Theorists of oppression commonly accept that unfair social power disparities result in a variety of harms. In particular, oppression is characterized by a loss of open-mindedness in the oppressors, and negative internalization in the oppressed. That is, while oppressors are often unable or unwilling to consider the points of view of the oppressed, the oppressed often come to internalize conditions of oppression by experiencing them as indicative of their own alleged shortcomings. Nevertheless, the psychological mechanisms behind these phenomena (...) have remained underexplored. This is unfortunate, since understanding the psychological processes behind these phenomena could help us understand how they could be reversed. In this work, I aim to fill this lacuna by extending debates on mechanisms of mindreading to show how close-mindedness and negative internalization come about. I synthesize empirical findings to show that while theorizing fosters emotional insulation by “reframing” affective cues from a third-person point of view, simulation fosters feelings of emotional vulnerability and psychological continuity. As a result, while theorizing allows oppressors to take a somewhat detached attitude during self and other interpretation, involuntary simulation fosters negative internalization on the part of the oppressed. (shrink)

Action orientation is a volitional mode that promotes flexible self-regulation of emotional and motivational states; state orientation represents the conceptually opposite volitional mode that promotes fixation on (particularly negative) emotional and motivational states (Kuhl & Beckmann, 1994a). The present research investigated the link between action versus state orientation and implicit emotion regulation under demanding conditions. After inducing a demanding context, action-oriented participants displayed reduced affective priming effects of negative primes relative to state-oriented individuals (Studies 1–3). Action versus (...) state orientation did not moderate affective priming effects of positive prime words (Studies 1–3). Effects of action versus state orientation emerged only for a limited number of trials (Study 2) and were reversed under low-demanding conditions (Study 3). These findings support the notion that implicit emotion regulation is closely linked to volitional action control. (shrink)

The negative emotions generated following stressful life events can increase one’s risk of depressive symptoms and promote higher levels of perceived stress. The process model of emotion regulation can help distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies to determine who may be at the greatest risk of worse psychological health across the lifespan. Heart rate variability may affect these relationships as it indexes aspects of self-regulation, including emotion and behavioral regulation, that enable an individual to (...) dynamically adapt to the changing demands of both internal and external environments. In this study, we expected individual differences in resting vagally mediated HRV to moderate the influence of emotion regulatory strategies among our sample of 267 adults. We found support for the hypothesis that higher vagally mediated HRV buffers against the typical adverse effects of expressive suppression when evaluating depressive symptoms and found weak support when considering perceived stress. There was no evidence for an interaction between cognitive reappraisal and vagally mediated HRV but there was a significant, negative association between cognitive reappraisal and depressive symptoms and perceived stress. Future work may determine if intervening on either emotion regulation strategies or HRV may change these within-persons over time. (shrink)

This essay argues that there are concrete emotion regulation practices described, but not developed, in Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses. These practices—such as attentiveness to emotion, attentional deployment, and cognitive reappraisal—help the reader to regulate her emotions, to get rid of negative, unwanted emotions such as worry, and to cultivate and nourish positive emotions such as faith, gratitude, and trust. An examination of the Discourses also expose Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions; his view is akin to a perceptual theory (...) of the emotions that closely connects emotions and concerns. In particular, this analysis unearths two main regulatory strategies located in the Discourses, strategies that closely resemble present-day psychological accounts of emotion regulation. I conclude that contemporary research reinforces Kierkegaard’s philosophical analysis of emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Drawing on this research provides the most persuasive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Additionally, present-day research clarifies the otherwise elusive, opaque strategies he describes. Finally, my analysis demonstrates that Kierkegaard’s work can uniquely contribute to the present-day psychological research by emphasizing the need for diachronic regulation strategies, while the contemporary literature overwhelmingly focuses on synchronic strategies. (shrink)

Trait mindfulness confers emotional benefits and encourages skillful emotion regulation, in part because it helps people more deliberately attend to internal experiences and external surroundings. Such heightened attentional control might help skillfully deploy one’s attention towards certain kinds of stimuli, which may in turn help regulate emotions, but this remains unknown. Testing how trait mindful people deploy attention when regulating their emotions could help uncover the specific mechanisms of mindfulness that confer its emotional benefits. The present study aimed to (...) determine whether high trait mindfulness is associated with sustained attention biases to (i.e. longer gaze at) emotional scenes, when all participants are given the emotion regulation goal of staying in a positive mood. To measure this, we used eye tracking to assess selective attention to positive, neutral, and negative photographs. Higher trait mindfulness was associated with both a stronger attention bias for positive (vs. neutral and vs. negative) images, as well as greater success staying in a positive mood during viewing. Surprisingly, this attention bias towards the positive images did not mediate the relationship between mindfulness and maintenance of positive mood. Future work should compare visual attention to other emotion regulation strategies that may maximise positive affect for mindful people. (shrink)

