Jennifer Veilleux

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

Personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder) are highly stigmatized, and as such, clinicians often elect to withhold sharing the diagnosis with their patients. In addition, when diagnoses are shared, the conversations can be difficult for both the clinician and the patient, as personality disorders are often considered “lifelo...

The goals that people have for their emotions are crucial for whether emotion regulation is pursued, as well as the regulation strategies people select. However, emotional goals may extend beyond the emotions people want to feel to include long-term goals for how people want to be emotionally in the future. In two studies, we qualitatively explored...

Emotion-related impulsivity—the engagement in impulsive reactions specifically in response to emotions—is considered a transdiagnostic factor underlying psychopathology. The reflexive responding to emotion (RRE) model of emotion-related impulsivity (Carver et al., 2008) suggests that sensitivities to reward and threat in combination with control ov...

The association of hydration knowledge and health habits with hydration status and fluid intake is rarely examined. We sought to determine whether knowledge or physical health behaviors predict physiological hydration status and fluid intake. Ninety-six participants (59 female; 27 ± 10 year) completed the previously validated hydration survey. Part...

Self-criticism is a trait associated with increased psychopathology, but self-criticism is also a personality state reflecting an action that people do in moments of time. In the current study, we explored factors associated with heightened self-criticism in daily life. Participants (N = 197) received five random prompts per day for one week on the...

Introduction When people feel hopeless, they are more likely to think about suicide. Prior work has shown that both hopelessness and suicidal ideation fluctuate over time; however, there are likely other contextual factors underlying increased hopelessness and suicidal ideation in moments of time. Method In two studies using retrospective recall o...

The tendency to experience emotions easily, feel emotions intensely, and to experience emotions for a long duration is encompassed by the construct of emotional reactivity, often assessed by the Emotion Reactivity Scale (ERS). Higher emotional reactivity is associated with a wide range of symptoms of psychopathology, and screening for emotional rea...

Purpose People who seek psychotherapy often have problems tolerating distress. The purpose of the current systematic review was to understand whether treatments successfully reduce distress intolerance. We intentionally focused both on treatments developed specifically to target distress intolerance and we also evaluated whether any type of treatme...

Desire intolerance is conceptualized as a motivational counterpoint to the transdiagnostic risk factor of distress intolerance and is defined as the inability or unwillingness to “sit with” the motivation to approach a rewarding object or task. The current work describes the development and validation of a novel measure of desire intolerance. After...

Objective: The purpose of these studies was to examine whether college students' beliefs about themselves (i.e., self-compassion and beliefs about emotions) could be mechanisms explaining the relationship between problematic parenting behaviors (helicopter parenting and parental invalidation) and outcomes including perfectionism, affective distress...

Due to prior work suggesting dynamic fluctuations in quit motivation over time, the current study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine contextual predictors of momentary quit motivation, most notably perceived self-regulation. The sample (n = 84) intentionally excluded smokers actively trying to quit and those who plan to never qui...

Distress tolerance is often defined as one’s ability to withstand negative and/or uncomfortable emotional states. However, after two decades of research, there is still no consensus on how to best conceptualize and measure distress tolerance. Previous attempts to conceptualize distress tolerance have relied on researchers’ understandings of distres...

Beliefs about emotion are clearly relevant for emotion regulation and psychopathology. Yet, understanding the dynamics of emotion beliefs (i.e., the situations and contexts in which beliefs may change over time) remains an important avenue of investigation. The current ecological momentary assessment study (n = 102) assessed nine different beliefs...

As a transdiagnostic vulnerability factor, low distress tolerance predicts a wide variety of psychopathology. The current article extends past research, which has typically adopted an individual-differences approach, by articulating a social-cognitive theory of momentary distress tolerance. This new model intentionally separates actions taken to re...

Self-stigma involves internalized negative evaluation in people with a societally prescribed label (i.e., mental health diagnosis). Thus, measures of self-stigma due to mental illness exclude people without a diagnosis who may negatively evaluate themselves because of their emotions-a process we define as self-invalidation due to emotion. In the cu...

