Emotion-Regulation Choice

Examining the moderating role of depressive symptoms on the dynamic interplay between cognitive reappraisal and rumination: Evidence from experience sampling

The dynamic view of emotion regulation (ER) posits that ER is a temporally dynamic process unfolding over time. Cognitive reappraisal and rumination, two extensively investigated ER strategies, are implicated in depression. However, it remains unclear whether these two strategies exhibit reciprocal relations in real-world contexts, and whether such relations vary across baseline depressive symptoms. To address this, we conducted two experience sampling studies and applied residual dynamic structural equation modeling (RDSEM). Results of the RDSEM revealed significant bidirectional associations between cognitive reappraisal and rumination in the Chinese sample, whereas in the Belgian sample, only a unidirectional relationship was found where rumination predicts subsequent cognitive reappraisal. Additionally, both strategies demonstrated stable autoregressive effects. Interestingly, higher depressive symptoms predicted a lower autoregressive effect of cognitive reappraisal within the Chinese sample, while this was not the case in the Belgian sample. These findings highlight the importance of targeting factors such as dynamics in ER and its relationship with depression symptoms.

Neuroticism Mediates the Association between Autistic Traits and Choice Reaction Time among Young Adults

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that influences an individual's cognitive functions and social interaction. While most studies have focused on children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD, elevated levels of autistic traits in subclinical populations may also influence individuals' daily functioning. Autistic traits are also linked to the Big Five personality. In particular, neuroticism (emotion instability) has been shown to be positively associated with autistic traits, which may contribute to behavioral symptoms of autistic traits. The present study aimed to investigate the association between autistic symptoms and sensorimotor processing among a subclinical population. One hundred young adults (Mage = 20.32 years; SD = 3.69 years; 69 female) completed a choice reaction time (RT) task, and their behavioral performance was analyzed using the ex-Gaussian modeling. The Autism Quotient (AQ) and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) were used to assess autistic traits and neuroticism, respectively. The mediation analysis was conducted to examine the behavioral mechanism through which autistic traits influence sensorimotor processing. The results showed that the AQ score was negatively correlated with RT and positively correlated with neuroticism score. Importantly, the mediation analysis indicated an indirect effect, suggesting that neuroticism mediates the association between the AQ score and RT. The findings indicated a possible mechanism of the association between autistic traits and sensorimotor responses and suggested that neuroticism should be included as an intervention target for ASD. The present study contributes to the research on autistic traits and has practical implications for future intervention programs to improve daily functioning among individuals with ASD.

The role of caregiver emotion regulation in youth mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal study

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented youth and families with a broad spectrum of unique stressors. Given that adolescents are at increased risk for mental health and emotional difficulties, it is critical to explore family processes that confer resilience for youth in the face of stress. The current study investigated caregiver emotion regulation (ER) as a familial factor contributing to youth ER and risk for psychopathology following stressful life events. In a longitudinal sample of 224 youth (M age = 12.65 years) and their caregivers, we examined whether caregiver and youth engagement in ER strategies early in the pandemic mediated the associations of pandemic-related stress with youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms six months later. Leveraging serial mediation analysis, we demonstrated that caregiver and youth rumination, but not expressive suppression or cognitive reappraisal, mediated the prospective associations of pandemic-related stress with youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Greater exposure to pandemic-related stressors was associated with greater caregiver rumination, which, in turn, related to greater rumination in youth, and higher levels of youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms thereafter. Family interventions that target caregiver ER, specifically rumination, may buffer against the consequences of stress on youth engagement in maladaptive ER strategies and risk for psychopathology.

Practicing mindfulness can foster monitoring and acceptance after experiencing negative affect

Although being mindful, that is, monitoring and accepting one's present feelings, has been shown to be associated with less current negative affect than distraction, acceptance is less endorsed after experiencing negative affect. Thus, acceptance, although effective, may not be endorsed when it is most needed, leading people to endorse other strategies such as distraction instead. In the present study, we examined whether a monitoring and acceptance induction in a laboratory setting (N = 258) and a monitoring and acceptance training in daily life (N = 125) increased acceptance (Study 1) and monitoring (Study 2) after experiencing negative affect. We found this to be the case: While participants in the control condition showed a significant negative association between prior negative affect and subsequent monitoring and acceptance, participants in the monitor and acceptance condition did not. Thus, even brief monitor and acceptance training is well suited to increasing the likelihood that individuals can monitor and accept their thoughts and feelings when confronted with strong emotions.

A network approach to emotion regulation and symptom activation in depression and anxiety

Background

Emotions can be regulated through several regulatory strategies that are involved in the development of psychopathological symptoms. Despite the well-established association between psychopathology and emotion dysregulation, little is known about the relationship between individual symptoms of depression and anxiety and emotion regulation strategies (ERS), as well as between ERS themselves.

Method

We conducted a cross-sectional study and examined the interactions between six ERS (reappraisal, engagement, rumination, suppression, arousal control, and distraction) and assessed their distinctive association with the activation of specific symptoms of depression and anxiety in a community sample of 376 adults (80.4% female; Mage  = 32.70; SDage  = 11.80). The Regulation Emotion Systems Survey (RESS) was used to measure ERS. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) were used to assess psychological symptoms. An exploratory graph analysis was performed to examine the structural properties of the network of interactions between these behaviors. Additionally, to test the association of ERS with the activation of the depression symptoms network, an expected symptoms activity (ESA) was conducted.

Results

Six communities were found that correspond to the six ERS. Rumination and suppression have a significant association with symptom activation (particularly low self-esteem), whereas reappraisal reduces symptomatic activation. The effect of arousal control, engagement, and distraction appears to depend on the remaining ERS rather than having much influence on their own.

Conclusion

This study provides insight into how ERS interact with each other and with individual symptoms of depression and anxiety. Understanding the effects of these interactions on symptom activation and comorbidity can improve our understanding of psychopathology.

Age differences in the influence of self-esteem and emotional regulation on memory

Emotion regulation (ER) comprises the processes that recognize, monitor, evaluate, and modify emotional reactions. Although ER refers to events that stem from internal or external situations, few studies have examined the effect of intrinsic emotional states on ER processes deployed on external stimuli. The present research investigated, in old- vs. young adults, the influence of state self-esteem (internal condition) in employing ER strategies while implicitly memorizing negative-valence pictures (external condition). State self-esteem was manipulated by giving random feedback (positive/negative) to a demanding cognitive task. Participants then saw 20 photographs and were asked to reappraise half of them and distract themselves from the other half. They were given a recognition task following a short delay with 20 old photographs and 20 new ones. Results indicated that young people with high self-esteem remembered the reappraised pictures better than the distracted ones. In the low self-esteem state, young adults remembered the distracted photographs better than the reappraised ones. In contrast, in old adults low self-esteem resulted in better recognition than high self-esteem, regardless of the regulation strategy. Thus, only among young participants did emotion regulation strategies moderate the effect of self-esteem on memory for negative emotional images. These findings highlight the intricate interplay between different ER strategies and their relative importance across various stages of life.

