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Social Anxiety and Positive Emotions: A Prospective Examination of a Self-Regulatory Model With Tendencies to Suppress or Express Emotions as a Moderating Variable
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to examine social anxiety as a predictor of positive emotions using a short-term prospective design. We examined whether the effects of social anxiety on positive emotions are moderated by tendencies to openly express or suppress emotions. Over the course of a 3-month interval, people with excessive social anxiety endorsed stable, low levels of positive emotions. In addition, people with low social anxiety who frequently display their emotions openly, whether negative or positive, reported the greatest increases in positive emotions. Similar results were found when using a measure of emotion suppression (low social anxiety and less tendency to rely on these types of regulatory acts led to the greatest positive emotions). These social anxiety main and interactive effects could not be attributed to depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that relations between social anxiety and positive emotional experiences over time are best understood in the context of meaningful individual differences such as affect regulatory strategies.
... Although the relationship between overprotective parenting and SA is fairly well-established, limited attention has been paid to potential factors that may explain this relationship. Herein, we argue that emotion regulation (ER) may be an important intervening factor, as maladaptive ER strategies are considered to be core characteristics of SA (e.g., Clark & Wells, 1995;Kashdan and Breen, 2008;Werner et al., 2011). ...
... Further, in line with the previous literature (e.g., Dryman & Heimberg, 2018), the use of such emotional suppression strategies may set adolescents at risk for more SA symptoms, although this association was less pronounced. Indeed, previous research found that individuals with SA report using emotional suppression more often, compared to individuals without SA symptoms (e.g., Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Werner et al., 2011). ...
The present study sought to examine the underlying mechanisms through which overprotective parenting relates to social anxiety symptoms in adolescents. Specifically, we tested whether the adolescents’ emotion regulation strategies of dysregulation, suppression, and integration, played an intervening role in the association between perceived maternal and paternal overprotection and social anxiety symptoms in adolescents. A sample of 278 Swiss adolescents filled out questionnaires assessing perceived overprotective parenting, social anxiety symptoms and emotion regulation. Results indicated that perceived overprotective parenting was significantly associated with adolescents’ social anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, structural equation modeling analyses indicated that emotional dysregulation, in particular, intervenes in the association between both maternal and paternal overprotection and social anxiety. These findings highlight emotion regulation difficulties as a potential mechanism underlying the association between parental overprotection and social anxiety, suggesting that adolescents’ maladaptive emotion regulation strategies as well as overprotecting parenting could be targeted when treating social anxiety symptoms.
... Other research emphasizes cognitive-behavioural factors such as maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (Farmer & Kashdan, 2012;Kashdan et al., 2013), experiential avoidance (Kashdan et al., 2013;Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Kashdan & Steger, 2006;Rodebaugh & Shumaker, 2012), and excessive use of maladaptive self-regulation strategies during social interaction (Kashdan et al., 2011;Rodebaugh & Heimberg, 2008). Studies supporting this view have shown that people with SAD are motivated to suppress displays of emotion and conceal other aspects of themselves that they worry others might evaluate negatively (Moscovitch et al., 2013), resulting in the potential depletion of cognitive resources required to benefit from positive social experiences (see Morrison & Heimberg, 2013). ...
... A significant proportion of previous research on PA deficits in SA has relied on trait measures of affect (e.g., Brown et al., 1998;Kashdan & Breen, 2008), or longer-time periods such as "the past week" or "the past few days" (e.g., Alden & Trew, 2013;Taylor et al., 2017). Daily diary research has often relied on end-of-day affect ratings (e.g., Farmer & Kashdan, 2012;Kashdan & Steger, 2006). ...
Prior research has shown that Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is associated with significantly diminished positive affect (PA). Few studies have examined PA reactivity to pleasant experimental stimuli in individuals with SAD and whether emotional responses might be moderated by social context. Here, we investigated repeated measures of PA reactivity among individuals with SAD (n = 46) and healthy controls (HC; n = 39) in response to standardized neutral images, pleasant music, and social versus nonsocial guided imagery. Primary analyses revealed that SAD and HC participants did not differ in their PA reactivity when PA was conceptualized as a unitary construct. Exploratory analyses examining discrete subfacets of PA revealed potential deficits for SAD participants in relaxed and content PA, but not activated PA. Although participants with SAD reported relatively lower levels of relaxed and content PA overall compared with controls, they exhibited normal increases in all PA subfacets in response to pleasant music as well as pleasant social and nonsocial stimuli. These findings support a more nuanced conclusion about PA deficits in SAD than is described in the extant literature, suggesting that detecting PA deficits in SAD may depend upon how PA is conceptualized, evoked, and measured. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Low CR conveys stronger risk for depression in individuals with SAD than in healthy controls (D'Avanzato et al., 2013). The combination of ES with social anxiety has been linked to subsequent low positive affect (Farmer & Kashdan, 2012;Kashdan & Breen, 2008), a key feature of depression. On the basis of such evidence, Dryman & Heimberg (2018) proposed that SAD/MDD comorbidity may result from less CR and more ES. ...
... Our results add support for the benefits of CR in conveying resilience against depression in those with social anxiety (D'Avanzato et al., 2013). The benefit of ES at low levels of CR in our data is unexpected in the context of prior studies that have mostly found ES to be maladaptive, such as studies that have shown ES to strengthen the association of social anxiety with less positive mood (Farmer & Kashdan, 2012;Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Kashdan & Steger, 2006) and lower life satisfaction (Jazaieri et al., 2017). Although our findings do not indicate an adaptive outcome of ES, they do suggest that ES weakens the association of social anxiety and depression when CR is low. ...
Comorbidity of social anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder is common and bears a worse prognosis than either disorder alone. Emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal (CR), expressive suppression (ES), and their interaction may impact the association of social anxiety with depression symptoms. Path analysis was used to examine how CR and ES may interact to predict the association of social anxiety with depression in a large, multi-university sample (N = 9,750). There was a three-way interaction of CR, ES, and social anxiety predicting depression. CR weakened the association of social anxiety with depression at low levels of ES. ES weakened the social anxiety/depression relation at low CR, and ES strengthened the association at high levels of CR. Compared to low levels of both strategies, high levels of either emotion regulation strategy paired with low levels of the other weakened the social anxiety/depression association. Compared to high or low levels of both strategies, high CR with low ES was associated with a weaker relation between social anxiety and depression. The association of social anxiety and depression symptoms, hence their comorbidity, may depend in part on the interaction of CR and ES. ES may interfere with the resilience to comorbidity provided by CR. Either CR or ES may convey resilience compared to using neither strategy.
... Consistent with these theoretical models, highly socially anxious individuals (Heerey & Kring, 2007) and individuals with SAD (Pearlstein et al., 2019) have been found to smile less than their nonsocially-anxious interaction partners, to express emotions to a lesser extent (Kashdan & Breen, 2008), and to perceive overt emotional expression as negative (Spokas et al., 2009). This motivation for self-concealment is not circumscribed to face-to-face communication and has also been identified in online interactions. ...
... Thus, when using an initial interaction application, individuals with SAD may upload pictures that are less positive and smiling and more neutral, and may disclose less personal information about themselves compared to individuals without SAD. This is based on both empirical studies (e.g., Kashdan & Breen, 2008) and theoretical models (e.g., Alden & Taylor, 2010;Clark & Wells, 1995;Schlenker & Leary, 1982, 1985. ...
Individuals with SAD have difficulties initiating and maintaining relationships. However, little is known about the preinteraction behavior of individuals with SAD. Individuals with (n = 40) and without SAD (n = 40) who reported being attracted to individuals of the opposite sex participated in a preregistered lab-based experiment using a novel task similar to existing initial interaction/dating applications. Specifically, participants viewed 112 profiles of individuals from the opposite sex that included pictures (either happy/smiling or neutral) and descriptive texts and were requested to choose partners for a future interaction. Participants could swipe right to indicate their willingness to meet an individual, swipe left to indicate their lack of willingness to meet the individual, or press a button to receive more information before making their decision. Participants were also requested to provide a photo of themselves and write a short description of themselves ostensibly for inclusion in the database. We found that individuals with SAD were less likely to swipe right compared to individuals without SAD, and their likelihood to swipe right did not increase in response to happy/smiling pictures. Individuals with SAD also sought less information about others before making their swiping decisions compared to individuals without SAD. Finally, individuals with SAD provided shorter self-descriptions and more neutral pictures compared to individuals without SAD. These findings could not be accounted for by depression and remained above and beyond depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that significant SAD-related biases may exist even in preinteraction stages of relationship development (i.e., before initial interactions occur) and research and clinical implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Leading a meaningful life is one of the main components of subjective wellbeing (Steger et al., 2008). It is possible that individuals who perceive their lives as less meaningful (Gross & John, 2003;Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Machell et al., 2015) also experience high negative affect and less positive affect which subsequently may be associated with low general wellbeing and specific job satisfaction aspects (e.g., burnout, PL). ...
... This may, in turn, hinder goal-attainment and value-directed behaviors (Bouton et al., 2001;Craske & Barlow, 2007;Hayes et al., 2006Hayes et al., , 1996. Less engagement in value-directed behaviors can reduce life satisfaction and elicit negative emotions (Gámez et al., 2011;Kashdan & Breen, 2008), which can, in turn, increase the risk of burnout (McEwen & Gianaros, 2011;Zhao et al., 2019). ...
Objectives:
The current study aims to investigate the indirect associations between experiential avoidance (EA) and burnout, wellbeing, and productivity loss (PL) via the mediating role of positive and negative emotions among police officers.
Methods:
Data were collected on 187 officers (84% male) aged 21-64 years between 2019 and 2020. Participants completed online self-report measures.
Results:
EA was indirectly associated with burnout via positive and negative affect. EA was indirectly associated with wellbeing through positive affect, positive affect and burnout, and negative affect and burnout. Finally, EA was indirectly associated with PL via positive affect and burnout, and negative affect and burnout.
Conclusion:
Results provide support for the role of EA in officers' wellbeing and job performance via increasing negative affect and decreasing positive affect. This highlights the importance of interventions, such as acceptance and commitment therapy that target acceptance and psychological flexibility.
... People with social anxiety also have exaggerated adverse emotional reactions and attenuated positive emotional responses (Goldin and Gross, 2010;Kashdan et al., 2011). Use of maladaptive ER strategies like experiential avoidance and suppression might be responsible for such deficits in rewarding social experiences and positive emotions (Kashdan and Breen, 2008;Kashdan and Steger, 2006;Kashdan et al., 2013;Weisman et al., 2015). It must be noted that socially anxious individuals tend to suppress both positive (Werner and Gross, 2010) and negative emotions (Spokas, Luterek and Heimberg, 2009). ...
