Abstract
Friends and therapists often encourage people in distress to say how they feel (i.e., name their emotions) with the hope that identifying their emotions will help them cope. Although lay and some psychological theories posit that emotion naming should facilitate subsequent emotion regulation, there is little research directly testing this question. Here, we report on two experimental studies that test how naming the emotions evoked by aversive images impacts subsequent regulation of those emotions. In study 1 (N = 80), participants were randomly assigned into one of four between-subjects conditions in which they either (i) passively observed aversive images, (ii) named the emotions that these images made them feel, (iii) regulated their emotions by reappraising the meaning of images, or (iv) both named and regulated their emotions. Analyses of self-reported negative affect revealed that emotion naming impeded emotion regulation via reappraisal. Participants who named their emotions before reappraising reported feeling worse than those who regulated without naming. Study 2 (N = 60) replicated these findings in a within-participants design, demonstrated that emotion naming also impeded regulation via mindful acceptance, and showed that observed effects were unrelated to a measure of social desirability, thereby mitigating the concern of experimenter demand. Together, these studies show that the impact of emotion naming on emotion regulation opposes common intuitions: instead of facilitating emotion regulation via reappraisal or acceptance, constructing an instance of a specific emotion category by giving it a name may “crystalize” one’s affective experience and make it more resistant to modification.
Highlights
Friends and therapists often encourage people in distress to say how they feel with the hope that identifying their emotions will help them cope
Using one trial per condition, this study found that generating labels for one’s emotional responses to audio vignettes led to reduced self-reported negative affect following emotion regulation in healthy participants, but this did not occur for participants with borderline personality disorder (Fitzpatrick et al, 2019)
We observed a main effect of regulating on Δ unpleasant affect such that participants felt better after regulating their emotions (M = − 1.15, SD = 0.98) compared to not regulating (M = − 0.01, SD = 0.26), F(1,76) = 65.22, p < .001, ηp2 = .46, 90% confidence intervals (CIs) = [.32, .56]
Summary
Friends and therapists often encourage people in distress to say how they feel (i.e., name their emotions) with the hope that identifying their emotions will help them cope. Study 2 (N = 60) replicated these findings in a within-participants design, demonstrated that emotion naming impeded regulation via mindful acceptance, and showed that observed effects were unrelated to a measure of social desirability, thereby mitigating the concern of experimenter demand Together, these studies show that the impact of emotion naming on emotion regulation opposes common intuitions: instead of facilitating emotion regulation via reappraisal or acceptance, constructing an instance of a specific emotion category by giving it a name may “crystalize” one’s affective experience and make it more resistant to modification. We are often encouraged to, “say how we feel,” when discussing life’s struggles with friends and therapists This prompt reveals the widespread belief that identifying one’s emotions helps us cope. Emotion verbalization might bolster emotion regulation across the lifespan
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