The primary objective of this study was to determine the adult attachment styles that play a role in the onset and continuation of chronic pain in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) patients, and to evaluate the relationship between the dimensions of adult attachment and depression.The secondary objective of this study was to determine whether social interaction and assessment of emotions via face expressions are impaired in FMS patients and to evaluate the relationship between said impairment, if any, with depression. The patient group consisted of 65 individuals diagnosed with FM in accordance with the American College of Rheumatology criteria published in 2010 and 2016. The control group consisted of 70 volunteers with sociodemographic characteristics that matched those of the patient group. A sociodemographic data form, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI), and the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) Scale were used to collect the research data. No statistically significant difference was found between the patient and control groups in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, that is, gender, place of residence, educational level, marital status, and occupation. However, there were significant differences between the patient and control groups in terms of both attachment and theory of mind (ToM) functions.I FM patients reported anxious and avoidant attachment more than the control subjects. Categorically, the fearful attachment style was more prominent. A weak correlation, albeit not statistically significant, was observed between ToM functions and attachment styles and depression in both the patient and control groups. The findings of this study related to attachment and ToM indicate that developmental factors may play a role in the etiology of FMS. In this context, a combined approach that also includes psychiatric treatment methods may prove more effective in the treatment of FM patients. Accordingly, assessing the mental profiles and attachment styles of FMS patients jointly with psychiatrists may strengthen the weak relations of these patients with their environment and the physician and create a positive effect on their self-perception, benefiting the patient's follow-up and treatment processes.

Previous research, mainly focusing on the situational preconditions of rule violations, indicates that feelings of being watched by other agents promote rule compliance. However, the cognitive underpinnings of this effect and of rule violations in general have only attracted little scientific attention yet. In this study, we investigated whether cues of being observed not only reduce the likelihood of violating rules but also affect the underlying cognitive processes of such behavior when still putting a rule violation into action. Therefore, we applied a motion-tracking paradigm in which participants could violate a simple stimulus-response mapping rule while being faced with pictures of either open or closed eyes. In line with prior research, temporal and spatial measures of the participants’ movements indicated that violating this rule induced substantial cognitive conflict. However, conflict during rulebreaking was not moderated by the eye stimuli. This outcome suggests that rule retrieval constitutes an automatic process which is not or is only barely influenced by situational parameters. Moreover, our results imply that the effect of perceived observation on rule conformity is driven by normative influences on decision-making instead of social facilitation of dominant action tendencies.

Recent research on empirical aesthetics conducted in a laboratory setting has shown that the beauty felt in response to an artwork depends on its interactivity and suggested that interactivity might shape aesthetic experience. The current study tested the role of availability of interacting with installations on naïve viewers’ understanding, liking, and affect. Participants were presented with contemporary installations alongside differing levels/degrees of interactions with them: (a) own-interaction, that is, own interactions and optional observing other viewers when interacting (in an art gallery), (b) other-interaction, that is, observing the viewer when interacting (in a laboratory setting), and (c) nointeraction, that is, interaction unavailable at all (control condition—in a laboratory setting). In Conditions B and C, artwork reproductions were presented. The results showed that in the own-interaction condition, participants liked the artworks more than in the laboratory setting conditions (when data from other-interaction and no-interaction conditions were combined). However, this result should be explained by the gallery effect rather than the degree of interactions. At the same time, subjective understanding and affective state did not differ depending on the level of interaction. Moreover, we tested what kind of affective state correlates with a greater tendency to interact with installations when viewing them in the art gallery. The variance of engagement in interaction with installations was statistically significantly positively explained (overall 42%) by valence (more positive states), subjective significance (more significant) and origin of affective states (metaphorically originating more from reasons of the mind, i.e., more deliberated upon and rational).