The situational context within which an activity takes place, as well as the personality characteristics of individuals shape the types of strategies people choose in order to regulate their emotions, especially when confronted with challenging or undesirable situations. Taking self-regulation as the framework to study emotions in relation to learning and performing chamber music canon repertoire, this quasi-experimental and intra-individual study focused on the self-rated emotional states of a professional classical cellist during long-term sustained practice across 100-weeks. This helped to (...) develop greater awareness of different emotions and how they vary over artistic events (9 profiled concerts and 1 commercially recorded album). Data analysis included traditional psychometric measurements to test the internal consistency of the time series data as well as the relationship between variables (artistic events). The study mapped the cellist’s flexible regulation of 17 different positive and negative emotions empirically linked to learning and achievement while practicing within the social context of performing music publicly at a high level. Findings arising from the study help with understandings of how to support musicians to maximize their artistic potential by reducing emotion dysregulation and strengthening the types of adaptive methods that enable them to manage their own emotions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments ENJOYING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS IN FICTIONS by John Morreall There is a puzzle going back to Aristotle and Augustine that has sometimes been called the "paradox of tragedy": how is it that nonmasochistic, nonsadistic people are able to enjoy watching or reading about fictional situations which are filled with suffering? The problem here actually extends beyond tragedy to our enjoyment of horror films and other fictional (...) depictions of situations which we would not enjoy in real life. What is it about fiction that turns intensely unpleasant situations into situations we can enjoy? Ofthe many solutions proposed to this puzzle, I shall mentionjust four. Aristotle held that in viewing tragedy we experience negative emotions — pity and fear — but get pleasure from the experience nonetheless because we are thereby purged of excess pity and fear. For Aristotle, too, there is a pleasure which tragedy shares with fiction in general, the delight we take in representations.1 Hume put more weight on this latter delight. Our pleasure in tragedy, he said, is based on our appreciation of the skill with which the literary or other artist has depicted the unpleasant scenes.2 Susan Feagin has recently located the pleasure we take in tragic art not in our direct responses to the work, which are "unpleasant experiences," she says, but in our meta-response of moral self-congratulation at these responses.3 The fourth solution to our puzzle is really a dissolution: it consists of denying that we actually feel fear, pity, and other negative emotions in our experience of fiction. The guiding principle here is that in order to have some emotion toward a situation, we must believe that it is a real situation. This principle is articulated in an influential article by Kendall Walton, though he does not apply it to our puzzle.4 95 96Philosophy and Literature I believe that this last solution is no solution at all because we do in fact feel emotions in our appreciation of fiction (a point I will develop later). The other three solutions above address the puzzle, and the pleasures they appeal to all have some explanatory power. But these solutions seem to me to overlook perhaps the most basic pleasure we take in tragedy, horror films, and the like — the direct pleasure of feeling (ear, pity, and similar emotions. The idea of enjoying negative emotions seems counterintuitive at first; indeed it may seem analytically false. But let us look more closely at those emotions to see what there might be to enjoy in them. Because the idea that we experience real emotions in response to fiction is controversial, we will begin not with fiction but with real life. After seeing how negative emotions can be enjoyed in real life, we can then consider their enjoyment in response to fiction. Fear is perhaps the most basic negative emotion, and at first glance one of the least likely to be enjoyed. To feel fear, many have claimed, we have tojudge that we are in danger, and danger is disturbing to us. And so it is natural that in fear there is the motivation to eliminate the danger, by fleeing, protecting ourselves, or attacking. Changes in the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system equip us forjust such actions. They produce an increase in alertness and muscle tension, a faster and stronger heartbeat, a redistribution of the blood from the skin and internal organs to the voluntary muscles and brain, and a release of stored sugar from the liver into the bloodstream. Now although we may not be able to identify all these changes when we are in a state of fear, we can feel many of them directly, and we certainly feel the overall excitement which they produce. It is this excitement, I think, that makes fear potentially enjoyable. Especially for someone who leads a relatively dull life, the stimulation provided by fear can be pleasurable by contrast with the ordinary lack of stimulation. Many people, indeed, go to considerable trouble to put themselves into dangerous situations, in part, at least, for the thrill of fear that the danger will provide. Consider mountain climbers and skydivers, for instance. Now there are many sources... (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, educational centers and universities in Venezuela have closed their physical plants and are migrating to emergency remote education to continue with academic programs. This empirical study aimed to analyze the predictive capacity of academic self-efficacy and emotional intelligence skills on each of the dimensions of psychological well-being. We employed a cross-sectional predictive design. The sample comprised 277 university students, of which 252 were female. Their ages ranged from 18 to 45 years, with a mean of (...) 20.35. Non-probabilistic chance sampling was used. For data collection, we used an anonymous online form, contacted students by mail, and invited them to participate in the study. Questionnaires were available between 217 and 227 days of decreed quarantine in Venezuela. The results indicated average levels of academic self-efficacy, emotional intelligence: clarity, attention y repair, and psychological well-being. We found differences according to sex and age, specifically in emotional regulation and in bonds of psychological well-being favoring men, respectively. Regarding age, statistically significant differences were found in the group of students older than 21 years with higher perception of psychological well-being and in each of its dimensions. Emotional intelligence and academic self-efficacy were found to be significant predictors of psychological well-being and its dimensions, specifically on control, links, projects, acceptance, and total well-being. It was concluded that emotional intelligence and academic self-efficacy are protective psychological resources of psychological well-being that should be promoted at university to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic on the mental health of young people. (shrink)

Children’s readiness for school is often threatened by the occurrence of both externalizing and internalizing problems. Previous research has shown that Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is particularly effective for fostering children’s behavioral skills and reducing externalizing problems. However, whether PBIS can enhance children’s emotional skills and reduce internalizing problems is less clear. Therefore, TIME-IN was developed, which extends PBIS by also including emotional support systems. It was tested whether TIME-IN was effective for (a) improving emotion regulation and (...) (b) reducing depressive symptoms. Furthermore, it was tentatively explored whether TIME-IN is accompanied by more than natural fluctuations in both children’s externalizing and internalizing problems. The effectiveness of TIME-IN was evaluated in a non-randomized study, in which an intervention group was compared with a matched control group. Both research questions were addressed in a sample consisting of 81 children between 8 and 12 years of age with special educational needs. Questionnaires for teachers (i.e., TRF), children (i.e., FEEL-KJ and CDI), and their parents (i.e., CBCL) were administered at the beginning (T0) and the end of the school year (T1) using multi-informant assessment. Only indicative evidence was found for the hypothesis that TIME-IN improved children’s emotion regulation. Practical implications, strengths, and limitations were discussed.Clinical Trial Registration:This work was retrospectively registered at International Standard Registered Clinical/soCial sTudy Number (ISRCTN) registry ISRCTN54456609 (Weymeis, 2017). Registered 28 March 2017. (shrink)

Variability in the emotion regulation (ER) strategies one uses throughout daily life has been suggested to reflect adaptive ER ability and to act as a protective factor in mental health. Moreover, psychological inflexibility and persistent negative affect (or affective inertia) are key features of depression and other forms of mental illness and are often further exacerbated by rigid or overly passive regulatory behaviours. The current study investigated the hypothesis that ER variability might serve as a protective factor against (...) depressive symptoms and affective inertia. Using experience-sampling (N = 213), we tested whether two indictors of ER variability (between- and within-strategy SDs) were related to depressive symptoms and affective inertia. We found that people with higher between-strategy variability and within-strategy variability (specifically for reappraisal and distraction) reported fewer depressive symptoms. Both within- and between-strategy variability were negatively related to negative affective inertia. Between-strategy variability and negative affective inertia had unique effects on depression, when used as simultaneous predictors. Altogether, this study provides further evidence for the utility of ER as a factor buffering against depressive symptoms and particularly for the use of variable ER strategies. (shrink)

