Andrea C Samson
Biographic Data
| ID | 761848 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrea C Samson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrea C |
| FAMILY NAME | Samson |
| SIGNATURE | SAMSON A C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6807-3132 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 51 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Humour as emotion regulation and resource in autism
Humour is closely linked to psychological well-being in neurotypical populations, supporting emotion regulation through mechanisms such as cognitive reappraisal, distraction, and positive affect. In autism, emotion regulation presents unique challenges, and humour use shows qualitative differences, including reduced reliance on adaptive strategies and a high prevalence of gelotophobia. This narrative review synthesises current evidence on humour …
How signature strengths develop positive interdependence and empowerment in an inclusive education context
This study evaluates the Individual Strengths, Collective Power! program in fostering students' use of strengths vocabulary and improving classroom relationships in an inclusive education setting in Switzerland, where students with and without special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) attend school together. The study involved 179 students, ages 8 to 12, divided into an experimental group that received specific training and an active cont…
Anxiety in families of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Switzerland
In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic generated a health, social, political, and economic crisis that dramatically reduced the institutional support for families of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs). To understand how these families may have experienced and coped with the pandemic, we created an online questionnaire that reached more than 10,000 families in 78 countries. The current manuscript - framed within the Intern…
Anxiety, concerns and Covid-19
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g., individual, family, country, children) have impacted on anxiety levels of families and their children with NDCs developed over time. Methods: We used data from a global survey assessing the e…
Current Challenges and Advances in Computational and Artificial Agent Modeling for the Simulation of Affective Social Learning and Regulation of Motivated Behaviors
Psychological science aims at understanding the development and interplay of hidden psychological mechanisms (cognitive, affective, and social) and their causal role in observable behaviors, both in adaptive and maladaptive contexts. It is thus relevant, though highly challenging, to develop computational models and artificial agents derived from psychological theories allowing investigators to explore and test hypotheses through simulations. Thi…
Play and Games
This chapter examines the mechanisms through which play may contribute to emotional development. First, the authors discuss different types of play that can be identified across developmental stages. Second, the chapter focuses on the emotional benefits of play and its potential role as a protective factor against the manifestation of psychopathologies. Next, it specifically refers to the experience of positive emotions and to emotion regulation,…
The Oxford Handbook of Emotional Development
This volume concerns emotional development and includes contributions from leading experts in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, sociology, primatology, philosophy, history, cognitive science, computer science, and education. This is the first volume of its kind to include such a multidisciplinary group of experts to consider emotional development, and, as such, provides perhaps the most complete examination yet of how emotions develop and m…
An exploratory study on emotion regulation strategy use in individuals with Williams syndrome, autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability
This study sheds light on an underexplored area of emotion regulation strategy use in different neurodevelopmental disorders. It also paves the way to further examine emotion regulation in more rigorous ways to better understand emotion regulation in different neurodevelopmental disorders as well as the impact on outcome measures such as anxiety. This exploratory study may help to develop and validate adequate measures to study a broad array of E…
Profiling Police Forces against Stress
Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increased risk to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout (BO). It is currently not well understood which officers are most at risk to develop these disorders. The aim of this study was to determine which coping strategies and personality traits could act as protective or risk factors in relation to PTSD and BO. The second aim, …
Brief Report
The COVID-19 pandemic has a multifaceted impact on mental health due to ill health, restrictions and lockdowns, and loss of employment and institutional support. COVID-19 may disproportionally impact families with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) due to the already higher prevalence of mental health conditions in children with SEND and their parents. Therefore, it is essential to determine the short-term impact of the pandemic on…
How cognitive, social, and emotional profiles impact humor appreciation
Humor is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon composed of a variety of cognitive, social, and emotional processes. This paper will discuss humor appreciation in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic disorder mainly characterized by intellectual disabilities, high social approach tendencies and high positive emotions. Drawing on research on the comprehension and appreciation o…
Positive humor in couples as interpersonal emotion regulation
The aim of this study was to investigate daily positive humor in couples as an interpersonal emotion regulation strategy. Associated changes in psychological intimacy were tested as a possible socio-affective pathway of emotion regulation that mediates the effects of couple humor on changes in individual momentary affect. Within a dyadic ambulatory assessment framework, 102 couples reported on their production of positive humor as an attempt to r…
Emotion Regulation Strategies in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth
Emotional Awareness in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth
The eyes have it
Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is a commonly used emotion-regulation strategy that has been shown to influence affective, cognitive, and social outcomes. Although progress has been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying CR, the role of attention remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated the role of attention in CR by tracking participants' gazes during the presentation of videos depicting people in negative moods. Participants wer…
