Abstract
This research aims to study the impact of implicit emotion on the use of theory of mind and enrich the research on emotions and the use of theory of mind, thus allowing adults to apply theory of mind more effectively in the context of social interaction. This study includes 120 college students as participants. A two (level of theory of mind: high vs. low) * three (implicit emotional state: implicit positive emotion, implicit neutral emotion, or implicit negative emotion) * two (private knowledge: endowed vs. unendowed) between-subjects three-factor design was employed. This study obtained the following results: (1) The main effect of different implicit emotional states on college students’ use of theory of mind is significant. College students with implicit positive emotions use theory of mind much less than those with implicit neutral and negative emotions. (2) In cases of implicit positive emotions, college students with a low level of theory of mind use theory of mind substantially less than students with a high level of theory of mind. In cases of implicit neutral and negative emotions, college students with the high and low theory of mind do not exhibit substantial differences in their use of theory of mind. This study concludes that different emotional states affect college students' use of theory of mind.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
References
Apperly I (2011) Mindreaders: the cognitive basis of “theory of mind.” Psychology Press, Hove
Baron-Cohen S, Wheelwright S, Hill J, Raste Y, Plumb I (2001) The “reading the mind in the eyes” test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with asperger’s syndrome or high-functioning autism. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 42:241–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-7610.00715
Birch SAJ, Bloom P (2007) The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psychol Sci 18(5):382–386. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01909.x
Brock RL, Harp NR, Neta M (2022) Interpersonal emotion regulation mitigates the link between trait neuroticism and a more negative valence bias. Personal Individ Differ 196:111726. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111726
Caillaud M, Bejanin A, Laisney M, Gagnepain P, Gaubert M, Viard A, Clochon P, Allain V, Eustache F, Desgranges B (2020) Influence of emotional complexity on the neural substrates of affective theory of mind. Hum Brain Mapp 41(1):139–149. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24794
Chen J, Chen H, Ma L, Jiang Y (2020) A review of studies on unconscious emotional priming. Oalib 07(04):1–11. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1106284
Clore GL, Palmer J (2009) Affective guidance of intelligent agents: how emotion controls cognition. Cogn Syst Res 10(1):21–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogsys.2008.03.002
Díaz R, Reuter K (2021) Feeling the right way: normative influences on people’s use of emotion concepts. Mind Lang 36:451–470. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12279
Dumontheil I (2015) Development of the social brain during adolescence. Psicol Educ 21(2):117–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pse.2015.08.001
Fabre L, Lemaire P (2019) How emotions modulate arithmetic performance: A study in arithmetic problem verification tasks. Exp Psychol 66(5):368–376. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000460
Forgas JP (2002) Feeling and doing: Affective influences on interpersonal behavior. Psychol Inq 13:1–28. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1301_01
Forgas JP (2019) Happy believers and sad skeptics? Affective influences on gullibility. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 28(3):306–313. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419834543
Frumento S, Menicucci D, Hitchcott PK, Zaccaro A, Gemignani A (2021) Systematic review of studies on subliminal exposure to phobic stimuli: integrating therapeutic models for specific phobias. Front Neurosci 15:654170. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.654170
Giedd JN, Rapoport JL (2010) Structural MRI of pediatric brain development: what have we learned and where are we going? Neuron 67(5):728–734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.08.040
Gyurak A, Gross JJ, Etkin A (2011) Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: a dual-process framework. Cogn Emot 25(3):400. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2010.544160
Henry JD, Cowan DG, Lee T, Sachdev PS (2015) Recent trends in testing social cognition. Curr Opin Psychiatr 28(2):133–140. https://doi.org/10.1097/YCO.0000000000000139
Jauniaux J, Tessier MH, Regueiro S, Chouchou F, Fortin-Côté A, Jackson PL (2020) Emotion regulation of others’ positive and negative emotions is related to distinct patterns of heart rate variability and situational empathy. PLOS ONE 15(12):e0244427. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244427
Keysar B, Lin S, Barr DJ (2003) Limits on theory of mind use in adults. Cognition 89(1):25–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0010-0277(03)00064-7
Kihlstrom JF (1999) The psychological unconscious. In: Pervin LA, John OP (eds) Handbook of personality: theory and research. Guilford press, New York, pp 424–442
Kiken LG, Lundberg KB, Fredrickson BL (2017) Being present and enjoying it: dispositional mindfulness and savoring the moment are distinct, interactive predictors of positive emotions and psychological health. Mindfulness 8:1280–1290. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0704-3
Koole SL, Rothermund K (2011) The psychology of implicit emotion regulation. Psychology Press, London
Koole SL, Webb TL, Sheeran PL (2015) Implicit emotion regulation: feeling better without knowing why. Curr Opin Psychol 3:6–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2014.12.027