Justification thinking (using excuses to "allow" giving into temptation) has been identified as a potential link between negative affect and self-control failure. We hypothesised that negative affect would prompt greater justification thinking, specifically deservingness thinking (i.e. "I deserve a treat"), and tested this for both inhibitory (temp...

Background and objectives: Perceived emotion invalidation is linked to the development or worsening of a variety of emotional and physical health conditions. However, prior studies are largely cross-sectional and whether there are day-to-day effects of generally feeling invalidated is unknown. Design: We examined the relations between perceived...

Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy with significant empirical support. However, it is also true that many people have difficultly using cognitive reappraisal—and any cognitive strategy that requires significant mental effort—while experiencing intense emotions. Per the tenants of emotion-regulation flexibility, we provide infor...

Intrapersonal affective styles and emotion regulation strategies have been studied at length and identified as predictors of affective distress (i.e., depression and anxiety symptoms). Less research has evaluated the extent to which distress is predicted by interpersonal factors, like how others respond to people's emotions. Perceived emotion inval...

Although distress tolerance is usually studied as a trait, people also vary in their momentary distress tolerance over time and across contexts. In the current study, we evaluated perceptions of distress tolerance changeability (n = 317) and qualitatively coded narrative responses to questions asking about contexts in which distress tolerance is im...

Recent work suggests that the cognitive process of justification, which is the act of generating an excuse to give in to temptation prior to acting, can license tempting behavior and disrupt long term goal pursuit. However, the emotional repercussions of justification are unknown. We examined the effect of justification on self-control failure and...

Objective The current study sought to empirically evaluate a new clinical tool, the Individual Beliefs about Emotion (IBAE) which assesses nine beliefs about emotion. The goal was to examine the overlap of the IBAE with the Leahy Emotional Schema Scale (LESS), indices of psychopathology, and emotion dysregulation. Method Participants (n = 513) com...

People may experience subjective shifts in their self-efficacy for exerting willpower over time and based on context, and people who struggle with self-control may be particularly vulnerable to willpower self-efficacy fluctuations. Across four samples (college students without borderline features: n = 49; borderline features group: n = 50; current...

There are a variety of beliefs people can hold about emotions (e.g., beliefs that emotions are malleable, beliefs that emotions last forever). In addition, some people's beliefs may fluctuate—their beliefs might change during an emotional event (i.e., belief instability). In two studies, we explored a variety of beliefs about emotion and perception...

This study examined if beliefs about emotion change across emotional contexts in daily life, and it investigated whether people with prominent features of borderline personality pathology experience greater shifts in emotion beliefs during emotional states. Undergraduate participants with (n = 49) and without borderline features (n = 50) completed...

Research has shown that growing up in an environment in which emotions are invalidated (i.e., ignored or responded to negatively) by parents is associated with later difficulties regulating emotions. Meanwhile, dispositional mindfulness has been shown to engender a greater capacity for emotion regulation, through use of adaptive strategies like cog...

Purpose This study aimed to examine the psychological factors (knowledge, barriers and facilitators) that can contribute to hydration-related behaviors (i.e., fluid intake) in the general population and how these relate to physical health. Methods A structured survey was developed to examine the links between hydration knowledge (29 items), attitu...

Introduction: Distress intolerance is an important risk factor for smokers. Smokers have greater problems tolerating distress than non-smokers, and distress intolerance is theoretically an important predictor of early lapse. However, much of the distress intolerance research has been conducted on daily smokers. Understanding distress intolerance i...

Affect balance is an individual difference construct depicting the balance of positive to negative emotions, where people with higher scores have positive affect which strongly “outweighs” the experience of negative affect. The present study aimed to validate the utility of affect balance as a predictor of emotions experienced during daily life. Pa...

The current behavioral tasks assessing distress tolerance measure tolerance to frustration and tolerance to physical discomfort, but do not explicitly assess tolerance to negative emotion. We closely evaluated the conceptual distinctions between current behavioral tasks and self-report tasks assessing distress tolerance, and then developed a new be...

