Applying Fineman’s vulnerability theory, this paper will explore the role of emotions within the legal profession and the specific vulnerabilities that arise from their traditional and contemporary treatment within law. It will consider how the notion of professionalism in law has traditionally disregarded or excluded emotions as irrelevant or even dangerous in a manner which is philosophically and psychologically flawed as well as damaging to mental health and wellbeing. This approach has created longstanding unacknowledged vulnerabilities for the profession as (...) a whole and individual practitioners. It will then explore how the shifting legal services landscape, and the resultant evolution of the profession, has led to a growing contemporary interest in the use of emotional competencies (often characterised as ‘soft skills’ or ‘emotional intelligence’). These are now increasingly exploited as tools to enhance profitability. However, this leads to a dichotomy as, despite their increasing utilisation, emotions are still not fully acknowledged or incorporated within law’s core professional values. This generates further individual and institutional vulnerabilities around mental health and wellbeing which require urgent attention to ensure the health of the contemporary profession. The paper concludes with suggestions for reforms to alleviate these vulnerabilities and promote greater future resilience within law. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have focused on whether and how emotions threaten autonomy, insofar as they lie outside the sphere of rational agency. That is, they have conceptualized emotional vulnerability as passivity. Second, they have considered how emotions are insensitive to rational judgment, focusing on cases in which emotions are dissonant or recalcitrant. Third, in recognizing the motivational force of emotions, philosophers have tracked their negative impact on rational deliberation. Indeed, emotions are often contrastive elements in rational deliberation. They appear (...) to defeat deliberative judgments about what to do, survive rational deliberation or preempt the very possibility of rational deliberation. But there are more interesting cases in which it is apparent that emotions bear a rather complicated relation to autonomy. Love and shame provide powerful examples of the ambivalences and complexities of such a relation. In analyzing such complexities, my aim is to present a case for appreciating various dimensions of vulnerability and, correspondingly, for exposing the importance of emotional vulnerability for agential autonomy. This view is rooted in a general account of agential autonomy marked by mutual respect and recognition of others, as a normative response to constitutive vulnerability, understood as the capacity to affect and be affected by others as well as by external agentive and non-agentive causes. (shrink)

Cognitive theories of emotion propose that the interpretation of emotion-eliciting situations crucially shapes affective responses. Implicit or automatic biases in these interpretations may hinder emotion regulation and thereby increase risk for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. In this study, participants were randomly assigned to a positive or negative interpretation bias training using ambiguous social scenarios. After the completion of the training, a stress task was administered and changes in positive and negative affect and self-esteem were assessed. The results (...) demonstrate that the interpretation bias training was successful in that participants exhibited a tendency to interpret novel scenarios in accordance with their training condition. Importantly, the positive training condition also had a protective effect on self-esteem. Participants in this condition did not exhibit a decrease in self-esteem after the stress task, whereas participants in the negative condition did. These results demonstrate that implicit cognitive biases can be trained and that this training affects self-esteem. Implications of these findings for research on psychopathology and emotion regulation are discussed. (shrink)

Spurred by Judith Butler’s seminal work, Pamela Anderson finds herself challenged to rethink her ontological assumptions, away from the traditional conceptions of the self. This essay is an attempt to face this challenge upfront, and come to terms with the kind of vulnerability that Anderson wants to vindicate. I start with distinguishing different contrastive but interlocking pairs of concepts of vulnerability: the ontological and the ethical, the pathogenic and the self-enhancing, the inherent and the circumstantial. I then argue (...) for the relevance of ontological vulnerability and suggest that it reveals the apparent normative structure of human agency and indicates the root of mutual accountability. In this perspective, human vulnerability to love and love’s own vulnerability can be appreciated and reassessed as a distinctive drive to cooperative interactions and shared agency, which allows finite and interdependent agents to deal and cope with contingency and temporality, by relying on mutually accountable relations. Focusing on the dynamic reciprocal permeability which is distinctive of love, I concur with Anderson that emotional vulnerability is not the source of burdens and constraints but a precious capacity that enables relations of mutual accountability, shapes human identity, expands individual agency, and shapes integrity in interactive and historical ways. (shrink)

