No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Does Emotion Regulation Occur Only Inside People's Heads? Toward a Situated Cognition Analysis of Emotion-Regulatory Dynamics
Abstract
In “Emotion Regulation: Current Status and Prospects”, Gross (in press) reviews the state of the art in modern emotion regulation research and presents a new model of emotion regulation. We applaud the extended process model (Gross, in press), as part of a more general push towards more dynamic conceptions of emotion regulation. At the same time, we feel that the field still has a long way to go before it can provide a satisfactory account of people’s emotion-regulatory dynamics. The extended process model and its conceptual cousins maintain that emotion regulation is driven by mental representations like goals and “valuation systems” (Gross, in press). In our view, such static representations do not adequately explain the dynamic nature of emotion regulation. To tackle this problem, we propose a situated cognition approach, which treats emotion regulation as an activity that emerges dynamically from people’s interactions with their environment.
... To understand just how bodily states may influence emotion regulation, we have recently developed a situated cognition perspective on emotion regulation (Koole & Veenstra, 2015; see also Feldman Barrett, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barsalou, 2014, for a situated conceptualisation of emotions and emotion regulation). According to a situated cognition perspective, people do not rely so much on abstract mental models in regulating their emotions. ...
... From a situated cognition perspective, the body represents one of the key affordances for emotion regulation (Koole & Veenstra, 2015). Because different bodily states are mentally associated with specific emotional processes, different bodily states offer different opportunities for regulating one's emotions. ...
... The priming explanation of the observed posture effects is in accordance with theories of embodiment, and a situated conceptualisation of emotion regulation (Feldman Barrett et al., 2014;Koole & Veenstra, 2015). More specifically, because of the bidirectional relationship between bodily processes and emotional representations (e.g. ...
The present work examines how stooped versus straight body postures influences recovery from negative mood. In Experiment 1 (N = 229), participants were assigned to a negative or neutral mood induction condition, after which they were instructed to take either a stooped, straight, or control posture while writing down their thoughts. Stooped posture (compared to straight or control postures) led to less mood recovery in the negative mood condition, and more negative mood in the neutral mood condition. Overall, stooped posture led to more negative thoughts compared to straight or control postures. In Experiment 2 (N = 122), all participants received a negative mood induction, after which half were instructed to engage in cognitive reappraisal and half received no regulation instructions. To assess mood-congruent cognitions, participants were also asked to recall autobiographical memories. Mood recovery was again less successful in a stooped (compared to straight) position, regardless of whether participants engaged in reappraisal. Stooped (versus straight) posture further increased the negativity of autobiographical recall, but not among participants in the reappraisal condition. These findings demonstrate for the first time that posture may play an important role in recovering from negative mood.
... For instance, situations with high emotional intensity are less suitable for enacting cognitive reappraisal strategies, because such strategies require high levels of cognitive engagement with the situation (Sheppes & Levin, 2013). In a similar vein, some situations may offer more Self-Regulation of Emotion 13 affordances for emotion regulation than others, for instance, by varying in the availability of social support (Koole & Veenstra, 2015). Notably, people may coordinate their personal resources to situational affordances by making implementation plans, plans that are tailored to he specifics of the situation. ...
... Much emotion regulation is indeed goal-directed in this way. However, other types of emotion regulation unfold in the absence of explicit, consciously verbalizable goals (Koole & Veenstra, 2015). For instance, the emotion-regulatory process of habituation that we mentioned earlier in this chapter requires no symbolic-linguistic processing. ...
... Beyond Gross' framework, there is an increased awareness that emotions are not only intrapsychic processes, but are also associated with dynamic social situations in which group members both experience and express similar emotions (Koole & Veenstra, 2015;Niedenthal & Brauer, 2012). Therefore, religious group adherence becomes highly relevant for emotion regulation studies as they gain emotion-regulative capacities and strategies through active participation in religious groups and through written material or speeches (Kim-Prieto & Diener, 2009). ...
... This strategy can be seen as an extension of the concept of emotion regulation by Gross (1998aGross ( , 1998b, which is much more focused on the short-term. In a further supplement to Gross' more intrapsychic concept of emotions, newer studies found that social situations play an important role in how group members experience and express similar emotions (Koole & Veenstra, 2015;Niedenthal & Brauer, 2012). To adhere to JWs shaped current emotions in two social ways: first, by the eschatological doctrine that was collectively shared by all interviewed members and secondly, by active participation in JWs' religious activities that confirmed the individual's belief and positive future expectations (Kim-Prieto & Diener, 2009). ...
The aim of this qualitative interview study was to explore the specific expectations that N = 29 Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) had of end times and paradise using an emotion regulation perspective. Beyond the general eschatological doctrine of JWs, the participants were encouraged to report their individual beliefs and connected emotions. Thematic analysis identified forecasting of life in paradise in the form of a continuation of physical life but with an overall positive emotional atmosphere. Emotionally, paradise was often contrasted with the present time, as negative emotions and the downregulation of strong positive emotions dominate the current end time. As an emotion regulation strategy between current end times and future paradise, emotional forecasting, i.e., predicting which emotions would arise in the future to regulate present-day emotions, is used. The results are discussed in the frame of positive and negative psychological implications of JWs’ eschatological beliefs and emotional forecasting.
... Instead, the present findings are most compatible with a situated motivation model of trait anger (Koole & Veenstra, 2015), which proposes that trait anger is linked to situationspecific increases in approach motivation in anger-relevant situations. This situated perspective can be contrasted with prior motivational research that has emphasized links between trait anger and general increases in approach motivation (Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009). ...
... If the latter is correct, then contextual shifts in motivational orientation may change anger management processes among people varying in trait anger, and might thus work as anger regulator. More research is needed to test this key prediction of the situated motivation model of trait anger (Koole & Veenstra, 2015). ...
Most people automatically withdraw from socially threatening situations. However, people high in trait anger could be an exception to this rule, and may even display an eagerness to approach hostile situations. To test this hypothesis, we asked 118 participants to complete an approach-avoidance task, in which participants made approach or avoidance movements towards faces with an angry or happy expression, and a direct or averted eye gaze. As expected, higher trait anger predicted faster approach (than avoidance) movements towards angry faces. Crucially, this effect occurred only for angry faces with a direct eye gaze, presumably because they pose a specific social threat, in contrast to angry faces with an averted gaze. No parallel effects were observed for happy faces, indicating that the effects of trait anger were specific to hostile stimuli. These findings suggest that people high in trait anger may automatically approach hostile interaction partners.
... Az elmúlt évtizedekben rohamosan nőtt azon kutatások száma, amelyek az érzelmek szerepét hangsúlyozzák a személyiségfejlődésben. Az érzelmek az élet minden területén jelen vannak, létfontosságú képességnek számít az érzelmek szabályozása (Koole-Veenstra, 2015). Az érzelemszabályozás magában foglalja azokat a folyamatokat, amelyek által az érzelmeket fenntartjuk vagy módosítjuk. ...
A tanulmány az affektív és a szociális tényezők jelentőségével foglalkozik pedagógiai megközelítésben. Az affektív szféra kifejezés szerteágazó területet jelöl, az érzelmi tényezők mellett magában foglalja például az attitűdöket, az érdeklődést, a motivációt és a társas viselkedés bizonyos elemeivel is átfedést mutat. E kérdéskör régóta foglalkoztatja az oktatás, nevelés iránt érdeklődőket. A téma önálló kutatási területté válása ugyanakkor alig száz évre tehető. Az iskola világához közvetlenül kapcsolódó vizsgálatok az utóbbi évtizedekben váltak egyre hangsúlyosabbá. E munkák napjainkra már számos bizonyítékot sorakoztattak fel arra, hogy az affektív tényezőknek döntő szerepük van a tanulás eredményességében. Néhány affektív változó erősebben jelzi előre az iskolai tanulás sikerességét, mint az intelligencia. Az érzelmek, motívumok kutatása szorosan kapcsolódik a társas kapcsolatok vizsgálatához. A társas kapcsolatok alapját a szociális készségek és motívumok jelentik. Ezek fejlettsége ugyancsak elengedhetetlen az iskolai tanulás sikerességéhez. A tanulmány rövid áttekintést ad e területek főbb kutatásairól, említést tesz azokról a programokról, melyek a tanulási motivációt, a szociális és érzelmi tanulást segítik.
... Gross 2015). But this individualistic perspective overlooks emergent qualities of emotion regulation and experience that are scaffolded by an individual's ongoing engagement with features of their environment (Koole and Veenstra 2015), including their musical environment (van der Schyff and Schiavio 2017). As already discussed, we use music throughout our lives and in many different contexts, including religious worship, to regulate our emotions (Saarikallio 2011). ...
For 4E cognitive science, minds are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Proponents observe that we regularly ‘offload’ our thinking onto body and world: we use gestures and calculators to augment mathematical reasoning, and smartphones and search engines as memory aids. This chapter argues that music is a ‘beyond-the-head’ resource that affords offloading. Via this offloading, music scaffolds access to new forms of thought, experience, and behaviour. The chapter focuses on music’s capacity to scaffold emotional consciousness, including the self-regulative processes constitutive of emotional consciousness. In developing this idea, the chapter considers the ‘material’ and ‘worldmaking’ character of music, applying these considerations to two case studies: music as a tool for religious worship, and music as a weapon for torture.
... Similarly, (Aldao et al., 2014) qualifies rigid emotion regulation responses as maladaptive due to the varied environmental situations, thereby suggesting contextual and adaptive emotion regulation instead. Koole and Veenstra, (2015) also acknowledge (Aldao et al., 2014) by "criticizing traditional models of emotion regulation as being too much based on decontextualized mental representations. The latter authors propose a new theoretical approach in which emotion regulation is continually and flexibly adjusted to the contingencies of the situation". ...
