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Biomedical subjects

R W Levenson

Publications and source records attributed to R W Levenson.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Emotion and autonomic nervous system activity in the Minangkabau of west Sumatra.

Physiology and emotional experience were studied in the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, a matrilineal, Moslem, agrarian culture with strong proscriptions against public displays of negative emotion. Forty-six Minangkabau men were instructed to contract facial muscles into prototypical configurations of 5 emotions. In comparison with a group of 62 Ss from the United States, cross-cultural consistencies were found in (a) autonomic nervous system (ANS) differences between emotions and (b) high configuration quality being associated with increased ANS differentiation and increased report of emotional experience. These findings provide the first evidence that these patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity and the capacity of voluntary facial action to generate this activity are not unique to American culture.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1992

Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: behavior, physiology, and health.

Seventy-three married couples were studied in 1983 and 1987. To identify marital processes associated with dissolution, a balance theory of marriage was used to generate 1 variable for dividing couples into regulated and nonregulated groups. For studying the precursors of divorce, a "cascade" model of marital dissolution, which forms a Guttman-like scale, received preliminary support. Compared with regulated couples, nonregulated couples had (a) marital problems rated as more severe (Time 1); (b) lower marital satisfaction (Time 1 and Time 2); (c) poorer health (Time 2); (d) smaller finger pulse amplitudes (wives); (e) more negative ratings for interactions; (f) more negative emotional expression; (g) less positive emotional expression; (h) more stubbornness and withdrawal from interaction; (i) greater defensiveness; and (j) greater risk for marital dissolution (lower marital satisfaction and higher incidence of consideration of dissolution and of actual separation).

Arousal↗
PubMed1992

Empathy: a physiological substrate.

The relation between empathy (defined as the ability to perceive accurately how another person is feeling) and physiology was studied in 31 Ss. Ss viewed 15-min martial interactions and used a rating dial to indicate continuously how they thought a designated spouse was feeling. Rating accuracy was determined by comparing Ss' ratings with identical self-ratings obtained previously from the target spouse. Physiological linkage between S and target was determined using bivariate time-series analyses applied to 5 autonomic and somatic measures obtained from the S during the rating task and from the target spouse during the original conversation. Accuracy of rating negative emotion was greatest when S and target evidenced high levels of physiological linkage across time. Accuracy of detecting positive emotion was related to a state of low cardiovascular around in the S, but not to physiological linkage between S and target.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Emotion, physiology, and expression in old age.

Emotion-specific autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity was studied in 20 elderly people (age 71-83 years, M = 77) who followed muscle-by-muscle instructions for constructing facial prototypes of emotional expressions and relived past emotional experiences. Results indicated that (a) patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity produced by these tasks closely resembled those found in other studies with younger Ss, (b) the magnitude of change in ANS measures was smaller in older than in younger Ss, (c) patterns of emotion-specific ANS activity showed generality across the 2 modes of elicitation, (d) emotion self-reports and spontaneous production of emotional facial expressions that occurred during relived emotional memories were comparable with those found in younger Ss, (e) elderly men and women did not differ in emotional physiology or facial expression, and (f) elderly women reported experiencing more intense emotions when reliving emotional memories than did elderly men.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Voluntary facial action generates emotion-specific autonomic nervous system activity.

Four experiments were conducted to determine whether voluntarily produced emotional facial configurations are associated with differentiated patterns of autonomic activity, and if so, how this might be mediated. Subjects received muscle-by-muscle instructions and coaching to produce facial configurations for anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise while heart rate, skin conductance, finger temperature, and somatic activity were monitored. Results indicated that voluntary facial activity produced significant levels of subjective experience of the associated emotion, and that autonomic distinctions among emotions: (a) were found both between negative and positive emotions and among negative emotions, (b) were consistent between group and individual subjects' data, (c) were found in both male and female subjects, (d) were found in both specialized (actors, scientists) and nonspecialized populations, (e) were stronger when the voluntary facial configurations most closely resembled actual emotional expressions, and (f) were stronger when experience of the associated emotion was reported. The capacity of voluntary facial activity to generate emotion-specific autonomic activity: (a) did not require subjects to see facial expressions (either in a mirror or on an experimenter's face), and (b) could not be explained by differences in the difficulty of making the expressions or by differences in concomitant somatic activity.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Expressive tendencies and physiological response to stress.

