Physical education (PE) can be the starting point for many students to be physically active throughout their lives. Positive emotional experiences in PE are discussed as beneficial for long-term physical activity, however, triggers of students’ emotions are still unclear. The purpose of this study is to explore, from a student’s perspective, emotions and their triggers, which occur in PE classes. N = 12 students  have been interviewed using a focused semi-structured interview to identify their emotions in PE and to explore the situations in which they occurred. An inductive approach with elements of the Grounded Theory Method was implemented to analyze the data. Students reported a wide range of positive and negative emotions. Furthermore, four crucial triggers were identified: (I) Attractiveness of the task, (II) social belonging, (III) competence and (IV) autonomy. Parallels to existing theories, especially the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), will be discussed. These results can be used to improve teachers’ knowledge about students’ emotions in PE in order to build a basis for lifelong physical activity. The International Charter of Physical Education (PE), Physical Activity, and Sport of the UNESCO states the following in article four:“Physical education…must inspire lifelong participation… Early positive experiences of play, games and physical activities should be prioritized for all so as to lay a foundation of the knowledge, skills, attitudes and motivation necessary for the maintenance of lifelong participation in physical activity and sport”  (pp. 4).Physical activity provides many physical, psychological, and social benefits for individuals . TherefoThe difficulty for teachers is to address students’ emotional experiences properly as emotional perceptions change in the course of a student’s school career depending on the development from childhood to adolescence. Consequently, this development influences sporting commitment and related positive experiences of adolescents . Every sEmotion is an important aspect of motivation, behavior, and commitment in PE , which hFrom a theoretical perspective, there are three main assumptions that were related to affective outcomes: Students’ attitudes towards PE , the basThis theoretical perspective on emotional outcomes represents a specific view on which theories are related to emotional outcomes in PE, but does not identify distinct emotional experiences of students. Current literature focused more on affective outcomes mainly categorized as positive or negative. The question remains, whether or not research misses the investigation students’ distinct emotions and their specific triggers in secondary school PE. In fact, there is no research that focuses a student’s perspective to prove, if there are unrevealed aspects of emotional experiences in secondary school PE. In contrast to a hypothesis testing , a qualiThus, it is necessary to explore the emotional experiences out of a student’s perspective. An explorative interview study could provide information about unrevealed aspects of student’s emotions in PE. In sum, it remains unclear what exactly students experience emotionally in secondary school PE and how these experiences are connected to individual and environmental triggers. In order to fill this research gap, we ask the two explorative research questions: (1) Which emotions do students experience in PE, and (2) what triggers students’ emotional experience in secondary school PE?To answer the research questions, a qualitative focused semi-structured interview study with an inductive strategy was conducted in order to explore the field of emotional experiences in PE classes from a student’s perspective. Students who participated in German secondary school PE classes were interviewed. The Public Administration for Education, Youth, and Science in the urban region where the study conducted was approved the ethical reasonableness of the entire study for the students. The study adhered to the data policy valid at the time when the study was conducted. Collecting the students’ names or any other pseudonyms to identify the participants were restricted by the Public Administration for Education, Youth, and Science.Twelve ninth and tenth graders participated, six boys and six girls, aged 14 to 18. The average age was 15.6 years. Half of the participants were physically active outside of school. The other half only took part in the PE classes provided by their schools. The teachers confirmed that the same pedagogical framework was used for all the participants’ PE classes. All students were chosen randomly and participated voluntarily. No compensation was given for participating in this study.As a first step to creating the interview structure, questions relevant to the topic were brainstormed, discussed, and selected with and by peer researchers. To avoid overlaying experiences of the interviewer, questions focused on remembering and visualizing real experiences of and by the interviewee. In a second step, questions were put into an order that enabled fluent communication. Subsequently, the interview structure was tested on two students  who participated voluntarily. Due to the results of this pilot study, the participants were briefed and it was pointed out that there were no wrong answers. According to our pilot interview partners, this statement relaxed the atmosphere. In order to support the participants in describing their emotions, the interviewer explained before the interview that it might be difficult to name emotions. However, every paraphrased explanation would be as good as a single word for one emotion. This reduced the participants’ struggle trying to find the ‘right words’; they were able to proceed with their individual narrative strategy. Their answers were never overlaid by the questions of the interviewer. All adjustments were made before using the interview structure in the study.The interview procedure was standardized in accordance with interlocutors, sequences of the communication and the interview structure. Interviews were carried out on a one (interviewee) to one (interviewer) basis with an average duration of 20 min. The interviewer remained the same. Interviews were carried out in a separate room in schools during regular classes. Students were picked randomly from the on-going PE class. Firstly, a short introduction was given introducing the interviewer and his assistant, informing the participant of the aims and the procedure of the study, as well as their rights as voluntary participants. Secondly, the interviewee was asked introductory questions  to start the conversation. Then the interviewee was asked about his or her general attitude towards PE in school. This beginning of the interview was chosen as attitudes are related to emotional experiences. Thus, if the answer to this first question was positive, questions about positive emotional experiences were asked directly afterwards. This would be followed by questions about negative emotional experience. If the answer was negative, questions were asked the other way around. Interview questions were for example, “Please describe a positively/negatively experienced situation during a PE class in which you participated”, “What did you feel in this situation?”, or “What exactly made this situation more or less intense?”. The entire interview guideline is attached in For the analysis, the interviews were audio-transcribed using the transcription software F5 . FollowiWe derived the model presented in In conclusion, a wide range of different emotions both on the positive and negative spectrum of students’ emotional experiences in secondary PE can be identified in the interviews. An overview of all identified emotions, categorized into positive and negative emotions, is given here. In the following sections, the emotional experiences are categorized additionally in activating and deactivating according to the circumplex model of affect .On the one hand, there are positive emotions and related states, such as happiness, joy, fun, rush of adrenaline, passion, contentedness, freedom, balance, compensation, relief, relaxation, pride, confidence, skilfulness, grandeur, power, superiority, enjoyment, sense of aesthetics, and tension.On the other hand, there are negative emotions and related states, such as depression, grief, weakness, helplessness, feeling cheated, fear, disappointment, discontentment, (negative) astonishment, embarrassment, humiliation, rage, aggression, anger, animosity, and boredom.Interviews show that attractiveness of the task describes a student’s interest in a specific motor task. It is an internal task-specific trigger that can be learned. This means, the