... Higher social anxiety seems to have a link with infrequent, weaker and less durable positive experiences, lower dispositional positive affect and fearful responses to overtly positive social experiences (Kashdan et al., 2011;Turk et al., 2005). Emotion dysregulation and depression might also impact the ability and experience of positive emotions among socially anxious individuals by conferring or denying opportunities for the development of positive skills (Kashdan and Breen, 2008). Everaert et al. (2020) showed that inflexibility in revising negative interpretations was associated with social anxiety and severity of depression which also led to dampening of positive emotions. ...
Purpose
Due to ongoing significant life changes during the transition into higher education, social anxiety can be problematic, especially for college students. It has adverse effects on various aspects of one’s life, including one’s feelings and emotions. The study investigated the interplay between social anxiety and emotions and its impact on affect. The aim of this study is to examine the role of difficulties in emotion regulation in the relationship between social anxiety and change in affect.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a longitudinal study. Data was collected with self-report instruments at two time points with a gap of four months. Participants were Indian undergraduate students from a technical institute.
Findings
The result revealed that high social anxiety in tandem with difficulties engaging in goal-directed behavior significantly impacts changes in positive affect. However, this effect was significant only in the presence of depression.
Research limitations/implications
This study highlights the harmful impact of comorbid issues such as depression in socially anxious individuals. The present study might have implications for educators and clinicians working with college students.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study to test the proposed research model in a sample of Indian college students. The use of a moderated moderation analysis with the three regulation strategies and depression also adds to the uniqueness of this study.
... Numerous researchers have posited that lack of expression of emotion may signal indifference to others, which may, in turn, hinder close relationships and dampen the PA that tend to accompany satisfying relationships (Berg & Derlega, 1987;Davis, 1982;Laurenceau, Barrett, & Pietromonaco, 1998;Reis & Shaver, 1988). Similarly, engagement in strategies like ES might preclude individuals from engaging in exploratory behaviors that would otherwise increase PA (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). ...
... These studies yielded inconsistent empirical support for their proposed moderation model, in which socially anxious individuals who engage in ES may allocate cognitive and emotional resources to suppressing their emotions that they might otherwise use to engage in appetitive behaviors that could, in turn, increase their PA levels. Although Kashdan and Steger (2006) found that higher ES was associated with lower PA among individuals who reported high SA, the same pattern did not emerge in a subsequent study (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). ...
People differ in their self-reported propensities to experience positive affect (PA). Even those prone to internalizing symptoms show varied proclivities to PA; social anxiety (SA), for instance, unlike other types of anxiety, shows a strong negative association with PA that cannot be explained by diminished reward sensitivity. Heightened reliance on suppression of emotional displays (expressive suppression; ES) may be an alternate contributor to attenuated PA among people with elevated SA, relative to people with other types of anxiety. A first step toward testing this hypothesis is clarifying the ES-PA association and examining whether it varies as a function of anxiety type (social anxiety vs. other types of anxiety).
This meta-analysis (k = 41; n = 11,010) revealed a significant, negative association between ES and PA (r = −0.158); however, this relationship was not significant for individuals with social or other anxiety disorders. Moreover, two moderators (sample culture—Western: r = −0.16; Eastern: r = 0.003; type of emotion suppressed—Negative: r = 0.18; Positive: r = −0.12) accounted for significant heterogeneity in effect sizes. This review synthesizes the literature on ES and PA in healthy and anxious samples; findings suggest moderating variables merit closer attention in future studies.
... For example, the correlation between experiential avoidance and anxiety is about 0.60, [63][64][65] while the correlation between emotion supression and anxiety is substantially lower and amounts to about 0.20. 57,[66][67][68][69][70] It can be speculated that experiential avoidance is a more pathological form of emotion dysregulation because when suppressing emotions a person tries to modulate the motor and physiological expression of an emotion, but the feeling of that emotion can still remain, while in the case of experiential avoidance the person supresses the motor expression, the physiological expression, and also the feeling itself, which are all three components of the total three components of emotion. In other words, in emotion supression the experienced emotion is hidden only "outwards", i.e. the person is trying to hide it from others, while in experiential avoidance the person is hiding the emotion primarily in relation to oneself. ...
Objective: To analyze the correlation between sociodemographic variables, emotional states (anxiety, depression), emotion regulation strategies (experiential avoidance, emotion suppression) and acute gastrointestinal symptoms. Method: On a convenience sample of 186 subjects, data on acute gastrointestinal symptoms, emotions (depression and anxiety), emotion regulation strategies (emotion supression and experiential avoidance) and sociodemographic variables have been gathered using a Physical health questionnaire (PHQ), Zung depression scale, State trait anxiety inventory (STAI), Emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ) and Brief experiential avoidance questionnaire (BEAQ). Data was analyzed by multiple hierarchical regression. In the final model 32% of variance of acute gastrointestinal symptoms was explained, and statistically significant predictors were depression and experiential avoidance. Higher levels of depression and experiential avoidance were associated with more frequent acute gastrointestinal symptoms. Conclusion: A high prevalence of clinically relevant symptoms of anxiety (63%) and depression (41%), as well as a positive correlation between emotion, emotion regulation strategies and acute gastrointestinal symptoms emphasize the importance of providing psychological support to patients with gastrointestinal system disorders. Independent contribution of experiential avoidance to the prediction of acute gastrointestinal symptoms shows that in order to understand the psychological aspect of gastrointestinal symptoms it is important to have insight not only into emotions, but also into the way they are being regulated. Sažetak Cilj: Analizirati povezanost između sociodemografskih varijabli, emocionalnih stanja (anksioznost, depresivnost), strategija regulacije emocija (izbjegavanje doživljaja, potiskivanje emocija) i akutnih probavnih simptoma Metode: Na prigodnom uzorku od 186 sudionika pomoću Upitnika tjelesnog zdravlja (PHQ), Zungovog upitnika depresivnosti, Upitnika anksioznosti kao stanja i osobine ličnosti (STAI), Upitnika regulacije emocija (ERQ) i Kratkog upitnika izbjegavanja doživljaja (BEAQ), prikupljeni su podaci o akutnim probavnim simptomima, emocijama (depresivnosti i anksioznosti), strategijama regulacije emocija (potiskivanje emocija i izbjegavanje doživljaja) i sociodemografskim varijablama. Na podacima je primijenjena hijerarhijska regresijska analiza. U finalnom modelu objašnjeno je 32% varijance akutnih gastrointestinalnih simptoma, pri čemu su statistički značajni prediktori bili depresivnost i izbjegavanje doživljaja. Intenzivnija depresivnost i izraženija sklonost izbjegavanju doživljaja bili su povezani s učestalijim akutnim gastrointestinalnim simptomima. Zaključak: Visoka zastupljenost klinički relevantnih simptoma anksioznosti (63%) i depresivnosti (41%), te pozitivna povezanost i emocija i strategija regulacije emocija s akutnim gastrointestinalnim simptomima, upućuje na važnost pružanja psihološke podrške bolesnicima s poremećajima gastrointestinalnog sustava. Nezavisan doprinos izbjegavanja doživljaja predikciji akutnih gastrointestinalnih simptoma pokazuje da je za razumijevanje psihološkog aspekta gastrointestinalnih simptoma važno imati uvid, ne samo u emocije, već i u način na koji ih se regulira.
... SIA has also been related to obsessive-compulsive disorders, depression and generalized anxiety disorder (Erliksson et al., 2020). A major characteristic of people with SIA is a lack of emotional regulation (Kashdan and Steger, 2006;Kashdan and Breen, 2008;Werner et al., 2011). Therefore, acknowledging or understanding emotions may play a significant role in the adaptive regulation of emotions during social interactions that cause the person to become anxious (O'Toole et al., 2013). ...
The aim of this research is to analyze the effect of social interaction anxiety on satisfaction with life mediated by emotional intelligence. The research design was descriptive, cross-sectional, and non-randomized. In total, 1,164 Mexican physical education students participated (M age = 21.21; SD = 3.26; 30.0% female; 69.6% male; 0.4% other). The scales used were the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale, Trait Meta-Mood Scale and Satisfaction with Life and a structural equation analysis with latent variables was conducted. The results highlight that it can be asserted that emotional clarity and repair had a mediating effect between social interaction anxiety and satisfaction with life, as they did decrease the negative effects of social interaction anxiety on satisfaction with life. In addition, social interaction anxiety had a direct and positive effect on emotional attention and a negative effect on emotional clarity and repair.
... The enactment of this past event in a safe setting might change their feelings, beliefs, and attitudes about the traumatized situations . Second, there is increasing evidence that socially anxious people have negative beliefs about the social consequences of expressing their emotions (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). SAD patients, therefore, devote effort to suppress their emotions and expression thereof (Kashdan & Steger, 2006;Spokas et al., 2009). ...
Background and objectives:
Although cognitive behavioral group therapy (CBGT) is an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder, many socially anxious patients are still symptomatic after treatment. A possible improvement for CBGT could come from the more experiential group psychotherapy, psychodrama (PD). The integration of CBGT and PD (labeled CBPT) might offer an even more effective treatment than CBGT or PD alone. With the present study, we investigated first whether three kinds of group therapy (CBGT, PD, and CBPT) are superior to a waitlist (WL). Second, we investigated whether CBPT is more effective than CBGT or PD alone.
Methods:
One hundred and forty-four social anxiety patients were randomly assigned to three active conditions or a WL. After wait, WL-participants were randomized over the active treatment conditions.
Results:
The results of a multilevel analysis showed that all treatments were superior to WL in reducing social anxiety complaints. Only CBGT and CBPT differed significantly from WL in reducing fear of negative evaluations. There were no significant differences between active conditions in any of the variables after treatment and after six-month follow up, neither were there significant differences in treatment dropout.
Limitations:
First there is the lack of a long-term follow-up. Second, because of loss of participants, we did not reach the planned numbers in the active treatment groups in comparison to WL. Moreover, this study was not designed as a non-inferiority or equivalence trial.
Conclusions:
Although the integrative CBPT showed good results, it was not more effective than the other treatments.
... In other words, the more social support a person feels, the greater their expected future success and the stronger their positive and weaker their negative emotions are (such as depression and anxiety, etc.). According to the stress buffer model, social support can regulate negative emotions and produce positive self-evaluation through stress buffer, which lowers the production of depressive feelings [31]. As a result, we believe that the ERSE acts as a mediator between social support and depression (H3). ...
Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between social support, rumination, emotion regulation self-efficacy (ERSE) and depression in college students, focusing on the mediating effect between social support and depression in college students.
Methods: A cross-sectional study of 1433 college students in Jiangxi, China was conducted between October and November 2022. A series of mediation analyses were performed using AMOS24.0 and the PROCESS macro to examine the mediation effects.
Results: The study found that depression was significantly positively correlated with rumination, while ERSE was significantly negatively correlated with social support and ERSE. Social support has a direct negative predictive effect on depression in college students. Rumination and ERSE play independent mediating and chain mediating roles in the mechanism of social support affecting college students' depression, with indirect effect values of 0.11, 0.02 and 0.01, respectively.
Conclusions: To alleviate and prevent depression in college students, emphasis should be placed on rumination and ERSE in addition to the influence of social support.
... Research linking difficulties in ER abilities and maladaptive ER strategies with clinical disorders include mood disorders (Hallion et al., 2018;Gonçalves et al., 2019;Miola et al., 2022), anxiety disorders (Mennin et al., 2005;Salters-Pedneault et al., 2006;Kashdan and Breen, 2008;Cisler et al., 2010), psychotic disorders (Lincoln et al., 2015;Ludwig et al., 2019), personality disorders (Linehan, 1993;Lynch et al., 2007), posttraumatic stress disorder (Tull et al., 2020), eating disorders (Clyne and Blampied, 2004;Bydlowski et al., 2005), and substance-related disorders (Fox et al., 2007;Sher and Grekin, 2007;Weiss et al., 2022). The growing body of literature demonstrating that ER is a clinically-relevant construct highlights the importance of targeting ER difficulties within therapeutic interventions. ...
Background:
Difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) abilities have been found to play a central role in different psychiatric disorders. However, researchers rarely compare ER across different diagnostic groups. In the current study, we examined ER and its relation to functional and symptomatic outcome among three distinct diagnostic groups: people with schizophrenia (SCZ), people with emotional disorders (EDs; i.e., depression and/or anxiety), and individuals without any psychiatric diagnosis (controls).
Methods:
Participants in this study comprised 108 adults who requested psychotherapy at a community clinic in the year 2015 and between 2017 and 2019. Clients were interviewed and filled out questionnaires measuring depression, distress, and difficulties in ER abilities.
Results:
Results showed that individuals with psychiatric diagnoses reported higher levels of difficulties in ER abilities than did controls. Moreover, there were very few differences in levels of ER difficulty between SCZ and EDs. Further, the associations between maladaptive ER and psychological outcomes were significant in each diagnostic group, and especially for SCZ.
Conclusion:
Our study indicates that difficulties in ER abilities partially have a transdiagnostic nature, and that these difficulties are associated with psychological outcomes among both clinical populations and controls. There were very few differences in levels of ER ability difficulties between SCZ and EDs, suggesting that the two groups share difficulties in relating and responding to emotional distress. The associations between difficulties in ER abilities and outcome were more robust and stronger among SCZ than the other groups, highlighting the potential contribution of targeting ER abilities in the treatment of schizophrenia.
... The frequent use or avoidance of specific emotion regulation strategies can have long-term cumulative effects on our functioning and well-being. For example, frequently suppressing one's emotions has been shown to increase psychological distress (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2009), whereas emotional expression is related to greater positive affect (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). While research on individual differences in emotion regulation is not new (e.g., Gross & John, 2003), much remains to be learned (Gross, 2015). ...
The study of individual differences in emotion regulation has typically focused exclusively either on the stage of the emotion generation process at which regulation occurs or on the engagement versus disengagement orientation of the regulation efforts. We introduce a new measure that samples equally across each stage of the process model of emotion regulation and from both engagement and disengagement orientations. Through five studies ( n total = 2,543), we present the development and convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity evidence for the Process Model of Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (PMERQ). We show the final 10-scale 45-item questionnaire has acceptable internal consistency, is invariant between genders and across the age range, and has sufficient convergent and discriminant validity. The PMERQ also predicts affective and relationship functioning with strategies occurring earlier in the process model generally showing the strongest effects. We propose the PMERQ is a valuable measure to assess individual differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies.
... For example, Mathews et al.'s [34] research found a significant effect in the association between anxiety and emotional capacity in childhood and adolescence, which informs intervention and treatment plans for anxiety in adolescents. Similarly, Kashdan and Breen [35] studied social anxiety as a predictor of positive emotions and found that people with excessive social anxiety demonstrated low levels of positive emotions, which, when enhanced, will reduce social anxiety through emotion regulation measures. However, individual differences also affect emotion regulation. ...
Usually, both external environmental factors and internal psychological factors affect the self-efficacy of athletes returning to sports after an injury. Based upon COR theory, this study investigated mindfulness interventions' effects on competitive state anxiety and burnout in injured athletes who are returning to sports. The study was conducted in South China from March to April 2022. The snowball and convenience sampling methods were used to select high-level sports teams' injured athletes returning to sports, and a questionnaire survey was administered, from which 433 valid samples were obtained. Amos v. 26 was used to analyze the data. The results showed that mindfulness has a significant negative effect on competitive state anxiety and burnout, such that after strengthening the mindfulness intervention, athletes' competitive state anxiety and burnout decreased and regulatory emotional self-efficacy increased. Further, this study indicated that athletes are prone to negative emotions after injury, and among athletes who returned to sports after injury, those with mindfulness interventions reported lower levels of competitive state anxiety and burnout. Hence, the study demonstrated that mindfulness can improve regulatory emotional self-efficacy in injured athletes who are returning to sports by reducing competitive state anxiety and burnout.
... Although Peters et al. (2020) did not assess positive emotions, the current findings align with their speculation that global suppression measures (e.g., the ERQ suppression subscale) may correlate with greater state use of suppression in response to PA. This finding is also broadly consistent with previous research linking global self-reported suppression with a tendency to inhibit the expression of positive emotions (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). ...
Recent theory conceptualizes emotion regulation as occurring across three stages: (a) identifying the need to regulate, (b) selecting a strategy, and (c) implementing that strategy to modify emotions. Yet, measurement of emotion regulation has not kept pace with these theoretical advances. In particular, widely used global self-report questionnaires are often assumed to index people's typical strategy selection tendencies. However, it is unclear how well global self-reports capture individual differences in strategy selection and/or whether they may also index other emotion regulation stages. To address this issue, we examined how global self-report measures correspond with the three stages of emotion regulation as modeled using daily life data. We analyzed data from nine daily diary and experience sampling studies (total N = 1,097), in which participants provided daily and global self-reports of cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and rumination. We found only weak-to-moderate correlations between global self-reports and average daily self-reports of each regulation strategy (indexing strategy selection). Global self-reports also correlated with individual differences in the degree to which (a) preceding affect experience predicted regulation strategies (representing the identification stage), and (b) regulation strategies predicted subsequent changes in affective experience (representing the implementation stage). Our findings suggest that global self-report measures of reappraisal, suppression, and rumination may not strongly and uniquely correlate with individual differences in daily selection of these strategies. Moreover, global self-report measures may also index individual differences in the perceived need to regulate, and the affective consequences of regulation in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... Suppressing emotions appears to also have a lasting impact on the overall emotional well-being of those with social anxiety. Specifically, among those low in social anxiety, less emotional suppression and greater emotional expression, both of positive and negative emotion, was associated with greater increases in positive emotion over time (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). In contrast, among those high in social anxiety, neither negative nor positive emotion expression or suppression predicted significant increases in positive emotion. ...
... Accounting conservatism is not only related to the choice of accounting method, but also estimates that cause the book value of assets to be relatively lower. Conservative accounting is an accounting principle that leads to faster cost recognition so that it will reduce profits on a relatively permanent basis (Wu et al., 2022;Kashdan & Breen, 2008). ...
Accounting conservatism can limit the opportunistic behaviour of managers who act to maximize their interests. One of the good corporate governance mechanisms, which is the characteristics of the board of commissioners, can strengthen the implementation of conservatism in the company. In this study, researchers wanted to examine the effect of independent commissioners and audit committees on conservatism with gender as a moderating variable. The research population is publicly listed companies on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2015-2019. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling. Research testing uses moderated regression that has model feasibility is tested with the classical assumption test. The results showed that conservatism increased with the presence of an audit committee. The audit committee can provide specific suggestions to be more conservative in making decisions. However, the results showed that conservatism was not affected by the proportion of independent commissioners. The results also show that the presence of women strengthens the relationship of the audit committee to conservatism.
... People who often show pride will be called arrogant. People who are often sad will be called moody (Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Jabbi et al., 2007). Anxious people are called worries. ...
The paper was intended to explore the correlation between emotion and feeling. It has involved two phenomena referring to health. Positive emotions experienced by humans are not born spontaneously. Various good and pleasant things make us experience positive emotions. Those feelings make us enjoy life's moments. As reported by Psychology Today, feeling positive emotions makes us healthier physically and mentally. Feeling it with others will also foster trust and compassion. Positive emotions will also keep people from stress. happy feelings are the emotions most often talked about and known. However, there are a variety of other positive emotions that are nuances of feeling happy. In 2009, psychologist Barbara Frederickson in her book Positivity identified 10 other positive emotions that are universally felt by humans in addition to feeling happy.
... Previous studies have reported that mood regulation strategies are often important regulatory variables affecting psychological changes in task conflict situations. For example, suppression can moderate the effect of social anxiety on positive emotion (Kashdan and Breen, 2008). Similarly, we speculate that suppression moderates the impact of family-work conflict on positive psychological capital and perceived social support, affecting the improvement of post-traumatic growth. ...
Under the impact of COVID-19, the status and mechanisms of post-traumatic growth among medical workers facing challenges related to family-work conflict are of great concern. In view of the complex relationship between family-work conflict and post-traumatic growth, the present study sought to explore the specific relationships between family-work conflict and post-traumatic growth as well as the specific roles of positive psychological capital, perceived social support, and suppression. We recruited 1,347 participants. The results revealed that positive psychological capital and perceived social support played mediating roles, while suppression strategies moderated the mediating effect. Compared with the low suppression group, the negative impact of family-work conflict on positive psychological capital and perceived social support was reduced in the high suppression group. Thus, a higher level of suppression was more conducive to post-traumatic growth. The current study enriches and expands the findings of previous studies in theory and provides practical ways to promote post-traumatic growth in medical workers.