Are the emotions relevant for the theory of value and normativity? Is there a set of morally correct arrangements of emotions? Current debates are often structured as though there were only two theoretical options to approach these questions, a sentimentalist theory of some sort, which emphasizes the role of emotions in forming ethical behaviour and practical thought, and intellectualist rationalism, which denies that emotions can help at all in generating normativity and contributing to moral value, hence also denying that they (...) may have any role to play in moral agency and moral thinking. In what follows, I will offer a Kantian account of ‘practical reason’ as the seat of moral agency, which recognizes a diversified and complex relation between reason and sensibility. (shrink)

This study developed an emotional vulnerability scale and examined its reliability and validity with a sample of university students. In health psychology, a measurement of emotional pain can contribute to the prevention and improvement of physical and mental health problems in daily life. We collected data from 361 Japanese university students. From preliminary interviews with 20 participants, 42 semantic units were extracted. For scale development, a questionnaire survey was conducted using the 42 extracted categories, and exploratory and (...) confirmatory factor analyses were performed. Four factors emerged, which were both reliable and valid: “vulnerability toward criticism or denial,” “vulnerability toward worsening relationships,” “vulnerability toward interpersonal discord,” and “vulnerability toward procrastination and emotional avoidance.” This scale can be useful to understand vulnerability in everyday situations and grasp the vulnerable conditions experienced by individuals. This can help prevent stress responses and mental health problems, which are valuable contributions to health psychology. (shrink)

Emotions and personhood are important notions within the field of mental health care. How they are related is less evident. This book provides a framework for understanding the important and complex relationship between our emotional wellbeing and our sense of self, drawing on psychopathology, philosophy, and phenomenology.

Objective: There is a demonstrated link between the mental health and substance use comorbidities experienced by young adults, however the vast majority of psychological interventions are disorder specific. Novel psychological approaches that adequately acknowledge the psychosocial complexity and transdiagnostic needs of vulnerable young people are urgently needed. A modular skills-based program for emotion regulation and impulse control addresses this gap. The current one armed open trial was designed to evaluate the impact that 12 weeks exposure to ERIC alongside usual care (...) had on young people's ability to regulate emotions, as well as examine potential moderating mechanisms.Methods: Seventy nine young people were enrolled to the 12 week intervention period. Twenty one practitioners from youth and community health services delivered relevant ERIC modules adjunct to usual care. Linear mixed effects regression was used to examine change over time across the primary outcome of emotion dysregulation and secondary outcomes of depression, anxiety, stress, experiential avoidance and mindfulness. Moderation analyses were conducted to test whether the magnitude of change in emotion dysregulation moderated change over time in secondary outcomes.Results: Analyses revealed significant improvement in the primary outcome of emotion dysregulation with a moderate effect size, in addition to decreases in the secondary outcomes of depression, anxiety, stress and experiential avoidance. No improvements in mindfulness were reported. Moderation analyses revealed that the residualised change over time in emotion dysregulation moderated the change over time in symptoms of distress, depression, anxiety, stress, experiential avoidance, and mindfulness.Conclusion: Reductions in the severity of emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, stress and experiential avoidance are promising, and were evident despite the complexity of the participants and the diversity of the service setting. The improvements found in each outcome were only observed for those young people whose emotion regulation also improved, providing preliminary evidence for the role of emotion regulation as a key treatment target in this population. (shrink)

In the present research we investigated gender-specific beliefs about emotional behaviour. In Study 1, 180 respondents rated the extent to which they agreed with different types of beliefs (prescriptive, descriptive, stereotypical, and contra-stereotypical) regarding the emotional behaviour of men and women. As anticipated, respondents agreed more with descriptive than with prescriptive beliefs, and more with stereotypical than with contra-stereotypical beliefs. However, respondents agreed more with stereotypical beliefs about the emotional behaviour of women than with those about men. (...) These results were replicated in Study 2 with a sample of 75 students and 80 nonstudents. In Study 3, a sample of 279 respondents rated the extent of agreement with the same items, this time with respect to then own emotional behaviour. A similar pattern of results was obtained, although agreement rates were higher than in Study 1 and 2. (shrink)