Emotion regulation is a vital psychological process that allows people to manage their own emotional states. Recent psychological research has highlighted the importance of flexibility in emotion regulation, such that people can alternative between different emotion regulation strategies a strategy is chosen depending upon the demands of the situation. This means that healthy emotion regulation is context-sensitive. This paper presents a computational model which models this form of flexible adaptation in emotion regulation in a simplified scenario in which the person has to switch between expressive suppression and attention modulation in managing anger in different work situations, . Simulation results are reported that illustrate the capacity of the model to display adaptivity in emotion regulation across different contexts.
... El modelo de Gross constituye indudablemente el modelo más estudiado y por otra parte ha ido aportando reelaboraciones, por ejemplo la nueva perspectiva dinámica en la que se comprende mejor tanto el carácter procesual de la regulación emocional como la interacción entre generación y regulación emocional (Gross, 2015a). De todos modos, han aparecido otras propuestas al modelo de Gross, el cual ha sido criticado por estar fuertemente vinculado con un modelo cognitivo clásico que no contempla el carácter situado y encarnado del proceso regulatorio de las emociones (Koole y Veenstra, 2015). Por otra parte, el modelo de Gratz y Roemer (2004) y, en línea con este, el de Berking y Schwarz (2014) se han elaborado a partir del eje de las dificultades en la regulación de las emociones y las habilidades necesarias para revertir tales dificultades (es decir, centrado en la disfunción) por lo que se ha aplicado de manera más habitual en contextos de investigación clínica. ...
La regulación emocional se ha convertido a lo largo de las últimas dos décadas en uno de los constructos más estudiados en el campo de la psicología clínica. En el presente artículo se exponen en una primera sección los conceptos primordiales en torno a los hallazgos psicopatológicos que dan cuenta del papel primordial de la regulación emocional como factor transdiagnóstico. Posteriormente, se describen las nociones centrales que deben ser consideradas para llevar a cabo una mejor articulación entre investigación y práctica clínica. Por último, se presentan algunos de los principales tratamientos existentes que abordan la regulación emocional como eje central, para plantear en último lugar los caminos por los que el campo de la regulación emocional debería transitar como campo específico de estudio en el contexto del desarrollo de la psicoterapia en general.
... Going beyond the classical cognitive model, we can mention the research program brought forth by Sander Koole and colleagues. Their cognitive perspective is integrated with principles of embodied and situated cognition, which permits to grasp the clinical phenomenon (i.e., emotion regulation) from a wider perspective (22). ...
We read with great interest the commentary by David et al. (1) in which the authors give a series of reasons to support that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) constitutes the current gold standard of psychotherapy. Their main argument revolves around the fact that CBT provides the most solid evidence in terms of efficiency (both efficacy and effectiveness). The authors back up this idea, principally, by providing an accurate description of the methodological strengths of CBT and finally by presenting some conceptual arguments. Although we broadly agree with the three described reasons outlined by the authors, we consider it important to incorporate some additional ideas to this discussion. Our principal interest is to extend the discussion regarding the integrative efforts that are being carried out in our field. We are firmly convinced that CBT constitutes the most appropriate approach to foster the integration among the different psychotherapeutic theoretical approaches (2). Psychotherapy is still diving into pre-paradigmatic waters, and the integration of theories is a rather logical goal that any scientific discipline that aspires to reach a paradigmatic stage should set (3). As some authors explained elsewhere (4, 5), the mere accumulation of empirical evidence is not enough to demonstrate the theoretical consistency of an approach. In other words, the empirical evidence of the benefits of the CBT does not ensure its theoretical foundations (6). By theoretical consistency, we understand not only "evidence based on (1) experimental studies (and sometimes additional/adjunctive correlational studies) and/or (2) component analyses, patient-treatment interactions, and/or mediation/moderation analyses in complex clinical trials (CCTs)" (4), but also epistemological consistency to add to an accurate conceptual debate. Cognitive therapy (CT) history can be characterized as a continuity of tensions derived in an ever-growing integration of its theoretical corpus and practical tools. Overall, we identify three tensions, described in detail elsewhere (1), which resulted in the development of integrative efforts, which greatly enriched the field of psychotherapy. First, pure CT extended not only to many clinical conditions, but also to other integrative approaches, like Dialectic Behavior Therapy [DBT; (7)] or the Cognitive Analytic Therapy [CAT; (8)]. Later, Alford and Beck (9) explicitly proposed that CT, as an approach that is technically eclectic and theoretically solid due to the consistency of the cognitive theory, could be adopted as a solid scientific foundation fostering a common language for the clinical practice. As a consequence, certain behavioral techniques, primarily exposure, became central procedures of CT. Subsequently, rapidly cognitive and behavioral therapies were integrated into the current CBT.
... Yet he does not say much about these situated practices-which are, arguably, significantly different from the cognitive-internal ones to which he pays more attention. Some psychologists, in fact (see Koole and Veenstra 2015), have recently pointed out that Gross's influential model of self-regulation places too much emphasis on the activation of internal explicit and verbalizable goals, and have called for a more embodied and situated approach that also takes into account the formation of habitual patterns of reliance on the environment to achieve specific affective states. ...
... À l'inverse, les moins bons régulateurs ont plus de risques de vivre un épisode de chômage (Mikolajczak, Luminet, Leroy, & Roy, 2007). Koole et Veenstra (2015) qualifient cependant « les modèles traditionnels de régulation émotionnelle comme étant trop basés sur des représentations mentales décontextualisées. Les auteurs proposent une nouvelle approche théorique dans laquelle la régulation émotionnelle est continuellement et de façon flexible ajustée aux contingences de la situation ». ...
Dans ce travail, nous avons souhaité explorer la dimension émotionnelle du conditionnement évaluatif. Nous postulons que celui-ci provient d’un processus de double évaluation, d’une part émotionnelle et d’autre part cognitive. Nous nous sommes focalisés sur l’étude des processus émotionnels à travers la régulation émotionnelle. Pour cela nous avons réalisé trois séries d’études. Dans la première, nous avons mis en évidence que la dérégulation émotionnelle diminuait le conditionnement positif. Dans deux autres études visant à explorer les stratégies de régulation, nous avons observé qu’un mésusage des stratégies engendrait un conditionnement négatif plus fort et un conditionnement positif plus faible. Ces premiers résultats sont appuyés par deux études utilisant la variabilité de la fréquence cardiaque comme indicateur des capacités d’autorégulation. Le conditionnement évaluatif paraît associé à la dérégulation émotionnelle à travers des difficultés d’adaptation durant le stress et de récupération post-stress. Enfin, deux études ont essayé d’observer les effets d’un prédicteur de la régulation émotionnelle : la pleine conscience. Dans aucune des deux études nous n’avons trouvé de lien entre la pleine conscience et le conditionnement évaluatif. Nous avons donc pu observer à travers différentes méthodes un lien entre le conditionnement évaluatif et la régulation émotionnelle. Celui-ci est discuté et des pistes de recherches sont envisagées.
... An integrated understanding of ER (i.e., implicit, automatic, and interpersonal dimensions) could be achieved through an articulated study of cognitive, behavioral, experiential, and psychophysiological dimensions by means of the incorporation of all the described technologies. For instance, a wide range of technologies such as VR-based avatars could embrace an embodied cognition perspective (Bailey et al., 2016), which is also an essential aspect within the emotion regulation field (Koole and Veenstra, 2015). ...
In the last decades, emotion regulation (ER) received increasing attention and became one of the most studied topics within the psychological field. Nevertheless, this construct has not been fully updated with the latest technological advancements. In this perspective, we will show how diverse technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), wearable biosensors, smartphones, or biofeedback techniques, can be applied to the understanding, assessment, and intervention of ER. After providing a brief overview of the currently available technological developments, we will discuss the benefits of incorporating new technologies in ER field, including ecological validity, intervention personalization, and the integration of understudied facets of ER, such as the implicit and interpersonal dimension.
... Yet he does not say much about these situated practices-which are, arguably, significantly different from the cognitive-internal ones to which he pays more attention. Some psychologists, in fact (see Koole and Veenstra 2015), have recently pointed out that Gross's influential model of self-regulation places too much emphasis on the activation of internal explicit and verbalizable goals, and have called for a more embodied and situated approach that also takes into account the formation of habitual patterns of reliance on the environment to achieve specific affective states. ...
In this paper I argue that it is misleading to regard the brain as the physical basis or “core machinery” of moods. First, empirical evidence shows that brain activity not only influences, but is in turn influenced by, physical activity taking place in other parts of the organism (such as the endocrine and immune systems). It is therefore not clear why the core machinery of moods ought to be restricted to the brain. I propose, instead, that moods should be conceived as embodied, i.e., their physical basis should be enlarged so as to comprise not just brain but also bodily processes. Second, I emphasise that moods are also situated in the world. By this I do not simply mean that moods are influenced by the world, but that they are complexly interrelated with it, in at least three different ways: they are shaped by cultural values and norms; they are materially and intersubjectively “scaffolded”; and they can even “experientially incorporate” parts of the world, i.e., include the experience of parts of the world as part of oneself.
... Theorists have argued persuasively that emotion regulation in general is scaffolded by environmental resources both material and social (e.g., Colombetti & Krueger 2015;Koole & Veenstra 2015). They have significant empirical support too. ...
... Az elmúlt évtizedekben rohamosan nőtt azon kutatások száma, amelyek az érzelmek szerepét hangsúlyozzák a személyiségfejlődésben. Az érzelmek az élet minden területén jelen vannak, létfontosságú képességnek számít az érzelmek szabályozása (Koole-Veenstra, 2015). Az érzelemszabályozás magában foglalja azokat a folyamatokat, amelyek által az érzelmeket fenntartjuk vagy módosítjuk. ...