For trainees in health service psychology, an effective approach to the assessment of competencies can identify trainees with problems of professional competence. Once such problems are identified, a systematic and proactive remediation effort can be put into place. Such efforts are likely to be most effective in training cultures that are competen...

In the current study, we tested the effects of core body temperature increases (e.g. heat stress) on affect, self-reported physical discomfort, and subsequent self-control in male smokers and nonsmokers using a novel passive heat stress paradigm, within a distress tolerance framework. Twenty-eight men (14 smokers), completed both heat stress and co...

Our aim was to develop a taxonomy of commonly experienced goals and temptations. We expected to find evidence of interpersonal self-control challenges and avoidance temptations (e.g., avoid a difficult conversation), as these are anecdotally frequent but under represented in the psychological literature. In Study 1, we used qualitative coding to de...

The current study extends cue-reactivity research by evaluating impulsive valuation as an outcome of exposure to food cues. This study also separates introspection after viewing cues (e.g., responding to questions about craving and affect) from mere cue exposure, to examine if introspection changes self-regulation behaviors in response to food cues...

Distress tolerance, or the ability to withstand uncomfortable states, is thought to be a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. Distress tolerance is typically measured using self-report questionnaires or behavioral tasks, both of which construe distress tolerance as a trait and downplay the potential variability in distress tolerance acr...

Emotion invalidation is theoretically and empirically associated with mental and physical health problems. However, existing measures of invalidation focus on past (e.g., childhood) invalidation and/or do not specifically emphasize invalidation of emotion. In this article, the authors articulate a clarified operational definition of emotion invalid...

Depression has been linked to multiple forms of aggressive behavior in college students; however, it is unclear which aspects of depression explain this connection. Anhedonia, defined as the loss of interest and/or pleasure in previously enjoyed activities, may provide unique information about relationships between depression and aggression. Using...

Increasingly, professionalism has been recognized as a core competency for health service professionals and is the domain in which vexing competence problems are observed in trainees. We begin by describing manifestations of problems of professionalism in accord with the values that fall within the rubric of this multi-faceted construct. We provide...

There is experimental evidence to suggest that attentional bias to food stimuli may predict food intake. The process model of ego-depletion (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012) proposes that after self-control exertion, attention shifts toward rewarding objects such as palatable food, which in turn should prompt greater food consumption as an indicator of...

Despite the burgeoning literature on professionalism in other health professions, psychology lags behind in the level of attention given to this core competency. In this paper, we review definitions from other health professions and how they address professionalism. Next, we review how this competency evolved within health service psychology (HSP),...

Research on nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) has moved beyond examination of factors that associate with the mere presence or absence of the behavior, and into more nuanced examination of which discrete features of NSSI behavior relate to pathology. This study examined two features of NSSI, frequency of occurrence and recency, as cross-sectional pred...

Background: Visual alcohol cues are often used to elicit craving (e.g., cue-reactivity), and selection of appropriate comparison cues is important to isolate the specific effect of craving for alcohol. Objectives: In the current study, via the development of a new set of non-alcoholic beverage cues, we examine measurement and methodological choi...

Research methods and statistics are core courses in the undergraduate psychology major. To assess learning outcomes, it would be useful to have a measure that assesses research methods and statistical literacy beyond course grades. In two studies, we developed and provided initial validation results for a research methods and statistical knowledge...

The current set of three studies further evaluates the validity and application of the Psychological Research Inventory of Concepts (PRIC). In Study 1, we administered the PRIC to a sample of introductory psychology students and online (Mechanical Turk) participants along with measures assessing theoretically related concepts. We found evidence of...

Background: Limited research has addressed the role of anhedonia in predicting suicidality and/or nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) in adults, despite evidence suggesting that loss of interest or pleasure may increase vulnerability for self-inflicted harm, even beyond other depressive symptoms. Methods: In the current study, we explored the role of...

Experiencing a client suicide or another form of client death is not uncommon for health service psychology trainees, or trainees in other mental health disciplines (e.g., psychiatry, counseling, social work). Yet, the majority of training programs and training clinics do not have procedures in place for managing a client death. The purpose of the...