... According to another result obtained from the present study, there is a positive relationship between internal dysfunctional emotion regulation and social anxiety sub-dimensions. This finding overlaps with many studies in the relevant literature (Kashdan & Breen, 2008;McLean, Miller & Hope, 2007;Perini, Abbott & Rapee, 2006;Brozovich & Heimberg, 2008). One of the internal dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies, suppression, manifests itself as inhibition of emotion expression. ...
... According to another result obtained from the present study, there is a positive relationship between internal dysfunctional emotion regulation and social anxiety sub-dimensions. This finding overlaps with many studies in the relevant literature (Kashdan & Breen, 2008;McLean, Miller & Hope, 2007;Perini, Abbott & Rapee, 2006;Brozovich & Heimberg, 2008). One of the internal dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies, suppression, manifests itself as inhibition of emotion expression. ...
... According to another result obtained from the present study, there is a positive relationship between internal dysfunctional emotion regulation and social anxiety sub-dimensions. This finding overlaps with many studies in the relevant literature (Kashdan & Breen, 2008;McLean, Miller & Hope, 2007;Perini, Abbott & Rapee, 2006;Brozovich & Heimberg, 2008). One of the internal dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies, suppression, manifests itself as inhibition of emotion expression. ...
This study was conducted to examine the relationships between high school students' social anxiety level and emotion regulation strategies and parental attitudes. 323 students studying at different types of high schools in Diyarbakır in the 2019-2020 academic years participated in the present study using the relational screening model. In the research, "Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents", "Child Rearing Attitudes Scale", "Adolescent Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (AERQ)" and a personal information form prepared by the researcher were used. Descriptive statistics were explained in the analysis of the data, and the Pearson product-moments correlation coefficient and hierarchical regression analysis were used. According to the results, the model formed by the strict supervision / control attitude of the parents and the internal dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies used by adolescents predicts social anxiety, and the related variables can be risk factors for social anxiety in adolescence.
... Similarly, children or adolescents with depressive symptoms or social anxiety may be characterized with poor eye contact and poor facial expressions (B1 -Unusual Eye Contact, B2 -Facial Expressions directed to the Examiner), lack of enjoyment in interaction (B4 -Shared Enjoyment in Interaction), and limited ability to share their experiences with others (B7 -Reporting of Events, B8 -Conversation). There is ample research to suggest that depression and social anxiety are characterized by poor eye contact and difficulty sharing one's experience with others (e.g., Schneier, Rodebaugh, Blanco, Lewin, & Liebowitz, 2011;Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Fiquer et al., 2018). ...
The study addressed different assessment of ASD obtained with the use of the ADOS-2 and compared with the DSM-5 with children between 8 and 10 years old. Case series data were used on four children who were referred with suspected autism, and as a result a discrepancy was found between the ADOS-2 assessment and the overall diagnosis. Initial findings indicated that age, additional diagnoses, and over-reliance on observation may bias the ADOS-2 classification. In particular, children who were diagnosed with other
disorders that share symptoms with ASD exhibit behaviors that may bias the ADOS-2 classification as it relies on observed behavior without considering the underlying cause. This discrepancy points to the importance of utilizing and integrating multiple sources of information in the process of establishing an ASD diagnosis, and suggests a need for specialized clinical training in diagnosing autism and other related co-morbid conditions in children aged 8–10. This preliminary data calls for further research into the area, especially due to the current over-reliance on the ADOS-2 in clinical practice and research.
... With the policies of the Financial Services Authority (OJK), banks must find the right way and strategy in order to fulfill the policies set by the OJK with the aim of increasing efficiency. In the theory of managerial efficiency theory of profits emphasizes that companies that are managed efficiently will earn profits above the average normal profit (Salvatore, 2011;Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Munce et al., 2006). Bank efficiency is an important indicator for analyzing the performance of a bank and also as a means to further improve the effectiveness of monetary policy. ...
This study aims to obtain empirical evidence about the effect of CAR, NPL and BOPO on NIM and examine the role of ROE in moderating the effect of CAR, NPL, and BOPO on NIM. This study uses purposive sampling method. The data used is secondary data obtained from the financial statements of banking companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the 2015-2019 period. Data analysis techniques using moderated regression analysis (MRA) test. The result of the analysis shows that CAR has a positive effect on NIM. NPL and BOPO has a negative effect on NIM. The moderating variable ROE strengthens the effect of CAR on NIM but weakens the effect of NPL and BOPO on NIM.
... The results are in line with those of Kashdan and Breen (2008), Kashdan and Hofman (2008), Norton (2009), Kashdan and Weeks (2010). Rachmans (1980) believe that there are four classes of factors that may give rise to impulsive problems; i.e. avoidance, lack of experience, short-term acclimation, depression and more appreciated beliefs. ...
The aim of the present study is to find out the role of social judgment and impulsiveness in predicting the reactivity of the girls with social phobia. The method of the study is of correlation kind. The statistical population of the study consists of all the girls with social phobia and normal girls of Islamic Azad University of Khoram Abad Branch in 2013. The sampling method of the study was multistage cluster one. In order to collect data, a comprehensive international clinical interview, social phobia scale, social judgment questionnaire, impulsiveness scale, interpersonal reaction index, and the inventory of a fear of evaluation (positive and negative) were used. The Pearson correlation coefficient and a stepwise multiple regression analysis were used in an attempt to analyze data. The findings indicated that there was a positive significant relationship between social judgment, impulsiveness and the reactions of women with social phobia, though there was a negative significant relation between a fear of positive and negative evaluation and reactivity. It was also made clear that 19%of the individual reactivity variance is explained by impulsiveness, social justice, and a fear of positive and negative evaluation variances. The results represent the contribution of social judgment and impulsiveness in predicting the reactivity of the girls with social phobia.
https://civilica.com/doc/390603/
... However, Daros et al. (2019) did not assess DPDR symptoms. Individuals with social anxiety may be more prone to using maladaptive emotion regulation strategies when compared to those low in social anxiety (e.g., suppression; Kashdan & Breen, 2008). As a result, individuals with social anxiety who are unable to regulate their emotions, even while using emotion regulation strategies, may experience DPDR symptoms (i.e., flattening of affect, reduction in emotion sensitivity and intensity), which is thought to be an automatic or unconscious response for avoiding or suppressing negative emotions related to acute stressors (Michelson & Ray, 1996). ...
Social anxiety is associated with dissociative experiences, which are thought to occur when coping or avoidance is unavailable, and distress is experienced. Emotion regulation difficulties maintain social anxiety. The current study examined the moderating effect of emotion regulation on social anxiety and dissociation. It was hypothesized that social anxiety would be positively associated with dissociation and that emotion regulation difficulties would moderate the relationship between social anxiety and dissociation such that the relationship would be stronger at higher levels of emotion regulation difficulties. College students aged 18 or older (n = 572) were recruited from a large public university. All participants completed measures of social anxiety, emotion regulation, and dissociation as part of a larger online study. Results supported both hypotheses. Future studies should investigate dissociative symptoms during times of acute stress or anxiety in social anxiety, how emotion regulation difficulties are associated with the genesis of dissociative symptoms, and how these variables are related in more diverse community samples.
... It is important to note that dampening of positive emotion was higher in the present study compared to unselected samples of college students (e.g., Feldman et al., 2008;McEvoy et al., 2018). Evidence in the anxiety literature suggests that individuals reporting high levels of anxiety may find emotional experiences distressing, including unpleasant and pleasant ones (Keough et al., 2010;Kashdan & Breen 2008), and efforts are engaged in to avoid or dampen these emotional experiences (Stapinski et al., 2010;Zvolensky & Forsyth, 2002). Present results indicate that students reporting high levels of anxiety and higher life satisfaction levels do not dampen positive emotions less than those reporting high levels of anxiety and lower life satisfaction levels, consistent with recommendations to help clients with high levels of anxiety learn tools to upregulate positive emotions as a useful treatment target (e.g., Carl et al., 2013;Tirpak et al., 2019). ...
Anxiety disorders are prevalent among college students and contribute to problems in social and academic functioning. The primary focus in the anxiety literature has been on symptoms and deficits in functioning rather than psychological well-being. The present study investigated the extent to which high levels of anxiety co-occurred with self-reported psychological well-being using a dual-factor model of mental health approach. Participants (n = 100) were categorized into two groups (high anxiety crossed with low and high life satisfaction), and groups were compared on several psychological well-being indicators. Supporting a dual-factor approach, students reporting high levels of anxiety and life satisfaction reported higher levels of hope, grit, gratitude, self-focused positive rumination, and savoring of positive emotions than students reporting high levels of anxiety and low levels of life satisfaction. Groups did not differ in emotion-focused positive rumination or in dampening of positive emotion. These results highlight well-being heterogeneity within individuals reporting high levels of anxiety, with implications for treatment and prevention efforts.
... Rather, memories for emotional experiences are particularly enduring (Christianson and Loftus 1990;Sheldon and Levine 2013;Yonelinas and Ritchey 2015), and thus negative memories can create a persistent emotion regulation challenge. Memory and affective symptoms are intertwined in many psychiatric disorders, including anxiety and depression (Elzinga and Bremner 2002)for example, both ruminative memory patterns (Harrington and Blankenship 2002;Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008) and habitual emotion regulation strategies (Blalock and Joiner 2000;Holahan et al. 2005;Kashdan and Breen 2008;Aldao et al. 2010) are related to mental health outcomes. Yet, though clinical psychology has long leveraged memory processes in order to analyze or explore past experiences using treatments such as psychodynamic therapy (Luborsky 1977;Schafer 1980), memory specificity training ( Neshat-Doost et al. 2013;Moradi et al. 2014;Eigenhuis et al. 2017), and exposure therapy (Foa et al. 1995;van Minnen et al. 2002), little is known about the basic memory mechanisms involved in mediating successful long-term regulation of emotional episodic memories. ...
Background
The ability to modulate undesirable emotions is essential for maintaining mental health. Negative emotions can arise both while experiencing and remembering an unpleasant event, which presents a persistent emotion regulation challenge because emotional memories tend to be particularly vivid and enduring. Despite the central role that memories play in our affective lives, little is known about the memory processes supporting successful regulation of emotions associated with long-term memories, which we refer to as retrospective emotion regulation.
Methods
In this paper, we review the literature on the mechanisms of memory modification, which may contribute to the success of retrospective emotion regulation. In particular, we review rodent and human studies that examine the modification of conditioned fear associations and emotional episodic memories.
