Effects of aging on experimentally instructed detached reappraisal, positive reappraisal, and emotional behavior suppression.

Emotion regulation includes multiple strategies that rely on different underlying abilities and that may be affected differently by aging. We assessed young, middle-aged, and older adults’ ability to implement 3 emotion regulation strategies (detached reappraisal, positive reappraisal, and behavior suppression) in a laboratory setting, using standardized emotional stimuli and a multimethod approach to assessing regulation success. Results revealed age-related decline in ability to implement detached reappraisal, enhancement of ability to implement positive reappraisal, and maintenance of ability to implement behavior suppression. We discuss these findings in terms of their implications for emotion theory and for promoting successful aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physiological down-regulation and positive emotion in marital interaction.

Previous studies have demonstrated that 1 function of positive emotion is the undoing of physiological arousal produced by negative emotions. These studies have used single-subject paradigms, in which emotions were induced by films in college-age individuals. In the present study, we examined the relationship between physiological down-regulation and positive emotion in a sample of 149 middle-aged and older married couples engaged in a 15-min discussion of an area of marital conflict. During the conversation, autonomic and somatic physiological activity was measured, and emotional behaviors were recorded and subsequently coded. We found that during 20-s periods of down-regulation (where physiology transitioned from high arousal to low arousal), couples showed an increase in positive emotional behavior compared with periods without down-regulation. The finding was quite robust, suggesting that the undoing effect of positive emotion generalizes across age, sex, and marital satisfaction. The advantages of using positive emotion as an emotion regulation strategy are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive reappraisal of negative affect: Converging evidence from EMG and self-report.

Prior psychophysiological studies of cognitive reappraisal have generally focused on the down-regulation of negative affect, and have demonstrated either changes in self-reports of affective experience, or changes in facial electromyography, but not both. Unfortunately, when taken separately, these measures are vulnerable to different sources of bias, and alternative explanations might account for changes in these indicators of negative affect. What is needed is a study that (a) obtains measures of self-reported affect together with facial electromyography, and (b) examines the use of reappraisal to regulate externally and internally generated affective responses. In the present study, participants up- or down-regulated negative affect in the context of both negative and neutral pictures. Up-regulation led to greater self reports of negative affect, as well as greater corrugator and startle responses to both negative and neutral stimuli. Down-regulation led to lesser reports of negative affect, and lesser corrugator responses to negative and neutral stimuli. These results extend prior research by (a) showing simultaneous effects on multiple measures of affect, and (b) demonstrating that cognitive reappraisal may be used both to regulate responses to negative stimuli and to manufacture a negative response to neutral stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing the silver lining: Cognitive reappraisal ability moderates the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms.

Individuals differ in their adjustment to stressful life events, with some exhibiting impaired functioning, including depression, while others exhibit impressive resilience. The present study examined the hypothesis that the ability to deploy a particularly adaptive type of emotion regulation—cognitive reappraisal—may be a protective factor. It expands upon existing research in three ways. First, participants' ability to use reappraisal (cognitive reappraisal ability: CRA) was measured by using a behavioral challenge that assessed changes in experiential and physiological domains, rather than questionnaires. Second, all participants had been exposed to one or more recent stressful life events, a context in which emotion regulation may be particularly important. Third, a community sample of 78 women aged 20 to 60 was recruited, as opposed to undergraduates. Results indicate that, at low levels of stress, participants' CRA was not associated with depressive symptoms. However, at high levels of stress, women with high CRA exhibited less depressive symptoms than those with low CRA, suggesting that CRA may be an important moderator of the link between stress and depressive symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture, emotion regulation, and adjustment.

This article reports differences across 23 countries on 2 processes of emotion regulation--reappraisal and suppression. Cultural dimensions were correlated with country means on both and the relationship between them. Cultures that emphasized the maintenance of social order--that is, those that were long-term oriented and valued embeddedness and hierarchy--tended to have higher scores on suppression, and reappraisal and suppression tended to be positively correlated. In contrast, cultures that minimized the maintenance of social order and valued individual Affective Autonomy and Egalitarianism tended to have lower scores on Suppression, and Reappraisal and Suppression tended to be negatively correlated. Moreover, country-level emotion regulation was significantly correlated with country-level indices of both positive and negative adjustment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion regulation in schizophrenia: Affective, social, and clinical correlates of suppression and reappraisal.

