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)     

Ironic effects of emotion suppression when recounting distressing memories.

Theories of ironic mental control posit that under conditions in which effortful control is compromised, for example, in laboratory manipulations of mental load or in those suffering from clinical levels of negative affect, attempts to suppress negative emotions can lead to a paradoxical increase in such feelings, relative to conditions in which no suppression is attempted. In line with this, we showed that high negative affect participants, when asked to suppress (downregulate) their negative feelings while writing about a distressing personal memory, exhibited an ironically greater increase in negative emotions compared with a no-instruction condition, in contrast to low negative affect controls who were able to suppress their emotions. Comparable ironic effects were not associated with instructions to experience emotions. This first demonstration of ironic effects of emotion suppression in response to personal material in those with emotional problems sheds light into how certain emotion regulation strategies may maintain and exacerbate such conditions. (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)     

The up- and down-regulation of amusement: Experiential, behavioral, and autonomic consequences.

A growing body of research has examined the regulation of negative emotions. However, little is known about the physiological processes underlying the regulation of positive emotions, such as when amusement is enhanced during periods of stress or attenuated in the pursuit of social goals. The aim of this study was to examine the psychophysiological consequences of the cognitive up- and down-regulation of amusement. To address this goal, participants viewed brief, amusing film clips while measurements of experience, behavior, and peripheral physiology were collected. Using an event-related design, participants viewed each film under the instructions either to (a) watch, (b) use cognitive reappraisal to increase amusement, or (c) use cognitive reappraisal to decrease amusement. Findings indicated that emotion experience, emotion-expressive behavior, and autonomic physiology (including heart rate, respiration, and sympathetic nervous system activation) were enhanced and diminished in accordance with regulation instructions. This finding is a critical extension of the growing literature on the voluntary regulation of emotion, and has the potential to help us better understand how people use humor in the service of coping and social goals. (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)     

The set switching function of nonclinical dissociators under negative emotion.

Rapid switching may underlie the disruption of some integrated thought processes that characterize dissociation in both nonclinical and clinical populations. We investigated the set switching function under negative emotion with three groups of nonclinical participants that had different degrees of dissociation proneness. In the experiment, participants judged whether the digit in a predefined target color was odd or even on the preswitch trials. In a perseverance condition, participants were required to switch to a new target color while the previous target color became the distractor color. In a learned irrelevance condition, the previously ignored color became the new target color. The results showed that the three groups did not differ in focusing attention in the preswitch trials, for set switching in the baseline condition (in which emotion was not engaged), or for switching in the learned irrelevance condition under negative emotion. However, high dissociators under negative emotion showed faster switching in the perseverance condition. This enhanced ability to divert attention to a new mental set under negative emotion may be a coping strategy related to cognitive symptoms in dissociative disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion.

Emotion regulation plays a central role in mental health and illness, but little is known about even the most basic forms of emotion regulation. To examine the acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion, we asked 180 female participants to watch sad, neutral, and amusing films under 1 of 2 conditions. Suppression participants (N?=?90) inhibited their expressive behavior while watching the films; no suppression participants (N?=?90) simply watched the films. Suppression diminished expressive behavior in all 3 films and decreased amusement self-reports in sad and amusing films. Physiologically, suppression had no effect in the neutral film, but clear effects in both negative and positive emotional films, including increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system. On the basis of these findings, we suggest several ways emotional inhibition may influence psychological functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Just stop thinking about it": Effects of emotional disengagement on children's memory for educational material.

Children regulate negative emotions in a variety of ways. Emotion education programs typically discourage emotional disengagement and encourage emotional engagement or "working through" negative emotions. The authors examined the effects of emotional disengagement and engagement on children's memory for educational material. Children averaging 7 or 10 years of age (N=200) watched either a sad or an emotionally neutral film and were then instructed to emotionally disengage, instructed to engage in problem solving concerning their emotion, or received no emotion regulation instructions. All children then watched and were asked to recall the details of an emotionally neutral educational film. Children instructed to disengage remembered the educational film better than children instructed to work through their feelings or children who received no emotion regulation instructions. Although past research has indicated that specific forms of emotional disengagement can impair memory for emotionally relevant events, the current findings suggest that disengagement is a useful short-term strategy for regulating mild negative emotion in educational settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral Inhibition and Amplification During Emotional Arousal: A Comparison of Two Age Groups.