Regulation of negative emotions through directed attention in high-trait-anxious women: Evidence from event-related potentials and eye-tracking

Abnormal emotional responses in high-trait-anxious (HTA) individuals may be related to the use of emotion regulation strategies. Directed attention is a substrategy of attention deployment, which has been proven to be effective in regulating individual negative emotions. The present study investigated whether HTA women can effectively utilize directed attention to decrease negative emotions. Two studies were conducted using the same directed attention paradigm, with one focusing on event-related potentials (ERPs) and the other utilizing eye-tracking techniques. Participants viewed negative and neutral pictures and rated their negative emotions experienced during viewing. During directed attention, attention was directed towards highly arousing aspects, less arousing aspects of negative pictures, or less arousing aspects of neutral pictures. In study 1, late positive potentials (LPP) were recorded in 26 HTA and 24 low-trait-anxious (LTA) women. In study 2, the latency of first fixation, the proportion of gaze duration and fixations in the specific area were recorded in 27 HTA and 23 LTA women. Both the HTA and LTA groups revealed a decrease in negative emotional ratings and LPP amplitudes when their attention was directed towards the less arousing aspects of negative pictures. Furthermore, in this condition, the HTA group had a shorter latency of first fixation on highly arousing aspects and a higher proportion of gaze duration on less arousing aspects of negative pictures compared to the LTA group. These results indicate that when confronted with negative pictures, HTA women are able to regulate their emotional responses through directed attention, which may be accompanied by attentional vigilance and avoidance tendencies.

Emotion Regulation in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Emotion dysregulation is a central process implicated in the genesis and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, past research on OCD has examined emotion regulation with a trait-level approach, thereby neglecting important situational and temporal dynamics. The present study is the first one to examine moment-to-moment emotion regulation in individuals with OCD. A 6-day ecological momentary assessment was used to assess affect, emotion regulation strategies, perceived effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies, and acceptance of emotional experiences in n = 72 individuals with OCD and n = 54 psychologically healthy controls. As expected, individuals with OCD reported more negative and less positive affect. Group differences in positive (but not negative) affect did remain significant when controlling for baseline depression. Furthermore, the OCD group reported to use a higher momentary number of avoidance-oriented regulation strategies and less perceived effectiveness of emotion regulation, even when controlling for current symptoms and negative affect or baseline depression scores. Further, irrespective of group, more momentary negative affect amplified use of avoidance-oriented strategies and diminished perceived effectiveness and emotional acceptance. Contrary to expectations, these effects were not more pronounced in the OCD group. Possible explanations for unexpected findings and implications for future research, particularly regarding more holistic emotion regulation treatments, are discussed.

Adolescent digital emotion regulation

The maturation of effective emotion regulation (ER) skills is a core achievement of adolescence and youth are now developing their ER habits and skills in a hybrid reality of digital and non-digital experiences. We present a new model of adolescent digital emotion regulation as a conceptual framework to help guide burgeoning research in this area. We distinguish two primary processes: the regulation of emotions that have been elicited within digital contexts (i.e., the regulation of digitally induced emotions), and how youth regulate their emotions through digital means (i.e., digitally regulated emotion). Following the explication of different pathways in the model and consideration of the affordances of digital contexts, we highlight how this framework connects to theory and guides future research.

Perceived stress moderates emotion regulation success in real-world contexts: an ecologically-valid multilevel investigation

BACKGROUND

Emotion regulation plays a crucial role in well-being in everyday life. Effective emotion regulation depends upon adaptively matching a given strategy to a given situation. Recent research has begun to explore these interactions in the context of daily reports of perceived stress, affect, and emotion regulation strategy usage. To further understand these differences in strategy efficacy in an ecologically valid context, we examined responses to real world stressors in a young adult sample.

METHODS

We surveyed a range of emotion regulation strategies, including two forms of cognitive reappraisal (i.e., reinterpretation, which involves cognitively reframing one's emotional responses, and psychological distancing, which involves adopting an objective, impartial perspective). Participants reported strategy usage, momentary perceived stress, and affect in response to multiple ecological momentary assessments over a period of 7 days.

RESULTS

Analyses of links between strategy usage and affect revealed that rumination was significantly negatively associated with more positive affect ratings. Further, a significant interaction between momentary perceived stress and reinterpretation usage was observed on affect, such that reinterpretation was more adaptive during situations perceived as less stressful.

CONCLUSION

These results provide further insight into the importance of situational context in determining the effectiveness of particular emotion regulation strategies.

The role of emotion recognition in reappraisal affordances

INTRODUCTION

Emotion regulation is essential for psychological well-being. One strategy that is commonly researched is reappraisal. Individual differences regarding the tendency to use reappraisal, as well as its implications for affective experience, were extensively studied. In recent years, interest has emerged in the choice to use reappraisal, based on stimuli properties. Recently, we suggested that reappraisal is related to emotion recognition processes. Emotion recognition (and affective labeling, as an explicit form of emotion recognition) is regarded as a form of emotion regulation, however, the relations between emotion recognition and reappraisal have not been previously investigated. The aim of the current study was to explore the relationship between reappraisal affordances (the opportunities of re-interpretation that are inherent in a stimulus) and emotion recognition.

METHOD

For this purpose, we used the Categorized Affective Picture Database, a database that provides data regarding the emotional category of each picture, agreement levels for each category, and intensity ratings. Agreement levels were used to assess the certainty regarding the emotion evoked by the pictures.

RESULTS

Findings suggest that reappraisal affordance is predicted by both agreement levels and intensity, in negative pictures alone. In negative pictures, intensity was negatively correlated with the difficulty to reappraise.

DISCUSSION

These findings strengthen the hypothesis regarding the relationship between emotion recognition and reappraisal, and provide evidence for the role of emotion recognition in reappraisal affordances.

Adaptive-to-maladaptive gradient of emotion regulation tendencies are embedded in the functional-structural hybrid connectome

BACKGROUND

Emotion regulation tendencies are well-known transdiagnostic markers of psychopathology, but their neurobiological foundations have mostly been examined within the theoretical framework of cortical-subcortical interactions.

METHODS

We explored the connectome-wide neural correlates of emotion regulation tendencies using functional and diffusion magnetic resonance images of healthy young adults (N = 99; age 20-30; 28 females). We first tested the importance of considering both the functional and structural connectome through intersubject representational similarity analyses. Then, we employed a canonical correlation analysis between the functional-structural hybrid connectome and 23 emotion regulation strategies. Lastly, we sought to externally validate the results on a transdiagnostic adolescent sample (N = 93; age 11-19; 34 females).

RESULTS

First, interindividual similarity of emotion regulation profiles was significantly correlated with interindividual similarity of the functional-structural hybrid connectome, more so than either the functional or structural connectome. Canonical correlation analysis revealed that an adaptive-to-maladaptive gradient of emotion regulation tendencies mapped onto a specific configuration of covariance within the functional-structural hybrid connectome, which primarily involved functional connections in the motor network and the visual networks as well as structural connections in the default mode network and the subcortical-cerebellar network. In the transdiagnostic adolescent dataset, stronger functional signatures of the found network were associated with higher general positive affect through more frequent use of adaptive coping strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

Taken together, our study illustrates a gradient of emotion regulation tendencies that is best captured when simultaneously considering the functional and structural connections across the whole brain.

To reappraise or not to reappraise? Emotion regulation strategies moderate the association of loneliness during COVID-19 with depression and anxiety

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in heightened feelings of loneliness due to lockouts and social restrictions.

OBJECTIVE

In the present study, we examined the association of loneliness during the pandemic with anxiety and depression, while exploring the moderating role of the tendency to use two emotion-regulation strategies (expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal).

DESIGN

We chose to examine these associations in a sample of older adults, because they faced higher risk for loneliness and health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

Specifically, 174 Israeli veterans and ex-prisoners of wars from the 1973 Yom Kippur war (mean age = 69) completed self-report scales tapping loneliness, depression, anxiety, and emotion regulation strategies at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak (April-May 2020).