In recent years in Turkey, it has been attempted to ensure that students who need special education are educated through inclusion. In the meanwhile, it became important to reveal scientifically the educational theories on which the inclusive education is based and the approach of Islam towards inclusive education that somehow has an influence on our national education policy. This study aims to examine the educational theories on which the inclusive education is based and the Islamic approach towards inclusive education. The (...) data of the study was collected by literature review. As a result, it is possible to say that the underlying theories of inclusive education are integrated education theory, cognitive democrative theory and dysontogenesis theories. In addition, although there are no specific verses for inclusive education in the Qurʾān and the Sunnah, it can be said that Islam has an positive approach to the inclusive education in general. Depending on this result, formal education should be conducted in the context of the principle of “least restricted education environment”.Summary: It is a matter of controversy about how education that increases the potential of human beings can be given to people who differ from their peers and who need special education. In recent years, there have been two prominent views in literature on this issue: The first is the ‘discriminatory’ view, which advocates that individuals with special needs should receive education in special spaces with similar students. The second is the ‘integrative view’, which states that these students should receive inclusive education with their peers. This view defends that students with special needs should be educated in separate boarding/day special education schools and special education classes within the normal schools. Recently in Turkey it is aimed to provide education to the students who need special education mostly by means of inclusion as an alternative to the first group. For this education, which is held with the claim of a less restricted environment, the conditions of the students are constantly improved with new regulations.This study aims to reveal the theories that can be the basis of inclusive education and Islam's approach to inclusive education. In this study, I will try to find answers to the following questions.1. What are the educational theories and claims that can be the basis of inclusive education?2. What are the principles of inclusive education in the Qur’an and Sunnah?This study is important in terms of revealing general opinions that may be the basis of theoretical foundations of inclusive education and examining Islam’s approach to inclusive education. The study, which was prepared by examining the English and Turkish literature available within the scope of the possibilities, was designed with theoretical analysis method. Although ‘accessibility’, which is considered among the shortcomings of theoretical studies in literature, is an important limitation for this study, the fact that it constitutes a theoretical ground for future studies and fills an important gap in the literature determines the importance of the study.Integrated education theory, cognitive democratic theory and dyontogenesis theories can be regarded as the establishing theoretical foundations of inclusive education. Integrated education theory is based on Whitehead’s philosophy of education. This philosophy sees the individual as a whole. It does not intend to make people have a profession or make money by simply using their intelligence. Instead, it helps to ensure that both the individual and society as a whole are happy by helping them to make the most of their potential. This model is based on developing emotion, mind, body, and spirituality as a whole. The distinctness and sacredness of human life and the need to know about this sacredness are the main pillars of integrated education theory. In this model all people are seen equal. According to this theory, the “natural” as well as the “beautiful” is appreciated. Therefore, no one feels bad in such an environment because of its differences. Because of the value given to them, each individual’s love of learning and ideals remain alive. The individual makes use of his/her mind to make a connection between the meaning of life and the school.Cognitive democratic theory asserts that educational arrangements should be made to prevent any feelings of alienation, oppression, and insignificance by considering different groups in education. This theory, which emphasizes the phenomenon of democracy and citizenship, aims at social cohesion in the light of epistemological principles. The theory is based on the fact that social change and change in education support each other. According to the theory, the formation of democratic citizenship is only possible if the school environment is a place where students can internalize democratic values. This is achieved by equal consideration of each segment at different levels. According to this theory, elements such as classroom environment, discipline, program, rights, participation in decisions, educational activities should be organized according to democratic values. In such an environment, different special education students find a place for themselves.Vygotsky's dysontogenesis thesis is based on his theory of social learning. His theory provides a methodological framework for inclusion in special education. The theory states that information is obtained through social communication. In this theory, knowledge is an element that is acquired together with other people rather than something that happens in the human mind. According to this theory, instead of focusing on the brain (head), where social knowledge is formed, self, mind, emotion should be included in education. Also, disability is a social deviation rather than a biological disease. Social relations and the environment mostly shape this deviation. Therefore, the abnormal child approach that has become a place in the society should be abandoned. The theory opposes the concept of mental retardation. Because mental disability should be explained by the differences in mental development. According to this theory, mental retardation is a social problem; education should be provided with appropriate methods over the examples that can be experienced in a commonplace with their peers. Distracting the student from his/her normal peers due to his/her differences, creates negative social conditions and harms his/herself.As far as I have examined, there is no direct Qur’anic verse or phrase about inclusive education for the disabled. However, there are verses regarding the integration and solidarity of the society on righteousness. Principles for inclusive education can be drawn from these verses. The Prophet valued the disabled and settled the principles on how society should treat them. He frequently visited them, enabled them to employ appropriate jobs, determined the conditions of the economic order by considering them, and dignified them with honor. In other words, he tried to make provisions to prevent the disabled from being separated from society. For example he urged Zahir bin Itban to continue trade, asked Abdullah Ibn Umm Mektum to come to community prayers, thus he sought different ways to integrate disabled people into society. These practices can be seen as a positive outlook towards the mainstreaming education of today. In the period of the four great caliphs, practices for mainstreaming education continued. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1, we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2, we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions (...) on how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological pro... (shrink)

Depression is a disorder of impaired emotion regulation. Consequently, examining individual differences in the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies has considerable potential to inform models of this debilitating disorder. The aim of the current study was to identify cognitive processes that may be associated with the use of emotion-regulation strategies and to elucidate their relation to depression. Depression has been found to be associated with difficulties in cognitive control and, more specifically, with difficulties inhibiting the processing of (...) negative material. We used a negative affective priming task to assess the relations among inhibition and individual differences in the habitual use of rumination, reappraisal, and expressive suppression in clinically depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants. We found that depressed participants exhibited the predicted lack of inhibition when processing negative material. Moreover, within the group of depressed participants, reduced inhibition of negative material was associated with greater rumination. Across the entire sample, reduced inhibition of negative material was related to less use of reappraisal and more use of expressive suppression. Finally, within the formerly depressed group, less use of reappraisal, more use of rumination, and greater expressive suppression were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of emotion-regulation strategies play an important role in depression, and that deficits in cognitive control are related to the use of maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies in this disorder. (shrink)

Victims of oppression are often called to let go of their anger in order to facilitate better discussion to bring about the end of their oppression. According to Amia Srinivasan, this constitutes an affective injustice. In this paper, we use research on emotion regulation to shed light on the nature of affective injustice. By drawing on the literature on emotion regulation, we illustrate specifically what kind of work is put upon people who are experiencing affective injustice and why (...) it is damaging. We begin by explaining affective injustice and how it can amount to a call for emotion regulation. Then we explain the various techniques that can be used to regulate emotions and explain how each might be harmful here. In the penultimate section of the paper, we explain how the upshot of this is that victims of affective injustice are left with a dilemma. Either they try to regulate their anger in a way that involves ignoring the fact of their oppression or they regulate it in a way that is likely to be harmful for them. Finally, we consider whether there are any good solutions to this dilemma, and how this issue opens up the possibility for further research into emotion regulation and moral philosophy. (shrink)

The tendency for emotions to be predictable over time, labelled emotional inertia, has been linked to low well-being and is thought to reflect impaired emotion regulation. However, almost no studies have examined how emotion regulation relates to emotional inertia. We examined the effects of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression on the inertia of behavioural, subjective and physiological measures of emotion. In Study 1 (N = 111), trait suppression was associated with higher inertia of negative behaviours. We (...) replicated this finding experimentally in Study 2 (N = 186). Furthermore, in Study 2, instructed suppressors and reappraisers both showed higher inertia of positive behaviours, and reappraisers displayed higher inertia of heart rate. Neither suppression nor reappraisal were associated with the inertia of subjective feelings in either study. Thus, the effects of suppression and reappraisal on the temporal dynamics of emotions depend on the valence and emotional response component in question. (shrink)

