Howard Berenbaum
Biographic Data
| ID | 770215 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Howard Berenbaum |
| GIVEN NAMES | Howard |
| FAMILY NAME | Berenbaum |
| SIGNATURE | BERENBAUM H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4610-2195 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Association Between Contentment and Depressive Symptoms: Results From Three Panel Studies
We examined whether contentment was associated with depressive symptoms at both between‐ and within‐person levels, both concurrently and prospectively. We examined our hypotheses using random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel models (RI‐CLPM) that computed the associations between contentment and depressive symptoms, treating tranquility and cheer as covariates, with three sets of data: three waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; n = 27,947),…
Self-conscious emotion traits & reactivity in narcissism
An experimental and simulation study of the impact of emotional information on analogical reasoning
Examining the latent structure of emotional awareness and associations with executive functioning and depression
Emotional awareness is comprised of dispositions towards and knowledge about one's emotions. Executive functions (EF) are cognitive processes that organise and guide behaviour towards one's goals. Both emotional awareness and EF play a role in processes such as emotion regulation and are risk factors for the development and maintenance of depression. Although previous research suggests that aspects of emotional awareness are related to EF, method…
Intensity, frequency, and differentiation of discrete emotion categories in daily life and their associations with depression, worry, and rumination
Previous research examining links between psychopathology and emotions in daily life have largely focused on disorder-specific patterns of mean-level positive and negative affect. In this study, we examined three transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology, namely depression, worry, and rumination, and their association with the intensity, frequency, and differentiation of discrete emotion categories endorsed in daily life. Three independent sa…
Proneness for and aversion to self-conscious emotion in posttraumatic stress
Results suggest that people high in shame-proneness, and therefore likely to experience shame in response to traumatic events, may experience greater posttraumatic stress if they are shame averse. If this is the case, addressing shame directly and teaching better skills for regulating it may be an important treatment goal for some individuals with posttraumatic stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Between-individuals and within-individual relations between self-insecurity and unpleasant repetitive thinking
Studies have found that self-security, defined as the acceptance of one’s own weaknesses, is associated with many important outcomes. The present research examined the link between self-insecurity (the rejection of one’s own weaknesses) and unpleasant repetitive thinking, a transdiagnostic process that appears to be a major risk factor for internalizing psychopathology. In Study 1, we examined the link at two levels: between-individuals (N = 158 …
Empathic accuracy: Associations with prosocial behavior and self-insecurity
Empathic accuracy, or the degree to which one accurately understands another person's emotions, is widely thought to be related to better social functioning. However, empirical tests of this assumed relationship are quite scarce. We tested the hypotheses that people higher in empathic accuracy would be more likely to engage in prosocial behavior and report lower self-insecurity (rejection of their own weaknesses). In a large sample ( N = 211) of …
Acts of omission, altered worldviews, and psychological problems among military veterans
Altered worldviews and acts of omission were strongly associated with psychological problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
The effect of the social regulation of emotion on emotional long-term memory
Memories for emotional events tend to be stronger than for neutral events, and weakening negative memories can be helpful to promote well-being. The present study examined whether the social regulation of emotion (in the form of handholding) altered the strength of emotional long-term memory. A sample of 219 undergraduate students viewed sets of negative, neutral, and positive images. Each participant held a stress ball while viewing half of the …
The social regulation of emotion and updating negative contents of working memory
The social regulation of emotion reduces negative affect and may also help remove negative contents from working memory. The present studies investigated whether the social regulation of emotion (in the form of handholding) altered the ability to update negative contents from working memory and whether a person's level of desired emotional closeness moderated this effect. In each of 2 studies, an unselected sample of undergraduate students comple…
Perceived utility of emotion: The structure and construct validity of the Perceived Affect Utility Scale in a cross-ethnic sample
This study introduces a new measure of the perceived utility of emotion, which is the degree to which emotions are perceived to be useful in achieving goals. In this study, we administered this new measure, the Perceived Affect Utility Scale (PAUSe), to a sample of 142 European American and 156 East Asian American college students. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for a new, culturally informed parsing of emotion and for perceived ut…
Cognitive correlates of emotional traits: Perceptions of self and others
Two studies examined how individuals' perceptions of self and others are associated with different emotional traits. Study 1 (N = 386) used structural equation modeling of questionnaire data to examine the relations between emotional traits (i.e., affect intensity, affect variability, and trait pleasant and unpleasant affect) and self- and other-perceptions (i.e., self-instability, self-esteem, other-instability, and perceived treatment by others…
Emotional salience, emotional awareness, peculiar beliefs, and magical thinking
Two studies with college student participants (Ns = 271 and 185) tested whether peculiar beliefs and magical thinking were associated with (a) the emotional salience of the stimuli about which individuals may have peculiar beliefs or magical thinking, (b) attention to emotion, and (c) clarity of emotion. Study 1 examined belief that a baseball team was cursed. Study 2 measured magical thinking using a procedure developed by P. Rozin and C. Nemero…