The psychological cost on emotional well-being due to the collateral damage brought about by COVID-19 in accessing oncological services for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment has been documented by recent studies in the United Kingdom. The current study set out to examine the effect of delays to scheduled oncology services on emotional and cognitive vulnerability in women with a breast cancer diagnosis in Iran, one of the very first countries to be heavily impacted by COVID-19. One hundred (...) thirty-nine women with a diagnosis of primary breast cancer answered a series of online questionnaires to assess the current state of rumination, worry, and cognitive vulnerability as well as the emotional impact of COVID-19 on their mental health. Results indicated that delays in accessing oncology services significantly increased COVID related emotional vulnerability. Regression analyses revealed that after controlling for the effects of sociodemographic and clinical variables, women’s COVID related emotional vulnerability explained higher levels of ruminative response and chronic worry as well as poorer cognitive function. This study is the first in Iran to demonstrate that the effects of COVID-19 on emotional health amongst women affected by breast cancer can exaggerate anxiety and depressive related symptoms increasing risks for clinical levels of these disorders. Our findings call for an urgent need to address these risks using targeted interventions exercising resilience. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider the question of whether there exists an essential relation between emotions and wellbeing. We distinguish three ways in which emotions and wellbeing might be essentially related: constitutive, causal, and epistemic. We argue that, while there is some room for holding that emotions are constitutive ingredients of an individual’s wellbeing, all the attempts to characterise the causal and epistemic relations in an essentialist way are vulnerable to some important objections. We conclude that the causal and epistemic (...) relation between emotions and wellbeing is much less strong than is commonly thought. (shrink)

This paper draws on cognitive psychological theory to explain the role of emotion in the decision-making process of four reluctant, vulnerable witnesses to wrongdoing, who were persuaded to blow the whistle on matters of substantial public interest. It proposes a theoretical explanation for the role of emotion on whistle-blower or witness decision-making, based on the Iterative Reprocessing Model and drawing on appraisal-based theories of cognitive psychology. It concludes that the decision to speak is preceded by an intense emotional episode, (...) probably due to changes in the witnesses’ coping and legitimacy appraisal structures. These changes are most likely a result of interaction with journalists and others during the decision-making process. (shrink)

The paper outlines an attempt at phenomenological description of two intermingled dimensions of human vulnerability. First, vulnerability understood as an essential dimension in the constitution of embodiment and second, vulnerability in regard to trust, as a form of emotive interpersonal disposition. In either case, vulnerability does not only refer to mere physical fragility but to the situational horizon where from emerge progressive anticipations of “possible harm”. According to this account, vulnerability appears as a practical horizon (...) of emotional awareness of risk involving not only bodily fragility but a dimension of concrete existence of individual persons, namely, the intimate affectation of being harmed, injured or deprived or a practical aim. In this context the paper claims for a second and more radical sense of vulnerability that problematize the classical account of emotive protentionality, following Anthony Steinbock´s description of moral emotions. In this regard, vulnerability of trust involves an emotional risk and fragility that opens to consideration a dimension of human existence revealing human persons in their absolute and individual concreteness. (shrink)

Shame is frequently viewed as a destructive emotion; but it can also be understood in terms of change and growth. This essay highlights the problematic values that cause pervasive and frequent shame and the importance of resisting and changing these values. Using Confucian insights, I situate shame in an interactive process between the individual's values and that of their society, thus, being vulnerable to shame represents both one's connection to a community and an openness to others’ negative feedback. This process (...) provides an important arena where personal values interact with communal ones. The Confucian tradition, I argue, affords individuals a degree of autonomy in internalization through urging them to cultivate and maintain a keen sense of shame. My discussion also offers resources for understanding the various aspects of this interactive process—how individuals with similar experiences of shame may, through channeling their experiences, influence social values and propel moral progress. (shrink)

Theorists of oppression commonly accept that unfair social power disparities result in a variety of harms. In particular, oppression is characterized by a loss of open-mindedness in the oppressors, and negative internalization in the oppressed. That is, while oppressors are often unable or unwilling to consider the points of view of the oppressed, the oppressed often come to internalize conditions of oppression by experiencing them as indicative of their own alleged shortcomings. Nevertheless, the psychological mechanisms behind these phenomena have remained (...) underexplored. This is unfortunate, since understanding the psychological processes behind these phenomena could help us understand how they could be reversed. In this work, I aim to fill this lacuna by extending debates on mechanisms of mindreading to show how close-mindedness and negative internalization come about. I synthesize empirical findings to show that while theorizing fosters emotional insulation by “reframing” affective cues from a third-person point of view, simulation fosters feelings of emotional vulnerability and psychological continuity. As a result, while theorizing allows oppressors to take a somewhat detached attitude during self and other interpretation, involuntary simulation fosters negative internalization on the part of the oppressed. (shrink)

