: a review.

The psychological and anthropological literature on cultural variations in emotions is reviewed. The literature has been interpreted within the framework of a cognitive-process model of emotions. Both cross-cultural differences and similarities were identified in each phase of the emotion process; similarities in 1 phase do not necessarily imply similarities in other phases. Whether cross-cultural differences or similarities are found depends to an important degree on the level of description of the emotional phenomena. Cultural differences in emotions appear to be due to differences in event types or schemas, in culture-specific appraisal propensities, in behavior repertoires, or in regulation processes. Differences in taxonomies of emotion words sometimes reflect true emotion differences like those just mentioned, but they may also just result from differences in which emotion-process phase serves as the basis for categorization.

Cognition↗
PubMed1988

The laws of emotion.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Experimental social fear: immunological, hormonal, and autonomic concomitants.

The aims of the two studies were to investigate the relationship between emotions and immune responses in an experimental setting by inducing social fear and to broaden our understanding of bodily reactions by examining both cardiovascular and hormonal responses. Seventy-nine healthy subjects were confronted with a situation in which relatively strong social fear was induced in the laboratory. Social fear was induced by having to prepare and give an oral presentation in front of an audience. Thirty additional healthy subjects formed a control group; they followed exactly the same procedure, but, instead of the "public speaking situation," they were subjected to a nondemanding task of the same duration. The results indicate that public speaking evoked fear as shown by both elevated feelings of tenseness and negative bodily sensations. Moreover, the data clearly show enhanced cardiovascular activity, elevated plasma hormone levels, and changes in immunological parameters (natural killer cell number and T helper/inducer cells). The control group reported significantly less feelings of tenseness and negative bodily sensations and showed a decrease in cortisol, prolactin, and beta-endorphin levels. Although some variation on immune responses was present, no variation on cardiovascular activity occurred in the control group during the experiment. The results show that there is indeed a relationship between emotion and immune responses. In addition, the data collected on body responses point to a direct mediating effect of sympathetic-adrenal medulla activity and an indirect mediating effect of hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis activity.

Adolescent↗