scholarly journals Psychopathy and Aggression: The Role of Emotion Dysregulation

2020 ◽  
pp. 088626051990094 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Garofalo ◽  
Craig S. Neumann ◽  
Patrizia Velotti
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Violent Behavior ◽  
Verbal Aggression ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Shared Variance ◽  
Reactive And Proactive Aggression

The importance of psychopathy in the forensic and criminal justice domains is largely due to its robust associations with aggression and violent behavior. Hence, investigators have increasingly been interested in elucidating potential mechanisms linking psychopathy and aggression. Recent research highlighted previously overlooked associations between psychopathy and difficulties in emotion regulation, the process responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and managing one’s emotional experience, as well as for guiding behavior under intense emotional arousal. Yet, it remains unclear whether emotion dysregulation may be helpful to explain well-documented associations between psychopathy and aggression. The present study examined whether emotion dysregulation mediated associations (i.e., explained a significant portion of the shared variance) between psychopathy and aggression across community ( N = 521) and offender ( N = 268) samples. Participants completed self-report measures of psychopathy, emotion dysregulation, trait aggressiveness (i.e., anger, hostility, physical and verbal aggression), as well as reactive and proactive aggression. Across both samples, psychopathy had significant indirect effect on all indices of aggression through emotion dysregulation, with the exception of verbal aggression. These findings support the relevance of emotion regulation for the construct of psychopathy and its maladaptive correlates and highlight the potential relevance of focusing on emotion regulation as a possible target for interventions aimed at reducing aggression among individuals with psychopathic traits.

Intimate Partner Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms: Indirect Effects Through Negative and Positive Emotion Dysregulation

2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110063
Author(s):  
Lauren E. Simpson ◽  
Alexa M. Raudales ◽  
Miranda E. Reyes ◽  
Tami P. Sullivan ◽  
Nicole H. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation

Women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) are at heightened risk for developing posttraumatic stress (PTS). Emotion dysregulation has been linked to both IPV and PTS, separately, however, unknown is the role of emotion dysregulation in the relation of IPV to PTS among women who experience IPV. Moreover, existing investigations in this area have been limited in their focus on negative emotion dysregulation. Extending prior research, this study investigated whether physical, sexual, and psychological IPV were indirectly associated with PTS symptom severity through negative and positive emotion dysregulation. Participants were 354 women who reported a history of IPV recruited from Amazon’s MTurk platform ( Mage = 36.52, 79.9% white). Participants completed self-report measures assessing physical (Conflict Tactics Scale), sexual (Sexual Experiences Scale), and psychological (Psychological Maltreatment of Women) IPV; negative (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale) and positive (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Positive) emotion dysregulation; and PTS symptom severity (PTSD Checklist for DSM-5) via an online survey. Pearson’s correlation coefficients examined intercorrelations among the primary study variables. Indirect effect analyses were conducted to determine if negative and positive emotion dysregulation explained the relations between physical, sexual, and psychological IPV and PTS symptom severity. Physical, sexual, and psychological IPV were significantly positively associated with both negative and positive emotion dysregulation as well as PTS symptom severity, with the exception that psychological IPV was not significantly associated with positive emotion dysregulation. Moreover, negative and positive emotion dysregulation accounted for the relationships between all three IPV types and PTS symptom severity, with the exception of positive emotion dysregulation and psychological IPV. Our findings provide support for the potential underlying role of both negative and positive emotion dysregulation in the associations of IPV types to PTS symptom severity. Negative and positive emotion dysregulation may be important factors to integrate into interventions for PTS among women who experience IPV.

Dysregulation of emotions among pathological gamblers: The role of savoring

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S394-S394
Author(s):  
G. Rogier ◽  
P. Velotti
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Pathological Gambling ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Clinical Sample ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Pathological Gamblers ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Regulation Strategies