Many of the activities of clinical practice happen to, with or upon vulnerable human beings. For this reason numerous nursing authors draw attention to or claim a significant moral domain in clinical practice. A number of nursing authors also discuss the emotional involvement and/or emotional labour which is often experienced in clinical practice. In this article I explore the importance of emotion for moral perception and moral agency. I suggest that an aspect of being a good nurse is (...) having an emotional sensitivity to other human beings (patients), because this emotional sensitivity allows the nurse to perceive more accurately the context and perspective of the patient. It is thus important to the moral agency of the nurse and to morally sensitive clinical practice. As such education of the emotions should be a feature of the moral education of the nurse. A useful conception of the role of educated emotion in the moral life can be discovered in Aristotelian ethics. (shrink)

Background: Empathy and moral courage are important virtues in nursing and nursing ethics. Hence, it is of great importance that nursing students and nurses develop their ability to empathize and their willingness to demonstrate moral courage. Research aim: The aim of this article is to explore third-year undergraduate nursing students’ perceptions and experiences in developing empathy and moral courage. Research design: This study employed a longitudinal qualitative design based on individual interviews. Participants and research context: Seven undergraduate nursing students were (...) interviewed during or immediately following their final clinical placement. Ethical considerations: The Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD) approved the study. Participants were informed that their participation was voluntary and were assured confidentiality. They were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time, without providing reasons. Findings: Affective empathy seemed to be strong among third-year undergraduate nursing students. However, they tried to handle the situations in a ‘professional’ way, and to balance their emotions. At the same time, they expressed how difficult it can be to show moral courage when confronted with poor patient care. In addition, they spoke about a lack of role models during clinical practice and supervision. Conclusions: Undergraduate nursing students are in a vulnerable position throughout their journey to become professional and to develop empathy and moral courage. The professional socialisation and forming of professional empathy and moral courage among nursing students, may be seen as a complex interaction of formal and hidden curriculum, where role models play an important role. We argue that the main theme ‘Vulnerable students – a journey towards professional empathy and moral courage’ may cover the longitudinal project as a whole. This vulnerability is something both teachers and supervisors should be aware of when following up with students in their clinical placements. (shrink)

Shame in the deep sense of fear of exposure of human vulnerability (and not in the narrower sense of individual transgression or fault) has been identified as one mood or disposition of philosophical thinking. Philosophical imaginary, disciplinary identity and misogynistic vocabulary testify to a collective, underlying, unprocessed shame inherent to the (Western) philosophical tradition like Le Doeuff (1989), Butler (2004) and Murphy (2012) have pointed out. One aspect of collective philosophical shame has to do with disgust of or denial (...) of embodiment insofar as it poses a threat to ideals of sovereignty and rationality (Nussbaum 2006). Embodiment reveals finitude, being dependent and exposed to others (Sartre 1984; Merleau-Ponty 2012; Landweer 1999; Zahavi 2014), and ultimately points to human vulnerability as rooted in an experience of fear of shame (Gilson 2016). If the inability to process shame of embodiment has resulted in disembodied notions of the human being that may lead to defensiveness, aggression or violence, how can a constructive processing of shame based on an embodied notion of the human being result in a way of philosophical thinking that is more vulnerable? And how can philosophical thinking that has its point of departure in vulnerability, neither in the sense of the victim nor the hero but as a self-conscious emotion, lead to philosophical dialogues that can unsettle vicious cycles of shaming and blaming and are productive for deepening philosophical reflection? Susan Brison’s (2002) work on sexual violence will finally be discussed as an example of such a philosophy. (shrink)