The unique relations between emotional awareness and facets of affective instability
The association between rejection and depression in the context of women's relationships with their parents
The relation between rejection and depression was examined in the context of college students' relationships with their parents. Female college students (n = 183) provided self-reports of how rejected they felt by their parents, and parents provided self-reports of how rejecting they were of their daughters. In father-daughter dyads, we found that fathers' reports of rejection moderated the relation between women's reports of rejection and depres…
Emotional approach and problem-focused coping: A comparison of potentially adaptive strategies
This study examined for whom and under what circumstances emotional-approach coping and problem-focused coping are differentially more effective. Eighty-nine participants identified a current stressful situation and then were randomly assigned to either: (a) write for 15 minutes about their feelings (emotional-approach coping); or (b) write about how to solve their problem (problem-focused coping). Participants also completed a self-report measur…
Culture and alexithymia: Mean levels, correlates and the role of parental socialization of emotions
Two studies examined the relationship between culture and alexithymia. In Study 1, mean levels and correlates of alexithymia were examined in 3 cultures: European American (EA), Asian American (AA), and Malaysian college students. Both Asian groups had higher alexithymia levels than the EA group. Somatization was more strongly associated with alexithymia in the Asian groups than in the EA group. Mood and life satisfaction were associated with ale…
Language Generation in Schizophrenia and Mania: The Relationships Among Verbosity, Syntactic Complexity, and Pausing
Personality and Emotional Reactivity
The categorization of thought disorder
Correlates and retrospectively reported antecedents of alexithymia
Two experiments were conducted in order to examine the relationship between alexithymia and: 1) family environment; 2) discomfort and ambivalence experiencing and expressing emotion; and 3) dissociation. Research participants in both experiments were college students. We examined the ability to identify and communicate emotion using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. In Experiment 1, we found that alexithymia was significantly correlated with ambival…
Alexithymia and Hedonic Capacity
The association between rejection and depression in the context of women's relationships with their parents
The relation between rejection and depression was examined in the context of college students' relationships with their parents. Female college students (n = 183) provided self-reports of how rejected they felt by their parents, and parents provided self-reports of how rejecting they were of their daughters. In father-daughter dyads, we found that fathers' reports of rejection moderated the relation between women's reports of rejection and depres…
The unique relations between emotional awareness and facets of affective instability
Personality and Emotional Reactivity
Alexithymia and Hedonic Capacity
Perceived utility of emotion: The structure and construct validity of the Perceived Affect Utility Scale in a cross-ethnic sample
This study introduces a new measure of the perceived utility of emotion, which is the degree to which emotions are perceived to be useful in achieving goals. In this study, we administered this new measure, the Perceived Affect Utility Scale (PAUSe), to a sample of 142 European American and 156 East Asian American college students. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for a new, culturally informed parsing of emotion and for perceived ut…
Language Generation in Schizophrenia and Mania: The Relationships Among Verbosity, Syntactic Complexity, and Pausing
The categorization of thought disorder
Alexithymia and Hedonic Capacity
Correlates and retrospectively reported antecedents of alexithymia
Two experiments were conducted in order to examine the relationship between alexithymia and: 1) family environment; 2) discomfort and ambivalence experiencing and expressing emotion; and 3) dissociation. Research participants in both experiments were college students. We examined the ability to identify and communicate emotion using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. In Experiment 1, we found that alexithymia was significantly correlated with ambival…
Personality and Emotional Reactivity
The categorization of thought disorder
Language Generation in Schizophrenia and Mania: The Relationships Among Verbosity, Syntactic Complexity, and Pausing
Culture and alexithymia: Mean levels, correlates and the role of parental socialization of emotions
Two studies examined the relationship between culture and alexithymia. In Study 1, mean levels and correlates of alexithymia were examined in 3 cultures: European American (EA), Asian American (AA), and Malaysian college students. Both Asian groups had higher alexithymia levels than the EA group. Somatization was more strongly associated with alexithymia in the Asian groups than in the EA group. Mood and life satisfaction were associated with ale…
Emotional approach and problem-focused coping: A comparison of potentially adaptive strategies
This study examined for whom and under what circumstances emotional-approach coping and problem-focused coping are differentially more effective. Eighty-nine participants identified a current stressful situation and then were randomly assigned to either: (a) write for 15 minutes about their feelings (emotional-approach coping); or (b) write about how to solve their problem (problem-focused coping). Participants also completed a self-report measur…
Emotional salience, emotional awareness, peculiar beliefs, and magical thinking
Two studies with college student participants (Ns = 271 and 185) tested whether peculiar beliefs and magical thinking were associated with (a) the emotional salience of the stimuli about which individuals may have peculiar beliefs or magical thinking, (b) attention to emotion, and (c) clarity of emotion. Study 1 examined belief that a baseball team was cursed. Study 2 measured magical thinking using a procedure developed by P. Rozin and C. Nemero…
The unique relations between emotional awareness and facets of affective instability
The association between rejection and depression in the context of women's relationships with their parents