Conclusions
Based on this literature, we conclude that memory reactivation plays a crucial role in memory modification. We discuss further the potential role of memory reactivation in mediating the success of cognitive reappraisal, which may be considered a special case of memory modification. We propose that the completeness, or strength, of reactivation during retrospective emotion regulation will be related to the likelihood of updating an episodic memory, reducing its emotional impact upon later recall. Understanding the role of memory processes in emotion regulation can help to inform research on memory-based treatments for affective disorders.
... One of the main reasons that relationships of people with social anxiety suffer is concealing emotional experiences and inhibiting emotional expressions (Alden and Taylor 2004). They engage in such behavior as they think they will appear less vulnerable and hence deemed more socially attractive (Kashdan and Breen 2008). People with high social anxiety report more problems describing, understanding, and identifying emotions (Mennin et al. 2009;Turk et al. 2005). ...
Despite theoretical support for the conceptualization of emotion dysregulation as a pathway linking peer victimization to psychopathology, there is a dearth of empirical support for this association. Hence, the present study aims to investigate if emotion dysregulation acts as a mechanism linking peer victimization to social anxiety and comorbid disordered eating symptoms and behavior. Data was collected from 411 undergraduates from a technical institute in India, using self-report instruments. Mediation analyses showed that online victimization exerted its influence on social anxiety and disordered eating through a lack of emotional awareness. These findings may have important clinical implications for preventive interventions that seek to reduce the prevalence of psychopathology among youth confronting peer-related stressors.
... In other words, cognitive emotion regulation strategies significantly predict self-efficacy and life quality of women suffering from cancer. The results of this study are in line with the results of studies conducted by Barghi Irani (2013), Bahmani (2013), Amstadter (2008), Martin andDahlin (2005) , Nolan et al. (2008), Kashdan and Breen (2008), Ghasempour et al. (2012), and Mennin et al. (2007). ...
The objective of the present research is Predicting the Self-Efficacy and Life Quality of Women Suffering from Breast Cancer based on Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies. The statistical population included all women who were suffering breast cancer and were undergoing treatment in Breast. 78 of them were selected b y convenience sampling and were assessed by using the questionnaires of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, self-efficacy and life quality. Then, the collected data were analyzed using multivariate regression. According to the attained findings, there is a significant relationship between cognitive emotion regulation strategies and self-efficacy and life quality of women suffering from breast cancer. In other words, cognitive emotion regulation strategies specify around 27.4% of changes of self-efficacy and about 23.9% of changes of life quality of the subjects.
... Although Peters et al. (2020) did not assess positive emotions, the current findings align with their speculation that global suppression measures (e.g., the ERQ suppression subscale) may correlate with greater state use of suppression in response to PA. This finding is also broadly consistent with previous research linking global self-reported suppression with a tendency to inhibit the expression of positive emotions (Kashdan & Breen, 2008). ...
Emotion regulation researchers often assume that global self-report questionnaires capture momentary emotion regulation processes that occur in everyday life; however, this assumption remains largely untested. To test this assumption, we analyzed data from 10 daily life studies (Total N = 1,198) in which participants reported their use of cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and rumination using both global questionnaires and diary/experience sampling methods. We investigated three forms of global-momentary correspondence. First, we examined how global self-reports of emotion regulation correlated with the stable between-person component of momentary self-reports, labelled mean-level correspondence. Meta-analyses across studies revealed only weak (reappraisal) to moderate (suppression, rumination) mean-level correspondence. Second, we examined how global self-reports correlated with the degree to which momentary emotion regulation is contingent on preceding affect, which we label identification correspondence. Meta-analyses revealed that higher global rumination was associated with momentary use of all three strategies that wasless contingent on preceding negative affect intensity. Finally, we investigated how global self-reports correlated with the effect of momentary regulation on subsequent affect, labelled implementation correspondence. Meta-analyses revealed that higher global reappraisal was associated with larger decreases in negative affect following momentary reappraisal. Taken together, our findings suggest that global self-reports do not always map clearly onto the stable trait component of momentary emotion regulation, but may instead reflect individual differences in the affective antecedents and consequences of emotion regulation.
... Centrally regulated systems reflect attention characteristics, for example, in skin conductance and heart rate responses. Variation of these responses is often studied in relation to temperament types, control of arousal, emotion control and coping (Goldin et al. 2012;Kashdan and Breen 2008;Ochsner et al. 2004). ...
In this paper we discuss the strategies of self-regulation that are used under stressful condition. The strategies were assessed by means of heart rate biofeedback with game plot that models a stressful situation as a sport competition. Special attention was paid to the analysis of personality traits, behavioral patterns, and other psychological correlates of effective learning of self-regulation skills during biofeedback training. It was shown that the training based on biofeedback computer game allows modifying self-regulation strategies of the subjects towards more effective ones. The steadiness of the stress-resilience skills was statistically confirmed. The psychological tolerance of ambiguity was found to be a basic feature of personality that determines the efficiency of self-regulation strategies under stress.
... People who often show pride will be called arrogant. People who are often sad will be called moody (Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Jabbi et al., 2007). Anxious people are called worries. ...
The paper was intended to explore the correlation between emotion and feeling. It has involved two phenomena referring to health. Positive emotions experienced by humans are not born spontaneously. Various good and pleasant things make us experience positive emotions. Those feelings make us enjoy life's moments. As reported by Psychology Today, feeling positive emotions makes us healthier physically and mentally. Feeling it with others will also foster trust and compassion. Positive emotions will also keep people from stress. happy feelings are the emotions most often talked about and known. However, there are a variety of other positive emotions that are nuances of feeling happy. In 2009, psychologist Barbara Frederickson in her book Positivity identified 10 other positive emotions that are universally felt by humans in addition to feeling happy.
... As identified in a large body of evidence, anxiety disorders are particularly characterized by a dysfunctional implementation of emotion regulation strategies. For example, a recent review of studies has shown that social anxiety disorder patients are more prone to inefficiently implement cognitive reappraisal or tend to suppress positive rewards for potential negative evaluations [95]. ...
The principal aim to this chapter is to present the latest ideas in virtual reality (VR), some of which have already been applied to the field of anxiety disorders, and others are still pending to be materialized. More than 20 years ago, VR emerged as an exposure tool in order to provide patients and therapists with more appealing ways of delivering a technique that was undoubtedly effective but also rejected and thus underused. Throughout these years, many improvements were achieved. The first section of the chapter describes those improvements, both considering the research progresses and the applications in the real world. In a second part, our main interest is to expand the discussion of the new applications of VR beyond its already known role as an exposure tool. In particular, VR is enabling the materialization of numerous ideas that were previously confined to a merely philosophical discussion in the field of cognitive sciences. That is, VR has the enormous potential of providing feasible ways to explore nonclassical ways of cognition, such as embodied and situated information processing. Despite the fact that many of these developments are not fully developed, and not specifically designed for anxiety disorders, we want to introduce these new ideas in a context in which VR is experiencing an enormous transformation.
... Research using diary techniques and other retrospective methods shows that individuals with elevated social anxiety tend to experience blunted positive affect and, in some cases, report fewer and less intense positive events (Blanco & Joormann, 2017;T. A. Brown, Chorpita, & Barlow, 1998;Farmer & Kashdan, 2012;Geyer et al., 2018;Kashdan, 2002Kashdan, , 2007Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Kashdan & Collins, 2010;Kashdan & Steger, 2006;Kashdan, Weeks, & Savostyanova, 2011). For example, Farmer and Kashdan (2012) used 2 weeks of diary data to demonstrate that individuals with higher levels of social anxiety report significantly less intense positive affect in their daily lives. ...
Understanding how individuals with varying levels of social anxiety respond to daily positive events is important. Psychological processes that increase positive emotions are being widely used as strategies to not only enhance well-being but also reduce the symptoms and impairment tied to negative emotional dispositions and conditions, including excessive social anxiety. At present, it is unclear whether and how levels of social anxiety impact the psychological benefits derived from momentary positive events. We used ecological momentary assessment to examine the impact of trait social anxiety on momentary changes in emotions, sense of belonging, and social approach versus avoidance motivation following positive events in daily life. Over the course of a week, people with elevated social anxiety experienced greater momentary anxiety and social avoidance motivation and lower momentary happiness and sense of belonging on average. Despite these impairments, individuals with elevated social anxiety experienced greater psychological benefits-in the form of reduced anxiety and motivation to avoid social situations, and an increased sense of belonging-following positive events during the past hour that were rated as particularly intense. This pattern of findings was not specific to social anxiety, with evidence of similar effects for other forms of internalizing psychopathology (general anxiety and depression). These observations detail circumstances in which individuals with social anxiety, and other emotional disturbances, can thrive-creating potentially important targets for intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... En ese sentido, varios estudios han indagado respecto de la disposición a utilizar ciertas estrategias de regulación emocional en diferentes trastornos como la depresión (Nolen-hoeksema, wisco, y Lyubomirsky, 2008;werner-Seidler, Banks, Dunn, y Moulds, 2012), trastorno de ansiedad generalizada (Mennin, holoway, Fresco, Moore, y heimberg, 2007), trastorno de estrés postraumático (Badour y Feldner, 2013;Tull y Roemer, 2003) y ansiedad social (Kashdan y Breen, 2008). No obstante, mientras que algunas investigaciones hallaron que las estrategias basadas en la evitación emocional incrementaban la tendencia a la psicopatología (Berman, wheaton, McGrath y Abramowitz, 2010;Karekla y Panayiotou, 2011); otros estudios mientras que otras registraron sólo una asociación débil entre ambas variables (Legerstee, Garnefski, Verhulst yutens, 2011). ...
... In a research that was concerned with the effects of social anxiety on positive emotions and adjusting them, the findings revealed that one has to pay attention to individual differences including strategies for adjusting emotions in order to understand special anxiety and experience emotions (Todd et al, 2008;Todd et al, 2010). ...