The vulnerability of the human world is an edited book that collects papers reflecting on the problem of well-being, health, and vulnerability in our current society. The ‘human world’ to which we refer points to the anthropological, environmental, and ecological issues in relation to health and well-being that we propose to discuss. It addresses the need for a critical anthropological concept that overcomes the biases of modern anthropocentrism while addressing the specific responsibility of humans in contemporary world crisis. (...) We do not try to give a final definition for what vulnerability is, but we problematize the notion of well-being as a standard of non-vulnerability that is often imposed on human beings; often well-being becomes a measure within which human beings should fit to not be vulnerable. Consequently, well-being has been implicitly defined as the opposite of vulnerability – especially when vulnerability is conceived as a risk or a threat to oneself or the community, rather than a potential source of growth and transformation. For this reason, we believe that well-being is more the title of a problem rather than its solution. This paradigm initiates, indeed, a “positive” conception of health that aims to push the boundaries of human finitude such as suffering, illness and the recognition of mortality. Usually, we assume that well-being is the final goal of our choices and the gist of a decent life, but we spend more time striving for well-being than asking ourselves what being well means for us, as individuals and societies. This paradox may generate emotional frustration which often worsens our condition rather than helps it reach its optimum. Moreover, it may generate and increase inequalities between people and countries who may suffer from the discrepancies in their access to healthcare or vaccination. Therefore, it also raises questions about collective justice and interdependence. Indeed, the concept of well-being seems to block a critical and epistemological appraisal of the concept of “health,” conflating thereby the impression of being “well,” which is normed by sociological, cultural and moral standards with the lived reality of what it means to be healthy – which itself needs to be questioned in light of the scientific paradigms that built human biology and environmental approaches over the past decades. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the legal position of those who perform caregiving work within the context of a cohabiting relationship through a novel relational vulnerability lens. I argue that the state, through privatising and devaluing caregiving labour, situates carers within an unequal and imbalanced relational framework, exposing them economic, emotional, and spatial harms. Unlike universal vulnerability, which is inherent and unavoidable, relational vulnerability can be avoided and reduced if the state were to acknowledge that humans (...) are embodied and relational rather than self-sufficient and rational. Law’s treatment of cohabiting carers reflects the state’s broader tendency to value economic self-sufficiency, while confining caregiving to the private family. I argue that the state has a duty to respond directly to relational vulnerability and should aim to make cohabiting carers resilient. Resilience must involve the provision of material resources but should also have a normative commitment to achieving autonomy and equality for those marginalised by law and state policies. (shrink)

VULNERABILITY AS A PERCEPTUAL CATEGORY – MARTHA NUSSBAUM’S CAPABILITIES APPROACH FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF POLITICAL AESTHETICS The aim of the paper is to draw politico-aesthetic consequences from Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. It is argued that this can be achieved by focusing on the notion of vulnerability implied by the idea of capabilities. The recognition of the vulnerability of the human good inspires a new model of practical rationality based on perception. This idea, in turn, explores the aesthetic (...) connotations of perception implied by its etymology (the ancient Greek for perception being aesthesis). Thus, political aesthetics is understood as the inquiry into the political consequences of the affinity between ethics and aesthetics, as well as the political relevance of the notion of beauty. (shrink)

Emotional memories are vivid and lasting but not necessarily accurate. Under some conditions, emotion even increases people’s susceptibility to false memories. This review addresses when and why emotion leaves people vulnerable to misremembering events. Recent research suggests that pregoal emotions—those experienced before goal attainment or failure —narrow the scope of people’s attention to information that is central to their goals. This narrow focus can impair memory for peripheral details, leaving people vulnerable to misinformation concerning those details. In contrast, postgoal (...) emotions—those experienced after goal attainment or failure —broaden the scope of attention leaving people more resistant to misinformation. Implications for legal contexts, such as emotion-related errors in eyewitness testimony, are discussed. (shrink)

Commentators disagree about Kant’s view on the proper treatment of emotions. In contrast to a tendency in this literature to treat them uniformly, I argue that, according to Kant, feelings (but not affects) require cultivation, and inclinations – although they can and perhaps may be cultivated – generally require discipline. The appropriate treatment for emotions depends on their susceptibility to rational constraint and on the threat they pose to rational deliberation. Although I read Kant as recommending that we cultivate certain (...) emotions, I argue that my reading is not vulnerable to Thomason’s recent pertinent objections to such readings. (shrink)

