Working memory capacity and the self-regulation of emotional expression and experience.

This research examined the relationship between individual differences in working memory capacity and the self-regulation of emotional expression and emotional experience. Four studies revealed that people higher in working memory capacity suppressed expressions of negative emotion (Study 1) and positive emotion (Study 2) better than did people lower in working memory capacity. Furthermore, compared to people lower in working memory capacity, people higher in capacity more capably appraised emotional stimuli in an unemotional manner and thereby experienced (Studies 3 and 4) and expressed (Study 4) less emotion in response to those stimuli. These findings indicate that cognitive ability contributes to the control of emotional responding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Origins and functions of positive and negative affect: A control-process view.

The question of how affect arises and what affect indicates is examined from a feedback-based viewpoint on self-regulation. Using the analogy of action control as the attempt to diminish distance to a goal, a second feedback system is postulated that senses and regulates the rate at which the action-guiding system is functioning. This second system is seen as responsible for affect. Implications of these assertions and issues that arise from them are addressed in the remainder of the article. Several issues relate to the emotion model itself; others concern the relation between negative emotion and disengagement from goals. Relations to 3 other emotion theories are also addressed. The authors conclude that this view on affect is a useful supplement to other theories and that the concept of emotion is easily assimilated to feedback models of self-regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Cognition and emotion: From order to disorder, second edition.

Reviews the book, Cognition and emotion: From order to disorder, second edition by Mick Power and Tim Dalgleish (see record 2007-10431-000). In this book, the authors provide a detailed analysis of emotion with an explicit focus on differences and similarities between "disordered" emotion and normative emotional experience. What sets this text apart from other books on cognition and emotion is its attempt to describe the philosophical and historical underpinnings of work on emotion. Another unique feature of this text is that the authors go beyond just describing the various theories of emotion by comparing and contrasting the arguments advanced by the theories and highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theory. This book is divided into two parts: Part 1 is a review of the major theories of emotion, and Part 2 consists of reviews of research on five basic emotions, as well as illustrations of how the SPAARS framework can be used to explain normative and nonnormative variants of these emotions. Power and Dalgleish suggest that readers can choose either to read the book in its entirety or to focus on the sections that are of interest. Overall, this second edition of Cognition and Emotion is a readable and engaging book. This book is not a primer; as noted earlier, some parts of it are conceptually heavy. For this reason, the most appropriate audience for this book is advanced graduate students who already have some background in research on basic emotion or psychopathology and who are looking to enhance their knowledge base. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory capacity and spontaneous emotion regulation: High capacity predicts self-enhancement in response to negative feedback.

Although previous evidence suggests that working memory capacity (WMC) is important for success at emotion regulation, that evidence may reveal simply that people with higher WMC follow instructions better than those with lower WMC. The present study tested the hypothesis that people with higher WMC more effectively engage in spontaneous emotion regulation following negative feedback, relative to those with lower WMC. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either no feedback or negative feedback about their emotional intelligence. They then completed a disguised measure of self-enhancement and a self-report measure of affect. Experimental condition and WMC interacted such that higher WMC predicted more self-enhancement and less negative affect following negative feedback. This research provides novel insight into the consequences of individual differences in WMC and illustrates that cognitive capacity may facilitate the spontaneous self-regulation of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An index of self-regulation of emotion and the study of repression in social contexts that threaten or do not threaten self-concept.

This research tests a model of repression (M. Mendolia, 1999; M. Mendolia, J. Moore, & A. Tesser, 1996) which specifies that the interaction of individual differences in emotional responsiveness and situational threats to self-concept contributes to one's tendency to regulate emotional responsiveness. This research demonstrates that (a) individuals regulate their autonomic activity, facial muscle activity, cognitive attention, and subjective experience during isolated and repeated exposures to self-threatening negative and positive emotional events and (b) repressive behavior can be predicted by the Index of Self-Regulation of Emotion, which complements and extends conventional categorical measures of dispositional repression. This model provides a more detailed understanding of basic mechanisms in emotion by identifying how individual differences in emotionality and particular social contexts contribute to self-regulation of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Disgust and its disorders: Theory, assessment, and treatment implications.