This study investigated age differences in the ability to suppress and amplify expressive behavior during emotional arousal. Young and old participants viewed 3 film clips about medical procedures while their behavioral, autonomic, and subjective responses were recorded. Half of the participants viewed all 3 films without additional instructions; the other half was asked to suppress and amplify their behavioral expression during the 2nd and 3rd films. Except for heart rate, suppression and amplification produced similar patterns of autonomic activation. Neither suppression nor amplification had effects on self-reported emotion. There were no age differences in the ability to suppress or amplify emotional expression or in their physiological or subjective consequences. Considering that older people's unregulated reactivity was lower than that of young adults, suppression may have been easier and amplification more difficult for older adults. Voluntary emotion regulation might be one domain of human performance that is spared from age-related losses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation: divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology

Using a process model of emotion, a distinction between antecedent-focused and response-focused emotion regulation is proposed. To test this distinction, 120 participants were shown a disgusting film while their experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses were recorded. Participants were told to either (a) think about the film in such a way that they would feel nothing (reappraisal, a form of antecedent-focused emotion regulation), (b) behave in such a way that someone watching them would not know they were feeling anything (suppression, a form of response-focused emotion regulation), or (c) watch the film (a control condition). Compared with the control condition, both reappraisal and suppression were effective in reducing emotion-expressive behavior. However, reappraisal decreased disgust experience, whereas suppression increased sympathetic activation. These results suggest that these 2 emotion regulatory processes may have different adaptive consequences.     

Mother's emotional expressivity and children's behavior problems and social competence: Mediation through children's regulation.

The relations between mothers' expressed positive and negative emotion and 55–79-month-olds' (76% European American) regulation, social competence, and adjustment were examined. Structural equation modeling was used to test the plausibility of the hypothesis that the effects of maternal expression of emotion on children's adjustment and social competence are mediated through children's dispositional regulation. Mothers' expressed emotions were assessed during interactions with their children and with maternal reports of emotions expressed in the family. Children's regulation, externalizing and internalizing problems, and social competence were rated by parents and teachers, and children's persistence was surreptitiously observed. There were unique effects of positive and negative maternal expressed emotion on children's regulation, and the relations of maternal expressed emotion to children's externalizing problem behaviors and social competence were mediated through children's regulation. Alternative models of causation were tested; a child-directed model in which maternal expressivity mediated the effects of child regulation on child outcomes did not fit the data as well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion regulation and decision making under risk and uncertainty.

It is well established that emotion plays a key role in human social and economic decision making. The recent literature on emotion regulation (ER), however, highlights that humans typically make efforts to control emotion experiences. This leaves open the possibility that decision effects previously attributed to acute emotion may be a consequence of acute ER strategies such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In Study 1, we manipulated ER of laboratory-induced fear and disgust, and found that the cognitive reappraisal of these negative emotions promotes risky decisions (reduces risk aversion) in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and is associated with increased performance in the prehunch/hunch period of the Iowa Gambling Task. In Study 2, we found that naturally occurring negative emotions also increase risk aversion in Balloon Analogue Risk Task, but the incidental use of cognitive reappraisal of emotions impedes this effect. We offer evidence that the increased effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal in reducing the experience of emotions underlies its beneficial effects on decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion experience, expression, and regulation in Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated with intact experience but abnormal expression of emotion. Because emotion regulation is important in determining levels of experienced and expressed emotion, individuals with AD and control participants were asked to watch film clips under conditions of spontaneous expression, suppression, or amplification of emotion. Both groups had difficulties with behavioral amplification that were related to performance on a measure of theory of mind. However, intentional use of suppression was intact even for those with AD, consistent with models of aging that regard some emotion control processes as being relatively more automatic in older adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Updating positive and negative stimuli in working memory in depression.

Difficulties in the ability to update stimuli in working memory (WM) may underlie the problems with regulating emotions that lead to the development and perpetuation of mood disorders such as depression. To examine the ability to update affective material in WM, the authors had diagnosed depressed and never-disordered control participants perform an emotion 2-back task in which participants were presented with a series of happy, sad, and neutral faces and were asked to indicate whether the current face had the same (match-set) or different (break-set or no-set) emotional expression as that presented 2 faces earlier. Participants also performed a 0-back task with the same emotional stimuli to serve as a control for perceptual processing. After transforming reaction times to control for baseline group differences, depressed and nondepressed participants exhibited biases in updating emotional content that reflects the tendency to keep negative information and positive information, respectively, active in WM. Compared with controls, depressed participants were both slower to disengage from sad stimuli and faster to disengage from happy facial expressions. In contrast, nondepressed controls took longer to disengage from happy stimuli than from neutral or sad stimuli. These group differences in reaction times may reflect both protective and maladaptive biases in WM that underlie the ability to effectively regulate negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion experience and expression across the adult life span: Insights from a multimodal assessment study.

This investigation represents a multimodal study of age-related differences in experienced and expressed affect and in emotion regulatory skills in a sample of young, middle-aged, and older adults (N = 96), testing formulations derived from differential emotions theory. The experimental session consisted of a 10-min anger induction and a 10-min sadness induction using a relived emotion task; participants were also randomly assigned to an inhibition or noninhibition condition. In addition to subjective ratings of emotional experience provided by participants, their facial behavior was coded using an objective facial affect coding system; a content analysis also was applied to the emotion narratives. Separate repeated measures analyses of variance applied to each emotion domain indicated age differences in the co-occurrence of negative emotions and co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions across domains, thus extending the finding of emotion heterogeneity or complexity in emotion experience to facial behavior and verbal narratives. The authors also found that the inhibition condition resulted in a different pattern of results in the older versus middle-aged and younger adults. The intensity and frequency of discrete emotions were similar across age groups, with a few exceptions. Overall, the findings were generally consistent with differential emotions theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Escaping affect: How motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering.