Interest in quitting smoking is important to model in cue-reactivity studies, because the craving elicited by cue exposure likely requires different self-regulation efforts for smokers who are interested in quitting compared to those without any quit interest. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the role of quit interest in how cigar...

Background: Individuals who disclose hazardous drinking often report strong motives to drink, which may occur to modulate views of the self. Investigating self-criticism tendencies in models of drinking motives may help explain who is more susceptible to drinking for internal or external reasons. As much of the research on drinking motives and alc...

In the current study, we aimed to extend smoking cue-reactivity research by evaluating delay discounting as an outcome of cigarette cue exposure. We also separated introspection in response to cues (e.g., self-reporting craving and affect) from cue exposure alone, to determine if introspection changes behavioral responses to cigarette cues. Finally...

Individuals with eating pathology, particularly those with diagnosed eating disorders, are at high risk for suicide. It is less clear whether undiagnosed eating pathology and subsyndromal eating disorders carry the same risk and, if so, what mechanisms may explain why higher levels of eating pathology yield greater risk for engaging in suicidal beh...

Objective: While eating-disordered individuals have shown high levels of comorbid psychopathology, there has not been an assessment of these symptoms across groups exhibiting different forms of problematic eating behavior. Method: Using 1,122 participants recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk, this study examined self-reported differences between...

Action orientation, or the ability to regulate both positive and negative affect to perform goal-directed action, has been associated with eating behavior in previous research. Additionally, differences in beliefs about self-control have been shown to influence behavior, but it is unclear how these beliefs impact disordered eating behavior or how t...

In non-smokers, passive heat stress increases shear stress and vasodilation, decreasing arterial stiffness. Smokers, who reportedly have arterial dysfunction, may have similar improvements in arterial stiffness with passive heat stress. Therefore, we examined the effects of an acute bout of whole-body passive heat stress on arterial stiffness in sm...

Depression is a significant risk factor for suicide. Evidence suggests that anhedonia may be a symptom of depression that is uniquely associated with suicidality. However, exactly how anhedonia is related to suicide is unclear. To provide more specific evidence regarding this association, we investigated relationships between anhedonia, suicidal id...

The field of psychology and law, including forensic psychology, is an exciting concentration of research activity and student training and has grown rapidly, but to what extent have teaching and training efforts in the field been systematically catalogued and evaluated? We conducted a historical review and content analysis of the American and Canad...

Research using alcohol-related visual stimuli has been limited due to a lack of published studies examining the psychometric properties of alcohol cues. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the factor structure, validity, and reliability of craving ratings following exposure to alcohol cues (including beer, wine, hard liquor, and mix...

Introduction: Decreased abstinence self-efficacy is linked to increased craving and negative affect, as well as poorer smoking outcomes, such as lapse, relapse, and withdrawal symptom severity. Research suggests that beliefs and cognitions concerning ourselves and the world orient us toward specific goals and thus impact our judgments and behavior....

The process model of ego-depletion (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012) implicated attention and motivation as the mechanisms driving the depletion effect. Using dot-probe reaction time scores to food reward images as an index of attention, this study reveals the differential effect of attention on eating behavior between depleted and non-depleted partici...

Recent work has extended the idea of implicit self-theories to the realm of emotion to assess beliefs in the malleability of emotions. The current article expanded on prior measurement of emotion beliefs in a scale development project. Items were tested and revised over rounds of data collection with both students and nonstudent adult online partic...

Behavioral motivation is regulated through the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the behavioral approach system (BAS), which underlie responses to emotional stimuli and are thought to influence emotion dysregulation. Research shows that mindfulness may increase the efficacy of emotion regulation among those with psychological symptoms, but the...

Although craving is a frequent phenomenon in addictive behaviors, and laboratory paradigms have robustly established that presentation of cues can elicit self-reported craving responses, extant work has not established whether cue exposure influences subsequent behavior. We systematically review extant literature assessing the effects of cue exposu...

Potential mechanisms underlying the pathway between borderline personality features and indices of social support have yet to be elaborated, despite that social difficulties are a hallmark feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We hypothesized that rejection sensitivity, or the tendency to anxiously anticipate and readily perceive social...

