scholarly journals People regulate each other’s emotion regulation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Cusimano ◽  
Geoffrey Goodwin
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Emotion Control ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
University Policies ◽  
General Capacity

People often observe others struggling with and attempting to regulate their negative emotions. But, rather than always offering sympathy and help, observers sometimes criticize others for feeling upset, thereby making them suffer even more. Why would observers react to suffering others in this way? Across six studies, we show that observers’ use criticism to spur sufferers to regulate their negative emotions away on their own. Consistent with this goal, observers base their supportive or critical reactions on whether they think the sufferer is capable of controlling their negative emotion (i.e., of regulating it away). Observers rely on a variety of cues to determine whether a person has control over their suffering. First, observers rely on their own sense of how much control they have over their own emotions (Study 1). Second, they judge emotions that are miscalibrated to the situation as being more controllable than emotions that are well-calibrated (Studies 2-4). And third, they incorporate information about the sufferer’s general capacity to exert cognitive control over his or her emotions (Study 4). Judgments about others’ emotion control extend to real-life contexts: They predict self-reports of supportive and critical behaviors towards close others (Study 5) and they predict support for university policies aimed at reducing the prevalence of microaggressions (Study 6). Taken together, our findings suggest that people engage in emotion regulation regulation, in which they expect and enforce others to regulate their own emotions if they can, and track features of the person or situation that enable successful emotion regulation.

Neural responses during down-regulation of negative emotion in patients with recently diagnosed bipolar disorder and their unaffected relatives

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Hanne Lie Kjærstad ◽  
Julian Macoveanu ◽  
Gitte Moos Knudsen ◽  
Sophia Frangou ◽  
K. Luan Phan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Down Regulation

Abstract Background Aberrant emotion regulation has been posited as a putative endophenotype of bipolar disorder (BD). We therefore aimed to compare the neural responses during voluntary down-regulation of negative emotions in a large functional magnetic resonance imaging study of BD, patients' unaffected first-degree relatives (URs), and healthy controls (HCs). Methods We compared neural activity and fronto-limbic functional connectivity during emotion regulation in response to aversive v. neutral pictures in patients recently diagnosed with BD (n = 78) in full/partial remission, their URs (n = 35), and HCs (n = 56). Results Patients showed hypo-activity in the left dorsomedial, dorsolateral, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (DMPFC and DLPFC) during emotion regulation while viewing aversive pictures compared to HCs, with URs displaying intermediate neural activity in these regions. There were no significant differences between patients with BD and HCs in functional connectivity from the amygdala during emotion regulation. However, exploratory analysis indicated that URs displayed more negative amygdala–DMPFC coupling compared with HCs and more negative amygdala-cingulate DLPFC coupling compared to patients with BD. At a behavioral level, patients and their URs were less able to dampen negative emotions in response aversive pictures. Conclusions The findings point to deficient recruitment of prefrontal resources and more negative fronto-amygdala coupling as neural markers of impaired emotion regulation in recently diagnosed remitted patients with BD and their URs, respectively.

scholarly journals Emotion Goals: What Do Sexual Offenders Want to Feel?

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (15-16) ◽  
pp. 2611-2629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Garofalo ◽  
Belén López-Pérez ◽  
Michaela Gummerum ◽  
Yaniv Hanoch ◽  
Maya Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Sexual Offenders ◽  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Limited Data ◽  
Perceived Utility ◽  
Emotional Dysfunction

Sexual offenders typically experience more negative emotions and greater difficulties in regulating emotions than non-offenders. However, limited data exist on what sexual offenders want to feel (i.e., their emotion goals). Notably, emotion goals play a key role in emotion regulation and contribute to emotional experience. The present study tested whether sexual offenders ( N = 31) reported higher scores for negative emotion goals and lower scores for positive emotion goals, compared with general offenders ( N = 26) and non-offenders ( N = 26). In addition, we tested whether sexual offenders differed from the other two groups in their perceived pleasantness and perceived utility of emotions. Sexual offenders reported greater scores for the emotion goal of sadness, and lower scores for the emotion goal of excitement, compared with both general offenders and non-offenders. State and trait levels of these emotions could not fully account for these differences. Furthermore, sexual offenders reported lower perceived pleasantness for sadness than general offenders and lower perceived pleasantness for excitement compared with both other groups. Finally, sexual offenders reported greater perceived utility of sadness than non-offenders. These novel findings and their implications for research and interventions are discussed in the context of sexual offenders’ emotional dysfunction.

scholarly journals Insensitive Players? A Relationship Between Violent Video Game Exposure and Recognition of Negative Emotions

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Miedzobrodzka ◽  
Jacek Buczny ◽  
Elly A. Konijn ◽  
Lydia C. Krabbendam
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Lower Sensitivity ◽  
Violent Video Game ◽  
Causal Direction ◽  
Matching Test ◽  
The One