Background: Anxiety has a negative effect on life satisfaction, but this effect can be moderated and/or mediated by emotion regulation. We assessed these relationships to plan strategies for a good life. The objectives were to: determine the relations among emotion regulation, anxiety, and life satisfaction, estimate the role of emotion regulation (mediation and moderation) in the relation between anxiety and life satisfaction, and evaluate the differences in emotion regulation and its subscale, anxiety and its subscale and life satisfaction across gender and age. Method: A cross-sectional sample of 1379 participants (952 female), with an age range of 9-19years (M=16.2; SD=2.15). The administered instruments were the Satisfaction with Life Scale, Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders, and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Reliability analysis, descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, moderation and mediation analyses and two-way multivariate ANOVA were applied. Results: Emotion regulation and life satisfaction were associated positively with each other but negatively with anxiety related emotional disorders. There was an interaction among emotion regulation, anxiety related emotional disorders, and life satisfaction with age and gender. The emotion regulation subscales, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, mediated and moderated (respectively) the relation between anxiety related emotional disorders and life satisfaction. Conclusions: This work contributes to the knowledge of the variables involved in people’s life satisfaction. Specifically, knowing the moderator and mediator roles of emotion regulation in the relationship between people’s life satisfaction and anxiety could contribute to the design of programs for the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental health problems in the population
Introduction:
Expressive flexibility, or the ability to both up- and down-regulate emotional expressions in social interactions, is thought as an indicator and a consequence of healthy interpersonal relationships. The present longitudinal study examined bidirectional associations between expressive flexibility and friendship quality in early adolescence. Since prior research found inconsistent results regarding the adaptiveness of expressive flexibility, which indicated the necessity to consider individual variability in the process, we further tested the potential moderating effect of social anxiety in the links from expressive flexibility to friendship quality.
Methods:
Participants from two junior high schools in eastern China (N = 274; 50.4% female; Mage = 13.56) were surveyed at three time points with 6-month intervals. Expressive flexibility, friendship quality, and social anxiety were all assessed via self-reported scales.
Results:
According to the cross-lagged model results, friendship quality significantly predicted increased expressive flexibility over time. Conversely, the longitudinal association from expressive flexibility to friendship quality was not significant, but the interaction between expressive flexibility and social anxiety significantly predicted later friendship quality. Further analyses via the Johnson-Neyman technique revealed that expressive flexibility only positively predicted friendship quality for adolescents with lower levels of social anxiety.
Conclusion:
Our results suggest that expressive flexibility is not always socially adaptive, so practical interventions that aim to improve youths' social adjustment via expressive flexibility training might need to consider the role of individual characteristics.
Experiencing childhood trauma (CT) can create barriers for developing relationships and is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Expressive suppression (ES; i.e., reducing expression associated with experiencing emotions) might explain the link between CT and relationship formation difficulties. We examined the association between (1) CT and ES during a dyadic paradigm intended to facilitate connectedness between unacquainted partners and (2) ES and desire for future interaction (DFI). Individuals with an anxiety or depressive disorder diagnosis (N=77) interacted with a trained confederate; partners answered a series of increasingly intimate questions about themselves. Participant ES for positive and negative emotions, and participant and confederate DFI were collected during the task. Participants completed global anxiety, depression, and CT measures. CT correlated with positive (r=.35, p=.002), but not negative, ES (r=.13, p=.273). In a multiple linear regression model, CT predicted positive ES beyond symptom variables and gender, β=.318, t=2.59, p=.012. Positive ES correlated with participant (r=-.38, p=.001) and confederate DFI (r=-.40, p<.01); and predicted participant DFI beyond symptom variables and ethnicity, β=-.358, t=-3.18, p=.002, and confederate DFI, β=-.390, t=-3.51, p=.001, beyond symptom variables. Mediation analyses suggested positive ES accounted for the relationship between greater CT severity and less desire for future interaction from participants, 95%CI [-0.26,-0.02], and confederates, [-0.38, -0.01]. Positive ES may be an important factor in the reduced capacity to form new social relationships for individuals with a history of CT, anxiety, and depression.
Emotion regulation (ER) is an important factor in resilience and overall well-being throughout development, and youth report increased variation in emotion and capacity for regulation across adolescence and early adulthood. Specific emotions may be associated with the use of different ER strategies, but much evidence exclusively collapses across negative and positive affect or may not reflect the daily experience of emotion and emotion regulation. The present study examined associations between the experience of unique positive and negative emotions and the use of common ER strategies in adolescence and early adulthood during daily life using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). The sample included 184 high school and college students (55% female, Mage = 17.88, SD = 1.25) who completed EMA surveys three times daily for 10 days (89% compliance). Participants reported on their recent emotional states and which of eight ER strategies they had used. Multilevel logistic regressions tested emotions as predictors of ER strategies, separately for each emotion-ER strategy combination across 96 total models, using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure to control the false discovery rate. Individuals had higher odds of engaging in maladaptive ER strategies, particularly suppression or rumination, when reporting most types of negative emotions-with the largest associations among unhappiness and anger. Conversely, positive emotions were generally linked to reported use of no ER strategies, though happiness and engagement were related to higher odds of problem-solving, while calm was related to less use of nearly all strategies. Specific emotion-strategy combinations may have implications for clinical targets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
This study consists of two separate studies. In the first study, the Turkish adaptation of the Beliefs About Emotions Questionnaire (BAEQ; Manser et al., 2012) was carried out. A total of 436 Turkish university students between the ages of 18-29 (M = 23.5, SD = 3.19) participated in the study. The findings showed that the data set confirmed the factor structure suggested for BAEQ with some modifications, and that the 37-item scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used by emotion regulation researchers and mental health professionals in Turkey. In the second study, a structural equation model was tested in order to better understand the relationships between trait/dispositional mindfulness, beliefs about emotions, adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, and negative and positive mental health. A total of 608 Turkish university students between the ages of 18-29 (M = 23.14, SD = 2.89) participated in the study. The findings revealed that the indirect effect of trait/dispositional mindfulness on adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies as well as on positive and negative mental health through beliefs about emotions and the indirect effect of beliefs about emotions on negative and positive mental health through maladaptive and adaptive emotion regulation strategies were statistically significant. The present findings are discussed in accordance with the relevant literature.
Humans, like other animals, are fundamentally motivated to pursue rewarding outcomes and avoid aversive ones. Anxiety disorders are conceptualized, defined, and treated based on heightened sensitivity to perceived aversive outcomes, including imminent threats as well as those that are uncertain yet could occur in the future. Avoidance is the central strategy used to mitigate anticipated aversive outcomes – often at the cost of sacrificing potential rewards and hindering people from obtaining desired outcomes. It is for these reasons that people are often motivated to seek treatment. In this chapter, we consider whether and how anhedonia – the loss of interest in pursuing and/or reduced responsiveness to rewarding outcomes – may serve as a barrier to recovering from clinically impairing anxiety. Increasingly recognized as a prominent symptom in many individuals with elevated anxiety, anhedonia is not explicitly considered within prevailing theoretical models or treatment approaches of anxiety. Our goal, therefore, is to review what is known about anhedonia within the anxiety disorders and then integrate this knowledge into a functional perspective to consider how anhedonia could maintain anxiety and limit treatment response. Our overarching thesis is that anhedonia disrupts the key processes that are central to supporting anxiety recovery. We end this chapter by considering how explicitly targeting anhedonia in treatment can optimize outcomes for anxiety disorders.
Background: Anticipatory Anxiety (AA) is defined as a course of thoughts, feelings, and actions occurring just and only "before" an anxiety-provoking event. In order to explore this construct, the Anticipation Anxiety Inventory (AAI) was developed and its psychometric properties have been investigated in two studies. Methods: Study 1 used an Exploratory Factor Analysis approach to determine the factor structure of the items of the scale. In study 2, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed to assess the scale structure, the validity of the factor solution, and convergent and discriminatory validity. Results: Exploratory factor analysis from study 1 suggested 13 items across four factors for the AAI: Emotional Hypersensitivity, Physical responses to AA, Dysfunctional Cognitions, and Daily Functioning. In study 2, the Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated that the 4-factor solution of the AAI had an acceptable fit, excellent internal consistency (α= 0.92), and displayed good convergent and discriminatory validity. Conclusion: The AAI could be proposed as a useful valid and reliable tool to investigate AA. For future implications, more research is needed regarding the utility of this measure in experimental designs or clinical settings.
Studies have found that anxiety is among the common negative emotions in individuals with substance use disorders. Anxiety affects drug abstention motivation, but the mechanism underlying this effect is still unclear. The current study aimed to examine the relationship among anxiety, regulatory emotional self-efficacy, psychological resilience and drug abstention motivation in an attempt to explore the mechanism underlying drug abstention motivation. The participants were 732 men with substance use disorders who were sent to compulsory rehabilitation in China. All participants completed measures of anxiety, regulatory emotional self-efficacy, psychological resilience and drug abstention motivation through questionnaires. The results indicated that anxiety negatively predicts drug abstention motivation. Regulatory emotional self-efficacy mediates the relationship between anxiety and drug abstention motivation. In addition, psychological resilience moderates the mediation between anxiety and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. The current results are not only helpful for understanding the relationship between anxiety and drug abstention motivation from the perspective of emotion but also of great significance for guiding individuals with substance use disorders in enhancing their drug abstention motivation by reducing negative emotion.
Background
It is known that social anxiety disorder (SAD) interferes in a great deal of life areas, ranging from social and private relationships to work related environments. We aimed to investigate the comparative efficacy of three emotion-regulation strategies in a job interview task for individuals with SAD. We considered both different categories of emotion-regulation strategies (reappraisal vs. suppression) but also different types of the same strategy (functional vs. positive reappraisal).
Methods
92 participants diagnosed with SAD were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental groups and a no strategy control group. Participants were required to present themselves in front of external observers who would rate their performance and decide if they are suited for the job. We measured subjective mood, rated performance, EEG asymmetries, and autonomic flexibility at three different phases: while anticipating the discourse, after the statement (when emotion regulation strategy was offered), and when recovering.
Results
The functional reappraisal strategy was found to be superior to no strategy for anxiety, confidence, and coded performance. We found a higher level of left side PFC activity for the functional reappraisal group at the statement phase, with a moderation effect for PFC asymmetry of SAD severity.
Using a newspaper questionnaire, a door-to-door survey, and 3 laboratory experiments, the authors examined a proposed effect of shared participation in novel and arousing activities on experienced relationship quality. The questionnaire and survey studies found predicted correlations of reported shared “exciting” activities and relationship satisfaction plus their predicted mediation by relationship boredom. In all 3 experiments, the authors found predicted greater increases in experienced relationship quality from before to after participating together in a 7-min novel and arousing (vs. a more mundane) task. Comparison with a no-activity control showed the effect was due to the novel–arousing task. The same effect was found on ratings of videotaped discussions before and after the experimental task. Finally, all results remained after controlling for relationship social desirability. Results bear on general issues of boredom and excitement in relationships and the role of such processes in understanding the typical early decline of relationship quality after the honeymoon period.