RESULTS

Findings revealed a stronger association between loneliness and depression among participants who had a greater tendency of using suppression. The tendency to use suppression did not significantly moderate the link between loneliness and anxiety. Additionally, a weaker association between loneliness and depression was found among participants who has a greater tendency of using reappraisal. However, these participants showed a stronger association between loneliness and anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight the complexity of reappraisal and adds to the growing body of work on emotion regulation.

Reciprocal effects between negative affect and emotion regulation in daily life

The extended process model of emotion regulation provides a framework for understanding how emotional experiences and emotion regulation (ER) mutually influence each other over time. To investigate this reciprocal relationship, 202 adults completed a ten-day experience-sampling survey capturing levels of negative affect (NA) experience and use of ten ER strategies in daily life. Residual dynamic structural equation models (DSEMs) were used to examine within-person cross-lagged and autoregressive effects of NA and ER (strategy use and between-strategy variability). Results showed that NA predicted lower between-strategy variability, lower subsequent use of acceptance and problem-solving, but higher subsequent use of rumination and worry. Moreover, reappraisal and between-strategy variability predicted lower subsequent NA levels, while expressive suppression and worry predicted higher subsequent NA levels. Stable autoregressive effects were found for NA and for maladaptive ER strategies (e.g., rumination and worry). Exploratory correlation analyses revealed positive associations between NA inertia and maladaptive ER strategies. Together, these findings provide evidence of a dynamic interplay between NA and ER. This work deepens how we understand the challenges of applying ER strategies in daily life. Future clinical and translational research should consider these dynamic perspectives on ER and affect.

Effectiveness of stress arousal reappraisal and stress-is-enhancing mindset interventions on task performance outcomes: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Stress arousal reappraisal (SAR) and stress-is-enhancing (SIE) mindset interventions aim to promote a more adaptive stress response by educating individuals about the functionality of stress. As part of this framework, an adaptive stress response is coupled with improved performance on stressful tasks. The goal of this meta-analysis is to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions on task performance. The literature search yielded 44 effect sizes, and a random-effects model with Knapp-Hartung adjustment was used to pool them. The results revealed an overall small significant improvement in task performance (d = 0.23, p < 0.001). The effect size was significantly larger for mixed interventions (i.e., SAR/SIE mindset instructions combined with additional content, k = 5, d = 0.45, p = 0.004) than SAR-only interventions (k = 33, d = 0.22, p < 0.001) and SIE mindset-only interventions (k = 6, d = 0.18, p = 0.22) and tended to be larger for public performance tasks than cognitive written tasks (k = 14, d = 0.34, p < 0.001 vs. k = 30, d = 0.20, p = 0.002). Although SAR and SIE mindset interventions are not "silver bullets", they offer a promising cost-effective low-threshold approach to improve performance across various domains.

The mindful gaze: trait mindful people under an instructed emotion regulation goal selectively attend to positive stimuli

Trait mindfulness confers emotional benefits and encourages skillful emotion regulation, in part because it helps people more deliberately attend to internal experiences and external surroundings. Such heightened attentional control might help skillfully deploy one's attention towards certain kinds of stimuli, which may in turn help regulate emotions, but this remains unknown. Testing how trait mindful people deploy attention when regulating their emotions could help uncover the specific mechanisms of mindfulness that confer its emotional benefits. The present study aimed to determine whether high trait mindfulness is associated with sustained attention biases to (i.e. longer gaze at) emotional scenes, when all participants are given the emotion regulation goal of staying in a positive mood. To measure this, we used eye tracking to assess selective attention to positive, neutral, and negative photographs. Higher trait mindfulness was associated with both a stronger attention bias for positive (vs. neutral and vs. negative) images, as well as greater success staying in a positive mood during viewing. Surprisingly, this attention bias towards the positive images did not mediate the relationship between mindfulness and maintenance of positive mood. Future work should compare visual attention to other emotion regulation strategies that may maximise positive affect for mindful people.

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Altered Autonomic Functioning in Youths With Emotional Dysregulation

OBJECTIVE

To systematically investigate if there is a significant association between markers of autonomic functioning and emotional dysregulation (ED) in children and adolescents.

METHOD

Based on a preregistered protocol (PROSPERO: CRD42021239635), PubMed, Web of Knowledge/Science, Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, and APA PsycInfo databases were searched until April 21, 2021, to identify empirical studies reporting indices of autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning in youths meeting DSM (version III, IV, IV-TR, 5 or 5-TR) or International Classification of Diseases (ICD) (version 9 or 10) criteria for any psychopathological/neurodevelopmental condition and assessed for ED with a validated scale. Eligible outcomes included correlation coefficients between ED and ANS measures or differences in ANS measures between youths with and without ED. Study quality was assessed with the Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS) and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for cohort studies. Random-effects meta-analyses were used for data synthesis.

RESULTS

There were 12 studies (1,016 participants) included in the descriptive review and 9 studies (567 participants) included in the meta-analyses. No evidence of a significant association between ED and altered cardiac or electrodermal functioning was found. However, exploratory meta-regressions suggested a possible association between reduced resting-state cardiac vagal control and increased ED.

CONCLUSION

This study did not find evidence of an association between ED and autonomic dysfunction. However, preliminary evidence that reduced vagal control at rest might be a transdiagnostic marker of ED in young people was found. Additional studies comparing autonomic measures in youths with and without ED are needed and should also assess the effects of interventions for ED on ANS functioning.

STUDY PREREGISTRATION INFORMATION

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Is Autonomic Nervous System Functioning Atypical in Children and Adolescents With Emotional Dysregulation? https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/; CRD42021239635.

Real-world flexibility in adolescent girls' emotion regulation strategy selection: An investigation of strategy switching

Adolescence is an important stage for the development of emotion regulation skills, especially for adolescent girls who are at elevated risk for the development of depression and anxiety. Although some emotion regulation strategies are more effective at helping adolescents regulate negative affect on average, research indicates strategy effectiveness varies with the context in which a strategy is deployed. Yet less work has been done examining which contextual factors are associated with adolescents switching emotion regulation strategies in their daily lives. This study examined individual and contextual factors related to negative interpersonal events that are associated with strategy effectiveness, including age, emotional intensity, perceived controllability, and co-regulatory support, and their association with adolescent emotion regulation strategy switching in daily life via ecological momentary assessment. Results indicated that adolescent girls differed in the degree to which they altered their emotion regulation strategies throughout their daily lives, and that switching strategies was associated with age as well as individual and within-person differences in perceived controllability, emotional intensity, and co-regulatory support. This study provides critical proof-of-concept of the utility of emotion regulation strategy switching as a measure of regulatory flexibility and highlights regulatory processes that may hold clues to the mechanisms of developmental psychopathology.

Investigating the effectiveness of instructing emotion regulation flexibility to individuals with low and high anxiety

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Psychopathology has been associated with a deficit in emotion regulation (ER) flexibility - the ability to flexibly utilize ER strategies that are appropriate to situational demands. Yet, whether anxious individuals can be taught ER flexibility, or whether ER flexibility is effective in managing negative affect, remains unknown. We investigated the impact of instructed ER flexibility on emotional responding among individuals with differing levels of anxiety.

DESIGN AND METHODS

Participants (N = 109) were taught two ER strategies (reappraisal, distraction) and randomized to be instructed in either flexible or inflexible ER while viewing images that differed in negative emotional intensity.