An ability to accurately recognize negative emotions in others can initiate pro-social behavior and prevent anti-social actions. Thus, it remains of an interest of scholars studying effects of violent video games. While exposure to such games was linked to slower emotion recognition, the evidence regarding accuracy of emotion recognition among players of violent games is weak and inconsistent. The present research investigated the relationship between violent video game exposure (VVGE) and accuracy of negative emotion recognition. We assessed the level of self-reported VVGE in hours per day and the accuracy of the recognition using the Facial Expressions Matching Test. The results, with adolescents (Study 1; N = 67) and with adults (Study 2; N = 151), showed that VVGE was negatively related to accurate recognition of negative emotion expressions, even if controlled for age, gender, and trait empathy, but no causal direction could be assessed. In line with the violent media desensitization model, our findings suggest that higher self-reported VVGE relates to lower recognition of negative emotional expressions of other people. On the one hand, such lower recognition of negative emotions may underlie inaccurate reactions in real-life social situations. On the other hand, lower sensitivity to social cues may help players to better focus on their performance in a violent game.

Positive and Negative Emotion Goals in Psychopathology

2019 ◽  
pp. 36-49
Author(s):  
Yael Millgram ◽  
Maya Tamir
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Emotion Regulation Strategies ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Regulation Strategies

Some forms of psychopathology involve deficits in emotion regulation. Whereas prior research has focused on identifying maladaptive emotion regulation strategies among people who are diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, this research focuses on identifying maladaptive emotion regulation goals. This chapter discusses preferences for sadness and happiness in clinical depression, a disorder characterized by the prevalence of negative emotions and the paucity of positive emotions. The chapter reviews empirical evidence suggesting that depressed individuals are more likely to direct emotion regulation toward increasing negative emotions rather than decreasing them. Next explored are possible maladaptive emotion regulation goals in other psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder. Finally discussed are the implications of these new ideas for research and practice in psychopathology.

Gender and Negative Emotion During Narratives About Romantic Conflict: Links to Conflict Strategies

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Feiring ◽  
Izabela Milaniak ◽  
Valerie A. Simon ◽  
Lesley Clisura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Emotion Words ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Conflict Strategies ◽  
Conflict Narratives

Adaptation to the reconstructed past is central to understanding negative emotion and its management, but research is scarce on negative emotion in romantic conflict narratives. Addressing this gap, we studied negative emotion in romantic conflict narratives as a function of gender and associations with self-reports of conflict strategies. In 145 emerging adults (54% women) from the United States, we assessed angry and sad emotion words and vocal pitch (an index of emotional arousal) during romantic conflict narratives, and self-rated anger and sadness immediately following these narratives. Results showed that self-rated anger and sadness were higher for women than men, but the use of angry and sad words and pitch did not differ by gender. For men, pitch and sad words were related to reports of less problem solving and aggression. For women, negative emotion ratings were related to less problem solving and more withdrawal. Our findings suggest that reflecting back on past romantic conflicts is a task that involves the regulation of negative emotions and that such emotions are related to conflict approaches.

From “Aha!” to “Haha!” Using Humor to Cope with Negative Stimuli

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Wu ◽  
Tingting Guo ◽  
Chao Zhang ◽  
Tzu-Yi Hong ◽  
Chou-Ming Cheng ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Neural Pathways ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Emotion Regulation Strategy ◽  
Negative Stimuli

Abstract Humor has been considered an effective emotion regulation strategy, and some behavioral studies have examined its superior effects on negative emotion regulation. However, its neural mechanisms remain unknown. Our functional magnetic resonance imaging study directly compared the emotion regulation effects and neural bases of humorous coping (reappraisal) and ordinary reappraisal following exposure to negative pictures. The behavioral results suggested that humorous reappraisal was more effective in downregulating negative emotions and upregulating positive emotions both in the short and long term. We also found 2 cooperative neural pathways involved in coping with negative stimuli by means of humor: the “hippocampal–thalamic–frontal pathway” and the “amygdala–cerebellar pathway.” The former is associated with the restructuring of mental representations of negative situations and accompanied by an insightful (“Aha!”) experience, while the latter is associated with humorous emotional release and accompanied by an expression of laughter (“Haha!”). Furthermore, the degree of hippocampal functional connectivity with both the thalamus and frontal cortex was positively correlated with changes in positive emotion, and this result implied that the degree of emotion regulation could be strongly directly related to the depth of cognitive reconstruction. These findings highlight that regulating negative emotions with humor involves cognitive restructuring and the release of positive emotions.