A tanulmány az affektív és a szociális tényezők jelentőségével foglalkozik pedagógiai megközelítésben. Az affektív szféra kifejezés szerteágazó területet jelöl, az érzelmi tényezők mellett magában foglalja például az attitűdöket, az érdeklődést, a motivációt és a társas viselkedés bizonyos elemeivel is átfedést mutat. E kérdéskör régóta foglalkoztatja az oktatás, nevelés iránt érdeklődőket. A téma önálló kutatási területté válása ugyanakkor alig száz évre tehető. Az iskola világához közvetlenül kapcsolódó vizsgálatok az utóbbi évtizedekben váltak egyre hangsúlyosabbá. E munkák napjainkra már számos bizonyítékot sorakoztattak fel arra, hogy az affektív tényezőknek döntő szerepük van a tanulás eredményességében. Néhány affektív változó erősebben jelzi előre az iskolai tanulás sikerességét, mint az intelligencia. Az érzelmek, motívumok kutatása szorosan kapcsolódik a társas kapcsolatok vizsgálatához. A társas kapcsolatok alapját a szociális készségek és motívumok jelentik. Ezek fejlettsége ugyancsak elenged-hetetlen az iskolai tanulás sikerességéhez. A tanulmány rövid áttekintést ad e területek főbb kutatásairól, említést tesz azokról a programokról, melyek a tanulási motivációt, a szociális és érzelmi tanulást segítik.
... Sometimes these strategies are "antecedent-focused" strategies that act upon emotions before they are fully formed (e.g., removing ourselves from a potentially anxiety-inducing situation; practicing meditation to cultivate more stable habits of mind); others are "response-focused" strategies that regulate emotions as they unfold (e.g., slowing our breathing to suppress our rising anger) (Gross 2001). For our purposes, what's important is that dominant accounts of emotion regulation in cognitive, clinical, and social psychological literature conceive of emotion regulation as something that occurs almost entirely within the individual (Campos et al. 2011;Koole and Veenstra 2015). But this intrapersonal approach overlooks the extent to which many strategies for regulating our emotions constitutively involve more than just internal resources (Varga and Krueger 2013). ...
Philosophical work exploring the relation between cognition and the Internet is now an active area of research. Some adopt an externalist framework, arguing that the Internet should be seen as environmental scaffolding that drives and shapes cognition. However, despite growing interest in this topic, little attention has been paid to how the Internet influences our affective life-our moods, emotions, and our ability to regulate these and other feeling states. We argue that the Internet scaffolds not only cognition but also affect. Using various case studies, we consider some ways that we are increasingly dependent on our Internet-enabled "techno-social niches" to regulate the contours of our own affective life and participate in the affective lives of others. We argue further that, unlike many of the other environmental resources we use to regulate affect, the Internet has distinct properties that introduce new dimensions of complexity to these regulative processes. First, it is radically social in a way many of these other resources are not. Second, it is a radically distributed and decentralized resource; no one individual or agent is responsible for the Internet's content or its affective impact on users. Accordingly, while the Internet can profoundly augment and enrich our affective life and deepen our connection with others, there is also a distinctive kind of affective precarity built into our online endeavors as well.
... Moreover, environments with substantial adversity (e.g., extreme poverty) may frequently be the same as those that offer the most limited access to AR resources and affordances (cf. Koole & Veenstra, 2015). This combination of increased negative affect, altered reward processing, and limited access to AR strategies could lead to overreliance on maladaptive behaviors. ...
Clinical science has benefited tremendously from taking seriously the proposition that putatively maladaptive behaviors serve psychological functions, prominently among these affect regulation (AR). These functionalist accounts have not only advanced basic clinical science, but also formed the bedrock for the development of effective treatments. Drawing heavily on reinforcement learning theory, we aim to elucidate functional relationships between maladaptive behavior and AR. Specifically, we take the view that maladaptive behaviors are frequently motivated and reinforced by hedonic AR functions (i.e., decreasing negative affect and increasing positive affect) but are also susceptible to becoming stimulus-bound habits. We review empirical evidence related to one such behavior, nonsuicidal self-injury. We close with a brief reflection on future directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Traditionally, affect regulation has been seen as a process that occurs almost entirely inside people's heads (e.g., Gross 2015). But this internalist supposition ignores emergent qualities of affect regulation that only arise via an individual's ongoing engagement with features of their extra-neural body, as well as their material and social environment (Koole and Veenstra 2015). ...
A family of recent externalist approaches in philosophy of mind argues that our psychological capacities are synchronically and diachronically "scaffolded" by external (i.e., beyond-the-brain) resources. I consider how these "scaffolded" approaches might inform debates in phenomenological psychopathology. I first introduce the idea of "affective scaffolding" and make some taxonomic distinctions. Next, I use schizophrenia as a case study to argue-along with others in phenomenological psychopathology-that schizophrenia is fundamentally a self-disturbance. However, I offer a subtle reconfiguration of these approaches. I argue that schizophrenia is not simply a disruption of ipseity or minimal self-consciousness but rather a disruption of the scaffolded self , established and regulated via its ongoing engagement with the world and others. I conclude by considering how this scaffolded framework indicates the need to consider new forms of intervention and treatment.
... Adopting an endless feedback loop between situation (or its perception) and emotion regulation strategy brought a more authentic representation of real-life dynamics in which emotion regulation is taking place. However, Koole and Veenstra (2015) argue that the model still relies on static mental representations as a driving force. Therefore, it is still lacking in capturing the emotion regulation as a process that is interacting with changing environment. ...
In spite of a large body of research in the field of emotion regulation, it has not yet been studied vigorously in naturalistic settings, especially not in the context of task performance. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether predominant theoretical conceptualisations of emotion regulation (e.g. Gross, 1998) can be applied to this sort of situation. In this qualitative study, we aimed to identify emotion regulation strategies of paramedic crew leaders (n = 30) in a simulated task with a sudden onset of a stressful incident. For this purpose, we analysed their emotional behaviour (i.e. facial expression, voice volume, body posture and movements etc.) on video recorded performance, and their affective states and emotion regulation strategies based on interviews realized right after the task. Verbal reports were analysed via phenomenologically-laden template analysis. We classified emergent strategies into two basic categories: task-related (e.g. attention narrowing, mobilization to action, monitoring) and self-supportive (e.g. emotional distancing, behavioural withdrawal, detachment and selective attention). Results of our analysis suggest that regulatory strategies are often implemented on an implicit level of processing and their function might be a better criteria for their distinction than a type of mental process.
... Despite agreement that emotion and its regulation are socially situated [103][104][105], limited attention has been paid to emotion regulation as it relates to sexual well-being in interpersonal contexts. Dyadic studies that account for interdependence in emotion regulation and sexual well-being among both members of the couple are rare. ...
Purpose of Review
Emotion regulation is a key contributor to social functioning and mental health; yet, its influence on sexual well-being has only recently gained research attention. To elucidate correlates of women’s sexual satisfaction, desire, frequency, function, and distress and guide future study, the present review evaluates research at the intersection of emotion regulation and sexual well-being.
Recent Findings
There are clear associations between mood and sexual well-being, with the interference of negative emotion on sexual outcomes stronger for women relative to men. Although there is evidence that women’s poorer emotion regulation abilities are related to poorer sexual well-being, associations between specific emotion regulation strategies and sexual outcomes are less established, possibly due to the abundance of regulatory strategies and dearth of research on emotion regulation in sexual contexts. Still, our review suggests that women’s greater sexual well-being is positively associated with strategies characterized by adaptive engagement (e.g., problem solving, acceptance, reappraisal) and negatively associated with strategies characterized by disengagement (e.g., avoidance, suppression, distraction) and aversive cognitive perseveration (e.g., worry, rumination).
Summary
Extant research is consistent with models of women’s sexual response and offers preliminary support for the emotion regulation–sexual well-being link. While the explanatory power of the current literature is limited by a lack of dyadic and longitudinal studies, interventions targeting emotion regulation hold promise for improving women’s and couples’ sexual well-being.
... Although emotion regulation is inherently an interaction of person, situation, and strat- egy factors, past research has focused more on main effects of each of these inf luences (e.g., benefits of a particular strategy as compared with others), and dominant models of emotion regulation have not foregrounded such interactions (see Aldao, 2013;Koole & Veenstra, 2015). Here, we argue that explicitly modeling emotion regulation as a person by situation by strategy interaction can provide direction for the growth of this field. ...
... These instrumental relations between a person and her tool, used to increase the fit between person and environment, are termed affordances (Gibson, 1979). Following this view, we argue that robots can be perceived as self-regulatory tools to increase affordances across different situations (Koole and Veenstra, 2015). Our instrumental relational approach enables flexibility in tuning the robot's level of responsiveness and dominance in human-robot social contexts. ...
The use of domestic service robots is becoming widespread. While in industrial settings robots are often used for specified tasks, the challenge in the case of robots put to domestic use is to afford human-robot collaboration in a variety of non-predefined and different daily tasks. Herein, we aim at identifying and understanding the conditions that will facilitate flexible collaboration between humans and robots. Past research of social and personality psychology was mainly focused on individual's self-regulation, defined as the ability to govern, or direct attention, resources, or action toward the realization of a particular goal (Higgins, 1989; Kruglanski et al., 2002). There is evidence that pursuing goals with the presence of others influences self-control (Fishbach and Trope, 2005), however only little is known on dyadic processes of self-regulation. Additionally, whereas research of goal pursuit in social psychology has mainly been associated with general processes of the structure and function of goals (Gollwitzer and Bargh, 1996; Carver and Scheier, 1998; Kruglanski et al., 2002; Fishbach and Ferguson, 2007; Custers and Aarts, 2010), human-robot interaction involves pragmatic interpersonal dilemmas such as how to coordinate human-robot activity and what knowledge should be shared between humans and robots over the course of action. To fill this gap, in what follows, we will define the unique characteristics of what we term as human-robot coupled self-regulation, which has the unique features of a dyadic asymmetric team aimed to increase the affordances of an individual in different activities. We will describe the unique characteristics of human-robot interaction and its special challenges toward goal pursuit.
