Emotions are experienced differently by individuals, and thus, it is important to account for individuals’ experienced emotions to understand their physiological responses to emotional stimuli. The present study investigated the physiological responses to a fear-inducing stimulus and examined whether these responses can predict experienced fear. A total of 230 participants were presented with neutral and fear-inducing film clips, after which they self-rated their experienced emotions. Physiological measures (skin conductance level and response: SCL, SCR, heart rate: HR, pulse transit time: PTT, fingertip temperature: FT, and respiratory rate: RR) were recorded during the stimuli presentation. We examined the correlations between the physiological measures and the participants’ experienced emotional intensity, and performed a multiple linear regression to predict fear intensity based on the physiological responses. Of the participants, 92.5% experienced the fear emotion, and the average intensity was 5.95 on a 7-point Likert scale. Compared to the neutral condition, the SCL, SCR, HR, and RR increased significantly during the fear-inducing stimulus presentation whereas FT and PTT decreased significantly. Fear intensity correlated positively with SCR and HR and negatively with SCL, FT, PTT, and RR. The multiple linear regression demonstrated that fear intensity was predicted by a combination of SCL, SCR, HR, FT, and RR. Our findings indicate that the physiological responses to experiencing fear are associated with cholinergic, sympathetic, and α-adrenergic vascular activation as well as myocardial β-sympathetic excitation, and support the use of multimodal physiological signals for quantifying emotions.

Synchronizing movements with an external periodic stimulus, such as tapping your foot along with a metronome, is a remarkable human skill called sensorimotor synchronization. A growing body of literature investigates this process, but experiments require collecting responses with high temporal reliability, which often requires specialized hardware. The current article presents and validates TeensyTap, an inexpensive, highly functional framework with excellent timing performance. The framework uses widely available, low-cost hardware and consists of custom-written open-source software and communication protocols. TeensyTap allows running complete experiments through a graphical user interface and can simultaneously present a pacing signal (metronome), measure movements using a force-sensitive resistor, and deliver auditory feedback, with optional experimenter specified artificial feedback delays. Movement data is communicated to a computer and saved for offline analysis in a format that allows it to be easily imported into spreadsheet programs. The present work also reports a validation experiment showing that timing performance of TeensyTap is highly accurate, ranking it among the gold standard tools available in the field. Metronome pacing signals are presented with millisecond accuracy, feedback sounds are delivered on average 2 ms following the subjects’ taps, and the timing log files produced by the device are unbiased and accurate to within a few milliseconds. The framework allows for a range of experimental questions to be addressed and, since it is open source and transparent, researchers with some technical expertise can easily adapt and extend it to accommodate a host of possible future experiments that have yet to be imagined.

The aim of the current study was to examine the explanatory power of personality traits, emotional abilities, trait emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, and self-esteem in predicting perceived stress in adolescents. The data were collected from 406 high school students, aged 18-22 years (Mage = 18.47, SD = 0.64). Perceived stress was assessed with the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10). Personality traits were measured with the Eysenck Personality Short Scale (EPQ-R-S), emotional abilities were assessed with two performance tests, the Emotional Intelligence Scale – Faces (SIE-T), and the Emotion Understanding Test (TRE), and trait emotional intelligence was measured with a self-report questionnaire (the Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale, SEIS). The Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) were also used. Results indicate that the strongest determinant of perceived stress in adolescents was high neuroticism. Perceived stress was also determined by low self-efficacy and self-esteem, as well as high extraversion and psychoticism. Women reported higher perceived stress than men. There also were differences in the determinants of perceived stress between graduate and nongraduate students. The obtained results suggest that the development of high self-esteem and high self-efficacy may contribute to perceptions of lower stress in adolescents and may be especially valuable for neurotic individuals and for women, who are more exposed to stress.