Cognitive models of depression posit that persistent negative self-referent thinking (PNSRT) is an important vulnerability factor for depressive symptoms. The mechanisms involved are still understudied, especially in adolescence. PNSRT has been assessed by a behavioural decision-making task, namely the emotional reversal learning task (ERLT). Within the ERLT, PNSRT is operationalised as the learning rate for negative self-reference. The first aim of the current study is to examine the association between PNSRT and depressive symptoms at baseline and follow-up. Second, (...) the current study investigated associations of PNSRT with temperamental and emotion regulation variables. We found no significant effect between PNSRT and baseline depressive symptoms, although the small effect size pointed in the expected direction. No significant prospective effect was found. Additionally, adolescents with greater capacity for response inhibition and better attentional control exhibited less PNSRT. No other significant associations were found with other temperamental dimensions or emotion regulation variables. In conclusion, while the small effect size of the cross-sectional association between PNSRT and depressive symptoms points in the expected direction, no significant evidence was found that PNSRT acts as either a concomitant or precursor to depressive symptomatology. However, the current study did find a relation between low effortful control and PNSRT. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhich emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for re-interpretation (...) of a stimulus that are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time, and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli. Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from r... (shrink)

This daily diary study examined the within-person coupling between four emotion regulation strategies and both subjective well-being and perceived stress in daily life of geriatric nurses. Participants ( N = 89) described how they regulated their emotions in terms of cognitive reappraisal and suppression. They also indicated their subjective well-being and level of perceived stress each day over 3 weeks. At the within-person level, cognitive reappraisal intended to increase positive emotions was positively associated with higher subjective well-being and negatively (...) associated with perceived stress. Suppression of the expression of positive emotions was negatively associated with subjective well-being and positively associated with perceived stress. However, cognitive reappraisal intended to down-regulate negative emotions and suppression as a strategy to inhibit the expression of negative emotions were not associated with daily well-being or perceived stress. Off-days were rated as days with higher subjective well-being and lower perceived stress in contrast to working days. At the between-person level, individuals who reported more daily negative affect reported increased suppression of positive emotions, corroborating the within-person findings. Moreover, findings indicated that nurses with more years of experience in the job reported higher subjective well-being and less perceived stress. These results provide insights into important daily emotional processes of geriatric nurses, both at workdays and in their leisure time. (shrink)

Sustained negative affect is a hallmark feature of depressive episodes. The ability to regulate emotional responses to negative events may therefore play a critical role in our understanding of this debilitating disorder. Individual differences in cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and interpretation may underlie difficulties in emotion regulation and numerous studies have identified cognitive biases and deficits that characterise depressed people. Few studies, however, have explicitly linked these biases to the difficulties in emotion regulation that (...) are associated with depression. In this paper we discuss relations among cognitive processes and emotion regulation and review the depression literature to identify cognitive biases and deficits that may underlie maladaptive responses to negative events and mood states. Our review suggests that difficulties in the disengagement from negative material, memory biases, and deficits in cognitive control are frequently observed in depressive disorders and may be associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as rumination. These biases may also be related to difficulties implementing strategies that are effective for non-depressed people, such as recall of mood-incongruent material and reappraisal. Our review also suggests, however, that empirical studies linking cognitive biases and emotion regulation in depression are still largely missing and would present an important goal for future research in this area. (shrink)

The theoretical framework of the study was the Stressors-Emotions model. The aim of the study was to investigate the mediating role of job-related negative affectivity, and the moderating role of emotional suppression in the relationship between workplace aggression and counterproductive work behaviour. It was expected that workplace aggression would be linked to CWB directly and indirectly and that suppression of negative emotions would intensify the effects of workplace aggression. Two hundred and five nurses participated in the study. The (...) regression analysis with interactional effect was applied to test the research hypotheses. The results confirmed the direct and the indirect effect of workplace aggression on CWB. Two of the three analyzed emotions moderated the effects of workplace aggression on jobrelated negative affectivity and CWB. Results of the study partially support the notion of the Stress-Emotion model and provide further insight into processes that lead to CWB. (shrink)

With an increase in the number of international students in China, there has been a simultaneous increase in their emotional problems, such as depression, as well as the importance of their emotional well-being. This study aimed to investigate the influence of social support on depression and the mediation and moderation mechanisms of this relationship in international students. In total, 349 international students in China responded to a questionnaire survey comprising the Social Support Rating Scale, Self-rating Depression Scale, Adult Attachment Scale, (...) and Self-Esteem Scale. The results showed that: attachment closeness had a significant direct predictive effect on depression; attachment closeness played a mediating role in the relationship between social support and depression; and the direct effect of social support on depression and the mediating effect of attachment and closeness are regulated by self-esteem. Therefore, interventions aimed at improving the social support, attachment closeness, and self-esteem of international students in China can be effective in reducing their depressive symptoms. (shrink)

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies may reduce the negative relationship between math anxiety and mathematics accuracy, but different strategies may differ in their effectiveness. We recorded electrodermal activity (EDA) to examine the effect of physiological arousal on performance during different applied ER strategies. We explored how ER strategies might affect the decreases in accuracy attributed to physiological arousal in high math anxious (HMA) individuals. Participants were instructed to use cognitive reappraisal (CR), expressive suppression (ES), or a “business as usual” (...) strategy. During the ES condition, HMA individuals showed decreases in math accuracy associated with increased EDA, compared to low math anxious (LMA) individuals. For both HMA and LMA groups, CR reduced the association between physiological arousal and math accuracy, such that even elevated physiological arousal levels no longer had a negative association with math accuracy. These results show that CR provides a promising technique for ameliorating the negative relationship between math anxiety and math accuracy. (shrink)

Job satisfaction is a core variable in the study and practice of organizational psychology because of its implications for desirable work outcomes. Knowledge of its antecedents is abundant and informative, but there are still psychological processes underlying job satisfaction that have not received complete attention. This is the case of employee emotion regulation. In this study, we argue that employees’ behaviors directed to manage their affective states participate in their level of job satisfaction and hypothesize that employee affect-improving and (...) -worsening emotion regulation behaviors increase and decrease, respectively, job satisfaction, through the experience of positive and negative affect. Using a diary study with a sample of professionals from diverse jobs and organizations, for the most part, the mediational hypotheses were supported by the results albeit a more complex relationship was found in the case of affect worsening emotion regulation. This study contributes to expanding the job satisfaction and emotion regulation literatures and informs practitioners in people management in organizations about another route to foster and sustain positive attitudes at work. (shrink)

Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When (...) required to experience emotional response, by ‘getting into the feeling’ of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group. (shrink)

I argue that gendered stereotypes, gendered emotions and attitudes, and display rules can influence extrinsic regulation stages, making failure points likely to occur in gendered-context and for reasons that the emotion regulation literature has not given adequate attention to. As a result, I argue for ‘feminist emotional intelligence’ as a way to help escape these failures. Feminist emotional intelligence, on my view, is a nonideal ability-based approach that equips a person to effectively reason about emotions through an intersectional lens (...) and use emotions to inform how we think and react to the world. This includes being attuned to the ways in which the world and our emotional lives are structured by and favors men. It stresses the need to be attuned to, as well as resist and challenge gender-based stereotypes and attitudes around emotions, paying close attention to the ways those stereotypes, norms, and attitudes differ across race, class, ethnicity, et cetera. (shrink)