Krawczyk DC (2018) Social cognition: reasoning with others. Reasoning. Academic press, Cambridge, pp 283–311. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809285-9.00012-0
Liu HC, Xu Y (2009) The Influence of Subliminal Emotional Priming on Interpersonal Judgment. Psychol Res 29(2):66–70
Lizcano-Cortés F, Rasgado-Toledo J, Giudicessi A, Giordano M (2021) Theory of mind and its elusive structural substrate. Front Hum Neurosci 15(2):618–630. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.618630
Lu B, Hui M, Yu-**a H (2005) The development of native Chinese affective picture system—a pretest in 46 college students. Chin Mental Health J 19(11):719–722
Ong DC, Zaki J, Goodman ND (2019) Computational models of emotion inference in theory of mind: a review and roadmap. Top Cognit Sci 11(2):338–357. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12371
Pick S, Mellers JD, Goldstein LH (2016) Emotion and dissociative seizures: a phenomenological analysis of patients’ perspectives. Epilepsy Behav 56:5–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yebeh.2015.12.010
Premack D, Woodruff G (1978) Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behav Brain Sci 1(4):515–526. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00076512
Qiu HY, Chen YQ (2018) Psychological characteristics of deaf students in real social situations and online social situations. J Nan**g **ao Zhuang Univ 34(1):77–84
Raimo S, Cropano M, Roldán-Tapia MD, Ammendola L, Malangone D, Santangelo G (2020) Cognitive and affective theory of mind across adulthood. Brain Sci 12(7):899. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12070899
Siciliano L, Clausi S (2020) Implicit versus explicit emotion processing in autism spectrum disorders: an opinion on the role of the cerebellum. Front Psychol 11:489779. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00096
Skandrani-Marzouki I, Marzouki Y (2010) Subliminal emotional priming and decision making in a simulated hiring situation. Swiss J Psychol/Schweizerische Zeitschrift Für Psychologie / Revue Suisse De Psychologie 69(4):213–219. https://doi.org/10.1024/1421-0185/a000025
Steinberg L (2010) Adolescence, 9th edn. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, New York, NY
Sun M (2019) The impact of different types of emotions and emotion regulation strategies on college students' psychological theories (master’s thesis). Hangzhou Normal University. https://kns.cnki.net/kcms2/article/abstract?v=A67obWUfw0nCNDWDXSbut-heMZSnTJjSBwYS4mY5cs-KyL4rujZlFo3S1r_ymYGim5BRUOc1K3KbsLaTksVuqBQHjwf_PkgtJNwSQwMUAR3DlRp-Vx4DPzfJehjniERnNSO-OWLvc8c=&uniplatform=NZKPT&language=CHS
Tager FH, Sullivan KA (2000) A componential view of theory of mind: evidence from Willians syndrome. Cognition 76(1):59–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00069-x
Tao Y, Cai Y, Rana C, Zhong Y (2020) The impact of the extraversion-introversion personality traits and emotions in a moral decision-making task. Pers Personal Individ Differ 158:109840. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.109840
Tao MX, Chen YQ, Chen RP (2021) The influence of emotion on the application of theory of mind of college students. J Shaanxi Xueqian Norm Univ 37(6):125–132
Toet A, van Erp JBF (2019) The Emoji grid as a tool to assess experienced and perceived emotions. Psychology 1(1):469–481. https://doi.org/10.3390/psych1010036
Tze VMC, Daniels LM, Hamm JM, Parker PC, Perry RP (2022) Stability and change in the achievement emotion profiles of university students. Curr Psychol 41:6363–6374. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12-020-01133-0
Victory A, Letkiewicz A, Cochran AL (2020) Digital solutions for sha** mood and behavior among individuals with mood disorders. Curr Opin in Syst Biol 21:25–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coisb.2020.07.008
Wang Y, Li X (2017) Temporal course of implicit emotion regulation during a priming-Identify task: an ERP study. Sci Rep 7:41941. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep41941
Wu ML (2010) Statistical analysis of questionnaire: spss operation and application. Chongqing University Press, Chongqing
Zhu C, Jiang Y, Li P, Lu F, Wang Y, Zhao Y, Liu D (2021) Implicit happy and fear experience contributes to computational estimation strategy execution: Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence. Neuropsychologia. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107959
Zhu C, Liu D, Luo W (2022) The cognitive and brain mechanisms of how emotional experience affecting individuals’ utilization of estimation strategies. Adv Psychol Sci 30(12):2639–2649. https://doi.org/10.3724/Sp.J.1042.2022.02639
Funding
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
MXT contributed to conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing, writing—review and editing. JPH contributed to conceptualization, investigation, writing—review & editing, and supervision. ZQZ contributed to conceptualization, investigation, writing—review & editing, supervision. YQC contributed to conceptualization, investigation, writing—review & editing, and resources.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
The Institutional Ethical Committee of the University Joint approved this study (approval number: IECUJ1021). Informed consent was obtained from all participants. This investigation complied with the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki governing human participants in research.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Editor: Claus Lamm (University of Vienna); Reviewers: William Wu (Peking University), Ting Liu (East China Normal University).
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Tao, MX., Hu, JP., Zhang, ZQ. et al. The effects of implicit emotion on the use of theory of mind among college students in China. Cogn Process 25, 267–279 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-023-01173-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-023-01173-x