ABSTRACTA concept of empathy as openness to the emotional perspective of another is developed in opposition to a concept of sympathy as agreement with the emotional perspective of another. Empathy involves knowledge of how things are emotionally for the other person, which is not the same thing as knowledge of the other person’s emotions. Being open to another perspective requires the capacity to hold two perspectives in mind simultaneously – one that is one’s own perspective and at the (...) same time the adopted perspective. This is why empathy can be so challenging for someone suffering from some kinds of anxiety. (shrink)

A profusion of jobs has arisen in contemporary capitalism involving ‘connective labor’, or the work of emotional recognition. Yet the expansion of this interpersonal work occurs at the same time as its systematization, as pressures of efficiency, measurement and automation reshape the work, generating a ‘colliding intensification’. Existing scholarship offers three different ways of understanding the role of emotions in connective labor – as tool, commodity or vulnerability – depending on their view of systematization as useful, inseparable or (...) dehumanizing. Based on 106 in-depth interviews and 300+ hours of observations, I found that vestiges of all three models lurked in the experience of providing connective labor, yet none fully captured the profound meaning practitioners reported finding in their work. Systems varied on three dimensions, reflecting the relative worth of worker, recipient or the work, extracting value from the forged connections, while the meanings workers derived shaped their perspective on its systematization. (shrink)

This brief meditation on Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts reads it as elaborating a politics and ethics of vulnerability in both its thinking and its formal qualities, thereby showing us the radical aesthetic, personal and political potential of this state of apparent unguardedness. I consider, in turn, the text's treatment of emotional vulnerability, physical vulnerability, the vulnerability of gender and our vulnerability to gender, as well as the vulnerabilities of the apparently confessional writer and of (...) the text itself. (shrink)

It is common to think of warfare as a setting in which emotion can lead combatants to engage in unethical behavior. On this view, it is natural to conceptualize the aim of military ethics training as quelling the influence of emotion in combat in order to reduce the risk that military personnel are vulnerable to its influence. Recent research, however, indicates that what is called “emotion processing” is connected in important ways with moral judgment and behavior. In this view, acting (...) ethically is not simply a matter of subordinating emotion to reason, but of responding with appropriate rather than inappropriate emotion. In this respect, such research challenges the powerful “rationalist” account of moral judgment and behavior. More fundamentally, it calls into question the distinction between reason and emotion as a way to understand our moral sensibilities. This article describes this research and discusses work on naturalistic decision-making and neuroscience that provide support for its insights. It then suggests ways in which such research is consistent with Aristotelian notions of character and virtue. Finally, it identifies ways in which some military training implicitly draws on lessons from this body of research, and suggests how it might do so more deliberately. (shrink)

This paper addresses the role of social emotional competence in the emotional and behavioral problems and learning outcomes of preschool children based on their parents’ and teachers’ evaluations. In this study, we compared the perceptions of teachers and parents when evaluating the same child using the multi-informant assessment. First, the associations and differences between both the informant evaluations were investigated. Second, the correlation of the social emotional competence and emotional, and behavioral difficulties among preschool children was (...) analyzed, separately addressing their parents’ and teachers’ evaluations. Third, the role of the preschool children’s social emotional competence in their emotional and behavioral problems, and learning outcomes was investigated building the regression and mediation models. The sample consisted of 507 preschool children and their parents and teachers. Both informants completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and Social Skills Improvement System Social-Emotional Learning Brief Scales, and teachers reported on each child’s learning outcomes. When comparing both informants’ evaluations, positive associations were found between teacher and parental evaluations of prosocial behavior and emotional, and behavioral difficulties of preschool children, as well as self-management. Parents evaluated their children higher than teachers in conduct problems, hyperactivity, prosocial behavior, and total difficulty, while teachers evaluated children higher than parents in social emotional competence. According to teachers, the social emotional competence of preschool children was negatively correlated to all difficulty scales, and positively related to the prosocial behavior scale. The demographic variables, as well as parental socioeconomic status and children’s belonging to a vulnerable group were not found to be significantly associated with the preschool children’s learning outcomes. However, social emotional competence remains a significant variable in teacher-rated learning outcomes of preschool children even if sociodemographic variables are controlled. Our findings indicate that a higher level of social emotional competence and lower levels of social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties are related to a higher preschoolers’ academic learning in their teachers’ evaluation. This suggests the importance of early facilitation of social emotional competence as a key factor for academic success and more positive behavioral outcomes. (shrink)

