Abstract
That emotions change in response to emotion-eliciting events is a natural part of human life. However, it is equally important for emotions to return to baseline once the emotion-eliciting events have passed. This suggests that the ability to emotionally react to and recover from emotion-eliciting events is critical for healthy psychological functioning. But why do individuals differ in their emotion reactivity and recovery? The present work postulates that the ability to update emotional information in working memory (WM) may explain individual differences in emotion reactivity and recovery. Two studies are presented, which examined whether updating ability was related to emotion reactivity and recovery. In Study 1, we assessed participants' self-reported affect as they viewed negative and positive films. Our results revealed that better updating ability was related to greater emotion reactivity and facilitated (i.e., quicker) recovery from watching negative films. In Study 2, participants recalled a recent angering event, and were then instructed to either ruminate about or reappraise the event. Results revealed that updating ability was again related to greater emotion reactivity and facilitated (i.e., successful) emotion recovery in response to the angering event, and that this was unrelated to the emotion regulation strategy used. These findings identify the ability to update emotional information in WM as a possible mechanism in emotion responding.
Highlights
Suppose another driver cuts you off, making you feel upset
Why do individuals differ in how much they react to and recover from an emotion-eliciting event? In this paper, we propose that one process involved in modulating emotion reactivity and recovery is updating—a specific executive function closely related to the construct of working memory (WM; Schmiedek et al, 2009; Hofmann et al, 2012; Wilhelm et al, 2013)
Our findings partially supported this hypothesis, such that the relationship between updating ability and emotion reactivity and recovery was specific to negative emotions in response to negative film-clips
Summary
Suppose another driver cuts you off, making you feel upset. One of the more critical functions of emotions is to organize and motivate rapid actions in order to adaptively respond to immediate threats to survival or well-being (Izard, 2009). It is adaptive for emotions to change in response to changing situational demands since they prompt the organism to immediately act or to prepare for action. Once alerted, it is important for the organism to regulate the initial emotional response back to baseline to avoid overload or disruption by sustained emotional arousal (Block and Kremen, 1996). The ability to Updating, emotion reactivity, emotion recovery modify emotional responses in accordance with the situation has been implicated as an important ingredient of psychological health (Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010); it is apparent in the fact that when they become resistant to change, they are associated with emotion disorders like depression (Bylsma et al, 2008; Aldao et al, 2010; Kuppens et al, 2010; Pe et al, 2015)
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