Dispositional Emotion Regulation Research Articles

Direct and indirect effects of dispositional emotion regulation on dream experiences.

Direct and indirect effects of dispositional emotion regulation on dream experiences.

Adolescent Emotion Regulation and Future Psychopathology: A Prospective Transdiagnostic Analysis.

Transdiagnostic frameworks posit a causal link between emotion regulation (ER) ability and psychopathology. However, there is little supporting longitudinal evidence for such frameworks. Among N = 1,262 adolescents, we examined the prospective bidirectional relationship between ER and future pathological anxiety, depression, and substance dependence symptoms in 10 assessment waves over 7 years. In Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models, within-person results do not reveal prospective lag-1 effects of either ER or symptoms. However, between-person analyses showed that dispositional ER ability at baseline predicted greater risk for developing clinically significant depression, anxiety, and substance dependence over the 7-year follow-up period. These findings provide some of the first direct evidence of prospective effects of ER on future symptom risk across affect-related disorders, and should strengthen existing claims that ER ability represents a key transdiagnostic risk factor.

Psychophysiological Responses to a Brief Self-Compassion Exercise in Armed Forces Veterans.

Armed Forces personnel are exposed to traumatic experiences during their work; therefore, they are at risk of developing emotional difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), following traumatic experiences. Despite evidence to suggest that self-compassion is effective in reducing the symptoms of PTSD, and greater levels of self-compassion are associated with enhanced resilience, self-compassion in armed forces personnel and armed forces veterans remains under-researched. As a result, it is not known if therapeutic approaches that use self-compassion interventions are an acceptable and effective treatment for this population. Having previously shown that a one-off self-compassion exercise has temporary beneficial psychophysiological effects in non-clinical participants, we conducted this proof-of concept study to investigate whether this exercise is equally beneficial in veterans who had experienced deployment to a combat zone. Additionally, we examined if brief a self-compassion exercise can temporarily reduce hyperarousal symptoms and increase feelings of social connectedness. The current study also investigated the association between PTSD symptom severity, emotion regulation, and self-compassion in 56 veterans. All participants listened to a loving-kindness meditation for self-compassion (LKM-S) and psychophysiological recordings were taken throughout. Psychophysiological effects were observed including heart-rate (HR), skin conductance (SCL), and heart-rate variability (HRV) to determine associations with PTSD and changes in response associated with the self-compassion induction. PTSD symptom severity, dispositional emotion regulation, and self-compassion were measured, and participants also completed state measures of hyperarousal and social connectedness before and after the LKM-S. The findings partially demonstrated that self-compassion can be elicited in a veteran population but there were considerable individual differences in psychophysiological responses. The findings are discussed in light of existing theories of PTSD and self-compassion and the implications of using self-compassion based psychological approaches with veterans.

The role of two emotion regulation tendencies across two waiting periods

The distress associated with uncertainty differs in important ways from distress over clear and present stressors. Emotion regulation (ER) tendencies—namely reappraisal and suppression—have received considerable empirical attention, but the stressful uncertainty of waiting for important news poses unique ER challenges. Two longitudinal studies examined the role of these dispositional ER tendencies in predicting well-being (e.g., emotions, worry, subjective health, expectation management efforts) during uncertain waiting periods. Study 1 surveyed undergraduate students awaiting their grade on a midterm exam (N = 137; a 5-day wait); Study 2 surveyed law graduates awaiting their result on the California bar exam (N = 230; a 4-month wait). Consistently with past research, reappraisal was generally associated with positive markers of well-being. However, suppression was largely unassociated with well-being, in contrast with previous evidence. Our findings confirm the unique context of uncertain waiting periods and suggest that suppression may not be as detrimental during these periods as in other stressful situations.

The role of dispositional emotion regulation strategies on the longitudinal emotional process and subjective performance during a competitive season

The purpose of this study was to shed light on the associations between emotion regulation (ER) strategies used, their emotional processes (including cognitive appraisals and discrete emotions), and subjective performance across a competitive season. A sample of fifteen national-level rink hockey players completed ER questionnaire at the beginning of the season (T0) and reported their experiences of everyday appraisal, emotions, and subjective performance every week. A series of hierarchical linear modelling analyses (HLM) were performed to investigate the associations between the variables. Sobel tests were computed to identify the mediating effects of emotions and appraisals on these relationships. HLM results revealed that (a) T0 adaptive ER strategies were positively related to adaptive appraisals; (b) adaptive appraisals were positively related to pleasant emotions and negatively with unpleasant emotions and opposite relationships emerged for maladaptive appraisals; (c) happiness was positively associated with subjective performance. Sobel tests provided evidence of mediating effects of (a) appraisals in the relationships between T0 adaptive ER and pleasant emotions; and (b) happiness in the relationships between appraisals and subjective performance. The results highlighted the positive relationships between the adaptive dispositional ER strategies at the beginning of the season and the emotional experiences. Moreover, the analyses revealed relationships between appraisals, emotions, and subjective performance of athletes. In sum, this study provided additional knowledge about the capture of the emotional process during a competitive season highlighting the associations between a variety of emotions and selected key variables in a competitive context (i.e. ER strategies, appraisal, subjective performance).