Reviews the book, Disgust and its disorders: Theory, assessment, and treatment implications by edited Bunmi O. Olantunji and Dean McKay (see record 2008-14016-000). The fairly recent shift toward a focus on disgust is nicely reflected in the title of this book. The goal of Disgust and its disorders is to assess the current state of disgust-based research and to highlight future suggested research directions to enhance our understanding, and thereby treatment of problems associated with the emotion disgust. Accordingly, this book contains 14 chapters and is divided into three separate but related sections: 1) Theory and Assessment; 2) Response Patterns; and 3) Disorders of Disgust. For the most part there is good flow and continuity across chapters relative to other edited volumes in which disjointedness may be an unwelcomed feature. A consistent theme in the chapters of this book is the call for more and more rigorous research involving the emotion disgust in a context of psychological disorders. Given recent increases in researchers’ interest and understanding of disgust, it seems likely that disgust-based research will continue to grow and foster the proliferation of This volume will certainly have a positive impact in this regard, and future volumes will ideally continue to explore issues raised here within as well as further examine different disgust domains (e.g., moral disgust). In sum, Disgust and its disorders is a delightful read—despite its “disgusting” content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for universality and cultural variation of differential emotion response patterning.

Reviews the major controversy concerning psychobiological universality of differential emotion patterning vs cultural relativity of emotional experience. Data from a series of cross-cultural questionnaire studies in 37 countries on 5 continents are reported and used to evaluate the respective claims of the proponents in the debate. Results show highly significant main effects and strong effect sizes for the response differences across 7 major emotions (joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, and guilt). Profiles of cross-culturally stable differences among the emotions with respect to subjective feeling, physiological symptoms, and expressive behavior are also reported. The empirical evidence is interpreted as supporting theories that postulate both a high degree of universality of differential emotion patterning and important cultural differences in emotion elicitation, regulation, symbolic representation, and social sharing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-regulation of response patterning: implications for psychophysiological research and therapy

This paper develops the basic premise that learning to self-regulate a pattern of responses can have different consequences from those observed when controlling individual functions alone. It is suggested that the self-regulation of patterns of responses can be a particularly sensitive and effective procedure for (a) uncovering biological linkages and constraints between responses in the intact human, (b) investigating how multiphysiological systems combine to produce unique subjective experiences and effects on performance, and (c) enhancing the clinical effectiveness of biofeedback procedures by training patients to integrate and coordinate voluntarily specific patterns of cognitive, autonomic, and motor responses. These hypotheses are illustrated by basic research involving biofeedback training for patterns of blood pressure, heart rate and EEG activity, related experiments on the cognitive self-regulation of patterns of physiological responses using affective imagery and meditation procedures, and case studies of patients treated with biofeedback. The concept of electronic biofeedback as an "unnatural act" is presented with the goal of placing self-regulation within a more biobehavioral perspective emphasizing the natural patterning of physiological processes.     

Goal orientation, self-regulation strategies, and job-seeking intensity in unemployed adults.

At Time 1 (T1), the authors surveyed 277 unemployed adults using measures of human capital, goal orientation, self-regulation (emotion control, motivation control, work commitment), and job-seeking intensity. At Time 2 (T2), 4 months later, 155 participants indicated their reemployment outcomes in number of job interviews and number of job offers. Using T1 data, the authors tested the predictors of job-seeking intensity and whether self-regulation mediated between goal orientation and job-seeking intensity. Using T1 and T2 data, they tested for predictors of reemployment outcomes and whether job-seeking intensity mediated the relationship between T1 antecedent variables and the reemployment outcomes. Learning goal orientation and self-regulation predicted job-seeking intensity, and self-regulation mediated between learning goal orientation and job-seeking intensity. Job-seeking intensity did not mediate the relationship among human capital, goal orientation, and self-regulation variables and reemployment outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral self-regulation in the treatment of patients with diabetes mellitus.

Conceptualizes the treatment regimen for patients with diabetes in terms of a behavioral self-regulation model for the control of blood sugar. The model, based on a negative feedback control system, includes 4 components: (a) behaviors related to the detection of discrepancies between actual and normal blood sugar, by urine or blood sugar monitoring; (b) corrective responses, such as the use of insulin, to normalize blood sugar; (c) minimization of disturbances to the system by such behaviors as stress reduction or dietary modification; and (d) self-reinforcement of self-regulatory behaviors. The management of Type I and Type II diabetes is discussed in terms of behavioral research related to each aspect of the model. Suggestions for further research that address monitoring and decision-making processes, the effects of various behaviors on blood sugar control, and training in self-regulation itself are derived from the self-regulation model. (70 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobiological conceptualization of children's functioning at school entry.