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) are two seemingly opposite types of active and volitional behaviors. However, previous research on the mutual relationships between these two types of behavior has yielded inconclusive results. Such relationships are of particular interest in countries such as Poland, which is still in the process of economic and social transformation from a communist to a capitalist system. Therefore, the current study sought to re-examine the relationships between OCB and CWB in a large sample of Polish employees. One thousand and fifty-one employees were recruited from small, medium, and large Polish enterprises to take part in the study, and they completed questionnaire measures of CWB and OCB. The results showed that the overall frequencies of CWB and OCB were statistically significantly correlated. However, while some dimensions of OCB were found to be significantly negatively correlated with certain categories of CWB, one dimension of OCB was significantly positively correlated with CWB. Cluster analysis allowed for distinguishing of four subgroups of participants with different profiles of CWB and OCB, including a subgroup that exhibited equal levels of OCB and CWB and a subgroup that exhibited high levels of CWB cooccurring with increased frequencies of some dimensions of OCB. These results demonstrate that, overall, CWB and OCB are relatively independent and unrelated constructs; however, their particular dimensions may show a more complex pattern of relationships.

The extent to which the preparation of an eye movement and spatial attention both independently influence performance within the same task has long been debated. In a recent study that combined computational modelling with a dual-task, both saccade preparation and spatial cueing were revealed to separately contribute to the discrimination of targets oriented along the cardinal axis (horizontal and vertical). However, it remains to be seen whether and to what degree the same holds true when different perceptual stimuli are used. In the present study, we combined evidence accumulation modelling with a dual-task paradigm to assess the extent to which both saccade preparation and spatial attention contribute to the discrimination of full contrast targets oriented along the oblique axis (diagonal). The results revealed a separate and quantifiable contribution of both types of orienting to discrimination performance. Comparison of the magnitude of these effects to those obtained for cardinal orientation discrimination revealed the influence of saccade preparation and spatial attention to be six times smaller for oblique orientations. Importantly, the results revealed a separate and quantifiable contribution of both saccade preparation and spatial attention regardless of perceptual stimuli or stimulus contrast.

Systematic information processing and decision-making under uncertainty are key constructs of new conceptions explaining the severity of pathological worry. The current study attempted to analyze their usefulness in subclinical and clinical groups. In the first phase of the study (N = 251) participants were examined with the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), a GP consultation-related survey, and a screening survey for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). In the second phase (N = 220), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the PSWQ, and tasks measuring systematic information processing (SIP) versus heuristic reasoning (HR) were applied. In the third phase (N = 60), GAD (n = 30) and healthy control (n = 30) groups were examined with the above methods and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). In the low risk group, a relationship between mood and the representativeness heuristic (ρ = 0.50), as well as anchoring and adjustment heuristic (anxiety-related stimuli) was found (ρ = −0.53). In the GAD group, significant correlations between the PSWQ score, the IGT loss avoidance score (ρ = 0.40), and total IGT score (ρ = 0.48) were found. The results did not confirm a particular usefulness of the systematic/heuristic information processing construct in subclinical and clinical groups. Theory-consistent results were rather found in the nonclinical groups. Nevertheless, the data revealed some interesting findings supporting potential explanatory power of some theoretical models.

The present study explored the intrinsic event-related potential (ERP) features of the effects of acute psychological stress on the processing of motion-in-depth perception using a dual-task paradigm. After a mental arithmetic task was used to induce acute psychological stress, a collision task was used to evaluate motion-in-depth perception. The error value and average amplitude of late slow waves (SW) were significantly larger for the earlier colliding spheres’ than for the later colliding spheres. The P1 peak latency in the left occipital region was significantly shorter than that of the right occipital region in the motion-in-depth perception task. Compared to the control condition, the estimated value of residual time-to-collision and error value were significantly reduced, and the N1 peak amplitude and the SW averaged amplitude were significantly increased in the stress condition. Longer motion-in-depth time improved discrimination accuracy and decreased the investment of cognitive resources. Acute psychological stress increased behavioral performance and enhanced attention resources on the motion-in-depth perception task together with greater investment of cognitive resources.

The current study sought to identify groups of navigation students and master mariners (captains) characterized by different constellations of the Big Five personality traits and aggression levels. We hypothesized that master mariners would exhibit the resilient personality type and that navigation students would additionally exhibit personality types other than the resilient (e.g., over- or undercontrolled). A sample of 108 navigation students (men, in their second or third year of naval school, all active athletes) and 76 master mariners took part in the study and completed the Polish version of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Zawadzki et al., 1998) and the Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry, 1992; Tucholska, 1998). The hypothesis about the resilient personality type among master mariners was confirmed. The second hypothesis about personality types other than the resilient among navigation students was also confirmed: 33% of the students exhibited the overcontrolling personality type. The article also highlights the need to include psychological assessment in naval school enrolment procedures.