Individuals can exert considerable control over their experience and expression of emotion by applying different regulatory strategies such as reappraisal and suppression. However, although it has been suggested that blunted affect in schizophrenia, characterized by markedly reduced emotion expressivity alongside apparently normal emotion experience, may reflect overuse of suppression, no study to date has assessed self-reported use of these different emotion regulatory strategies in relation to this disorder. In the present study, 41 individuals with schizophrenia and 38 control participants completed a self-report measure that differentiated between use of suppression and reappraisal. Symptom severity and various aspects of cognitive and psychosocial functioning were also assessed. Relative to controls, individuals with schizophrenia did not differ with regard to their reported use of suppression and reappraisal, and reported use of both strategies was unrelated to clinical ratings of blunted affect. However, whereas (lower) use of reappraisal was associated with greater social function impairment for both groups, only for controls was (greater) use of suppression associated with reduced social functioning. Implications for understanding blunted affect and social dysfunction in schizophrenia are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing, thinking, and feeling: Emotion-regulating effects of gaze-directed cognitive reappraisal.

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is an emotion-regulatory (ER) process that is theorized to operate via changes in appraisals. CR is distinct from attentional deployment (AD), an ER process that is theorized to operate via changes in attention. However, a recent neuroimaging study has suggested that the ER effects of CR might largely be explained by AD. In this study, I manipulated CR while holding visual AD constant across CR conditions. In a randomized within-subjects design, 54 participants used CR to increase and decrease emotion in response to unpleasant pictures. This was compared with simply viewing the pictures. On all trials, gaze was directed to a circumscribed area of the pictures. Even with gaze held constant across conditions, increase reappraisals led to higher ratings of emotional intensity, greater corrugator activity, and greater autonomic arousal. In addition, decrease reappraisals led to lower ratings of emotional intensity and lower corrugator activity, the latter of which held only when gaze was directed to arousing information. Overall, the results suggest that changes in appraisal are the likely mechanism for the ER effects of CR. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spontaneous emotion regulation during evaluated speaking tasks: Associations with negative affect, anxiety expression, memory, and physiological responding.

In these studies, the correlates of spontaneously using expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal during stressful speeches were examined. Spontaneous emotion regulation means that there were no instructions of how to regulate emotions during the speech. Instead, participants indicated after the speech to what extent they used self-motivated expressive suppression or reappraisal during the task. The results show that suppression is associated with less anxiety expression, greater physiological responding, and less memory for the speech while having no impact on negative affect. In contrast, reappraisal has no impact on physiology and memory while leading to less expression and affect. Taken together, spontaneous emotion regulation in active coping tasks has similar consequences as experimentally induced emotion regulation in passive tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective responses to emotional stimuli during labeling, reappraisal, and distraction.

Although multiple neuroimaging studies suggest that affect labeling (i.e., putting feelings into words) can dampen affect-related responses in the amygdala, the consequences of affect labeling have not been examined in other channels of emotional responding. We conducted four studies examining the effect of affect labeling on self-reported emotional experience. In study one, self-reported distress was lower during affect labeling, compared to passive watching, of negative emotional pictures. Studies two and three added reappraisal and distraction conditions, respectively. Affect labeling showed similar effects on self-reported distress as both of these intentional emotion regulation strategies. In each of the first three studies, however, participant predictions about the effects of affect labeling suggest that unlike reappraisal and distraction, people do not believe affect labeling to be an effective emotion regulation strategy. Even after having the experience of affect labels leading to lower distress, participants still predicted that affect labeling would increase distress in the future. Thus, affect labeling is best described as an incidental emotion regulation process. Finally, study four employed positive emotional pictures and here, affect labeling was associated with diminished self-reported pleasure, relative to passive watching. This suggests that affect labeling tends to dampen affective responses in general, rather than specifically alleviating negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion regulation and vulnerability to depression: Spontaneous versus instructed use of emotion suppression and reappraisal.