IntroductionTheories have conceptualized pathological gambling as an attempt to cope with emotional states. However, there is a lack of research about emotion dysregulation in this population. In a similar way, few is known about the nature of emotion regulation strategies used by pathological gamblers. Furthermore, it is not clear if pathological gamblers have difficulties to regulate negative emotions (as sadness) or positive ones (as excitement).ObjectivesWe sought to explore the associations among pathological gambling, emotion dysregulation and different types of emotion regulation strategies, comparing a clinical sample with community participants.AimsTo highlight similarities and differences in emotion dysregulation between pathological gamblers and healthy participants.MethodsA sample of pathological gamblers and a sample of healthy men, were administered the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Difficulties in Emotion regulation Scale-Positive (DERS-P), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and the Ways of Savoring Checklist (WOSC).ResultsAs expected, both levels of emotion dysregulation and suppression were significantly higher in the clinical sample while levels of savoring and reappraisal were significantly higher in the community sample.ConclusionsSuch results confirm the theorization of pathological gambling as a dysfunctional response to emotional states and underline the role of positive emotions. Specifically, pathological gamblers may be prone to suppress negative emotions instead to engage in functional strategies as reappraisal. Gamblers also fail to regulate positive emotions showing a poor capacity of savoring positive moments.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals Positive and Negative Emotion Regulation in Adolescence: Links to Anxiety and Depression

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Young ◽  
Christina Sandman ◽  
Michelle Craske
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Emotional Reactivity ◽  
Depressive Disorders ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Adolescent Anxiety

Emotion regulation skills develop substantially across adolescence, a period characterized by emotional challenges and developing regulatory neural circuitry. Adolescence is also a risk period for the new onset of anxiety and depressive disorders, psychopathologies which have long been associated with disruptions in regulation of positive and negative emotions. This paper reviews the current understanding of the role of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescent anxiety and depression, describing findings from self-report, behavioral, peripheral psychophysiological, and neural measures. Self-report studies robustly identified associations between emotion dysregulation and adolescent anxiety and depression. Findings from behavioral and psychophysiological studies are mixed, with some suggestion of specific impairments in reappraisal in anxiety. Results from neuroimaging studies broadly implicate altered functioning of amygdala-prefrontal cortical circuitries, although again, findings are mixed regarding specific patterns of altered neural functioning. Future work may benefit from focusing on designs that contrast effects of specific regulatory strategies, and isolate changes in emotional regulation from emotional reactivity. Approaches to improve treatments based on empirical evidence of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescents are also discussed. Future intervention studies might consider training and measurement of specific strategies in adolescents to better understand the role of emotion regulation as a treatment mechanism.

scholarly journals Cognitive and affective empathy relate differentially to emotion regulation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas M Thompson ◽  
Carien M. van Reekum ◽  
Bhismadev Chakrabarti
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Affective Empathy ◽  
Interference Effects ◽  
Emotional Interference ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Component Processes ◽  
The Relationship

The constructs of empathy (i.e. understanding/sharing another’s emotion) and emotion regulation (i.e. the processes by which one manages emotions) have largely been studied in relative isolation of one another. To better understand the interrelationships between their various component processes, this manuscript reports two studies that examined the relationship between empathy and emotion regulation using a combination of self-report and task measures. In study 1 (N=137), trait cognitive and affective empathy were found to share divergent relationships with self-reported emotion dysregulation. Emotion dysregulation was negatively related to cognitive empathy but showed no relationship with affective empathy. In the second study (N=92), the magnitude of emotion interference effects (i.e. the extent to which inhibitory control was impacted by emotional relative to neutral stimuli) in variants of a Go/NoGo and Stroop task were used as proxy measures of implicit emotion regulation abilities. Trait cognitive and affective empathy were found to share different relationships with both task metrics. Higher affective empathy was associated with increased emotional interference in the Emotional Go/NoGo; no such relationship was observed for trait cognitive empathy. In the Emotional Stroop, higher cognitive empathy was associated with reduced emotional interference, but no such relationship was observed for affective empathy. Together, these studies demonstrate that greater cognitive empathy was broadly associated with improved emotion regulation abilities, while greater affective empathy was typically associated with increased difficulties with emotion regulation. This finding points to the need for assessing the different components of empathy in psychopathological conditions marked by difficulties in emotion regulation.

scholarly journals Cognitive and Affective Empathy Relate Differentially to Emotion Regulation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas M. Thompson ◽  
Carien M. van Reekum ◽  
Bhismadev Chakrabarti
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Stroop Task ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Cognitive Empathy ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Affective Empathy ◽  
Emotional Stroop Task ◽  
Emotional Interference ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Component Processes