attractiveness of the task depends on motor experiences formed during previous physical activities. These experiences are internal representations of motor tasks that the students had to perform in the past. Hanna, for example, likes to practice on a beam. She says: “…if you make it—it is simply this…small rush of adrenaline” (Interview-3). Former experiences influence the attractiveness of the task as an emotional trigger. Only if students remember previous positive individual experiences connected to the specific task or see similarities in this task with a known and liked task, then this is a positive trigger. Linda’s experiences as a cheerleader enable her to include motor experiences that she enjoys in this specific PE-task. This, too, helps to foster her commitment to PE because she can incorporate what she likes from cheerleading into gymnastics. Finally, she concludes that she enjoys investing her time and skills into the task. When we asked Linda to describe this joyful experience, she explains:“I like special tasks. In winter, we did gymnastics and fitness. This was very fun, and when we started, … I thought: “Finally, we can do it again!” It’s been a year since we last practiced it. We do it every year, and I can hardly wait for gymnastics. When we start again, I am so excited… It is always so much fun because we can perform a lot. Since I have been a cheerleader for five years, I can show a lot more than expected, things we learned in cheerleading like lifts and entertainment…” (Interview-7).Compared to Linda, Anna shows that individual experiences—“this is not my sport”, as she says (Interview-10)—influence the attractiveness of the task (Anna does not like games in PE) in a way that finally triggers negative emotions such as a lack of interest or boredom. Anna, 15 years old, makes clear that she is absolutely not interested in games: “… In general I am not that kind of girl who likes games, this is not my kind of sport…” (Interview-10). Whenever she has to play in PE, she feels uncomfortable and dislikes this specific PE lesson.From the data, we summarize that on the one hand the attractiveness of the task triggers positive emotions that are pleasant and highly activating, for example, excitement or joy, and on the other hand, negative emotions that are unpleasant and barely activating, for example, boredom. We can conclude that the attractiveness of the task is, as in Linda’s example, an important predictor of positive emotions in PE, like feeling “joyful”, “happy”, and “excited”. Anna’s example shows the opposite reaction to the teacher’s announcement of playing in the following PE lesson.These stories are good examples for the relationship between attractiveness of a specific task and the perception of positive and negative emotions. Past motor experiences play a crucial role and are an influencing aspect in perceiving a task as attractive.The perception of social belonging is represented in the interviews by a perception of interaction among peers. Selma, 15 years old, is not very interested in participating in sports but whenever the entire class is involved she has “fun” during the PE classes:“Our fun lessons are the game lessons when we play together… And we are not so ambitious to win; we just want to have a good time together. We are all friends, and we know each other pretty well. That is how I see it… if I had to name it in one word, it is about belonging. Everyone is part of it, and everyone is accepted. And this makes you feel happy, it is fun, and you do not play against the others, you play with them” (Interview-2).In contrast to this, Peter, 14 years old, shares an intensely negative experience with us when he remembers a group exercise with low cooperation and social commitment. Peter’s words show that he had expected collaboration during this group exercise. When he describes that quitting the group would have made his experience worse, we can interpret this as downgrading the feeling of belongingness: Losing the group means losing the sense of belonging:“… we had to perform a gymnastic routine in a group building human pyramids; I am normally the guy at the base. The others, though, did not want to climb up. They just said: “Nah, this is not what I fancy doing!” And our teacher had already said that this is not okay. Then, I felt betrayed! They just gave up in the last rehearsal. I just did not understand how this cooperation and team spirit could not exist anymore. That I just could not rely on the others, it was the uncertainty, this feeling of “why are they doing this?” I really did not understand why they gave up. And this was a mixture of sadness and anger, and I was in total rage because of them. And I felt down and depressed” (Interview-1).External factors like friendships between classmates or a good social atmosphere in class influences the perception of social belonging. Social belonging is characterized by a degree of social cohesion and engagement, motivation, inclusion or exclusion, and admiration or rejection. Whereas social cohesion and engagement is the perception and concrete action of interpersonal dependence, as Leonard describes: “I devoted myself to the other guy, because I realized that he was active on my behalf, he would even make a sacrifice for me in the match by falling out of the match” (Interview-4); motivation means to push on with the support from another peer group member, like in Jack’s experience: “…the others [students] who have already finished the exercise but still run with me to motivate me, they really go along with me I improve my results and feel really good” (Interview-8). Inclusion or exclusion defines interpersonal behavior above average or the general perception of being part of a certain community like being with friends as Peter puts it: “Well these are the people I trust most, and otherwise it would not be as much fun, my friends do have to be there” (Interview-1) or like watching other students that distance themselves from the others as Marie says: “I do not like the guys …who are sitting on the bench, who are doing nothing but talking, who do not help. I think this is impolite” (Interview-9).Data shows that social belonging mainly triggers positive emotions with pleasant and slightly activating characteristics like fun or happiness. However, a lack of social belonging seems to lead to negative emotional experiences of unpleasant and slightly deactivating (for example sadness) or slightly activating characteristics (for example anger). Selma describes her feelings as positive when playing together. Peter’s story shows that a reduction, loss or lack of social belongingness triggers negative emotions in PE and that this atmosphere influences the type of negative emotions.The interview examples show that social inclusion triggers the emotional perception. However, it is also obvious that social belonging does not exist on its own. This feeling of being “part of it” depends on the atmosphere and friendly relationships in class.Interviewees described competence as perceived success in motor tasks, like learning or improving in an exercise or achieving personal goals  or competitive goals  in sports. Perceived competence becomes evident in the interviews of Jack, Marie, and Selma. Soccer player Jack, 15 years old, describes success in a soccer game, and Marie, 16 years old, explains how she succeeded on the horizontal bar. Both Jack and Marie describe situations in which they succeeded. Jack succeeded in scoring a goal, whereas Marie learnt a specific move in gymnastics. Jack says:“… I kicked the ball and directly scored a goal… It was a positive feeling that I had made it. And the others sometimes tell me: “What you did was really cool.” This positive feedback is a good thing for me. I feel better in soccer when I know that I did it right. And it is fun; playing a game you are good at. … I feel certain when I know that I can succeed in my performance” (Interview-8).Additionally, Marie explains:“Recently, we practiced at the horizontal bar. I did not make it. But my teacher helped me, explained and showed me how to do it. And then I learned it and finally succeeded. And this success felt good. … and my teacher told me that it was very good… Finally, I was really happy and relieved!” (Interview-9).Perceived competence depends on external or internal factors. External factors are environmental aspects that influence the perception of competence due to feedback, evaluation, help, or support by others: “It was good to know that my teacher trusted me, and that she knew I could succeed. This boosted my will to succeed. I wanted to make it. My teacher supported me, and this was my motivation”, says Marie (Interview-9). In contrast, internal factors are