RESULTS

When averaged over anxiety, or for participants with low anxiety, negative affect did not differ between conditions. However, among anxious participants, those in the flexible regulatory conditions - those who were instructed to flexibly switch between strategies - reported lower negative affect than those in the inflexible Reappraisal only condition, but not the Distraction only condition. The effectiveness of the two flexible conditions did not significantly differ.

CONCLUSIONS

Anxious individuals benefitted from being instructed in either ER flexibility or distraction. This finding supports literature on the adaptiveness of distraction and provides preliminary evidence linking instructed ER flexibility and improved emotional responding.

Age differences in emotion regulation strategy use and flexibility in daily life

OBJECTIVES

Age-related shifts in emotion regulation patterns are important for explaining preserved emotional well-being in late adulthood amidst declines in physical and cognitive health. Although several studies have examined age-related shifts in emotion regulation strategy use, age differences in how specific strategies are flexibly adapted to shifting contexts in daily life and the adaptiveness of such shifts remains poorly understood.

METHODS

130 younger adults (ages 22-35) and 130 older adults (ages 65-85) completed a modified Day Reconstruction Method Assessment and self-report questionnaires to examine age differences in emotion regulation strategy use and one aspect of emotion regulation flexibility (responsiveness) in daily life, and the adaptive implications of these differences.

RESULTS

Older adults exhibited more frequent acceptance use, less frequent distraction use, and less flexibility in the responsiveness of strategies with varying negative affect. Across age groups, the use of expressive suppression and distraction was associated with less adaptive outcomes, whereas higher acceptance responsiveness, positive reappraisal responsiveness, and situation selection responsiveness were associated with more adaptive outcomes. Age-group moderated the associations between adaptiveness metrics with the use and flexibility of several emotion regulation strategies.

CONCLUSION

The current findings provide early evidence of age-related decreases in emotion regulation flexibility as well as age-related shifts in the adaptiveness of emotion regulation patterns.

Quantitative versus qualitative emotion regulation goals: Differential effects on emotional responses

Emotion regulation (ER) involves both a goal (e.g., to feel less emotion) and a strategy (e.g., reappraisal). To clarify the impact of ER goals on emotional responding, we conducted a within-participant study (N = 156) in which we held the strategy constant (reappraisal) to isolate the impact of regulation goals. We compared the impact of a quantitative goal (changing emotion quantity/intensity) with that of a qualitative goal (changing emotion quality/type) on emotional responses to negative and positive pictures. We manipulated ER goals by cuing participants to continue viewing the picture (unregulated/no ER goal) or to reappraise it to decrease its predominant affective impact (quantitative goal) or increase its opposite-valence impact (qualitative goal). We assessed emotional responses through self-reported feelings and facial expressions (corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major electromyography). Our findings suggest that the type of regulation goal has a differential effect on emotional responses, with qualitative goals being more effective in modulating both negative and positive emotions. For negative stimuli, attempts to use a quantitative goal decreased negative but not positive emotional responses (uncoupled negative deactivation). Conversely, attempts to use a qualitative goal decreased negative and increased positive emotional responses (reciprocal positive activation). For positive stimuli, the quantitative goal generated uncoupled positive deactivation, while the qualitative goal produced reciprocal negative activation. Results highlight the importance of considering specific regulation goals in shaping emotional responses. Future research in the field of ER may benefit from identifying and manipulating different goals and strategies to understand how to effectively regulate emotions.

Looking on the bright side: the impact of ambivalent images on emotion regulation choice

Previous research has found that people choose to reappraise low intensity images more often than high intensity images. However, this research does not account for image ambivalence, which is presence of both positive and negative cues in a stimulus. The purpose of this research was to determine differences in ambivalence in high intensity and low intensity images used in previous research (experiments 1-2), and if ambivalence played a role in emotion regulation choice in addition to intensity (experiments 3-4). Experiments 1 and 2 found that the low intensity images were more ambivalent than the high intensity images. Experiment 2 further found a positive relationship between ambivalence of an image and reappraisal affordances. Experiments 3 and 4 found that people chose to reappraise ambivalent images more often than non-ambivalent images, and they also chose to reappraise low intensity images more often than high intensity images. These experiments support the idea that ambivalence is a factor in emotion regulation choice. Future research should consider the impact ambivalent stimuli have on emotion regulation, including the potential for leveraging ambivalent stimuli to improve one's emotion regulation ability.

Peer victimization and children's internet addiction in China: a moderated mediation model

Background

Peer victimization used to be considered as a crucial risk factor for children addicted to the internet. Whereas some victimized ones are function better than would be expected. Variability across individuals indicates that it is necessary to understand how children cope with being bullied and why they do not exhibit maladaptive outcomes.

Objective

We explored the underlying mechanisms by testing whether subjective well-being was a mediator between peer victimization and Internet addiction and whether the mediation effects conditioned on the levels of parent-child relationship (PCR).

Methods

Data were collected from 65, 868 elementary school students in China (Mage = 9.56 years, SD = 0.62, 54.0% male) using four questionnaires.

Results

We found that: (1) subjective well-being can partially mediate the relationship of the two variables; and (2) PCR can moderate direct path and second half of the intermediary process. These moderating effects were stronger for children with higher PCR vs. lower PCR, as a strong PCR can help children to deal with intense emotions and to access effective resources to obtain support.

Conclusion

This study deepens our understanding of how peer victimization leads to internet addiction, identifies a supportive PCR as a crucial factor that strengthens the resilience of child victims, and highlights the value of focusing on improving the relationship between parents and children in intervening internet addiction related to peer victimization.

Reconceptualizing emotion regulation and coping strategy usage in eating disorders research: The utility of a regulatory flexibility framework

Emotion regulation and coping strategies are often conceptualized in eating disorder (ED) research as inherently adaptive or maladaptive, and successful regulation is often defined as greater overall use of adaptive strategies. However, recent empirical work outside of the field of EDs challenges this categorical conceptualization of strategies, demonstrating that adaptiveness is determined by the ability to flexibly implement and adjust strategies based on contextual demands (i.e., regulatory flexibility). Despite evidence that emotion regulation and coping strategies are best conceptualized in terms of flexibility in the broader literature, few ED studies have adopted this model. We review the current conceptual framework of emotion regulation and coping strategies used in ED research and present regulatory flexibility as an alternative approach to conceptualizing these strategies. The lack of research on regulatory flexibility among individuals with EDs limits our understanding of the role of emotion regulation and coping difficulties in ED risk and maintenance. Adopting a regulatory flexibility model of strategies in EDs may extend knowledge of the role of emotion regulation difficulties in the development and maintenance of EDs. We highlight the potential utility of investigating regulatory flexibility and present recommendations for future research on regulatory flexibility in EDs. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: Research on emotion regulation and coping strategy usage in eating disorders often view regulatory strategies as inherently adaptive or maladaptive. However, recent studies support defining strategies in terms of flexibility. Adopting a regulatory flexibility model of strategies in eating disorders research may advance knowledge of the role of emotion regulation difficulties in the development and maintenance of eating disorders, ultimately enhancing prevention and treatment efforts.

