The question is not whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions. – Marvin Minsky, (Minsky, 1986) p. 163 In every art form it is the emotional content that makes the difference between mere technical skill and true art.

The authors review evidence that self-control may consume a limited resource. Exerting self-control may consume self-control strength, reducing the amount of strength available for subsequent self-control efforts. Coping with stress, regulating negative affect, and resisting temptations require self-control, and after such self-control efforts, subsequent attempts at self-control are more likely to fail. Continuous self-control efforts, such as vigilance, also degrade over time. These decrements in self-control are probably not due to negative moods or learned helplessness produced by the initial self-control attempt. These decrements appear to be specific to behaviors that involve self-control; behaviors that do not require self-control neither consume nor require self-control strength. It is concluded that the executive component of the self--in particular, inhibition--relies on a limited, consumable resource. To do or not to do: Which requires more effort? In principle, performing almost any behavior should require more exertion than not performing it. Eating a piece of pie, for example, requires various muscular movements of arm, fingers, and jaw. Yet most dieters can attest that refraining from such behaviors can seem more difficult and draining than performing them.

This article builds on insights into how humans cope with emotion to guide the design of virtual humans. Although coping is increasingly viewed in the psychological literature as having a central role in human adaptive behavior, it has been largely ignored in computational models of emotion. In this paper, we show how psychological research on the interplay between human emotion, cognition and coping behavior can serve as a central organizing principle for the behavior of human-like autonomous agents. We present a detailed domain-independent model of coping based on this framework that significantly extends our previous work. We argue that this perspective provides novel insights into realizing adaptive behavior.

According to the hedonic treadmill model, good and bad events temporarily affect happiness, but people quickly adapt back to hedonic neutrality. The theory, which has gained widespread acceptance in recent years, implies that individual and societal efforts to increase happiness are doomed to failure. The recent empirical work outlined here indicates that 5 important revisions to the treadmill model are needed. First, individuals ’ set points are not hedonically neutral. Second, people have different set points, which are partly dependent on their temperaments. Third, a single person may have multiple happiness set points: Different components of well-being such as pleasant emotions, unpleasant emotions, and life satisfaction can move in different directions. Fourth, and perhaps most important, well-being set points can change under some conditions. Finally, individuals differ in their adaptation to events, with some individuals changing their set point and others not changing in reaction to some external event. These revisions offer hope for psychologists and policymakers who aim to decrease human misery and increase happiness.

ABSTRACT Individuals regulate their emotions in a wide variety of ways. Are some forms of emotion regulation healthier than others? We focus on two commonly used emotion regulation strategies: reappraisal (changing the way one thinks about a potentially emotion-eliciting event) and suppression (changing the way one responds behaviorally to an emotion-eliciting event). In the first section, we review experimental findings showing that reappraisal has a healthier profile of short-term affective, cognitive, and social consequences than suppression. In the second section, we review individual-difference findings, which show that using reappraisal to regulate emotions is associated with healthier patterns of affect, social functioning, and well-being than is using suppression. In the third section, we consider issues in the development of reappraisal and suppression and provide new evidence for a normative shift toward an increasingly healthy emotion regulation profile during adulthood (i.e., increases in the use of reappraisal and decreases in the use of suppression). In the extensive literature on emotion, two rather different perspectives have emerged. Are emotions irrational forces that unleash Preparation of this article was supported by Grants MH43948 and MH58147 from the

Purpose—a cognitive process that defines life goals and provides personal meaning—may help explain disparate empirical social science findings. Devoting effort and making progress toward life goals provides a significant, renewable source of engagement and meaning. Purpose offers a testable, causal system that synthesizes outcomes including life expectancy, satisfaction, and mental and physical health. These outcomes may be explained best by considering the motivation of the individual—a motivation that comes from having a purpose. We provide a detailed definition with specific hypotheses derived from a synthesis of relevant findings from social, behavioral, biological, and cognitive literatures. To illustrate the uniqueness of the purpose model, we compared purpose with competing contemporary models that offer similar predictions. Addressing the structural features unique to purpose opens opportunities to build upon existing causal models of “how and why ” health and well-being develop and change over time. What do volunteer services, social support, pet care, and religious attendance have in common? Recent studies indicate that people participating in these activities live longer than those who do not. Volunteers had a 60 % lower mortality rate compared with

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A processing model of emotion regulation (PMER) was investigated by assessing the attachment system and the two types of emotion regulation strategies (adaptive and maladaptive) in undergraduate students (N = 307) at Georgia State University. The analysis of the data revealed an interesting set of findings: (a) attachment anxiety was a stronger indicator of whether people use adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies than was attachment avoidance; (b) self efficacy, and not cognitive inability to suppress unwanted thoughts, partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and adaptive emotion regulation strategies; and (c) cognitive inability to suppress unwanted thoughts, and not self efficacy beliefs, partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. Overall, the findings provided substantial support for the PMER, and also have important implications for clinical interventions aimed at effective emotion regulation.

Illness Perception Questionnaire (AIPQ; Modified version of IPQ) Cross-sectional COPE inventory Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short Form (MOS SF-36) Identity (DB20; HT17) Timeline (3) Control/Cure (6) Consequences (7) Eiser, Riazi, Eiser, Hammersley and Tooke (2001) DB (Type I and Type II) Type 1, (49 female, 47 male); Type II, (61 female, 78 Type I47.81 (16.67); Type II=63.89 (11.31) CommonSense Measures of Illness Representations Outcome expectations Self-efficacy None Cross-sectional -- Well-Being Questionnaire (WBQ) Fortune, Richards, Main and Griffiths (2000) Psoriasis 140 (45% female) 41.9 (14.2) range (18--68) Questionnaire (IPQ) Identity (15) Cause (10) Consequences (7) Timeline (4) Cure/control (6) None Cross-sectional -- Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) Fortune, Richards, Griffiths and Main (2002) Psoriasis 225 (45% female) 43.3 (12.0) (range 20--77) (15) Cause (10) Consequences (7) Timeline (4) Cure/control (6) None Cross-sectional COPE inventory PSWQ, Psoriasis Life Stress Inventory, Psoriasis Disability Inventory (PDI), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) Glasgow, Hampson, Strycker and Ruggiero (1997) DB Type I and DB Type II 2056 (62% female) 59 Model of Diabetes (PMDI) Seriousness (4) Treatment effectiveness (2 items per treatment) None Cross-sectional Summary of DB Self Care Scale (SDSC) Self-reported DB Self-management behaviours. Treatment barriers (7 items per treatment) General barriers (4) Dietary self-management (27) Griva, Myers and Newman (2000) DB Type I 64 (51.6% female) 20.6 (4.68) (range 15--25) IPQ Identity Consequences Timeline Cure/control None Cross-sectional Self- reported DB selfmanage - ment behav- iours Glycolysated haemoglobin (HbA1c) measure of disease status ...

Abstract. In this paper we present our current work on an embodied conversational agent for training medical bad news conversations and discuss the inspiration gained from previous work of our own and others. Central in this research is the influence of emotional and social features on the selection and realization of conversational behavior.