As the number of people in need of help increases, the degree of compassion people feel for them ironically tends to decrease. This phenomenon is termed the collapse of compassion. Some researchers have suggested that this effect happens because emotions are not triggered by aggregates. We provide evidence for an alternative account. People expect the needs of large groups to be potentially overwhelming, and, as a result, they engage in emotion regulation to prevent themselves from experiencing overwhelming levels of emotion. Because groups are more likely than individuals to elicit emotion regulation, people feel less for groups than for individuals. In Experiment 1, participants displayed the collapse of compassion only when they expected to be asked to donate money to the victims. This suggests that the effect is motivated by self-interest. Experiment 2 showed that the collapse of compassion emerged only for people who were skilled at emotion regulation. In Experiment 3, we manipulated emotion regulation. Participants who were told to down-regulate their emotions showed the collapse of compassion, but participants who were told to experience their emotions did not. We examined the time course of these effects using a dynamic rating to measure affective responses in real time. The time course data suggested that participants regulate emotion toward groups proactively, by preventing themselves from ever experiencing as much emotion toward groups as toward individuals. These findings provide initial evidence that motivated emotion regulation drives insensitivity to mass suffering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deficits in emotion-regulation skills predict alcohol use during and after cognitive–behavioral therapy for alcohol dependence.

Objective: As emotion regulation is widely considered to be a primary motive in the misuse of alcohol, our aim in the study was to investigate whether deficits in adaptive emotion-regulation skills maintain alcohol dependence (AD). Method: A prospective study investigated whether emotion-regulation skills were associated with AD and whether these skills predicted alcohol use during and after treatment for AD. Participants were 116 individuals treated for AD with cognitive–behavioral therapy. Emotion regulation and severity of AD symptoms were assessed by self-report. Alcohol use during treatment was assessed by Breathalyzer and urine analysis for ethyl glucuronide; alcohol use during the 3-month follow-up interval was assessed by self-report. Results: Pretreatment emotion-regulation skills predicted alcohol use during treatment, and posttreatment emotion-regulation skills predicted alcohol use at follow-up, even when controlling for other predictors potentially related to emotion regulation. Among a broad range of specific emotion-regulation skills, the ability to tolerate negative emotions was the only skill that negatively predicted subsequent alcohol consumption when controlling for the other skills. Individuals in the AD sample reported significantly larger deficits in emotion-regulation skills than did those in a nonclinical control sample but significantly less than did those in a sample of individuals exclusively meeting criteria for major depressive disorder. Conclusions: Enhancement of general emotion-regulation skills, especially the ability to tolerate negative emotions, appears to be an important target in the treatment of AD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Viewing Injustice: Greater Emotion Heterogeneity With Age.

The present study examined age differences in emotion heterogeneity, defined as the experience of co-occurring negative emotions. Younger and older European American and Mexican American participants (N=183) viewed film clips depicting scenes of injustice. Younger adults were more likely to report a single primary negative emotion, whereas older adults reported greater emotion heterogeneity, a finding consistent across gender and ethnicity. In addition, greater emotion heterogeneity was related to a greater number of life experiences. Future directions concerning the meaning of and possible implications for this age difference are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of worry on physiological and subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli in generalized anxiety disorder and nonanxious control participants.

The present study examined the effect of worry versus relaxation and neutral thought activity on both physiological and subjective responding to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Thirty-eight participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and 35 nonanxious control participants were randomly assigned to engage in worry, relaxation, or neutral inductions prior to sequential exposure to each of four emotion-inducing film clips. The clips were designed to elicit fear, sadness, happiness, and calm emotions. Self reported negative and positive affect was assessed following each induction and exposure, and vagal activity was measured throughout. Results indicate that worry (vs. relaxation) led to reduced vagal tone for the GAD group, as well as higher negative affect levels for both groups. Additionally, prior worry resulted in less physiological and subjective responding to the fearful film clip, and reduced negative affect in response to the sad clip. This suggests that worry may facilitate avoidance of processing negative emotions by way of preventing a negative emotional contrast. Implications for the role of worry in emotion avoidance are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion regulation and memory: The cognitive costs of keeping one's cool.

An emerging literature has begun to document the affective consequences of emotion regulation. Little is known, however, about whether emotion regulation also has cognitive consequences. A process model of emotion suggests that expressive suppression should reduce memory for emotional events but that reappraisal should not. Three studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool may vary according to how this is done. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)