Personality Differences in Emotions

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiting Ng ◽  
Ed Diener
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Personality Differences ◽  
Laboratory Situation

In Study 1, individuals high in neuroticism (high N) felt more negative and experienced less decrease of their negative emotions than individuals low in Neuroticism (low N) when extremely unpleasant hypothetical scenarios improved. Study 2 also found that high N individuals felt more negative than low N in a slightly unpleasant laboratory situation, and that individuals high in Extraversion (high E) felt more positive than individuals low in Extraversion (low E) in a slightly pleasant laboratory situation. The present studies also confirmed that high N individuals were less likely to repair negative emotions than low N, and high E individuals were more likely to savor positive emotions than low E. These attempts at negative and positive emotion regulation predicted negative and positive emotional reactions, respectively, and accounted for the trait differences in emotions. Hence, there is evidence that differences in negative emotion regulation mediated the relation between Neuroticism and negative emotions, and differences in positive emotion regulation mediated the relation between Extraversion and positive emotions.

scholarly journals Sleep quality is associated with the experience and adaptive regulation of positive emotion: an experience sampling study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Elizabeth Parsons ◽  
Beatrice Ellen Schofield ◽  
Sofia Batziou ◽  
Camilla Ward ◽  
Katherine Seaton Young
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Sleep Quality ◽  
Positive Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Smartphone Application ◽  
Emotional Dysregulation ◽  
Poor Sleep ◽  
Positive And Negative Emotions

Poor sleep patterns have been strongly linked to disrupted emotional experiences. Emotion regulation, defined as the capacity to manage one’s own emotional responses, is comprised of strategies to increase, maintain, or decrease the intensity, duration, and trajectory of positive and negative emotions. Poor sleep has been identified as a risk factor for emotional dysregulation, but most of the focus has been on negative emotion regulation. We therefore asked whether natural variations in sleep are associated with the experience and regulation of both positive and negative emotion. Young adults, aged between 18-24 years, (n = 101) completed seven-days of ecological momentary assessments using a smartphone application. Duration and quality of the previous night’s sleep was reported each morning. Levels of positive and negative emotions, and the strategies used to regulate emotions, were measured at pseudo-random timepoints four times a day. Multilevel modelling indicated that higher self-reported sleep quality was significantly associated with increased intensity and duration of positive emotion, and decreased intensity of negative emotion. Sleep quality, and not sleep duration, was also associated with reported use of adaptive positive emotion regulation strategies. For negative emotion regulation strategy use, we found no associations with sleep quality or duration. Naturally occurring fluctuations in daily sleep quality may be important for the experience and regulation of positive emotion in young adults. These findings emphasise the need to examine both positive and negative emotion, and emotion regulation to understand the links between sleep and mood.

scholarly journals Is Negative Emotion Differentiation Associated With Emotion Regulation Choice? Investigations at the Person and Day Level

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia S. O'Toole ◽  
Emma Elkjær ◽  
Mai B. Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Experiential Avoidance ◽  
Daily Variation ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Expressive Suppression ◽  
Emotion Differentiation ◽  
Psychotherapeutic Interventions ◽  
Healthy Participants

Negative emotion differentiation (ED) has been suggested to be important for adaptive emotion regulation (ER). However, knowledge concerning how ED may impact specific ER strategy choice remains surprisingly sparse. We therefore investigated (1) if person-level negative ED was associated with habitual use of individual ER strategies, (2) how person-level negative ED was associated with daily use of individual ER strategies, and finally (3) 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 (reflection, distancing, non-reactivity, reappraisal) and four putatively maladaptive strategies (rumination, experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, worry). 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.

scholarly journals The Immediate and Lasting Effect of Emotion Regulation in Adolescents: An ERP Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (19) ◽  
pp. 10242
Author(s):  
Meng Yang ◽  
Xinmei Deng ◽  
Sieun An
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Phase 1 ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Phase 2 ◽  
Lasting Effect ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Two Phases

The immediate effect is an important index of the outcomes of emotion regulation. However, in daily life, whether the effect of emotion regulation lasts and the lasting mechanism have been examined less. The present research focused on the relationships between the immediate and lasting effect of the emotion regulation of adolescents. Electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded from 51 adolescents (31 boys and 20 girls, Mage = 12.82) during online emotion regulation using the Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task (phase 1) and re-presentation of emotional stimuli after a period of time (phase 2). Event-related potentials (ERPs) related to emotion regulation, such as N2, P3, and the late positive potential (LPP), were examined in the two phases. The results showed that: (1) In both of the two phases, in negative emotion conditions, the amplitudes of P3 and LPP 300–600 of no-regulation conditions were significantly higher than those in reappraisal conditions. However, there was no significant difference under neutral conditions; (2) The amplitudes of P3, N2, and LPP 300–600 during emotion regulation in phase 1 positively predicted the amplitudes of P3, N2, and LPP300–600 in phase 2 in different experimental conditions. Results from the regression analysis implied that the immediate effect of online emotion regulation may predict the lasting effect when adolescents face the same emotions again. In addition, our findings provide neurological evidence that the use of cognitive reappraisal could effectively help adolescents to reduce the recruitment of cognitive resources when they regulate negative emotions and when they face those negative emotions again.

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