students’ inner principles that affect their expectations and perceptions of being competent, like individual values, ambitions, or the will to succeed. Harry explains these inner principles referring to his ambitions: “Actually, I have my goal in mind… to be faster [when running] than before. This only works out when I am very, very motivated, when I do not give up, and when I am very ambitious” (Interview-6). There are internal influential aspects, as well. Jack is a good soccer player in his free time, so he seems to be fit, and his motor skills for the match are well developed which makes him feel certain (“I feel certain when I know that I can succeed in my performance”). Marie mentions her “will to succeed”, so she refers to a mental skill that helped her in gymnastics. Thus, we suggest that individual skills are either physically or mentally important influential factors on being able to perceive competence as a trigger of positive emotions. Jack would not have been as successful as a soccer player without his skills and experiences, and Marie would have stopped trying to learn this specific move in gymnastics if it had not been for her strong will. Even bad motor experiences in the past can influence the perception of competence, but the emotional perception however is negative. Selma, for example, is not very interested in sports. When we asked her what she does not like in PE, she answered rapidly: “Cross country running, I am so bad at cross country running”. Every time she has to run, she feels incompetent. Here is her story:“… I feel really uncomfortable when I run two laps in eighteen minutes, and even though I feel I was really fast, my teacher tells me that I will still get the worst grade because I was too slow. It was so exhausting. I did my best, but I still got the worst grade. No reward! This is so humiliating; I do not want to carry on because I think that I will never change. It makes me feel disappointed, angry and sad at the same time. And I feel bad because I could not do any better…” (Interview-2).Positive emotions in this context seem to be very pleasant but barely activating (for example enjoyment or relief), whereas negative emotions seem to be very unpleasant and slightly activating (for example anger) or deactivating (for example disappointment). For Marie and Jack, the final motor success triggered positive emotions such as “happiness”, “joy”, “certainty” , and “relief” . Selma’s description contrasts that of Jack and Marie. Feeling incompetent at cross country running makes Selma feel “uncomfortable”, “humiliated”, “angry”, “disappointed” and “sad”.The stories of Jack, Marie, and Selma show that perceived competence is a trigger of emotions in PE, but this trigger is strongly related to the support from their peers and teachers, the evaluation by others, and their individual skills.Data has shown that autonomy can be defined as students’ freedom of choice concerning activity or their own behavior. The satisfaction of autonomy can trigger emotions simply by having the right to choose: “…that you choose something [a task] you are good at…” (Interview-2). Additionally, it can influence competence when the student can make his or her own decisions about a task, as Selma explains: “… for example those who are good at soccer, can play soccer, if they want to” (Interview-2). Students can then choose to be active in whatever activity they are good at.Interviewees explained two distinct external influential aspects of autonomy: variations and new tasks. Variations are, for example, individual changes to a task that students can choose from or alternatives to specific tasks. New tasks are a novelty in relation to the regular curriculum in PE. Yet, they have to be discussed and chosen by the students to support autonomy. Anna gives a clear example of novelty when she explains that she appreciates her teacher being more flexible with the curriculum to make a step towards the class’s interest “… then she [the teacher] makes the most of it. For example, we recently danced which was different from what we normally do” (Interview-10). Both variation and novelty are conditions for supporting autonomy in PE.The results show positive emotional experiences that are triggered by the satisfaction of autonomy, pleasant, and more activating  than the emotions triggered by the satisfaction of competence. According to Marie, her teacher asks the students to express their wishes and ideas for the PE classes. With this democratic approach, novelty leads to perceived autonomy. Autonomy triggers positive experiences and as Marie states: “this is a great thing to happen in every PE lesson. I am always looking forward to our PE classes” (Interview-9). With our data, we cannot contrast autonomy as a trigger of positive emotions with a negative experience. No interviewee reported negative effects concerning autonomy. Autonomy supportive situations in PE attract students to a specific task. Mainly, variety and novelty influence these situations positively.The purpose of the present study was to explore from a student’s perspective the emotions of adolescent students in PE at secondary schools, and how they are triggered. The following section, in turn, presents the key findings concerning students’ emotions and integrates the findings of students’ perspectives into a theoretical perspective. Thanks to the interview design, we could determine distinct emotions out of a student’s perspective, in contrast to former research findings that focused more on positive or negative affective outcomes. Secondly, the derived model and its close relation to self-determination theory (SDT) is discussed. In this section, we will emphasize our findings on the attractiveness of the task that can be compared to students’ attitudes and personal relevancies towards PE. Equally we focus on the parallels between our findings and the basic need theory and its relation to positive affective outcomes. Finally, this model’s implications are explained, and the methodology of the study is discussed.To explore the field of emotions in PE in young people, our first research question was: Which emotions do students experience in PE? The interviews revealed a variety of individual insights into emotional experiences. The identification of a broad range of both positive  and negative  emotions assists in the understanding of PE from a student’s perspective. The results show that students experience a broad range of activating emotions in PE, be it pleasant  or unpleasant (for example anger). Yet, it is also possible that students experience deactivating emotions, which seem to be limited to unpleasant feelings, like sadness or disappointment. Regarding positive emotions and related states, primary school students mentioned being cheerful, happy, contented, joyful, relaxed, and passionate in PE as well as feeling fit, free, and relieved . In compWhen contrasting the negative emotions and related states identified in this study with previous research, some differences can be seen. Fear, boredom, weakness, grief, depression, rage, and anger have also been identified in the experiences of primary school students . Other nOur second research question in exploring the emotions of young people in PE was: What triggers students’ emotions in secondary school PE? We identified four triggers of emotional experience: (I) Attractiveness of the task, (II) social belonging, (III) perceived competence, and (IV) autonomy. These triggers are similar to recent findings on how to support adolescent students in finding a meaning in PE through personal relevance  or satis(I) The attractiveness of the task is a trigger of positive or negative emotions. The present findings show that attractiveness is related to interest or personal relevance ,11. Acco(II) Social belonging amongst peers plays a crucial part in PE. To experience positive and negative emotions, the degree of how strongly one feels part of a social group is very important. The word “belonging” even appeared in the interview. These social bonds create emotional bonds that also foster intrinsically motivated behavior . Thus, s(III) Perceived competence is a strong trigger for emotional experience. The feeling of competence/incompetence in a motor task leads to either positive or negative emotions and depends on one’s skills, either physically or mentally. We assume that perceived competence is strongly related to success when performing tasks in PE. The present results show that internal factors influence the perception of competence, as seen in determination, because one has either met expectations or has the ambition to utilize one’s skills. In this context, the results of this study support the assumptions of the