Research concerning work on caring for older people shows that care providers experience a variety of consuming emotions and stress. They can be said to be in a vulnerable position. It is not known, however, how the care providers themselves understand vulnerability. The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of vulnerability to care providers caring for older people. A qualitative interpretive approach was adopted. Data were collected through tape-recorded interviews with 16 female registered and practical (...) nurses who were experienced in caring for older people. Qualitative analysis resulted in one core theme and six themes with subthemes. The core theme showed that, for the participating nurses, vulnerability essentially meant being human. The meanings of being human were illustrated by the six themes: having feelings; experiencing moral indignation; being harmed; having courage; protecting oneself; and maturing and developing. Analysis showed that vulnerability was a resource as well as a burden. (shrink)

In our interactions with science, we are often vulnerable; we do not have complete control of the situation and there is a risk that we, or those we love, might be harmed. This is not an emotionall...

Adolescence is a period of several changes and a time when young people are confronted with some difficult tasks of dealing with a diversity of emotions and building their own identity. Therefore, it is a period of higher vulnerability for the development of internalizing problems. The present paper aims to study some constructs considered relevant to adolescents’ adjustment and/or internalizing disorders, emphasizing the role of well-being, emotional regulation and family environment. Therefore, this research aims to test the mediating (...) role of well-being in the relationship between emotional regulation difficulties, the family environment, and internalizing problems, and understand the differences between adolescents with a higher and lower risk of presenting internalizing problems. In the study, 723 adolescents of both sexes from middle to high school completed self-report questionnaires. The results indicated that the mediating role of well-being was partially established between emotional regulation difficulties and internalizing problems, explaining 31% of the variance in these problems. Well-being was also considered a partial mediator between family environment and internalizing problems, explaining 19 and 26% of the variance, respectively. Furthermore, the group with a higher risk of developing internalizing problems revealed higher levels of emotional regulation difficulties and family conflict. In contrast, this group reported less family cohesion and support and lower levels of well-being. The main results of the present study provide relevant data in the context of clinical practice. Important implications are also discussed for the design of psychopathology prevention programs and the promotion of global well-being with adolescents. Considering the limitations of the present study, such as the nonrandom sampling process and the reduced number of participants included in the clinical group, these results need to be deepened in future research in this area. (shrink)

Emotional peer support systems have benefits for student-student relationships and allow for children and adolescents' participation in schools. For students with specific educational needs and disabilities, positive relationships seem to be more difficult to attain and these students are more vulnerable to suffer negative peer experiences such as bullying and social exclusion. Systems in which peers can show helpful behavior are beneficial for schools in order to create a positive, supportive climate. Emotional peer support entails social interaction through (...) emotional or practical help based on what these peers have in common and many times with benefits for both. This systematic review identified interventions of emotional peer support in schools for students with SEND. Twenty-three studies were identified that involved four types of befriending: circle of friends, peer buddying, peer networks, and social lunch clubs. Studies reported mainly positive outcomes for both focus students and peer supporters in terms of increased social interaction and social acceptance, as well as enhanced self-esteem and empathy on the individual level. Further bonding of the students by friendship was also perceived, but more precise data is required to draw further conclusions. Support by the school as an institution, the specific role of the teacher, and family participation are important factors related to the impact of peer support systems. Information on these aspects was scarce, and it is recommended to include variables of this nature in future research. Intervention descriptions revealed students' active participation through suggestions for activities, however their involvement in organizing the systems was limited. More research is needed to learn about the opportunities of emotional peer support to improve student-student relationships including the active involvement of the peers themselves in this support. (shrink)