Emotion dysregulation has long been thought to be a vulnerability factor for mood disorders. However, there have been few empirical tests of this idea. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that depression vulnerability is related to difficulties with emotion regulation by comparing recovered-depressed and never-depressed participants (N = 73). In the first phase, participants completed questionnaires assessing their typical use of emotion regulation strategies. In the second phase, sad mood was induced using a film clip, and the degree to which participants reported to have spontaneously used suppression versus reappraisal to regulate their emotions was assessed. In the third phase, participants received either suppression or reappraisal instructions prior to watching a second sadness-inducing film. As predicted, suppression was found to be ineffective for down-regulating negative emotions, and recovered-depressed participants reported to have spontaneously used this strategy during the first sadness-inducing film more often than controls. However, the groups did not differ regarding the effects of induced suppression versus reappraisal on negative mood. These results provide evidence for a role for spontaneous but not instructed emotion regulation in depression vulnerability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Look before you regulate: Differential perceptual strategies underlying expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal.

Successful emotion regulation is important for maintaining psychological well-being. Although it is known that emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, may have divergent consequences for emotional responses, the cognitive processes underlying these differences remain unclear. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate the role of attentional deployment in emotion regulation success. We hypothesized that differences in the deployment of attention to emotional areas of complex visual scenes may be a contributing factor to the differential effects of these two strategies on emotional experience. Eye-movements, pupil size, and self-reported negative emotional experience were measured while healthy young adult participants viewed negative IAPS images and regulated their emotional responses using either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression. Consistent with prior work, reappraisers reported feeling significantly less negative than suppressers when regulating emotion as compared to a baseline condition. Across both groups, participants looked away from emotional areas during emotion regulation, an effect that was more pronounced for suppressers. Critically, irrespective of emotion regulation strategy, participants who looked toward emotional areas of a complex visual scene were more likely to experience emotion regulation success. Taken together, these results demonstrate that attentional deployment varies across emotion regulation strategies and that successful emotion regulation depends on the extent to which people look toward emotional content in complex visual scenes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotion regulation: Self-report and physiological response to peer provocation.

The authors examined the notion that children's emotion regulation (ER) is a uniform skill by (a) investigating the concordance between self-report of ER and physiological measures and by (b) examining ER in a specific context (e.g., peer provocation) and context-free manner (e.g., during a semistructured interview of ER abilities). Seventy-two children in middle childhood (average age = 9 years) participated. Time-locked measures of heart rate reactivity and recovery were obtained in response to provoking comments, and vagal regulation was measured throughout the provocation session. Children who reported greater dysregulation showed increased heart rate reactivity to provocative comments (i.e., steeper heart rate slope) but no difference in heart rate recovery. The context-free but not the context-specific self-report measure was associated with a failure to suppress vagal tone. Implications for ER measurement and children's peer relations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of emotion regulation on social interactive decision-making.

Although adequate emotion regulation is considered to be essential in every day life, it is especially important in social interactions. However, the question as to what extent two different regulation strategies are effective in changing decision-making in a consequential socially interactive context remains unanswered. We investigated the effect of expressive suppression and emotional reappraisal on strategic decision-making in a social interactive task, that is, the Ultimatum Game. As hypothesized, participants in the emotional reappraisal condition accepted unfair offers more often than participants in the suppression and no-regulation condition. Additionally, the effect of emotional reappraisal influenced the amount of money participants proposed during a second interaction with partners that had treated them unfairly in a previous interaction. These results support and extend previous findings that emotional reappraisal as compared to expressive suppression, is a powerful regulation strategy that influences and changes how we interact with others even in the face of inequity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using reappraisal to regulate unpleasant emotional episodes: Goals and timing matter.

The hypothesis that cognitive reappraisal will have different effects on emotion as a function of regulatory goal and the timing with which reappraisals are enacted within an emotion episode was tested. Forty-one participants reappraised situations depicted in unpleasant pictures by imagining those situations getting worse (increase), staying the same (maintain), or getting better (decrease). Reappraisal instructions were delivered 2 s before (anticipatory) or 4 s after (online) picture onset. Measures of rated unpleasantness, expressive behavior (corrugator muscle activity), heart rate (HR), and electrodermal activity (EDA) were collected. Increase reappraisals produced higher rated unpleasantness, corrugator muscle activity, HR, and EDA relative to maintain reappraisals. For corrugator muscle activity and EDA, the effect of increase reappraisals was only apparent when enacted online. Decrease reappraisals produced lower rated unpleasantness relative to maintain reappraisals but had no effect on expressive behavior or autonomic physiology. The effect of decrease reappraisals did not depend on when reappraisal was enacted. These data underscore the importance of regulatory goals and the impact of regulatory timing as a moderator of emotion regulatory success within an emotion episode. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The unconscious regulation of emotion: Nonconscious reappraisal goals modulate emotional reactivity.