attribution theory , which s(IV) Autonomy is a trigger of positive emotions since it relates to students’ freedom of choice and wishes. Students appreciate being able to decide for themselves what they want to do in PE, or decide that they like to try new things, in accordance to their wishes. In a similar qualitative study , autonomTriggering students’ emotions by creating an attractive, interactive, competence-oriented, and autonomy-supportive PE can help teachers train the students’ emotional intelligence. Thus, teachers can create situations with knowledge of triggering emotions to provide emotional intelligence training within PE. This work on emotional intelligence contributes to a secondary school PE that is sensitive to the emotional development throughout adolescence .The present findings create a basis to support students by motivating them to be physically active in the long term. In addition to recent research findings on triggers of adults’ emotional perceptions during recreational physical activities , the preThe findings of the present study are closely related to SDT, particularly with the three basic needs as emotional triggers: Social belonging, perceived competence, and autonomy . We deriThe role of emotions in SDT has already been discussed. Different types of motivation depend on different emotional regulation strategies . Other sRegarding the interaction of former experiences and the attractiveness of the task as an emotional trigger, this can confirm the reciprocal relation between intrinsic motivation and emotion. As we did not focus on emotional regulation strategies in this exploration, we cannot compare our findings with the suggestion that these regulation strategies are important . Howevern = 12) seems small, there were enough participants to be able to achieve successful saturation and a deep exploration of the data, which might provide a framework for future qualitative approaches to this topic. In the present study, it is a limitation that the interview questions were not derived from current literature. Future research might use current literature to create the interview guideline and its questions to focus on the research gap. Another open question is—due to the restriction of collecting students’ names—which we are not able to prove the semantic meaning of words used by the interviewees.The strengths of this study are the systematic analysis and the heterogeneous choice of the sampling concerning sex, school levels, and extracurricular sport activities. The sample was equitable in regards to sex and school levels as well as the number of hours spent on participating in extra-curricular sport activities per week. The interviews have been highly standardized in terms of setting, interviewer, and interview structure. While the sample size (This study sets implications for both future research and practical work for teachers in PE. Future research is supposed to add observational data to analyze behavioral effects of emotions in contrast to the individual representation of emotional experiences, as identified in this study. Additionally, quantitative studies should be carried out to test the established model of emotions in PE. This will help to focus more closely on the role of emotions, for example in motivational theories, and to be able to better explain the affective part of motivation. Further research on the mechanisms of basic needs and emotions are required in order to answer the question of which role do emotions play in the context of SDT in PE. This helps to better locate emotions in SDT and to better explain self-determined behavior in the context of secondary school PE.For teachers, our results can contribute to knowledge of how emotional experiences can be triggered in students during secondary class PE. However, practical implications based on our research results are hypothetical. Therefore, it can be assumed that teachers can relate to the four identified triggers. They may focus on their students’ interests to contribute to the attractiveness of the task, better cooperation, and interaction in motor tasks. This might affect social belonging and strategies for setting individual goals to improve students’ perceptions of competence. Finally, teachers may use teaching methods supporting autonomy in order to meet the students’ needs for autonomy. Nevertheless, these practical implications are not analyzed with an empirical methodology. Thus, before integrating the given results into teachers’ work in PE, different pedagogical interventions have to be analyzed empirically.A crucial part of PE is increasing young people’s commitment and decreasing their dropout rates in physical activities and sports in a lifelong perspective. In this context, understanding students’ emotional experiences is important. The present results show specific mechanisms that function as triggers. These are the attractiveness of the task, social belonging, perceived competence, and autonomy concerning emotional experience. These triggers are already known in various motivational theories, for example as basic needs to achieve intrinsic motivation . In the


Modern embodied approaches to cognitive science overlap with ideas long explored in theater. Performance coaches such as Michael Chekhov have emphasized proprioceptive awareness of movement as a path to attaining psychological states relevant for embodying characters and inhabiting fictional spaces. Yet, the psychology of performance remains scientifically understudied. Experiments, presented in this paper, investigated the effects of three sets of exercises adapted from Chekhov’s influential techniques for actors’ training. Following a continuous physical demonstration and verbal prompts by the actress Bonnie Eckard, 29 participants enacted neutral, expanding, and contracting gestures and attitudes in space. After each set of exercises, the participants’ affect  and self-perceptions of height were measured. Within the limitations of the study, we measured a significant impact of the exercises on affect: pleasantness increased by 50% after 15 min of expanding exercises and arousal increased by 15% after 15 min of contracting exercises, each relative to the other exercise. Although the exercises produced statistically non-significant changes in the perceived height, there was a significant relation between perceived height and affect, in which perceived height increased with increases in either pleasantness, or arousal. These findings provide a preliminary support for Chekhov’s intuition that expanding and contracting physical actions exert opposite effects on the practitioners’ psychological experience. Further studies are needed to consider a wider range of factors at work in Chekhov’s method and the embodied experience of acting in general. Much of the work in modern cognitive philosophy could be considered embodied, situated, or enactive . EmbodimThe present study proceeds from the premise that proprioceptive sensations of posture and movement are linked to emotional and cognitive processes , p. 78. Movement has also been shown to influence our perceptions of space. As Not only has research concluded that proprioceptive sensations of movement influence mood and spatial perception, but these two psychological experiences have been shown to interact, suggesting a complex mediating effect. In a study by To the Actor (1953). Chekhov encouraged his students to approach the role they were working on by assuming a pose that, in their view, expressed the gist of the character’s affects and attitudes. He believed that starting from such a single large gesture or pose, involving the whole body, was an effective way for the actor to coax his or her imagination, discover additional nuances of the character’s mindset, and, in the process, attain an emotional state relevant for the role  at the Arizona State University participated in this experiment. We have not collected data on their previous experience with acting and various formal techniques of bodily mastery, such as dance, martial arts, or yoga, because Chekhov’s method of actors’ training does not distinguish between professional practitioners and novices . Each participant was paid $10 upon arrival. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 49 years old . The mean height of the participants was 172.8 cm .In groups of 5–10 , participants were led through three sets of exercises based on The experiment was run in a large room typically used for theater and dance rehearsals. A curtain hung through the middle of the room so that the exercises were done on one side of the curtain and the measurements of mood and perceived height were done on the other. Mood was measured using an Affect Grid . An AffeUpon entering the room, the participants’ actual height was measured using a tape measure. For the experiment, participants were led through three sets of exercises, adapted from Each set of exercises lasted 15 min. At the end of each 15-min set, an experimenter tapped participants randomly one-by-one to perform the measurements of mood and perceived height. Each of the three times , the participants picked up a new, clean Affect Grid to report mood and then moved on to report perceived height. After making these two reports, participants returned to the group exercises and were instructed to continue the exercises until the new set began. The entire procedure lasted approximately 1 h. The Institutional Review Board at Arizona State University approved all elements of the procedure.r(27) = 0.7, p < 0.01.Actual and perceived height data are reported for all participants in F = 1.53, p = 0.23, The ANOVA of perceived height as a function of exercise is reported in F = 4.83, p = 0.036, F = 5.61, p = 0.006, F = 13.17, p < 0.001, t-tests comparing arousal and pleasantness across the expanding and contracting exercise conditions revealed significant effects for each. Arousal was greater after performing the contracting exercises, compared to the expanding exercises, t(28) = 2.60, p = 0.015; pleasantness was greater after performing the expanding exercises, compared to the contracting exercises, t(28) = 5.08, p < 0.001. Reported arousal and pleasantness as a function of exercise for all participants are reported in R = 0.403, F = 5.321, p = 0.008. The coefficients on both predictors were significant: ΔArousal, b = 0.79, t = 2.65, p = 0.011; ΔPleasantness, b = 0.68, t = 2.58, p = 0.013. The resulting regression equation is,Because there was variability in each measure not attributable to conditions, we sought a direct effect of mood on perceived height. To normalize the data to reflect changes within a participant and not across participants, the value of each measure  after the neutral exercises was subtracted from the values after the expanding and contracting exercises. These data , then, indicate how much each measure changed relative to neutral. A multiple regression analysis see , 6 reveaEquation 1 reveals that increases in both arousal and pleasantness were associated with increases in perceived height. As participants felt more aroused and more pleasant, they felt taller. The reason that that there was no significant effect of exercise on perceived height, therefore, may have been that each exercise condition produced an increase in one dimension of mood and a decrease in the other, possibly canceling out the mean changes in perceived height.The present study investigated whether the movement exercises used in Michael Chekhov’s method produce noticeable effects on the participants’ psychological experience, specifically, on their affective state and their perception of their own height. Chekhov’s method for training actors was predicated on the assumption that movement influenced psychological experience, attuning the subject to the role. The present study was motivated to test for the specific psychological effects based on recent research supporting an embodied, situated, and enactive perspective on psychology . ParticiVery few previous studies have examined the effect of embodied or situated cognition on the perception of one’s own height. Taken together, our results suggest that the contracting and expanding acting exercises developed by In reporting these preliminary results, this study’s limitations must be acknowledged, so as to mark the specificity of our findings and point to future studies that may help further elucidate the factors shaping the subjects’ experience during Chekhov’s “psychological gesture” exercises. We have used the neutral exercises as our base condition for our comparisons, with no measurements of affect taken prior to the beginning of the experiment. Our study also did not involve a control group. Objections may be raised as to whether any form of physio-mental exercise could produce the same effects as the contracting and expanding exercises we have adapted from Chekhov. In anticipating this objection, we point to the opposite trends in self-reported mood that we found after the expanding and contracting exercises, which suggests that specific types of movement routines, coupled with appropriate verbal instructions, tend to evoke specific inner experiences. Future studies may compare the subjects’ self-perceptions of mood and height after Chekhov’s acting exercises and after purely physical exercises, not accompanied by verbal prompts that endow actions with semantic connotations.An important feature of artistic performance is that it typically occurs within the context of a character, a narrative, or some situational circumstances. Michael Chekhov designed his exercises to help actors discover embodied nuances of their roles within a specific dramatic text. In fact, the purpose of Chekhov’s “psychological gesture” was to help actors capture complex context with simple archetypal gestures. Although we stripped the exercises of a specific narrative or character, verbal instructions allowed participants to generate their own imagined context. Thus, our verbal prompts, such as a request to imagine interacting with an “external force” while doing the exercises, could be considered situational circumstances. It is essential, therefore, to consider the role of context when evaluating the individuals’ psychological experiences occurring in tandem with their physical performances.A seminal study on the “power poses” by Although the present study assessed the participants’ self-perception of mood and height in subjective, ego-centric terms, we do not want to conclude that the psychological effects we observed are context-free. While the verbal instructions accompanying the exercises did not cue the participants to pay attention to their standing vis-à-vis others, they involved abstract metaphors of “supportive energy” in case of expansive gestures and “oppressing energy” in case of contracting ones. We found that in these circumstances, the expanding exercises produced a positive and relaxed mood, as they were coupled with verbal prompts to imagine “supportive energy” spreading out from the torso and filling up the body. However, it is possible to imagine a different scenario, in which the actor were performing expanding exercised to inhabit a character who is asserting his victory over an opponent. In this case, it is likely that the actor would follow up with a primal scream, suggesting an aroused rather than relaxed mood. This counterexample, however, does not diminish the value of research on the role of proprioceptive sensations of posture and gestures in mood regulation. Rather, it prompts us to acknowledge the role of situational circumstances, which impose an interpretative framework on the person’s perceptions of their own bodily state.Chekhov’s exploration of the “psychological gesture” anticipated modern embodied, situated, and enactive approaches to psychology. Whether he worked with beginner actors or seasoned professionals, Chekhov encouraged his students to enact their character’s state of mind and attitudes in a specific scene through large gestures involving the entire body. By concentrating on the proprioceptive sensations of this pose, Chekhov’s actor achieved the psychological state useful for approximating the character’s internal emotional landscape.Our study confirms Chekhov’s predictions about the interplay between the sensations of bodily pose and affective state. We demonstrated that expanding and contracting gestures and postures, coupled with verbal metaphors describing the situation, produce systematic effects on the subjects’ mood: expansive movements result in higher pleasure, while closing in on oneself brings about higher arousal. Neither type of exercise appeared to significantly impact the subjects’ self-perception of height. However, a correlation between the increased sense of tallness and rises in the self-estimates of arousal and pleasantness that we have observed opens up a potentially productive new research pathway, by suggesting a hypothesis that exercises inducing low arousal and low pleasantness  would more likely bring about lowered estimates of one’s own height.Key aspects of Chekhov’s training method were thus transformed in our study into testable hypotheses with the aim of deriving conclusions about general psychological mechanisms, relevant both inside and outside the actors’ studio. We believe that a quantificational inquiry of this kind does not undermine the artistic dimension of Chekhov’s legacy; nor does our study exhaust the full