Older adults report high emotional well-being, but age-comparative studies of emotion regulation strategies have not identified systematic age differences. We propose that emotion regulation tactics may be more promising. Emotion regulation tactics involve strategy implementation in a specific situation, and have features shared across strategies involving positive or negative elements (objects/thoughts) in the environment that may be approached or receded from in the regulation attempt (i.e., a valence dimension about the environmental element, and a direction dimension (...) indicating movement toward or away from it). Across several studies, older adults used more positive-approaching than negative-receding tactics. Positive-approaching tactics may also be more effective at regulating mood. We consider implications for aging, as well as group differences in emotion regulation behavior generally. (shrink)

The present study aimed to explore the effectiveness of two typical intrapersonal strategies (cognitive reappraisal, CR; expressive suppression, ES) on interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), and uncover the physiological synchrony pattern underlying this. A sample of 90 friend dyads (N = 180) was randomly assigned to the CR, the ES, or the control group. In each dyad, the target underwent a negative emotional task (induce sadness by recalling a negative event), and the regulator was assigned to implement the (...) CR strategy, the ES strategy, or no action to down-regulate the targets’ negative emotions. Self-reported results showed that compared to the control group, both CR and ES strategies decreased the targets’ negative emotions, and increased the targets’ positive emotions, indicating a successful IER effect. And the ECG results revealed that relative to the control condition, both CR and ES strategies evoked stronger physiological synchrony (heart rate synchrony and heart rate variation synchrony) during the emotion regulation stage of IER. Overall, these findings demonstrated the similar efficacy of reappraisal and suppression strategies implemented by the regulators to improve the targets’ negative emotions, and suggested that the physiological synchrony might have an important relational meaning during the IER process. (shrink)

The aim of our study was to verify relationships between individual difficulties in emotion regulation (ER), ER strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and compassion (to self and others) with the presence of depressive symptomatology in a sample of Slovak adolescents during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the sample of 140 Slovak adolescents (age between 17–19 years) was administrated The Beck Depression Inventory- II. (Beck et al., 1996), The Overall Depression Severity and Impairment Scale (Bentley et (...) al., 2014), The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003), The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), The Sussex-Oxford Compassion for the Self Scale and The Sussex-Oxford Compassion for Others Scale (Gu et al., 2019). Results revealed that difficulties in ER (all subscales) and expressive suppression were in positive relationships with depression symptoms. Cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion were in negative relationships with depression symptoms. Lack of ER strategies and cognitive reappraisal (inversely) were the strongest predictors of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that ER strategies (mainly cognitive reappraisal) could be assumed as protective factors in adolescent depression symptoms development in stressful circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The Coronavirus Covid 19 pandemic has produced terrible effects in the world economy and is shaking social and political stability around the world. The world of sport has obviously been severely affected by the pandemic, as authorities progressively canceled all level of competitions, including the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. In Spain, the initial government-lockdown closed the Sports High-performance Centers, and many other sports facilities. In order to support athlete's health and performance at crises like these, an online questionnaire named (...) RECOVID-19, was designed to assess how athletes were living their lives during such periods of home confinement. The main purpose of the questionnaire was to assess the impact of prolongued confinement on athlete's psychological, emotional, and behavioral performance. One thousand, two hundred forty-eight athletes participated in the survey. They had the fllowing characteristics:, who compete at National and International level. Results showed that during the confinement period, those athletes who lacked motivation reported a higher level of stressful thoughts, more behavioral problems, and greater emotional upheaval. However, those athletes who accepted confinement measures as necessary, and were in favor of respecting the rules of social isolation, fostered positive emotional states such as feelings of friendship. In addition, the availability of some sport equipment together with the ability to continue some training, were protective factors against emotional stress, lack of motivation and behavioral problems; and they were associated with greater respect for, and adherence to, confinement rules. Gender differences, tested by multigroup analysis, revealed that coping activities were more often associated to negative emotional states among women, whereas the ongoing availability of training information and future conditions were equally protective factors for both genders. This study also showed that receiving coaching, support and completing frequent training routines seem to be valuable tools to prevent or reduce some of the harmful effects of isolation on athlete's emotional well-being. The conclusions derived from this research would possibly help sport authorities to design supporting policies and plans to support athletes and trainers in future disruptive health crises. (shrink)