The Process Model of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Assessing Individual Differences in Strategy Stage and Orientation

The study of individual differences in emotion regulation has typically focused exclusively either on the stage of the emotion generation process at which regulation occurs or on the engagement versus disengagement orientation of the regulation efforts. We introduce a new measure that samples equally across each stage of the process model of emotion regulation and from both engagement and disengagement orientations. Through five studies (ntotal = 2,543), we present the development and convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity evidence for the Process Model of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (PMERQ). We show the final 10-scale 45-item questionnaire has acceptable internal consistency, is invariant between genders and across the age range, and has sufficient convergent and discriminant validity. The PMERQ also predicts affective and relationship functioning with strategies occurring earlier in the process model generally showing the strongest effects. We propose the PMERQ is a valuable measure to assess individual differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies.

Shame-coping clusters: comparisons regarding attachment insecurities, mentalizing deficits, and personality pathology, controlling for general emotion dysregulation

BACKGROUND

General Emotion Dysregulation (GED) is increasingly implicated as an underlying factor in personality pathology; however, the regulation of specific emotions, such as shame, has been relatively overlooked in the literature. We aimed to identify distinct clusters of shame-coping/regulation and compare them regarding attachment insecurities, mentalizing deficits, and personality pathology, controlling for GED.

METHODS

A convenience sample of 600 participants (351 females and 249 males) from the general population with ages ranging from 18 to 65 (M = 33.78, SD = 12.80) completed a battery of self-report instruments, measuring shame-coping styles, GED, attachment insecurities, mentalizing deficits, criteria A and B of the alternative model for personality disorders, and borderline personality traits. A two-stage clustering method was employed, with shame-coping styles as the clustering variables. The identified clusters were then compared for their effects on dependent variables using multivariate and univariate analyses. These comparisons were also performed after controlling for GED.

RESULTS

Multiple determination methods suggested a two-cluster solution: maladaptive and adaptive shame-coping. Attack-self, withdrawal, and attack-other styles were the main discriminators. Compared with the adaptive cluster, the maladaptive cluster was characterized by higher use of maladaptive and lower use of adaptive shame-coping styles. Multivariate analyses demonstrated significant differences for all the between-cluster comparisons, with and without GED as the covariate (p < .001).

CONCLUSIONS

The current study provides evidence for the presence of homogenous clusters of shame-coping in community-based adults. Between-cluster contrasts after controlling for GED suggest that addressing shame-coping could have incremental utility over and above GED.

Estimating individual subjective values of emotion regulation strategies

Individuals have a repertoire of emotion regulation (ER) strategies at their disposal, which they can use more or less flexibly. In ER flexibility research, strategies that facilitate goal achievement are considered adaptive and therefore are subjectively valuable. Individuals are motivated to reduce their emotional arousal effectively and to avoid cognitive effort. Perceived costs of ER strategies in the form of effort, however, are highly subjective. Subjective values (SVs) should therefore represent a trade-off between effectiveness and subjectively required cognitive effort. However, SVs of ER strategies have not been determined so far. We present a new paradigm for quantifying individual SVs of ER strategies by offering monetary values for ER strategies in an iterative process. N = 120 participants first conducted an ER paradigm with the strategies distraction, distancing, and suppression. Afterwards, individual SVs were determined using the new CAD paradigm. SVs significantly predicted later choice for an ER strategy (χ2 (4, n = 119) = 115.40, p < 0.001, BF10 = 1.62 × 1021). Further, SVs were associated with Corrugator activity (t (5, 618.96) = 2.09, p = 0.037, f2 = 0.001), subjective effort (t (5, 618.96) = - 13.98, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.035), and self-reported utility (t (5, 618.96) = 29.49, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.155). SVs were further associated with self-control (t (97.97) = 2.04, p = 0.044, f2 = 0.002), but not with flexible ER. With our paradigm, we were able to determine subjective values. The trait character of the values will be discussed. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on July 19, 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FN9BT .

Emotional regulation strategies in daily life: the intensity of emotions and regulation choice

Objective

Emotion regulation is an adaptive ability affecting people's physical and mental health, quality of life and functioning. In the present study we focused on the influence of the intensity of experienced emotions on emotion regulation strategies (ERS) that are applied in everyday life.

Methods

For 7 days the participants kept an online diary where every day they described the situation which had aroused their strongest negative emotions. Next, they identified the emotions, their intensity and the type of applied strategies (acceptance vs. reappraisal vs. rumination vs. distraction vs. suppression). The study involved 88 people N = 88, which gives 538 observations.

Results

The obtained results indicate that the intensity of emotions affects the choice of regulation strategies. When the intensity increases, people are more likely to choose the rumination strategy and less likely to choose the reappraisal strategy. However, the expected relationship between the intensity and the number of regulation strategies was not confirmed. In turn, it was gender (male) that turned out to be associated with a greater number of strategies used.

Conclusion

The concern of this research was to look at making regulatory decisions in personally relevant and complex everyday situations. Although the emotions experienced in response to a difficult situation were varied, the intensity of the emotional experience was an important factor determining the choice of a regulation strategy. It indicates that this emotional dimension is a basic and determining aspect in people's regulatory capabilities. These results also indicate that perhaps men in a situation perceived as stressful and worthy of emotional involvement use more regulatory strategies than women. These findings may find an application in all kinds of psychological interventions (e.g., psychotherapy, anger management therapies).

Using Reappraisal to Improve Outcomes for STEM Teachers and Students

The many stressors associated with teaching can take a toll, resulting in high levels of burnout among teachers and reduced motivation and academic performance among students. This is especially true in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Despite the efficacy of emotion regulation interventions in pedagogical settings in general and in STEM teaching in particular, there is a lack of suitable interventions. We applied the process model of emotion regulation to STEM teaching and proposed a framework, STEM-Model of EmotioN regulation: Teachers' Opportunities and Responsibilities (STEM-MENTOR), to elucidate how the high demands of STEM teaching and contextual factors (e.g., culture, reforms, teacher-student interactions) may lead to intensified negative emotions and deficits in executive functioning and emotion regulation implementation. Teacher emotions, in turn, shape students' STEM-related achievements and epistemic emotions. Thus, teachers' emotion regulation skills have pervasive effects on teaching outcomes for both teachers and students. We illustrate how at each level of our framework, steps could be taken to improve teachers' emotional trajectory. Our proposed STEM-MENTOR framework has implications for theoretical understanding and may help to shape future interventions that focus on cognitive-emotional processes in STEM education.

Implicit, But Not Explicit, Emotion Regulation Relieves Unpleasant Neural Responses Evoked by High-Intensity Negative Images

Evidence suggests that explicit reappraisal has limited regulatory effects on high-intensity emotions, mainly due to the depletion of cognitive resources occupied by the high-intensity emotional stimulus itself. The implicit form of reappraisal has proved to be resource-saving and therefore might be an ideal strategy to achieve the desired regulatory effect in high-intensity situations. In this study, we explored the regulatory effect of explicit and implicit reappraisal when participants encountered low- and high-intensity negative images. The subjective emotional rating indicated that both explicit and implicit reappraisal down-regulated negative experiences, irrespective of intensity. However, the amplitude of the parietal late positive potential (LPP; a neural index of experienced emotional intensity) showed that only implicit reappraisal had significant regulatory effects in the high-intensity context, though both explicit and implicit reappraisal successfully reduced the emotional neural responses elicited by low-intensity negative images. Meanwhile, implicit reappraisal led to a smaller frontal LPP amplitude (an index of cognitive cost) compared to explicit reappraisal, indicating that the implementation of implicit reappraisal consumes limited cognitive control resources. Furthermore, we found a prolonged effect of implicit emotion regulation introduced by training procedures. Taken together, these findings not only reveal that implicit reappraisal is suitable to relieve high-intensity negative experiences as well as neural responses, but also highlight the potential benefit of trained implicit regulation in clinical populations whose frontal control resources are limited.