Modeling individual differences in emotion regulation repertoire in daily life with multilevel latent profile analysis.

Emotion regulation (ER) repertoire-the range of different ER strategies an individual utilizes across situations-is assumed to enable more adaptive ER and greater well-being. ER repertoire has been operationalized by a quantitative index (sum of ER strategies across situations) or by applying a person-centered approach to global self-reports of dispositional ER. We aimed to assess ER repertoire in daily life by using an experience sampling methodology (ESM) and a person-centered approach that could account for nested data. We used multilevel latent profile analyses of ESM data (N = 179, 9-10 prompts per day over 21 days) to (a) group the occasions into latent profiles of momentary ER strategies, (b) group individuals whose distributions of ER profiles differed across occasions into latent classes, and (c) examine well-being correlates of class membership at the person level. At the occasion level, we identified nine ER profiles that differed in degree of use (e.g., no use of any vs. strong use of all strategies) and in specific combinations of strategies (e.g., situation selection and acceptance vs. suppression and ignoring). At the person level, we identified 5 classes of individuals differing in the degree to which they used various momentary ER profiles versus one predominant profile across situations. Well-being was highest for individuals who used multiple ER profiles of active strategies and lowest for individuals who used ER profiles focused on suppression. Hence, both ER repertoire width and the specific make-up of the ER repertoire were relevant for the relation between ER repertoire and well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Resting State Cortico-Limbic Functional Connectivity and Dispositional Use of Emotion Regulation Strategies: A Replication and Extension Study.

Neuroimaging functional connectivity analyses have shown that the negative coupling between the amygdala and cortical regions is linked to better emotion regulation (ER) in experimental task settings. However, less is known about the neural correlates of ER traits or dispositions. The present study aimed to: (1) replicate the findings of differential cortico-limbic coupling during resting-state depending on the dispositional use of emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, the study aimed to: (2) extend prior findings by examining whether differences in cortico-limbic coupling during resting-state predict experiential and neuronal ER success in a standard ER task. To this end, N = 107 healthy adults completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), underwent an 8-min resting-state fMRI acquisition, and completed a reappraisal task during fMRI. Functional connectivity maps of basolateral and centromedial amygdala nuclei were estimated with a seed-based approach regarding associations with regions of the prefrontal cortex and were then correlated with ERQ scores as well as experiential and neuronal ER success. All hypotheses and the analysis plan are preregistered at https://osf.io/8wsgu. Opposed to prior findings, we were not able to replicate a correlation of dispositional ER strategy use with functional connectivity between the amygdala and PFC regions (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). Furthermore, there was no association of experiential and neuronal reappraisal success with functional connectivity between amygdala and insula as well as PFC (p > 0.05, FWE-corrected). The present preregistered study calls into question the reported association between individual differences in resting-state cortico-limbic connectivity and dispositional use of ER strategies. However, ongoing advances in functional brain imaging and distributed network approaches may leverage the identification of reliable functional connectivity patterns that underlie successful emotion regulation.

Cognitive integration of personal or public events affects mental health: Examining memory networks in a case of natural flooding disaster.

The purpose of this research was to examine whether memories of personal or public events could affect mental health through the way those memories are integrated in memory networks. Participants from the general population (N=224, age mean=36.62years, 74% female) were either directly or indirectly personally affected by a natural flooding disaster with moderate consequences or had simply learned about it. A prospective design (during the floods and two months later) was used to examine the impact that such a personal or public event memory could have on their mental health. Results showed that flood-affected individuals reported poorer mental health compared to the unaffected. However, both affected and unaffected individuals who had encoded a current floods-related event in memory as need satisfying or who had embedded such an event in need satisfying memory networks showed better mental health over time. These results held after controlling for the effect of various demographics and dispositional emotion regulation styles. Simply learning about public events can impact mental health through the way those events are integrated in memory, which appears as a critical individual difference.