Failings of a categorical systemFor decades, standardized classification systems have attempted to define psychiatric disorders in our mental health care system, with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013) and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th revision (ICD-10; World Health Organization, 2010) being internationally best-known. One of the major advantages of the DSM must be that it has seriously diminished the international linguistic confusion regarding psychiatric disorders. Since (...) its introduction, it contributed extensively towards one common international language for defining and conceptualizing psychiatric disorders. Strikingly, within the field of psychological testing a similar step forward seems to have not yet been taken. At present, there exists no international standard for the use of psychological tests that takes the definition of a specific symptom as listed in DSM-5 as its starting point, and reliably and validly measures this symptom. Rather, the majority of tests are measuring constructs consisting of a multitude of symptoms. For example, the Beck’s Depression Inventory (Beck et al., 1996) measures core symptoms of depression summing up to a depression score. Accordingly, we believe it is time for a change. The diagnostics of psychiatric disorders, where disorders are defined as nosological units with a single cause, a single organic substrate, and a single time course, has been problematic for centuries. The field of psychiatry has always been ambivalent about its desire to follow a medical model (Blaney, 2015), but afflicted due to its definitions of pathology. The definition of a psychiatric disorder in DSM-5 offers little room for a clear cut pathogenesis and harsh demarcation of syndromes. This is reflected in the DSM-5, where it states: “A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning” (APA, 2013, p.20). An unfortunate and recognized consequence of this definition within the current system is that many symptoms overlap within categories of psychiatric disorders and patients end up diagnosed with many co-morbid disorders.Two fundamental problemsRegardless of new attempts to improve the diagnostics of psychiatric disorders, the DSM-5 represents the status quo. Consequently, the distinction between diagnosis and classification remains substantial and more than a discussion on semantics. We identify two fundamental problems within the current framework. Generally, a psychiatric diagnosis is considered to be descriptive (Hengeveld and Schudel, 2003). The clinician will describe a syndrome (its nature, timespan, and severity) within the framework of a disorder, and often include a differential diagnosis, predisposing protective or vulnerability factors, and provoking or maintaining factors. Within the DSM-5 framework, a similar ‘approach to clinical case formulation’ is taken (APA, 2013, p. 19). Evidently, a descriptive diagnosis has a hypothetical character. It consists of the clinician’s hypothesis and is based on his or hers professional considerations according to the abovementioned factors. Once the clinician has formulated a descriptive diagnosis, it is then complementary ‘translated’ into a DSM-5 classification. Herein lies the problem. For the layman, the existence of this distinction between diagnosis and classification is usually unknown. Preceding treatment, the clinician will give the client a classification of the existing psychiatric problems and the client may attribute more meaning to it than appropriate, thereby fostering the risk of reification. Second, the DSM-5 is a categorical system. Thus, individual disorders are regarded as discrete units – ‘you either have it, or you don’t’. DSM-5 states about this: “(…) scientific evidence places many, if not most, disorders on a spectrum with closely related disorders that have shared symptoms, shared genetic and environmental risk factors (…)”. And “(…) we have come to recognize that the boundaries between disorders are more porous than originally perceived.” (APA, 2013, p. 6). This leads to a fundamental problem. Because the overwhelming majority of psychiatric disorders examined thus far using taxometric methods appear to be dimensional in nature (Haslam, 2003; Widiger and Samuel, 2005), consequently all of their categorizations become artificial and debatable. Even though DSM-5 took a modest step towards a more dimensional approach, its core remains categorical. To illustrate, consider the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This classification consists of nine diagnostic criteria of which a minimum of five need to be present for the diagnosis of BPD. A simple numerical combination algorithm leads to a staggering number of 256 distinct presentations of BPD (Albion et al., 2013). Due to this chameleon-like nature, the disorder’s diagnostic validity becomes questionable. Strikingly, this number is relatively small when compared to other conditions, e.g., there are 636,120 ways to have posttraumatic stress disorder (Galatzer-Levy and Bryant, 2013).DSM-5 does propose an alternative model for personality disorders based on personality functioning and traits (APA, 2013, p. 761), as a possible answer to the problem that most patients fit with multiple co-morbid personality disorders or to the category of personality disorder not otherwise specified. In November 2012, the chair committee of APA decided to move this alternative model to section III of DSM-5 and to sustain the categorical system in section II. A potential solutionDSM-5 and its predecessors have brought about an invaluable improvement regarding the formulation of a common international language for psychiatric disorders. However, the individual disorders fit poorly with its starting point of discrete units and strict boundaries. Van Os (2014) has argued for a better balance between the categorical and personalized aspects of psychiatric disorders. We argue for a two-step approach.Particularly due to the ‘weak boundaries’ between disorders, it might be beneficial to limit ourselves by merely categorizing clients into the main categories of the DSM-5 according to their most prominent symptoms (Van Os, 2014), i.e. their main complaint. In other words, clinicians could first ask themselves whether the symptomatology is concerning a neurodevelopmental disorder, or a bipolar and related disorder, or a depressive disorder, and so on. It will drastically reduce the over 400 classifications in DSM-5 down to 20 categories. Van Os (2014) even argues to combine some of the main categories, reducing this number even further to 15 categories. The advantages of reducing the over 400 classifications are fivefold: 1) a syndrome, being an aggregation of symptoms, creates a false relation between symptoms that are that are already heterogeneous themselves; 2) 15 broad categories are functional: it results into a very heterogeneous group of clients within a category and thus prevents stereotypes and invites further personalizing of complaints; and 3) a dimensional measure of a symptom rather than a syndrome will correspond better with the client regardless of it not providing the complete picture. Focusing on the main complaint will indicate where there is an immediate need for care (Van Os, 2014); 4) it will allow clinicians to recognise subthreshold conditions more easily (Magruder and Calderone, 2000); and 5) it might facilitate the development of clear demarcations between normal and abnormal functioning (Kessler, 2002; Widiger and Samuel, 2005). Please, see also Table 1.This also fits well within scientific advances, as thus far strongest evidence has been found for a distinction between internalizing and externalizing disorders, even superseding these 15 main categories (DSM-5; APA, 2013, p.13, but see Weiss et al., 1998). The second step would concern the personalized aspect, which we argue to define on a level of core symptoms of the specific main category, to be agreed upon later. To assess these core symptoms, the field of psychological testing could develop an internationally applicable instrument to reliably and validly measure each (core) symptom on a dimensional scale. Many of these instruments are readily available and have proven its psychometric properties within scientific research. Elements from these instruments could be easily transformed to work within the new system. Within the field of psychology, this approach could aid development of a common international language to define symptoms, analogous to the field of psychiatry. Importantly, current psychological testing mainly implies the use of self-report measures. This leads to an abundance of auto-amnestic information. To increase the reliability and validity of psychological tests to assess DSM-5 symptoms, it may be important to add two additional information resources. This would entail psychological tests where a next of kin answers questions about the symptom of the client, and psychological tests that include the clinicians’ judgment, such as structured clinician-based interviews. Conversely, we also need to acknowledge the well-known limitations of clinical judgment (e.g., Faust, 1986; Garb, 1998). Advantages of a new frameworkThe changes we suggest have big implications and are not easily implemented in the current framework. Clients may prefer the comfort of a single clear label, similar to what they are used to in other areas of medicine. Health insurance providers and policy makers may argue for single labels as well. Therefore, it would require a lot of explanation from our clinicians to promote a change. Our suggestions for broader categories may not disambiguate the current situation better than the existing approach, but it will promote personalisation of health care. Difficulties in diagnostic reliability will remain in disorders that fall on the boundaries of the taxons, e.g., schizoaffective disorder versus bipolar disorder with psychotic characteristics, which may benefit from further study. There are also some politically tinged questions to keep in mind: How will we finance our health care, and how will we ensure a gradual transition from the current financing system, including clients who already have their labels? What about visitations from insurers and health inspection? How can they control for a good standard of quality in health care when considering the increasing heterogeneity? Nevertheless, we argue that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. We will see a shift from a categorical to a personalized approach, which will lead to less (self) stigmatizing, less estrangement, and it will challenge reification thinking. DSM-V states that “a reformulation of research goals should also keep DSM-5 central to the development of dimensional approaches to diagnosis that will likely supplement or supersede current categorical approaches to diagnosis in coming years” (APA, 2013, p. 13). Our proposition for psychological testing on symptom level could contribute to this development. Furthermore, this new approach will do more justice to the heterogeneity of symptoms within and outside of classification categories, see also Table 1. Moreover, in this new approach we join forces of expert knowledge from the fields of psychiatry and psychological science. Finally, it offers new and potentially better opportunities to map health care needs. This in turn will lead to a better interface for allocation of appropriate treatment. It will present a clearer picture of when preventative care is preferred over treatment and vice versa. Importantly, health care needs will be more closely attuned to the ‘own story’ of the client.We argue for the national and international psychological associations in Europe and the United States of America to support the idea of a collective approach to develop an internationally standardized psychological testing battery to reliably assess all the core symptoms of the main categories in DSM-5. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmotion regulation comprises attempts to influence when and how emotions are experienced and expressed. It has mostly been conceived of as proactive or reactive, but it may also be retroactive and involve memory. I term such past-oriented activity mnemonic emotion regulation and propose that it involves increasing or decreasing access to or altering the characteristics of a memory. People may increase access to a memory and make it more likely that it will be retrieved in the future, for example (...) by rehearsing a pleasant memory. They may decrease access to a memory and make it less likely that intrusions will be experienced in the future, for example by repeatedly trying to stop an unpleasant memory from being retrieved. Finally, people may alter the characteristics of a memory and change its content or context, for example by replacing a negative impression with a productive interpretation. I discuss how mnemonic emotion regulation may be i... (shrink)