The relation between rejection and depression was examined in the context of college students' relationships with their parents. Female college students (n = 183) provided self-reports of how rejected they felt by their parents, and parents provided self-reports of how rejecting they were of their daughters. In father-daughter dyads, we found that fathers' reports of rejection moderated the relation between women's reports of rejection and depres…
Cognitive correlates of emotional traits: Perceptions of self and others
Two studies examined how individuals' perceptions of self and others are associated with different emotional traits. Study 1 (N = 386) used structural equation modeling of questionnaire data to examine the relations between emotional traits (i.e., affect intensity, affect variability, and trait pleasant and unpleasant affect) and self- and other-perceptions (i.e., self-instability, self-esteem, other-instability, and perceived treatment by others…
Perceived utility of emotion: The structure and construct validity of the Perceived Affect Utility Scale in a cross-ethnic sample
This study introduces a new measure of the perceived utility of emotion, which is the degree to which emotions are perceived to be useful in achieving goals. In this study, we administered this new measure, the Perceived Affect Utility Scale (PAUSe), to a sample of 142 European American and 156 East Asian American college students. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for a new, culturally informed parsing of emotion and for perceived ut…
The effect of the social regulation of emotion on emotional long-term memory
Memories for emotional events tend to be stronger than for neutral events, and weakening negative memories can be helpful to promote well-being. The present study examined whether the social regulation of emotion (in the form of handholding) altered the strength of emotional long-term memory. A sample of 219 undergraduate students viewed sets of negative, neutral, and positive images. Each participant held a stress ball while viewing half of the …
The social regulation of emotion and updating negative contents of working memory
The social regulation of emotion reduces negative affect and may also help remove negative contents from working memory. The present studies investigated whether the social regulation of emotion (in the form of handholding) altered the ability to update negative contents from working memory and whether a person's level of desired emotional closeness moderated this effect. In each of 2 studies, an unselected sample of undergraduate students comple…
Acts of omission, altered worldviews, and psychological problems among military veterans
Altered worldviews and acts of omission were strongly associated with psychological problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)
Empathic accuracy: Associations with prosocial behavior and self-insecurity
Empathic accuracy, or the degree to which one accurately understands another person's emotions, is widely thought to be related to better social functioning. However, empirical tests of this assumed relationship are quite scarce. We tested the hypotheses that people higher in empathic accuracy would be more likely to engage in prosocial behavior and report lower self-insecurity (rejection of their own weaknesses). In a large sample ( N = 211) of …
Examining the latent structure of emotional awareness and associations with executive functioning and depression
Emotional awareness is comprised of dispositions towards and knowledge about one's emotions. Executive functions (EF) are cognitive processes that organise and guide behaviour towards one's goals. Both emotional awareness and EF play a role in processes such as emotion regulation and are risk factors for the development and maintenance of depression. Although previous research suggests that aspects of emotional awareness are related to EF, method…
Intensity, frequency, and differentiation of discrete emotion categories in daily life and their associations with depression, worry, and rumination
Previous research examining links between psychopathology and emotions in daily life have largely focused on disorder-specific patterns of mean-level positive and negative affect. In this study, we examined three transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology, namely depression, worry, and rumination, and their association with the intensity, frequency, and differentiation of discrete emotion categories endorsed in daily life. Three independent sa…
Proneness for and aversion to self-conscious emotion in posttraumatic stress
Results suggest that people high in shame-proneness, and therefore likely to experience shame in response to traumatic events, may experience greater posttraumatic stress if they are shame averse. If this is the case, addressing shame directly and teaching better skills for regulating it may be an important treatment goal for some individuals with posttraumatic stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Between-individuals and within-individual relations between self-insecurity and unpleasant repetitive thinking
Studies have found that self-security, defined as the acceptance of one’s own weaknesses, is associated with many important outcomes. The present research examined the link between self-insecurity (the rejection of one’s own weaknesses) and unpleasant repetitive thinking, a transdiagnostic process that appears to be a major risk factor for internalizing psychopathology. In Study 1, we examined the link at two levels: between-individuals (N = 158 …
An experimental and simulation study of the impact of emotional information on analogical reasoning
Self-conscious emotion traits & reactivity in narcissism
The Association Between Contentment and Depressive Symptoms: Results From Three Panel Studies
We examined whether contentment was associated with depressive symptoms at both between‐ and within‐person levels, both concurrently and prospectively. We examined our hypotheses using random‐intercept cross‐lagged panel models (RI‐CLPM) that computed the associations between contentment and depressive symptoms, treating tranquility and cheer as covariates, with three sets of data: three waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS; n = 27,947),…
Psychology (22 works) · Developmental psychology (17 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Clinical Psychology (12 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Psychiatry (8 works) · Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes (7 works) · Cognitive psychology (7 works) · Mental Health Research Topics (7 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (6 works)