implications of Chekhov’s exploration of embodiment. We share the performance theorist John Lutterbie’s sense that cognitive psychology helps reveal the significance of Chekhov’s “psychological gesture” in the creative process and provide a stronger foundation for this method of actor training without reducing the full spectrum of the artist’s insights and observations to one rigid formula , p. 96.Acting in general remains an underexplored area for psychology, compared to music and visual arts . This reAll datasets generated for this study are included in the manuscript/supplementary files.The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the IRB, Arizona State University . The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.AO conceptualized the overall approach of the study, did bibliographic research, and wrote the Introduction, Discussion, and Conclusion sections of the manuscript. EA carried out the data analysis and wrote the Materials and Methods and Results sections. BE created the exercise script on the basis of Michael Chekhov’s book, led the exercise sessions for the subjects, and provided consultations on the ways in which Chekhov’s teachings are employed in acting schools. JP contributed to the design of experiment materials, did bibliographic research, and created data graphs for the manuscript.The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.


The artice titled, “‘You Sort of Go Down a Rabbit Hole...You’re Just Going to Keep on Searching’: A Qualitative Study of Searching Online for Pregnancy-Related Information During Pregnancy” , had several citation errors. These in-text citation errors have been corrected, as well as the resulting error in the numbering of the references, as follows:“It would be beneficial for health professionals to provide pregnant women with information on reliable online sources and highlight them to the potential dangers of forums. HCP should suggest suitable sites to empower people , especia“This and prior research  note theThe old reference 13 (McManus) was deleted. The corrected and renumbered list of references appears below and in the corrected paper, re-published on the JMIR website on July 13, 2017, together with thepublication of this correction notice. Because this was madeafter submission to PubMed, the correction notice has beensubmitted to PubMed. The corrected metadata have also beenresubmitted to CrossRef.


Field of medicine: Immunology, biology.Format: Hardcover book/eBook.Audience: Immunology is a rapidly developing field, of great interest for researchers, clinicians, and students in a wide variety of biomedical and clinical areas including biology, hematology, infectious diseases, etc. The book tackles immunology from the evolutionary perspective in order to understand “forces that shaped, and are shaping, immune defense systems.” To fully appreciate the content, the reader would benefit from having basic knowledge of both fields.Purpose: As stressed by the authors, the book does not attempt to comprehensively cover evolution or immunology, but rather “to present certain immune phenomena in an evolutionary context.” It certainly contributes to the book’s originality that the authors do not hesitate to give their personal interpretation of the presented information, Therefore, instead of being a dull collection of facts, the book aims to “provide a starting point for those who wish to find out more about particular issues.”Content: The book is divided into six chapters: “What Makes Evolution Tick?,” “From Unicellular to Metazoan Immunity,” “Innate Immunity,” “The Triumph of Individualism: Evolution of Somatically Generated Adaptive Immune Systems,” “The Other Side of the Arms Race,” and “Postface,” followed by the Appendices and Index.The first chapter gives a short overview of the fundamental evolutionary processes that would be further discussed in the context of immunology, such as heredity, mutations, genetic drift, recombination, etc. Within this chapter, the authors refer to postulates by Thomas Malthus, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Ernst Mayr, and some others, that are fundamental to the understanding of evolution. The chapter ends with the subheading “Evolution of Immunity,” referring to the specific evolutionary mechanisms within the immune system. In this chapter, the authors persuasively raise several intriguing points that make the reader curious to read the rest of the book.The following few chapters focus on immunity, starting from the second chapter, which deals with the development of the immune system from unicellular to metazoan organisms. The concepts of lineage restriction, recognition of self, and mobilization of the immune machinery are presented together with examples, making the text easy to follow despite the relative sparsity of the graphical presentations. At the end of the chapter, authors discuss the important concept of immune response polarization into the innate and adaptive arm, referring to the “seminal remark made by Charles Janeway” describing the two systems as “dramatically different” but, at the same time, tightly integrated to achieve the common goal.The third chapter deals with the innate immunity, explaining first the organization of the innate immune system and then the evolutionary processes, mainly focusing on the innate immune receptors. Several subheadings explain the mechanisms of gene duplication, modification, and exon/intron swapping, which, during evolution, have produced diversified intracellular and extracellular receptors capable of recognizing a potential threat. In addition to pathogen recognition, innate immune system is able to transmit a signal initiated by receptors and produce a “means of destruction” based on phagocytosis, effective even in “the single cell organisms that existed prior to the evolution of metazoans.”The fourth chapter introduces adaptive immunity, explaining why we need more than the innate immunity to be able to recognize the antigen and produce a protective response. From the evolutionary perspective, “crucial difference is that innate systems are always germline based, while adaptive systems are always based on somatic adaptations.” Important mechanisms of such “somatic evolution of the immune system” are described related to immune receptors, formation of repertoire, ligand binding, etc. An important observation made by the authors is that evolution has suddenly changed “course,” resulting in some “exceptional events in the evolution of the antigen-specific receptors of adaptive immunity” in agnathans and gnathostomes.The fifth chapter depicts the “battle” between the immune system and pathogens. After we arm ourselves with innate and adaptive “weapons,” we should test the competence by facing the enemy. But, evolution is a tricky force; “any effective defensive move made by the host merely provides the selection pressure that drives the evolution of new virulence strategies in pathogens,” resulting in a real “arms race.” In other words, pathogens are not helpless at all. During evolution, they have developed different strategies directed against the innate and adaptive immune system, named by the authors as “disrupting detection hardware,” “playing dead,” or “hiding in the immunological future.”The Postface contains concluding remarks and the summary of authors’ opinions on the immune evolution. An important highlight is that “the evolution of immunity follows the principle of permanent revolution,” so nothing stays “quite the same.” The immune system is constantly changing in order to keep track with the evolution of pathogen virulence mechanisms. In this perspective, our “current understanding of the subject is no more than a mere snapshot of the present,” which means a lot of work for future generations!Highlights: The book is rather concise, striving for originality at the expense of quantity. The language is not typically scientific; the book provides an original perspective in an unconventional and interesting manner. The authors give examples of the discussed phenomena, making it easier to follow the arguments. They also combine the citations of the seminal works in the field of evolution and immunology with scientific facts and personal opinions, producing a very intriguing text. As stressed by the authors, “immunity’s seemingly simple primary role of providing us with defense against pathogens is hedged about with innumerable ifs and buts.” So, the role of the book is to inspire us and motivate us to learn more.Related reading: At the end of each chapter, the authors provide a list of references related to the text, as well as a list for further reading, which help guide further study and provide wider perspectives for the readers.