Negative emotion differentiation has been suggested to be important for adaptive emotion regulation. However, knowledge concerning how ED may impact specific ER strategy choice remains surprisingly sparse. We therefore investigated if person-level negative ED was associated with habitual use of individual ER strategies, how person-level negative ED was associated with daily use of individual ER strategies, and finally how within-person daily fluctuations in negative ED were associated with daily use of individual ER strategies. During (...) a 10-day experience sampling study, 90 healthy participants rated their momentary emotions and their ER efforts in response to those emotions. ER strategies included four putatively adaptive strategies and four putatively maladaptive strategies. Results revealed that negative ED at the person level was neither associated with habitual nor daily ER strategy endorsement when controlling for negative emotions. Likewise, associations between within-individual daily variation in negative ED and daily ER did not remain statistically significant after controlling for negative emotions. The results thus point to no or weak associations between negative ED and ER choice above and beyond negative emotions. Future experimental studies addressing ED at the momentary level and teasing out the ED–ER causal timeline are needed to further evaluate ED–ER associations. Findings from such research may represent an important step toward refining psychotherapeutic interventions aimed at improving emotional problems. (shrink)

Because emotion regulation processes operate over time, they potentially change the context in which subsequent ER processes occur. To test this proposal, fifty-two healthy participants completed the ER choice task. Thirty standardized low- and high-intensity negative images were used to generate different emotional contexts in which participants selected between distraction or reappraisal strategies to decrease the intensity of their negative emotion. Participants then implemented their selected strategy and rated their negative emotion. Using a dynamic (...) perspective, we examined as predictors of ER strategy choice, in addition to current stimulus intensity, several contextual factors from the immediately preceding trial: preceding stimulus intensity and strategy choice, and the intensity of negative affect following the previous strategy implementation and thus preceding the current trial. Results replicated earlier findings that participants are more likely to choose distraction for high-intensity images. Extending earlier findings, selecting reappraisal in the preceding trial and greater negative affect preceding the current trial were associated with lower odds of choosing distraction. The lack of significant interactions among the current and preceding trial factors suggests that these effects on ER choice were direct and not through moderating the effect of current stimulus intensity. These findings support dynamic theories of ER. (shrink)

Building relationships is crucial for satisfaction and success, especially when entering new social contexts. In the present paper, we investigate whether attempting to improve others’ feelings helps people to make connections in new networks. In Study 1, a social network study following new networks of people for a twelve-week period indicated that use of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) strategies predicted growth in popularity, as indicated by other network members’ reports of spending time with the person, in work and non-work (...) interactions. In Study 2, linguistic analysis of the tweets from over 8000 Twitter users from formation of their accounts revealed that use of IER predicted greater popularity in terms of the number of followers gained. However, not all types of IER had positive effects. Behavioral IER strategies (which use behavior to reassure or comfort in order to regulate affect) were associated with greater popularity, while cognitive strategies (which change a person’s thoughts about his or her situation or feelings in order to regulate affect) were negatively associated with popularity. Our findings have implications for our understanding of how new relationships are formed, highlighting the important the role played by intentional emotion regulatory processes. (shrink)

Despite the centrality of emotion regulation in psychiatric disorders such as depression, there is a lack of experimental studies examining the psychological factors that influence emotion regulation in individuals with depressive symptoms. Participants with current depressive symptoms were randomly assigned to an experimental manipulation promoting more malleable emotion beliefs or the control condition. Participants underwent a negative emotion induction and reported on their affect and emotion regulation during the induction. Individuals who received the experimental (...) manipulation reported greater cognitive reappraisal and greater emotion recovery. Experimental manipulations that can enhance emotion regulation and emotion recovery possess significant promise as a preliminary step in developing brief interventions that can overcome formal barriers to care. (shrink)

High levels of violence and conflict occur in inpatient psychiatric settings, causing a range of psychological and physical harms to both patients and staff. Drawing on critiques of vulnerability from the philosophical literature, this paper contends that staff's understanding of their relationship with patients (including how they should respond to violence and conflict) rests on the dominant, reductive account of vulnerability. This account frames vulnerability as an increased susceptibility to harm and so regards ‘invulnerable’ staff's responsibility to be protecting and (...) managing vulnerable patients. We offer an alternative view of vulnerability as an openness and capability to be changed, which illuminates how the common account of vulnerability is used to justify staff's coercive power over patients and to control staff behaviour. Our main argument is that staff's adoption of this negative approach to vulnerability is associated with a range of factors that are connected to the violence and conflict endemic to these settings. Staff's need to situate themselves as invulnerable and therefore incapable of harm, we argue, leads to significant issues through: damaging staff ability to emotionally regulate; coercing patients into an asymmetrical openness leading to aggression to restore status; damaging therapeutic relationships by enforcing separation between staff and patients; increasing staff's reliance on unhelpful and rigid techniques (such as de‐escalation); repressing staffs’ ability to learn and grow through encounters with patients. Finally, we offer recommendations for how vulnerability and openness could be cultivated as a relational and radical practice in spaces that are traditionally closed and hostile to it. (shrink)

Self-compassion (SC) seems to play an important role in improving Emotion Regulation (ER). Nevertheless, the results of previous studies regarding the links between SC and ER are not consistent, especially facing diverse models of ER (strategy-based vs skill-based). The goal of this prospective study was to evaluate the links between these three concepts, by testing the predictive roles of SC and ER skills on both ER adaptive and maladaptive strategies, using standardised questionnaires and visual analogue scales. Results of regression (...) analysis showed that self-compassion positively predicts cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, problem-solving, relaxation, self-support, tolerance and ER skills and negatively predicts behavioural avoidance, expressive suppression and ruminations. Results also showed that ER skills positively predict cognitive reappraisal, expression, acceptance, relaxation, self-support and tolerance and negatively predicts behavioural avoidance, expressive suppression and ruminations. Results from a mediation model are also promising regarding both the role of ER skills on the effect of SC on adaptive ER strategy use. Even if this study can be associated with common limits of self-report measures, it highlights the role of SC in a model of ER. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPeople's relationship between positive and negative affect varies on a continuum from relatively independent to bipolar opposites, with stronger bipolar opposition being termed affective bipolarity. Experiencing more depressive symptoms is associated with increased bipolarity, but the processes underlying this relation are not yet understood. Here, we sought to replicate this link, and to examine the role of two potential mediating mechanisms: emotion regulation ability, and trait brooding. Drawing from the Dynamic Model of Affect, we hypothesised that a poor (...) ability to regulate negative emotion, and the tendency to brood over one's depressed feelings would predict stronger affective bipolarity, and mediate the relationship between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. To measure affective bipolarity, we calculated within-person affect correlations using two weeks of experience sampling data from a community sample. Mediation analyses indicated that baseline assessments o... (shrink)