Functional versus dysfunctional coping with physical pain: An experimental comparison of acceptance vs. avoidance coping

This study compared acceptance vs. avoidance coping with acute physical pain, in a pain-induction experiment and examined both between and within-group differences, multi-methodically and multi-dimensionally using behavioral, physiological and self-report measures. The sample consisted of 88 University students (76.1% females; Mage = 21.33 years). Participants were randomly assigned to four instructed groups and participated twice in the Cold Pressor Task: (a) Acceptance followed by avoidance; (b) Avoidance followed by acceptance; (c) No instructions (control) followed by acceptance, and (d) No instructions (control) followed by avoidance. All analyses were conducted using repeated-measures ANOVAs. Randomized techniques analyses showed that participants receiving no instructions followed by acceptance reported significantly greater changes in physiological and behavioral measures across time. Low adherence to acceptance instructions was found, especially during the first phase. Exploratory analyses on actual techniques used (as opposed to taught technique) showed that participants using avoidance followed by acceptance exhibited significantly greater changes in physiological and behavioral measures across time. No significant differences were found for the self-report of negative affect outcome. Overall, our findings provide support to ACT theory, as participants might have to use firstly ineffective coping to understand what works best to cope with pain. This is the first study examining acceptance vs. avoidance coping both between and within individuals in physical pain, multi-methodically and multi-dimensionally.

Effects of cognitive emotion regulation strategies on mood and cortisol in daily life in women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder

BACKGROUND

The psychological risk factors of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) are not fully understood, but initial evidence points to a potential role of unfavorable cognitive emotion regulation (ER-) strategies. Given the symptom cyclicity of PMDD, ambulatory assessment is ideally suited to capture psychological and physiological processes across the menstrual cycle. Our study examines habitual ER-strategies in women with PMDD and their predictive value for the course of mood and basal cortisol across the cycle in affected women.

METHODS

Women with and without PMDD (n = 61 each) were compared regarding habitual mindfulness, reappraisal, and repetitive negative thinking (RNT). Momentary affect and cortisol output were assessed over two consecutive days per cycle phase (menstrual, follicular, ovulatory, late luteal).

RESULTS

Women with PMDD reported lower mindfulness, less use of reappraisal and stronger RNT than controls (ps < 0.035). In women with PMDD, higher mindfulness and reappraisal and lower RNT predicted decreased negative and increased positive affect across the menstrual cycle (ps < 0.027). However, women using more favorable ER-strategies displayed stronger mood cyclicity, resulting in stronger mood deterioration in the late luteal phase, thereby resembling women with more unfavorable ER-strategies toward the end of the cycle. Lower mindfulness predicted lower cortisol in the menstrual phase.

CONCLUSIONS

Protective ER-strategies seem to be generally linked to better momentary mood in women with PMDD, but do not appear to protect affected women from premenstrual mood deterioration. Habitual mindfulness, in turn, seems to buffer blunted cortisol activity in women with PMDD, especially in the menstrual phase.

Using connectome-based models of working memory to predict emotion regulation in older adults

Older adulthood is characterized by enhanced emotional well-being potentially resulting from greater reliance on adaptive emotion regulation strategies. However, not all older adults demonstrate an increase in emotional well-being and instead rely on maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. An important moderator of age-related shifts in strategy preferences is working memory (WM) and its underlying neural circuitry. As such, individual differences in the neural integrity underlying WM may predict older adults' emotion regulation strategy preferences. Our study used whole-brain WM networks-derived from young adults using connectome-based predictive modeling-to predict WM performance and acceptance strategy use in healthy older adults. Older adults (N = 110) completed baseline assessments as part of a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of mind-body interventions on healthy aging. Our results revealed that the WM networks predicted WM accuracy but not acceptance use or difficulties in emotion regulation in older adults. Individual differences in WM performance, but not WM networks, moderated relationships between image intensity and acceptance use. These findings highlight that robust neural markers of WM generalize to an independent sample of healthy older adults but may not generalize beyond cognitive domains to predict emotion-based behaviors.

Comparing reappraisal and acceptance strategies to understand the neural architecture of emotion regulation: a meta-analytic approach

Introduction

In the emotion regulation literature, the amount of neuroimaging studies on cognitive reappraisal led the impression that the same top-down, control-related neural mechanisms characterize all emotion regulation strategies. However, top-down processes may coexist with more bottom-up and emotion-focused processes that partially bypass the recruitment of executive functions. A case in point is acceptance-based strategies.

Method

To better understand neural commonalities and differences behind different emotion regulation processes, in the present study, we applied the Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) method to perform a meta-analysis on fMRI studies investigating task-related activity of reappraisal and acceptance. Both increased and decreased brain activity was taken into account in the contrast and conjunction analysis between the two strategies.

Results

Results showed increased activity in left-inferior frontal gyrus and insula for both strategies, and decreased activity in the basal ganglia for reappraisal, and decreased activity in limbic regions for acceptance.

Discussion

These findings are discussed in the context of a model of common and specific neural mechanisms of emotion regulation that support and expand the previous dual-routes models. We suggest that emotion regulation may rely on a core inhibitory circuit, and on strategy-specific top-down and bottom-up processes distinct for different strategies.

The Emotion-Regulation Benefits of Implicit Reappraisal in Clinical Depression: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Evidence

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by emotion dysregulation. Whether implicit emotion regulation can compensate for this deficit remains unknown. In this study, we recruited 159 subjects who were healthy controls, had subclinical depression, or had MDD, and examined them under baseline, implicit, and explicit reappraisal conditions. Explicit reappraisal led to the most negative feelings and the largest parietal late positive potential (parietal LPP, an index of emotion intensity) in the MDD group compared to the other two groups; the group difference was absent under the other two conditions. MDD patients showed larger regulatory effects in the LPP during implicit than explicit reappraisal, whereas healthy controls showed a reversed pattern. Furthermore, the frontal P3, an index of voluntary cognitive control, showed larger amplitudes in explicit reappraisal compared to baseline in the healthy and subclinical groups, but not in the MDD group, while implicit reappraisal did not increase P3 across groups. These findings suggest that implicit reappraisal is beneficial for clinical depression.

The Costs and Benefits of Mindfulness and Reappraisal in Daily Life

Reappraisal and mindfulness represent two fundamentally different but interconnected ways of dealing with one's emotions: whereas reappraisal is aimed at changing one's thoughts and emotions, mindfulness is aimed at not immediately changing, but appreciating them. Despite this difference, prior research has shown that both are beneficial for one's affective well-being. However, research on the spontaneous use of reappraisal and mindfulness in daily life found that they might be differentially associated with positive and negative affect, with reappraisal and mindful attention being more strongly associated with increased positive affect and mindful acceptance with decreased negative affect. Moreover, the spontaneous use of reappraisal may be less effective than mindfulness in daily life given that it is more cognitively taxing. To compare these possibly different benefits (i.e., change in positive and negative affect) and costs (i.e., feeling depleted), we re-analyzed two experience sampling studies (N = 125 and N = 179). Regarding benefits, endorsing reappraisal and mindful attention was significantly associated with increases in positive affect, whereas endorsing mindful acceptance was significantly associated with decreases in negative affect. Regarding costs, we found that endorsing reappraisal led to more depletion and that reappraisal was selected less often than mindfulness in daily life. Our results demonstrate the importance of assessing not only the different benefits but also the costs of emotion regulation in daily life.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00178-7.