The Self as a Reason to Regulate

Notably absent from much of the psychological literature on emotion regulation are attempts to answer explicitly normative questions about the phenomenon. It is one thing to explain how emotional states are regulated. It is another thing to say something about what reasons there are to regulate our emotions, whether and why we might sometimes be obligated to regulate our emotions, and how we regulate our emotions well, or optimally. This paper is an attempt at the latter task, focused specifically on a type of emotion regulation also receiving little attention in the literature—what I call dispositional emotion regulation. Dispositional regulation occurs, when it does, at some point or period of time significantly prior to the onset of affected emotional states or episodes, and by means of modifying the subject’s emotional dispositions. And it is done well, or optimally, I argue, when it is done with an aim toward achieving and maintaining a coherent and comprehensible self, in the sense Shaftesbury had in mind.

The five factor model of personality and emotion regulation: A meta-analysis

ObjectiveThe aim of the present meta-analysis was to examine the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and emotion regulation strategies. MethodStudies were identified in PsycArticles, Medline, and Eric databases. Only empirical studies were included. ResultsOut of 32,656 identified articles, 132 studies (156 independent samples, 46,345 participants, and 753 effect sizes) met the inclusion criteria. The effect sizes of the r-type were obtained from all studies. The data were analyzed with random effects model. Lower level of neuroticism and higher levels of extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were associated with greater typically adaptive emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, problem solving and mindfulness) and lower typically maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (avoidance and suppression). Additionally, in a few cases, the associations were stronger in clinical samples than in nonclinical samples, in females than males, and in samples reporting dispositional emotion regulation compared to samples reporting situational emotion regulation. ConclusionThese results were discussed in terms of their importance for possible intervention strategies.

Neural networks in bottom up ‘experiential emotion regulation’

Emotion regulation influences how and when we experience emotion, impacting our sense of self and well being. While previous brain research on emotion regulation has focused on gray matter correlates of emotion regulation, this study represents a first exploratory study on white matter integrity of brain networks of ‘emotional approach’ as a bottom up experiential emotion regulation-strategy. Responding to the gap between cognitive and affective approaches of emotion regulation, pertaining to some of the daily emotional stressors, the present study investigates brain pathways of individual differences in ‘emotional approach’, or the tendency to affectively acknowledge, understand and express emotional experience (cf. [1]). Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI-MRI) measures of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusion (MD) evaluated dispositional emotion regulation in a group of 21 women with a ‘high emotional approach’ (HEA) (N = 11) and a ‘low emotional approach’ (LEA) (N = 10). HEA exhibited more FA of the cingulum, supporting emotion processing and emotion regulation, whereas LEA correlated to a higher FA in the right corticospinal tracts, supporting automatic action tendencies and a higher FA in the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), supporting cognitive control and monitoring of emotion. LEA also correlated with an increase in MD in the body (p. = 0.05) and in the splenium of the corpus callosum (CC). A higher FA in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (IFL) may indicate higher visual- affective integration within emotion processing, whereas more MD in the body and splenium of the CC decreases interhemispheric integration of emotional information within emotion processing and emotion regulation.

Do social conflicts at work affect employees’ job satisfaction?

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine social conflicts with co-workers (SCCWs) as a predictor of job satisfaction with co-workers (JSCWs) on a daily basis. Moreover, dispositional emotion regulation (ER) was suggested to moderate the within-person relationship between daily conflicts at work and JSCWs.Design/methodology/approachNinety-eight employees from German civil service agencies completed surveys across five consecutive work days. Dispositional variables and controls were assessed in a general survey which was completed before the start of the daily surveys.FindingsHierarchical linear modeling showed that SCCWs at noon were significantly related to employees’ JSCWs in the evening and that dispositional ER moderated this relationship, indicating that people with high abilities of ER reported higher levels of job satisfaction with their co-workers than people with low abilities of ER after experiencing SCCWs.Originality/valueThe present study links conflict research with organizational and personality research. The findings broaden the understanding of social conflicts in an organizational context and further highlight ER as an important factor which can buffer the negative effects of workplace conflicts.

Emotion Regulation of Events Central to Identity and Their Relationship With Concurrent and Prospective Depressive Symptoms

Dispositional emotion regulation is related to the severity and maintenance of depressive symptoms. However, whether emotion regulation specific to an event highly central for an individual’s identity is predictive of depressive symptoms has not been examined. Nonclinical participants (N = 220) reported the extent to which they employed a selection of emotion regulation strategies when recalling low- and high-centrality events. Dispositional emotion regulation and depressive symptoms were also assessed. A 7-week follow-up was conducted. High-centrality events were associated with more emotion regulation efforts. Greater brooding and expressive suppression in relation to high-centrality memories predicted concurrent depressive symptoms after controlling for event valence and dispostional emotion regulation. Effects were absent for low-centrality memories. Emotion regulation in response to high-centrality memories did not predict depressive symptoms at follow-up beyond baseline depressive symptoms. Overall, the findings showed that maladaptive emotion regulation in response to memories of high-centrality events is important for explaining depressive symptomatology.