Background Voluntary assisted dying became lawful in Victoria, the first Australian state to permit this practice, in 2019 via the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic). While conscientious objection by individual health professionals is protected by the Victorian legislation, objections by institutions are governed by policy. No research has been conducted in Victoria, and very little research conducted internationally, on how institutional objection is experienced by patients seeking assisted dying. Methods 28 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 family caregivers and (...) one patient about the experience of 28 patients who sought assisted dying. Participants were interviewed during August-November 2021. Data from the 17 interviews (all with family caregivers) which reported institutional objection were analysed thematically. Results Participants reported institutional objection affecting eligibility assessments, medication access, and taking the medication or having it administered. Institutional objection occurred across health settings and was sometimes communicated obliquely. These objections resulted in delays, transfers, and choices between progressing an assisted dying application and receiving palliative or other care. Participants also reported objections causing adverse emotional experiences and distrust of objecting institutions. Six mediating influences on institutional objections were identified: staff views within objecting institutions; support of external medical practitioners and pharmacists providing assisted dying services; nature of a patient’s illness; progression or state of a patient’s illness; patient’s geographical location; and the capability and assertiveness of a patient and/or caregiver. Conclusions Institutional objection to assisted dying is much-debated yet empirically understudied. This research found that in Victoria, objections were regularly reported by participants and adversely affected access to assisted dying and the wider end-of-life experience for patients and caregivers. This barrier arises in an assisted dying system that is already procedurally challenging, particularly given the limited window patients have to apply. Better regulation may be needed as Victoria’s existing policy approach appears to preference institutional positions over patient’s choice given existing power dynamics. (shrink)

Cultural differences exist in the use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies, but the focus to date has been on intrapersonal ER strategies such as cognitive reappraisal. An emerging literature highlights the importance of interpersonal ER, which utilizes social cues to facilitate the regulation of emotional states. In cultures that place high value on social interconnectedness as integral to their collectivistic self-construal, including East Asian cultures, interpersonal ER strategies may be particularly effective in reducing negative affect but this has (...) not been previously tested. In this study, two groups comprising East Asian ( n = 48) and Western European ( n = 38) participants were randomly assigned to receive a priming narration depicting the use of either interpersonal (e.g., social modeling, perspective taking) or intrapersonal (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) ER strategies during a stressful experience. They were then instructed to utilize similar ER strategies in an emotion reactivity task during which they viewed high arousing negative pictorial stimuli while their heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (high frequency power – HF-HRV) and subjective affective states were measured. First we found that the East Asian group reported higher use of interpersonal ER strategies of social modeling and perspective taking in daily life. During the experimental interpersonal prime exposure, the East Asian group showed elevated HF-HRV (relative to baseline) compared to the Western European group, indicating more adaptive ER, but this pattern was not sustained during the reactivity or recovery phases. Instead, the East Asian group demonstrated increased HF-HRV and decreased HR across both prime conditions. The East Asian group also showed greater decreases in positive affect across the course of the experiment. Furthermore, individual differences in social modeling and individualistic self-construal moderated the effect of the ER prime in the East Asian group at trend levels, and main effects for perspective taking and reappraisal were observed in the Western European group. The findings support the notion that engaging in interpersonal ER strategies may be more beneficial for East Asian groups when immediately exposed to a stressful situation, as these strategies are congruent with cultural context and preferences, but our priming methodology may have limited the longer-term benefits. (shrink)

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of students in China followed an emergency policy called “Suspending Classes without Stopping Learning” to continue their study online as schools across the country were closed. The present study examines how students adapted to learning online in these unprecedented circumstances. We aimed to explore the relationship between adaptability, academic emotion, and student engagement during COVID-19. 1,119 university students from 20 provinces participated in this longitudinal study (2 time points with a 2-week interval). (...) The results showed that adaptability (the ability to respond to changes) and student engagement are significantly positively correlated with positive academic emotion and negatively correlated with negative academic emotion. Furthermore, adaptability not only directly predicts student engagement, but also affects student engagement through the chain mediation of positive academic emotion and negative academic emotion. The results contribute to the gap in knowledge regarding changes in students’ learning in response to the outbreak. This study further explains the internal mechanisms mediating the relationship between adaptability and student engagement. It may provide references for educational researchers and universities in dampening the negative effects of COVID-19 on students’ learning by improving their adaptability and developing positive academic emotions. (shrink)

Attachment theory proposes that the activation of the attachment system enacts emotion regulation (ER) to maintain security or cope with insecurity. However, the effects of ER on attachment states and their bidirectional influences remain poorly understood. In this ecological momentary assessment study, we examined the dynamics between attachment and ER. We hypothesised that attachment states and ER influence each other through time. Specifically, we hypothesised bidirectional short-term cycles between state attachment security and reappraisal, state attachment anxiety and rumination, and (...) state attachment avoidance and suppression. We also tested how trait attachment is related to state attachment and ER. One hundred twenty-two participants (Mage = 26.4) completed the Experiences in Close Relationship–Revised and reported state attachment and ER seven times daily for seven days. The results were only partly consistent with our cycle hypotheses yet revealed a cycle between low state attachment security and rumination that was attenuated by reappraisal. Moreover, rumination and suppression predicted increased insecure states, and reappraisal predicted increased secure and insecure states. Finally, trait attachment showed associations with state attachment and ER. Our study suggests regulatory dynamics between attachment and ER and opens important questions about their functional relationship in maintaining attachment-related behavioural patterns and emotional well-being. (shrink)

Recent theories have argued that emotions play a central role in moral decision-making and suggested that emotion regulation may be crucial in reducing emotion-linked biases. The present studies focused on the influence of emotional experience and individual differences in emotion regulation on moral choice in dilemmas that pit harming another person against social welfare. During these “harm to save” moral dilemmas, participants experienced mostly fear and sadness but also other emotions such as compassion, guilt, anger, disgust, regret (...) and contempt (Study 1). Fear and disgust were more frequently reported when participants made deontological choices, whereas regret was more frequently reported when participants made utilitarian choices. In addition, habitual reappraisal negatively predicted deontological choices, and this effect was significantly carried through emotional arousal (Study 2). Individual differences in the habitual use of other emotion regulation strategies (i.e., acceptance, rumination and catastrophising) did not influence moral choice. The results of the present studies indicate that negative emotions are commonly experienced during “harm to save” moral dilemmas, and they are associated with a deontological bias. By efficiently reducing emotional arousal, reappraisal can attenuate the emotion-linked deontological bias in moral choice. (shrink)