Using outpatients with anxiety and mood disorders (N = 350), the authors tested several models of the structural relationships of dimensions of key features of selected emotional disorders and dimensions of the tripartite model of anxiety and depression. Results supported the discriminant validity of the 5 symptom domains examined (mood disorders; generalized anxiety disorder, GAD; panic disorder; obsessive-compulsive disorder; social phobia). Of various structural models evaluated, the best fitting involved a structure consistent with the tripartite model (e.g., the higher order factors, negative affect and positive affect, influenced emotional disorder factors in the expected manner). The latent factor, GAD, influenced the latent factor, autonomic arousal, in a direction consistent with recent laboratory findings (autonomic suppression); Findings are discussed in the context of the growing literature on higher order trait dimensions (e.g., negative affect) that may be of considerable importance to the understanding of the pathogenesis, course, and co-occurrence of emotional disorders.
Several investigations have examined the potential role of mentation suppression in various psychological disorders. Existing studies do not, however, differentiate between the effects of suppressing imagery- versus thought-based mentation. This distinction is an especially important one for worry, given the predominantly thought-based nature of the worry process. The present study sought to distinguish between the effects of suppressing thoughts versus images about worrisome versus neutrally valenced topics. Consistent with past studies of worry suppression, results failed to find a rebound effect regardless of valence (worrisome, neutral) or mentation content (thoughts, images). However, results did indicate that a decrease in worrisome mentation across two consecutive expression periods was more pronounced when the worrisome material was imagery-based rather than thought-based in nature. Implications of these findings as they pertain to the perpetuation of worrisome activity and to treatment of generalized anxiety disorder are discussed.
In a study of self-presentational motives in everyday social encounters, 164 first-year and upper-class undergraduate students described their social interactions for 1 week using a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record. These descriptions focused on the strength of self-presentational motives and concerns for others’ evaluations. Participants also completed measures of individual differences hypothesized to be relevant to self-presentation, which formed four distinct factors. A series of multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses found that individual differences in factors labeled Impression Motivation, Impression Construction Positivity, and Impression Construction Appropriateness were positively related to participants’ nervousness in interaction and individual differences in Impression Motivation were positively related to the strength of self-presentational motives in interaction. A fourth factor, Negative Self-Evaluation, was positively related to the strength of participants’ self-presentational motives for first-year students but negatively related to self-presentational motives for upper-class students, and Negative Self-Evaluation was related to self-presentation differently for men and women.
In recent studies of the structure of affect, positive and negative affect have consistently emerged as two dominant and relatively independent dimensions. A number of mood scales have been created to measure these factors; however, many existing measures are inadequate, showing low reliability or poor convergent or discriminant validity. To fill the need for reliable and valid Positive Affect and Negative Affect scales that are also brief and easy to administer, we developed two 10-item mood scales that comprise the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The scales are shown to be highly internally consistent, largely uncorrelated, and stable at appropriate levels over a 2-month time period. Normative data and factorial and external evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scales are also presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among 292 unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships between the predictors employment commitment, financial hardship, job-search self-efficacy, and motivation control and the outcome job-search intensity. Support was not found for a relationship between perceived job-search constraints and job-search intensity. Motivation control was highlighted as the only lagged predictor of job-search intensity over time for those who were continuously unemployed. Job-search intensity predicted Time 2 reemployment status for the sample as a whole, but not reemployment quality for those who found jobs over the study's duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Syndromal classification is a well-developed diagnostic system but has failed to deliver on its promise of the identification of functional pathological processes. Functional analysis is tightly connected to treatment but has failed to develop testable, replicable classification systems. Functional diagnostic dimensions are suggested as a way to develop the functional classification approach, and experiential avoidance is described as 1 such dimension. A wide range of research is reviewed showing that many forms of psychopathology can be conceptualized as unhealthy efforts to escape and avoid emotions, thoughts, memories, and other private experiences. It is argued that experiential avoidance, as a functional diagnostic dimension, has the potential to integrate the efforts and findings of researchers from a wide variety of theoretical paradigms, research interests, and clinical domains and to lead to testable new approaches to the analysis and treatment of behavioral disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The psychometric adequacy of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS; R. P. Mattick & J. C. Clark, 1989), a measure of social interaction anxiety, and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS; R. P. Mattick & J. C. Clark, 1989), a measure of anxiety while being observed by others, was evaluated in anxious patients and normal controls. Social phobia patients scored higher on both scales and were more likely to be identified as having social phobia than other anxious patients (except for agoraphobic patients on the SPS) or controls. Clinician-rated severity of social phobia was moderately related to SIAS and SPS scores. Additional diagnoses of mood or panic disorder did not affect SIAS or SPS scores among social phobia patients, but an additional diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder was associated with SIAS scores. Number of reported feared social interaction situations was more highly correlated with scores on the SIAS, whereas number of reported feared performance situations was more highly correlated with scores on the SPS. These scales appear to be useful in screening, designing individualized treatments, and evaluating the outcomes of treatments for social phobia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
recently, we have begun to explore . . . [the] process of emotional contagion / people's conscious analyses give them a great deal of information about their social encounters / [people] can also focus their attention on their moment-to-moment emotional reactions to others, during their social encounters / this stream of reactions comes to them via their fleeting observations of others' faces, voices, postures, and instrumental behaviors / further, as they nonconsciously and automatically mimic their companions' fleeting expressions of emotion, people also may come to feel as their partners feel / by attending to the stream of tiny moment-to-moment reactions, people can gain a great deal of information on their own and their partners' emotional landscapes
begin by defining emotion and emotional contagion and discussing several mechanisms that we believe might account for this phenomenon / review the evidence from a variety of disciplines that "primitive emotional contagion" exists / examine the role of individual differences in emotional contagion / outline some of the broad research questions researchers might profitably investigate (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The criterion validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) was investigated by pairing blind BDI-II administrations with the
major depressive episode portion of the Structured Clinical Interview for
DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I; M. B. First, R. L. Spitzer, M. Gibbon, & J. B. W. Williams, 1997) in a sample of 137 students receiving treatment at a university counseling center. Student BDI-II scores correlated strongly (
r=.83) with their number of SCID-I depressed mood symptoms. A BDI-II cut score of 16 yielded a sensitivity rate of 84% and a false-positive rate of 18% in identifying depressed mood. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were used to produce cut scores for determining severity of depressed mood. In a second study, a sample of 46 student clients were administered the BDI-II twice, yielding test-retest reliability of .96. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is argued that insufficient attention has been paid to the nature and processes underlying positive experiences. An analogy is drawn between coping with negative events and the processes of taking advantage of, or capitalizing on, positive events. It was hypothesized that expressive displays (e.g., communicating the event to others, celebrating, etc.) and perceived control would be effective capitalizing responses after positive events. These responses were predicted to augment the benefits of the events on temporary moods and longer-term well-being. Two daily-diary studies of college undergraduates showed that expressive responses and perceived control were associated with positive affect above and beyond the benefits due to the valence of the positive events themselves.
Using an explicit model of emotion, we developed the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire. This measure of emotional expressivity has three facets: impulse strength, negative expressivity, and positive expressivity. After evaluating its factor structure and psychometric properties, we tested propositions derived from an analysis of display rules. As predicted, women were more expressive than men; Asian-Americans less expressive than other ethnic groups; and Democrats more expressive than Republicans. Expressivity also was related to two mood dimensions and to four of the Big Five personality dimensions. The pattern of findings for the subscales showed convergent and discriminant validity. Positive mood, Extraversion, and Agreeableness were most strongly related to the Positive Expressivity subscale. Negative mood, Neuroticism, and somatic complaints were most strongly related to the Impulse Strength and Negative Expressivity subscales.
Positive emotions are hypothesized to undo the cardiovascular aftereffects of negative emotions. Study 1 tests this undoing effect. Participants (n = 170) experiencing anxiety-induced cardiovascular reactivity viewed a film that elicited (a) contentment, (b) amusement, (c) neutrality, or (d) sadness. Contentment-eliciting and amusing films produced faster cardiovascular recovery than neutral or sad films did. Participants in Study 2 (n = 185) viewed these same films following a neutral state. Results disconfirm the alternative explanation that the undoing effect reflects a simple replacement process. Findings are contextualized by Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (B. L. Fredrickson, 1998).
We review psychometric and other evidence relevant to mixed anxiety-depression. Properties of anxiety and depression measures, including the convergent and discriminant validity of self- and clinical ratings, and interrater reliability, are examined in patient and normal samples. Results suggest that anxiety and depression can be reliably and validly assessed; moreover, although these disorders share a substantial component of general affective distress, they can be differentiated on the basis of factors specific to each syndrome. We also review evidence for these specific factors, examining the influence of context and scale content on ratings, factor analytic studies, and the role of low positive affect in depression. With these data, we argue for a tripartite structure consisting of general distress, physiological hyperarousal (specific anxiety), and anhedonia (specific depression), and we propose a diagnosis of mixed anxiety-depression.
Distinguishing between depression and anxiety has been a matter of concern and controversy for some time. Studies in normal samples have suggested, however, that assessment of two broad mood factors—Negative Affect (NA) and Positive Affect (PA)—may improve their differentiation. The present study extends these findings to a clinical sample. As part of an ongoing twin study, 90 inpatient probands and 60 cotwins were interviewed with the anxiety and depression sections of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS; Robins, Helzer, Croughan, & Ratcliff, 1981). Respondents also completed trait NA and PA scales. Consistent with previous research, NA was broadly correlated with symptoms and diagnoses of both anxiety and depression, and acted as a general predictor of psychiatric disorder. In contrast, PA was consistently related (negatively) only to symptoms and diagnoses of depression, indicating that the loss of pleasurable engagement is a distinctive feature of depression. The results suggest that strengthening the PA component in depression measures may enhance their discriminative power.
We investigated the hypothesis that people's facial activity influences their affective responses. Two studies were designed to both eliminate methodological problems of earlier experiments and clarify theoretical ambiguities. This was achieved by having subjects hold a pen in their mouth in ways that either inhibited or facilitated the muscles typically associated with smiling without requiring subjects to pose in a smiling face. Study 1's results demonstrated the effectiveness of the procedure. Subjects reported more intense humor responses when cartoons were presented under facilitating conditions than under inhibiting conditions that precluded labeling of the facial expression in emotion categories. Study 2 served to further validate the methodology and to answer additional theoretical questions. The results replicated Study 1's findings and also showed that facial feedback operates on the affective but not on the cognitive component of the humor response. Finally, the results suggested that both inhibitory and facilitatory mechanisms may have contributed to the observed affective responses.