Dispositional and Situational Emotion Regulation in Younger and Older Adults

Abstract. Younger and older adults (N = 207) viewed a film scene eliciting strong negative emotions and then indicated how they had regulated their emotions. Dispositional emotion regulation was measured prior to stimulus presentation. Older adults showed higher levels of dispositional suppression than younger adults. Furthermore, individual differences in dispositional expressive suppression were predictive of reappraisal and suppression in the given situation. However, dispositional suppression was more strongly related to situational suppression among older adults than among younger adults. Future directions concerning the importance of and possible implications for age differences in coping with stressful situations are discussed.

Dispositional Experiential Emotion Regulation and the effects of PreSleep Negative Mood on Sleep

The present study investigates the impact of pre-sleep negative stress on sleep and unrecognized effects of dispositional emotion regulation. It was examined whether the induction of negative pre-sleep emotion had a negative impact on sleep physiology and second, whether a dispositional High ‘Emotional Approach’ (HEA) compared to a ‘Low Emotional Approach’ (LEA) defined by high versus low efforts to identify, process, and express emotions, assessed by the ‘Emotional Approach’ scale EAC, Stanton et al., facilitates the recovery from a pre-sleep failure-experience and its effects on sleep physiology. The induction of a personal failure experience resulted in a worsening of mood, a significant increase of ruminative thoughts about one’s own performance and impaired subsequent sleep physiology. The negative impact on sleep physiology was observed in decreases in sleep efficiency, (SE), total sleep time (TST), an increase in total time awake (TTA), and latency to the third phase sleep (N3) or slow wave sleep (SWS) and % REM-sleep. Our main objective of exploring emotion regulation as a personality trait in this study revealed an impact of dispositional differences in a high versus low emotional approach on the recovery of painful emotions within subjects and not between subjects. This result can be explained by the small group of participants- a characteristic of much effortful and exploratory sleep research. However and this is highly interesting: within the group with a LEA (8), more sleep parameters were affected in the night after the failure induction; a longer sleep onset latency, an enhanced latency to slow wave sleep, less % REM-sleep, more arousals, time awake, less total sleep time and sleep efficiency during the failure night relative to the neutral night was observed. Within the group of a HEA (7), only REM-% was decreased in the failure induction compared to the neutral condition. These preliminary results suggest an adaptive regulatory effect of a HEA in the recovery with a painful experience, an effect extending into sleep.

Emotion regulation mediates the relationship between personality and sleep quality

Objective: Despite a long history of interest in personality as well as in the mechanisms that regulate sleep, the relationship between personality and sleep is not yet well understood. The purpose of this study was to explore how personality affects sleep.Design: The present cross-sectional study, based on a sample of 1291 participants with a mean age of 31.16 years (SD = 12.77), investigates the impact of personality styles, assessed by the Personality Adjectives Checklist (PACL), on subjective sleep quality, as well as the possible mediation of this relationship by dispositional emotion regulation (ER) styles.Results: The dispositional use of suppression was a quite consistent predictor of poor subjective sleep quality for individuals scoring high on Confident, Cooperative or Introversive personality traits, but low on Respectful personality traits. Although a positive relationship between reappraisal and subjective sleep quality was found, there was only little evidence for a relationship between the assessed personality styles and the use of cognitive reappraisal.Conclusion: The present results indicate that in the evaluation of subjective sleep, the impact of personality and ER processes, such as emotion suppression, should be taken into account.

The Role of Dispositional Reappraisal in the Age-Related Positivity Effect

This study aimed to clarify mixed findings about whether older adults have a cognitive bias toward positive and/or away from negative information (the positivity effect) by examining whether dispositional cognitive reappraisal (a disposition to reinterpret an event to lessen its negative emotional impact) could moderate this effect. Participants from 19 to 79 years old watched a video that simultaneously showed a positive and a negative image. Two layers of their emotion regulation process, attention (measured by percent fixation duration) and cognitive effort (measured by pupil dilation), toward each image were recorded. One dispositional emotion regulation strategy, dispositional cognitive reappraisal, was also assessed. In general, older age was related to less percent fixation duration but not to differential pupil dilation toward the negative image. However, among those with higher dispositional cognitive reappraisal, older age was related to smaller pupil dilation for the negative image. Findings suggest that whether the age-related positivity effect occurs depends on the matching between cognitive processes and dispositional emotion regulation strategies.