The author examines the construct of emotionality, developmental relations between cognition and emotion, and neural plasticity and frontal cortical functioning and proposes a developmental neurobiological model of children's school readiness. Direct links are proposed among emotionality, use-dependent synaptic stabilization related to the prefrontal cortex, the development of executive function abilities, and academic and social competence in school settings. The author considers research on the efficacy of preschool compensatory education in promoting school readiness and recommends that programs expand to include curricula directly addressing social and emotional competence. Research should focus on the ontogeny of self-regulation and successful adaptation to the socially defined role of student, the development of prevention research programs to reflect this orientation, and interdisciplinary collaborations that integrate scientific methods and questions in the pursuit of comprehensive knowledge of human developmental processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acceptability and suppression of negative emotion in anxiety and mood disorders.

The present study investigated perceived acceptability and suppression of negative emotion in participants with anxiety and mood disorders. Sixty participants with these disorders and 30 control participants watched an emotion-provoking film and completed self-report measures of their experience and regulation of emotions. The film elicited similar increases in negative emotion for clinical and nonclinical participants; however, clinical participants judged their resulting emotions as less acceptable and suppressed their emotions to a greater extent. The higher level of suppression in the clinical group was attributable to females in the clinical group suppressing their emotions more than females in the nonclinical group. For all participants, high levels of suppression were associated with increased negative emotion during the film and during a postfilm recovery period. Further analyses showed that appraising emotions as unacceptable mediated the relationship between negative emotion intensity and use of suppression in the clinical group. This study extends the literature on emotion regulation to a clinical sample and suggests that judging emotions as unacceptable and suppressing emotions may be important aspects of the phenomenology of emotional disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A meta-analysis of self-regulated learning in work-related training and educational attainment: What we know and where we need to go.

Researchers have been applying their knowledge of goal-oriented behavior to the self-regulated learning domain for more than 30 years. This review examines the current state of research on self-regulated learning and gaps in the field's understanding of how adults regulate their learning of work-related knowledge and skills. Self-regulation theory was used as a conceptual lens for deriving a heuristic framework of 16 fundamental constructs that constitute self-regulated learning. Meta-analytic findings (k = 430, N = 90,380) support theoretical propositions that self-regulation constructs are interrelated—30% of the corrected correlations among constructs were .50 or greater. Goal level, persistence, effort, and self-efficacy were the self-regulation constructs with the strongest effects on learning. Together these constructs accounted for 17% of the variance in learning, after controlling for cognitive ability and pretraining knowledge. However, 4 self-regulatory processes—planning, monitoring, help seeking, and emotion control—did not exhibit significant relationships with learning. Thus, a parsimonious framework of the self-regulated learning domain is presented that focuses on a subset of self-regulatory processes that have both limited overlap with other core processes and meaningful effects on learning. Research is needed to advance the field's understanding of how adults regulate their learning in an increasingly complex and knowledge-centric work environment. Such investigations should capture the dynamic nature of self-regulated learning, address the role of self-regulation in informal learning, and investigate how trainees regulate their transfer of training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications.

This article provides a review of the "Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications" (see record 2004-00163-000). The topic of self-regulation is currently receiving increasing attention in various areas of psychological research. Many psychological disorders (such as depression, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder etc.) as well as addictions and risk-taking behaviour are believed to involve some kind of failure of self-regulation. Self-regulation is a concept that crosses domains. For this reason, self-regulation is, as the editors of the the book remark, "simply too large, diverse, and important a topic not to have a handbook". The editors of the Handbook define self-regulation as "processes by which the human psyche exercises control over its functions, states, and inner processes". This broad definition serves as the umbrella under which multiple areas of self-regulation research are presented. The book comprises six sections, which progress from consideration of basic processes, to applications of theory and research to "everyday problems" of self-regulation. Each chapter is self-contained, allowing one to select and focus on topics of interest. At the same time, the individual chapters provide neither a systematic discussion and comparison of different views on self-regulation, nor an exhaustive review of the literature. Furthermore, because the authors of the individual chapters largely focus on the presentation of their approach to self-regulation, the Handbook reflects the fragmented and kaleidoscopic state of self-regulation research in general. The book is a good choice for anyone with an interest in self-regulation, particularly anyone who seeks a collation of the literature, summaries of key concepts, and an idea of where the field of self-regulation is headed in the future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frameworks for understanding emotions and their development: Functionalist and dynamic systems approaches.