... These instrumental relations between a person and her tool, used to increase the fit between person and environment, are termed affordances (Gibson, 1979). Following this view, we argue that robots can be perceived as self-regulatory tools to increase affordances across different situations (Koole and Veenstra, 2015). Our instrumental relational approach enables flexibility in tuning the robot's level of responsiveness and dominance in human-robot social contexts. ...
... The situated cognition approach, according to Koole and Veenstra (2015), places emotion regulation within the context of an activity that is based on a person's interaction with their specific environment. Heersmink (2017) focused on the moral aspects through enhancing cognitive abilities with the use of external artifacts. ...
With the proliferation of students’ abilities to use technology, in particular virtual reality (VR) applications, teachers are experimenting with VR in virtual learning environments (VLE) to engage students; but clear ethics and safety guidelines are not available. Within the field of education additional research is needed to determine how VR is employed in VLEs. Additionally, what are the decision-making processes of educators for the VR programs chosen for classroom use based on ethics and student safety? Through qualitative inquiry, educators from K–12 and higher education shared their perceptions of ethics and safety concerns in VR applications for use in the classroom. We collected data from a sample of K–12 and higher education professionals from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) membership, an educational organization emphasizing technology integration and learning. Data analysis from the individual interviews with open-ended questions revealed five primary themes and twelve sub-themes. Participants agreed that they need ethical and safety guidelines as they embark on new horizons that influence student well-being. The findings from this study may provide an in-depth understanding of the importance of developing ethics and safety guidelines for educational VR programs when used by students.
... Emotion regulation research has been theoretically and empirically dominated by focusing on internally generated strategies (Gross, 2015;Koole & Veenstra, 2015;Zaki & Williams, 2013). However, people often experience difficulties regulating their emotions with these internally generated, explicit, effortful, top-down, and cognitive-based emotion regulation strategies (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996;Heatherton, 2011;Hofmann, Schmeichel, & Baddeley, 2012;McRae, 2016;Raio, Orederu, Palazzolo, Shurick, & Phelps, 2013;Schmeichel, Volokhov, & Demaree, 2008). ...
Placebos offer an effective way to manage a host of clinical disorders and nonclinical conditions. However, the commonly held belief that people need to be deceived in order for placebos to work prevents their widespread use. Research on placebos administered without deception (non-deceptive placebos) has challenged this assumption and opens the possibility of harnessing the beneficial effects of placebos. However, as this research accumulates, old placebo issues proliferate, such as controversy about whether the beneficial effects from non-deceptive placebos reflect true effects or are the byproduct of response bias. In four studies, I attempted to address some of these new issues and advance the basic understanding of non-deceptive placebo effects. Chapter I provides an overview of placebos, placebo effects, and non-deceptive placebos. Chapter II tests a novel non-deceptive placebo manipulation and finds beneficial effects on self-reported emotional distress; however, it was not effective for skin conductance response or an implicit cognitive-based measure of emotional reactivity. Chapter II also shows that the non-deceptive placebo manipulation may work for female participants but not male participants, dictating the methodology of subsequent studies. Chapter III replicates this finding with an all-female sample and finds a similar pattern of modulation for self-reported emotional distress but none for skin conductance response. Chapter IV uses a different objective measure but finds null effects on pain tolerance duration. Chapter V uses an objective neural measure and finds that non-deceptive placebos reduced neural measures of emotional reactivity, suggesting that effects are more than response bias and are true psychobiological effects. Chapter V provides important insights into the neural mechanisms and time course of the non-deceptive placebo effect. Non-deceptive placebos appear to increase attentional allocation to emotional stimuli before exerting their regulatory effect at a later time. Taken together, this work presents a nuanced understanding of non-deceptive placebo effects, suggesting that they are indeed true psychobiological effects in specific circumstances: the objective measure must be carefully selected, with the type of manipulation and the time course of beneficial effects in mind. This delayed regulatory finding provides an important insight regarding the beneficial effects of non-deceptive placebos and when these effects should be assessed. Moreover, this work has important translational implications for medical practice, psychopathology, and emotion regulation in daily life.
... We are affected not only by the context in which the experience occurs (Pastor et al., 2008;Fujimura et al., 2013;Czekóová et al., 2015), but as agentive creatures, we may attempt to change or regulate what we are currently feeling (Gross, 1998). Therefore, emotion processing incorporates the interaction of situation, regulation, and person factors (Aldao, 2013;Koole and Veenstra, 2015;Doré et al., 2016). The dynamic features of emotion are critical to emotion regulation flexibility and adaptation to environmental change, and may be linked to psychopathology (Aldao et al., 2015;Hollenstein, 2015;Heller and Casey, 2016). ...
Why are some people more susceptible to interference from previous emotional stimuli? Neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation are typically studied with one-off positive or negative stimuli. Less is known about how they operate during dynamic emotional experiences, which more closely resemble how emotions occur in real life. Therefore, we investigated the interaction among temporal context, stimulus content, and regulatory strategy. Image sequences included either neutral to negative emotion or negative to neutral emotion. Participants were instructed to either passively watch the emotional stimuli or apply cognitive reappraisal during the image sequences presentation. Participants also reported their habitual use of cognitive reappraisal in their daily lives on a standard scale. We measured functional connectivity (FC) with electroencephalography (EEG) source localization. A three-way interaction suggested that, in addition to momentary emotional content and regulatory effort, the temporal context of stimuli impacts the FC between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in both alpha and beta frequency bands. In the reappraisal condition—but not the passive watch conditions—, individual differences in habitual reappraisal were manifested in the FC of vmPFC-ACC in alpha band. Emotion transitions may be more demanding because prefrontal-posterior FC in the beta band decreased during emotion transitions regardless of emotional content or regulation efforts. Flexible emotion regulation enables the recruiting of neural activities in response to the content of dynamic, ever-changing experiences encountered in daily life. Studying brain responses to dynamic emotional stimuli may shed light on individual differences in adaptation and psychological health. It also provides a more ecologically valid assessment of emotion regulation.
... The present work is also consistent with theories of embodied emotion regulation (Koole et al., 2014;Koole & Veenstra, 2015;Lotte Veenstra et al., 2017a). According to the latter, emotion regulation is not just something that occurs within the mind or 'between the ears', as traditional perspectives have assumed. ...
People differ in trait anger, or how easily they lose their temper. The present authors suggest
that whether trait anger become translated into angry feelings and behavior may depend on
basic motivational states. Specifically, people with high (versus low) trait anger may display
increased anger and aggression when their current state is more rather than less approachoriented.
Consistent with this, trait anger predicted state anger among participants who assumed
high approach-oriented postures, but not among those who assumed low approachoriented-
oriented postures (Study 1, N= 127; Study 2, N = 151). Trait anger further predicted
aggressive inclinations (Study 2) when participants assumed a high (rather than low) approach-
oriented posture. Finally, trait anger predicted aggression (Study 3, N = 178; Study 4,
N = 177) when participants assumed a high (rather than low) approach-oriented posture.
These findings suggest that motivationally relevant bodily movements regulate whether trait
anger becomes translated into state anger and aggression.
... Instrumental humanrobot relationships increase the fit between person and environment-affordances (Gibson, 1979). One way then to characterize RAATs is self-regulatory technologies to increase affordances in a variety of contexts (Koole & Veenstra, 2015;Shalev & Oron-Gilad, 2015). In other words, the agronomist and farmer dyad should be maintained, even if the nature of their work changes considerably with the development of autonomous agriculture. ...
Robotic and Autonomous Agricultural Technologies (RAAT) are increasingly available yet may fail to be adopted. This paper focusses specifically on cognitive factors that affect adoption including: inability to generate trust, loss of farming knowledge and reduced social cognition. It is recommended that agriculture develops its own framework for the performance and safety of RAAT drawing on human factors research in aerospace engineering including human inputs (individual variance in knowledge, skills, abilities, preferences, needs and traits), trust, situational awareness and cognitive load. The kinds of cognitive impacts depend on the RAATs level of autonomy, ie whether it has automatic, partial autonomy and autonomous functionality and stage of adoption, ie adoption, initial use or post-adoptive use. The more autonomous a system is, the less a human needs to know to operate it and the less the cognitive load, but it also means farmers have less situational awareness about on farm activities that in turn may affect strategic decision-making about their enterprise. Some cognitive factors may be hidden when RAAT is first adopted but play a greater role during prolonged or intense post-adoptive use. Systems with partial autonomy need intuitive user interfaces, engaging system information, and clear signaling to be trusted with low level tasks; and to compliment and augment high order decision-making on farm.
... The hypersensitivity to emotions and emotion information that we found to be associated with high (measured) EI, might well be balanced out by more spontaneous and implicit inhibitory processes that would, as demanded by the context, modulate emotional responses. As a matter of fact recent situated cognition approaches emphasize that emotion regulation may arise from the dynamic interaction of the individual with the environment (e.g., Koole & Veenstra, 2015). In order to function effectively in the environment, individuals need not only top-down, schematic knowledge or mental representations that guide behavior regardless of the contingencies of the situation, but for effective regulation they also need bottom-up, sensory motor reactions that originate in the environment and that adjust emotional reactions accordingly. ...
... It thus seems important to consider alternative interventions. For instance, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TRAIT ANGER 9 there is preliminary evidence that training avoidance tendencies towards threatening situations may improve anger management among people with high trait anger * [51] [52]. ...
