the use of diffusion as a research methodology
Introduction
In our daily life and by nature, human beings often themselves engaged in kind of expressions that occur in a different context. These expressions only serve a productive end when it has the expected audience response. Such a response, however, often has a negative or positive implication on the speaker’s performance. In the article “Processing Emotional Expression Under Fear of rejection: Findings from Diffusion Model Analyses,” Lerche, V., Bucher, A., and Voss, A. (2019) examined how emotional expression is impacted by fear for rejection. While this article postulated a tremendous result on the topic, there are imminent issues on some of its components and generalization of results that this paper attempts to look at.
To begin with, the use of diffusion as a research methodology serves to bring a binary model into perspective. This model emphasizes the notion that information is often continuously accumulated, and this runs to a given threshold. That until one limit is reached is when one has the execution of a corresponding response. As such, angry versus happy audiences depending on the drift, will elicit a typical communication response on the speaker. However, (Lerche et al.,2019) did not robustly reiterate the individual ability to adopt new behavioral tendencies in the face of such a drift. Also, there is little or lack of reflection on the speaker’s being as the most focus is drifted on the audience. This lack of clarification makes it challenging to understand the correlation between emotional expression and fear for rejection.
Also, the article focused on the explanation of social factors that often impact individual actions. Lerche et al. (2019) argue that there are explicit forces that tend to influence an individual to perform in a given direction. For instance, a mother telling his son, “We will decide on the matter later today”. Such information elicits different reactions as it will live one in suspense. One would perform more bravely before an audience to suppress the effects of such stimuli that had been ignited previously to deal with it. While Lerch et al. (2019) stated these aspects, implicit and explicit forces on changing behavior, it did not provide how such factors posits a limitation to their study.
Furthermore, the presence of people in any setting affects individual behavior, both positively and negatively. Human beings, by nature, operate under a constant notion of response and coordination. Therefore, the different environment can give different stimuli which also influence a person (Zwart, 2018). For instance, an angry audience with frowned faces and zero smiles will trigger an impression to any speaker that his activities are either boring or uninteresting (Lerch et al.,2019). This creates a sense of demotivation that profoundly changes the performance trajectory of any communication or presentation. On the contrary, a happy audience provides a positive stimulus that motivates an individual even to perform better.
Besides, it’s undebatable that the brain is the controller of every activity of human beings. The limbic structure of the brain is empirically involved in controlling emotion and motivation (Ahafonov & Bokoch, 2018). This is encompassed in four different but interrelated organs, namely, the hypothalamus, the thalamus, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. It’s their coordination that governs both emotions and motivation of human beings.
Accordingly, the article has succeeded in delving more profound the various tenets of psychology. Such include the cognitive role in the interpretation of multiple phenomena to exhibit a given result. Also, by looking at the social and behavioral impact of the audience on individual performance, the study appreciates the relevance of behavioral and sociological psychology as the key to understanding the contemporary communication challenges. For instance, emotional expression under fear of rejection.
Conclusively, the article emphasized the role of various psychology tenets in understanding emotional expressions that we face in different settings (Lerch et al.,2019). In so doing, it sheds light, appreciates, and helps curb some psychological situation that hampers our behavior and, therefore, performance. However, this article did not robustly analyze the role of different branches of psychology from a broader perspective and how they contribute to the generalization of such findings. Future research on the topic becomes necessary to help broaden the scope of emotional processing and the influence of each irrespective of the premise.