People often encounter difficulty when making conscious attempts to regulate their emotions. We propose that nonconscious self-regulatory processes may be of help in these difficult circumstances because nonconscious processes are not subject to the same set of limitations as are conscious processes. Two experiments examined the effects of nonconsciously operating goals on people’s emotion regulatory success. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in an anxiety-eliciting task. Participants who had a reappraisal emotion control goal primed and operating nonconsciously achieved the same decrease in physiological reactivity as those explicitly instructed to reappraise. In Experiment 2, the effect of nonconscious reappraisal priming on physiological reactivity was shown to be most pronounced for those who do not habitually use reappraisal strategies. The findings highlight the potential importance of nonconscious goals for facilitating emotional control in complex real-world environments and have implications for contemporary models of emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hooked on a feeling: Rumination about positive and negative emotion in inter-episode bipolar disorder.

Rumination has been consistently implicated in the onset and maintenance of depression. Less work has examined rumination in the context of bipolar disorder, especially rumination about positive emotion. The present study examined rumination about negative and positive emotion in interepisode bipolar disorder (BD; n = 39) and healthy controls (CTL; n = 34). Trait rumination about positive and negative emotion, as well as experiential and physiological responses to a rumination induction, was measured. Illness course was also assessed for the BD group. Results indicated that the BD group reported greater trait rumination about positive and negative emotion compared with the CTL group, though no group differences emerged during the rumination induction. For the BD group, trait rumination about positive and negative emotion, as well as increased cardiovascular arousal (i.e., heart rate), was associated with greater lifetime depression frequency; trait rumination about positive emotion was associated with greater lifetime mania frequency. These findings suggest that interepisode BD is associated with greater rumination about positive and negative emotion, which in turn is associated with illness course. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Silver linings and candles in the dark: Differences among positive coping strategies in predicting subjective well-being.

Ideal coping strategies enhance positive aspects of well-being as well as reduce distress. Although researchers have identified several "positive coping" strategies, it is unclear which are most strongly associated with well-being or whether all strategies are equally appropriate for all kinds of stressors. Participants completed well-being measures, and described the most negative event of the day and their emotion regulation strategies for the next 7 days. Dispositional use of positive emotion-inducing coping strategies was most strongly associated with positive aspects of well-being. Use of positive coping did not decrease with increased objective stress during the week, and use of particular strategies was partly predicted by the types of stressors that were reported. Implications for theories of positive coping are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in poignancy: Cognitive reappraisal as a moderator.

Poignancy is defined as a mixed emotional experience that arises when one faces meaningful endings. According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006), when people are aware of the finitude of time, they tend to experience more poignancy. In Study 1, we found that Chinese younger, but not older, participants experienced more poignancy under time limitations. In Study 2, we found that an emotion regulation strategy—namely, cognitive reappraisal—moderated the relationship between limited time and poignancy, such that the increases in poignancy under time limitations were found only among older Chinese participants with lower levels of cognitive reappraisal but not among those with higher levels of cognitive reappraisal. These findings contribute to the existing literature on poignancy by showing that not every older adult exhibits poignancy in the face of an ending: The poignancy phenomenon may occur among only older adults who are less likely to use an emotion regulation strategy, such as cognitive reappraisal, to reinterpret the anticipated ending. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disentangling emotion processes in borderline personality disorder: Physiological and self-reported assessment of biological vulnerability, baseline intensity, and reactivity to emotionally evocative stimuli.

This study investigated M. Linehan’s (1993) theory that individuals meeting criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) have high biological vulnerability to emotion dysregulation, including high baseline emotional intensity and high reactivity to emotionally evocative stimuli. Twenty individuals with BPD, 20 age-matched individuals with generalized social anxiety disorder (SAD), and 20 age-matched normal controls (NCs) participated in 2 separate emotion induction conditions, a standardized condition, and a personally relevant condition. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), skin conductance response (SCR), and self-report measures were collected throughout the experiment. BPD participants displayed heightened biological vulnerability compared with NCs as indicated by reduced basal RSA. BPD participants also exhibited high baseline emotional intensity, characterized by heightened SCR and heightened self-reported negative emotions at baseline. However, the BPD group did not display heightened reactivity, as their physiological and self-reported changes from baseline to the emotion inductions tasks were not greater than the other 2 groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)