Most emotion theories recognise the importance of the body in expressing and constructing emotions. Focusing beyond the face, the present research adds needed empirical data on the effect of static full body postures on positive/negative affect. In Studies 1 (N = 110) and 2 (N = 79), using a bodily feedback paradigm, we manipulated postures to test causal effects on affective and physiological responses to emotionally ambiguous music. Across both studies among U.S. participants, we find the strongest support for an effect of bodily postures that are expansive and oriented upward on positive affect. In addition, an expansive and upward pose also led to greater cardiac vagal reactivity but these changes in parasympathetic activity were not related to affective changes (Study 2). In line with embodied theories, these results provide additional support for the role of postural input in constructing affect. Discussion highlights the relevance of these findings for the study of religious practices during which the postures studied are often adopted.
Emotion researchers are increasingly interested in processes by which people influence others’ feelings. Although one such process, interpersonal emotion regulation, has received particular attention in recent years, there remains confusion about exactly how to define this process. The present article aims to distinguish interpersonal emotion regulation from other, related processes by outlining its four key characteristics. Specifically, interpersonal emotion regulation is presented as a process of (i) regulation, that (ii) has an affective target, (iii) is deliberate, and (iv) has a social target. Considering these characteristics raises questions for future research concerning factors that may influence the process of interpersonal emotion regulation, why interpersonal emotion regulation sometimes fails, and whether interventions can improve people's use of interpersonal emotion regulation.
Gross’s Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation (or EPM) draws on insights from the psychology of action control to consider not just the strategies that people use to regulate their emotions, but also how people decide when and how to regulate, and go about implementing their chosen strategy. This commentary seeks to extend the action control perspective on emotion regulation even further to connect the EPM with extant frameworks on self-regulation. In this regard, we consider the relation between emotions and behavior, conflict between emotional goals, the nature of the reference value toward which regulation is directed, and the dynamics of emotion regulation. We then consider two issues only touched on by Gross’s review – automatic (or implicit) emotion regulation and (ii) interpersonal (or extrinsic) emotion regulation.
We developed a measure regarding interpersonal strategies of emotion regulation, and asked 310 students to report on their daily use. As a result, we gained 7 interpersonal strategies: making others uncomfortable, doing something fun together, making a joke, ruminating together, reassurance seeking, problem solving together, and complaining. The new measure demonstrated appropriate psychometric properties. We found significant gender differences on strategy use and relationships between measures of mental health. Lastly, we discussed the limitations of the current study, and prospects for future studies.
Recent studies have focused on investigating factors that moderate the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the use of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies moderate the association between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depression/anxiety. 1,000 participants aged 20 to 69 years, completed self-report measures regarding their daily use of interpersonal and cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depression/anxiety. Results indicated that four of the interpersonal emotion regulation strategies moderate the associations between seven cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depression/anxiety. These findings suggest that the relationship between a particular cognitive emotion regulation strategy and psychological health may depend on individuals’ use of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Future studies should examine whether the findings obtained in the present study are replicable.
The aim of this study was to explore which group-based emotion regulation goals and strategies are offered in the group culture of Jehovah's Witnesses (JWS). Based on interviews with 29 group-active JWS in Norway, a thematic analysis was conducted in which an overall pattern of cognition taking precedence over emotions was found. Due to endtime expectations and a long-term goal of eternal life in Paradise, future emotions were prioritized. The emotion regulation strategies identified among JWS were social sharing and the interconnected cognitive reappraisal. A new concept, emotional forecasting, was introduced, describing a reappraisal tactic of regulation using prospects of future emotions to regulate the here and now. It was concluded that the prospection of the future is a strong regulator of emotions of the here and now and should be included in psychological models of emotion regulation.
We make the case for the possible integration of affect experience induced via embodiment techniques with CBT for the treatment of emotional disorders in clinical settings. Theoretically we propose a possible integration of cognitive behavioural theory, neuroscience, embodied cognition and important processes of client change outcomes such as the therapeutic alliance to enhance client outcomes. We draw from evidence of bidirectional effects between embodiment modes of bottom-up (sensory-motor simulations giving rise to important basis of knowledge) and top-down (abstract mental representations of knowledge) processes such as CBT in psychotherapy. The paper first describes the dominance and success of CBT for the treatment of a wide range of clinical disorders. Some limitations of CBT, particularly for depression are also outlined. There is a growing body of evidence for the added value of experiential affect-focused interventions combined with CBT. Evidence for the embodied model of cognition and emotion is reviewed. Advantages of embodiment is highlighted as a complimentary process model to deepen the intensity and valence of affective experience. It is suggested that an integrated embodiment approach with CBT enhances outcomes across a wide range of emotional disorders. A description of our embodiment method integrated with CBT for inducing affective experience, emotional regulation, acceptance of unwanted emotions and emotional mastery is given. Finally, the paper highlights the importance of the therapeutic alliance as a critical component of the change process. The paper ends with a case study highlighting some clinical strategies that may aid the therapist to integrate embodiment techniques in CBT that can further explore in future research on affective experience in CBT for a wider range of clinical disorders.
In this article we adopt the view that emotion dysregulation is characterized by emotion regulation dynamics that are defined as dysfunctional based on contextual criteria. We regard the construct of emotion regulation as valuable because it permits the integration of the classic view of emotions as interfering with human functioning and contemporary views of emotion as adaptive and beneficial. To define patterns that reflect emotion dysregulation, we explain our views of emotion as a dynamic process, and emotion regulation as the bidirectional interplay between emotions and actions/thoughts (extrinsic factors) and the contextual factors that constitute the criteria for that interplay reflecting dysregulation. This conceptualization of emotion regulation and dysregulation leads to methods for studying the intrinsic dynamics of emotion, extrinsic factors that change the intrinsic dynamics of emotion, and how emotion regulation changes over time at multiple time scales. We then apply this thinking to several emotion dysregulation patterns. Emotion regulation is a complex construct, embracing emotion as regulator and as regulated, as self- and other-regulated, and as incorporating both top-down and bottom-up regulatory processes. We highlight an emerging line of research on the development of emotion regulation in early childhood and indicate how this work can inform understanding of emotion dysregulation and the emergence of psychopathology.
The article considers how Joanna Baillie’s concept of “sympathetick curiosity” informs contemporary discussions about emotion regulation. By focusing on Baillie’s De Monfort (1798) and Orra (1812), the article argues that regulatory flexibility is a learned skill that can be improved by actively engaging sympathetic curiosity. Baillie insisted that her plays had pedagogical value and that having audiences watch them would help them learn how to avoid the destructive nature of the passions. Working with Bonanno and Burton’s (2013) model of regulatory flexibility, the article demonstrates the importance not just of inherent differences in emotion regulation but also of learning opportunities individuals engage to develop it. In particular, the article presents a model of how people learn through narrative simulation, drawing on the work of Romantic writers and current critics as well as cognitive psychologists and neuropsychologists. Consideration is then given to how watching protagonists’ manifestations of and responses to an unfolding passion helps audiences learn to develop their regulatory flexibility.
Previous studies have evaluated the adaptiveness of emotion regulation strategies as related to various outcomes; however, most studies have focused on the effects of intrapersonal strategies, independent of interpersonal contextual factors. The present study examined the moderating effects of perceived social support on the association between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and psychological distress. Data were cross-sectional from Internet survey panels. The survey targeted Japanese adults aged 20 to 79 years. The final analysis included data from 1200 participants.
Results of regression analyses showed that higher levels of social support weaken the associations of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies with psychological distress. These results suggest that perceived availability of support may attenuate the negative effects of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, although they may also weaken the positive effects of adaptive strategies. Therefore, psychological interventions should not only target individuals’ emotion regulation strategies but also consider one’s available social resources to promote better mental health.
Abstract Negativity bias, i.e., tendency to respond strongly to negative stimuli, can be captured via behavioural and psychophysiological responses to potential threat. A virtual environment (VE) was created at room-scale wherein participants traversed a grid of ice blocks placed 200 m above the ground. Threat was manipulated by increasing the probability of encountering ice blocks that disintegrated and led to a virtual fall. Participants interacted with the ice blocks via sensors placed on their feet. Thirty-four people were recruited for the study, who were divided into High (HN) and Low (LN) Neuroticism groups. Movement data were recorded alongside skin conductance level and facial electromyography from the corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major. Risk-averse behaviours, such as standing on ‘safe’ blocks and testing blocks prior to movement, increased when threat was highest. HN individuals exhibited more risk-averse behaviour than the LN group, especially in the presence of high threat. In addition, activation of the corrugator muscle was higher for HN individuals in the period following a movement to an ice block. These findings are discussed with respect to the use of room-scale VE as a protocol for emotion induction and measuring trait differences in negativity bias within VR.
Dieses Kapitel gibt eine Übersicht über Definition, Konzepte und Modelle von Emotion und Emotionsregulation (ER). Dabei werde ich näher auf folgende Fragen eingehen: 1) Was versteht man unter Emotion, Emotionsgenerierung und ER, und wie sind diese Prozesse miteinander assoziiert? 2) Welche ER-Strategien werden beschrieben, und welche theoretischen Modelle existieren hierzu? 3) Ist es sinnvoll, ER-Strategien bezüglich ihrer Wirksamkeit in adaptiv versus maladaptiv zu klassifizieren, und welche Bedeutung hat u. a. die Kontextsensitivität hierbei? 4) Was versteht man unter einer flexiblen (adaptiven) ER? Abschließend stelle ich ein integratives Modell flexibler ER vor und diskutiere die klinischen Implikationen und Herausforderungen an die zukünftige Forschung.