Experimentally observed responses to humor are related to individual differences in emotion perception and regulation in everyday life
This study aimed to investigate the relevance of an individual's typical emotion perception and emotion regulation behavior to his or her responsiveness to humor. This was studied behaviorally by examining responses to different types of humorous stimuli in an experimental paradigm, in a sample of n = 54 participants aged between 18 to 41 years (29 women, 25 men). Individual differences in emotion perception and regulation were assessed by releva…
Humor as character strength and its relation to life satisfaction and happiness in Autism Spectrum Disorders
The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individuals with Asperger's syndrome/High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA) and how it relates to life satisfaction and orientation to happiness. Thirty-three individuals with AS/HFA and 33 gender-, age- and education-matched typically developing (TD) participants filled out scales assessing character strengths (VIA-IS), life satisfaction (SWLS) and orientation to ha…
Seven decades after Hans Asperger's observations
The aim of the present study was to better understand humor in individuals with Asperger's syndrome. Therefore, various humor and laughter related phenomena were investigated by means of various standardized humor instruments. Forty individuals with AS and 113 controls filled out several self-report questionnaires and tests. The results revealed that individuals with AS scored significantly lower on trait cheerfulness and higher on trait seriousn…
From Ice Age to Madagascar
The aim of the present study was to examine whether children with Asperger's syndrome differ from typically developing children in the appreciation of and behavioral responses to simple slapstick type humor, in which cognitive requirements that are commonly impaired in autism spectrum disorders are reduced to a minimum. Short slapstick scenes and matched non-humorous control scenes were extracted from popular movies to produce an appropriate humo…
Humor(lessness) elucidated – Sense of humor in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Humour as emotion regulation
Humour is often seen as an adaptive coping strategy; however, the empirical literature is inconclusive. One possible explanation is that different types of humour have different adaptive consequences. In the present research, we predicted that positive (good-natured) humour would be more effective at regulating negative emotions than negative (mean-spirited) humour. In Study 1, participants were shown negative pictures two times. First, they simp…
Emotion regulation in Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism
It is generally thought that individuals with Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism (AS/HFA) have deficits in theory of mind. These deficits have been previously linked to problems with social cognition. However, we reasoned that AS/HFA individuals' Theory of Mind deficits also might lead to problems with emotion regulation. To assess emotional functioning in AS/HFA, 27 AS/HFA adults (16 women) and 27 age-, gender-, and education-matche…
The influence of empathizing and systemizing on humor processing
This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective humor processing in two studies. Three cartoon types differing in their logical mechanisms (LMs) and cognitive requirements were presented to participants with high scores on one scale and low scores on the other (empathizers and systemizers): visual puns, semantic cartoons and Theory of Mind cartoons. Empathizers and systemizers were expected to proce…
Humor with backgrounded incongruity
Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a specific constellation of opposition and overlap that is essential to their humorousness. Many stimuli also contain additional incongruities that the audience usually overlooks, but that may be needed to create the setup for the main incongruity, e.g., animals that talk, space aliens, an Italian, an American, and a Russian sharing a language. Two of the s…
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia)
The current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants …
The interaction of cartoonist's gender and formal features of cartoons
The present study investigates gender differences in the use of formal features of cartoons, like the amount of text, the number of panels, or the application of color. For the analysis, 300 cartoons (150 each by female and male cartoonists) were selected randomly from the works of 1519 cartoonists. Twenty-one formal features were analyzed. On average, female cartoonists use more text, include text more frequently, and also draw more panels. Thes…
Positive humor in couples as interpersonal emotion regulation
The aim of this study was to investigate daily positive humor in couples as an interpersonal emotion regulation strategy. Associated changes in psychological intimacy were tested as a possible socio-affective pathway of emotion regulation that mediates the effects of couple humor on changes in individual momentary affect. Within a dyadic ambulatory assessment framework, 102 couples reported on their production of positive humor as an attempt to r…
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia)
The current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants …
From Ice Age to Madagascar
The aim of the present study was to examine whether children with Asperger's syndrome differ from typically developing children in the appreciation of and behavioral responses to simple slapstick type humor, in which cognitive requirements that are commonly impaired in autism spectrum disorders are reduced to a minimum. Short slapstick scenes and matched non-humorous control scenes were extracted from popular movies to produce an appropriate humo…
Humor(lessness) elucidated – Sense of humor in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Seven decades after Hans Asperger's observations
The aim of the present study was to better understand humor in individuals with Asperger's syndrome. Therefore, various humor and laughter related phenomena were investigated by means of various standardized humor instruments. Forty individuals with AS and 113 controls filled out several self-report questionnaires and tests. The results revealed that individuals with AS scored significantly lower on trait cheerfulness and higher on trait seriousn…
The influence of empathizing and systemizing on humor processing