Recent scientific work has established both a theoretical basis and strong empirical evidence for a causal impact of social
relationships on health. Prospective studies, which control for baseline health status, consistently show increased risk of
death among persons with a low quantity, and sometimes low quality, of social relationships. Experimental and quasi-experimental
studies of humans and animals also suggest that social isolation is a major risk factor for mortality from widely varying
causes. The mechanisms through which social relationships affect health and the factors that promote or inhibit the development
and maintenance of social relationships remain to be explored.
In 1980, 30 married couples had engaged in a low-conflict and a high-conflict conversational interaction while continuous physiological data were obtained. In a separate session each spouse had provided a continuous self-report of affect while viewing the videotape of the interaction. In 1983, 19 of these couples were re-located to determine the change in relationship satisfaction that had occurred over the preceding 3 years. A broadly based pattern of physiological arousal (across spouses, interaction segments, and physiological measures) in 1980 was found to predict decline in marital satisfaction; the more aroused the couple was during the 1980 interactions, the more their marital satisfaction declined over the ensuing 3 years. Several affective variables also predicted decline in marital satisfaction, including a pronounced sex difference in negative affect reciprocity: Marital satisfaction declined most when husbands did not reciprocate their wives' negative affect, and when wives did reciprocate their husbands' negative affect.
A hypothesized need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships is evaluated in light of the empirical literature. The need is for frequent, nonaversive interactions within an ongoing relational bond. Consistent with the belongingness hypothesis, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds. Belongingness appears to have multiple and strong effects on emotional patterns and on cognitive processes. Lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Other evidence, such as that concerning satiation, substitution, and behavioral consequences, is likewise consistent with the hypothesized motivation. Several seeming counterexamples turned out not to disconfirm the hypothesis. Existing evidence supports the hypothesis that the need to belong is a powerful, fundamental, and extremely pervasive motivation.
In exploring the emotional climate of long-term marriages, this study used an observational coding system to identify specific emotional behaviors expressed by middle-aged and older spouses during discussions of a marital problem. One hundred and fifty-six couples differing in age and marital satisfaction were studied. Emotional behaviors expressed by couples differed as a function of age, gender, and marital satisfaction. In older couples, the resolution of conflict was less emotionally negative and more affectionate than in middle-aged marriages. Differences between husbands and wives and between happy and unhappy marriages were also found. Wives were more affectively negative than husbands, whereas husbands were more defensive than wives, and unhappy marriages involved greater exchange of negative affect than happy marriages.
The common and specific symptom dimensions of anxiety and depression proposed by the tripartite (L.A. Clark & D. Watson, 1991 c) and cognitive (A.T. Beck, 1976, 1987) models were investigated in 844 psychiatric outpatients and 420 undergraduates. Principal-factor analyses with oblique rotations performed on the 42 items of the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory for both samples revealed that there were 2 correlated factors. Depression and Anxiety. Second-order factor analyses of the interfactor correlation matrices indicated a large general distress or negative affect factor underlying the relationship between the 2 first-order factors. Specific depression and anxiety dimensions were apparent even after we controlled for negative affect. The results were consistent with both the tripartite and cognitive models, with the cognitive and motivational symptoms specific to depression and the physiological arousal symptoms unique to anxiety.
Evidence for the role of affective states in social judgments is reviewed, and a new integrative theory, the affect infusion model (AIM), is proposed as a comprehensive explanation of these effects. The AIM, based on a multiprocess approach to social judgments, identifies 4 alternative judgmental strategies: (a) direct access, (b) motivated, (c) heuristic, and (d) substantive processing. The model predicts that the degree of affect infusion into judgments varies along a processing continuum, such that judgments requiring heuristic or substantive processing are more likely to be infused by affect than are direct access or motivated judgments. The role of target, judge, and situational variables in recruiting high- or low-infusion judgmental strategies is considered, and empirical support for the model is reviewed. The relationship between the AIM and other affect-cognition theories is discussed, and implications for future research are outlined.
L. A. Clark and D. Watson (1991) proposed a tripartite model of depression and anxiety that divides symptoms into 3 groups: symptoms of general distress that are largely nonspecific, manifestations of anhedonia and low positive affect that are specific to depression, and symptoms of somatic arousal that are relatively unique to anxiety. This model was tested by conducting separate factor analyses of the 90 items in the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire (D. Watson & L. A. Clark, 1991) in 5 samples (3 student, 1 adult, 1 patient). The same 3 factors (General Distress, Anhedonia vs. Positive Affect, Somatic Anxiety) emerged in each data set, suggesting that the symptom structure in this domain is highly convergent across diverse samples. Moreover, these factors broadly corresponded to the symptom groups proposed by the tripartite model. Inspection of the individual item loadings suggested some refinements to the model.
This study examined the effects of emotional suppression, a form of emotion regulation defined as the conscious inhibition of emotional expressive behavior while emotionally aroused. Ss (43 men and 42 women) watched a short disgust-eliciting film while their behavioral, physiological, and subjective responses were recorded. Ss were told to watch the film (no suppression condition) or to watch the film while behaving "in such a way that a person watching you would not know you were feeling anything" (suppression condition). Suppression reduced expressive behavior and produced a mixed physiological state characterized by decreased somatic activity and decreased heart rate, along with increased blinking and indications of increased sympathetic nervous system activity (in other cardiovascular measures and in electrodermal responding). Suppression had no impact on the subjective experience of emotion. There were no sex differences in the effects of suppression.
The cardiovascular effects of embarrassment and of attempts to suppress embarrassment were examined. In 2 studies, embarrassment was associated with substantial increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure which monotonically increased over a 2-minute embarrassment period. In contrast, heart rate (HR) rose significantly during the 1st minute of embarrassment but returned to baseline levels during the 2nd minute. This pattern of reactivity may be distinctive. The effects of trying to suppress emotion in an interpersonal situation were also tested. Relative to the no-suppression group, suppression participants showed greater blood pressure during embarrassment and during posttask recovery. Suppression did not significantly affect HR. Possible mechanisms for these results, including passive coping, are discussed. Nonverbal behavior was also examined.
Social phobia has become a focus of increased research since its inclusion in DSM-III. However, assessment of social phobia has remained an underdeveloped area, especially self-report assessment. Clinical researchers have relied on measures that were developed on college populations, and these measures may not provide sufficient coverage of the range of situations feared by social phobic individuals. There is a need for additional instruments that consider differences in the types of situations (social interaction vs. situations involving observation by others) that may be feared by social phobics and between subgroups of social phobic patients. This study provides validational data on two instruments developed by Mattick and Clarke (1989): the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), a measure of anxiety in social interactional situations, and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS), a measure of anxiety in situations involving observation by others. These data support the use of the SIAS and SPS in the assessment of individuals with social phobia.
The development and validation of the Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) two companion measures for assessing social phobia fears is described. The SPS assesses fears of being scrutinised during routine activities (eating, drinking, writing, etc.), while the SIAS assesses fears of more general social interaction, the scales corresponding to the DSM-III-R descriptions of Social Phobia—Circumscribed and Generalised types, respectively. Both scales were shown to possess high levels of internal consistency and test–retest reliability. They discriminated between social phobia, agoraphobia and simple phobia samples, and between social phobia and normal samples. The scales correlated well with established measures of social anxiety, but were found to have low or non-significant (partial) correlations with established measures of depression, state and trait anxiety, locus of control, and social desirability. The scales were found to change with treatment and to remain stable in the face of no-treatment. It appears that these scales are valid, useful, and easily scored measures for clinical and research applications, and that they represent an improvement over existing measures of social phobia.
presents some of the findings regarding the impact of mild positive affect on thinking and motivation / explores the processes underlying them and the circumstances under which they are likely to be observed / focus is on decision making, but in order to understand affect's influence on decisions, it is helpful to consider its impact on cognitive organization (or the way material is thought about and related to other material) and on motivation (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A model of asymmetric contributions to the control of different subcomponents of approach- and withdrawal-related emotion and psychopathology is presented. Two major forms of positive affect are distinguished. An approach-related form arises prior to goal attainment, and another form follows goal attainment. The former is hypothesized to be associated with activation of the left prefrontal cortex. Individual differences in patterns of prefrontal activation are stable over time. Hypoactivation in this region is proposed to result in approach-related deficits and increase an individual's vulnerability to depression. Data in support of these proposals are presented. The issue of plasticity is then considered from several perspectives. Contextual factors are superimposed upon tonic individual differences and modulate the magnitude of asymmetry. Pharmacological challenges also alter patterns of frontal asymmetry. A diverse array of evidence was then reviewed that lends support to the notion that these patterns of asymmetry may be importantly influenced by early environmental factors that result in enduring changes in brain function and structure.
In this chapter, the authors present a social functional account of emotions that attempts to integrate the relevant insights of evolutionary and social constructivist theorists. The authors' account is summarized in 3 statements: (1) social living presents social animals with problems whose solutions are critical for individual survival; (2) emotions have been designed in the course of evolution to solve these problems; and (3) in humans, culture loosens the linkages between emotions and problems so that cultures find new ways of using emotions. In the first half of the chapter the authors synthesize the positions of diverse theorists in a taxonomy of problems of social living and then consider how evolution-based primordial emotions solve those problems by coordinating social interactions. In the second half of the chapter the authors discuss the specific processes according to which culture transforms primordial emotions and how culturally shaped elaborated emotions help solve the problems of social living. (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)
From an emotion regulation framework, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) can be conceptualized as a syndrome involving heightened intensity of subjective emotional experience, poor understanding of emotion, negative reactivity to emotional experience, and the use of maladaptive emotion management strategies (including over-reliance on cognitive control strategies such as worry). The current study sought to replicate previous findings of emotion dysregulation among individuals with GAD and delineate which aspects of emotion dysregulation are specific to GAD or common to GAD and another mental disorder (social anxiety disorder). Individuals with GAD reported greater emotion intensity and fear of the experience of depression than persons with social anxiety disorder and nonanxious control participants. Individuals with social anxiety disorder indicated being less expressive of positive emotions, paying less attention to their emotions, and having more difficulty describing their emotions than either persons with GAD or controls. Measures of emotion differentiated GAD, social anxiety disorder, and normal control groups with good accuracy in a discriminant function analysis. Findings are discussed in light of theoretical and treatment implications for both disorders.