This study examines the effect of employment on delinquent behavior among young people in “hidden situations”. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, and 588 young people in these hidden situations were investigated. Results showed that some of them had employment; their employment status constituted a mediating effect on preventing them from being involved in delinquent behavior. Also, participants who had work explained the reasons for not being involved in delinquent behavior. These results reflect that whether young people in hidden situation involve in delinquent behavior depends on their employment rather than their hidden behavior itself. The implication is that practitioners should respect the youths’ self-preferred choice of employment and even advocate a revision of the definition of employment in Hong Kong. Traditionally, it is stated that employment and delinquent behavior are related e.g., –3. StabiTo provide support for the research aims, in the following, literature about the relationship between employment and delinquent behavior will first be reviewed.While deviant behavior refers to behavior that violates societal norms and behavioral standards, or triggers negative reactions from others , delinquReviewing existing literature, there are theories supporting the significant negative relationship between employment and delinquent behavior . To Subsequent scholars also provided support for the association between employment and decrease in delinquent behavior. As stated by some scholars ,There is a view positing that the relationship between employment and delinquent behavior is a spurious one e.g., , 49, 50 On the contrary, unemployment increases the likelihood of delinquent behavior due to the cumulative disadvantage of long-term distance from the labor market . Low-quaTo summarize, although the relationship between employment and delinquent behavior is inconsistent, there are a number of theoretical notions supporting the idea that employment can help one desist from delinquent behavior. Employment, especially stable employment, brings about a number of positive effects, such as 1) heightening one’s risk involved with offending, increasing his/her pressure to conform; 2) increasing opportunities for monitoring his/her delinquent behavior; 3) decreasing his/her idle time for engaging in delinquent behavior; 4) facilitating his/her experience in other transitional events; 5) experiencing new opportunities for social support and developing new identity; and 6) enhancing his/her self-esteem. Moreover, employment with higher quality and less pressure has a higher effect on desistance.Young people in hidden situations, known as hikikomori in Japan , are comOn the other hand, in Hong Kong and Japan, these youths have been reported as having committed delinquent behavior, such as killing  and violinvisible in social situations. Eligible participants should be residents of Hong Kong, be within the age range of 12–30, have retreated from society for at least 6 months, and have received no psychiatric diagnosis or treatment. The criteria for youth in Hong Kong in the context of social service provision is 12–29 years old. Hence, the participants in the study were termed as “youths” or “young people” in hidden situations.There were 540 participants in this study, who were recruited through purposive sampling. This sampling method is useful for locating “unusual” extreme or deviant cases , 182, suN = 346) were male, while the rest  were female. More than half of them  were 21 or older. Participants in this study had withdrawn for 1 to 8 years; 51.7% (N = 279) had been hidden for 1–2 years, while 48.4% (N = 261) had been hidden for longer than 2 years. For their level of hidden situation, 15.9% (N = 86) of participants were identified as being in a level 1 hidden situation ; 73.0% (N = 394) were at levels 2 to 4, and 11.1% (N = 60) were at level 5 . Regarding their education level, 53.1% of them reported to have achieved senior secondary qualification (N = 287), while 29.4% (N = 159) and 17.4% (N = 94) of them had achieved the education qualification of college/university or above and junior secondary, respectively. With respect to their family income, only 37.2% (N = 201) received a family income of HK$20,000 or less; more than half of them  had a family income of HK$20,000 or more (US$1 = HK$7.8). For their employment status, although most of them  reported to have no employment, there were some  who had work, with most of them  having Internet-based jobs and a few of them  being self-employed. This reflects that young people are not necessarily lacking in social status . Due to prior understanding of the participants, researchers were able to understand their employment situations and delinquent behavior.Informed consent from participants was achieved by directly giving consent forms to those who had reached 18 years of age and giving the forms to their parents if they had not reached 18. Researchers also met them face-to-face, to explain the aim, topic, and process of the study, and assess their eligibility for participating in the study. Once all of the aforementioned procedures were completed, the questionnaire was administered to them.On the other hand, 56 participants participated in the qualitative study. The interviews were conducted in a face-to-face manner.In this study, the transitional event of employment was examined to see if it affected participants’ involvement in delinquent behavior in life. This piece of information was collected from participants by asking them to self-report whether they had a job in the questionnaire.In this study, participants who had full-time work and earned a living from their work were considered as employed. Among the youths in hidden situations, Internet-based work and freelance jobs, which are non-typical work arrangements, are common.Period of hidden situation refers to the duration of being hidden. This piece of information was obtained from a question about how long they had retreated from society in the questionnaire. For the level of hidden situation, according to Oiwa , there aThe Youth Deviant Behavior Scale of Yang  was usedDelinquent behavior, by definition, is law-breaking behavior . Not allp < .05 was the significance level of the study. Analyses included the following: 1) cross-tabulation analysis was conducted to see the distribution of participants in employment in different periods and levels of hidden situation; 2) Spearman’s rank correlation was performed to investigate whether employment was associated with participants’ period and level of hidden situation, as well as their engagement in delinquent behavior; and 3) mediation analysis was undertaken to examine whether participants’ employment contributes to the link between hidden behavior and delinquent behavior, so as to shed light on the importance of employment in affecting their engagement in delinquent behavior.SPSS for Windows 19.0 was the program used for conducting the statistical analyses, in which Other than the quantitative analyses, qualitative verbatim accounts of the participants were analyzed to examine how their jobs influenced their involvement in delinquent behavior. To conduct the qualitative analysis, the recordings of the interview were first transcribed, and then the verbatim data of the participants were summarized in terms of the reasons for not engaging in