In recent years, both functionalist and dynamic systems approaches have assumed increasing prominence in the study of emotion and its development, but the similarities and differences between these perspectives remain largely unexplored and open to more systematic examination. In this article, the authors argue that both approaches share a systems view of emotion and regard emotion in relational, process terms. However, each approach adopts a distinct level of analysis and distinct types of explanation for emotion and its development. Whereas the functionalist approach appeals to formal and final causes to explain patterning in emotion at the level of organism-environment relations, the dynamic systems approach appeals to efficient and material causes to explain emotion at the specific content level of behavior in context. Whether these approaches complement or conflict with one another depends on the extent to which the dynamic systems approach admits abstraction into its explanatory framework. A. Fogel's social process theory and M. D. Lewis' approach to emotion self-organization are discussed in this regard. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic automation of emotion regulation.

As implementation intentions are a powerful self-regulation tool for thought and action (meta-analysis by P. M. Gollwitzer & P. Sheeran, 2006), the present studies were conducted to address their effectiveness in regulating emotional reactivity. Disgust- (Study 1) and fear- (Study 2) eliciting stimuli were viewed under 3 different self-regulation instructions: the goal intention to not get disgusted or frightened, respectively, this goal intention furnished with an implementation intention (i.e., an if-then plan), and a no-self-regulation control group. Only implementation-intention participants succeeded in reducing their disgust and fear reactions as compared to goal-intention and control participants. In Study 3, electrocortical correlates (using dense-array electroencephalography) revealed differential early visual activity in response to spider slides in ignore implementation-intention participants, as reflected in a smaller P1. Theoretical and applied implications of the present findings for emotion regulation via implementation intentions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comprehensive treatment model for anger disorders.

Notes that because anger can be a frequent and debilitating client problem, it is important for practitioners to have a clear conceptualization of available and effective treatment strategies. This article presents a comprehensive treatment model based on reviews of empirical outcome studies of anger interventions. However, because this outcome literature is relatively small and restricted to a few therapeutic approaches, additional suggestions for therapeutic interventions are presented based on what is known about the emotion of anger. It is concluded that although knowledge of anger treatment is still developing, the scientific literature can provide much-needed guidance for working with angry clients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion and cognition in psychotherapy: The transforming power of affect.

Theory and research on emotion in both psychology and psychotherapy are reviewed to demonstrate the importance of emotion in human functioning and psychotherapeutic change. A proposal is made for the importance of integrating empirically supported emotion-focused change processes into psychotherapeutic work. Five principles of change in the emotion domain-emotion awareness; expression; regulation; reflection on emotion; and the more novel principle of emotion transformation, by which emotion is changed by emotion-are offered as processes of change that are rapidly gathering empirical support. The result of emotion coming of age will be the expansion of theories of dysfunction and of treatment to include emotion-focused coping and emotional processes of change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Evidence for universality and cultural variation of differential emotion response patterning": Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by K. R. Scherer and H. G. Wallbott (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994[Feb], Vol 66[2], 310–328). On page 325, the 2nd and 3rd terms in the leftmost column of figure 2 should be interchanged. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1994-29654-001.) Reviews the major controversy concerning psychobiological universality of differential emotion patterning vs cultural relativity of emotional experience. Data from a series of cross-cultural questionnaire studies in 37 countries on 5 continents are reported and used to evaluate the respective claims of the proponents in the debate. Results show highly significant main effects and strong effect sizes for the response differences across 7 major emotions (joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, and guilt). Profiles of cross-culturally stable differences among the emotions with respect to subjective feeling, physiological symptoms, and expressive behavior are also reported. The empirical evidence is interpreted as supporting theories that postulate both a high degree of universality of differential emotion patterning and important cultural differences in emotion elicitation, regulation, symbolic representation, and social sharing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arousal, affect, and attention as components of temperament.

Contemporary models of human temperament have been based on the general constructs of arousal, emotion, and self-regulation. In order to more precisely investigate these constructs, they were theoretically decomposed into 19 subconstructs, and homogeneous scales were developed to assess them. The scales were constructed through an item-selection technique that maximized internal consistency and minimized conceptual overlap. Correlational and factor analyses suggested that arousal can be usefully assessed in terms of its central, autonomic, and motor components. The emotions of sadness, relief, and low-intensity pleasure were most closely related to the measures of central arousal. Emotions of fear, frustration, discomfort, and high-intensity pleasure were more closely related to measures of attentional control. We discuss these findings in terms of the functional relations between arousal, emotion, and attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)