Dieses Kapitel beleuchtet Emotionsregulation (ER) aus einer neurowissenschaftlichen Perspektive. Welche Hirnstrukturen sind an der ER beteiligt? Wie arbeiten diese zusammen? Und wie ist der zeitliche Verlauf? Der Fokus dieses Kapitels liegt darauf, den aktuellen Stand der Forschung zu neuronalen Korrelaten der ER verständlich zu beschreiben. Weiterhin wird herausgearbeitet, welche Bedeutung diese neurowissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse für unser Wissen rund um die ER haben – auch in Hinblick auf psychische Störungen und Wohlbefinden.
Studies have shown that interpersonal factors moderate the association between emotion regulation strategies and mental health. Although, there are limited studies on the effect of receiving social support for emotion regulation on mental health. We conducted three studies to examine the effects of assistance from others with emotion regulation on mental health. In Studies 1 and 2, we developed the Received Assistance in Regulating Emotions Questionnaire (RAREQ), a measure of assistance that individuals received when in distress, and reported preliminary validity data. Factor analysis confirmed attentional assistance and cognitive assistance as independent dimensions. In Study 3, we examined the RAREQ's concurrent and predictive validity for mental health. Concurrently, RAREQ scores moderated the relationship between maladaptive regulation strategies and happiness: the relationship was weaker for participants who received high levels of attentional assistance. Prospectively, RAREQ cognitive assistance significantly predicted happiness at Time 2. Results support the differential effects of receiving emotion regulatory assistance for improving emotion regulation and mental health. The RAREQ appears useful for examining of the role of social support in the emotion regulation process. Future research should examine how social context influences the effects of emotion regulatory assistance.
Emotion regulation is not always deliberate, but can also operate on nonconscious or implicit levels. From an action control perspective, there are three ways in which implicit processes may support emotion regulation. First, implicit processes may allow people to decide whether or not to engage in emotion regulation, through implicit activation of emotion regulation goals and implicit monitoring of whether emotional responses are compatible with these goals. Second, implicit processes may guide people in selecting suitable emotion regulation strategies, by activating habitual strategies and by tailoring strategies to situational affordances. Third, the implicit processes recruited by habits and implementation intentions may facilitate the enactment of emotion regulation strategies. Implicit processes are thus vital in the self-regulation of emotion.
Using cellular automata, the authors show how mutual influences among elements of self-relevant information give rise to dynamism, differentiation, and global evaluation in self-concept. The model assumes a press for integration that promotes internally generated dynamics and enables the self-structure to operate as a self-organizing dynamical system. When this press is set at high values, the self can resist inconsistent information and reestablish equilibrium after being perturbed by such information. A weak press for integration, on the other hand, impairs self-organization tendencies, making the system vulnerable to external information. Paradoxically, external information of a random nature may enhance the emergence of a stable self-structure in an initially disordered system. The simulation results suggest that important global properties of the self reflect the operation of integration processes that are generic in complex systems.
People respond to stressful events in different ways, depending on the event and on the regulatory strategies they choose. Coping and emotion regulation theorists have proposed dynamic models in which these two factors, the person and the situation, interact over time to inform adaptation. In practice, however, researchers have tended to assume that particular regulatory strategies are consistently beneficial or maladaptive. We label this assumption the fallacy of uniform efficacy and contrast it with findings from a number of related literatures that have suggested the emergence of a broader but as yet poorly defined construct that we refer to as regulatory flexibility. In this review, we articulate this broader construct and define both its features and limitations. Specifically, we propose a heuristic individual differences framework and review research on three sequential components of flexibility for which propensities and abilities vary: sensitivity to context, availability of a diverse repertoire of regulatory strategies, and responsiveness to feedback. We consider the methodological limitations of research on each component, review questions that future research on flexibility might address, and consider how the components might relate to each other and to broader conceptualizations about stability and change across persons and situations.
© The Author(s) 2013.
As Tversky and Kahneman (1971) noted, effect sizes in smaller samples are inherently unstable. Donellan et al. (2014) in a large sample show that the relation between trait loneliness and warmth extraction through bathing activities is much smaller than in our initial smaller samples. We report further replications of our original findings in samples from India, Israel, and North America, again showing significant correlations between loneliness and physical warmth extraction from bathing and showering; the overall effect being reliable across all three samples, although, consistent with Donellan et al.'s conclusions, smaller than in our original studies. We also respond to criticisms of the original data analyses, noting that removal of the problematic 'bathing frequency' item from the warmth index did not substantially change the results and thus our conclusions from them. We also note that in their 2 studies in which Donellan et al. attempted to most closely follow our original procedure, they did replicate our original results, but not in the other 7 studies in which considerable procedural changes were made. As our new replications reveal variability in bathing and showering preferences and habits around the world, we recommend the inclusion of a wider sample of cultures beyond North American in future research. This research should also focus not only on the narrower question of how loneliness relates to bathing activities but on the broader relation between feelings of social coldness (e.g., after rejection or exclusion) and the seeking of physical warmth (e.g., warm food and drink, thermostat settings). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
The present research analyzed automatic self-regulation during mate searching. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that in a dating context, individuals who are currently looking for a mate show increased automatic attention allocation (focusing effect) to faces of opposite-sex others who display signs of reciprocal romantic interest. We tested this hypothesis in a longitudinal dating study by analyzing intra-individual change in attention allocation to romantic reciprocators and non-reciprocators. Attention allocation was assessed using a visual cueing paradigm prior to and after the announcement of mutual interest in a date between two participants of the study. In line with our hypothesis, focusing effects were obtained selectively for romantic reciprocators. This focusing effect was restricted to participants with a secure attachment style, indicating
interindividual differences in adaptive automatic self-regulation processes during mate searching.
Close and caring relationships are undeniably linked to health and well-being at all stages in the life span. Yet the specific pathways through which close relationships promote optimal well-being are not well understood. In this article, we present a model of thriving through relationships to provide a theoretical foundation for identifying the specific interpersonal processes that underlie the effects of close relationships on thriving. This model highlights two life contexts through which people may potentially thrive (coping successfully with life’s adversities and actively pursuing life opportunities for growth and development), it proposes two relational support functions that are fundamental to the experience of thriving in each life context, and it identifies mediators through which relational support is likely to have long-term effects on thriving. This perspective highlights the need for researchers to take a new look at social support by conceptualizing it as an interpersonal process with a focus on thriving.
Alexithymia is a personality dimension that involves both cognitive deficits, including difficulties in recognizing, describing, and distinguishing feelings from bodily sensations of emotional arousal, and affective deficits, including difficulties in emotionalizing and fantasizing. Alexithymia has been the focus of considerable research. However, researchers have so far taken few steps to translate these insights into treatments and interventions. We call upon researchers to consider more systematically how basic research findings may be translated into tools for improving the fate of alexithymic individuals. To facilitate the translation process, we describe how alexithymia research on emotion, language, oxytocin, and neurofeedback may be converted into clinical interventions. With this outline, we hope to stimulate researchers to invest more in the development of evidence-based treatments for alexithymia, and to evaluate these treatments in terms of their effectiveness.
Dual-process and dual-system theories in both cognitive and social psychology have been subjected to a number of recently published criticisms. However, they have been attacked as a category, incorrectly assuming there is a generic version that applies to all. We identify and respond to 5 main lines of argument made by such critics. We agree that some of these arguments have force against some of the theories in the literature but believe them to be overstated. We argue that the dual-processing distinction is supported by much recent evidence in cognitive science. Our preferred theoretical approach is one in which rapid autonomous processes (Type 1) are assumed to yield default responses unless intervened on by distinctive higher order reasoning processes (Type 2). What defines the difference is that Type 2 processing supports hypothetical thinking and load heavily on working memory.
© The Author(s) 2013.
Emotion regulation has been conceptualized as a process by which individuals modify their emotional experiences, expressions, and physiology and the situations eliciting such emotions in order to produce appropriate responses to the ever-changing demands posed by the environment. Thus, context plays a central role in emotion regulation. This is particularly relevant to the work on emotion regulation in psychopathology, because psychological disorders are characterized by rigid responses to the environment. However, this recognition of the importance of context has appeared primarily in the theoretical realm, with the empirical work lagging behind. In this review, the author proposes an approach to systematically evaluate the contextual factors shaping emotion regulation. Such an approach consists of specifying the components that characterize emotion regulation and then systematically evaluating deviations within each of these components and their underlying dimensions. Initial guidelines for how to combine such dimensions and components in order to capture substantial and meaningful contextual influences are presented. This approach is offered to inspire theoretical and empirical work that it is hoped will result in the development of a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the relationship between context and emotion regulation.
© The Author(s) 2013.
Interpersonal touch is a fundamental but undervalued aspect of human nature. In the present article, the authors review psychological research showing that even fleeting forms of touch may have a powerful impact on our emotional and social functioning. Given its significant beneficial effects, touch may be valuable as a therapeutic or health-promoting tool.
Models postulating 2 distinct processing modes have been proposed in several topic areas within social and cognitive psychology. We advance a new conceptual model of the 2 processing modes. The structural basis of the new model is the idea, supported by psychological and neuropsychological evidence, that humans possess 2 memory systems. One system slowly learns general regularities, whereas the other can quickly form representations of unique or novel events. Associative retrieval or pattern completion in the slow-learning system elicited by a salient cue constitutes the effortless processing mode. The second processing mode is more conscious and effortful; it involves the intentional retrieval of explicit, symbolically represented rulesfrom either memory system and their use to guide processing. After presenting our model, we review existing dual-process models in several areas, emphasizing their similar assumptions of a quick, effortless processing mode that rests on well-learned prior associations and a second, more effortful processing mode that involves rule-based inferences and is employed only when people have both cognitive capacity and motivation. New insights and implications of the model for several topic areas are outlined.