delinquent behavior.The above results suggest that young people in hidden situations engage in employment. In the following, correlation analysis was performed to investigate whether participants’ employment is related to their engagement in delinquent behavior.r = −.41). This shows that having a job is related to a decrease in delinquent behavior. Additionally, period of hidden situation was negatively correlated to delinquent behavior (r = −.38) but positively correlated to employment (r = .17), while level of hidden situation was positively correlated to delinquent behavior (r = .74) but negatively correlated to employment (r = −.39). These findings reflect that as young people progress to a hidden situation, they are more likely to hold jobs and their involvement in delinquent behavior may decrease, while as the level of hidden situation increases, young people are less likely to hold jobs and their involvement in delinquent behavior may increase.Employment was negatively correlated to delinquent behavior . Although I don’t need to go to work, drawing graphics is time-consuming and I need to pay much attention to this. If I take drugs, I will not be able to concentrate on my work, and will be scolded. (Youth b)…now I work for 14 hours every day (as a shop assistant in an online store). I won’t do those meaningless things (taking drugs) again. In the past, I did this (drug-taking) to kill my time. Now I need not do this anymore. (Youth c)I love my job (working as a translator)…I don’t want to do anything which makes me lose my job. (Youth j)As stated by Youth b and Youth c, jobs reduced their idle time to commit delinquent acts. At the same time, the verbatim accounts of Youth b reflected that work situations had a supervising effect on their behavior, which prohibited them from becoming involved in delinquent behavior, such as drug-taking. Delinquent behavior could affect work performance. Also, Youth j reported that having a job increased his cost for engaging in delinquent behavior, as he feared that being delinquent would make him lose his job.Now I have different social circles. My friends become different. So I no longer engage in hacking activities and set cheating programmes… (Youth a)…in the past, I fooled around in BBS (Bulletin Board System) with my peers, criticizing and teasing other people as a pastime. At that time, I thought that I had status on the Internet. However, when I have a job, I think that BBS becomes no longer important. I think that my value can be found elsewhere. (Youth e)In the past, I used the same skill  to find money, but it’s illegal; now I use the same skills and experience in my work (as a game manager), and it’s legal. I feel great! (Youth g)I love my job (working as a translator), and I can enjoy my beloved lifestyle while being able to support my life… (Youth j)As stated by Youth a, the job created opportunities for him to build new social networks, which drove him away from delinquent behavior. As expressed by Youth e, jobs brought them a new identity, value, and meaning of life. As expressed by Youth g and Youth k, having legal jobs increased their self-esteem (Youth g). Besides, the verbatim accounts of Youth j reflected that he enjoyed his work, as it brought him a high quality of life. This implies that work of high quality helps prevent one from becoming helpful in delinquent behavior.Of course not (not engaging in delinquent behavior anymore). I do this (search for bugs) every day when I’m at work. No kidding! (He works as a programmer who is responsible for finding bugs in online games). (Youth d)In the past, I didn’t earn money by myself, so I didn’t know how difficult money-making is … Now I earn $250 a day, which means that I can only get half an ounce of ketamine … so expensive! So I don’t take ketamine anymore now. (Youth i)Now I’m more concerned about other people’s feelings. I’ve learnt to take other people’s perspectives before saying and doing anything. So I think that I was wrong (to uncover and bully other people on the Internet) before. (He works as a peer counselor) (Youth l)On the other hand, participants showed other reasons for not engaging in delinquent behavior. For Youth d, employment offered him a legitimatized way to engage in bug-finding. Since his interests, potentials, and needs had already been fulfilled in his job, his drive to engage in delinquent behavior was weakened. For Youth i and Youth l, they gave up delinquent behavior including drug-taking (Youth i) and cyber bullying (Youth l) as they understood the importance of saving money (Youth i) and perspective-taking (Youth l), respectively. They thought that engaging in delinquent behavior wasted money (Youth i) and brought harm to others (Youth l).In summary, all of the above verbatim accounts of participants show that young people in hidden situations have jobs, such as graphic design (Youth b), working as an online shop assistant (Youth c), programming (Youth d), webpage designing (Youth f), working as a game manager (Youth g), making cosplay costumes (Youth h), translation (Youth j), working as a sensory operator on the gaming platform (Youth k), and working as a peer counselor (Youth l). Participants have various reasons for ceasing delinquent behavior due to employment. In general, the reasons show coherence to the literature review, including increased sense of satisfaction brought about by the job, being more “at stake” , 1,044, Results showed that 15.1% of youths in hidden situations had jobs. They mainly worked in an Internet-based, home-based manner, with some of them being self-employed or working as freelancers, and they were able to make money from their jobs. This suggests that these youths’ being jobless is a prejudice; they are not necessarily those who lack social status as described in previous literature The results about the youths’ employment situations provoke reflections upon the concept of employment in Hong Kong. According to the Census and Statistics Department , “employTo conclude, the results of this study show that young people in hidden situations, though not all of them, have work. This helps de-stigmatize them as a group of jobless youth who are socially isolated and have a fear of entering the labor market. Although, from a clinical perspective, prolonged hidden situation would lead to negative consequences including mental issues , social isolation, and fear of engaging in interpersonal relationships , iThe sampling method used in this study likely constitutes the limitation of this study. Since the participants were mainly recruited through the Internet, the sample might probably not be able to include young people in hidden situations who do not use the Internet. As such, the representability of the sample might be hindered. Hence, in the future, similar studies can be performed on participants who are recruited by other types of sources to see whether similar results can be derived.Also, it is mentioned that the relationship between employment and delinquent behavior is affected by other factors, such as level of self-control and delinquent propensity ; alThis study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the “Research and Ethics Committee, City University of Hong Kong,” with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the “Research and Ethics Committee, City University of Hong Kong.”The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.