AbstractThe constructs of empathy (i.e., understanding and/or sharing another’s emotion) and emotion regulation (i.e., the processes by which one manages emotions) have largely been studied in relative isolation of one another. To better understand the interrelationships between their various component processes, this manuscript reports two studies that examined the relationship between empathy and emotion regulation using a combination of self-report and task measures. In study 1 (N = 137), trait cognitive empathy and affective empathy were found to share divergent relationships with self-reported emotion dysregulation. Trait emotion dysregulation was negatively related to cognitive empathy but did not show a significant relationship with affective empathy. In the second study (N = 92), the magnitude of emotion interference effects (i.e., the extent to which inhibitory control was impacted by emotional relative to neutral stimuli) in variants of a Go/NoGo and Stroop task were used as proxy measures of implicit emotion regulation abilities. Trait cognitive and affective empathy were differentially related to both task metrics. Higher affective empathy was associated with increased emotional interference in the Emotional Go/NoGo task; no such relationship was observed for trait cognitive empathy. In the Emotional Stroop task, higher cognitive empathy was associated with reduced emotional interference; no such relationship was observed for affective empathy. Together, these studies demonstrate that greater cognitive empathy was broadly associated with improved emotion regulation abilities, while greater affective empathy was typically associated with increased difficulties with emotion regulation. These findings point to the need for assessing the different components of empathy in psychopathological conditions marked by difficulties in emotion regulation.

scholarly journals Positive and negative emotion regulation in adolescence: links to anxiety and depression

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Seaton Young ◽  
Christina F Sandman ◽  
Michelle G. Craske
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotional Regulation ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Emotional Reactivity ◽  
Depressive Disorders ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Adolescent Anxiety

Emotion regulation skills develop substantially across adolescence, a period characterized by emotional challenges and developing regulatory neural circuitry. Adolescence is also a risk period for the new onset of anxiety and depressive disorders, psychopathologies which have long been associated with disruptions in regulation of positive and negative emotions. This paper reviews current understanding of the role of disrupted emotion regulation in adolescent anxiety and depression, describing findings from self-report, behavioral, peripheral psychophysiological and neural measures. Self-report studies robustly identified associations between emotion dysregulation and adolescent anxiety and depression. Findings from behavioral and psychophysiological studies are mixed, with some suggestion of specific impairments in reappraisal in anxiety. Results from neuroimaging studies broadly implicate altered functioning of amygdala-prefrontal cortical circuitries, although again, findings are mixed regarding specific patterns of neural functioning. Future work may benefit from focusing on designs that contrast effects of specific regulatory strategies, and isolate changes in emotional regulation from emotional reactivity. Greater integration of multiple measures within the same study would also facilitate more reliable evidence of effects observed. Future intervention studies might consider training and measurement of specific strategies in adolescents to better understand the role of emotion regulation as a treatment mechanism.

scholarly journals The Relationship between Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Interpersonal Competence Controlled for Emotion Dysregulation

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Asude Malkoç ◽  
Meltem Aslan Gördesli ◽  
Reyhan Arslan ◽  
Ferah Çekici ◽  
Zeynep Aydın Sünbül
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Private University ◽  
Hierarchical Regression ◽  
Interpersonal Competency ◽  
Male Undergraduate ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Interpersonal Emotion Regulation

The aim of this study is to examine the role of interpersonal emotion regulation on interpersonal competency when controlled for emotion dysregulation. The sample of the study consists of 342 (235 female; 107 male) undergraduate students attending to the various departments of a private university in Turkey. The average age of participants was 20.81 (SD=2.29). The Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Scale, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and Interpersonal Competency Scale were used.  Analyses were conducted through the SPSS 20 (IBM, 2011). Results of hierarchical regression analysis revealed that interpersonal emotion regulation and emotion dysregulation seem to predict interpersonal competency. After controlling for the effect of emotion dysregulation, interpersonal emotion regulation alone explains 18% of the overall variance in interpersonal competency. Interpersonal emotion has the highest contribution on interpersonal competency followed by emotion dysregulation.

Improving emotion regulation of social exclusion in depression-prone individuals: a tDCS study targeting right VLPFC

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenhong He ◽  
Zhenli Liu ◽  
Jun Zhao ◽  
Rebecca Elliott ◽  
Dandan Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Depressive Mood ◽  
Emotional Dysregulation ◽  
Social Emotional ◽  
Social Emotion ◽  
Passive Viewing