This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective humor processing in two studies. Three cartoon types differing in their logical mechanisms (LMs) and cognitive requirements were presented to participants with high scores on one scale and low scores on the other (empathizers and systemizers): visual puns, semantic cartoons and Theory of Mind cartoons. Empathizers and systemizers were expected to proce…
Humor with backgrounded incongruity
Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a specific constellation of opposition and overlap that is essential to their humorousness. Many stimuli also contain additional incongruities that the audience usually overlooks, but that may be needed to create the setup for the main incongruity, e.g., animals that talk, space aliens, an Italian, an American, and a Russian sharing a language. Two of the s…
Experimentally observed responses to humor are related to individual differences in emotion perception and regulation in everyday life
This study aimed to investigate the relevance of an individual's typical emotion perception and emotion regulation behavior to his or her responsiveness to humor. This was studied behaviorally by examining responses to different types of humorous stimuli in an experimental paradigm, in a sample of n = 54 participants aged between 18 to 41 years (29 women, 25 men). Individual differences in emotion perception and regulation were assessed by releva…
Humor as character strength and its relation to life satisfaction and happiness in Autism Spectrum Disorders
The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individuals with Asperger's syndrome/High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA) and how it relates to life satisfaction and orientation to happiness. Thirty-three individuals with AS/HFA and 33 gender-, age- and education-matched typically developing (TD) participants filled out scales assessing character strengths (VIA-IS), life satisfaction (SWLS) and orientation to ha…
The interaction of cartoonist's gender and formal features of cartoons
The present study investigates gender differences in the use of formal features of cartoons, like the amount of text, the number of panels, or the application of color. For the analysis, 300 cartoons (150 each by female and male cartoonists) were selected randomly from the works of 1519 cartoonists. Twenty-one formal features were analyzed. On average, female cartoonists use more text, include text more frequently, and also draw more panels. Thes…
Breaking ground in cross-cultural research on the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia)
The current study examines whether the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) can be assessed reliably and validly by means of a self-report instrument in different countries of the world. All items of the GELOPH (Ruch and Titze, GELOPH〈46〉, University of Düsseldorf, 1998; Ruch and Proyer, Swiss Journal of Psychology 67:19–27, 2008b) were translated to the local language of the collaborator (42 languages in total). In total, 22,610 participants …
Humor with backgrounded incongruity
Humorous stimuli, like jokes and cartoons, are assumed to contain a central incongruity in a specific constellation of opposition and overlap that is essential to their humorousness. Many stimuli also contain additional incongruities that the audience usually overlooks, but that may be needed to create the setup for the main incongruity, e.g., animals that talk, space aliens, an Italian, an American, and a Russian sharing a language. Two of the s…
Humour as emotion regulation
Humour is often seen as an adaptive coping strategy; however, the empirical literature is inconclusive. One possible explanation is that different types of humour have different adaptive consequences. In the present research, we predicted that positive (good-natured) humour would be more effective at regulating negative emotions than negative (mean-spirited) humour. In Study 1, participants were shown negative pictures two times. First, they simp…
Emotion regulation in Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism
It is generally thought that individuals with Asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism (AS/HFA) have deficits in theory of mind. These deficits have been previously linked to problems with social cognition. However, we reasoned that AS/HFA individuals' Theory of Mind deficits also might lead to problems with emotion regulation. To assess emotional functioning in AS/HFA, 27 AS/HFA adults (16 women) and 27 age-, gender-, and education-matche…
The influence of empathizing and systemizing on humor processing
This paper investigates the influence of empathizing and systemizing on cognitive and affective humor processing in two studies. Three cartoon types differing in their logical mechanisms (LMs) and cognitive requirements were presented to participants with high scores on one scale and low scores on the other (empathizers and systemizers): visual puns, semantic cartoons and Theory of Mind cartoons. Empathizers and systemizers were expected to proce…
Humor as character strength and its relation to life satisfaction and happiness in Autism Spectrum Disorders
The goal of this study was to examine the importance of humor as character strength in individuals with Asperger's syndrome/High Functioning Autism (AS/HFA) and how it relates to life satisfaction and orientation to happiness. Thirty-three individuals with AS/HFA and 33 gender-, age- and education-matched typically developing (TD) participants filled out scales assessing character strengths (VIA-IS), life satisfaction (SWLS) and orientation to ha…
Seven decades after Hans Asperger's observations
The aim of the present study was to better understand humor in individuals with Asperger's syndrome. Therefore, various humor and laughter related phenomena were investigated by means of various standardized humor instruments. Forty individuals with AS and 113 controls filled out several self-report questionnaires and tests. The results revealed that individuals with AS scored significantly lower on trait cheerfulness and higher on trait seriousn…
From Ice Age to Madagascar
The aim of the present study was to examine whether children with Asperger's syndrome differ from typically developing children in the appreciation of and behavioral responses to simple slapstick type humor, in which cognitive requirements that are commonly impaired in autism spectrum disorders are reduced to a minimum. Short slapstick scenes and matched non-humorous control scenes were extracted from popular movies to produce an appropriate humo…
Humor(lessness) elucidated – Sense of humor in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders
The eyes have it
Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is a commonly used emotion-regulation strategy that has been shown to influence affective, cognitive, and social outcomes. Although progress has been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying CR, the role of attention remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated the role of attention in CR by tracking participants' gazes during the presentation of videos depicting people in negative moods. Participants wer…
Experimentally observed responses to humor are related to individual differences in emotion perception and regulation in everyday life
This study aimed to investigate the relevance of an individual's typical emotion perception and emotion regulation behavior to his or her responsiveness to humor. This was studied behaviorally by examining responses to different types of humorous stimuli in an experimental paradigm, in a sample of n = 54 participants aged between 18 to 41 years (29 women, 25 men). Individual differences in emotion perception and regulation were assessed by releva…
Emotion Regulation Strategies in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth
Emotional Awareness in Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Youth
Positive humor in couples as interpersonal emotion regulation
The aim of this study was to investigate daily positive humor in couples as an interpersonal emotion regulation strategy. Associated changes in psychological intimacy were tested as a possible socio-affective pathway of emotion regulation that mediates the effects of couple humor on changes in individual momentary affect. Within a dyadic ambulatory assessment framework, 102 couples reported on their production of positive humor as an attempt to r…
Brief Report
The COVID-19 pandemic has a multifaceted impact on mental health due to ill health, restrictions and lockdowns, and loss of employment and institutional support. COVID-19 may disproportionally impact families with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) due to the already higher prevalence of mental health conditions in children with SEND and their parents. Therefore, it is essential to determine the short-term impact of the pandemic on…
How cognitive, social, and emotional profiles impact humor appreciation
Humor is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon composed of a variety of cognitive, social, and emotional processes. This paper will discuss humor appreciation in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic disorder mainly characterized by intellectual disabilities, high social approach tendencies and high positive emotions. Drawing on research on the comprehension and appreciation o…
Current Challenges and Advances in Computational and Artificial Agent Modeling for the Simulation of Affective Social Learning and Regulation of Motivated Behaviors
Psychological science aims at understanding the development and interplay of hidden psychological mechanisms (cognitive, affective, and social) and their causal role in observable behaviors, both in adaptive and maladaptive contexts. It is thus relevant, though highly challenging, to develop computational models and artificial agents derived from psychological theories allowing investigators to explore and test hypotheses through simulations. Thi…
Play and Games
This chapter examines the mechanisms through which play may contribute to emotional development. First, the authors discuss different types of play that can be identified across developmental stages. Second, the chapter focuses on the emotional benefits of play and its potential role as a protective factor against the manifestation of psychopathologies. Next, it specifically refers to the experience of positive emotions and to emotion regulation,…
The Oxford Handbook of Emotional Development
This volume concerns emotional development and includes contributions from leading experts in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, sociology, primatology, philosophy, history, cognitive science, computer science, and education. This is the first volume of its kind to include such a multidisciplinary group of experts to consider emotional development, and, as such, provides perhaps the most complete examination yet of how emotions develop and m…
An exploratory study on emotion regulation strategy use in individuals with Williams syndrome, autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disability
This study sheds light on an underexplored area of emotion regulation strategy use in different neurodevelopmental disorders. It also paves the way to further examine emotion regulation in more rigorous ways to better understand emotion regulation in different neurodevelopmental disorders as well as the impact on outcome measures such as anxiety. This exploratory study may help to develop and validate adequate measures to study a broad array of E…
Profiling Police Forces against Stress
Police officers are frequently exposed to highly stressful situations at work and have an increased risk to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout (BO). It is currently not well understood which officers are most at risk to develop these disorders. The aim of this study was to determine which coping strategies and personality traits could act as protective or risk factors in relation to PTSD and BO. The second aim, …
Anxiety in families of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Switzerland
In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic generated a health, social, political, and economic crisis that dramatically reduced the institutional support for families of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs). To understand how these families may have experienced and coped with the pandemic, we created an online questionnaire that reached more than 10,000 families in 78 countries. The current manuscript - framed within the Intern…
Anxiety, concerns and Covid-19
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g., individual, family, country, children) have impacted on anxiety levels of families and their children with NDCs developed over time. Methods: We used data from a global survey assessing the e…
How signature strengths develop positive interdependence and empowerment in an inclusive education context
This study evaluates the Individual Strengths, Collective Power! program in fostering students' use of strengths vocabulary and improving classroom relationships in an inclusive education setting in Switzerland, where students with and without special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) attend school together. The study involved 179 students, ages 8 to 12, divided into an experimental group that received specific training and an active cont…
Psychology (24 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Developmental psychology (14 works) · Humor Studies and Applications (12 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Clinical Psychology (9 works) · Cognition (9 works) · Psychiatry (8 works) · Anxiety (7 works) · Autism (7 works)