This study assessed the effects of natural expressive tendencies on physiological response to stress. Male undergraduates were unobtrusively observed while watching a stressor videotape. On the basis of the subjects' facial responsiveness to the film, a group of 23 natural expressers and 22 natural inhibitors were selected and exposed to a threat of shock situation during which heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance, and facial expressions were monitored. In accord with the discharge model of emotion, natural inhibitors were less facially expressive and more physiologically reactive to the shock threat than were natural expressers. The results also demonstrated that overt expressivity is stable over time and situation. On personality measures, natural expressers scored significantly higher on Mehrabian's empathic tendency scale, thus supporting the efficacy of this paper-and-pencil instrument as a measure of non-verbal responsiveness. The two groups did not differ on measures of self-esteem, introversion--extraversion, or locus of control. The results are discussed in terms of the discharge model as a descriptive metaphor and not a causal theory.

Arousal↗
PubMed1979

Effects of thematically relevant and general stressors on specificity of responding in asthmatic and nonasthmatic subjects.

Twenty-nine mild asthmatics and 12 nonasthmatics were exposed to three films of varying emotional content to assess differential patterns of physiological response in the cardiac, ventilatory, and bronchial systems. Results indicated that only cardiac interbeat interval (IBI) and total respiratory resistance (RT) were reliable indices of reactivity. In a film of thematic relevance to asthmatics which depicted asthmatic children in a hospital setting, asthmatics evidenced sustained elevation of RT throughout the entire film with no reactivity in IBI. Nonasthmatics did not evidence any significant reactivity to the film. In a film of a generally stressful nature which depicted industrial accidents, asthmatics evidenced elevated RT in response to the accident scenes. Both asthmatic and nonasthmatic subjects responded to the post-accident periods with increases in IBI. In a film depicting a mother giving up her child for adoption, asthmatics responded to the relinquishing of the child with elevated RT. These results are discussed in terms of the necessity of evolving a comprehensive theory of specificity patterns in psychosomatic disorders which goes beyond models of symptom specificity and stimulus-response specificity, neither of which can adequately account for these results. The results are further seen as supporting the utility of selecting stressors of thematic relevance to asthmatics and measuring symptom-relevant indices of physiological reactivity to isolate these specificity patterns in response to stress.

Airway Resistance↗
PubMed1978

Efficacy of pattern feedback for the dissociation of heart rate and respiration rate.

The present study assessed the efficacy of pattern feedback for producing integrative and dissociative patterns of heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR). 60 uninformed subjects were assigned to six groups in which beat-by-beat feedback was contingent upon production of a specific pattern of increased ( ), decreased ( ), or unchanged (=) HR and RR during 11 feedback trials. Concomitant changes in respiratory volume and general activity (GA) were also recorded. Groups given feedback for HR and RR changes in the same directions (HR RR and HR RR ) ANd for changes in opposite directions (HR RR and HR RR ) were generally unable to produce the respective patterns, indicating that pattern feedback does not enable subjects to produce a wide range of HR-RR patterns. However, evidence of dissociation of HR and RR was obtained in the HR RR= and HR RR= groups in which HR changed significantly in the appropriate directions without significant changes in RR. These results are not consistent with the view that RR changes are necessary for HR control, although significant concomitant changes in respiratory volume and GA indicated that HR control was non-specific relative to these variables.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Role of feedback in voluntary control of heart rate.

The relative effectiveness of biofeedback techniques on the voluntary control of heart rate was examined by randomly assigning 32 Ss to one of four feedback conditions in a bi-directional heart-rate control task: (1) no feedback, (2) binary feedback--S was signaled when an interbeat interval had changed in the correct direction, (3) "real-time," proportional feedback--S was provided information about the relative duration of successive interbeat intervals, and (4) numerical, proportional feedback--each interbeat interval was represented as a numeral indicating its relationship to pre-trial mean by direction and magnitude. Significant over-all heart-rate changes were evidenced for both increase and decrease directions, but no differences were found between the feedback conditions. While these data suggest that feedback may be a relatively insignificant factor in voluntary heart-rate control, it was recommended that further investigation examine the role of feedback within the context of other training, mediating and motivational variables.

Adult↗