This study had two purposes; first, to reconstruct existing models of the mediating mechanisms of embarrassment, and second, to examine the mechanisms underlying the 6 groups of emotions that comprise embarrassment. Two hundred and eighty-eight university students were presented with "Public" or "Private" embarrassing situations, and were asked to rate 18 items related to the 6 elements representing the existing models, and 23 items measuring the 6 groups of emotions of embarrassment. Both explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the existing models could be integrated into 4 causal factors. Covariance structure analysis was then conducted to examine the relationship of these 4 factors with each group of emotions. In the Public situations, 3 causal factors affected each group of emotions, although the nature of the effect varied between groups. In the Private situations, none of the groups were affected by "Apprehension of Social Evaluation" and "Disruption of Social Interaction." These results were discussed in relation to the groups of emotions of embarrassment in public and private situations.

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Two experimental studies were performed to examine the effects of categories of emotion and posers' sex on the facial expressions posed by 25 participants who ranged in age from 65 to 84. Following a coding system (MAX: Izard, 1979), the photographed expressions of seven primary emotions and neutral faces were analyzed by two coders in Study 1, and in Study 2, expressions were rated by 30 student raters using the seven primary emotion scales. It was found that the expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, surprise were accurately conveyed, while fear, disgust, and contempt were not. It was also noted that the difficulty in posing expressions varied among emotions, and that females tended to express fear, surprise, and contempt better than males. Results were discussed in terms of aging on neuromuscular systems and effects of display rules of the aged.

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This study investigated self-focused affect of differential influences on other focused affect in relationship with asymmetry of the effect of positive and negative affects. The influence of affect on cognitive processes is thought to occur in two phases: trait accessibility and trait applicability. The former occurs automatically, while the latter is moderated by several factors such as affect control motivation. Namely, self-focused affect influences trait applicability differently than other-focused affect. Both were induced by asking participants to recall past experiences toward self or other. To clarify trait accessibility, a word association task was used in which participants were asked to fill in the blanks of positive, neutral, and negative words. To explore trait applicability, an impression formation task was used, which asked subjects to rate an ambiguously described target person on several traits. Results suggest that for a word association task, a mood-congruency effect was obtained in both self-focused affect and other-focused affect. Impression formation task data revealed effects on neither self-focused affect nor other-focused affect. Results were discussed in terms of individual differences of affective reactions in interpersonal cognition.

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