Age and Cognitive Ability Predict Emotion Regulation Strategy Use

OBJECTIVES

This study examines how age and cognitive ability predict use of different emotion regulation strategies in a laboratory task eliciting emotions varying in valence and arousal.

METHODS

Participants (N = 287) aged 25-85 completed the NIH Toolbox Cognitive Battery and an emotion regulation task in a laboratory setting. They watched a series of emotional clips (disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment) under instructions to increase positive emotions or decrease negative emotions. After each clip, they rated the extent to which they used emotion regulation strategies that involve different types of engagement with emotional stimuli and disengagement from emotional stimuli.

RESULTS

Older age was predictive of greater use of immersive-engagement strategies (e.g., perspective taking) and less use of disengagement strategies (e.g., distraction). Fluid cognitive ability was positively associated with immersive-engagement strategy use, particularly for high-arousal clips. For older adults, fluid cognitive ability was also associated with using positive-engagement strategies (e.g., positive reappraisal) to a greater extent to regulate negative emotions.

DISCUSSION

Patterns of emotion regulation strategy use varied by age, even when accounting for differences in reactivity. Findings suggest that older adults may not necessarily prefer strategies that are lower in cognitive demands or that focus on enhancing positivity. Results support the idea that strategy preferences are driven by a combination of characteristics of the regulator and the regulation context. The relevance of cognitive resources likely varies across situations, perhaps being most consequential for deeper processing of high-arousal stimuli and for older adults' engagement with positive aspects of an otherwise negative situation.

Reappraisal affordances: a replication of Suri et al. (2018) and investigation of alternate predictors of reappraisal choice

Reappraisal affordances have recently emerged as an important predictor of emotion regulation choice . In a pre-registered replication of study 4 of Suri et al., 2018, we assessed the role of affordances and several other predictors of regulation choice. Participants (N = 315) read one of eight vignettes that varied in reappraisal affordance (high or low) and intensity (high or low). For each vignette, they rated hedonic and instrumental motives, affordances, intensity, importance, and long-term implications. One week later, participants re-read the vignette, chose between reappraisal and distraction, and rated their likelihood of using each strategy. Unexpectedly, participants rated predicted high affordance vignettes as lower in affordance than predicted low affordance vignettes. This difference from the original study may be due to sample differences: in the original study, participants were employees in a specific workplace and several vignettes targeted workplace activities. Nonetheless, we replicated the original finding that reappraisal affordances predicted reappraisal choice. The result held even when controlling for other contextual variables, which played a limited role in predicting emotion regulation. The results highlight the need to consider multiple aspects of context, including the research setting, when examining predictors of emotion regulation choice.

The undoing-hypothesis in athletes - three pilot studies testing the effect of positive emotions on athletes' psychophysiological recovery

Three pilot studies were performed to investigate the undoing-hypothesis (i.e., fast psychophysiological recovery due to positive emotions after stressor) in an athletic sample - after 1) a psychosocial stressor (study 1, N = 19), 2) a physiological stressor (study 2, N = 14), and 3) a simulated competition (study 3, N = 13). Therefore, the effect of positive emotion interventions on cardiovascular (heart rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability) and psychological (perceived positive and negative emotions, arousal, valence) recovery was tested in comparison to neutral interventions. Additionally, study 3 examined the impact on performance after the intervention. Results only confirmed the undoing-hypothesis after a psychosocial stressor (study 1), showing greater increases in perceived positive emotions and a long-lasting decline in diastolic blood pressure after the positive emotion induction compared to the neutral condition. No effects on performance were found. Despite missing significance, descriptive analyzes indicated that our results are in line with the undoing-hypothesis, calling for further research in a greater sample to explore its full potential for athletes. Especially its impact on performance should be examined in future studies.

Reduced emotion regulatory selection flexibility in post-traumatic stress disorder: converging performance-based evidence from two PTSD populations

BACKGROUND

Contemporary views of emotion dysregulation in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) highlight reduced ability to flexibly select regulatory strategies according to differing situational demands. However, empirical evidence of reduced regulatory selection flexibility in PTSD is lacking. Multiple studies show that healthy individuals demonstrate regulatory selection flexibility manifested in selecting attentional disengagement regulatory strategies (e.g. distraction) in high-intensity emotional contexts and selecting engagement meaning change strategies (e.g. reappraisal) in low-intensity contexts. Accordingly, we hypothesized that PTSD populations will show reduced regulatory selection flexibility manifested in diminished increase in distraction (over reappraisal) preference as intensity increases from low to high intensity.

METHODS

Study 1 compared student participants with high (N = 22) post-traumatic symptoms (PTS, meeting the clinical cutoff for PTSD) and participants with low (N = 22) post-traumatic symptoms. Study 2 compared PTSD diagnosed women (N = 31) due to childhood sexual abuse and matched non-clinical women (N = 31). In both studies, participants completed a well-established regulatory selection flexibility performance-based paradigm that involves selecting between distraction and reappraisal to regulate negative emotional words of low and high intensity.

RESULTS

Beyond demonstrating adequate psychometric properties, Study 1 confirmed that relative to the low PTS group, the high PTS group presented reduced regulatory selection flexibility (p = 0.01, ŋ²ₚ= 0.14). Study 2 critically extended findings of Study 1, in showing similar reduced regulatory selection flexibility in a diagnosed PTSD population, relative to a non-clinical population (p = 0.002, ŋ²ₚ= 0.114).

CONCLUSIONS

Two studies provide converging evidence for reduced emotion regulatory selection flexibility in two PTSD populations.

Effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies measured by self-report and EMG as a result of strategy used, negative emotion strength and participants' baseline HRV

We investigated how emotion regulation (ER) effectiveness-on both a self-reported rating as well as emotional expression (corrugator supercilii muscle activity) level-is affected by the characteristics of the situation (low vs. high negativity), the strategy used (reinterpretation, distraction, suppression, no regulation control condition) and individual dispositions (low vs. high baseline Heart Rate Variability) as well as their interaction. For this purpose, 54 adult women participated in a laboratory study. All the included factors significantly influenced both corrugator activity and appraisals of pictures' negativity (in specific experimental conditions). For example, for high HRV participants, (1) distraction, suppression and reinterpretation significantly decreased corrugator activity compared to the control condition, and (2) distraction decreased appraised picture negativity for high negativity photos. For low HRV participants, distraction and suppression were most effective in decreasing corrugator responses, while suppression was more effective than reinterpretation in decreasing perceived picture negativity in the high negativity condition. Subjectively reported effort and success in applying ER strategies were also dependent on manipulated and dispositional factors. Overall, our results lend support to the flexible emotion regulation framework, showing that emotion regulation effectiveness relies on situational context as well as individual dispositions and their interaction.

Individual differences in social power: Links with beliefs about emotion and emotion regulation

OBJECTIVE

People differ in how they regulate their emotions, and how they do so is guided by their beliefs about emotion. We propose that social power-one's perceived influence over others-relates to one's beliefs about emotion and to emotion regulation. More powerful people are characterized as authentic and uninhibited, which should translate to the belief that one should not have to control one's emotions and, in turn, less suppression and more acceptance. More powerful people are also characterized as self-efficacious and confident, which should translate to the belief that one can control one's emotions and, in turn, more reappraisal and acceptance.

METHOD

Two preregistered studies using four samples (Ntotal  = 1286) tested these hypotheses using cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys as well as diaries.