In the present study, we sought to examine how craving beliefs may mediate the relationship between urgency and craving in smokers. Mediation analyses indicated that while controlling for nicotine dependence, negative urgency predicted increased cigarette craving through craving beliefs while positive urgency directly predicted cigarette craving.

An inverse relationship exists between baseline arterial compliance (AC) and changes with passive heating in non‐smokers, yet it is unknown if this relationship exists in smokers. Purpose : To examine the effects of passive heating on AC in chronic smokers (S) vs. non‐smokers (NonS). Methods: 13 S and 13 NonS (27.2 ± 7.9 y; 78.8 ± 15.4 kg; 177.6 ±...

Psychotherapy supervision is a complex process; supervisors must concurrently balance multiple roles, such as teacher, counselor and consultant. The current paper proposes four “dialectical tensions” inherent in supervision which, if attended to, can guide supervisor behavior during the supervision session. Specifically, supervision requires balanc...

Uncertainty moderates the relationship between self-criticism and emotion regulation strategies Katherine U. Sosna, Nicole H. Swank, and Jennifer C. Veilleux Abstract: Considerable research has examined the relationship between uncertainty and self-criticism however; it has rarely been evaluated when considering the residuals of emotion regulati...

Short abstract (50 words): We investigated gender differences for distress tolerance to negative images of varying types. Results revealed that both genders had a high tolerance and low distress for images of violence compared to other images types. In addition, women indicated distress faster to disgust pictures compared to men. Abstract (150 wo...

Introduc#on Method Results Discussion Results (con#nued) • The action control theory postulates two broad categories describing individual differences in goal orientation: action orientation and state orientation (Kuhl, 1994). • Action orientation describes a disposition towards flexible regulation of affect in stressful situations to plan, initiat...

Behavioral motivation is regulated through two separate, neurologically based systems, the behavioral approach system (BAS) and the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), each of which are associated with positive and negative affect respectively. Furthermore, research shows mindfulness reduces negative affect and increases positive emotion. Thus, we...

Action control describes an individual’s ability to plan, initiate, and follow through with goal-driven action (Kuhl, 1994). Previous research suggests action oriented individuals are more efficient at self-regulation and more likely to complete goal-motivated action as compared to state oriented individuals, who tend to fixate on immediate emotion...

To further elucidate how individual differences in the frequency with which people get upset about having negative emotions (i.e., meta-emotions) and how often they experience negative emotions (i.e., trait emotions) are related to drinking to cope, we tested direct and mediated path models predicting drinking to cope in a sample of emerging adult...

Introduc1on Purpose and Hypotheses Discussion • Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been described as a disorder of emotion regulation, which is marked by difficulties with affect regulation, impulse control, interpersonal relationships, and self-image. 1,2,3 • Social problem solving and distress tolerance are two indices of emotion dysregula...

Beliefs that willpower is a limited resource predict higher rates of binge eating compared with beliefs that willpower is an unlimited resource. Additionally, lower levels of self-control have been shown to predict binge-eating behavior. Little research has been done to examine how implicit beliefs about willpower and self-control relate to binge e...

The practice of waterpipe smoking (hookah) has rapidly increased in popularity among young adults yet burgeoning research suggests that its use is associated with nicotine dependence and other negative smoking-related health consequences. Moreover, descriptive studies indicate that consumers may hold the belief that hookah smoking is safer than smo...

Perfectionism, generally defined as a personality characteristic associated with setting excessively high goals and standards, has been evaluated as a multidimensional construct predictive of psychopathology. For example, one facet of perfectionism, parental criticism, has been shown to be a unique predictor of anxiety symptoms, and doubts about ac...

The current study focused on the mediating role of emotion dysregulation factors in the affect lability and binge eating relationship. Results of a multi-step regressional analysis indicated difficulties in emotion regulation, specifically non-acceptance of emotion, may account for this relationship in college and community populations.