A multiaxial model of coping and instrument were developed to explore communal aspects of coping and move beyond the current individualistic perspective. The model suggests that coping strategies differ on level of activity, prosocial and antisocial demeanor, and directness. Individualistic models of coping tend to ignore the social aspects of coping and neither see prosocial coping as healthy nor antisocial coping as unhealthy, despite a wealth of psychological theory that conceptualizes healthy functioning as both active and prosocial. Individualistic models also imply that direct action is preferred, whereas communal models emphasize that social coping may often be indirect. In a series of studies we found support for the muitiaxial model among both student and inner-city samples. Women were found to be as active as men, but more prosocial in their coping. Men were more antisocial in their coping. Indirect coping, however, was either less well conceptualized or measured as the results regarding this dimension were more mixed.
Reports 2 experiments that test whether both emotional and nonemotional feelings may be influenced by uninterpreted proprioceptive input. The logic of the procedure was adopted from studies by F. Strack et al (1988), who unobtrusively manipulated people's facial expressions. In the 1st experiment, a functionally equivalent technique was used to vary the posture of the body. Study 1 results revealed that success at an achievement task led to greater feelings of pride if the outcome was received in an upright position rather than in a slumped posture. Study 2 results revealed that nonemotional feelings of effort were influenced by contraction of the forehead muscle (corrugator), and Ss' self-ratings on a trait dimension reflected this experience when the facial contraction was maintained during the recall of behavioral episodes exemplifying this trait. To account for these results, a framework is proposed that draws on a distinction between noetic and experiential representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This review demonstrates that an individualist view of emotion and regulation is untenable. First, I question the plausibility of a developmental shift away from social interdependency in emotion regulation. Second, I show that there are multiple reasons for emotional experiences in adults to elicit a process of social sharing of emotion, and I review the supporting evidence. Third, I look at effects that emotion sharing entails at the interpersonal and at the collective levels. Fourth, I examine the contribution of emotional sharing to emotion regulation together with the relevant empirical evidence. Finally, the various functions that the social sharing of emotion fulfills are reviewed and the relevance of the social sharing of emotion for emotion scientists is discussed.
The present article reviews modern research on the psychology of emotion regulation. Emotion regulation determines the offset of emotional responding and is thus distinct from emotional sensitivity, which determines the onset of emotional responding. Among the most viable categories for classifying emotion-regulation strategies are the targets and functions of emotion regulation. The emotion-generating systems that are targeted in emotion regulation include attention, knowledge, and bodily responses. The functions of emotion regulation include satisfying hedonic needs, supporting specific goal pursuits, and facilitating the global personality system. Emotion-regulation strategies are classified in terms of their targets and functions and relevant empirical work is reviewed. Throughout this review, emotion regulation emerges as one of the most far-ranging and influential processes at the interface of cognition and emotion.
Although emotions have a strong impact, individuals have a remarkable ability to control or regulate them in various ways. Choosing between these various regulatory options in a manner that suits situational demands, has been recently strongly linked to well-being and mental health. Despite its clear importance, emotion regulation choice remained unexplored until recently. This paper describes a recent conceptual framework that represents a classic example of cognition-emotion interaction, where deliberate executive control processes modulate the influence of competing associative emotion generative processes. The utilization of this conceptual framework to explain central influencing factors and underlying mechanisms of emotion regulation choice entails an interdisciplinary intersection of affective science and decision making.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages
Our aim in this chapter is to outline the dynamical perspective and demonstrate its relevance to social psychology. The dynamical approach serves as both a useful heuristic and an integrative platform for the diverse phenomena comprising social psychology. Both these functions are reflected in the following principles, which summarize the primary themes conveyed in this chapter. Principle 1. Intrinsic dynamics are inherent in social psychological systems. Principle 2. There is a direct connection between structure and dynamics in social psychological systems. Principle 3. Attractor dynamics provide for stability while allowing for constant change in social psychological systems. Principle 4. Latent attractors represent possible equilibrium states for a system that have yet to be manifest. Principle 5. Change in social psychological systems can refer to changes in state or changes in attractors. Principle 6. Personal causation can be understood as patterns of intrinsic dynamics and constraints on the effects of external influences. Principle 7. Structure and order at the system level can result from interactions among elements at a lower level in a process referred to as self-organization. Principle 8. The approach of dynamical minimalism is essential for building and testing dynamical theories. Because dynamical principles characterize complex systems generally, the dynamical approach to investigating personal and interpersonal experience holds potential for bridging social psychology with other areas of science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The present review adopts an action control perspective on emotion regulation, contextualising the gap between emotion control goals (e.g., I want to remain calm) and emotional outcomes (e.g., anger, anxiety, and aggression) in terms of the broader literature on goal pursuit. We propose that failure to effectively
regulate emotions can result from difficulties with the self-regulatory tasks of (i) identifying the need to regulate, (ii) deciding whether and how to regulate, and (iii) enacting a regulation strategy. Next we review evidence that a technique traditionally associated with regulating behavioural goals (forming
implementation intentions or ‘‘if-then’’ planning) can help to overcome these difficulties. Meta-analysis indicated that forming implementation intentions is effective in modifying emotional outcomes, with a large effect relative to no regulation instructions (k = 21, N = 1306 d = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.61 to 1.20) and a medium-sized effect relative to goal intention instructions (k = 29, N = 1208, d = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.42 to 0.65). Our conclusion is that research on emotion regulation might benefit from an action control perspective and the
interventions that this perspective offers.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
A growing body of research has revealed that labeling an emotion, or putting one's feelings into words, can help to downregulate that affect, as occurs with intentional forms of emotion regulation, such as reappraisal and distraction. We translated this basic research to a real-world clinical context, in which spider-fearful individuals were repeatedly exposed to a live spider. Using a between-subjects design, we compared the effects of affect labeling, reappraisal, distraction from the feared stimulus, and exposure alone during this brief course of exposure therapy on subsequent fear responding. At a 1-week posttest involving a different spider in another context, the affect-labeling group exhibited reduced skin conductance response relative to the other groups and marginally greater approach behavior than the distraction group; however, the affect-labeling group did not differ from the other groups in self-reported fear. Additionally, greater use of anxiety and fear words during exposure was associated with greater reductions in fear responding. Thus, perhaps surprisingly, affect labeling may help to regulate aspects of emotion in a clinical context.
This research explored how individuals regulate their emotions by consuming products of a hedonic nature. We introduce a new construct to the consumer research literature, emotion regulation consumption (ERC), which involves the consumption or purchase of a good or service for the purposes of alleviating, repairing, or managing an emotion in the short term. Specifically, ERC processes were examined for four discrete emotions – sadness, amusement, contentment, and fear/anxiety. Additionally, this research demonstrates how an individual's ability to use internal cognitive control processes, or “emotion regulation strategies,” to manage emotions may differentially moderate the effects of emotions on hedonic consumption. Important theoretical and managerial implications are offered:
Anytime that I am bummed, I order in the unhealthiest foods I can think of. I definitely use food as a crutch. I call it eating my feelings. (female, 23).
Whenever I feel great, the first thing I want to do is play golf. It does not matter if I go play a full round somewhere or just get in some practice at the driving range…I just want to hit some golf balls. (male, 24).1
Copyright
The now-classic Metaphors We Live By changed our understanding of metaphor and its role in language and the mind. Metaphor, the authors explain, is a fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects. Because such metaphors structure our most basic understandings of our experience, they are "metaphors we live by"--metaphors that can shape our perceptions and actions without our ever noticing them.
In this updated edition of Lakoff and Johnson's influential book, the authors supply an afterword surveying how their theory of metaphor has developed within the cognitive sciences to become central to the contemporary understanding of how we think and how we express our thoughts in language.
Approach-avoidance theories describe the major systems that motivate behaviours in reaction to classes of appetitive (rewarding) and aversive (punishing) stimuli. The literature points to two major avoidance systems, one related to pure avoidance and escape of aversive stimuli, and a second, to behavioural inhibition induced by the detection of goal conflict (in addition, there is evidence for nonaffective behavioural constraint). A third major system, responsible for approach behaviour, is reactive to appetitive stimuli, and has several subcomponents. A number of combined effects of these systems are outlined. Finally, the hierarchical nature of behavioural control is delineated, including the role played by conscious awareness in behavioural inhibition.
One of the fastest growing areas within psychology is the field of emotion regulation. However, enthusiasm for this topic continues to outstrip conceptual clarity, and there remains considerable uncertainty as to what is even meant by “emotion regulation.” The goal of this review is to examine the current status and future prospects of this rapidly growing field. In the first section, I define emotion and emotion regulation and distinguish both from related constructs. In the second section, I use the process model of emotion regulation to selectively review evidence that different regulation strategies have different consequences. In the third section, I introduce the extended process model of emotion regulation; this model considers emotion regulation to be one type of valuation, and distinguishes three emotion regulation stages (identification, selection, implementation). In the final section, I consider five key growth points for the field of emotion regulation.
Valence biases in attention allocation were assessed after remembering positive or negative personal events that were either still emotionally hot or to which the person had already adapted psychologically. Differences regarding the current state of psychological adjustment were manipulated experimentally by instructing participants to recall distant vs. recent events (Experiment 1) or affectively hot events vs. events to which the person had accommodated already (Experiment 2). Valence biases in affective processing were measured with a valence search task. Processes of emotional counter-regulation (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of opposite valence to the emotional event) were elicited by remembering affectively hot events, whereas congruency effects (i.e., attention allocation to stimuli of the same valence as the emotional event) were obtained for events for which a final appraisal had already been established. The results of our study help to resolve conflicting findings from the literature regarding congruent vs. incongruent effects of remembering emotional events on affective processing. We discuss implications of our findings for the conception of emotions and for the dynamics of emotion regulation processes.