AbstractBackgroundGrowing evidence has indicated that right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (RVLPFC) is critical in down-regulating emotional responses to social exclusion, and that depression is accompanied by social emotional dysregulation associated with reduced lateral prefrontal engagement. This study used anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to examine whether stimulating RVLPFC could improve emotional down-regulation of social exclusion in individuals with high depressive mood (DM).MethodsA total of 96 high and 94 low DM individuals received active or sham tDCS while viewing social exclusion or individual negative pictures under no-reappraisal (passive viewing) and reappraisal conditions. Participants rate their negative emotional experience following the presentation of each image. Pupil diameter and visual fixation duration were also recorded during the task.ResultsIt was found that tDCS-activated RVLPFC induced a stronger regulation effect on social exclusion than individual negative emotions. The effect of tDCS on regulation of social exclusion was more pronounced in low v. high DM individuals.ConclusionsThese findings demonstrate the specific role of RVLPFC on social emotion regulation, which has implications for refining target areas for the treatment of social emotion dysregulation in depression. However the findings do not suggest that high DM individuals benefit from a single-tDCS session on the emotion regulation of social exclusion. Thus we suggest to use multiple tDCS sessions or transcranial magnetic stimulation to further explore the therapeutic proposal in the future.

scholarly journals The cost of empathy: Parent-adolescent conflict predicts emotion dysregulation for highly empathic youth

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caspar J. Van Lissa ◽  
Skyler T. Hawk ◽  
Hans M. Koot ◽  
Susan Branje ◽  
Wim H. J. Meeus
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Consolidation Process ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Mood Variability ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Adolescent Parent ◽  
Parent Conflict ◽  
Over Time

Empathy plays a key role in maintaining close relationships and promoting pro-social conflict resolution. However, research has not addressed the potential emotional cost of adolescents’ high empathy, particularly when relationships are characterized by more frequent conflict. The present six-year longitudinal study (N = 467) investigated whether conflict with parents predicted emotion dysregulation more strongly for high-empathy adolescents than for lower-empathy adolescents. Emotion dysregulation was operationalized at both the experiential level, using mood diary data collected for three weeks each year, and at the dispositional level, using annual self-report measures. In line with predictions, we found that more frequent adolescent-parent conflict predicted greater day-to-day mood variability and dispositional difficulties in emotion regulation for high-empathy adolescents, but not for average- and low-empathy adolescents. Mood variability and difficulties in emotion regulation, in turn, also predicted increased conflict with parents. These links were not moderated by empathy. Moreover, our research allowed for a novel investigation of the interplay between experiential and dispositional emotion dysregulation. Day-to-day mood variability predicted increasing dispositional difficulties in emotion regulation over time, which suggests that experiential dysregulation becomes consolidated into dispositional difficulties in emotion regulation. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that, for high-empathy adolescents, conflict was a driver of this dysregulation consolidation process. Finally, emotion dysregulation played a role in over-time conflict maintenance for high-empathy adolescents. This suggests that, through emotion dysregulation, high empathy may paradoxically also contribute to maintaining negative adolescent-parent interactions. Our research indicates that high empathy comes at a cost when adolescent-parent relationships are characterized by greater negativity.

Not just ‘callous-unemotional’: Psychopathic traits are associated with emotion dysregulation dimensions

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S181-S181
Author(s):  
P. Velotti ◽  
M. D’aguanno ◽  
C. Garofalo ◽  
G. Rogier
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Psychopathic Traits ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Male Offenders ◽  
Callous Unemotional ◽  
Callous Unemotional Traits ◽  
Difficulties In Emotion Regulation ◽  
Competing Interest

IntroductionHistorically, psychopathic individuals have mainly been described as characterized by pervasive callous-unemotional traits, with dramatic implications for clinical and forensic practices – such as the tendency to deem psychopathic individuals as untreatable. However, recent evidence with community samples have highlighted that psychopathic traits may be in fact related to emotion dysregulation rather than being the mere reflection of an underlying ‘unemotionality’. Yet, it is no clear if this association extends to populations with more severe forms of psychopathy (i.e., offenders).ObjectivesWe wanted to replicate previous evidence of an association between emotion dysregulation and psychopathic traits in a sample of incarcerated offenders.AimsTo investigate the associations among emotion dysregulation dimensions and psychopathic traits, exploring similarities and differences between the Interpersonal-Affective and the Antisocial-Lifestyle facets of psychopathy.MethodsA sample of male offenders incarcerated in Italian jails completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-4; Paulhus, Neumann, & Hare, 2015) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004).ResultsIn line with the expectations, emotion dysregulation dimensions did predict higher levels of psychopathic traits. Structural Equation Modelling revealed that selected dimensions of emotion dysregulation were associated with different facets of psychopathy.ConclusionsBased on our findings, we argue that psychopathic traits may be associated to a certain extent with emotion dysregulation, and thus a focus on improving emotion regulation skills may hold the promise to dampen the therapeutic pessimism when dealing with psychopathic offenders.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

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