En la filosofía y la psicología moral existe una discusión actualmente de vital importancia, esto es la relación entre moral y emociones. Después de una larga tradición de pensamiento en donde los procesos de justificación moral se asociaron con el valor normativo de la razón, hoy en día asistimos a una nueva orientación que defiende la integración de aspectos cognitivos y emocionales dentro del análisis de la acción moral y los compromisos ciudadanos. En este contexto, Martha Nussbaum, con su teoría (...) cognitivo-evaluadora de las emociones, aporta una original reflexión ética centrada en lo que ha denominado el juicio eudaimonista ligado al florecimiento de la persona y la comprensión de una vida humana buena. Esta visión posibilita entender las emociones como advertidores de vulnerabilidad, sufrimiento y dignidad humana menoscabada, en momentos en que miles de hombres y mujeres se sumergen en lo infrahumano. In moral philosophy and psychology there is currently discussion of vital importance, this is the relationship between morality and emotions. After a long tradition of thought in which the processes of moral justification were associated with the normative value of reason, today we are witnessing a new orientation that defends the integration of cognitive and emotional aspects within the analysis of moral action and citizen commitments. In this context, Martha Nussbaum, with her cognitive appraisal theory of emotions, contributes an original ethical reflection focused on what has been called the eudaimonist judgment linked to the flowering of the person and understanding of a good human life. This vision makes it possible to understand the emotions as warners of vulnerability, suffering and human dignity undermined, at a time when thousands of men and women are immersed in the subhuman. (shrink)

Self-distancing has been proposed as an emotion regulation strategy to reduce the duration and intensity of emotions. This meta-analysis synthesised 48 studies and 102 effect sizes examining the effects of self-distancing on emotion regulation. The results showed an overall significant, small effect of self-distancing in attenuating emotional responses (Hedges’ g = −0.26, 95%CI: [−0.36, −0.15]). Moderator analyses highlighted the efficacy of one intervention feature: approach. Stronger effect was associated with the visual and verbal approach to process emotional events, (...) in comparison to the visual only approach and the pronouns approach. The effectiveness of self-distancing was consistent across other intervention features (context, stimuli, time, emotional outcome) and individual characteristics (emotional vulnerability, age, culture). These findings suggest that self-distancing is effective in emotion regulation when people externalise and articulate thoughts through writing and talking. Practical implications were discussed in relation to the design of interventions to enhance emotional well-being. (shrink)

The disease brought about by the SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 coronavirus has had an unprecedented global impact. Confinement to control the outbreak may have mental health consequences for the most vulnerable in the population, including adolescents. This study aims to describe and analyze the relationships between the stress variables, Emotional Intelligence and the intention to use cannabis in healthy adolescents, before and after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic containment stage. A comparative correlational study was carried out with validated self-completed questionnaires (...) through an online platform. The sample is made up of adolescents aged 13–17 from two different schools in Ponferrada. The analysis of correlation and differences between the groups indicate that confinement has had effects on the mental health of the adolescents, specifically on the emotional manifestations of stress. Furthermore, significant gender differences were found for stress values and Emotional Intelligence. However, no differences have been found for cannabis use intention. (shrink)

ABSTRACT When hope is discussed in bioethics’ literature, it is most often in the context of ‘false hopes’ and/or how to maintain hope while breaking bad news to patients. Little or no time is generally devoted to the description of hope that supports these analyses. In this paper, I present a detailed description of hope, one designed primarily for the healthcare context. Noting that hope is an emotional attitude, four key aspects are explored. In particular, the function of imagination (...) in hope is discussed in depth. Through an examination of the relationship between hope and vulnerability, I demonstrate how adequately describing hope can broaden the normative inquiry into the role of hope in healthcare. Three ways in which persons with hope can be vulnerable are illustrated, and the challenge of how healthcare providers can attend in moral ways to the hopes of patients is identified. (shrink)

Currently, patients are expected to take control over their health and their life and act as independent users and consumers. Simultaneously, health care policy demands patients are expected to self manage their disease. This article critically questions whether this is a realistic expectation. The paper presents the auto-ethnographic narrative of the first author, which spans a period of 27 years, from 1985 to 2012. In total nine episodes were extracted from various notes, conversations and discussions in an iterative process. Each (...) of these episodes was condensed around a ‘critical moment’ as perceived by the “self”. The critical moments in the illness process vary between newly encountered problems with basic needs and mourning, to renewed strength and the desire to grow, embracing new situations. Being confronted with and living with a chronic illness involves periods of anxiety and self centredness alternating with strength and advocating the interests of peer-patients. These episodes of emotion, confusion and refinding a balance have a cyclic pattern. The narrative illustrates the vulnerability and dependency of a patient with a chronic disease. The discussion relates this to mainstream dominant views on patients ‘in control of their own life’. The narrative illustrates, that the vulnerability and dependency of the patient are key factors to take into account in health care policy. The narrative provides a counter story, challenging current thinking in terms of strength, selfmanagement, patients’ own control and independent role. (shrink)