RESULTS

In Study 1, power related to beliefs about emotion and emotion regulation in hypothesized ways. Study 2 also largely supported the hypotheses: The belief that one should not have to control one's emotions accounted for the links between power and suppression and acceptance, whereas the belief that one can control one's emotions accounted for the link between power and reappraisal.

CONCLUSION

Power and emotion regulation are interconnected, in part because of their links with beliefs about emotions.

Emotion regulation as a mediator on the relationship between emotional awareness and depression in elementary school students

As a cognitive skill, emotional awareness plays a fundamental role in emotional intelligence and significant effect on the development of individuals’ social adaptation. However, the role of emotional awareness in children’s social adaptation, especially emotional development, remains unclear, the current study sought to determine the significant influence of emotional awareness in children’s emotional development. By using cross-sectional and longitudinal study designs, the current study explored the relationship between emotional awareness and children’s depression, as well as the mediation effect of emotion regulation on this relationship. The sample comprised 166 Chinese elementary school students (89 girls and 77 boys) ranging from 8 to 12 years old. After adjusting for demographic variables (gender, grade, etc.), the results showed that children with high emotional awareness were less likely to adopt expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy and had lower depression levels currently and in the future. In contrast, children with low emotional awareness were more likely to use suppression strategies and showed higher depression levels. Thus, the results indicated that emotional awareness could predict children’s current and future depression status. Meanwhile, emotional regulation strategies are an important mediating variable explaining the relationship between emotional awareness and children’s depression. Implications and limitations were also discussed.

Alexithymia and emotion regulation

BACKGROUND

Alexithymia is a key transdiagnostic risk factor for emotion-based psychopathologies. Conceptual models specify that this is because alexithymia impairs emotion regulation. However, the extent of these putative emotion regulation impairments remains underexplored. Our aim in this study was to begin to address this gap by examining whether people with high, average, or low levels of alexithymia differ in the types of emotion regulation strategies they typically use.

METHOD

General community adults from the United States (N = 501) completed a battery of alexithymia and emotion regulation measures. Participants were grouped into high, average, and low alexithymia quantiles.

RESULTS

After controlling for demographics and current levels of distress, the high, average, and low alexithymia groups differed in their use of cognitive and behavioral emotion regulation strategies. Compared to the other groups, the high alexithymia group reported lesser use of generally adaptive regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, approaching problems, and seeking social support) and greater use of generally maladaptive regulation strategies (expressive suppression, behavioral withdrawal, ignoring).

LIMITATIONS

Our data were cross-sectional and from self-report questionnaires. Future work in other cultural groups would be beneficial.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results support the view that alexithymia is associated with impaired emotion regulation. In particular, people with high alexithymia seem to exhibit a less adaptive profile of emotion regulation strategies. Direct targeting of these emotion regulation patterns in psychotherapy may therefore be a useful pathway for the treatment of emotional disorder symptoms in people with high alexithymia.

Components of emotion regulation flexibility and psychosis: The association between psychosis-proneness and context sensitivity

OBJECTIVES

Emotion regulation flexibility has been conceptualized as a multi-componential construct involving context sensitivity, repertoire and feedback responsiveness. Psychosis research has yet to incorporate these new developments in the study of emotion regulation. Thus, we sought to advance even further the knowledge on emotion regulation in psychosis by adopting the emotion regulation flexibility approach as proposed by Bonanno and Burton (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2013, 8, 591).

METHOD

In total, 401 participants completed 4 scales assessing the multi-components of emotion regulation flexibility and psychosis-proneness.

RESULTS

Our results indicated that Context Sensitivity (i.e., Cue Absence) and Feedback Responsiveness (i.e., Evaluation) were associated with psychosis-proneness. Cue absence was specifically associated with the positive dimension, while both Cue Absence and Enhancement ability were associated with the negative dimension.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, our results suggest that emotional context insensitivity is the most relevant component of regulatory flexibility in the case of psychosis-proneness. Thus, the disruption in this first step of flexible emotion regulation might be already present in those prone to psychosis. Difficulties in decoding appropriately the contextual cues might further disrupt the other steps of emotion regulation contributing to the psychotic (-like) experiences. This study needs replication in clinical and non-clinical samples.

Effects of positive reappraisal and self-distancing on the meaningfulness of everyday negative events

Current work on meaning-making has primarily focused on major negative life events such as trauma and loss, leaving common daily adversities unexplored. This study aimed to examine how utilizing meaning-making strategies such as positive reappraisal and self-distancing (in isolation or in combination) can facilitate an adaptive processing of these daily negative experiences. Overall meaning and facets of meaning (coherence, purpose, and significance/mattering) were assessed at both global and situational levels. Results suggested that positive reappraisal was generally effective for enhancing situational meaning but not under all conditions. Specifically, when negative experiences were high on emotional intensity, reflecting on the experience from a distanced (third-person) perspective enhanced coherence and existential mattering more than engaging in positive reappraisal. However, when negative experiences were low on intensity, distanced reflection led to less coherence and mattering than positive reappraisal. The findings of this study elucidated the importance of examining the multidimensional construct of meaning at the facet level and highlighted the importance of applying different coping strategies to effectively make meaning out of daily negative experiences.

Physiological arousal guides situational appraisals and metacognitive recall for naturalistic experiences

As individuals navigate the world, they are bound to have emotionally intense experiences. These events not only influence momentary physiological and affective responses, but may also have a powerful impact on one's memory for their emotional experience. In this research, we used the naturalistic context of a haunted house to examine how physiological arousal is associated with metacognitive emotional memory (i.e., the extent to which an individual remembers having experienced a certain emotion). Participants first navigated the haunted house while heart rate and explicit situational appraisals were recorded, and then recalled specific events from the haunted house and the intensity of these affective events approximately one week later. We found that heart rate predicted both the intensity of reported scariness in the haunted house and meta-cognitive memory of affect during recall. Critically, we found evidence for malleability in metacognitive emotional memory based on how the event was initially labeled. Individuals tended to recall events that they explicitly labeled as fear-evoking as being more intense than they reported at the time of the event. We found the opposite relationship for events that they labeled as not fear-evoking. Taken together, this indicates that there are strong relationships between physiological arousal and emotional experiences in naturalistic contexts, but that affective labeling can modulate the relationship between these features when reflecting on the emotionality of that experience in memory.

Harnessing the placebo effect to enhance emotion regulation effectiveness and choice

The placebo effect demonstrates how positive expectancies shape the effectiveness of various treatments. Across studies, placebo treatments are interventions (creams, pills, etc.) that are presented to individuals as, and are learned to be, beneficial for them. This study tested whether placebo-induced expectancies can be harnessed to improve individuals' internal emotion regulation attempts. Participants implemented two types of distraction, an emotion regulation strategy involving attentional disengagement, to attenuate fear of pain. In a typical conditioning paradigm, the placebo-distraction was introduced as an effective strategy (verbal suggestion) and was surreptitiously paired with reduced pain (conditioning), whereas the control-distraction was introduced as noneffective and was surreptitiously paired with increased pain. As predicted, we found that during a later test phase, where pain intensity was identical, the placebo-distraction resulted in reduced self-reported fear of pain, relative to the control-distraction. Moreover, we utilized a robust behavioral choice measure, demonstrating increased preferences for the placebo-distraction. We additionally tested whether these effects generalize to a different emotional context of fear of unpleasant pictures. In that context, the placebo-distraction was as effective as the control-distraction, but was substantially preferred. This study demonstrates that the placebo effect can be expanded to include individuals' internal attempts to influence their conditions.