Abstract
Emotion-related disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress, eating, substance and some personality disorders) include some of the most common, burdensome, and costly diseases worldwide. Central to many, if not all of these disorders, may be patterns of rigid or inflexible emotion responses. Indeed, theorists point to emotion in-flexibility as a potential cause or maintaining factor in emotion-related diseases. Despite the increasing prominence of emotion inflexibility in theories of affective disease, a comprehensive review of the developing empirical literature has not yet been conducted. Accordingly, this review will examine the three dominant lines of inquiry assessing emotion flexibility. These include: (1) the capacity to use and vary deliberate emotion regulation strategies, (2) the context sensitivity of spontaneous emotional responses, and (3) flexibility in the appraisal of emotional events and experiences. Moreover, current evidence suggests that each of these three lines of research may converge to suggest the interplay of two key biological dimensions in emotion inflexibility, threat sensitivity, and cognitive control, known to be impaired in patients with affective disorders. In short, this developing body of work suggests a path by which future research could explicate and even exploit the ties between emotion inflexibility and affective disease, contributing to the development of improved models of risk, assessment, and intervention, with broad implications for psychological health.
Highlights
Current evidence suggests that each of these three lines of research may converge to suggest the interplay of two key biological dimensions in emotion inflexibility, threat sensitivity, and cognitive control, known to be impaired in patients with affective disorders. This developing body of work suggests a path by which future research could explicate and even exploit the ties between emotion inflexibility and affective disease, contributing to the development of improved models of risk, assessment, and intervention, with broad implications for psychological health
Theory and burgeoning evidence suggest that flexible emotion processing, characterized by variable and responsive up- and down-regulation of emotions to meet individual needs and contextual demands, is a core feature of psychological health and adaptation
It is clear that patterns of emotion in-flexibility, including poor up-generation and poor down-regulation of negative and/or positive emotions, could be a phenotype for a range of affective diseases
Summary
Theorists largely agree that emotion flexibility encompasses automatic, implicit, as well as deliberate emotion regulatory processing and is defined as the ability to respond to shifting demands with contextually sensitive modulation of emotional responses (Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010; Waugh et al, 2011; Bonanno and Burton, 2013; Ottaviani et al, 2013; Aldao et al, 2015; Hollenstein, 2015; Coifman and Almahmoud, 2016). Ochsner et al, 2009) with appropriate modulation of emotional responses, encompassing automatic, implicit as well as deliberate processing This includes the ability to generate or up-regulate emotions in response to contextual factors as well as the ability to shift or down-regulate emotions as contextual parameters or features change (Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010; Waugh et al, 2011; Bonanno and Burton, 2013; Aldao et al, 2015; Hollenstein, 2015; Coifman and Almahmoud, 2016). The study of emotion flexibility demands repeated assessment of the individual across contexts, circumstances, and/or time, so as to provide ample opportunity to capture changing responses, whether directed deliberately or spontaneously emerging
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