We hypothesized that framing possible outcomes of decisions in terms of gains vs. losses should increase the salience of information that is incongruent in valence (counter-regulation principle: gain frame – negativity bias, loss frame – positivity bias). These incongruent attentional biases in the processing of positive and negative outcomes of risky options can explain why people tend to avoid risky options in a gain frame but tend to choose risky options in a loss frame. In line with our expectations, Experiment 1 revealed incongruent effects of framing on attentional biases for positive vs. negative stimuli in an evaluation task. In addition, valence bias predicted risk-seeking vs. risk-averse decisions and mediated the effect of framing on decision making. Two additional experiments investigated effects of valence biases on risky decision making by manipulating affective processing directly with an attention training task. Inducing a positivity (negativity) bias produced risk-seeking (risk-averse) decision behavior by enhancing the salience of win- or loss-related information in a gambling task with ambivalent color stimuli (Experiment 2) and by enhancing the impact of gain or loss outcomes on decision making in a coin toss (Experiment 3).
Individuals with low (rather than high) self-esteem often struggle with existential concerns. In the present research, we examined whether these existential concerns may be alleviated by seemingly trivial experiences of both real and simulated interpersonal touch. A brief touch on the shoulder by a female experimenter led individuals with low self-esteem to experience less death anxiety (Study 1) and more social connectedness after a death reminder (Study 2). Reminding individuals with low self-esteem of death increased their desire for touch, as indicated by higher value estimates of a teddy bear, a toy animal that simulates interpersonal touch (Study 3). Finally, holding a teddy bear (vs. a cardboard box) led individuals with low self-esteem to respond to a death reminder with less defensive ethnocentrism (Study 4). Individuals with high self-esteem were unaffected by touch (Studies 1-4). These findings highlight the existential significance of embodied touch experiences, particularly for individuals with low self-esteem.
In 1988, the cognitive revolution had become institutionalized: Cognition was the manipulation of abstract symbols by rules. But, much like institutionalized political parties, some of the ideas were becoming stale. Where was action? Where was the self? How could cognition be smoothly integrated with emotions, with social psychology, with development, with clinical analyses? Around that time, thinkers in linguistics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, biology, and psychology were formulating the idea that just as overt behavior depends on the specifics of the body in action, so might cognition depend on the body. Here we characterize (some would say caricature) the strengths and weaknesses of cognitive psychology of that era, and then we describe what has come to be called embodied cognition: how cognition arises through the dynamic interplay of brain controlling bodily action controlling perception, which changes the brain. We focus on the importance of action and how action shapes perception, the self, and language. Having the body in action as a central consideration for theories of cognition promises, we believe, to help unify psychology.
© The Author(s) 2013.
Social cognition refers to the mental representations and processes that underlie social judgments and behavior—for example, the application of stereotypes to members of social groups. Theories of social cognition have generally assumed that mental representations are abstract and stable and that they are activated and applied by relatively automatic, context-independent processes. Recent evidence is inconsistent with these expectations, however. Social-cognitive processes have been shown to be adaptive to the perceiver's current social goals, communicative contexts, and bodily states. Although these findings can often be given ad hoc explanations within current conceptual frameworks, they invite a fuller integration with the broad intellectual movement emphasizing situated cognition. Such an approach has already been influential in many areas within psychology and beyond, and theories in the field of social cognition would benefit by taking advantage of its insights.
This chapter proposes a new integration of social psychology and situated cognition—that is, socially situated cognition (SSC). This new approach rests directly on recent developments in psychology and cognitive science captured by the label situated cognition. It highlights four core assumptions that are common to social psychology and the situated cognition perspective: Cognition is for the adaptive regulation of action, and mental representations are action oriented; cognition is embodied, drawing on our sensorimotor abilities and environments as well as human brains; cognition and action are the emergent outcome of dynamic processes of interaction between an agent and an environment; and cognition is distributed across brains and the environment and across social agents. With regard to each of these themes, the chapter reviews and integrates relevant social psychological research and suggests ways in which the theme can be advanced by rethinking current assumptions. The overall goals are to make social psychology part of the interdisciplinary integration emerging around the concept of situated cognition, and to advance these four themes as high-level conceptual principles that can organize seemingly disparate areas of research and theory within social psychology itself.
Accounts of falling in love were obtained from three samples: (a) lengthy accounts from fifty undergraduates who had fallen in love in the last 8 months; (b) brief accounts from 100 adult nonstudents, which were compared to 100 brief falling-in-friendship accounts from the same population; and (c) questionnaire responses about falling-in-love experiences from 277 undergraduates, which were compared to falling-in-friendship-experience questionnaires from eighty-three similar undergraduates. Content analyses of Study 1 and 2 accounts and Study 3 questionnaire results suggested that falling in love was preceded by frequent reported incidences of discovering other's liked the self and noticing other's desirable characteristics (appearance and personality); moderate incidences of perceived similarity, propinquity and `special falling-in-love processes' (readiness, specific cues, arousal/unusualness, mystery, isolation); and relatively low reported incidences of filling needs and social influence. These patterns contrast with those suggested by the general-attraction and mate-selection literatures. Falling-in-friendship accounts, on the other hand, gave relatively more emphasis to similarity and propinquity, but somewhat less to reciprocal liking, other's desirable characteristics, needs, and the special falling-in-love processes.
Emotions seem to come and go as they please. However, we actually hold considerable sway over our emotions: We influence which emotions we have and how we experience and express these emotions. The process model of emotion regulation described here suggests that how we regulate our emotions matters. Regulatory strategies that act early in the emotion-generative process should have quite different outcomes than strategies that act later. This review focuses on two widely used strategies for down-regulating emotion. The first, reappraisal, comes early in the emotion-generative process. It consists of changing how we think about a situation in order to decrease its emotional impact. The second, suppression, comes later in the emotion-generative process. It involves inhibiting the outward signs of emotion. Theory and research suggest that reappraisal is more effective than suppression. Reappraisal decreases the experience and behavioral expression of emotion, and has no impact on memory. By contrast, suppression decreases behavioral expression, but fails to decrease the experience of emotion, and actually impairs memory. Suppression also increases physiological responding in both the suppressors and their social partners.
The implications of conceptualizing personality as a cognitive-affective processing system that functions as a parallel constraint satisfaction network are explored. Computer simulations show that from dynamic interactions among the units in such a network, a set of stable attractor states and functionally equivalent groups of situations emerge, such that IF exposed to situation group X, THEN the system settles in attractor Y. This conceptualization explicitly models the effect of situations on a given individual, and therefore can also be used to model the function of interpersonal systems. We demonstrate this possibility by modeling dyadic systems in which one partner's behavior becomes the situational input into the other partner's personality system, and vice versa. The results indicate that each member of the dyad will, in general, exhibit new attractor states. This suggests that the thoughts, affects, and behaviors that an individual typically experiences are a function not of that individual's personality system alone, but rather a function of the interpersonal system of which the individual is a part. Just as individuals have distinctive and stable IF-THEN signatures, so do interpersonal relationships. Understanding the structure of the cognitive-affective processing system of each relationship partner also should enable predictions of their distincitve relational signatures as emergent properties of the interpersonal system that develops.
In the realm of self-regulation, recent work shows that the state of ego depletion can be vicariously transmitted from a target to a perceiver simply by imagining the perspective of a depleted target (i.e., vicarious depletion; Ackerman et al., 2009). The present study asked whether such vicarious effects can extend to the domain of self-regulatory recovery. In Experiment 1, depleted participants who took the perspective of someone engaging in a restorative activity showed recovered self-control on a later task. Experiments 2 and 3 expanded upon this effect by illustrating that such vicarious self-regulatory processes only emerge if the target is similar to the participant. Taken together, the present studies offer a powerful method by which mental resources can be replenished, and identify one critical boundary condition of its effectiveness.
We examined dynamical patterns in the course of bipolar depression. We interviewed 55 individuals with bipolar I disorder using Modified Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (MHRSD) for at least 20 months. Using a recently developed methodology, we categorized the level of instability and the nature of attractor patterns for each individual. Instability was related to the lifetime severity of depression as well as suicidality during the follow-up period. Individuals varied from 0 to 2 in the number of attractors. Relatively few individuals displayed only one attractor that fell within a depressive range; the most common patterns were instability and two attractors. Limitations and implications of these results are discussed.
The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.
suggest that in the absence of social verification, experience is transitory, random, and ephemeral / once acknowledged by others and shared in a continuing process of social verification termed "shared reality," experience is no longer mere capricious subjectivity, but instead achieves the phenomenological status of objective reality / in other words, experience is established as valid and reliable to the extent that it is shared with others / examine classic social-psychological research and theory as well as more recent research, especially that pertaining to the role of communication processes in social cognition / [the authors] suggest several implications of the hypothesis for such topics as stereotyping, self, language, attitudes, and persuasion
suggest that (1) the individual creates and maintains the experience of reality or meaning by sharing it with others in a process of social verification; (2) social interaction depends upon and is regulated by the achievement of shared reality; and (3) the shared reality that is established in social interaction in turn functions to regulate the self, closing the dialogical circle (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The emerging field of emotion regulation studies how individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express them. This review takes an evolutionary perspective and characterizes emotion in terms of response tendencies. Emotion regulation is defined and distinguished from coping, mood regulation, defense, and affect regulation. In the increasingly specialized discipline of psychology, the field of emotion regulation cuts across traditional boundaries and provides common ground. According to a process model of emotion regulation, emotion may be regulated at five points in the emotion generative process: (a) selection of the situation, (b) modification of the situation, (c) deployment of attention, (d) change of cognitions, and (e) modulation of responses. The field of emotion regulation promises new insights into age-old questions about how people manage their emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)