Despite the increasing emphasis on competencies in professional psychology graduate training, little is known, other than from anecdotal reports, about faculty behaviors in doctoral training programs when addressing trainees with problems of professional competence (TPPC). This mixed method pilot study explored training directors' perceptions about...

Drug withdrawal clearly emerges as a critical component of addiction. This chapter reviews the literature with respect to the role played by withdrawal (and, in the case of alcohol, the aftereffect of hangover) in drug addiction. It starts by operationalizing substance withdrawal, and reviewing examples of various withdrawal syndromes. The chapter...

Despite the increasing emphasis on competencies in professional psychology graduate training, little is known, other than from anecdotal reports, about faculty behaviors in doctoral training programs when addressing trainees with problems of professional competence (TPPC). This mixed method pilot study explored training directors’ perceptions about...

Of all the motives for drinking, drinking to cope is the strongest predictor of problematic alcohol use, particularly for adolescent and college-age drinkers, with limited work assessing predictors of drinking to cope for community adult samples. At least for young adults, drinking to cope is associated with heightened negative affect and may serve...

Considerable research has examined the role of valence in specific feelings and emotions; however, it is rare to look at temporal perspective as a way of differentiating among emotions of similar valance. The purpose of our study was to examine how differences in valence (positive and negative) and in temporal perspective (anticipatory and consumma...

Considerable research has examined the role of valence in specific feelings and emotions; however, it is rare to look at temporal perspective as a way of differentiating among emotions of similar valance. The purpose of our study was to examine how differences in valence (positive and negative) and in temporal perspective (anticipatory and consumma...

Drinking to cope with negative affect has been shown to predict future alcohol use problems. Most research concerning emotional factors related to drinking to cope, including experiential avoidance, has focused on anxiety. Little has been done to examine these relationships regarding depression. This study focuses on the mediatory role of experient...

Craving is an important component of nicotine addiction, and extant research has demonstrated a clear link between cue-induced craving and negative affect, with mixed results in the positive affect domain. The current study was designed to test the idea that cue-reactive craving might be associated with a mixed emotional process, or the simultaneou...

Measurement of program climate, defined as a sense of environmental safety amid respectful relationships and effective organizational systems, has been associated with a myriad of important outcomes in school and workplace settings. However, climate has received scant attention in the realm of graduate training, including training in psychology hea...

The goal of the scientist-practitioner (S-P) training model is to produce clinical psychologists equipped to integrate and utilize both science and practice in the clinical and research domains. However, much has been written regarding the possible shortcomings of S-P training and whether clinical psychology graduate students are actually gaining t...

Limited previous literature on peers influenced by students with problems of professional competence has descriptively focused on rates of peer identification and actions in response to identification. Prior research has suggested that students who exhibit diminished functioning due to life stressors or psychological distress may be qualitatively d...

Individuals who smoke cigarettes are significantly more likely to smoke more when they drink alcohol. Indeed, smoking and drinking appear strongly linked, at both between- and within-person levels of analyses. Anecdotal evidence further suggests that alcohol consumption in combination with smoking cigarettes reduces anxiety, yet the mechanisms by w...

Over one-quarter of psychologists and psychiatrists will lose a client to suicide, and the impact of suicide on therapists is profound. Therapists report both personal (e.g., emotional) and professional (e.g., fears of litigation, doubts about competency) reactions to client suicide, and these reactions are thought to be pronounced for therapists-i...

The objective of this study was to determine whether adolescent smokers, who varied in their smoking histories and symptoms of nicotine dependence, exhibit any decrease in puff volume and duration similar to that typically seen in dependent adolescent and adult smokers. Moreover, we examined whether puffing trajectories were moderated by individual...

To better understand the graduate student viewpoint on quality of preparation provided by graduate programs in terms of the internship application process, the current study surveyed students enrolled in member programs of the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology (CUDCP). Six hundred seventy-four students completed a questionnaire...

Training programs have increasingly focused on development of competencies as a benchmark for trainee progress. While much writing on the subject of trainee competency has focused on programmatic implementation of competency-based training, considerably less attention has been paid to the experience of trainees in these programs. The current study...